February 5, 2024 • 32 mins
In this podcast, Karol welcomes John Carney to discuss his move to Connecticut and the challenges of making friends in adulthood. They discuss the differences in social interactions between New York and Connecticut, as well as the cultural divisions in society. John shares his transition from being a lawyer to a writer and his predictions on inflation and economic growth. They also touch on the evolution of blogging and journalism. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday. Email Karol at KarolMarkowiczShow@gmail.com & follow Karol on X @Karol.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
There's this I don't know do we call it a meme.
My kids make fun of me when I call something
a meme when it's not. There's this thing going around
that Generation Z, that is the generation that is currently
in their early late teens to late twenties right now,
(00:28):
is quote aging like milk to translate for the olds
out there. That means they are looking older far faster
than previous generations had. And there have been some funny
answers as to why this is. Gen Z themselves say, oh,
it's because they are so much more stressed than any
other generations, to which I say, haha, stup it. Every
(00:51):
time these younger generations list everything they've been through, Like
when millennials are like, we live through nine to eleven
and wars and recession all of it, I'm like, yeah,
gen X was there too, except we didn't have the
Internet and all these things that you guys have to
make your lives easier. Millennials are having a good time
with this whole aging like milk thing, and they're saying
(01:12):
that they look better than Gen Z because they ate
a lot of preservatives and gen Z was raised on
all organic everything. I mean, maybe, you know, wouldn't hurt
gen Z to have a twinkie and see what happens.
At the same time that this whole conversation is happening online,
Kylie Jenner was photographed in Paris with, oh my god,
(01:35):
a shadow on her face, and then all of these
dermatologists online on Instagram and I assume on TikTok or whatever,
but you know, I'm too old for that app wade
in to say that it's possible that the shadow on
her face was caused by filler that she had had
that had migrated to different parts of her face. And look,
(01:55):
you know, maybe it is, maybe that's what it was,
or maybe she's and her face wasn't as flawless as usual.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Kylie actually showed.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Up at another event the next night looking perfect, and
none of the online you know, experts weighed back in
to say what happened to their speculations from the day before.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But my take overall here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And why I mentioned Kylie, is that the reason gen
Z is aging like milk is because they have no
real perception of what reality is. Their entire existence has
been looking at very overfiltered photos, and they don't know
what aging actually looks like. They've seen everything through this
(02:36):
smooth view where you can edit out any wrinkle or blemish.
So Kylie was having, you know, a bad face day,
and the shock of seeing her face look even slightly
imperfect was a multi day news story. I mean, that's crazy.
You know. There are days I wake up and I
look significantly worse than I looked the day before, and
(02:58):
other days, you know, I look better. That's just how
life goes. But when you're in the public eye, you
have all these people commenting on the tiniest, tiniest little imperfection.
I think that's what these gen zers are doing wrong.
They think that their face is supposed to be completely
perfect at all times. I'm into pictures, you know, I've
(03:19):
talked about pictures on here before. I think taking natural
pictures is important. I think taking pictures in general is important.
I enjoy photography. I was always the person with a
camera in my bag in the days before cell phone cameras,
So I do spend a lot of time thinking about
the way we are portrayed in pictures, how we're perceived,
(03:39):
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
On what that says to young people.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I don't use filters at all ever, but I definitely
consider it on the days when I don't feel like
I'm looking my best and when I see everyone else
look so good on their social media, and I know
I can easily click something and fix any imperfection and
just look better. But I do think it messes up
our perception of ourselves and each other. To do that,
(04:05):
gen Z needs to have a few weeks of looking
at unfiltered photos from bygone eras like maybe the nineties
and the eighties to see that they're aging just fine.
It's their phones and these apps that are the problem,
and they're making them think that they're looking like old milk.
I'm still collecting stories for Thursday's episode on how single
(04:28):
people can meet someone. Give me your best piece of
advice for single people who want to meet someone to
date seriously and marry. Write to us at Carol Markowitz
Show at gmail dot com or tweet at me at
ka rol on x dot com. I'll read some of
the responses on the show. So tune in coming up
next and interview with John Carney.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Join us after the.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Break, Hey, and welcome back to The Carol Markowitz Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is John Carr, Finance and
economics editor at Breitbart News. He's the author of the
Breitbart Business Digest, the best daily guide on how national
and global economics affect you. Larry Kudlow of Fox Business
(05:12):
calls it a must read and says it now has
a cult following. You can sign up for it at
Breitbart dot com slash newsletters.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Hi John, Hi Carol, It's good to see you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Really good to see you too. It's been a while.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It has been since you departed for the Southern Climbs.
It looks like it's done well for you though.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
See. I feel like I knew you were going to
blame me, but actually you left first.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Right when did you move?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
I moved November twenty twenty, so.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Right, I mean you were out like a full two
years before me, And somehow it's my fall. We don't
hang out.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And I fled to New York City even before that
because they shut everything down. So why, you know, who
wants to live in a city where everything is shut down?
And my kids couldn't even go to school. So hey,
you know, we packed ourselves in a car and drove
across America.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
We lived in this same neighborhood in Park Slope, and I,
you know, I always saw you as a very like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Man about town. You are out a lot in New York.
You remember at four Square.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I was just telling my daughter about four Square for
the kids out there. It was an app where we
used to check in wherever we were and John Carney's
four Square was like just super active and all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
So about it was that it worked, you know, like
you could get in somewhere and friends would just show up,
and it was it was amazing for that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, I have to say my husband, that was like
his just nightmare, the fact that like I would check
in somewhere and then somebody would stop in and he'd
be like, no, So I had to start checking in
like when we were leaving a place, because he didn't
like people dropping in.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
At my wife's request, I made a similar concession in
that if we were you know, out just the two
of us together, I wouldn't check in because people would
just you know, drop by all the time. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
She'd be like, I mean she personally would say things
like I can't believe this many people would ever want
to see you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, I would say like you know the term like popular.
You know, it's usually reserved for school and like high
school or whatever. But John Carney was popular in New York.
And so you live in Connecticut. Now, are you still
cool or what's going on you?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Now? I'm starting to get some cool vibes up here.
People are starting to figure out it's you know, it's
different you You can't just check into your local place.
I mean one of the big differences is you have
to make and this is you know, won't be news
to women, but for men, having to make an appointment
to get a haircut isn't the deal. I used to
(07:43):
just walk down the street, go into the local Italian
barber shop with the you know, the spinning pole, and
you know, sit down, wait a couple of minutes, and
then they call you up and you get your haircut. Yeah,
you can't really walk into places out here in the country.
