April 25, 2024 • 28 mins
In this conversation, Karol welcomes Phil Klein to discuss their shared love for pizza! They also explore the availability of good pizza outside of New York City and the importance of local water in pizza-making. The conversation then shifts to Phil's career as an editor at National Review Online and his passion for writing about politics and policy. They touch on the societal issue of difficulty in meeting potential partners and the limitations of online dating apps. Phil shares his tip for living a better life: trying new things to keep life interesting. 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 (00:07):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
This show is about life, and I love focusing on
how to improve my life and yours. I like to
get tips from people because I think that's the best
way to kind of move forward. I think people need
to hear certain advice in order for it to resonate.
(00:29):
I got this great email from a listener that I
wanted to share Craig Wrights quote, you always ask for
tips on how to live a better life, and I
thought i'd throw mine out there since whenever I mention
it at work, people seem to really like it. In
our house, Monday night is cocktail hour for dinner night,
nothing crazy, a cheap bottle of wine, cheese and crackers, olives,
(00:52):
splurge for the good ones, sliced cucumber and tisicky and
usually one hot item, pigs in a blanket, boneless buffalo
wings and it's just fantastic. The ritual of it is nice.
Having it on a Monday is nice. You never have
to figure out what's for dinner that night, and most
of the stuff is easy to supply to keep on
hand for a couple of weeks in a row, so
(01:12):
you don't have to worry about food shopping. It's the
perfect way to start the week. I really think doing
it on a Monday is a big part of why
we enjoy it so much. End quote. I really enjoyed
reading that. I like it so much for the simplicity
of it. When we look to make positive changes in
our lives, and I know I do this too, I
feel like we try to do too much. So Okay,
(01:35):
how do we make Monday dinners easier and more enjoyable.
You can say, Okay, I'm going to spend the weekend
meal prepping for the whole.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Week, and then maybe you do it. Maybe you do spend.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Your whole Sunday getting stuff ready, and then maybe you
do it again the next week. And that's great if
that works.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
For you, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
But if you fail to do that, then you feel
all bad for yourself, and I don't think that it
ends up benefiting you at all. I think making big
changes starts with little changes, gradual improvements is what I'm
all about. I'm very into making small, incremental changes. That's
why I just love this. I love this, you know,
(02:14):
Monday cocktail hour thing. It's just such a good, happy, idea.
I'd love to hear more ideas like.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This or otherwise.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
If you have small things you're doing to change your
life for the better, email me Carol Maarkowitz Show at
gmail dot com or tweet at me on X or
whatever you kids are doing these days. Coming up next
and interview with Phil Klein. Join us after the break.
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
(02:44):
guest today is Phil Klein, editor of National Review Online.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Hi Phil, Hey, good to be here, are you?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Nice to have you on.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You know, when I was thinking about this conversation, and
I think a lot of times I don't know what
I'm going to talk to people about out, but I
feel like with you, I know I'm going to start
with pizza, which is maybe not what people are expecting,
but it's important.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Both very into pizza.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
We have a shared affinity for it, and we travel
places to go eat it. But you take it a
step further and you make it at home. And do
you still ship in water from New York?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Or is that I've kind of gotten lazy just because
logistically it's kind of hard to always I used to
keep a stash up Brooklyn water at home for.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Just that's normal, yeah, just for making.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Some Lately, when I make pizza, I tend to use
just local water and not go through the Brooklyn water.
When I visit New York, there's always just more stuff
to carry, yeah, sort of you know, buying a gallon
of poland spring, dumping it out and then filling it
(04:06):
in the tap of a hotel just right.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
You know, it seems crazy? So did the local water
work as well?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I've had pretty good results I've been, I tend to lately,
I've been making more Brooklyn Square pizza as opposed to
more Neapolitan pies. I find that I find that the
pizza has gotten better generally, and that in most decent
(04:36):
sized cities you could find serviceable sort of like Neapolitan
fancy pizza, right, but it's harder to find like what
we'd call growing up Sicilian pizza or for those who
have been to LMB Stomony gardens, the classic where you
(04:57):
put the cheese on first and so it sort of
merges though as it cooks and the sauce is not.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Is that what you make at home, like the upside
down squares.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Like that I do I have? Actually it was based.
I made a few modifications, but I mainly use the
recipe that you would sent me like ten years too.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, I'm going I need you to send that back
now now that I cook.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's really if you follow it, it's
actually quite a good recipe and it's easier you don't
especially when you're having people over. Like one of the
issues what I'd have with making pizza at home and
when i'd have people over is that because I don't
(05:44):
have an actual pizza oven, it's longer to cook than
an actual place. And so yeah, people over, and then
you're like for an hour and a half, like forming
all the pizzas and you know, molding them right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Some people, I mean now, of course they have a
number of home pizza ovens that you get all but
when I was starting out, that wasn't an option. And
the right go on the Internet and some of the
pizza freak forums and everyone would always be obsessing of
like how you could get the temperature hot right eizza oven? Yeah,
(06:27):
one guy figured out that on the self cleaning mode
an oven can get up to like seven hundred degrees
or something. Only when it's on the cleaning mode, the
oven locks in place right the sky to gardening shears
to like destroy the locks on his ovens. Oh my god,
(06:50):
on self cleaning mode.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I sort of love that, Like I love that the
Internet is full of crazy people who have done wacky
things that they tell other people about. Like you can
google anything, right, It's like literally anything that you want
to know.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Just a search away. I really appreciate that. Like, how
do I.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Disengage my oven during cleaning mode to make pizza at
seven hundred degrees? Here's how you do it with kitchen
shears or gardening shears. Yeah, yeah, it's great, you know.
