January 15, 2024 • 31 mins
In this episode, Karol discusses the ideal age for motherhood and the challenges of parenthood. Karol welcomes Miranda Devine, a New York Post columnist and author of "Laptop from Hell." They touch on the normalization of drug use in America, the country's peculiar relationship with pharmaceuticals, and the contrasting attitudes toward religion and spirituality. Devine, who moved from Australia to New York, also talks about her preference for a private life despite her public career, her best-selling book, and the importance of family. 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 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Last week I talked about men putting off parenthood and
delaying having real relationships, but of course it's not just
men who do this. In twenty twenty two, the average
age for an American woman having her first child hit
thirty for the first time. In the never ending mommy
(00:23):
wars of our time, one of the ongoing battles is
the ideal age of motherhood. The shots are usually lobbed
at older moms. They put off having babies because they
wanted to focus on their careers. Goes this assumption, and
now they're quote granny moms who lack the energy to
deal with children. I recently reread a Molly Finn piece
(00:46):
in The Wall Street Journal from a few years ago
that fired in the other direction. She argued that being
an older mother is better than being a younger mother,
despite the fact that she is indeed sometimes mistaken for
the child's grand tongue in cheek. Thinn called older or
geriatric mothers Jerry's and says they're better than younger mothers
(01:07):
because they're tanned, rested, and ready for motherhood in a
way younger mothers just aren't, she writes. Quote what about
the stamina needed to keep up with a child, you ask,
But we Jerries have the advantage of not being regularly
hungover from youthful self indulgence. We have only three apps
on our iPhones, and we waited a long time for children.
(01:28):
We're energized, focused, and almost always happy to see our kids. Also,
we have watched younger folks make mistakes and learn how
to conserve energy.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I have no quarrel with people who have kids later
in life. I myself am what used to be considered
an older mother, though, of course, as the average age
of motherhood moves ever upward, my ages of thirty two,
thirty five, and thirty eight at the time of the
births of my children don't seem quite so ancient. But
if there was a way to redo everything, my idea
(02:00):
would have been to have children much earlier. My husband
and I knew each other for a decade before we
started dating, and that's like a lot of lost and
wasted time. I used to say he was the Jerry
to my Elaine, really minus the romantic beginning. Because Jerry
and Elaine dated first, we were just friends. You know,
(02:20):
together all the time, platonically for a long long time.
In my rewrite of this history, we would have gotten
together in our twenties and our kids would be heading
to college right now. Older parenthood is hard, even as
Finn notes, you know fewer hangovers. Maybe older parenthood takes
its toll in so many ways. It's harder to lose
(02:40):
the baby weight. You don't look a little tired when
you don't get enough sleep, you look like the crypt keeper.
It's harder to chase around babies you know, who are
intent on plunging headfirst into everything. And you know the
lament from a young person putting off parenthood who says,
I just want to live my life first, explore the world,
do things. The shocking truth that's unknown to twenty somethings,
(03:02):
including myself at that age, is that there really is
no time when you don't want to live your life.
I'm in my forties and I still want to do
all those things that people consider living their lives. I
want to go out to dinner, meet new people, travel.
My husband and I have been incredibly lucky that our
children have involved grandparents. We have an amazing situation that
(03:25):
we get to do all of that. But the older
you are when you have kids, the older your parents are,
and the less ability they will have to help. There's
this idea that there comes a point in your life
when everything can pause for a bit, as you take
time off to have a baby, secure in your finances
and the knowledge that your career will pick right up
where left off. And it doesn't really work like that
(03:48):
for women or for men. At the start of your career,
you're new and mostly expendable. As you climb your career ladder,
you take on more responsibilities, making it harder all the
time to step away. And that's the thing about having kids.
There's no right or wrong time to have them. Are
you ready for a baby? No, No one actually is.