You have to call ahead, make sure you know, I
now have a barber guy. I used to just do
as like any of the rooms we were there, they
(08:05):
cut my hair. Now I have to be like, is
Kyle going to be there? Can I have an appointment?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Is that a sign of like getting older or is
that suburbs or is that you now need Kyle to
cut your hair like it's like it has to be Kyle.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, it's definitely a sign of of where I live.
I don't even live in the suburbs so much. I
live on two acres of land. It's more like my
neighbors have sheep. I live in the country. I live
in their farms around me. Uh, you know, I live
in a suburban house. I'm not a farmer. I had
(08:41):
some chickens. A fox got to them. I'm not you know,
I'm not try enough yet to keep your chickens alive
from the box.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Sorry chickens.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, my daughter had named them, so it was kind
of tragic when they when they got to although she
named her favorite one Nugget, which I thought was a
pretty dark name for chick You know that's what you're
going to become someday, I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But still really actually, you know, sooner rather than later
the fox gets.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
To you nuggets for the foxes exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So have you enjoyed the move? Have you made friends?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I have one of the things, I had a lot
of grown up friends when I move out of the
city here. I've made a lot of friends through my
children and through my church like it's been, which is
also really through the kids. Like the people that my
kids know, I get to know their parents, and you know,
(09:37):
you sort of do this like pushing thing where if
you really like one group of you know, one set
of parents, you're like, hey, why don't you hang out
with her more?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And then it never works, right, It's.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Been okay, yeah, no, it's nice and there's a lot
of hiking around here, and I, you know, now like
to know a couple of the dads enough that I can,
you know, call up and be like, Hey, I'm going
out to Huntington State Park. You want to come with?
You come with me? And they do, and you know,
we take our dogs, we go on hikes and stuff.
So that's the next step. Right At first you need
(10:15):
the kids to be the excuse for what you're and
then you graduate to the like, no, it's okay, we
could you know, we could hang out, don't We don't
deep the kids, right, that's.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
A big step, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Making friends in adulthood is a topic we cover a
lot on the show because so many people have moved
in the last few.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Years and it's tough.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
But I would say, out of all of my guests,
you might be doing the best job, because a lot
of the answers I get to that question are still like, well,
I knew people already from Twitter, and they happen to
live near me, so it's going fine.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You know, it's not like yours.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Seems to be more organic, and even for me, we
haven't met that many. We haven't made that many friends
like the organic, you know, situational way. A few, we
definitely have a few. We have a couple we go
out with sometimes, but the majority of our friends are
either like from the Internet that I knew before, or
like friends of ours from New York who also I mean,
(11:08):
obviously Florida was a has been a popular choice in
the last few years, so like friends who move down
to it.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Because I moved to a place where I didn't know
anybody right there was you know, there was nobody here.
There was a you know, one or two people who
I'm friends with on Twitter who live up here, but
I don't want to out them, so like, you know,
I won't give away where they live, but very few.
So in a sense, like out of as you said,
(11:37):
I'm a pretty social person and so out of necessity,
I've had to you know, be outgoing. But but it
is a little bit you said, like high school, it
does feel a little bit like you're starting over again.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, completely starting over.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, people make friends with them, and especially I think
those of us who have kind of isolating jobs. So
a lot of times when people move to new places,
you know, they have a new work you know, new workplace,
and they go out with their coworkers. I work from
home and so exactly don't have that natural group of
like coworkers to like invite out. You have to be
(12:16):
very intentional if you're going to meet people in social life.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And it's also tough, I think, you know, like me,
you grew up in New York and right, and I
grew up in Manhattan. Yeah, so I grew up in Brooklyn.
We you know, have a similar trajectory. And you know,
I used to run into people all the time in
New York, even though it's this giant city. It was
just like because you're from there, you're constantly running into
people like on the subway or on the street or
(12:41):
at a restaurant or whatever. And so I've been in
Florida two years and it only recently have I started
running into people and I you know, and both of
them were like not super close to my house.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It was like, oh, I'm in Florida.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And I ran into, you know, a friend of mine
on the right line, and then I ran into another
friend of mine at a restaurant like forty minutes from
my house.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So it's been that those are like really cool moments
for me.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Those were like, oh, yes, this is like I'm starting
to like live there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's like starting to real.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
My wife makes fun of me because we'll go into
like a crowded shopping mall or something and I'll start
to look around. I was like, all these people, there
must be somebody I know, and she's like, there's no
one you know here. But you know, you do get
used to that in New York City, as you said,
it's a city of eight million people, but you still
run into front time, right time, and that because once
you move out. I think that's a very New York thing.
(13:33):
I think most other places and even other big cities,
it's very rare that you have that kind of uh
you know, just you know, very common but random uh
encounters with people all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, probably because in other places you drive more, whereas
in New York you're walking around or you're on the subway,
and which is just.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
More you're interacting with more people all over the time.
You're not interested car you know, you don't people. You know,
when you're driving around, people you know could drive past
you and you wouldn't necessarily even know it's them.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yes, right.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I would also say, like near me in South Florida,
like I go to the same restaurants that like the.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Tourists go to.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Where it's in New York.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
That line is really stark, like you do not go
to the same restaurants so the tourists go to, like
the tourists go somewhere else entirely.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
In fact, we stop going to places once once other
people start throwing up. We're like, oh yeah, we can't
go there. It's too popular now.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So do you have a bar, because you had a
bar in New York City.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, it was Tom and Jerry's, right, it's the bar,
and so you don't have that not yet.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You know, it's sort of under development. It took a
while to find, you know. Tom and Jerry's was like
my third bar, you know, because they close. You know,
New York City, you know, you have to get used
to constant change. They open and close, so I'm still
you know, looking around find myavorite places. One thing is, uh,
(15:03):
I do do a lot of sort of backyard socializing,
which is not something you can do in New York City.
You know, I can invite people over to my house.
They don't even have to come into my house necessarily,
you know. They like during the you know, summertime, it's
just you know, we can all hang out. I can
cook food, have a I have a one of those
(15:24):
like fire pits. I can fire you know. So there
there's a lot more of that. One of the reasons
in New York City people are in restaurants and bars.
