February 29, 2024 • 28 mins
In this conversation, Karol interviews journalist Nancy Rommelmann about her experience of making friends and building a community in New York City. Nancy shares her secret to attracting people and creating a welcoming environment, which involves opening her home and cooking for others. She emphasizes the importance of human connection and the joy of bringing people together. Nancy also discusses her career as a writer and the challenges and rewards of being in the industry. 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 (00:03):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
During a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shack,
the ex NBA star had on Jason Kelsey, who is
retiring from NFL football after playing for the stinky Philadelphia Eagles. Sorry,
I'm a Cowboys fan. I had to include that Jason
(00:26):
Kelcey is married to Kylie Kelsey and the two have
been in the public eye more often recently since Jason's
brother Travis started dating Taylor Swift and a lot more
interest into the Kelsey family and their podcast and everything,
so we kind of know a little bit about the relationship.
On Shaq's show, Shaq was talking about his own retirement
(00:46):
and he told Jason, quote, I made a lot of
dumbass mistakes to where I lost my family and didn't
have anyone. I was an idiot. I lost my whole family.
I'm in a one hundred thousand square foot house by
my end quote. I of course clicked on the comments
under the clips of these comments that he made on
his show, and they were generally saying that Shaq cheated
(01:10):
on his wife with like hundreds of women and destroyed
their relationship. I assume that's true, and I assume that
that's what Shack means by the mistakes he's made. I've
seen such an uptick in podcasts and just general kind
of clips and information aimed at men telling them that
if they're on the path to making money, then they'd
(01:31):
be suckers to settle down with just one woman. It's
such bad advice, and everyone knows that. Like one loser
bro who insists that men are only as faithful as
their options, implying that men with money should get to cheat,
and any man not cheating just doesn't have the opportunity.
That guy is said, don't be like that guy. What
(01:52):
Shaq is saying is that you can have all the money,
but if you throw away your family along the way,
then it will not have been worth it. And you know,
that's like the most obvious advice ever. The image of
him in his ten thousand square foot house alone is
actually really depressing. There's this trope that if you're rich
and you're sad, then you could just dry your tears
(02:14):
with your money. Well, here's an incredibly wealthy man issuing
a warning to another man to not end up in
his same situation, and he seemed to be specifically telling
Jason Kelsey this because when Jason retires and suddenly has
a lot of time on his hands, not practicing, not playing,
maybe Shack understands that times of change like that can
(02:37):
make a wealthy man more susceptible to making mistakes or
being put in situation where those mistakes are more likely.
I think it's interesting to think about the times in
your life where something could trigger you to feel unsettled
or uncomfortable in your life. If you get used to
doing something like having a career and then you don't
have it, that can definitely leave you susceptible to maybe
(03:00):
acting out. For the average person when you're going through
a time of change, whether moving like we've talked about
on the show, or your kids leaving the house, or
making any big changes to your life, I think it's
smart advice to be extra careful about what you're doing
and who you're doing it with. You don't want to
be like Shaq alone in his ten thousand square foot house.
Coming up next and interview with Nancy Rammelman. Join us
(03:23):
after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Nancy Rammelman. Nancy is
a journalist who writes for such publications as Reason and
The Free Press, as well as writing the substack Make
More Pie, and co host of the podcast Smoke Them
(03:44):
If You Got Them. Hi, Nancy, Good morning Carol. I'm
so happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you.
I have to say that we talk on this show
a lot about making friends, especially after moves, because so
many people have moved in the last few years, you know,
the Great Migration, And you moved from Portland to New York.
What year was that, July twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. I
(04:09):
knew it was pre pandemic, which is rare because most
of these big moves are happening, you know, during the pandemic,
right and you you know, you already had a lot
of friends in New York. But you have this amazing
social gravitational pull. I just see you as this like warm,
welcoming person who everyone wants to be around. Like, whenever
I see you, I smile. How do you do that?
(04:30):
How do you help other people do that?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
This is very funny because when we were talking about
the questions you're going to ask that you like to
ask your guests. I will I will say that one
thing is that I love to cook, and it's not
so fun to just cook for yourself, so you wind
up opening your home. But also I just like it,
and people like to not just be on their computers.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You want to meet new people. You don't know what's
happening all the time.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And when I got this little place, I had moved Fromland.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Moore, had like, you know, a four bedroom house with
a garage, the.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Whole kind of thing, to all of a sudden, this
little place in Chinatown, and it was just super fun
to build it out and build a sound studio and
have people in.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And then, as you know, because you were here a few.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Times during the pandemic, you know, we all kind of
went into our houses for about eight weeks and then
I was like, no, we're having We're going to have
people over for lunch.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We're just going to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And I was back and forth between reporting on the
riots in Portland, but when I was home, I was like,
let's just let's just open the doors.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And people really needed it, and we just never stopped. Yeah. Yeah,
I was at a party at your house in June
twenty twenty one, so still you know, pretty pandemic. Ye,
it was amazing, and we like we had my husband
and I were there and it was just this amazing party.
And then like some friends of ours who like aren't
(05:51):
in our you know, writer political world, texted and they're like, Hey,
we're out in the city. You guys around And I
was like, Oh, we're at this party, you know, come
by and they still talk about your party. They're still
like that party, you know, June twenty twenty one, just
this amazing, amazing time. It was something that people really
weren't doing. And again, I just think you have this
(06:12):
ability to bring people together, Like, do you have any
advice for people on how to be I mean other
than learn how to cook like you, how do you
navigate having people like you know, how do you attract
people to you the way you do? Tell us everything
what you see.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I think I just really like having people around and
also being able to connect people. I mean, you know this,
when we've been at parties here, it's not like everybody
has the same opinions or they come from the same
world at all, and you sort of put them in
the super collider and then you're just all enjoying each other.
