January 25, 2024 • 40 mins
In this conversation, Karol interviews Kevin McCullough, a TV and radio host, columnist, and yoga enthusiast. They discuss Kevin's journey into yoga, his career in radio, the challenges of public life, his admiration for his wife, and his "appreciation" for Taylor Swift. They also explore the lack of accountability in society and end with Kevin's advice for improving lives. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
There's a meme my very literary teenage daughter likes. It
describes different literature styles by nationality. It goes like this,
English literature, I will die for honor, French literature, I
will die for love, American literature, I will die for freedom.
(00:27):
Russian literature, I will die. While I've spent the great
majority of my life in America, I was born in Russia,
and I still carry around that Russian stoicism and bluntness,
especially where death is concerned. The casual way I talk
about death really alarms my family. Can you not, they say,
(00:48):
when I talk about death, the way I talk about
like anything else happening in the future, where I want
to be buried, what I'd like to see happen to
my stuff after I'm gone, etc. Or I read this
thing recently that's for so many people, the last words
they say before they die is calling out for their mama.
I shared this with my husband and kids, and they
(01:09):
did not enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Update at all.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I was thinking about how sweet it was for someone
in their nineties who hadn't seen their own mother in
decades to still feel.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Her and want her when they're on their own deathbed.
To me, that was a happy story.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The faces of my family said that they didn't agree,
and they didn't want to be thinking of their own
deaths and their mom long gone, so I try to
tone it down for them. But it is just interesting
to me how different cultures think or don't think about death.
I'm scared of death, don't get me wrong. I want
to live a long life. I want to be with
(01:46):
my family.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
As much as possible.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
But to me, the whole point is having a limited
amount of time on this.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Earth so that we can really appreciate what we have.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
My son sometimes asks me these would you rather questions,
and one of them recently was would I prefer to
be twenty years younger today or live till three hundred?
I mean very much neither. I want to be right
here where I am. I don't want to be twenty
years younger. I like my current age and I love
my current life, and I don't want to live until
(02:16):
three hundred. I want to do everything I'm supposed to
do in the time I have and go to my
grave confident that I've maxed.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Out my life in every way.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
This is a show about life and about making changes
to your life to improve it. So it's important to
think about the fact that life does come to an end.
Did you spend it the way you intended to? Are
you making the changes to make it what you want
it to be? If we don't face the reality of
death that this all ends someday, what's our impetus to
(02:48):
improve our lives today?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
As my kids get older, and the.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Older two are coming up on fourteen and eleven in
a few weeks, and the youngest is eight, I'm trying
to hold on to real moments with them as long
as possible. I realized recently that so many of our
best memories are on vacation, and that's great, but life
isn't vacation, and I want more regular day memories together too.
So We've started doing things like we read a book
(03:15):
together after dinner, something we haven't done since they were small.
And I want to take family walks more often. We
live in Florida, the weather is usually perfect. We should
enjoy it like we would on vacation. The idea that
I will die someday propels me to live better. It
makes me want to waste less of my time to
(03:36):
focus on the things that matter to me and discard
the rest. Death doesn't have to be scary. It can
be the motivation that you need to live. Coming up
next and interview with Kevin McCullough. Join us after the break. Hi,
and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
(03:56):
My guest today is Kevin McCullough TV and radio, your
host columnist at townhall dot com. Kevin is also the
seer of political things, lover of the Dallas Cowboys, great food, yoga,
and one very stunning brunette. He didn't tell me to
say that he hosts that Kevin Show. Thanks for coming on, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Hey, Carol, it's great to see you, and congrats on
the podcast. It's just tearing up the internet and I
love it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Thanks so much. So.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I've known you a long time and it's still fascinating to.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Me that you've become a yogi.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Is it fair to say that was a bit out
of character for you when that began?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Very much?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So? How did it happen?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
We had moved, We moved three times in eight years
inside the same village, which is nuts. Why would anybody
do that?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Would anybody do that.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But in the last move we left a house that
had a pool, and our kids were just starting to
get to the age where they needed to start taking
swim lessons, so we joined a local Lifetime They get
no money from me saying this, I get no money
from me saying this. But we joined the local Lifetime
workout place near us, and as part of the package,
(05:09):
they had yoga classes and the stunning brunette of which
you spoke said to me, I think I want to
try those, because it's part of the basic package. And
I said, okay. She was going. This was before pandemic.
She went probably fifteen or sixteen weeks. She had lost weight,
she was vibrant with energy. She was feeling so good
(05:33):
and so confident about herself, and I said, I think
I want to give that a try too, to which
she promptly said, now this is my thing. So I said, oh, well, okay.
Knowing that she was someone who did not like to
get up early, I knew that they had classes at
five point thirty and six o'clock in the morning. So
about a month later I started getting up mysteriously three
(05:54):
times a week and going and I was lost. I
didn't know anything about what I was doing. I used
to make fun of people that took yoga when I was,
you know, in my athletic years. And I found out
it was not only one of the hardest things I'd
ever done, but it was also one of the most
rewarding things. And I met this great, great, great instructor.
(06:16):
Her name is Lucy. Shout out to Lucy. She gave
me some one on one to kind of break down
what the poses mean and you know why they go
into order that they go in, cause I knew nothing,
and about I don't know. Two months later, the brunette
rolls over to me one morning. She goes, why do
you get up so early? Where are you going? I said, well,
(06:37):
I'm you know, I'm working out. She goes, why can't
you just go work out, you know when I go
to class? And I said, well, because I'm taking yoga.
She goes, well, why didn't you just take it with me?
And I said, well, I didn't want to rain on
your parade. And so we started then taking regularly nine
forty five vinyasa flow classes. If people are into yoga,
they know what vignasa is. It's a very aerobic, intense
(07:01):
kind of workout, but she get a lot of anaerobic
muscle training and other things and it as well. We've
been doing that now for four years, minus just a
few months that we had to kind of do it
remotely and other things because of the stupid COVID pandemic.
But yeah, we've been doing it. And in fact, as
we are having a conversation at this very moment, she
is in that class that I am not getting to
(07:23):
be at because I am talking to Carol Markowitz.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your young.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Glad to be it.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So did you always want to be in radio? Is
that something lifelong dream or radio?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I mean, i've very very apprecient statement by an aunt,
my mother's only sister. Actually, she says to me after
coming over to babysit one night, where I just literally
she I did to her what my Jonathan, my eleven
year old does to me. But I just talked her
ear off all night, and she literally turns to me
(07:59):
at one point and she goes, Kevin, as long as
you can make a living with that mouth of yours,
you're never going to go hungry. I don't think she
meant it as a compliment, but it was efficient in
the degree. And then so after that my grand my
one grandfather, I was a collector of audio equipment, so
I had like these classic real to real machines. I
(08:19):
had cassette decks, I had old vinyl record players. I
had all kinds of stuff, and the kind of crim
to resistant. The piece to resistance was the day that
my grandfather let me have one of his old CBE
radios and I figured out how to input the audio
from my mixer into the CBE radio. I ran the
(08:41):
magnetic antenna up the rain gutter outside my window, stuck
it on top of the house, and began broadcasting on
Channel nineteen, which also happened to be the official channel
of the River Oaks Police Department. And they put my
Shenanigans to rest about six days later. But we had
some great, great show in those early days.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's excellent.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
What would you be doing if you weren't on the radio,
If you weren't radio.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Oh, well, I've done a lot of other things, so
I would probably be an entrepreneur of some sort. But
I also have a degree in theology, so I would
probably be involved in in ministry in some way and
trying to help people. My passion is people and making
sure that we leave them the best world we can.
So it's probably something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Do you get recognized a lot?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What's it like leaving a pretty public life.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I don't get recognized as much as my kids wish.
I would.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Believe me, my kids do not enjoy when I get recognized.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
But no, they want me. They like the fact that
I have a TV show and that I'm on the radio,
and then I'm on all the other channels and stuff.