And this is something like I discovered that people from
around the country don't know. But those bars and restaurants
are our living rooms.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
We have nowhere else to be, don't We.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Can't meet up with you know, ten of our friends
in our house. We don't have a backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, so we've hung out on your stoop in Park Slope.
I brought my kids over to your kids on the.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Store, you know, which somebody had a roof. We could
go up there sometimes, but very but you know, it's
usually when you hang out with people, it's going to
be in a you know, in an establishment rather than
somebody's house in New York City. And so that's been
like an adjustment, you know, to realize, like, oh, if
I want to hang out with people, I should invite
(16:19):
them over. Yeah, she's like not a New York thing
to do, right.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That is definitely a giant adjustment. So you're a writer,
but you're also you're you were a lawyer and you
were working I believe one of the top firms in
true right am I Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, So but you left it all to go be
in media. Why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Good question? It was more fun. I mean, you know,
I thought I would go back to being a lawyer.
I left being a lawyer almost twenty years ago, so
I'm not going back, I guess. But I did think
at the time. I was feeling a little burnt out.
It's a lot of work. I was a corporate lawyer
doing leverage finance transactions and it and I needed a break.
(17:05):
And I it was two thousand and six. There was
a lot of ridiculous going in this going on on
Wall Street. My clients were kind of ridiculous. I thought
it would be really fun to write, and I got
to help start a website called deal Breaker. I then
got to do Business Insider, I got to do CNBC
(17:27):
and then Wall Street Journal, so like things just kept
working out. So I never, you know, like the finance.
First of all, the financial crisis happened, right, So yeah,
if I were thought like, oh, I'll do you know,
I'll write for a little while and then I'll go
back to work, I ended up writing, like starting to
like by making fun of Wall Street. And my basic
thesis was like, these people on these idiots on Wall
(17:49):
Street don't know what they're doing. Ha ha. And then
it like became totally obvious that I was right about that.
It wasn't that funny. It was going to destroy the economy.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So yeah, it's really your fault to the Yes, well.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I do say that it's sort of dark. But I
was one of the you know, biggest bet you know,
other than the guys who made billions of dollars. I
was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the financial crisis
because it turned me into one of more serious journalists,
but to a lot more people started paying attention to
what I was doing, and that worked out.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, that's you know, that's a good, good ending.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And I mean things turned around, you know, economy. Of course,
what's your prediction? Now where are we heading?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So I think people are going to be surprised that
inflation doesn't go away as fast as a lot of
the official predictions are. I said last year that inflation
was going to last a lot longer than people thought,
and it did. I said, we weren't going to have
a recession because the economy seemed to be doing like
people were shopping a lot. Yeah, well that's happening still today.
(18:56):
There's a you know, retail sales come out and you
see that they blow out all expectations. I think people
are going to be surprised that inflation. We're not going
to go up to nine percent inflation like we had
two years ago, but we're not going to come down
to two percent. We're going to be stuck somewhere in
the three to four percent range, which will feel like
a lot of inflation because inflation is like interest in
(19:19):
your bank account. It compounds, right, you get nine percent
one year and three percent the other things didn't get cheaper.
They kept going up, just at a slower rate, and
that will feel very bad for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitch Show. So for those of
us who don't know a lot about the financial system,
how is it possible that inflation is so high but
people keep shopping? Like, where does this money come from?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Right? Well, good, good question, So I help you know. Yeah, Well,
a big source of idea is government spending. So the
initial inflation happened because we had, on the one side,
supply constraints and two all of this stimulus money that
came from putting in people got checks, but it was
beyond just the checks. People also got uh the basically
(20:08):
rent a bate abatements because you couldn't get foreclosing upon you.
People didn't have to pay off their student loans. So
there's a lot more money that people could spend into
the economy. And if you look at the size of
the government deficit today, a lot of the formal stimulus
that's gone away, but the deficit is still really high
compared to GDP on a historical basis. And so what
(20:30):
that means is that there's still a lot of government
pumping of the economy going on and that's where the
money comes from. It's you know, sure you might not
get a check directly from the government, but government workers
are spending money into the economy. Every time government government
employee gets a job, they get a paycheck. Every Time
the government needs to build a road, it hire you know,
(20:52):
it hires a private contractor so there's a lot of
spending going on through the government that's helping prop up
the economy even though we've had such bad inflation.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So are you feeling optimistic on America's near future or pessimistic?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Optimistic on growth? Okay, I don't think that growth is
going to crater, which puts me at odds with a
lot of conservatives. For three years now, conservatives have been saying, oh,
you know, we're in a recession already or we're heading
into one. I don't think we are. But I'm pessimistic
on inflation. I think inflation is going to be more
(21:26):
stubborn than people think, and I think eventually that means
that the Fed won't cut interest rates as much as
people think, and they may even have to start raising
rates again, which is basically on nobody's RDAR screen, and
that could be pretty damaging to the economy when it happens.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
What about culturally, what do you think is our largest
cultural scietal problem and is it solvable?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Well, So, I do think that we are in a
culture that is increasingly divided. I mean, that's almost a
cliche now. People are at each other's throat, it's all
the time. I think that gets worse before it gets better.
I think that we still have a few years. Like
right now, people are I can't believe how vicious things are.
(22:12):
I think that's going to get worse. I don't think
it gets better. I think people will continue to divide
until we come to until either we face a horrific
economic or foreign policy disaster where there's a war, or
we come to something very close to a civil war frankly,
(22:32):
and then we will be able to come together again.
I don't think we are permanently divided, but I do
think we're going to keep edging towards a crisis for
a while.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So I think of all of my guests who I've
interviewed who have made the move to another state, I
think you might be the only one who went to
a blue state.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And so it's funny, you.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Know, yeah, right right, weird, But how has that been?