And first of all, first of all, tell your friends
they're welcome back anytime, never the address. And I don't know,
(06:53):
I think especially we may have noticed this more Carol,
because it was so stark during the pandemic. I remember
when I first started to have the lunches here. I
think it was August twenty twenty, which, you know, still
really in the thicket things, right.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It was so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
People would creep in here like they had not left
their house in three months, and.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Then they remembered, Oh, we really really need this and
really want this. I just like doing it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I had people here the other day. It was the
super Bowl, where about have six or eight people. I
invited a friend of mine who's in a play right here,
and he's like, well, I can't come, but the whole
cast wants to come.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I'm like sure. I had eight people i'd never met
here for the super Bowl and it was great. It
was great. So yeah, I just took a lot. So
how did you become a writer? What was your path
to it? So?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I moved to Los Angeles from New York City, where
I'm from when I was twenty four, and I had
a baby not that long after, and at the time.
I'd gone to La to be a movie star, as
I'm sure you can guess. And I started reading scripts
for a living when I was pregnant, which is like
you'd go Julia Roberts agent would give you a script
(07:59):
and read it and do a summation and then recommended
or not. And I got really fast at it, and
I could do it at home, and I knew I
wanted to be home with my kids. Plus we didn't
have any money. It wasn't like I was going to
hire someone to raise my kid, right, And then that
segued into journalism, and by the time I was thirty,
I never had another job. It was also, you know,
it was the nineties. There was a lot of money
(08:20):
in You could make money pretty easily. You could write
for a ton of places, and I just it turned
out I was good at it and I.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Loved it, and I've never I knew the minute I
did my.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
First article of Carol, which was a like five hundred
word piece on genital piercing, which is so old.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Whatever it was the next where was that published?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Okay, so it was this lad magazine called Bikini, which
was also part of Ray Gun.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Maybe this is a billion years ago. But anyway, they
sent me to do this article about genital this salon.
I'm like, wow, I go to this place in Lost Bilis.
I'm talking to these people. This couple walks in.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
They're like, you know, in their twenties, and they said
they were getting their engagement rings or wedding rinks. And
I was like, well, what are you going to do
when people ask to see them? And she's like, well,
we'll show them. And I was like, that's it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I'm never having another job. That's it. Like this is
magic and I never have I've never had another job.
So do you feel like you've made it? I think
it depends on the week.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
You know, sometimes you have really good weeks. I can't
remember what the exact expression. Expression expression is. It's like,
you know, writing is no fun or or not writing
is no fun, but having written.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Is the best feeling.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
So when you see you know, you know, yeah, you've
finished that piece and you just can you can dine
out on it for a matter of hours or even days.
But then it's like the gas runs out of tank
and you just got to just have to keep working.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, sometimes you feel.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Great, you have a book that's published, or you do
a story that really moves people and then you communicate
with them and then that leads to the.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Next article and you can feel really good. But then
when you're not haven't written for a little while, you
just feel crappy and have I made it? I don't know. So, yeah,
that feeling of publishing. I mean when I publish in
the post, for example, I used to just do it
would be Mondays, so Sunday night it would hit the
(10:14):
internet and I had like Sunday night, I'd be refreshing,
And you know, it was years in. It wasn't like
my first, my tenth or my fiftieth article at that point.
It was years and years and years and I still
like loved it so much, and I totally get that feeling.
And I have to say, I think I avoid places.
I avoid writing for places where I don't know when
it's going to run, because I'm like, no, I need
(10:35):
I need to know. I need to know when I'm
going to get that boost of like happiness and my
piece is out there. And yeah, when.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
You're funny working on a piece for a while in
your letter, like when is it going to run? Yeah? Hello,
I wrote book reviews for a long time for the
Wall Street Journal, and they have a fantastic Saturday section.
And yeah, every time I'd be like, I have h yeah,
I know, babe had went two weeks, it goes like
last Saturday, right, Yeah, there's Saturday newspapers.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's a great it's a great section. It's a great session.
So if you weren't doing this, if you needed a
plan B, what would it be. Probably work as a baker.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I had worked as a baker, like when I first
went to LA and then when my husband had a
series of coffee shops, I'd baked for his coffee shops
for about a year.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
But I really just bak for pleasure. So I don't
know if I want to do it as a job.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know, I always thought this is going to sound
so ridiculous when I go with pharmacy and get my
get a prescription filled, and I always watched the farm
and it's so organized and clean, and I was like,
that'dn't be a bad gig.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, working, I don't think this sounds ridiculous at all.
My plan B is I think i'd be a really
good DJ. So so you know, it's dream big on
this show is really you know what it's all about.
You want to be a pharmacist back there with your clean,
organized world, like organizing everything. I see it. I could,
(12:01):
you know, I need things orderly? Yeah can Yeah. I
feel like yours requires a lot more school than mine, though.
My plan B and you could just do it tonight, girl, right,
get everybody's dancing, And that's really I feel like I could.
I think I could just organize music well, like I could, Like,
I know what people want to hear next, if they're happy.
You know, I have zero skills in that area. So
(12:23):
I'm coming. I love it. We're going to take a
quick break and be right back on the Carol marco
It Show. So you recently went to Israel, which seemed
like an amazing trip. How was it, As you know,
Israel is complicated, It's always a complicated place.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
And then to drop in when they have I was
on the Bill Schultz Show yesterday and I compared it
to be getting kicked in the heart.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
They not not just the emotional stuff, but.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
They really have to have a real reset in how
they think about how their own survival, of their government,
of the military, and I it was a difficult trip
in terms of the people I hung out with, I
hung out for four days, that the missing hostages and
(13:15):
families for them, these are I'm talking to mothers whose
children are still in Gaza and they're still there now.
This is not easy. However, that piece ran in reason.
To see how the country pulled together after October seventh,
you know, especially in light of the fact that for
the past you know, fourteen months they've been rebelling against
(13:36):
their own government, is pretty amazing. And you realize what
is baked into the Israeli psyche is that they need
to save their own lives. They're never going back to
what it used to be. Ever, that's not going to happen,
and so to be around that is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
One thing I also love about.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Being in Israel, especially in Tel Aviv, is this constant
everybody looks you in the eye, everyone wants to talk
to you, and there's just this incredible energy going.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I feel like that might just be you. But okay, no,
I know, what do you think? I don't know. I
don't know. I love Israeli as I'm married to an Israeli.