(04:10):
And the truth is you're still allowed to do, you know,
the things that we call bucket list, but now we
refer to bucket list even not kicking the bucket, but
having a baby. You're still allowed to go bungee jumping,
or procrastinate on writing that novel you swear you're going
to write after the babies arrive. There's no rule that
says you have to own your own home or have
(04:32):
made partner at your firm and You can have all
the money and still be a terrible parent, or have
very little of it and win at parenthood daily. Aim
for the parenthood winning, and let the rest fall into place.
The other problem with putting off parenthood, of course, is
that baby making is more art than science. In general,
a lot has to go right for a baby to
(04:54):
be produced. You have to meet the right person, you
have to be fertile, they have to be fertile, and
even then, and there's no guarantee everything will work as
it should. So much of life is luck, and meeting
the right person is a huge part of that. Putting
off kids because you haven't met the right person makes sense.
Putting off kids because being an older parent is better
(05:16):
is foolishness. Coming up next, an interview with Miranda Divine.
Join us after the break. Hi, and welcome back to
the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is
Miranda Divine, columnist at the New York Post and author
of the best selling book Laptop from Hell. Thank you
(05:38):
so much for coming on, Miranda.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Great to be with you, Carol.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So I have an admission to make to you, and
I remember the very first time I read you, I
just looked it up. It was twenty nineteen. It was
your third piece at the Post, and you wrote about
how marijuana was a really big deal and that it
came with mental health risks for some people, and that
it was becoming a pro problem in New York. And
(06:01):
I remember reading it and being like, I disagree with
all of this. This is crazy. Who is this person?
I remember being like, this is so square. And of
course I've come around to most of what you've most
of what you wrote there. So how does it feel?
Do you get that a lot? Like people are saying
you're right?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That's so interesting? Yeah, Look, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Sometimes I guess people don't really like to admit that,
and you know, I'm.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Often wrong myself.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
But the drugs thing is something that I've been writing
about for, you know, more than twenty years. I was
a police reporter early on, and I just saw the
detrimental effect that drugs had, particularly on people at the
bottom of the ladder, and you know, kids who grew
(06:49):
up with addicted parents. And you know, if there was
one thing I could do to wave a magic wand
to cure a lot of the ills that plague Western societies,
it would be to just ban get rid of illicit
drug use. And I think it's you know, I mean
when I was young, I was just as susceptible to
(07:10):
the sort of pop culture ideas about legal drugs. You know,
I joined some stupid, you know, marijuana legalization party when
I was at university.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, it was cool. But when you actually look.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
At the scientific studies that have been done, particularly on marijuana,
which you're seen as such a particularly in America, seen
as such a benign drug, and you see that the
very large risks of psychosis. You know, once your brain
has become psychotic, has had a psychotic episode, it's more
(07:47):
prone to them for the rest of your life, and
that begins the descent into insanity. And you see it
all around you in the streets of New York and
other big American cities, with homeless people who are homeless
because they're mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. I think you also you predicted in that piece
what ended up happening in New York was that the
full legalization has made it so the whole entire city
smells like weed now. And you know, people say, oh,
it was always like that, No, it wasn't. I grew
up in New York.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
No, it was not.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
You know, people used to be covert about smoking. Now
it's out in the open. I think also, New York
is the only city where you're allowed to do that.
All the other kind of hippie cities who legalized it,
which legalized it, didn't legalize it to smoke in the
street anywhere you wanted. And I think New York is
the only place that's okay. So I think that piece
(08:42):
was really I went back and I read it, and
it's really interesting. You know, how much I've learned in
just a few years, but how right you were about
where New York was heading with that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's interesting that you say that. I mean, why did
you change your mind?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Was it just because you saw that hails and disorder
in New York over the years.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yes, I think I had that impression, like you said,
where look, I you know, I used to be a pothead.
I you know, was very much into the idea that
if we just legalized that everybody would be able to
use it, you know, kind of the way that we
have a drink and it wouldn't be just a problem.