I also I agree with you that good pizza is
not as hard to find as it used to be.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I know that first of all.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
When you know, when we moved to Florida, people were like, Oh,
you're going to miss the pizza that's going to be
I really don't.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I really don't. I have other things that I miss.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I always talk about Asian food is like just really
top of the list, specifically Chinese food, but.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Pizza not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
There's a lot of very very good pizza places, not
just that thin crust you know, fancy pizza, which look
I love that, but a lot of very New York
style slice places, like the kind that I grew up with,
the kind that really like hit my nostalgia button it
and my guess about why that is. And I, you know,
tweeted this in the past, even when we lived in Brooklyn.
(08:12):
I think a lot of the Italian Americans moved out
of New York and they moved, you know, throughout the
country and definitely to Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
South Florida is.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Very Italian and they opened their places here and so
I don't miss pizza. I think that they've gone everywhere
and they're making the pizza and I don't think maybe.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
The New York water doesn't matter. Maybe that's really what
the secret is here.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I mean, the thing that I will say is that
it's hard to get outside of New York is just
like which honestly it's harder to find in New York
itself at this point, but just like when we were
growing up, just a local place that right isn't necessary.
(08:55):
You wouldn't necessarily wait in line two hours for Yes, it's.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Not the destination. It's corner, amazing corner.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Place and do everything just pretty good like an arms.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Up, Yes, big zd D whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
You want that the garlic bread is like, yeah, those
sorts of places are hard to find.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Out, absolutely, and I think they're hard to find in
New York. I mean when I lived in Park Slope, we.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Did not have that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
There was one place, I know, you know, and everybody
talks about that one place, Luigi's, and it's really the
only one, and it's old school, it has been around
a while, but all the other corner places were just.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Okay place smiling pizza or smiling pizza.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
On the Yeah, on Ninth Street, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Used to be kind of you know, so I used
to used to be my f street stop. So then yea,
yeah you go there and again it was yeah, like
I never I've never been there since I've left Park.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, You're not like, let's go back there, but I
like that, you know, the destination pizza places in Brooklyn
are still good. Obviously, Defara's, Gisipena's, La Colli's, all those,
and there's a bunch of new ones. My brother always
sends me fn F et cetera. And you know, I listen,
they're still great.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It's not that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's just that you can get great pizza elsewhere and
you know. That's the That's the thing about moving and
leaving New York, Phil, It turns out life exists somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I tried to tell you, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Well.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
The joke is that for a long long time Phil
and I met New York and then he moved away,
and I was, you know, kind of bitter about it,
and I would always say, like, he has to move back,
and he'd kind of say, you know, no, there's some
good stuff going on outside.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
New York too, And so now I maybe believe him.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Of course, the history is like Carol's always like ten
years way to acknowledge it, because I remember when we
first met about which must have been almost twenty years
ago at this point, living the Park Slope at the time,
maybe the first thing you ever said to me was, oh,
fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Well I still believe that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I still think of Park Slope as fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Uh yes, But but with.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
The acknowledgement that I was living in Like why we
liked park Slope was that it was Manhattane. It was
like Manhattane, but like a little better. It had neighborhood,
you know, more of a neighborhood. You feel people knew
each other but it had all the Manhattan conveniences, It
had the restaurants, and just the way of life was
very city orientated, as opposed to where I grew up,
(11:35):
which I consider real Brooklyn. Deeper in Brooklyn, very ethnic,
very immigrant heavy, not hot popping restaurants, no Blue Ribbon restaurant.