Like the fact, you know, you say.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
We're very divided and we're at each other's throat.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
It's like I see that much less now in Florida
because you know, it's a majority red state. But also
I just think, I guess people are just more normal
here than in New York. Like I think I see
a normalcy that I really appreciate. But you move to
a blue state, Like, what has that been.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Like for you? You know, politically speaking?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
It's actually really kind of fun because like I'll drive
down the road and there'll be somebody with like a
Trump flag outside of their house.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yep, Okay, that's.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Like I end up. It becomes division actually becomes something
that unites people.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But that's like what it was like in New York too, right,
I mean, you know we had like our servers, right, So.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
There's definitely still some of that where you run, you
meet somebody and you can you know, it begins just
like in New York right quietly, where somebody will be
like you know, somebody will say something about the schools,
and like you'll see somebody rolled around.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
All right, right, right, So it hasn't been an issue
and you don't feel like you're outcast, and actually, I
mean not any more than usual.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
I would take much less. So that the the sort
of hot house of Brooklyn was so politically extreme, yeah,
that it was, especially park Slope, Yeah, I mean it
was scary. I had a friend who was a US
marshal who I used to have drinks with around park
Slope and we would talk about politics and he was like,
(24:40):
you know, this guy carried a gun around and he
was worried.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
He's like, yeah, oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I have a funny park Slope story from when my
daughter was young and my middle son was young. You know,
they were like, I don't know, three and six or something,
and the he said something like, you know, what can't
girls be and she said a father And I was like,
you know, you can't say that here.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I mean, there was definitely that feeling where you'd walk
into Ah, you know, there'd be signs that say like
hate has no home here in a store window and
you think, okay, that is literally like a no conservative
trespassing sign, right, and it means the opposite. They mean
they hate me, yeah, right, Like like they mean this
(25:35):
is a home for hate of the right. That is
what that sign means it doesn't actually mean to hate
as a home here. And I used to joke we
actually we were driving around and we passed one of
those signs out here, and my my daughter joked, she
was like, Dad, do they think that there are like,
you know, refugees driving around, being like, oh good, finally
(25:57):
a house that doesn't do those not Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
A mutual friend of ours is not going to name her,
but in Park Slope said that, you know, when she
when the hate has no home here, signs went up
on the various schools, she felt like, you know, writing
underneath like except Trump, because that's like what you know, what.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
What it really what it really meant?
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You know? Right, So you're a lawyer turned writer. You
made some very good predictions in your life. You moved
to Connecticut, you have a great family. Do you feel
like you've made it?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So I always wanted I want to write more. So
I know I write every day. I'd like to write books.
You know, my my brother Tim's on his fourth book.
I think it's coming out this March.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
We're going to have him on Friendly.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Everybody should go pre order it now. But you know,
my brother Brian's written a couple of books. I'd like that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What's taking you so long? What's up with that?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
You know?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's hard when I write every single day about you know,
the economy. I write put out bright Oart Business Digest
every day. It's free, everybody subscribe, and then and then
I'm writing for the website as well. It's hard to
like have extra energy to write a lot of times. Okay,
I did it all already. I'm not sure I have.
So I do think if I write, I might have
(27:15):
to be fiction. Actually, I would really like to write,
you know, fiction now. So many of my New York
experiences I feel like would make really cool stories to
tell you see that, you know, you know, through the
medium of fiction. So that might be how I get
around to it. But you know, have I made it? Sure?
I have, you know, a beautiful family. I've gotten to
(27:36):
do an amazing job now for fifteen years, which you know,
I mean, if you think about it, did you ever
think that we could like make a living doing what
we do? I mean back in the day, it's.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Crazy not I hadn't really thought that far ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
I mean, I always thought it would be amazing to
be able to write the kind of things I did,
but I didn't think, you know it, didn't you know
I was. I was a blogger. I wrote, you know,
I wrote for free on the internet. I didn't think
that this was like a career. I was a lawyer.
So it's been terrific to be able to you know,
(28:15):
make a living, feed my family, save up some money
doing this thing that I love.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So John and I both started out as bloggers.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And I remember when my blog picked up some ads
and I think I was making like maybe six hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Dollars a month. I was like, whoa, you know, this
is amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And it's also funny because like what was like large
traffic numbers back then is nothing now. I just remember
like when my blog hit like two thousand readers a day,
and that was like, whoa, you know, I mean it
was great, right, it's.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Really nice to I mean when I look back on
like the guys who I came up with through the
early days of Business Insider, for instance, people have done
really well. You have your Joe Wisenhall's at Bloomberg. Jay
Yarrow now runs c MBC's website that you dan from.
There's people are everywhere. They've done really well. And uh
(29:16):
and a lot of the people who I knew from
those years ended up doing so well that I think
there was almost something magical happening in New York at
the time. Yeah, one was an openness that doesn't exist
right now. You know, we you and I were. We
were able to be friends with people who we differed
with on politics.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right, That's crazy. Yeah, it's much harder to do today.
I think about that whole blogger era actually, Like so
before Joe Wisenthal was at Business Insider, he had a
blog that I used to follow, and I just think
all of the best bloggers from that time got picked
up by you know, we were such rebels, we were
(29:57):
going to like, you know, change the way journalism happened.
But really what happened is all of the like big
outlets either hired the bloggers or bought the blog and
adapted it to their site, and they really ended up
killing our own thing. Like independent blocks was largely murdered
by independent bloggers who were hired to do you know,
(30:20):
back to regular journalism.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Right, which which which was smart? I mean, you know, yeah,
everybody won. It was just why these or you know,
the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times have
existed for hundreds of years, because yeah, they're pretty smart
about how to survive. And I think what they saw was,
you know, hey, here are a bunch of writers who
are able to attract an audience without any of the
(30:42):
institutional support. Imagine what will happen if we give them
the institutional support and it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really interesting point.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
That's exactly it. They you know, they're like, oh, these
people are already doing it, Like we can hire them
and get all their viewers and other readers and that
could be you know, yeah, it's excellent, excellent point about
the whole They've been doing it for a while and
they know what's going on.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
They know what. You know, longevity at least suggests a
good instinct for survival.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Sure right, definitely, So end here with your best tip
for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So I'll give you three. How's that all right? Let's
go three exercise every day, get to sleep, and wear
comfortable shoes.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That's it, John, You sound like an old man. Where
is that crazy revel guy?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Okay, here's a more controversial one. When don't be afraid
to just be a little bit more socially aggressive. We
live in an age that almost seems to punish people,
whether it's you're a young man or a young woman
and you're you're worried, like can I talk to somebody
of the opposite sexes? Or you're older and you just
(31:58):
want to be friends with people. One of the things
I had to get over in life, but it's been
one of the biggest improvements has been the willingness to
like reach out to people in person or online. I
write to writers who I like. If I read so
many stuff, I very often reach out to them and say, like, hey,
let's hang out or at least let's talk, like let
(32:19):
me and I think that's a good idea. And I
think people are the people have always been shy, that's
that new. But I think we've actually made social life
so dangerous that people need to, you know, be a
little bit more courageous in their social lives.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Hughes John Carney. Find him on brave bart dot com.