(09:24):
And I think that what we've seen, and you're right
about the psychosis stuff too. I think that there's a
lot of research that has come out in the last
few years that does make the link between serious marijuana
use and psychosis and people who maybe were susceptible to
it already. But I just think New York I've seen
such a downward spiral. And one of the things is,
(09:47):
you know, I remember when we still lived in Brooklyn
walking by somebody smoking a joint in park Slope, like,
you know, eight thirty am as I'm taking my kids
to school, and if we saw somebody, you know, having
a drink on the corner at eight thirty, we would
register that that's a problem. But because it's weed, it's
sort of like, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It's really odd in America, I think it's a hangover
from Prohibition. I went to university at Northwestern in Chicago,
actually in Evanston, a little bit north of the city,
and that was the home of the Christian Women's Temperance League,
and really, you know, one of the early sources of prohibition,
(10:25):
I think. And it's still a dry town. I mean,
it's a university town, but it's a dry town. You
couldn't get a drink. That was very hard for me
to wrap my head around that coming from Australia to
Chicago and realizing that, you know, we had to go
a long way to get a drink. But there's still
this attitude, I mean, which is good I think. I know,
(10:46):
in Australia and Britain, binge drinking, especially among young men,
is a real problem and causes a lot of violence
and mayhem, and so it's kind of a good thing
that people don't get in America with drinking so much.
I mean, you can go to a Broadway show and
they will give you a glass of wine which is
(11:07):
like as big as a bucket, and you can have
as many as you like, and people are not brawling
in the aisles at intermission, which would happen if you
had a lot of hard drinking cultures. And so I
mean that's kind of a good thing, but I think
it's gone way over the top. I mean, the fact
that the drinking age is twenty one for young people.
(11:31):
I know from my own kids who came to America
on various sporting excursions when they were at school, that
you know what that meant was that rather than underage drinking,
which occurs in Australia and England and places which is
really I think, fine, it's just experimental drinking with a
legal substance in America because it's harder to get a
(11:55):
drink kids, So I smoking marijuana at school, and that's
that's a much more problematic issue because you know, alcohol
is illegal, and therefore you haven't broken that kind of wall.
A child hasn't broken that wall. That's well, I'm taking
an illegal substance. What's the difference if I take a
different one, like you know, okay or heroin or you know,
(12:18):
meth or whatever. And I know that. You know, for
so many years we've been told about the reefer madness.
Don't say no drugs, Nancy Pelosi, you know, craziness and yeah,
sorry Nancy, the.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Opposite, yeah, Nancy Reagan. And you know, so it's really
uncool to be anti drugs, especially.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
If you're from that generation that grew up with chitch
and chong and a lot of you know, the cool
or at least in the aftermath of that cool nineteen
sixties nineteen seventies psychedelic era where drugs, you know, that
was that was sort of the thing that our elders
were doing. And so by the time the next generation
(13:01):
came of age. It was completely normal and it was
part you know, hooked into music and celebrity and anything
you wanted to do. And so we've had I guess
forty years of its normalization of drug use and coolification
of it, and and I think it's been really detrimental
(13:24):
to mental health and and you know, I mean just
to the culture.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
You know, po pot.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I know from my own misspent youth, it just SAPs
you of energy and enterprise. It's the most loser drug
you could ever think of, and it has the cash
day as being just so safe, zen and hip and safe,
and so you know, I don't know. I just think
(13:54):
alcohol is bad. It has problems, but it's been with
us for a long time. Humans are going to need
some sort of mind altering drug. We chose long ago
that it be alcohol, and it's relatively safe. And I
think we'd be better off just focusing on having fun
(14:14):
with the one legal drug rather than trying to supplement
it with all sorts of other crazy drugs, because there'll
always be something new. And we now see fentanal the
ultimate expression of optimizing illegal drugs, and it's just you know,
it's lethal.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So I mentioned that that piece was from twenty nineteen.