They don't like the fact that almost none of their
parents agree with me on much of anything.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right Well, to Florida, I have an easy solution for
Suddenly my kids are much more popular.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That's true their friends.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I actually think it's not been a bad thing because
it's caused my children to kind of evaluate what I
say based on its merits and also a good exercise
in teaching them to be winsome. You know. I kind
of approach politics, Not that we're going to get into
politics here, but I kind of approach it as as
I would what some people use the term evangelical in
(10:26):
terms of faith. I want to be a positive advocate
for what I believe, and I want to win people
to the ideas that I hold, because I think the
ideas really are good and I think they really do
make a difference. So in doing it, winsome is not
something that our side does sometimes, very often. I don't
ever want to be questioning the number of eggs that
(10:47):
some pop stars still has in her womb somewhere. It's
not that that part of it's not.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We'll get into Taylor Salt.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh Man, you didn't tell me we're talking Taylor.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Okay, of course we're talking Taylor.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So do you worry about them your kids getting like
repercussions based on who you are?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There was a recent Abigail Shreier had wrote on her
substack recently that her daughter was cut from a soccer
team in California because of who she is, because the
coach simply doesn't like Abigail.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I do worry about stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I have not worried about that, but I've felt the
nasty side of this. I have an adopted son who's
older than our biological kids, and when I was living
and working in Chicago before coming to the New York area,
we were in the middle of some pretty pretty tumultuous
(11:40):
constitutional questions at the time, and I was talking about
them on the air loot and I got an email
out of the blue from someone saying they knew what
school my child went to, and wow, you know what
entrance in the building he got dropped off at and
so forth. I took that seriously, reported it, got a
(12:02):
restraining order in place. I don't mess around with that stuff.
I largely don't make reference to my family members by
name on the air. I know, I just gave my
eleven year old's name, but sometimes I do that, But
in large measure, I try to live as anonymously as
I can. Will that have repercussions for them at some point?
(12:23):
I hope not, because again, my goal is to engage
in conversation that is meant to convince and meant to win,
not to always shove away and push away. There are
going to be unreasonable people that are going to say, no,
I just can't be around you because you just discussed me. Okay,
I don't have to hang out with them, but where
(12:44):
I can build positive conversation, I'm always about trying, and
I think it's to our movements detriment that more people
don't try, Because I think there's a lot of people, Carol,
especially since your book came out and the pandemic happened.
I think there's a lot of people in the middle
that don't know it exactly everything that they believe. But man,
if we just had some good conversations and some winsome
(13:05):
people out there just making the case what good work
could be done.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to look up the word win
some after this conversation.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Oh yes, but no, I agree.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
I I you know, for the book tour, I had
a lot of people coming up to me and saying,
you know, I'm not on your political side, or I'm
a liberal but or I'm a moderate or whatever. But
I think that these issues around children are really important,
and I agree with so much of what you say.
And the thing is, and this is something that, like
I feel like, doesn't get discussed enough. A lot of
(13:42):
times you'll see people tweeting or writing you know, I
don't usually agree with blah blah blah, But who cares?
Who cares if you usually agree with them or not?
Just say it, Just say whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You don't need to.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Qualify that normally you disagree with this person or the
other one that I really like is I don't always
agree with Kevin McCullough, but I don't always agree with
anybody ever, Like I don't have anybody ever that I
always agree with.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
That's crazy, and.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I think that people need to kind of dial back
the idea that when you agree with somebody, you're signing
up for their whole You know.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
No, actually, I could be fine if nobody said used
any labels ever, Like if I would be totally totally
down with people saying I don't know if I'm a
Democrat or Republican, or a progressive or a conservative, but
what I believe about the money I earn is that
I should be able to keep as much of that
as is necessary to provide them for my family. You
(14:35):
take the ten biggest issues. Should a nation defend itself?
Should a nation protect its borders? Should a nation take
the money from the people that are working or let
them keep as much of it as possible. Should we
be kind to children? Should we be kind to seniors?
You take any of the big issues related to a
lot of this stuff, and you wipe the labels away,
(14:55):
and you just talk about the substance this nation would
be overwhelmed considered Center right to write in terms of
just how they view the world. The issue is that
it is very easy to compartmentalize everybody if we can
label them all, and I think that that works to
our detriment.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So on your show, you're very and just generally in life,
you're very effusive about your wife.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You clearly are obsessed with her. I love it. Do
you get any pushback or criticism for that?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I feel like I've seen in the last few years,
especially around for men. I would say, especially for men
when they are like, like, oh, I really am so
in love with my wife, or like really talk about
their wives in a really positive way, they get called names.
I don't know if you remember, there was the wife guy.
It was like the guy that always mentions his wife.
Like the New York Times had a whole piece on it.
(15:49):
So do you get that criticism or not.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
No, I've gotten more compliments to that than anything, because
we just celebrated our twentieth wedding.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Anniversary last year, so we've we've.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Been around for a long time. But I would say
that people that do that kind of thing sadly probably
don't know the benefit of what a really strong marriage
partner brings to your life. Look, I'm gonna admit this
way up front, I way outkicked my coverage on my bride,
(16:23):
not just in how you know how attractive she is
and she is stunningly beautiful, though she doesn't believe that
she is. But she's a thinker, she feels deeply. She
is a wonderful mother. She manages our home and lives
almost effortlessly. I mean, I'm shocked at how easy she
makes it look. And at the end of the day,
(16:44):
she's my deepest, dearest, best friend that can can and
will talk to me about anything, especially very very hard
things when we have very hard things to deal with.
And I can't put a dollar of value on anything
even similar to that by way of people in my
sphere of experience that have that. If I looked at
(17:07):
one person and said that person has made more of
an impact on me personally as a person than any
other person, it would be her. She edited all three
of my books. She regularly gives feedback on my column
and on my show. She is my pop culture critic
if I get if I get a pop culture reference wrong,
we do the assignment next weekend on the on the
(17:27):
TV show on the weekends. It's kind of like a
weekend update. But if I get an inference wrong on something,
She's like, you got to change that. I mean, it
just gives me all of those extra eyes, ears and
feedback that I wouldn't have otherwise. And that doesn't intimidate me,
like I'm really grateful that that she's here.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I was waiting for that question. I don't think I have,
And I was thinking about this because you told me
that you ask all your ask that question. I don't
think that I have. From this standpoint, I have had
seasons of really great happiness where growth and development have occurred,
and I feel like, wow, is this it? Like did
I make it? And I find somewhere not long after
(18:17):
that feeling that there's always like, oh, I'd love to
try that. And so I would say I am way
further from where I started, but I've got so much
further to go in terms of what I would like
to see and accomplish and do. And I don't say
that in a selfish way. It's not that I feel
like I want to achieve a certain thing for me.
(18:41):
It's like I have goals for my kids. I want
to see them successfully transition to adulthood and to start
lives that they find great satisfaction in peace with. I
want to make a bigger difference in the world around us.
My listeners have liberated over the last five years, We've
liberated forty three hundred human slaves across the globe. We
(19:04):
have done relief work in places like Israel recently with
the conflict there. We've helped get people that don't have
homes homes. I feel like there's always more to do,
and so I feel like and I coach a lot
of talent TV and radio talent, and when I tell
them you're only as good as your last air check,
(19:24):
that's really true. Whatever you just did by way of
your last presentation is what your current reputation rides on.
So I'm always wanting to improve what I'm doing. I
have good mentors in my life that I seek out
advice from and feedback from, and then there's people that
I'm turning around and given that feedback back to as well.
So it's kind of like a never ending process. But
(19:45):
I figure a rolling stone gathers no moss, so why
not just keep going.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I feel like we're missing a lot of that mentorship
in this country, where people, you know, take somebody younger
under their wing and show them how it's done. A
lot of it is also I think a lot of
people just feel like they know everything already, like, oh,
I have the Internet, like everything's available to me. I
already know all of it. But I think a good
mentor know that story that came.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Out it's important last week or the week before about
gen z and hating nine to five jobs and how
they have no.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Patience, Like that story comes out every few Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like there's a whole generation of kids that not
only don't know how to do anything, but they don't
want to learn how to do anything. And I'm really
fearful that that is going to be a very destructive
season when they come into leadership in terms of their
time if they don't, if they don't turn that around,
because that is that is an awfully ignorant, unhappy, belligerent
(20:39):
place to live, and one I don't want my kids
to live there. So that's one of the reasons why
we're going to try to help focus them in a
different direction.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
My only pushback to this is, think about every generation.