He's fantastic, love talking to you. Thanks for coming on,
Thanks Carol, Thanks so much for joining us on the
Carol Marcowitz Show.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
There's this I don't know do we call it a meme.
My kids make fun of me when I call something
a meme when it's not. There's this thing going around
that Generation Z, that is the generation that is currently
in their early late teens to late twenties right now,
(00:28):
is quote aging like milk to translate for the olds
out there. That means they are looking older far faster
than previous generations had. And there have been some funny
answers as to why this is. Gen Z themselves say, oh,
it's because they are so much more stressed than any
other generations, to which I say, haha, stup it. Every
(00:51):
time these younger generations list everything they've been through, Like
when millennials are like, we live through nine to eleven
and wars and recession all of it, I'm like, yeah,
gen X was there too, except we didn't have the
Internet and all these things that you guys have to
make your lives easier. Millennials are having a good time
with this whole aging like milk thing, and they're saying
(01:12):
that they look better than Gen Z because they ate
a lot of preservatives and gen Z was raised on
all organic everything. I mean, maybe, you know, wouldn't hurt
gen Z to have a twinkie and see what happens.
At the same time that this whole conversation is happening online,
Kylie Jenner was photographed in Paris with, oh my god,
(01:35):
a shadow on her face, and then all of these
dermatologists online on Instagram and I assume on TikTok or whatever,
but you know, I'm too old for that app wade
in to say that it's possible that the shadow on
her face was caused by filler that she had had
that had migrated to different parts of her face. And look,
(01:55):
you know, maybe it is, maybe that's what it was,
or maybe she's and her face wasn't as flawless as usual.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Kylie actually showed.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Up at another event the next night looking perfect, and
none of the online you know, experts weighed back in
to say what happened to their speculations from the day before.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But my take overall here.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
And why I mentioned Kylie, is that the reason gen
Z is aging like milk is because they have no
real perception of what reality is. Their entire existence has
been looking at very overfiltered photos, and they don't know
what aging actually looks like. They've seen everything through this
(02:36):
smooth view where you can edit out any wrinkle or blemish.
So Kylie was having, you know, a bad face day,
and the shock of seeing her face look even slightly
imperfect was a multi day news story. I mean, that's crazy.
You know. There are days I wake up and I
look significantly worse than I looked the day before, and
(02:58):
other days, you know, I look better. That's just how
life goes. But when you're in the public eye, you
have all these people commenting on the tiniest, tiniest little imperfection.
I think that's what these gen zers are doing wrong.
They think that their face is supposed to be completely
perfect at all times. I'm into pictures, you know, I've
(03:19):
talked about pictures on here before. I think taking natural
pictures is important. I think taking pictures in general is important.
I enjoy photography. I was always the person with a
camera in my bag in the days before cell phone cameras,
So I do spend a lot of time thinking about
the way we are portrayed in pictures, how we're perceived,
(03:39):
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
On what that says to young people.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I don't use filters at all ever, but I definitely
consider it on the days when I don't feel like
I'm looking my best and when I see everyone else
look so good on their social media, and I know
I can easily click something and fix any imperfection and
just look better. But I do think it messes up
our perception of ourselves and each other. To do that,
(04:05):
gen Z needs to have a few weeks of looking
at unfiltered photos from bygone eras like maybe the nineties
and the eighties to see that they're aging just fine.
It's their phones and these apps that are the problem,
and they're making them think that they're looking like old milk.
I'm still collecting stories for Thursday's episode on how single
(04:28):
people can meet someone. Give me your best piece of
advice for single people who want to meet someone to
date seriously and marry. Write to us at Carol Markowitz
Show at gmail dot com or tweet at me at
ka rol on x dot com. I'll read some of
the responses on the show. So tune in coming up
next and interview with John Carney.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Join us after the.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Break, Hey, and welcome back to The Carol Markowitz Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is John Carr, Finance and
economics editor at Breitbart News. He's the author of the
Breitbart Business Digest, the best daily guide on how national
and global economics affect you. Larry Kudlow of Fox Business
(05:12):
calls it a must read and says it now has
a cult following. You can sign up for it at
Breitbart dot com slash newsletters.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Hi John, Hi Carol, It's good to see you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Really good to see you too. It's been a while.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It has been since you departed for the Southern Climbs.
It looks like it's done well for you though.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
See. I feel like I knew you were going to
blame me, but actually you left first.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Right when did you move?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
I moved November twenty twenty, so.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Right, I mean you were out like a full two
years before me, And somehow it's my fall. We don't
hang out.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And I fled to New York City even before that
because they shut everything down. So why, you know, who
wants to live in a city where everything is shut down?
And my kids couldn't even go to school. So hey,
you know, we packed ourselves in a car and drove
across America.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
We lived in this same neighborhood in Park Slope, and I,
you know, I always saw you as a very like.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Man about town. You are out a lot in New York.
You remember at four Square.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I was just telling my daughter about four Square for
the kids out there. It was an app where we
used to check in wherever we were and John Carney's
four Square was like just super active and all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
So about it was that it worked, you know, like
you could get in somewhere and friends would just show up,
and it was it was amazing for that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, I have to say my husband, that was like
his just nightmare, the fact that like I would check
in somewhere and then somebody would stop in and he'd
be like, no, So I had to start checking in
like when we were leaving a place, because he didn't
like people dropping in.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
At my wife's request, I made a similar concession in
that if we were you know, out just the two
of us together, I wouldn't check in because people would
just you know, drop by all the time. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
She'd be like, I mean she personally would say things
like I can't believe this many people would ever want
to see you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, I would say like you know the term like popular.
You know, it's usually reserved for school and like high
school or whatever. But John Carney was popular in New York.
And so you live in Connecticut. Now, are you still
cool or what's going on you?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Now? I'm starting to get some cool vibes up here.
People are starting to figure out it's you know, it's
different you You can't just check into your local place.
I mean one of the big differences is you have
to make and this is you know, won't be news
to women, but for men, having to make an appointment
to get a haircut isn't the deal. I used to
(07:43):
just walk down the street, go into the local Italian
barber shop with the you know, the spinning pole, and
you know, sit down, wait a couple of minutes, and
then they call you up and you get your haircut. Yeah,
you can't really walk into places out here in the country.