I think that's around when you moved from Australia to
New York, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yep, that's right, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So we talk a lot on this show about people
moving because you know, as you know, there's been this
migration in America over the COVID years, but you made
an international move and you did it before COVID. So
how's that been for you?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's been great and weird because of COVID, I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
And you know, I was actually born in Jamaica, Queens,
so really kind of a native born in New York
or my accent doesn't doesn't tell you that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And my parents were journalist.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
My father was a foreign correspondent in New York, and
so you know, I was born here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
We lived, you know, in.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
London, and we lived in Tokyo for six years, and
I went to an American school. I had this very American,
strangely American upbringing, which was hyper American suburban upbringing in
Tokyo because I went to an international school. All my
friends were American parents were diplomats or my best friend
(15:45):
lived on the Pan American compound, and that was like
the Truman Show. It was behind It was a gated
community with these manicured lawns and culder sacks and little
American bungalows, and you know, we used to you know,
I read the Bobbsey Twins and all sorts of sort
of old American classics, children's classics.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I didn't know that this.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Was bizarre and the real America had changed, but we
were living in this sort of capsule of Americana as
sort of interpreted through Tokyo in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And then my.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Parents decided that the family needed to sort of live
a normal lifestyle, not next pat lifestyle. So they went
back to my mother's home country, which was Australia, and
that was a huge culture shock for us kids, my
sisters and I.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
How old were you, I was ten eleven, and you know,
I just thought of myself as an American kid and here,
you know, speaking Japanese, living this sort of strange international lifestyle.
And then we were in the sort of the sub
verbs of Perth, which is a real outpost in western
(17:04):
Australia and among the sand dunes, and.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So that was that was quite a culture shock. I
remember my mother ushering my sister and I, who were
both very indoor kids living in Tokyo, ushering us out
for a picnic, which we just didn't want to do,
but we immediately encountered all these horrible creatures and came
running back screaming to my mother saying there were dinosaurs
(17:28):
and blue tongues, and you know, there were just lizards
and sort of fauna and flora that we didn't enjoy.
But looking being kids, we adapted. I almost overnight changed
my accent. I remember practicing in bed at night how
to save and not bath, and so transformed overnight and
(17:51):
fit in like a good Aussie.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And my mother, you know, born in a.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Farm in western Australia, very Australian, she was horrorfied by
my accent. She said, Darling, you sound like an Oka,
which is like a redneck.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And I thought, I've done it. I've achieved my goal.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So yeah, yeah, do you feel I mean, do you
think you'd go back to Australia?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Oh yeah, I mean our grown up children are there,
and you know we left only for eighteen months. I
had I lived off.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And on in America a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'd gone to university, as I said, in Northwestern and
worked in Boston, worked in Chicago, I worked in New York.
But then when I went back to Australia, I married
a New Zealander actually, but he was living in Australia.
And so my married life has been in Australia, and
our kids are very rooted in that country, and you know,
(18:53):
we have a house and a dog and the whole thing.
And I only came to the New York Post for
eighteen months to cover the twenty twenty election because it's
sort of an adventure, because our kids had gone off
to university, and because my former editor in Australia, a
fantastic journalist called Cole Allen, was the editor in chief
(19:18):
of the New York Post, and he asked me to
come over, and you know, I thought it would be
fun to cover this momentous election. And so we arrived
sort of midway through twenty nineteen and had about six
normal months in New York, had its best before Boom
(19:39):
the pandemic hit and everything the world changed.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Do you think of
yourself as a New Yorker?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Are you like fully adapted or somewhat. And again, you
were born there, so maybe you've been New Yorker all along.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, I mean I've sort of thought of myself a
little bit as a New Yorker all my life, only
because my father was just such a He grew up
in New Zealand, but he was just such a fan
of America and used to read Jon O'Hara when he
was young. And we're so proud to have a daughter
who was an American and a New Yorker, and so
(20:22):
my parents used to sort of tease me about it
and sort of boost it. So I always had a
great affinity for American and for New York. But I
guess now i'm here, I just I don't feel like that.