I think, like, look at you know, I'm gen Z
or that's what I consider myself as.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Are you right or both?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
GM, Jenet, I'm sorry, Jenny sorry, gen X, Yeah, we
gen Z. No, we're not gen Z gen X, Yes,
but do you remember we were slackers? We were the
slacker generation who like wore you know, the lad shirts
that didn't want to work. Yes, thinking back to when
to when we were you know, twenty, they called us
(21:18):
the slacker generation. There was a movie called Slacker, And
I think every generation gets criticism.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I remember thinking Millennials were the laziest people in the universe.
They were just.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Always I remember the articles about them where it was
like Millennials just don't.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Want to work. But you know, you grow up and
you kind of face reality.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And I think what the gen Zers have that the
Millennials and the gen X really didn't have is TikTok
or Instagram where they post these videos of like I
don't like working. Working nine to five is you know,
for suckers, And so we feel like it's more prevalent
than other generations. But I think they're going to hit
the same wall of reality that every other generation hits,
(21:58):
that this is how how money gets made. You want
a certain lifestyle, you want certain things for yourself, You're
going to have to work for it, and then nothing
is free and that you don't get like only so
many people get to be top influencers who actually make
money on these apps.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I hope you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I have hope.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I have hope that they all every young generation is
considered lazy, and you know it's those boomers calling all
of us lazy.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
We should just like all unite against them.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, they're not going to be around much longer, so
we should probably just cherish them and let them be
a piece when their time going.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Too good.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You're too good, too good, Kevin, So tell me about
Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You're a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I'm not a huge fan, but I'm married to the
world's biggest fan. And she literally spent all of twenty
twenty three playing the same playlist throughout our house. I
think from about January till November when we finally broke
out the Christmas music.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No, hey, Taylor has Christmas music.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think one of my favorite songs by her is
tis the damn season. I think that's that's a Christmas hunt.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
No, she goes home for the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Taylor and So Salem News Channel is one of the
places that I work for, and they asked me to
executive produce an end of year special that we ran
that was the ten top news stories of the year
and we used contributors from the channel to put it together,
and everyone kind of had their own pick, and I
got to do three of the ten pieces, the issue
(23:32):
and story and person of who Taylor Swift is. We
ranked her at number six in terms of general market
news for the entire year, and the reason was and
there was no other single person that was just a
news story except for Donald Trump, that made the list
by themselves, but she did because she produced more GDP
(23:55):
than fifty nations on Planet Earth. Last year. She paid
her sixteen semi truck drivers one hundred thousand dollars bonuses
for the extra hard work that they were putting in.
She went out and had five simultaneous albums on the
Billboard Top one hundred chart in the same calendar year.
The only other person that's come close to that was
(24:17):
Elvis Presley, who at his peak had two I mean,
there's so many things that you could just list. Every
single stadium that she played set a new attendance record
for the venue that she was in, and usually she
was there for two or three nights, so for total
total attendance for a single event, all three events being
considered one. She shattered records that had been previously held. There.
(24:41):
There was just nothing that she didn't touch that turned
to gold, including when they came to her and they
said or when she's she thought, well, you know, aris
tour went pretty well, maybe we should make a movie
of it. And they, of course had videoed every night's
performance throughout the whole tour, so they had all of
the footage. It cost her almost nothing to make. She
went out and negotiated with the individual theater owners of
(25:04):
how the release with her, and she starts getting criticized
by all the smart people in the room saying, well,
you know, you could have done much better if you
had gone through us. Well, on opening weekend, she was
in thirty eight hundred theaters, the most of any movie
in the country in that year. She grows ninety two
million in opening weekend, which was more than the other
top twenty films of that weekend put together. I think
(25:26):
she did okay, and I don't agree with her. I
don't agree with her politically on you know, she's very
I'm pro life, she's very pro choice, she's very heavily
into the LGBTQ, cause I'm not. They're just things that
we differ on. But in terms of a forced azure,
I've never seen I've never witnessed any single one human
(25:48):
being on planet Earth do what she did in the
calendar year of twenty twenty three, and I don't think
there's any way around it. People have to deal with
who she is and she's and she's also done it
in a winsome way. She's went out and she's she's
found new fan bases. I don't you know, the NFL
probably doesn't consider itself a Taylor Swift arena. It is now.
But Amy was watching the the Chief's playoff game. As
(26:12):
she was she was looking up the buffer coat whatever
coach she showed up, and she's like, I got to
find out how they made that. She did a whole
research thing on her phone.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That was a good story though. It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, So what do you think conservatives misunderstand about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Well because they don't take the time to try to understand.
I think they just get her wrong a lot. I think, yeah,
you can, you can say her her songs can come
off a little bit on the whiny side. She's had
some mistreatment. She's also made a lot of bad decisions
when it comes to the guys that she's chosen to
be with. Ye, so that's kind of like a wash.
(26:48):
But I think that Peggy Noonan actually wrote a piece
about her in the Wall Street Journal, and I thought
it was really well said. You know, she she has
some profanity in her music, but it's very much, i'le
compared to most of what the pop culture is these days.
She does she's not promiscuous. She doesn't she doesn't, you know,
advance this idea that girls all need to dress like
(27:10):
street walkers. She is she she carries herself with dignity.
She has a positive role model on so many levels,
and she has kind of the heart of a generation.
And I would say that we need to pay attention
to how she how she goes about what she's doing,
because our daughters are going to like her, and we're
(27:30):
gonna have to. We're gonna have to figure out a
way to accommodate that or give them really good reasons
why they shouldn't. But right now, you know, I helped
make the Friendship bracelets for my bride and daughter to
go see the movie. We didn't take we didn't take
the baby girl to the to the Arena show. I
only took the bride to that, but we did take
the baby girl to go see the movie.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I'm trying to figure out how I can take my
thirteen year old to one of the shows. I mean,
it's you know, she's a huge Taylor Swift fan. She
doesn't get one of the I'm going to make it
hat she wasn't. She wasn't a Swift fan yet. I
would say she became a Taylor Swift fan in the
last year. And now Taylor's coming to Miami next fall,
(28:13):
so you know, the pressure's on. I want to I'm
going to make it happen for her, But you know,
it's it's It's interesting because I agree with so much
of that. It's not my kind of music, but I
enjoy that my daughter is super into it. It reminds
me of being thirteen years old and really into different artists,
(28:34):
and I, you know, I enjoy it on in my home,
so I don't I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It's not like, oh my god, it turn it's turned into.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
A girl thing. In the McCullough house, the boys, if
they hear one more song, they're gonna put their head
through a wall. And then you know, my princess comes
up and she goes but this is so good you
just have to give it a chance.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So right, it's my youngest son is a swift ye. Also,
I mean he does whatever his sister wants. But also
the fact that she's dating Travis Kelcey. They were on
this so much earlier than the story broke, like they
knew this was coming, you know, I would say very early.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So he's been very into that.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I think my bride was actually texting your kids telling
him all the stuff because she she knew about the
friendship bracelet at MetLife before he said it on the podcast.
There was somehow.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Right same, yeah, there, you know, they're they're really into it.
So on a bigger topic, what do you think is
our largest cultural or societal problem in America?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And do you think this.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Is the most difficult question that you told me you
were going to ask.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's funny because of the three questions, people very really
variate between what they think is the hardest one, and
this is always the hardest one for getting.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Well, I think I wanted. I wanted to answer it thoughtfully,
because it's easy to just turn political at this point
in the conversation and then fall into the labels that
we just talked about not having right, like, well, if
we just had a different administration, then the world would
be different. But that is not my answer to this question.