So yeah, you know, I stand by the fake Brooklyn characterization,
even though I did end up there, and even though, yes, Phil,
you were right, it turns out, you know, you were
(11:56):
right about a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I feel like the boundaries of fake Brooklyn, though, have
expanded in the past twenty years.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I just think of it as like the hip parts,
like the not very I can't say not authentic, because
obviously they're authentic.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They're fine.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But just like green Point, where the term fake Brooklyn
came from, was right after college, I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
which when I was growing up it was a very
Polish neighborhood. But then it's close to Manhattan, so it
just became hipper and hipper. I had a cool bar
on my street and now it's completely hipster. Bye if
(12:35):
that's still even you know, hipster is still even a
charm that people use and my brother.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
When he would come visit.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Me, he was like, you know, if I was like
twenty three or twenty two, you know, so he's five
years younger. He'd call his friends and be like, I'm
at my sister's place in fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
We'll back to real Brooklyn later.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
He needed to differentiate, like, I'm still in Brooklyn, but
I'm nowhere near where.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
We live, so that that's where it came from. I
didn't come up with that.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's the that's that's the origin story of
me and Phil Klein.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So you're editor at National Review Online.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I guess we could talk about things other than pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well, it's a difficult question without kind of sounding sort
of on the one hand, hard on yourself if you
say no, on the other hand, sounding arrogant if you
say yes. I would say that I feel fortunate in
the sense that when I was growing up and when
I went to school in New York City, surrounded by liberals,
(13:42):
I was always the sort of weirdo conservative that during
lunchtime was you know, reading conservative stuff like National Review
and listening to conservative talk radio and like racing home
to listen to conservative talk. Great. I could still remember
the whole w ABC line up from when I was
(14:05):
in high school where you had Rush Limbaugh neon three,
then Bob Grant from three to seven, and then overnight
was Jay Diamond. Do I understand subsequently became a leftist.
Oh at the time, he was the Overnight. And so
what I used to do is I used to argue
(14:27):
with all my you know, leftist fellow students, and I
used to write stuff for the school political newspaper, just
kind of right wings to burst of stuff for the school. Yeah.
And it kind of is fun that I get to do.
(14:47):
You know, now I'm talking to you on a show,
and I you know some have I get to be
on radio shows. Yeah, sort of fight. It's like the
old days you used to have to fight busy signals.
You get to be the coller. Yeah, And so I
kind of feel lucky in the sense that and it
(15:11):
could it just in my case it's sort of you know,
getting to work and oversee such a great group of
people and sort of an important publication for the conservative movement.
But personally I feel like whatever it is that you
(15:31):
could do it. It sounds kind of like cliche, but
if you get to do something that you enjoy and
get paid for it, I feel like you can kind
of feel like you've made it. And it might it
might be cooking pizza, maybe it might be whatever it is.
But I kind of feel like that is the barometer,
because it's not the same thing for ever. For some people,
(15:55):
making millions of dollars is making it. I certainly not
in that category.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
But I've had people on the show that make millions
of dollars and said that they don't feel like they
made it. So it's even even in that case, you're
you still might not feel like you've gotten to where
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
What would you be doing if you weren't a writer.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I honestly don't know what i'd be doing. Unfortunately. You know,
I was in a family that we were all writers
of some sort, unfortunately, and so that I don't know.
I just kind of always knew. It's sort of like
in my family, it was like, I don't know, it's
(16:38):
it's sort of like all your family and mechanics or
plumbers or whatever, like that's just what you kind of
feel like you're going to end up doing. I almost
never really thought that i'd be doing something else, but
maybe running a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, oh why not pizza guy. You know, I feel
like you're already doing it get paid.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, so I feel like maybe the restaurant business. But
it is sort of it done at work. It's not
the thing that you do as a side hustle if
you want to do it properly.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
What do you enjoy writing about most?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Like? I have your book on Obama care, do you
are you going to have any other books in the future.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Or what do you think that I'm writing now? But
I always like the idea of some sort of passionate
about politics and the orse race type of stuff. But also,
and I've done extensive in reporting over the course of
my career, but also I like getting into policy and
(17:51):
ideas and what and how you know, they sort of
come together, how policy the can shape politics, and how
politics in shape policy. And I think it's important to
kind of understand both because if just pure electoral politics
(18:14):
to avoid of trying to advance the ball on any
tangible policy aims is sort of not meaning. It's sort
of meaningless. Whereas if you're just sort of focusing on
white papers to the exclusion understand, you know, in a vacuum,
for the exclusion of what the political realities are, that's
(18:36):
kind of difficult. So that's why healthcare was something that
I focused on so extensively because well, when I started
writing about healthcare, it was, you know, it was before
the Obama administration, and I saw that there the progressives
(19:00):
were pushing for whoever was going to be president to
put to put universal health care as their top priority, right,
and they wanted and I saw that there was the
conversation was almost completely dominated by progressive Conservatives are great
(19:21):
on you know, like guns and military matters and all
sorts of other things, but I feel like healthcare was
sort of dismissed as a kind of left wing issue
that that you know, like was is right about. And
so I kind of said that felt like there was
(19:42):
an opening for conservatives to do rigorous policy work and
writing on that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And so of course they all followed you on that, right,
and they did such a good job. Everything worked out
exactly as it should, right.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But like a few years years after I started writing
on it, it became the focal point of our our
politics right about two thousand and nine, let's say, see
so it ended up per you know, I guess you
can say till the repeal fell in twenty seventy. So
(20:18):
for god to eight years, there was this sort of
if you were covering policy, you were covering politics. If
you were covering politics, you have to govern policy. I
think they changed a bit with the Trump era, And
obviously with Trump it becomes much more of a debate
about what you think about Trump and what you said
(20:42):
or did on day.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, what would you say is our largest cultural or
societal issue?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
So I thought of that, And there are obviously like
a ton of issues that you could point out, but
I just I was thinking, said, you've been reading a
lot about stuff about the important families and raising families
and fertility and how people are getting married later and
(21:13):
not having a lunch kids. Of course, Tim Carney, who
you had on recently, even though his book isn't necessarily
explicitly a call for people to have more kids, he does.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
He lives the lifestyle that encourages that, and he sort.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Of writes about how or you know, country has become
family unfriendly in many ways just because of cultural right
and societal expectations that we placed upon ourselves. But I
was thinking that a lot of the focus and this
isn't to take anything away from Tim or Brad Wilcox
(21:51):
or any of the excellent writers on the stuff yet,
but I think a lot of the focus and conservatives
is on sort of people are getting married later, they're
not having much kids, trying to convince people to what
you know, the virtues of family formation. But it strikes
(22:12):
me that one problem which is upstream from that is
that I think that it's very difficult for a lot
of people to meet each other. And I think that
there are a lot of people who would happily get married.