You know, I have a lot of Israeli friends. I
would not say that they are extra friendly. Well, I
don't know, friendly is the world. They're very very willing
to be confrontational. How's that right, Like right, yes, for sure, yes,
(14:28):
very willing to be confrontation. No, no, no, no, I
you know I had I had an Israeli friend say
to me something like, you know, the trans insanity that
we're going through in America could never happen in Israel
because they'd be like, no, what are you crazy? No, like,
you know, no, no, biological boys can play in girls
sports next, Like, they just they're not polite. They're not
(14:51):
polite enough to be like, well, I don't know, let
me think about your feelings, like no, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
No, they're they're they're like New Yorkers that way, yeah
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We're just like no, we're just getting onto the next
topic here. We're not going to fool around this. Except
I feel like New Yorkers have like slid off of
that a little bit in the last I mean that
the pandemic, you know, obviously crushed my feelings on badass
New Yorkers standing up for it. But you know, and
I have definitely concerns about the migrant situation and the
fact that New Yorkers are not like kind of fighting
(15:22):
back on it, Like, you know, people are suffering in
the city, and yet like the people who are coming
here legally get all this free stuff. And it's it's
hard for me to watch New Yorkers just roll over.
Especially the pandemic was really the that point for me
where I don't think, you know, Israelis would necessarily I
mean they kind of did also, so I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, New York was a was a strange place. I
was traveling a lot during the pandemic because I was
covering the situation in Portland.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But I was surprised, as a you.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Know, born and bred New Yorker at how sort of
obedient people.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Want complacent like the place and see. Yeah, I remember
taking off my mask.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I don't remember the exact date, but it was definitely
before we were allowed to and I'm like, screwid, I'm
not I'm not doing it. So, yeah, get some dirty
hooks on the subway.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I don't care. Right, was it your first trip to Israel?
My second?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
So you may recall back in November twenty twenty twenty three, No,
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The reasonally crue ones. Yeah, well not really reason so much.
It was the Israeli consulate here took over a bunch
of journalists. It was Matt Well to Michael moynihan and
me the reason CR.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And we all went over on their dime but zero obligation.
And I went over early with and they've talked about
it at this point, so it's no with Leifang and
Jesse's single and we toured around with bits l M
very left wing group, which was actually really.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Smart to do because it was a complicated country. They
don't all agree, so you can kind of get a sense.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And I was in Hebron at that point, and I
was back and he Brew on this trip, and that
is a weird place, as you may or may not know.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, very very strange. So what was strange about it
for people who may not well? So it's cut in.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It's split into you've got H one and H two
and H one and I'm hopefully I'm not swapping these.
H one is where it's all Palestinian, right. You live there,
there's economy, you.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Walk in bebbe clothes.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Turkish coffee. It's just like a busy busy you know,
you pay in Mexico City or something though it's also
sort of depressed because it's isolated and it's surrounded and
you have to like get in and out of checkpoints
that are run by the Israeli military, and certain things
were closed down, but it's still very vibrant.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You cross over to the other side and everything is
boarded up and sealed up, all the buildings, there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It's truly ghosty. It's looked over by the Israeli military.
If you are Palestinian, you can live there, but you
can't have a car, so you can't really get any
place unless you us into H one, which is easy.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh, but then getting out.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
That's kind of up to the two Israeli guards that
are at the gate. So maybe they wait you, you
wait three minutes, maybe you wait three hours in the
rain with your kids. Like it's weird, it's messed up,
and there's reasons. I hung out with the Palestinian activist,
I hung out with settlers, and they can both tell
you they all want the same thing, but they see
it from different ends of the tube. And frankly, they
(18:27):
both have points. They both have points. So that's an
interesting piece that I have to get to.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I have to write this. Yeah, I can't wait to
read it. Do you feel like you know what you're
talking about? Like Israeli unity right now? You know the
post October seventh moment. Do you feel like America can
ever get to a similar place of unity? Like I
don't feel like a terrorist attack like that would unite us.
I don't think. I feel like I don't know if
(18:54):
those days are even possible, the post nine to eleven unity,
for example. I don't think we could ever do that again.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I think that something happened around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,
when Trump was stole the nominee.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
People kind of lost their minds. On both sides.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
You had the Trump derangement syndrome, and then you had
the Trump epiphantic love affair. You know, I see the
portraits of Trump as Jesus, and I'm like, hi, everyone,
maybe stop drinking the kool aid and we It just
split people so intensely, and everybody believes not only that
(19:35):
they're right, but that the other side is driving this
country into hell.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I think, you know, I don't belong to any of
either of these tribes.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And as a journalist who absolutely adores getting in my
car and driving around this country, and talking to people
in Texas, in Kansas, in Oklahoma, in New York State.