(30:09):
I'm a Bible believing, God fearing person. I believe that
God exists for a reason, and that that reason is
good for us to understand as human beings because he
made all of us. So having said that, I think
the context of what the biggest problem we face, generally
speaking in twenty twenty four in the pop culture that
(30:30):
we live in is a lack of accountability. When you
don't have accountability for your actions, you destroy the universe
around you. My thirteen year old got baptized this last year,
and it was his decision and he thought a lot
about it before it happened. But we had a lot
of theological discussion about sin and the depravity of man
(30:54):
and who God is and what constitutes all that? And
I said, and I've said to him repeatedly, that selfishness
is in and of itself, what is at the core
of everything that we would deem immoral or sinful. So
wanting what I want more than the to the exclusion
(31:16):
of what everybody else wants or needs, and wanting it
to a degree that I'm willing to take actions that
are hurtful towards others, et cetera, is is the That's
the piece of sin, that is in every sin that
every sinner ever commits. So how does that work? Well,
you murder somebody, you don't want that person to live
for some reason. But it's it's not because of what's
(31:38):
good for them. It's because you're angry with them. You
have something that you despise, They've done you so wrong
that this is the only way they're going to They're
going to rat you out. Something's going on that that
that is the core of what that crime essentially comes from.
And when you live in a society where there's no
accountability or no check and balance on what your heart thinks,
(32:00):
then selfishness is what comes to the fore So, I
really do believe that an internal reflective which come on.
Has there been a season where we've ever been less concerned,
I mean, less interested in our own navels than what
we live through Right now, It's all about me. Everything's
always me. I want what I want and when I
(32:23):
want it. We cater to this that lends itself to
a lack of accountability. The reason the left despises the
founders and the founding documents of our country is because
there's so much accountability built into it that you can't
have one branch of government that's just going to railroad
the other two and it's clunky and it's inefficient if
(32:45):
you're the one that's trying to get stuff done. But
it also makes sure that there's a lot of checks
and balances, and you could trace this throughout our entire conversation.
You asked why I have such affection for my bride.
In part, it's because she keeps me accountable. She is
someone that I know that at the end of the day,
I have to look in the face of and I
(33:06):
have to be accountable for what I've done and where
I've been and why I've been involved in the things
that I've been involved in because she's going to ask me, hey,
how is your day. There's just basic restraint that comes
into a society when accountability is put to people. And
all you have to do is look at some of
the biggest headlines right now to see that. One of
(33:28):
the reasons that I think that Taylor Swift is so
interesting is that she sought to hold people who did
her wrong very accountable, and she said, I'm not going
to let you get away with the stuff that you've done.
You could talk politics, you could talk Hunter Biden. He's
trying to evade accountability. You could say that there have
(33:49):
been people on the right that have tried to do
the same thing. The reason Nixon had to resign was
because he was evading accountability for his actions. In other words,
this is a theme that runs through every life, every person,
every corner of society. And ultimately, I believe our accountability
does come from God. I think we are held accountable
by God at some point in time. But in the
(34:10):
human sphere, the reason that parents raise good kids is
because the parents put a check and balance on the
on the child and they say, hey, no, that's not
what we're going to do today. We're going to do
We're gonna do this instead, and you're not going to
get your way, Johnny, on every single thing that you
ask for, because Susie's going to have requests, She's going
to have needs to Living in a community, whether it
be a family or a larger community, we hold a
(34:33):
certain degree of responsibility towards one another. It's not it
takes a village, but it is a we have to
live together and we have to we have to figure
out a way to win some lee, figure out solutions
that help all of us do better. And sometimes that
means saying no to somebody, and sometimes that means no,
we're not going to act that way because we didn't
(34:54):
get our way this particular time. So biggest crisis we
face lack of accountability, I think across the board is
really the thing that I would point to and the
kind of thing that kind of keeps me up sometimes
at night. I worry about, you know, is the government
going to slide off the edge because they're trying to
do away with accountability in different ways. So it is
to me that's it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
That was a very winsome answer that leads us very
very well to our last question. And with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Wow. Well, there's a lot of things that come to mind,
and because I am somewhat faith based and so forth,
I could go in that direction, but I'm going to
go with this instead. It's probably the hardest lesson I
had to learn when I was young gerr and growing
(35:51):
up in a conservative house and always being told the
conservative answers to life's biggest dilemmas. I grew up kind
of thinking that I knew it all, and when things
didn't work out the way that I had hoped they would,
I could have a tendency to get jaded. And at
(36:12):
one point in time, I had a friend who was
very wealthy. He was actually a client, but he was
very wealthy, and I made some offhanded remark when I
was playing a round of golf at his golf club
on his dime. I made some side remark about someone
being wealthier than God and not knowing what to do
(36:32):
with it. He wrote me this handwritten letter afterwards, and
he was like, keV, there's a lot of things that
are wrong with the world, and I share your passion
for trying to make things right. He said, but if
you have this this outlook that you're the only one
who's right and everybody else is always wrong, you're going
(36:54):
to self destruct. And because I love you and care
about you, I'm willing to tell you about this, and
I think that I need to draw your attention to
it because I think you need to change. I'd never
had somebody speak to me that way, especially regarding this,
And what I learned quickly was that it's not wrong
(37:16):
to have your opinions based on fact and to try
to be as as truly truthful and right as you
can be about everything that you want to do. But
being willing to apologize quickly and mean it and take
an inventory of where you're at and adjust and calibrate
your response to that confrontation is probably one of the
(37:38):
It's probably one of the healthiest things that we can
learn how to do. It was a hard thing for
me to learn how to do. I still don't always
do it well, but I'm way better at it than
where I was. And I think that if I could
encourage people when you're in even if it's an argument
with your spouse, your kids, someone at work, you know,
voters in a picket line, and whatever, I mean whatever,
(38:01):
Pick your scenario. If someone's in your face and they're
confronting you, if you can take the breath, listen to
what they're having to say for any amount of truth,
apply it if it applies, Apologize, build a bridge, try
to go forward where you can. You're not always going
to be able to There are going to be relationships
that break even if you apologize and try to make
(38:23):
it right. But being humble enough to say I'm sorry
about stuff you get wrong, and to do it quickly.
Don't stretch it out and make it take four and
a half hours to sit you stooping in it all
night and oh well tomorrow I'll do with it. No evaluate,
do the assessment, apologize, quickly, repair the relationship. People are
(38:44):
the greatest commodity on planet Earth, Carol. They are our
best friends, they are our spouses, they are kids. There
is no aspect of life that does not involve people.
And if we cannot find a way to build a
bridge to people, we don't, we're not going to have
a good life. There's not going to be anything nice
about wanting to be around us. And I want to
I want a nice life. I want lots of grandkids.
(39:06):
I want to I want to look back when I'm
done and say, yes, look at what happened.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah I made it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well he is the winsome Kevin McCullough talking about on
that love talking to you.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, yeah, is that you are a connoisseur of bourbon?
Am I am? I wrong?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh yeah, I'm kind of into Rye right now, but
yes I am.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I don't know if you have seen. And I don't
get a dime for this either, but I was like,
I got to tell Carol about this.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You should get you should get some dimes.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Here is our new favorite bourbon in the McCullough house,
New Rift, single barrel. Have you tried this New Rift?
You have to know this. It is the most okay,
caramely delicious, smooth bourbon that I've found. And it is
it is not incredibly strangely oddly expensively priced. It is
(40:02):
really really uh doable but New Riff single barrel, and
that's my little I'm.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Going to go check it out. And I think that
they should be sponsoring that, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I don't know, I you know, I don't know that
some of my family members would want alcohol as a sponsor.
What I do, but because I know you like good bourbon,
I was like, I got to tell Carol about it,
new risk, single barrel gifts. If we were in the
same studio, I would have poor Justip, but we can't
do that today.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I love you me next time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Well, we're going to definitely sometime, you know, join together
over some bourbon.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Love. Talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on.