I would love that kids, But yeah, because the way
(22:33):
it's not easy to meet someone, not everyone's lucky enough
to meet someone. And so to me, I kind of
feel like if you look at the the graphs and
all these surveys about like people aren't interested in having kids,
or you know, like people aren't interested in getting married,
(22:53):
I feel like society can kind of absorb a bunch
of thinks and so forth we could figure out a
better way for people who are interested in getting married
to get the Now you think that in theory. That's
something the Internet should make better because I think of
like right, like Uber right, like when we were growing up,
(23:16):
the annoyance of attack.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yes, they've solved the problem. Why can't they solve this one?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
It was totally random, right, Like you would be waiting
on a corner, waiting hoping that an.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Open hope it works out.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, And there were other cab drivers who were probably
somewhere else in the city, yes, like looking for a fair. Hey,
there's no one here who wants a fair. I'm just
going to wander around, like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well you think the I mean literally, the uber for
dating is online dating apps. That's what they are, right,
But they're not working, and there's something about them that
makes people like I guess you know. The thing is
like when you take an uber, you're going to take
another Uber ride. But if you go on a dating app,
(24:04):
it sort of dissuades you from finding the person because
then you're not going to be on the dating app anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And there's definitely something to that.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
But you know, there has to be a better way, right, I.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Just there has to be a better way. Maybe it
is going.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Back to basics, back to waiting on the corner for
your car, you know, in a dating sense, I talk
about luck a lot on here. I think married people
sometimes convince themselves that they are skillful in finding their person,
and I feel like a lot of it is luck
and timing and all of that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
But there has to be some.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Way for people to meet each other. There has to
be a disruption of the system, and I do we
need a startup for that, because I don't know fel
like that would do well.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Talking to single friends about how the dating app situation is,
it seems like a disaster. And from what the studies
I've seen have said that at this point, a majority
of people meet each other online. So if that's the
majority of how people are meeting, and it's sort of
(25:12):
it's basically something that algorithmically is sort of geared toward
not really serious, substantial people trying to meet each other.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Right, I don't really know how, but even the serious
people are not meeting each other. Something about it just
didn't work out the way it was supposed to and
where other problems were solved by technology, Like you said,
I think that that is one that has been exacerbated.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And I don't know, I don't know what to tell
my own kids. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I mean, they're still young, but I imagine that when there
is time for dating age, I'm going to maybe dissuade
them from using the apps because I just don't think
that they work the way that they're supposed to. And
you know, so living a good life, all of that,
I think is tied into having somebody. And I know
that that's you know, it's not a controversial opinion in
(26:07):
our world, but and here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can live a better life
and it can be, you know, eat more pizza and
date offline.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Well, I mean, I think to tie this into pizza,
I would say. My view is you should always just
try new things so the stuff doesn't get boring. Like
I was. The pizza stuff started because it was back
during a time when it was really hard to get
good pizza out of pic So I felt like I
had to take matters in my own haarents and kind
(26:41):
of learn how to make pizza and bagels the way
I like them. But I've done that. I've learned how
to smoke meat in recent years, so that's been a
big vocation I realized in part because of a lot
of the pandemic. You're a bread baking. I'd like gotten
(27:02):
very out of shape. So I took up swimming because
I hate you know, I hate running. I hate exercise.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, it's the worst.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
People that that exercise all the time, just doing machinery.
But like swimming is amazing. It's just because it's sort
of like a full body workout and it's a cardio.
And also it's the one time where even though you
could get theoretically waterproof your plug.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
No no, no, you're you're just connected. That's the best.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And it's just like the one time where if if
some major thing happened, somebody tweeted something really stupid, or
you know, bomb went off somewhere, like I wouldn't know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, you're going to find out about it later. Yeah,
that's the way it's supposed to go. I think that
that's a normal way to live.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yes, So I would just say if there's something that
you're thinking of doing, I don't know, if it's learning
foreign language, taking piano.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Or what.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I find that it is a good constantly keep things
interesting by just trying new stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Thank you, Phil Klein, thanks for coming on read him
at National Review. Thanks so much for joining us on
the Carol Marco which show.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
This show is about life, and I love focusing on
how to improve my life and yours. I like to
get tips from people because I think that's the best
way to kind of move forward. I think people need
to hear certain advice in order for it to resonate.