Most people are pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Okay, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Who you voted for. They're like, really pretty great. And
we really do. I truly believe.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
We agree on more than we disagree on. But it
just doesn't seem to pay.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Whether it's our media institution screaming at us or it's
us believing me. I will say one of the people
I love most in the world, if he were not
an emergency room physician.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
For children, he would be priest. Okay. He once said
to me that he could never be friends with someone
that voted for Trump. And I'm like, guess what you
already are? Wow, not meaning me? But yeah, no, I
know you don't I know meaning you.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
But it's like, you don't say that, do not say
that about your fellow Americans. And that brings me out
because I love America and I believe God like actually
got chill saying that, and I believe almost everybody in
this country does love America. And that means you should
be talking to your neighbors, and you should be looking
(20:58):
for the stuff that really meant, not stuff to fight about.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What would you say is our largest cultural or societal problem.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Besides not listening to each other, besides being we could.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Not listening to each other not listening, but also being
addicted to the sense that we're right. I mean, people,
there was something on it.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I've written a lot about Portland, Oregon, which really drove
itself into the ground by making some really stupid decisions
in twenty twenty and downstream. It should have been obvious
to any grown up that there were going to be
really bad repercussions. But I wrote today on Twitter, like
the elixir of believing you are right is really super sweet.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You get addicted to that taste and I you know,
go try something else at the soda fountain.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Right do you think Portland could come back? I know
you love Portland? Right am I my right that you
have like an affection for it? No, because it does
seem like when you write about it, it's not like, Haha,
you suck. You know, It's very like you care about
them and you want them to do bad and you
don't want it to fall apart. At least That's how
(22:02):
I'm reading you. I don't Portland.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I live there from twenty four to twenty and eighteen,
and I watched Portland do some really really cool things,
things that couldnot be done in a city where it
was more expensive, where it was more like like even
a little more urban or lesser. But like they really
it was a really interesting experiment, and then they screwed
it up. They've screwed it up in a lot of ways. However,
(22:27):
it's still beautiful. It is such a beautiful city, and
it's a bread basket, and the region is great.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I would hope that they can come back, but they.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Really ding themselves, and financially they just are They're really
seeing some problems, and we've seen the problems with Measure
one ten, which decriminalized drugs.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
They really have some work to do. I can be hopeful.
I'm an optimist. So let's see. I was recently reading
Blake Nelson, the writer who you went to college with.
Was their connection. I love him, He's you know, so
like his books. When I was in my late teens
early twenties, I was just such a huge fan, and
(23:06):
I happened to meet him in New York and but
he recently wrote this whole thing about Portland, and it
was I just love reading about old Portland. I guess
that's the same feeling. I mean, it might it definitely
has some connection to how I feel about New York
and how it used to be. But he wrote this
whole thing and it was just Portland sounds so exciting.
In the piece he talks about sleeping with Courtney Love,
(23:26):
which is like, oh, okay, that's it. Yea.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
She has a bit of a reputation there. And also
in la Hey question for you, Yeah, do you miss
New York.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Like I do? But when I'm there, I'm not like,
oh I miss this place. I miss the New York
that I feel like it used to be. Like the
pandemic really broke New York. I don't know if and
when it will recover. It hasn't recovered, I mean by
like a lot of the measures. But it really hurt
me to see that complacent rule following New Yorker that
(24:01):
I always thought would be like badass and thinking for themselves.
And a lot of people left, like a lot of
my native New Yorkers left because they couldn't take it anymore.
And it's just it's hard to watch. But in the
same way that I think you root for Portland, I
root for New York. I want to see it revived.
I want to see that city that I loved so
(24:22):
much back. But when I'm in town, I'm like, I'm
a genius. I like, you know, I got my kids
out of this, Like it's just guess you know, we
record this in advance. But there was a snow day
and New Yorkers were forced to do remote learning with
their kids because you know, they discovered remote learning the
during the pandemic, and now they want to implement it
(24:43):
whenever possible. But like the New York I know would
have just had a snow day and had a you know,
the kids would play in the snow and it would
be amazing and magical and they'd be hot, chocolate and involved.
But now they have to like get on zoom because
somebody's bad idea. And that's a small bad idea, but
it's still a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. I
said this. That was yesterday, this snow day. I was out.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I had to go record midtown. This snow was just
wet slush by ten thirty in the morning, so it
didn't stick. No, that is true.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean it just put your boots on, kids, It's
not I don't want to be like in my day.
But literally in my day, we would have, you know,
two feet of snow and go to school and it
would have to be a serious snow stream. Or if
we were having off, nobody would be expected to still
do busy work. And it just it's hard. I miss
the restaurants a lot, obviously missed my family. I should
(25:33):
reverse those. I missed my family first, and then I
missed the restaurants because no matter what anybody says, there's
no food scene like the New York food scene. Like
you know, I could tell you specifically I missed Ti
Diner very much. I miss my friend's restaurant Marry them
very much. You know, we just don't have that in
South Florida.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
I will say, you know, I live in Dine Square,
that area of Chinatown which never it never closed. I
remember during the pandemic, the New York Post was running
a weekly like look at the Terrible Things that have
happened to my neighborhood, and they asked me to write one.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I was like, can I write that? It's kind cool
down here?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
He's like, okay, it never really went under, mom, But Midtown, boy,
it Midtown is still.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Is still strong. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah, and the outer
borrows I think are still like not back, like a
lot of things closed and just never reopened. Yeah. Yeah,
it's you know, bums me out. But you know, New
York has to keep moving forward. I hope it catches,
you know, its breath and then it improves itself again.
I have high hopes. I you know, I don't want
(26:39):
to hate it. I want to be able to visit
and see my family and be like, oh, this place
is amazing, look at it. Come back so good. I
don't I definitely don't root against it. I don't want
to come to Florida. Yeah, I think it definitely definitely
deserves some Florida time. Yes. So I love talking to
your you know, one of my favorite people end here
(27:01):
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives. I think my best tip we
kind of started with it. I mean, if you're not
going to cook for a bunch of people, which is
sort of my secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I would say, both initiate and attend social events. I
remember being I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I do a lot of traveling, and sometimes it's a
tough places for work, and I came back from someplace
recently I don't think it is real, and I was.
I found it so necessary to go out and see people,
whether it's a drink at a bar, down at someone's house,
someone says, come to sh your bottom, like, yes, I'm coming.
You need to cycle all of this stuff through and
share it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
And it just it just grows. I mean your world.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
He grows and then you wind up giving it away
to the next group. So that would be my That's
my best advice.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I love that. Thank you so much. Nancy Rammelman loved
having you on. Where can people read you?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Oh, you can go to my substock, which is Make
More Pie. You can go listen to my podcast but
Sarah pup Love called smoke 'em if you got them.