You have to call ahead, make sure you know, I
now have a barber guy. I used to just do
as like any of the rooms we were there, they
(08:05):
cut my hair. Now I have to be like, is
Kyle going to be there? Can I have an appointment?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Is that a sign of like getting older or is
that suburbs or is that you now need Kyle to
cut your hair like it's like it has to be Kyle.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well, it's definitely a sign of of where I live.
I don't even live in the suburbs so much. I
live on two acres of land. It's more like my
neighbors have sheep. I live in the country. I live
in their farms around me. Uh, you know, I live
in a suburban house. I'm not a farmer. I had
(08:41):
some chickens. A fox got to them. I'm not you know,
I'm not try enough yet to keep your chickens alive
from the box.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Sorry chickens.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, my daughter had named them, so it was kind
of tragic when they when they got to although she
named her favorite one Nugget, which I thought was a
pretty dark name for chick You know that's what you're
going to become someday, I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But still really actually, you know, sooner rather than later
the fox gets.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
To you nuggets for the foxes exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So have you enjoyed the move? Have you made friends?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I have one of the things, I had a lot
of grown up friends when I move out of the
city here. I've made a lot of friends through my
children and through my church like it's been, which is
also really through the kids. Like the people that my
kids know, I get to know their parents, and you know,
(09:37):
you sort of do this like pushing thing where if
you really like one group of you know, one set
of parents, you're like, hey, why don't you hang out
with her more?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And then it never works, right, It's.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Been okay, yeah, no, it's nice and there's a lot
of hiking around here, and I, you know, now like
to know a couple of the dads enough that I can,
you know, call up and be like, Hey, I'm going
out to Huntington State Park. You want to come with?
You come with me? And they do, and you know,
we take our dogs, we go on hikes and stuff.
So that's the next step. Right At first you need
(10:15):
the kids to be the excuse for what you're and
then you graduate to the like, no, it's okay, we
could you know, we could hang out, don't We don't
deep the kids, right, that's.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
A big step, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Making friends in adulthood is a topic we cover a
lot on the show because so many people have moved
in the last few.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Years and it's tough.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
But I would say, out of all of my guests,
you might be doing the best job, because a lot
of the answers I get to that question are still like, well,
I knew people already from Twitter, and they happen to
live near me, so it's going fine.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You know, it's not like yours.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Seems to be more organic, and even for me, we
haven't met that many. We haven't made that many friends
like the organic, you know, situational way. A few, we
definitely have a few. We have a couple we go
out with sometimes, but the majority of our friends are
either like from the Internet that I knew before, or
like friends of ours from New York who also I mean,
(11:08):
obviously Florida was a has been a popular choice in
the last few years, so like friends who move down
to it.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Because I moved to a place where I didn't know
anybody right there was you know, there was nobody here.
There was a you know, one or two people who
I'm friends with on Twitter who live up here, but
I don't want to out them, so like, you know,
I won't give away where they live, but very few.
So in a sense, like out of as you said,
(11:37):
I'm a pretty social person and so out of necessity,
I've had to you know, be outgoing. But but it
is a little bit you said, like high school, it
does feel a little bit like you're starting over again.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, completely starting over.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah, people make friends with them, and especially I think
those of us who have kind of isolating jobs. So
a lot of times when people move to new places,
you know, they have a new work you know, new workplace,
and they go out with their coworkers. I work from
home and so exactly don't have that natural group of
like coworkers to like invite out. You have to be
(12:16):
very intentional if you're going to meet people in social life.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
And it's also tough, I think, you know, like me,
you grew up in New York and right, and I
grew up in Manhattan. Yeah, so I grew up in Brooklyn.
We you know, have a similar trajectory. And you know,
I used to run into people all the time in
New York, even though it's this giant city. It was
just like because you're from there, you're constantly running into
people like on the subway or on the street or
(12:41):
at a restaurant or whatever. And so I've been in
Florida two years and it only recently have I started
running into people and I you know, and both of
them were like not super close to my house.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
It was like, oh, I'm in Florida.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
And I ran into, you know, a friend of mine
on the right line, and then I ran into another
friend of mine at a restaurant like forty minutes from
my house.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
So it's been that those are like really cool moments
for me.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Those were like, oh, yes, this is like I'm starting
to like live there.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's like starting to real.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
My wife makes fun of me because we'll go into
like a crowded shopping mall or something and I'll start
to look around. I was like, all these people, there
must be somebody I know, and she's like, there's no
one you know here. But you know, you do get
used to that in New York City, as you said,
it's a city of eight million people, but you still
run into front time, right time, and that because once
you move out. I think that's a very New York thing.
(13:33):
I think most other places and even other big cities,
it's very rare that you have that kind of uh
you know, just you know, very common but random uh
encounters with people all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, probably because in other places you drive more, whereas
in New York you're walking around or you're on the subway,
and which is just.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
More you're interacting with more people all over the time.
You're not interested car you know, you don't people. You know,
when you're driving around, people you know could drive past
you and you wouldn't necessarily even know it's them.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yes, right.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I would also say, like near me in South Florida,
like I go to the same restaurants that like the.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Tourists go to.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Where it's in New York.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
That line is really stark, like you do not go
to the same restaurants so the tourists go to, like
the tourists go somewhere else entirely.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
In fact, we stop going to places once once other
people start throwing up. We're like, oh yeah, we can't
go there. It's too popular now.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So do you have a bar, because you had a
bar in New York City.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, it was Tom and Jerry's, right, it's the bar,
and so you don't have that not yet.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
You know, it's sort of under development. It took a
while to find, you know. Tom and Jerry's was like
my third bar, you know, because they close. You know,
New York City, you know, you have to get used
to constant change. They open and close, so I'm still
you know, looking around find myavorite places. One thing is, uh,
(15:03):
I do do a lot of sort of backyard socializing,
which is not something you can do in New York City.
You know, I can invite people over to my house.
They don't even have to come into my house necessarily,
you know. They like during the you know, summertime, it's
just you know, we can all hang out. I can
cook food, have a I have a one of those
(15:24):
like fire pits. I can fire you know. So there
there's a lot more of that. One of the reasons
in New York City people are in restaurants and bars.
And this is something like I discovered that people from
around the country don't know. But those bars and restaurants
are our living rooms.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
We have nowhere else to be, don't We.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Can't meet up with you know, ten of our friends
in our house. We don't have a backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, so we've hung out on your stoop in Park Slope.