(00:29):
I got this great email from a listener that I
wanted to share Craig Wrights quote, you always ask for
tips on how to live a better life, and I
thought i'd throw mine out there since whenever I mention
it at work, people seem to really like it. In
our house, Monday night is cocktail hour for dinner night,
nothing crazy, a cheap bottle of wine, cheese and crackers, olives,
(00:52):
splurge for the good ones, sliced cucumber and tisicky and
usually one hot item, pigs in a blanket, boneless buffalo
wings and it's just fantastic. The ritual of it is nice.
Having it on a Monday is nice. You never have
to figure out what's for dinner that night, and most
of the stuff is easy to supply to keep on
hand for a couple of weeks in a row, so
(01:12):
you don't have to worry about food shopping. It's the
perfect way to start the week. I really think doing
it on a Monday is a big part of why
we enjoy it so much. End quote. I really enjoyed
reading that. I like it so much for the simplicity
of it. When we look to make positive changes in
our lives, and I know I do this too, I
feel like we try to do too much. So Okay,
(01:35):
how do we make Monday dinners easier and more enjoyable.
You can say, Okay, I'm going to spend the weekend
meal prepping for the whole.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Week, and then maybe you do it. Maybe you do spend.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Your whole Sunday getting stuff ready, and then maybe you
do it again the next week. And that's great if
that works.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
For you, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
But if you fail to do that, then you feel
all bad for yourself, and I don't think that it
ends up benefiting you at all. I think making big
changes starts with little changes, gradual improvements is what I'm
all about. I'm very into making small, incremental changes. That's
why I just love this. I love this, you know,
(02:14):
Monday cocktail hour thing. It's just such a good, happy, idea.
I'd love to hear more ideas like.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This or otherwise.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
If you have small things you're doing to change your
life for the better, email me Carol Maarkowitz Show at
gmail dot com or tweet at me on X or
whatever you kids are doing these days. Coming up next
and interview with Phil Klein. Join us after the break.
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
(02:44):
guest today is Phil Klein, editor of National Review Online.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Hi Phil, Hey, good to be here, are you?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Nice to have you on.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You know, when I was thinking about this conversation, and
I think a lot of times I don't know what
I'm going to talk to people about out, but I
feel like with you, I know I'm going to start
with pizza, which is maybe not what people are expecting,
but it's important.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Both very into pizza.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
We have a shared affinity for it, and we travel
places to go eat it. But you take it a
step further and you make it at home. And do
you still ship in water from New York?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Or is that I've kind of gotten lazy just because
logistically it's kind of hard to always I used to
keep a stash up Brooklyn water at home for.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Just that's normal, yeah, just for making.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Some Lately, when I make pizza, I tend to use
just local water and not go through the Brooklyn water.
When I visit New York, there's always just more stuff
to carry, yeah, sort of you know, buying a gallon
of poland spring, dumping it out and then filling it
(04:06):
in the tap of a hotel just right.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
You know, it seems crazy? So did the local water
work as well?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I've had pretty good results I've been, I tend to lately,
I've been making more Brooklyn Square pizza as opposed to
more Neapolitan pies. I find that I find that the
pizza has gotten better generally, and that in most decent
(04:36):
sized cities you could find serviceable sort of like Neapolitan
fancy pizza, right, but it's harder to find like what
we'd call growing up Sicilian pizza or for those who
have been to LMB Stomony gardens, the classic where you
(04:57):
put the cheese on first and so it sort of
merges though as it cooks and the sauce is not.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Is that what you make at home, like the upside
down squares.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Like that I do I have? Actually it was based.
I made a few modifications, but I mainly use the
recipe that you would sent me like ten years too.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Okay, I'm going I need you to send that back
now now that I cook.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's really if you follow it, it's
actually quite a good recipe and it's easier you don't
especially when you're having people over. Like one of the
issues what I'd have with making pizza at home and
when i'd have people over is that because I don't
(05:44):
have an actual pizza oven, it's longer to cook than
an actual place. And so yeah, people over, and then
you're like for an hour and a half, like forming
all the pizzas and you know, molding them right.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Some people, I mean now, of course they have a
number of home pizza ovens that you get all but
when I was starting out, that wasn't an option. And
the right go on the Internet and some of the
pizza freak forums and everyone would always be obsessing of
like how you could get the temperature hot right eizza oven? Yeah,
(06:27):
one guy figured out that on the self cleaning mode
an oven can get up to like seven hundred degrees
or something. Only when it's on the cleaning mode, the
oven locks in place right the sky to gardening shears
to like destroy the locks on his ovens. Oh my god,
(06:50):
on self cleaning mode.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I sort of love that, Like I love that the
Internet is full of crazy people who have done wacky
things that they tell other people about. Like you can
google anything, right, It's like literally anything that you want
to know.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Just a search away. I really appreciate that. Like, how
do I.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Disengage my oven during cleaning mode to make pizza at
seven hundred degrees? Here's how you do it with kitchen
shears or gardening shears. Yeah, yeah, it's great, you know.