And my work runs in the Free press, it runs
in Reason and Real Clearer Investigations and other places, and
I would love to.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
See you there. Stay in touch. Thank you so much, Nancy,
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
During a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shack,
the ex NBA star had on Jason Kelsey, who is
retiring from NFL football after playing for the stinky Philadelphia Eagles. Sorry,
I'm a Cowboys fan. I had to include that Jason
(00:26):
Kelcey is married to Kylie Kelsey and the two have
been in the public eye more often recently since Jason's
brother Travis started dating Taylor Swift and a lot more
interest into the Kelsey family and their podcast and everything,
so we kind of know a little bit about the relationship.
On Shaq's show, Shaq was talking about his own retirement
(00:46):
and he told Jason, quote, I made a lot of
dumbass mistakes to where I lost my family and didn't
have anyone. I was an idiot. I lost my whole family.
I'm in a one hundred thousand square foot house by
my end quote. I of course clicked on the comments
under the clips of these comments that he made on
his show, and they were generally saying that Shaq cheated
(01:10):
on his wife with like hundreds of women and destroyed
their relationship. I assume that's true, and I assume that
that's what Shack means by the mistakes he's made. I've
seen such an uptick in podcasts and just general kind
of clips and information aimed at men telling them that
if they're on the path to making money, then they'd
(01:31):
be suckers to settle down with just one woman. It's
such bad advice, and everyone knows that. Like one loser
bro who insists that men are only as faithful as
their options, implying that men with money should get to cheat,
and any man not cheating just doesn't have the opportunity.
That guy is said, don't be like that guy. What
(01:52):
Shaq is saying is that you can have all the money,
but if you throw away your family along the way,
then it will not have been worth it. And you know,
that's like the most obvious advice ever. The image of
him in his ten thousand square foot house alone is
actually really depressing. There's this trope that if you're rich
and you're sad, then you could just dry your tears
(02:14):
with your money. Well, here's an incredibly wealthy man issuing
a warning to another man to not end up in
his same situation, and he seemed to be specifically telling
Jason Kelsey this because when Jason retires and suddenly has
a lot of time on his hands, not practicing, not playing,
maybe Shack understands that times of change like that can
(02:37):
make a wealthy man more susceptible to making mistakes or
being put in situation where those mistakes are more likely.
I think it's interesting to think about the times in
your life where something could trigger you to feel unsettled
or uncomfortable in your life. If you get used to
doing something like having a career and then you don't
have it, that can definitely leave you susceptible to maybe
(03:00):
acting out. For the average person when you're going through
a time of change, whether moving like we've talked about
on the show, or your kids leaving the house, or
making any big changes to your life, I think it's
smart advice to be extra careful about what you're doing
and who you're doing it with. You don't want to
be like Shaq alone in his ten thousand square foot house.
Coming up next and interview with Nancy Rammelman. Join us
(03:23):
after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Nancy Rammelman. Nancy is
a journalist who writes for such publications as Reason and
The Free Press, as well as writing the substack Make
More Pie, and co host of the podcast Smoke Them
(03:44):
If You Got Them. Hi, Nancy, Good morning Carol. I'm
so happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you.
I have to say that we talk on this show
a lot about making friends, especially after moves, because so
many people have moved in the last few years, you know,
the Great Migration, And you moved from Portland to New York.
What year was that, July twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. I
(04:09):
knew it was pre pandemic, which is rare because most
of these big moves are happening, you know, during the pandemic,
right and you you know, you already had a lot
of friends in New York. But you have this amazing
social gravitational pull. I just see you as this like warm,
welcoming person who everyone wants to be around. Like, whenever
I see you, I smile. How do you do that?
(04:30):
How do you help other people do that?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
This is very funny because when we were talking about
the questions you're going to ask that you like to
ask your guests. I will I will say that one
thing is that I love to cook, and it's not
so fun to just cook for yourself, so you wind
up opening your home. But also I just like it,
and people like to not just be on their computers.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
You want to meet new people. You don't know what's
happening all the time.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And when I got this little place, I had moved Fromland.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Moore, had like, you know, a four bedroom house with
a garage, the.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Whole kind of thing, to all of a sudden, this
little place in Chinatown, and it was just super fun
to build it out and build a sound studio and
have people in.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And then, as you know, because you were here a few.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Times during the pandemic, you know, we all kind of
went into our houses for about eight weeks and then
I was like, no, we're having We're going to have
people over for lunch.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We're just going to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
And I was back and forth between reporting on the
riots in Portland, but when I was home, I was like,
let's just let's just open the doors.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And people really needed it, and we just never stopped. Yeah. Yeah,
I was at a party at your house in June
twenty twenty one, so still you know, pretty pandemic. Ye,
it was amazing, and we like we had my husband
and I were there and it was just this amazing party.
And then like some friends of ours who like aren't
(05:51):
in our you know, writer political world, texted and they're like, Hey,
we're out in the city. You guys around And I
was like, Oh, we're at this party, you know, come
by and they still talk about your party. They're still
like that party, you know, June twenty twenty one, just
this amazing, amazing time. It was something that people really
weren't doing. And again, I just think you have this
(06:12):
ability to bring people together, Like, do you have any
advice for people on how to be I mean other
than learn how to cook like you, how do you
navigate having people like you know, how do you attract
people to you the way you do? Tell us everything
what you see.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I think I just really like having people around and
also being able to connect people. I mean, you know this,
when we've been at parties here, it's not like everybody
has the same opinions or they come from the same
world at all, and you sort of put them in
the super collider and then you're just all enjoying each other.