He's Kevin McCullough. His show is that Kevin Show. Look
it up. It's amazing. It's really well done.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Thank you, Kerl.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Thank you so much, Kevin.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
There's a meme my very literary teenage daughter likes. It
describes different literature styles by nationality. It goes like this,
English literature, I will die for honor, French literature, I
will die for love, American literature, I will die for freedom.
(00:27):
Russian literature, I will die. While I've spent the great
majority of my life in America, I was born in Russia,
and I still carry around that Russian stoicism and bluntness,
especially where death is concerned. The casual way I talk
about death really alarms my family. Can you not, they say,
(00:48):
when I talk about death, the way I talk about
like anything else happening in the future, where I want
to be buried, what I'd like to see happen to
my stuff after I'm gone, etc. Or I read this
thing recently that's for so many people, the last words
they say before they die is calling out for their mama.
I shared this with my husband and kids, and they
(01:09):
did not enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Update at all.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I was thinking about how sweet it was for someone
in their nineties who hadn't seen their own mother in
decades to still feel.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Her and want her when they're on their own deathbed.
To me, that was a happy story.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The faces of my family said that they didn't agree,
and they didn't want to be thinking of their own
deaths and their mom long gone, so I try to
tone it down for them. But it is just interesting
to me how different cultures think or don't think about death.
I'm scared of death, don't get me wrong. I want
to live a long life. I want to be with
(01:46):
my family.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
As much as possible.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
But to me, the whole point is having a limited
amount of time on this.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Earth so that we can really appreciate what we have.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
My son sometimes asks me these would you rather questions,
and one of them recently was would I prefer to
be twenty years younger today or live till three hundred?
I mean very much neither. I want to be right
here where I am. I don't want to be twenty
years younger. I like my current age and I love
my current life, and I don't want to live until
(02:16):
three hundred. I want to do everything I'm supposed to
do in the time I have and go to my
grave confident that I've maxed.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Out my life in every way.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
This is a show about life and about making changes
to your life to improve it. So it's important to
think about the fact that life does come to an end.
Did you spend it the way you intended to? Are
you making the changes to make it what you want
it to be? If we don't face the reality of
death that this all ends someday, what's our impetus to
(02:48):
improve our lives today?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
As my kids get older, and the.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Older two are coming up on fourteen and eleven in
a few weeks, and the youngest is eight, I'm trying
to hold on to real moments with them as long
as possible. I realized recently that so many of our
best memories are on vacation, and that's great, but life
isn't vacation, and I want more regular day memories together too.
So We've started doing things like we read a book
(03:15):
together after dinner, something we haven't done since they were small.
And I want to take family walks more often. We
live in Florida, the weather is usually perfect. We should
enjoy it like we would on vacation. The idea that
I will die someday propels me to live better. It
makes me want to waste less of my time to
(03:36):
focus on the things that matter to me and discard
the rest. Death doesn't have to be scary. It can
be the motivation that you need to live. Coming up
next and interview with Kevin McCullough. Join us after the break. Hi,
and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
(03:56):
My guest today is Kevin McCullough TV and radio, your
host columnist at townhall dot com. Kevin is also the
seer of political things, lover of the Dallas Cowboys, great food, yoga,
and one very stunning brunette. He didn't tell me to
say that he hosts that Kevin Show. Thanks for coming on, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Hey, Carol, it's great to see you, and congrats on
the podcast. It's just tearing up the internet and I
love it.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Thanks so much. So.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I've known you a long time and it's still fascinating to.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Me that you've become a yogi.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Is it fair to say that was a bit out
of character for you when that began?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Very much?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So? How did it happen?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
We had moved, We moved three times in eight years
inside the same village, which is nuts. Why would anybody
do that?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Would anybody do that.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
But in the last move we left a house that
had a pool, and our kids were just starting to
get to the age where they needed to start taking
swim lessons, so we joined a local Lifetime They get
no money from me saying this, I get no money
from me saying this. But we joined the local Lifetime
workout place near us, and as part of the package,
(05:09):
they had yoga classes and the stunning brunette of which
you spoke said to me, I think I want to
try those, because it's part of the basic package. And
I said, okay. She was going. This was before pandemic.
She went probably fifteen or sixteen weeks. She had lost weight,
she was vibrant with energy. She was feeling so good
(05:33):
and so confident about herself, and I said, I think
I want to give that a try too, to which
she promptly said, now this is my thing. So I said, oh, well, okay.
Knowing that she was someone who did not like to
get up early, I knew that they had classes at
five point thirty and six o'clock in the morning. So
about a month later I started getting up mysteriously three
(05:54):
times a week and going and I was lost. I
didn't know anything about what I was doing. I used
to make fun of people that took yoga when I was,
you know, in my athletic years. And I found out
it was not only one of the hardest things I'd
ever done, but it was also one of the most
rewarding things. And I met this great, great, great instructor.
(06:16):
Her name is Lucy. Shout out to Lucy. She gave
me some one on one to kind of break down
what the poses mean and you know why they go
into order that they go in, cause I knew nothing,
and about I don't know. Two months later, the brunette
rolls over to me one morning. She goes, why do
you get up so early? Where are you going? I said, well,
(06:37):
I'm you know, I'm working out. She goes, why can't
you just go work out, you know when I go
to class? And I said, well, because I'm taking yoga.
She goes, well, why didn't you just take it with me?
And I said, well, I didn't want to rain on
your parade. And so we started then taking regularly nine
forty five vinyasa flow classes. If people are into yoga,
they know what vignasa is. It's a very aerobic, intense
(07:01):
kind of workout, but she get a lot of anaerobic
muscle training and other things and it as well. We've
been doing that now for four years, minus just a
few months that we had to kind of do it
remotely and other things because of the stupid COVID pandemic.
But yeah, we've been doing it. And in fact, as
we are having a conversation at this very moment, she
is in that class that I am not getting to
(07:23):
be at because I am talking to Carol Markowitz.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your young.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Glad to be it.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So did you always want to be in radio? Is
that something lifelong dream or radio?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I mean, i've very very apprecient statement by an aunt,
my mother's only sister. Actually, she says to me after
coming over to babysit one night, where I just literally
she I did to her what my Jonathan, my eleven
year old does to me. But I just talked her
ear off all night, and she literally turns to me
(07:59):
at one point and she goes, Kevin, as long as
you can make a living with that mouth of yours,
you're never going to go hungry. I don't think she
meant it as a compliment, but it was efficient in
the degree. And then so after that my grand my
one grandfather, I was a collector of audio equipment, so
I had like these classic real to real machines. I
(08:19):
had cassette decks, I had old vinyl record players. I
had all kinds of stuff, and the kind of crim
to resistant. The piece to resistance was the day that
my grandfather let me have one of his old CBE
radios and I figured out how to input the audio
from my mixer into the CBE radio. I ran the
(08:41):
magnetic antenna up the rain gutter outside my window, stuck
it on top of the house, and began broadcasting on
Channel nineteen, which also happened to be the official channel
of the River Oaks Police Department. And they put my
Shenanigans to rest about six days later. But we had
some great, great show in those early days.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's excellent.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
What would you be doing if you weren't on the radio,
If you weren't radio.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Oh, well, I've done a lot of other things, so
I would probably be an entrepreneur of some sort. But
I also have a degree in theology, so I would
probably be involved in in ministry in some way and
trying to help people. My passion is people and making
sure that we leave them the best world we can.
So it's probably something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Do you get recognized a lot?
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Like?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What's it like leaving a pretty public life.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I don't get recognized as much as my kids wish.
I would.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Believe me, my kids do not enjoy when I get recognized.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
But no, they want me. They like the fact that
I have a TV show and that I'm on the radio,
and then I'm on all the other channels and stuff.