I also I agree with you that good pizza is
not as hard to find as it used to be.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I know that first of all.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
When you know, when we moved to Florida, people were like, Oh,
you're going to miss the pizza that's going to be
I really don't.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I really don't. I have other things that I miss.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I always talk about Asian food is like just really
top of the list, specifically Chinese food, but.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Pizza not at all.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
There's a lot of very very good pizza places, not
just that thin crust you know, fancy pizza, which look
I love that, but a lot of very New York
style slice places, like the kind that I grew up with,
the kind that really like hit my nostalgia button it
and my guess about why that is. And I, you know,
tweeted this in the past, even when we lived in Brooklyn.
(08:12):
I think a lot of the Italian Americans moved out
of New York and they moved, you know, throughout the
country and definitely to Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
South Florida is.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Very Italian and they opened their places here and so
I don't miss pizza. I think that they've gone everywhere
and they're making the pizza and I don't think maybe.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
The New York water doesn't matter. Maybe that's really what
the secret is here.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I mean, the thing that I will say is that
it's hard to get outside of New York is just
like which honestly it's harder to find in New York
itself at this point, but just like when we were
growing up, just a local place that right isn't necessary.
(08:55):
You wouldn't necessarily wait in line two hours for Yes, it's.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Not the destination. It's corner, amazing corner.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Place and do everything just pretty good like an arms.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Up, Yes, big zd D whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
You want that the garlic bread is like, yeah, those
sorts of places are hard to find.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Out, absolutely, and I think they're hard to find in
New York. I mean when I lived in Park Slope, we.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Did not have that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
There was one place, I know, you know, and everybody
talks about that one place, Luigi's, and it's really the
only one, and it's old school, it has been around
a while, but all the other corner places were just.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Okay place smiling pizza or smiling pizza.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
On the Yeah, on Ninth Street, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Used to be kind of you know, so I used
to used to be my f street stop. So then yea,
yeah you go there and again it was yeah, like
I never I've never been there since I've left Park.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Right, You're not like, let's go back there, but I
like that, you know, the destination pizza places in Brooklyn
are still good. Obviously, Defara's, Gisipena's, La Colli's, all those,
and there's a bunch of new ones. My brother always
sends me fn F et cetera. And you know, I listen,
they're still great.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It's not that.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's just that you can get great pizza elsewhere and
you know. That's the That's the thing about moving and
leaving New York, Phil, It turns out life exists somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I tried to tell you, I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Well.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
The joke is that for a long long time Phil
and I met New York and then he moved away,
and I was, you know, kind of bitter about it,
and I would always say, like, he has to move back,
and he'd kind of say, you know, no, there's some
good stuff going on outside.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
New York too, And so now I maybe believe him.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Of course, the history is like Carol's always like ten
years way to acknowledge it, because I remember when we
first met about which must have been almost twenty years
ago at this point, living the Park Slope at the time,
maybe the first thing you ever said to me was, oh,
fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Well I still believe that.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I still think of Park Slope as fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Uh yes, But but with.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
The acknowledgement that I was living in Like why we
liked park Slope was that it was Manhattane. It was
like Manhattane, but like a little better. It had neighborhood,
you know, more of a neighborhood. You feel people knew
each other but it had all the Manhattan conveniences, It
had the restaurants, and just the way of life was
very city orientated, as opposed to where I grew up,
(11:35):
which I consider real Brooklyn. Deeper in Brooklyn, very ethnic,
very immigrant heavy, not hot popping restaurants, no Blue Ribbon restaurant.
So yeah, you know, I stand by the fake Brooklyn characterization,
even though I did end up there, and even though, yes, Phil,
you were right, it turns out, you know, you were
(11:56):
right about a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I feel like the boundaries of fake Brooklyn, though, have
expanded in the past twenty years.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I just think of it as like the hip parts,
like the not very I can't say not authentic, because
obviously they're authentic.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They're fine.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But just like green Point, where the term fake Brooklyn
came from, was right after college, I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,
which when I was growing up it was a very
Polish neighborhood. But then it's close to Manhattan, so it
just became hipper and hipper. I had a cool bar
on my street and now it's completely hipster. Bye if
(12:35):
that's still even you know, hipster is still even a
charm that people use and my brother.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
When he would come visit.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Me, he was like, you know, if I was like
twenty three or twenty two, you know, so he's five
years younger. He'd call his friends and be like, I'm
at my sister's place in fake Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
We'll back to real Brooklyn later.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
He needed to differentiate, like, I'm still in Brooklyn, but
I'm nowhere near where.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
We live, so that that's where it came from. I
didn't come up with that.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, yeah, that's the that's that's the origin story of
me and Phil Klein.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
So you're editor at National Review Online.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I guess we could talk about things other than pizza.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Well, it's a difficult question without kind of sounding sort
of on the one hand, hard on yourself if you
say no, on the other hand, sounding arrogant if you
say yes. I would say that I feel fortunate in
the sense that when I was growing up and when
I went to school in New York City, surrounded by liberals,
(13:42):
I was always the sort of weirdo conservative that during
lunchtime was you know, reading conservative stuff like National Review
and listening to conservative talk radio and like racing home
to listen to conservative talk. Great. I could still remember
the whole w ABC line up from when I was
(14:05):
in high school where you had Rush Limbaugh neon three,
then Bob Grant from three to seven, and then overnight
was Jay Diamond. Do I understand subsequently became a leftist.