And first of all, first of all, tell your friends
they're welcome back anytime, never the address. And I don't know,
(06:53):
I think especially we may have noticed this more Carol,
because it was so stark during the pandemic. I remember
when I first started to have the lunches here. I
think it was August twenty twenty, which, you know, still
really in the thicket things, right.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
It was so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
People would creep in here like they had not left
their house in three months, and.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Then they remembered, Oh, we really really need this and
really want this. I just like doing it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
I had people here the other day. It was the
super Bowl, where about have six or eight people. I
invited a friend of mine who's in a play right here,
and he's like, well, I can't come, but the whole
cast wants to come.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I'm like sure. I had eight people i'd never met
here for the super Bowl and it was great. It
was great. So yeah, I just took a lot. So
how did you become a writer? What was your path
to it? So?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I moved to Los Angeles from New York City, where
I'm from when I was twenty four, and I had
a baby not that long after, and at the time.
I'd gone to La to be a movie star, as
I'm sure you can guess. And I started reading scripts
for a living when I was pregnant, which is like
you'd go Julia Roberts agent would give you a script
(07:59):
and read it and do a summation and then recommended
or not. And I got really fast at it, and
I could do it at home, and I knew I
wanted to be home with my kids. Plus we didn't
have any money. It wasn't like I was going to
hire someone to raise my kid, right, And then that
segued into journalism, and by the time I was thirty,
I never had another job. It was also, you know,
it was the nineties. There was a lot of money
(08:20):
in You could make money pretty easily. You could write
for a ton of places, and I just it turned
out I was good at it and I.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Loved it, and I've never I knew the minute I
did my.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
First article of Carol, which was a like five hundred
word piece on genital piercing, which is so old.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Whatever it was the next where was that published?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Okay, so it was this lad magazine called Bikini, which
was also part of Ray Gun.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Maybe this is a billion years ago. But anyway, they
sent me to do this article about genital this salon.
I'm like, wow, I go to this place in Lost Bilis.
I'm talking to these people. This couple walks in.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
They're like, you know, in their twenties, and they said
they were getting their engagement rings or wedding rinks. And
I was like, well, what are you going to do
when people ask to see them? And she's like, well,
we'll show them. And I was like, that's it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I'm never having another job. That's it. Like this is
magic and I never have I've never had another job.
So do you feel like you've made it? I think
it depends on the week.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
You know, sometimes you have really good weeks. I can't
remember what the exact expression. Expression expression is. It's like,
you know, writing is no fun or or not writing
is no fun, but having written.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Is the best feeling.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
So when you see you know, you know, yeah, you've
finished that piece and you just can you can dine
out on it for a matter of hours or even days.
But then it's like the gas runs out of tank
and you just got to just have to keep working.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah, sometimes you feel.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Great, you have a book that's published, or you do
a story that really moves people and then you communicate
with them and then that leads to the.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Next article and you can feel really good. But then
when you're not haven't written for a little while, you
just feel crappy and have I made it? I don't know. So, yeah,
that feeling of publishing. I mean when I publish in
the post, for example, I used to just do it
would be Mondays, so Sunday night it would hit the
(10:14):
internet and I had like Sunday night, I'd be refreshing,
And you know, it was years in. It wasn't like
my first, my tenth or my fiftieth article at that point.
It was years and years and years and I still
like loved it so much, and I totally get that feeling.
And I have to say, I think I avoid places.
I avoid writing for places where I don't know when
it's going to run, because I'm like, no, I need
(10:35):
I need to know. I need to know when I'm
going to get that boost of like happiness and my
piece is out there. And yeah, when.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
You're funny working on a piece for a while in
your letter, like when is it going to run? Yeah? Hello,
I wrote book reviews for a long time for the
Wall Street Journal, and they have a fantastic Saturday section.
And yeah, every time I'd be like, I have h yeah,
I know, babe had went two weeks, it goes like
last Saturday, right, Yeah, there's Saturday newspapers.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's a great it's a great section. It's a great session.
So if you weren't doing this, if you needed a
plan B, what would it be. Probably work as a baker.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
I had worked as a baker, like when I first
went to LA and then when my husband had a
series of coffee shops, I'd baked for his coffee shops
for about a year.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
But I really just bak for pleasure. So I don't
know if I want to do it as a job.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
You know, I always thought this is going to sound
so ridiculous when I go with pharmacy and get my
get a prescription filled, and I always watched the farm
and it's so organized and clean, and I was like,
that'dn't be a bad gig.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, working, I don't think this sounds ridiculous at all.
My plan B is I think i'd be a really
good DJ. So so you know, it's dream big on
this show is really you know what it's all about.
You want to be a pharmacist back there with your clean,
organized world, like organizing everything. I see it. I could,
(12:01):
you know, I need things orderly? Yeah can Yeah. I
feel like yours requires a lot more school than mine, though.
My plan B and you could just do it tonight, girl, right,
get everybody's dancing, And that's really I feel like I could.
I think I could just organize music well, like I could, Like,
I know what people want to hear next, if they're happy.
You know, I have zero skills in that area. So
(12:23):
I'm coming. I love it. We're going to take a
quick break and be right back on the Carol marco
It Show. So you recently went to Israel, which seemed
like an amazing trip. How was it, As you know,
Israel is complicated, It's always a complicated place.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
And then to drop in when they have I was
on the Bill Schultz Show yesterday and I compared it
to be getting kicked in the heart.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
They not not just the emotional stuff, but.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
They really have to have a real reset in how
they think about how their own survival, of their government,
of the military, and I it was a difficult trip
in terms of the people I hung out with, I
hung out for four days, that the missing hostages and
(13:15):
families for them, these are I'm talking to mothers whose
children are still in Gaza and they're still there now.
This is not easy. However, that piece ran in reason.
To see how the country pulled together after October seventh,
you know, especially in light of the fact that for
the past you know, fourteen months they've been rebelling against
(13:36):
their own government, is pretty amazing. And you realize what
is baked into the Israeli psyche is that they need
to save their own lives. They're never going back to
what it used to be. Ever, that's not going to happen,
and so to be around that is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
One thing I also love about.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Being in Israel, especially in Tel Aviv, is this constant
everybody looks you in the eye, everyone wants to talk
to you, and there's just this incredible energy going.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I feel like that might just be you. But okay, no,
I know, what do you think? I don't know. I
don't know. I love Israeli as I'm married to an Israeli.