They don't like the fact that almost none of their
parents agree with me on much of anything.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right Well, to Florida, I have an easy solution for
Suddenly my kids are much more popular.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That's true their friends.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I actually think it's not been a bad thing because
it's caused my children to kind of evaluate what I
say based on its merits and also a good exercise
in teaching them to be winsome. You know. I kind
of approach politics, Not that we're going to get into
politics here, but I kind of approach it as as
I would what some people use the term evangelical in
(10:26):
terms of faith. I want to be a positive advocate
for what I believe, and I want to win people
to the ideas that I hold, because I think the
ideas really are good and I think they really do
make a difference. So in doing it, winsome is not
something that our side does sometimes, very often. I don't
ever want to be questioning the number of eggs that
(10:47):
some pop stars still has in her womb somewhere. It's
not that that part of it's not.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
We'll get into Taylor Salt.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh Man, you didn't tell me we're talking Taylor.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Okay, of course we're talking Taylor.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So do you worry about them your kids getting like
repercussions based on who you are?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
There was a recent Abigail Shreier had wrote on her
substack recently that her daughter was cut from a soccer
team in California because of who she is, because the
coach simply doesn't like Abigail.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I do worry about stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I have not worried about that, but I've felt the
nasty side of this. I have an adopted son who's
older than our biological kids, and when I was living
and working in Chicago before coming to the New York area,
we were in the middle of some pretty pretty tumultuous
(11:40):
constitutional questions at the time, and I was talking about
them on the air loot and I got an email
out of the blue from someone saying they knew what
school my child went to, and wow, you know what
entrance in the building he got dropped off at and
so forth. I took that seriously, reported it, got a
(12:02):
restraining order in place. I don't mess around with that stuff.
I largely don't make reference to my family members by
name on the air. I know, I just gave my
eleven year old's name, but sometimes I do that, But
in large measure, I try to live as anonymously as
I can. Will that have repercussions for them at some point?
(12:23):
I hope not, because again, my goal is to engage
in conversation that is meant to convince and meant to win,
not to always shove away and push away. There are
going to be unreasonable people that are going to say, no,
I just can't be around you because you just discussed me. Okay,
I don't have to hang out with them, but where
(12:44):
I can build positive conversation, I'm always about trying, and
I think it's to our movements detriment that more people
don't try, Because I think there's a lot of people, Carol,
especially since your book came out and the pandemic happened.
I think there's a lot of people in the middle
that don't know it exactly everything that they believe. But man,
if we just had some good conversations and some winsome
(13:05):
people out there just making the case what good work
could be done.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to look up the word win
some after this conversation.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Oh yes, but no, I agree.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
I I you know, for the book tour, I had
a lot of people coming up to me and saying,
you know, I'm not on your political side, or I'm
a liberal but or I'm a moderate or whatever. But
I think that these issues around children are really important,
and I agree with so much of what you say.
And the thing is, and this is something that, like
I feel like, doesn't get discussed enough. A lot of
(13:42):
times you'll see people tweeting or writing you know, I
don't usually agree with blah blah blah, But who cares?
Who cares if you usually agree with them or not?
Just say it, Just say whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
You don't need to.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Qualify that normally you disagree with this person or the
other one that I really like is I don't always
agree with Kevin McCullough, but I don't always agree with
anybody ever, Like I don't have anybody ever that I
always agree with.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
That's crazy, and.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I think that people need to kind of dial back
the idea that when you agree with somebody, you're signing
up for their whole You know.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
No, actually, I could be fine if nobody said used
any labels ever, Like if I would be totally totally
down with people saying I don't know if I'm a
Democrat or Republican, or a progressive or a conservative, but
what I believe about the money I earn is that
I should be able to keep as much of that
as is necessary to provide them for my family. You
(14:35):
take the ten biggest issues. Should a nation defend itself?
Should a nation protect its borders? Should a nation take
the money from the people that are working or let
them keep as much of it as possible. Should we
be kind to children? Should we be kind to seniors?
You take any of the big issues related to a
lot of this stuff, and you wipe the labels away,
(14:55):
and you just talk about the substance this nation would
be overwhelmed considered Center right to write in terms of
just how they view the world. The issue is that
it is very easy to compartmentalize everybody if we can
label them all, and I think that that works to
our detriment.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I definitely agree with that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So on your show, you're very and just generally in life,
you're very effusive about your wife.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
You clearly are obsessed with her. I love it. Do
you get any pushback or criticism for that?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I feel like I've seen in the last few years,
especially around for men. I would say, especially for men
when they are like, like, oh, I really am so
in love with my wife, or like really talk about
their wives in a really positive way, they get called names.
I don't know if you remember, there was the wife guy.
It was like the guy that always mentions his wife.
Like the New York Times had a whole piece on it.
(15:49):
So do you get that criticism or not.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
No, I've gotten more compliments to that than anything, because
we just celebrated our twentieth wedding.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Anniversary last year, so we've we've.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Been around for a long time. But I would say
that people that do that kind of thing sadly probably
don't know the benefit of what a really strong marriage
partner brings to your life. Look, I'm gonna admit this
way up front, I way outkicked my coverage on my bride,
(16:23):
not just in how you know how attractive she is
and she is stunningly beautiful, though she doesn't believe that
she is. But she's a thinker, she feels deeply. She
is a wonderful mother. She manages our home and lives
almost effortlessly. I mean, I'm shocked at how easy she
makes it look. And at the end of the day,
(16:44):
she's my deepest, dearest, best friend that can can and
will talk to me about anything, especially very very hard
things when we have very hard things to deal with.
And I can't put a dollar of value on anything
even similar to that by way of people in my
sphere of experience that have that. If I looked at
(17:07):
one person and said that person has made more of
an impact on me personally as a person than any
other person, it would be her. She edited all three
of my books. She regularly gives feedback on my column
and on my show. She is my pop culture critic
if I get if I get a pop culture reference wrong,
we do the assignment next weekend on the on the
(17:27):
TV show on the weekends. It's kind of like a
weekend update. But if I get an inference wrong on something,
She's like, you got to change that. I mean, it
just gives me all of those extra eyes, ears and
feedback that I wouldn't have otherwise. And that doesn't intimidate me,
like I'm really grateful that that she's here.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I was waiting for that question. I don't think I have,
And I was thinking about this because you told me
that you ask all your ask that question. I don't
think that I have. From this standpoint, I have had
seasons of really great happiness where growth and development have occurred,
and I feel like, wow, is this it? Like did
I make it? And I find somewhere not long after
(18:17):
that feeling that there's always like, oh, I'd love to
try that. And so I would say I am way
further from where I started, but I've got so much
further to go in terms of what I would like
to see and accomplish and do. And I don't say
that in a selfish way. It's not that I feel
like I want to achieve a certain thing for me.
(18:41):
It's like I have goals for my kids. I want
to see them successfully transition to adulthood and to start
lives that they find great satisfaction in peace with. I
want to make a bigger difference in the world around us.
My listeners have liberated over the last five years, We've
liberated forty three hundred human slaves across the globe. We
(19:04):
have done relief work in places like Israel recently with
the conflict there. We've helped get people that don't have
homes homes. I feel like there's always more to do,
and so I feel like and I coach a lot
of talent TV and radio talent, and when I tell
them you're only as good as your last air check,
(19:24):
that's really true. Whatever you just did by way of
your last presentation is what your current reputation rides on.
So I'm always wanting to improve what I'm doing. I
have good mentors in my life that I seek out
advice from and feedback from, and then there's people that
I'm turning around and given that feedback back to as well.
So it's kind of like a never ending process. But
(19:45):
I figure a rolling stone gathers no moss, so why
not just keep going.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I feel like we're missing a lot of that mentorship
in this country, where people, you know, take somebody younger
under their wing and show them how it's done. A
lot of it is also I think a lot of
people just feel like they know everything already, like, oh,
I have the Internet, like everything's available to me. I
already know all of it. But I think a good
mentor know that story that came.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Out it's important last week or the week before about
gen z and hating nine to five jobs and how
they have no.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Patience, Like that story comes out every few Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's like there's a whole generation of kids that not
only don't know how to do anything, but they don't
want to learn how to do anything. And I'm really
fearful that that is going to be a very destructive
season when they come into leadership in terms of their
time if they don't, if they don't turn that around,
because that is that is an awfully ignorant, unhappy, belligerent
(20:39):
place to live, and one I don't want my kids
to live there. So that's one of the reasons why
we're going to try to help focus them in a
different direction.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
My only pushback to this is, think about every generation.