I brought my kids over to your kids on the.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Store, you know, which somebody had a roof. We could
go up there sometimes, but very but you know, it's
usually when you hang out with people, it's going to
be in a you know, in an establishment rather than
somebody's house in New York City. And so that's been
like an adjustment, you know, to realize, like, oh, if
I want to hang out with people, I should invite
(16:19):
them over. Yeah, she's like not a New York thing
to do, right.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That is definitely a giant adjustment. So you're a writer,
but you're also you're you were a lawyer and you
were working I believe one of the top firms in
true right am I Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, So but you left it all to go be
in media. Why would you do that?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Good question? It was more fun. I mean, you know,
I thought I would go back to being a lawyer.
I left being a lawyer almost twenty years ago, so
I'm not going back, I guess. But I did think
at the time. I was feeling a little burnt out.
It's a lot of work. I was a corporate lawyer
doing leverage finance transactions and it and I needed a break.
(17:05):
And I it was two thousand and six. There was
a lot of ridiculous going in this going on on
Wall Street. My clients were kind of ridiculous. I thought
it would be really fun to write, and I got
to help start a website called deal Breaker. I then
got to do Business Insider, I got to do CNBC
(17:27):
and then Wall Street Journal, so like things just kept
working out. So I never, you know, like the finance.
First of all, the financial crisis happened, right, So yeah,
if I were thought like, oh, I'll do you know,
I'll write for a little while and then I'll go
back to work, I ended up writing, like starting to
like by making fun of Wall Street. And my basic
thesis was like, these people on these idiots on Wall
(17:49):
Street don't know what they're doing. Ha ha. And then
it like became totally obvious that I was right about that.
It wasn't that funny. It was going to destroy the economy.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So yeah, it's really your fault to the Yes, well.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I do say that it's sort of dark. But I
was one of the you know, biggest bet you know,
other than the guys who made billions of dollars. I
was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the financial crisis
because it turned me into one of more serious journalists,
but to a lot more people started paying attention to
what I was doing, and that worked out.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, that's you know, that's a good, good ending.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And I mean things turned around, you know, economy. Of course,
what's your prediction? Now where are we heading?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So I think people are going to be surprised that
inflation doesn't go away as fast as a lot of
the official predictions are. I said last year that inflation
was going to last a lot longer than people thought,
and it did. I said, we weren't going to have
a recession because the economy seemed to be doing like
people were shopping a lot. Yeah, well that's happening still today.
(18:56):
There's a you know, retail sales come out and you
see that they blow out all expectations. I think people
are going to be surprised that inflation. We're not going
to go up to nine percent inflation like we had
two years ago, but we're not going to come down
to two percent. We're going to be stuck somewhere in
the three to four percent range, which will feel like
a lot of inflation because inflation is like interest in
(19:19):
your bank account. It compounds, right, you get nine percent
one year and three percent the other things didn't get cheaper.
They kept going up, just at a slower rate, and
that will feel very bad for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitch Show. So for those of
us who don't know a lot about the financial system,
how is it possible that inflation is so high but
people keep shopping? Like, where does this money come from?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Right? Well, good, good question, So I help you know. Yeah, Well,
a big source of idea is government spending. So the
initial inflation happened because we had, on the one side,
supply constraints and two all of this stimulus money that
came from putting in people got checks, but it was
beyond just the checks. People also got uh the basically
(20:08):
rent a bate abatements because you couldn't get foreclosing upon you.
People didn't have to pay off their student loans. So
there's a lot more money that people could spend into
the economy. And if you look at the size of
the government deficit today, a lot of the formal stimulus
that's gone away, but the deficit is still really high
compared to GDP on a historical basis. And so what
(20:30):
that means is that there's still a lot of government
pumping of the economy going on and that's where the
money comes from. It's you know, sure you might not
get a check directly from the government, but government workers
are spending money into the economy. Every time government government
employee gets a job, they get a paycheck. Every Time
the government needs to build a road, it hire you know,
(20:52):
it hires a private contractor so there's a lot of
spending going on through the government that's helping prop up
the economy even though we've had such bad inflation.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So are you feeling optimistic on America's near future or pessimistic?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Optimistic on growth? Okay, I don't think that growth is
going to crater, which puts me at odds with a
lot of conservatives. For three years now, conservatives have been saying, oh,
you know, we're in a recession already or we're heading
into one. I don't think we are. But I'm pessimistic
on inflation. I think inflation is going to be more
(21:26):
stubborn than people think, and I think eventually that means
that the Fed won't cut interest rates as much as
people think, and they may even have to start raising
rates again, which is basically on nobody's RDAR screen, and
that could be pretty damaging to the economy when it happens.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
What about culturally, what do you think is our largest
cultural scietal problem and is it solvable?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Well, So, I do think that we are in a
culture that is increasingly divided. I mean, that's almost a
cliche now. People are at each other's throat, it's all
the time. I think that gets worse before it gets better.
I think that we still have a few years. Like
right now, people are I can't believe how vicious things are.
(22:12):
I think that's going to get worse. I don't think
it gets better. I think people will continue to divide
until we come to until either we face a horrific
economic or foreign policy disaster where there's a war, or
we come to something very close to a civil war frankly,
(22:32):
and then we will be able to come together again.
I don't think we are permanently divided, but I do
think we're going to keep edging towards a crisis for
a while.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So I think of all of my guests who I've
interviewed who have made the move to another state, I
think you might be the only one who went to
a blue state.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
And so it's funny, you.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Know, yeah, right right, weird, But how has that been?