Oh at the time, he was the Overnight. And so
what I used to do is I used to argue
(14:27):
with all my you know, leftist fellow students, and I
used to write stuff for the school political newspaper, just
kind of right wings to burst of stuff for the school. Yeah.
And it kind of is fun that I get to do.
(14:47):
You know, now I'm talking to you on a show,
and I you know some have I get to be
on radio shows. Yeah, sort of fight. It's like the
old days you used to have to fight busy signals.
You get to be the coller. Yeah, And so I
kind of feel lucky in the sense that and it
(15:11):
could it just in my case it's sort of you know,
getting to work and oversee such a great group of
people and sort of an important publication for the conservative movement.
But personally I feel like whatever it is that you
(15:31):
could do it. It sounds kind of like cliche, but
if you get to do something that you enjoy and
get paid for it, I feel like you can kind
of feel like you've made it. And it might it
might be cooking pizza, maybe it might be whatever it is.
But I kind of feel like that is the barometer,
because it's not the same thing for ever. For some people,
(15:55):
making millions of dollars is making it. I certainly not
in that category.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
But I've had people on the show that make millions
of dollars and said that they don't feel like they
made it. So it's even even in that case, you're
you still might not feel like you've gotten to where
you want to go.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
What would you be doing if you weren't a writer.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I honestly don't know what i'd be doing. Unfortunately. You know,
I was in a family that we were all writers
of some sort, unfortunately, and so that I don't know.
I just kind of always knew. It's sort of like
in my family, it was like, I don't know, it's
(16:38):
it's sort of like all your family and mechanics or
plumbers or whatever, like that's just what you kind of
feel like you're going to end up doing. I almost
never really thought that i'd be doing something else, but
maybe running a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, oh why not pizza guy. You know, I feel
like you're already doing it get paid.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, so I feel like maybe the restaurant business. But
it is sort of it done at work. It's not
the thing that you do as a side hustle if
you want to do it properly.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
What do you enjoy writing about most?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Like? I have your book on Obama care, do you
are you going to have any other books in the future.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Or what do you think that I'm writing now? But
I always like the idea of some sort of passionate
about politics and the orse race type of stuff. But also,
and I've done extensive in reporting over the course of
my career, but also I like getting into policy and
(17:51):
ideas and what and how you know, they sort of
come together, how policy the can shape politics, and how
politics in shape policy. And I think it's important to
kind of understand both because if just pure electoral politics
(18:14):
to avoid of trying to advance the ball on any
tangible policy aims is sort of not meaning. It's sort
of meaningless. Whereas if you're just sort of focusing on
white papers to the exclusion understand, you know, in a vacuum,
for the exclusion of what the political realities are, that's
(18:36):
kind of difficult. So that's why healthcare was something that
I focused on so extensively because well, when I started
writing about healthcare, it was, you know, it was before
the Obama administration, and I saw that there the progressives
(19:00):
were pushing for whoever was going to be president to
put to put universal health care as their top priority, right,
and they wanted and I saw that there was the
conversation was almost completely dominated by progressive Conservatives are great
(19:21):
on you know, like guns and military matters and all
sorts of other things, but I feel like healthcare was
sort of dismissed as a kind of left wing issue
that that you know, like was is right about. And
so I kind of said that felt like there was
(19:42):
an opening for conservatives to do rigorous policy work and
writing on that.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And so of course they all followed you on that, right,
and they did such a good job. Everything worked out
exactly as it should, right.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But like a few years years after I started writing
on it, it became the focal point of our our
politics right about two thousand and nine, let's say, see
so it ended up per you know, I guess you
can say till the repeal fell in twenty seventy. So
(20:18):
for god to eight years, there was this sort of
if you were covering policy, you were covering politics. If
you were covering politics, you have to govern policy. I
think they changed a bit with the Trump era, And
obviously with Trump it becomes much more of a debate
about what you think about Trump and what you said
(20:42):
or did on day.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, what would you say is our largest cultural or
societal issue?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
So I thought of that, And there are obviously like
a ton of issues that you could point out, but
I just I was thinking, said, you've been reading a
lot about stuff about the important families and raising families
and fertility and how people are getting married later and
(21:13):
not having a lunch kids. Of course, Tim Carney, who
you had on recently, even though his book isn't necessarily
explicitly a call for people to have more kids, he does.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
He lives the lifestyle that encourages that, and he sort.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Of writes about how or you know, country has become
family unfriendly in many ways just because of cultural right
and societal expectations that we placed upon ourselves. But I
was thinking that a lot of the focus and this
isn't to take anything away from Tim or Brad Wilcox
(21:51):
or any of the excellent writers on the stuff yet,
but I think a lot of the focus and conservatives
is on sort of people are getting married later, they're
not having much kids, trying to convince people to what
you know, the virtues of family formation. But it strikes
(22:12):
me that one problem which is upstream from that is
that I think that it's very difficult for a lot
of people to meet each other. And I think that
there are a lot of people who would happily get married.