I think, like, look at you know, I'm gen Z
or that's what I consider myself as.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Are you right or both?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
GM, Jenet, I'm sorry, Jenny sorry, gen X, Yeah, we
gen Z. No, we're not gen Z gen X, Yes,
but do you remember we were slackers? We were the
slacker generation who like wore you know, the lad shirts
that didn't want to work. Yes, thinking back to when
to when we were you know, twenty, they called us
(21:18):
the slacker generation. There was a movie called Slacker, And
I think every generation gets criticism.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I remember thinking Millennials were the laziest people in the universe.
They were just.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Always I remember the articles about them where it was
like Millennials just don't.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Want to work. But you know, you grow up and
you kind of face reality.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
And I think what the gen Zers have that the
Millennials and the gen X really didn't have is TikTok
or Instagram where they post these videos of like I
don't like working. Working nine to five is you know,
for suckers, And so we feel like it's more prevalent
than other generations. But I think they're going to hit
the same wall of reality that every other generation hits,
(21:58):
that this is how how money gets made. You want
a certain lifestyle, you want certain things for yourself, You're
going to have to work for it, and then nothing
is free and that you don't get like only so
many people get to be top influencers who actually make
money on these apps.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
I hope you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I have hope.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
I have hope that they all every young generation is
considered lazy, and you know it's those boomers calling all
of us lazy.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
We should just like all unite against them.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Well, they're not going to be around much longer, so
we should probably just cherish them and let them be
a piece when their time going.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Too good.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
You're too good, too good, Kevin, So tell me about
Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You're a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
I'm not a huge fan, but I'm married to the
world's biggest fan. And she literally spent all of twenty
twenty three playing the same playlist throughout our house. I
think from about January till November when we finally broke
out the Christmas music.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No, hey, Taylor has Christmas music.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think one of my favorite songs by her is
tis the damn season. I think that's that's a Christmas hunt.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
No, she goes home for the weekend.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Taylor and So Salem News Channel is one of the
places that I work for, and they asked me to
executive produce an end of year special that we ran
that was the ten top news stories of the year
and we used contributors from the channel to put it together,
and everyone kind of had their own pick, and I
got to do three of the ten pieces, the issue
(23:32):
and story and person of who Taylor Swift is. We
ranked her at number six in terms of general market
news for the entire year, and the reason was and
there was no other single person that was just a
news story except for Donald Trump, that made the list
by themselves, but she did because she produced more GDP
(23:55):
than fifty nations on Planet Earth. Last year. She paid
her sixteen semi truck drivers one hundred thousand dollars bonuses
for the extra hard work that they were putting in.
She went out and had five simultaneous albums on the
Billboard Top one hundred chart in the same calendar year.
The only other person that's come close to that was
(24:17):
Elvis Presley, who at his peak had two I mean,
there's so many things that you could just list. Every
single stadium that she played set a new attendance record
for the venue that she was in, and usually she
was there for two or three nights, so for total
total attendance for a single event, all three events being
considered one. She shattered records that had been previously held. There.
(24:41):
There was just nothing that she didn't touch that turned
to gold, including when they came to her and they
said or when she's she thought, well, you know, aris
tour went pretty well, maybe we should make a movie
of it. And they, of course had videoed every night's
performance throughout the whole tour, so they had all of
the footage. It cost her almost nothing to make. She
went out and negotiated with the individual theater owners of
(25:04):
how the release with her, and she starts getting criticized
by all the smart people in the room saying, well,
you know, you could have done much better if you
had gone through us. Well, on opening weekend, she was
in thirty eight hundred theaters, the most of any movie
in the country in that year. She grows ninety two
million in opening weekend, which was more than the other
top twenty films of that weekend put together. I think
(25:26):
she did okay, and I don't agree with her. I
don't agree with her politically on you know, she's very
I'm pro life, she's very pro choice, she's very heavily
into the LGBTQ, cause I'm not. They're just things that
we differ on. But in terms of a forced azure,
I've never seen I've never witnessed any single one human
(25:48):
being on planet Earth do what she did in the
calendar year of twenty twenty three, and I don't think
there's any way around it. People have to deal with
who she is and she's and she's also done it
in a winsome way. She's went out and she's she's
found new fan bases. I don't you know, the NFL
probably doesn't consider itself a Taylor Swift arena. It is now.
But Amy was watching the the Chief's playoff game. As
(26:12):
she was she was looking up the buffer coat whatever
coach she showed up, and she's like, I got to
find out how they made that. She did a whole
research thing on her phone.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
That was a good story though. It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, So what do you think conservatives misunderstand about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Well because they don't take the time to try to understand.
I think they just get her wrong a lot. I think, yeah,
you can, you can say her her songs can come
off a little bit on the whiny side. She's had
some mistreatment. She's also made a lot of bad decisions
when it comes to the guys that she's chosen to
be with. Ye, so that's kind of like a wash.
(26:48):
But I think that Peggy Noonan actually wrote a piece
about her in the Wall Street Journal, and I thought
it was really well said. You know, she she has
some profanity in her music, but it's very much, i'le
compared to most of what the pop culture is these days.
She does she's not promiscuous. She doesn't she doesn't, you know,
advance this idea that girls all need to dress like
(27:10):
street walkers. She is she she carries herself with dignity.
She has a positive role model on so many levels,
and she has kind of the heart of a generation.
And I would say that we need to pay attention
to how she how she goes about what she's doing,
because our daughters are going to like her, and we're
(27:30):
gonna have to. We're gonna have to figure out a
way to accommodate that or give them really good reasons
why they shouldn't. But right now, you know, I helped
make the Friendship bracelets for my bride and daughter to
go see the movie. We didn't take we didn't take
the baby girl to the to the Arena show. I
only took the bride to that, but we did take
the baby girl to go see the movie.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I'm trying to figure out how I can take my
thirteen year old to one of the shows. I mean,
it's you know, she's a huge Taylor Swift fan. She
doesn't get one of the I'm going to make it
hat she wasn't. She wasn't a Swift fan yet. I
would say she became a Taylor Swift fan in the
last year. And now Taylor's coming to Miami next fall,
(28:13):
so you know, the pressure's on. I want to I'm
going to make it happen for her, But you know,
it's it's It's interesting because I agree with so much
of that. It's not my kind of music, but I
enjoy that my daughter is super into it. It reminds
me of being thirteen years old and really into different artists,
(28:34):
and I, you know, I enjoy it on in my home,
so I don't I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It's not like, oh my god, it turn it's turned into.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
A girl thing. In the McCullough house, the boys, if
they hear one more song, they're gonna put their head
through a wall. And then you know, my princess comes
up and she goes but this is so good you
just have to give it a chance.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
So right, it's my youngest son is a swift ye. Also,
I mean he does whatever his sister wants. But also
the fact that she's dating Travis Kelcey. They were on
this so much earlier than the story broke, like they
knew this was coming, you know, I would say very early.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So he's been very into that.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I think my bride was actually texting your kids telling
him all the stuff because she she knew about the
friendship bracelet at MetLife before he said it on the podcast.
There was somehow.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Right same, yeah, there, you know, they're they're really into it.
So on a bigger topic, what do you think is
our largest cultural or societal problem in America?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And do you think this.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Is the most difficult question that you told me you
were going to ask.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
It's funny because of the three questions, people very really
variate between what they think is the hardest one, and
this is always the hardest one for getting.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Well, I think I wanted. I wanted to answer it thoughtfully,
because it's easy to just turn political at this point
in the conversation and then fall into the labels that
we just talked about not having right, like, well, if
we just had a different administration, then the world would
be different. But that is not my answer to this question.