Like the fact, you know, you say.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
We're very divided and we're at each other's throat.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
It's like I see that much less now in Florida
because you know, it's a majority red state. But also
I just think, I guess people are just more normal
here than in New York. Like I think I see
a normalcy that I really appreciate. But you move to
a blue state, Like, what has that been.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Like for you? You know, politically speaking?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
It's actually really kind of fun because like I'll drive
down the road and there'll be somebody with like a
Trump flag outside of their house.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yep, Okay, that's.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Like I end up. It becomes division actually becomes something
that unites people.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
But that's like what it was like in New York too, right,
I mean, you know we had like our servers, right, So.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
There's definitely still some of that where you run, you
meet somebody and you can you know, it begins just
like in New York right quietly, where somebody will be
like you know, somebody will say something about the schools,
and like you'll see somebody rolled around.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
All right, right, right, So it hasn't been an issue
and you don't feel like you're outcast, and actually, I
mean not any more than usual.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
I would take much less. So that the the sort
of hot house of Brooklyn was so politically extreme, yeah,
that it was, especially park Slope, Yeah, I mean it
was scary. I had a friend who was a US
marshal who I used to have drinks with around park
Slope and we would talk about politics and he was like,
(24:40):
you know, this guy carried a gun around and he
was worried.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
He's like, yeah, oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I have a funny park Slope story from when my
daughter was young and my middle son was young. You know,
they were like, I don't know, three and six or something,
and the he said something like, you know, what can't
girls be and she said a father And I was like,
you know, you can't say that here.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I mean, there was definitely that feeling where you'd walk
into Ah, you know, there'd be signs that say like
hate has no home here in a store window and
you think, okay, that is literally like a no conservative
trespassing sign, right, and it means the opposite. They mean
they hate me, yeah, right, Like like they mean this
(25:35):
is a home for hate of the right. That is
what that sign means it doesn't actually mean to hate
as a home here. And I used to joke we
actually we were driving around and we passed one of
those signs out here, and my my daughter joked, she
was like, Dad, do they think that there are like,
you know, refugees driving around, being like, oh good, finally
(25:57):
a house that doesn't do those not Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
A mutual friend of ours is not going to name her,
but in Park Slope said that, you know, when she
when the hate has no home here, signs went up
on the various schools, she felt like, you know, writing
underneath like except Trump, because that's like what you know, what.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
What it really what it really meant?
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You know? Right, So you're a lawyer turned writer. You
made some very good predictions in your life. You moved
to Connecticut, you have a great family. Do you feel
like you've made it?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So I always wanted I want to write more. So
I know I write every day. I'd like to write books.
You know, my my brother Tim's on his fourth book.
I think it's coming out this March.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
We're going to have him on Friendly.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Everybody should go pre order it now. But you know,
my brother Brian's written a couple of books. I'd like that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
What's taking you so long? What's up with that?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
You know?
Speaker 3 (26:53):
It's hard when I write every single day about you know,
the economy. I write put out bright Oart Business Digest
every day. It's free, everybody subscribe, and then and then
I'm writing for the website as well. It's hard to
like have extra energy to write a lot of times. Okay,
I did it all already. I'm not sure I have.
So I do think if I write, I might have
(27:15):
to be fiction. Actually, I would really like to write,
you know, fiction now. So many of my New York
experiences I feel like would make really cool stories to
tell you see that, you know, you know, through the
medium of fiction. So that might be how I get
around to it. But you know, have I made it? Sure?
I have, you know, a beautiful family. I've gotten to
(27:36):
do an amazing job now for fifteen years, which you know,
I mean, if you think about it, did you ever
think that we could like make a living doing what
we do? I mean back in the day, it's.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Crazy not I hadn't really thought that far ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
I mean, I always thought it would be amazing to
be able to write the kind of things I did,
but I didn't think, you know it, didn't you know
I was. I was a blogger. I wrote, you know,
I wrote for free on the internet. I didn't think
that this was like a career. I was a lawyer.
So it's been terrific to be able to you know,
(28:15):
make a living, feed my family, save up some money
doing this thing that I love.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So John and I both started out as bloggers.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And I remember when my blog picked up some ads
and I think I was making like maybe six hundred.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Dollars a month. I was like, whoa, you know, this
is amazing.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
And it's also funny because like what was like large
traffic numbers back then is nothing now. I just remember
like when my blog hit like two thousand readers a day,
and that was like, whoa, you know, I mean it
was great, right, it's.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Really nice to I mean when I look back on
like the guys who I came up with through the
early days of Business Insider, for instance, people have done
really well. You have your Joe Wisenhall's at Bloomberg. Jay
Yarrow now runs c MBC's website that you dan from.
There's people are everywhere. They've done really well. And uh
(29:16):
and a lot of the people who I knew from
those years ended up doing so well that I think
there was almost something magical happening in New York at
the time. Yeah, one was an openness that doesn't exist
right now. You know, we you and I were. We
were able to be friends with people who we differed
with on politics.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right, That's crazy. Yeah, it's much harder to do today.
I think about that whole blogger era actually, Like so
before Joe Wisenthal was at Business Insider, he had a
blog that I used to follow, and I just think
all of the best bloggers from that time got picked
up by you know, we were such rebels, we were
(29:57):
going to like, you know, change the way journalism happened.
But really what happened is all of the like big
outlets either hired the bloggers or bought the blog and
adapted it to their site, and they really ended up
killing our own thing. Like independent blocks was largely murdered
by independent bloggers who were hired to do you know,
(30:20):
back to regular journalism.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Right, which which which was smart? I mean, you know, yeah,
everybody won. It was just why these or you know,
the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times have
existed for hundreds of years, because yeah, they're pretty smart
about how to survive. And I think what they saw was,
you know, hey, here are a bunch of writers who
are able to attract an audience without any of the
(30:42):
institutional support. Imagine what will happen if we give them
the institutional support and it worked.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really interesting point.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
That's exactly it. They you know, they're like, oh, these
people are already doing it, Like we can hire them
and get all their viewers and other readers and that
could be you know, yeah, it's excellent, excellent point about
the whole They've been doing it for a while and
they know what's going on.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
They know what. You know, longevity at least suggests a
good instinct for survival.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Sure right, definitely, So end here with your best tip
for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So I'll give you three. How's that all right? Let's
go three exercise every day, get to sleep, and wear
comfortable shoes.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
That's it, John, You sound like an old man. Where
is that crazy revel guy?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Okay, here's a more controversial one. When don't be afraid
to just be a little bit more socially aggressive. We
live in an age that almost seems to punish people,
whether it's you're a young man or a young woman
and you're you're worried, like can I talk to somebody
of the opposite sexes? Or you're older and you just
(31:58):
want to be friends with people. One of the things
I had to get over in life, but it's been
one of the biggest improvements has been the willingness to
like reach out to people in person or online. I
write to writers who I like. If I read so
many stuff, I very often reach out to them and say, like, hey,
let's hang out or at least let's talk, like let
(32:19):
me and I think that's a good idea. And I
think people are the people have always been shy, that's
that new. But I think we've actually made social life
so dangerous that people need to, you know, be a
little bit more courageous in their social lives.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Hughes John Carney. Find him on brave bart dot com.
He's fantastic, love talking to you. Thanks for coming on,
Thanks Carol, Thanks so much for joining us on the
Carol Marcowitz Show.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,
Host
Karol Markowicz
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