You know, I have a lot of Israeli friends. I
would not say that they are extra friendly. Well, I
don't know, friendly is the world. They're very very willing
to be confrontational. How's that right, Like right, yes, for sure, yes,
(14:28):
very willing to be confrontation. No, no, no, no, I
you know I had I had an Israeli friend say
to me something like, you know, the trans insanity that
we're going through in America could never happen in Israel
because they'd be like, no, what are you crazy? No, like,
you know, no, no, biological boys can play in girls
sports next, Like, they just they're not polite. They're not
(14:51):
polite enough to be like, well, I don't know, let
me think about your feelings, like no, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
No, they're they're they're like New Yorkers that way, yeah
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
We're just like no, we're just getting onto the next
topic here. We're not going to fool around this. Except
I feel like New Yorkers have like slid off of
that a little bit in the last I mean that
the pandemic, you know, obviously crushed my feelings on badass
New Yorkers standing up for it. But you know, and
I have definitely concerns about the migrant situation and the
fact that New Yorkers are not like kind of fighting
(15:22):
back on it, Like, you know, people are suffering in
the city, and yet like the people who are coming
here legally get all this free stuff. And it's it's
hard for me to watch New Yorkers just roll over.
Especially the pandemic was really the that point for me
where I don't think, you know, Israelis would necessarily I
mean they kind of did also, so I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, New York was a was a strange place. I
was traveling a lot during the pandemic because I was
covering the situation in Portland.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But I was surprised, as a you.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Know, born and bred New Yorker at how sort of
obedient people.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Want complacent like the place and see. Yeah, I remember
taking off my mask.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I don't remember the exact date, but it was definitely
before we were allowed to and I'm like, screwid, I'm
not I'm not doing it. So, yeah, get some dirty
hooks on the subway.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I don't care. Right, was it your first trip to Israel?
My second?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
So you may recall back in November twenty twenty twenty three, No,
twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
The reasonally crue ones. Yeah, well not really reason so much.
It was the Israeli consulate here took over a bunch
of journalists. It was Matt Well to Michael moynihan and
me the reason CR.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And we all went over on their dime but zero obligation.
And I went over early with and they've talked about
it at this point, so it's no with Leifang and
Jesse's single and we toured around with bits l M
very left wing group, which was actually really.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Smart to do because it was a complicated country. They
don't all agree, so you can kind of get a sense.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
And I was in Hebron at that point, and I
was back and he Brew on this trip, and that
is a weird place, as you may or may not know.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, very very strange. So what was strange about it
for people who may not well? So it's cut in.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It's split into you've got H one and H two
and H one and I'm hopefully I'm not swapping these.
H one is where it's all Palestinian, right. You live there,
there's economy, you.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Walk in bebbe clothes.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Turkish coffee. It's just like a busy busy you know,
you pay in Mexico City or something though it's also
sort of depressed because it's isolated and it's surrounded and
you have to like get in and out of checkpoints
that are run by the Israeli military, and certain things
were closed down, but it's still very vibrant.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
You cross over to the other side and everything is
boarded up and sealed up, all the buildings, there's nothing.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
It's truly ghosty. It's looked over by the Israeli military.
If you are Palestinian, you can live there, but you
can't have a car, so you can't really get any
place unless you us into H one, which is easy.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh, but then getting out.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
That's kind of up to the two Israeli guards that
are at the gate. So maybe they wait you, you
wait three minutes, maybe you wait three hours in the
rain with your kids. Like it's weird, it's messed up,
and there's reasons. I hung out with the Palestinian activist,
I hung out with settlers, and they can both tell
you they all want the same thing, but they see
it from different ends of the tube. And frankly, they
(18:27):
both have points. They both have points. So that's an
interesting piece that I have to get to.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I have to write this. Yeah, I can't wait to
read it. Do you feel like you know what you're
talking about? Like Israeli unity right now? You know the
post October seventh moment. Do you feel like America can
ever get to a similar place of unity? Like I
don't feel like a terrorist attack like that would unite us.
I don't think. I feel like I don't know if
(18:54):
those days are even possible, the post nine to eleven unity,
for example. I don't think we could ever do that again.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I think that something happened around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen,
when Trump was stole the nominee.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
People kind of lost their minds. On both sides.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
You had the Trump derangement syndrome, and then you had
the Trump epiphantic love affair. You know, I see the
portraits of Trump as Jesus, and I'm like, hi, everyone,
maybe stop drinking the kool aid and we It just
split people so intensely, and everybody believes not only that
(19:35):
they're right, but that the other side is driving this
country into hell.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
I think, you know, I don't belong to any of
either of these tribes.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And as a journalist who absolutely adores getting in my
car and driving around this country, and talking to people
in Texas, in Kansas, in Oklahoma, in New York State.