(30:09):
I'm a Bible believing, God fearing person. I believe that
God exists for a reason, and that that reason is
good for us to understand as human beings because he
made all of us. So having said that, I think
the context of what the biggest problem we face, generally
speaking in twenty twenty four in the pop culture that
(30:30):
we live in is a lack of accountability. When you
don't have accountability for your actions, you destroy the universe
around you. My thirteen year old got baptized this last year,
and it was his decision and he thought a lot
about it before it happened. But we had a lot
of theological discussion about sin and the depravity of man
(30:54):
and who God is and what constitutes all that? And
I said, and I've said to him repeatedly, that selfishness
is in and of itself, what is at the core
of everything that we would deem immoral or sinful. So
wanting what I want more than the to the exclusion
(31:16):
of what everybody else wants or needs, and wanting it
to a degree that I'm willing to take actions that
are hurtful towards others, et cetera, is is the That's
the piece of sin, that is in every sin that
every sinner ever commits. So how does that work? Well,
you murder somebody, you don't want that person to live
for some reason. But it's it's not because of what's
(31:38):
good for them. It's because you're angry with them. You
have something that you despise, They've done you so wrong
that this is the only way they're going to They're
going to rat you out. Something's going on that that
that is the core of what that crime essentially comes from.
And when you live in a society where there's no
accountability or no check and balance on what your heart thinks,
(32:00):
then selfishness is what comes to the fore So, I
really do believe that an internal reflective which come on.
Has there been a season where we've ever been less concerned,
I mean, less interested in our own navels than what
we live through Right now, It's all about me. Everything's
always me. I want what I want and when I
(32:23):
want it. We cater to this that lends itself to
a lack of accountability. The reason the left despises the
founders and the founding documents of our country is because
there's so much accountability built into it that you can't
have one branch of government that's just going to railroad
the other two and it's clunky and it's inefficient if
(32:45):
you're the one that's trying to get stuff done. But
it also makes sure that there's a lot of checks
and balances, and you could trace this throughout our entire conversation.
You asked why I have such affection for my bride.
In part, it's because she keeps me accountable. She is
someone that I know that at the end of the day,
I have to look in the face of and I
(33:06):
have to be accountable for what I've done and where
I've been and why I've been involved in the things
that I've been involved in because she's going to ask me, hey,
how is your day. There's just basic restraint that comes
into a society when accountability is put to people. And
all you have to do is look at some of
the biggest headlines right now to see that. One of
(33:28):
the reasons that I think that Taylor Swift is so
interesting is that she sought to hold people who did
her wrong very accountable, and she said, I'm not going
to let you get away with the stuff that you've done.
You could talk politics, you could talk Hunter Biden. He's
trying to evade accountability. You could say that there have
(33:49):
been people on the right that have tried to do
the same thing. The reason Nixon had to resign was
because he was evading accountability for his actions. In other words,
this is a theme that runs through every life, every person,
every corner of society. And ultimately, I believe our accountability
does come from God. I think we are held accountable
by God at some point in time. But in the
(34:10):
human sphere, the reason that parents raise good kids is
because the parents put a check and balance on the
on the child and they say, hey, no, that's not
what we're going to do today. We're going to do
We're gonna do this instead, and you're not going to
get your way, Johnny, on every single thing that you
ask for, because Susie's going to have requests, She's going
to have needs to Living in a community, whether it
be a family or a larger community, we hold a
(34:33):
certain degree of responsibility towards one another. It's not it
takes a village, but it is a we have to
live together and we have to we have to figure
out a way to win some lee, figure out solutions
that help all of us do better. And sometimes that
means saying no to somebody, and sometimes that means no,
we're not going to act that way because we didn't
(34:54):
get our way this particular time. So biggest crisis we
face lack of accountability, I think across the board is
really the thing that I would point to and the
kind of thing that kind of keeps me up sometimes
at night. I worry about, you know, is the government
going to slide off the edge because they're trying to
do away with accountability in different ways. So it is
to me that's it.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
That was a very winsome answer that leads us very
very well to our last question. And with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Wow. Well, there's a lot of things that come to mind,
and because I am somewhat faith based and so forth,
I could go in that direction, but I'm going to
go with this instead. It's probably the hardest lesson I
had to learn when I was young gerr and growing
(35:51):
up in a conservative house and always being told the
conservative answers to life's biggest dilemmas. I grew up kind
of thinking that I knew it all, and when things
didn't work out the way that I had hoped they would,
I could have a tendency to get jaded. And at
(36:12):
one point in time, I had a friend who was
very wealthy. He was actually a client, but he was
very wealthy, and I made some offhanded remark when I
was playing a round of golf at his golf club
on his dime. I made some side remark about someone
being wealthier than God and not knowing what to do
(36:32):
with it. He wrote me this handwritten letter afterwards, and
he was like, keV, there's a lot of things that
are wrong with the world, and I share your passion
for trying to make things right. He said, but if
you have this this outlook that you're the only one
who's right and everybody else is always wrong, you're going
(36:54):
to self destruct. And because I love you and care
about you, I'm willing to tell you about this, and
I think that I need to draw your attention to
it because I think you need to change. I'd never
had somebody speak to me that way, especially regarding this,
And what I learned quickly was that it's not wrong
(37:16):
to have your opinions based on fact and to try
to be as as truly truthful and right as you
can be about everything that you want to do. But
being willing to apologize quickly and mean it and take
an inventory of where you're at and adjust and calibrate
your response to that confrontation is probably one of the
(37:38):
It's probably one of the healthiest things that we can
learn how to do. It was a hard thing for
me to learn how to do. I still don't always
do it well, but I'm way better at it than
where I was. And I think that if I could
encourage people when you're in even if it's an argument
with your spouse, your kids, someone at work, you know,
voters in a picket line, and whatever, I mean whatever,
(38:01):
Pick your scenario. If someone's in your face and they're
confronting you, if you can take the breath, listen to
what they're having to say for any amount of truth,
apply it if it applies, Apologize, build a bridge, try
to go forward where you can. You're not always going
to be able to There are going to be relationships
that break even if you apologize and try to make
(38:23):
it right. But being humble enough to say I'm sorry
about stuff you get wrong, and to do it quickly.
Don't stretch it out and make it take four and
a half hours to sit you stooping in it all
night and oh well tomorrow I'll do with it. No evaluate,
do the assessment, apologize, quickly, repair the relationship. People are
(38:44):
the greatest commodity on planet Earth, Carol. They are our
best friends, they are our spouses, they are kids. There
is no aspect of life that does not involve people.
And if we cannot find a way to build a
bridge to people, we don't, we're not going to have
a good life. There's not going to be anything nice
about wanting to be around us. And I want to
I want a nice life. I want lots of grandkids.
(39:06):
I want to I want to look back when I'm
done and say, yes, look at what happened.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah I made it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Well he is the winsome Kevin McCullough talking about on
that love talking to you.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Yeah, yeah, is that you are a connoisseur of bourbon?
Am I am? I wrong?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Oh yeah, I'm kind of into Rye right now, but
yes I am.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
I don't know if you have seen. And I don't
get a dime for this either, but I was like,
I got to tell Carol about this.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You should get you should get some dimes.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Here is our new favorite bourbon in the McCullough house,
New Rift, single barrel. Have you tried this New Rift?
You have to know this. It is the most okay,
caramely delicious, smooth bourbon that I've found. And it is
it is not incredibly strangely oddly expensively priced. It is
(40:02):
really really uh doable but New Riff single barrel, and
that's my little I'm.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Going to go check it out. And I think that
they should be sponsoring that, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I don't know, I you know, I don't know that
some of my family members would want alcohol as a sponsor.
What I do, but because I know you like good bourbon,
I was like, I got to tell Carol about it,
new risk, single barrel gifts. If we were in the
same studio, I would have poor Justip, but we can't
do that today.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I love you me next time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Well, we're going to definitely sometime, you know, join together
over some bourbon.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Love. Talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on.
He's Kevin McCullough. His show is that Kevin Show. Look
it up. It's amazing. It's really well done.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Thank you, Kerl.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Thank you so much, Kevin.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
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