I would love that kids, But yeah, because the way
(22:33):
it's not easy to meet someone, not everyone's lucky enough
to meet someone. And so to me, I kind of
feel like if you look at the the graphs and
all these surveys about like people aren't interested in having kids,
or you know, like people aren't interested in getting married,
(22:53):
I feel like society can kind of absorb a bunch
of thinks and so forth we could figure out a
better way for people who are interested in getting married
to get the Now you think that in theory. That's
something the Internet should make better because I think of
like right, like Uber right, like when we were growing up,
(23:16):
the annoyance of attack.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yes, they've solved the problem. Why can't they solve this one?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
It was totally random, right, Like you would be waiting
on a corner, waiting hoping that an.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Open hope it works out.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, And there were other cab drivers who were probably
somewhere else in the city, yes, like looking for a fair. Hey,
there's no one here who wants a fair. I'm just
going to wander around, like, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well you think the I mean literally, the uber for
dating is online dating apps. That's what they are, right,
But they're not working, and there's something about them that
makes people like I guess you know. The thing is
like when you take an uber, you're going to take
another Uber ride. But if you go on a dating app,
(24:04):
it sort of dissuades you from finding the person because
then you're not going to be on the dating app anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And there's definitely something to that.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
But you know, there has to be a better way, right, I.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Just there has to be a better way. Maybe it
is going.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Back to basics, back to waiting on the corner for
your car, you know, in a dating sense, I talk
about luck a lot on here. I think married people
sometimes convince themselves that they are skillful in finding their person,
and I feel like a lot of it is luck
and timing and all of that.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
But there has to be some.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Way for people to meet each other. There has to
be a disruption of the system, and I do we
need a startup for that, because I don't know fel
like that would do well.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Talking to single friends about how the dating app situation is,
it seems like a disaster. And from what the studies
I've seen have said that at this point, a majority
of people meet each other online. So if that's the
majority of how people are meeting, and it's sort of
(25:12):
it's basically something that algorithmically is sort of geared toward
not really serious, substantial people trying to meet each other.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Right, I don't really know how, but even the serious
people are not meeting each other. Something about it just
didn't work out the way it was supposed to and
where other problems were solved by technology, Like you said,
I think that that is one that has been exacerbated.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
And I don't know, I don't know what to tell
my own kids. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I mean, they're still young, but I imagine that when there
is time for dating age, I'm going to maybe dissuade
them from using the apps because I just don't think
that they work the way that they're supposed to. And
you know, so living a good life, all of that,
I think is tied into having somebody. And I know
that that's you know, it's not a controversial opinion in
(26:07):
our world, but and here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can live a better life
and it can be, you know, eat more pizza and
date offline.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Well, I mean, I think to tie this into pizza,
I would say. My view is you should always just
try new things so the stuff doesn't get boring. Like
I was. The pizza stuff started because it was back
during a time when it was really hard to get
good pizza out of pic So I felt like I
had to take matters in my own haarents and kind
(26:41):
of learn how to make pizza and bagels the way
I like them. But I've done that. I've learned how
to smoke meat in recent years, so that's been a
big vocation I realized in part because of a lot
of the pandemic. You're a bread baking. I'd like gotten
(27:02):
very out of shape. So I took up swimming because
I hate you know, I hate running. I hate exercise.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, it's the worst.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
People that that exercise all the time, just doing machinery.
But like swimming is amazing. It's just because it's sort
of like a full body workout and it's a cardio.
And also it's the one time where even though you
could get theoretically waterproof your plug.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
No no, no, you're you're just connected. That's the best.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And it's just like the one time where if if
some major thing happened, somebody tweeted something really stupid, or
you know, bomb went off somewhere, like I wouldn't know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, you're going to find out about it later. Yeah,
that's the way it's supposed to go. I think that
that's a normal way to live.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yes, So I would just say if there's something that
you're thinking of doing, I don't know, if it's learning
foreign language, taking piano.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Or what.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
I find that it is a good constantly keep things
interesting by just trying new stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Thank you, Phil Klein, thanks for coming on read him
at National Review. Thanks so much for joining us on
the Carol Marco which show.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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