Most people are pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Okay, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Who you voted for. They're like, really pretty great. And
we really do. I truly believe.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
We agree on more than we disagree on. But it
just doesn't seem to pay.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Whether it's our media institution screaming at us or it's
us believing me. I will say one of the people
I love most in the world, if he were not
an emergency room physician.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
For children, he would be priest. Okay. He once said
to me that he could never be friends with someone
that voted for Trump. And I'm like, guess what you
already are? Wow, not meaning me? But yeah, no, I
know you don't I know meaning you.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
But it's like, you don't say that, do not say
that about your fellow Americans. And that brings me out
because I love America and I believe God like actually
got chill saying that, and I believe almost everybody in
this country does love America. And that means you should
be talking to your neighbors, and you should be looking
(20:58):
for the stuff that really meant, not stuff to fight about.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What would you say is our largest cultural or societal problem.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Besides not listening to each other, besides being we could.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Not listening to each other not listening, but also being
addicted to the sense that we're right. I mean, people,
there was something on it.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I've written a lot about Portland, Oregon, which really drove
itself into the ground by making some really stupid decisions
in twenty twenty and downstream. It should have been obvious
to any grown up that there were going to be
really bad repercussions. But I wrote today on Twitter, like
the elixir of believing you are right is really super sweet.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You get addicted to that taste and I you know,
go try something else at the soda fountain.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Right do you think Portland could come back? I know
you love Portland? Right am I my right that you
have like an affection for it? No, because it does
seem like when you write about it, it's not like, Haha,
you suck. You know, It's very like you care about
them and you want them to do bad and you
don't want it to fall apart. At least That's how
(22:02):
I'm reading you. I don't Portland.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I live there from twenty four to twenty and eighteen,
and I watched Portland do some really really cool things,
things that couldnot be done in a city where it
was more expensive, where it was more like like even
a little more urban or lesser. But like they really
it was a really interesting experiment, and then they screwed
it up. They've screwed it up in a lot of ways. However,
(22:27):
it's still beautiful. It is such a beautiful city, and
it's a bread basket, and the region is great.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I would hope that they can come back, but they.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Really ding themselves, and financially they just are They're really
seeing some problems, and we've seen the problems with Measure
one ten, which decriminalized drugs.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
They really have some work to do. I can be hopeful.
I'm an optimist. So let's see. I was recently reading
Blake Nelson, the writer who you went to college with.
Was their connection. I love him, He's you know, so
like his books. When I was in my late teens
early twenties, I was just such a huge fan, and
(23:06):
I happened to meet him in New York and but
he recently wrote this whole thing about Portland, and it
was I just love reading about old Portland. I guess
that's the same feeling. I mean, it might it definitely
has some connection to how I feel about New York
and how it used to be. But he wrote this
whole thing and it was just Portland sounds so exciting.
In the piece he talks about sleeping with Courtney Love,
(23:26):
which is like, oh, okay, that's it. Yea.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
She has a bit of a reputation there. And also
in la Hey question for you, Yeah, do you miss
New York.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Like I do? But when I'm there, I'm not like,
oh I miss this place. I miss the New York
that I feel like it used to be. Like the
pandemic really broke New York. I don't know if and
when it will recover. It hasn't recovered, I mean by
like a lot of the measures. But it really hurt
me to see that complacent rule following New Yorker that
(24:01):
I always thought would be like badass and thinking for themselves.
And a lot of people left, like a lot of
my native New Yorkers left because they couldn't take it anymore.
And it's just it's hard to watch. But in the
same way that I think you root for Portland, I
root for New York. I want to see it revived.
I want to see that city that I loved so
(24:22):
much back. But when I'm in town, I'm like, I'm
a genius. I like, you know, I got my kids
out of this, Like it's just guess you know, we
record this in advance. But there was a snow day
and New Yorkers were forced to do remote learning with
their kids because you know, they discovered remote learning the
during the pandemic, and now they want to implement it
(24:43):
whenever possible. But like the New York I know would
have just had a snow day and had a you know,
the kids would play in the snow and it would
be amazing and magical and they'd be hot, chocolate and involved.
But now they have to like get on zoom because
somebody's bad idea. And that's a small bad idea, but
it's still a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. I
said this. That was yesterday, this snow day. I was out.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I had to go record midtown. This snow was just
wet slush by ten thirty in the morning, so it
didn't stick. No, that is true.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
I mean it just put your boots on, kids, It's
not I don't want to be like in my day.
But literally in my day, we would have, you know,
two feet of snow and go to school and it
would have to be a serious snow stream. Or if
we were having off, nobody would be expected to still
do busy work. And it just it's hard. I miss
the restaurants a lot, obviously missed my family. I should
(25:33):
reverse those. I missed my family first, and then I
missed the restaurants because no matter what anybody says, there's
no food scene like the New York food scene. Like
you know, I could tell you specifically I missed Ti
Diner very much. I miss my friend's restaurant Marry them
very much. You know, we just don't have that in
South Florida.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
I will say, you know, I live in Dine Square,
that area of Chinatown which never it never closed. I
remember during the pandemic, the New York Post was running
a weekly like look at the Terrible Things that have
happened to my neighborhood, and they asked me to write one.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I was like, can I write that? It's kind cool
down here?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
He's like, okay, it never really went under, mom, But Midtown, boy,
it Midtown is still.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Is still strong. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah, and the outer
borrows I think are still like not back, like a
lot of things closed and just never reopened. Yeah. Yeah,
it's you know, bums me out. But you know, New
York has to keep moving forward. I hope it catches,
you know, its breath and then it improves itself again.
I have high hopes. I you know, I don't want
(26:39):
to hate it. I want to be able to visit
and see my family and be like, oh, this place
is amazing, look at it. Come back so good. I
don't I definitely don't root against it. I don't want
to come to Florida. Yeah, I think it definitely definitely
deserves some Florida time. Yes. So I love talking to
your you know, one of my favorite people end here
(27:01):
with your best tip for my listeners on how they
can improve their lives. I think my best tip we
kind of started with it. I mean, if you're not
going to cook for a bunch of people, which is
sort of my secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
I would say, both initiate and attend social events. I
remember being I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
What it was.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I do a lot of traveling, and sometimes it's a
tough places for work, and I came back from someplace
recently I don't think it is real, and I was.
I found it so necessary to go out and see people,
whether it's a drink at a bar, down at someone's house,
someone says, come to sh your bottom, like, yes, I'm coming.
You need to cycle all of this stuff through and
share it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
And it just it just grows. I mean your world.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
He grows and then you wind up giving it away
to the next group. So that would be my That's
my best advice.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I love that. Thank you so much. Nancy Rammelman loved
having you on. Where can people read you?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Oh, you can go to my substock, which is Make
More Pie. You can go listen to my podcast but
Sarah pup Love called smoke 'em if you got them.
And my work runs in the Free press, it runs
in Reason and Real Clearer Investigations and other places, and
I would love to.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
See you there. Stay in touch. Thank you so much, Nancy,
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Karol Markowicz
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