I mean, I feel very much, you know, a foreigner,
I guess. But I mean I've felt a foreigner wherever
(20:42):
I lived, because I was in a way. And so
and that's what happens to a lot of kids that
grow up, you know, among a lot of different cultures,
is that there are chameleons and can fit in anywhere,
but also don't really fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So I guess that's the very definition of a globalist.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
What the Trump people won't tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well, So a question I ask all of my guests,
and I think your uniquely positioned to answer it, is
what do you think is our largest cultural or societal
problem in America? And is it solvable? I feel like
you have a unique view.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
I think if you live in America and you know,
you sort of just used you like a frog in
boiling water, you haven't really noticed what's been going on.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
But there's a.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Really peculiar leniency about illegal drug use in this country.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And you can see it just legally.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So many states are now legalizing pot or legalizing other drugs,
and it just has become so normalized. And you know,
I mean, this is the country that carries on about
the evils of having two alcoholic drinks or smoking a
cigarette or vaping, and yet the really harmful substances that
(22:09):
people are ingesting as a matter of course aren't even mentioned.
And and and it's it's odd. I mean, I think
it really is like a multi decade propaganda mission by
a global group of people who for some reason are
into drug liberalization. And this is you know, the World
(22:31):
Health Organization has been doing it there's there's been this
push in.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The medical, you know field, to sort of equate alcohol
with other drugs.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
They've callt alcohol and other drugs, even though one is
a tried and trusted through the centuries legal drug and
the other are illegal and we don't know exactly how
they work on the brain. And the addiction is shoes
with them, and and.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So and and and.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Americans also have this peculiar relationship with pharmaceuticals, you know,
I mean, you watch television, They're a ceremony. Nowhere else
in the world have I ever seen so many drug ads,
and you know that they're just people prancing through meadows
with daffodils and funghine and you know, some awful sounding
(23:26):
drug is going to transform their life, take away their pain,
make them have happy families.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
You know, Americans pop a pill for everything. You know.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
If they're constipated, instead of changing their diet and eating healthily,
they take a constipation pill. You know, if they're fat,
instead of not eating, they take a pill. If they're sad,
they take a pill. Like life's normal realities.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That you you know that that.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
People through the eons have dealt with by changing their
behavior or changing their environment or getting rid of toxic people.
The American culture is to pop a pill, and so
I think that's hand in glove with this illicit drug culture.
And I think it again, is just symptomatic of a
spiritual absence, which is odd because I think America is
(24:21):
the most religious country I've lived in it, certainly in
the West, and you know, people are very overt about
their religiosity, and almost to a fanatical extent in some quarters.
You know, I admire the religious faith that Americans are
(24:44):
happy to exhibit. I like the fact that their churches
and their synagogues in so many places are overflowing, unlike
say in Europe. But by the same token, I think,
you know, for instance, the sort of religious fervor around
Donald Trump just seems to me insane. There really are
(25:05):
people who think that he's the second coming of Jesus
Christ and that Joe Biden is Satan. Now, I like
Donald Trump, and I don't like Joe Biden. I think
Donald Trump was a good president and Joe Biden is
a complete disaster. But I don't I don't see Joe
Biden as Satan, and I don't see Donald Trump as God.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And yet some.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
People do see that, and I think it it sort
of unpicks their brain because they're not making rational decisions
and they're sort of allowing fate to take over because
they think that there's this existential battle. And again, you know,
that's that's sort of the opposite of what I'm saying.
And I think that there's such a schizophrenic attitude in
(25:49):
America towards you know, religion, spirituality.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You've got the.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Real godless crew who are looking for anything to fill
that spiritual gap.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And then you have people at the other.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Extreme who have just you know, allowed their belief in
in in all their religious beliefs to take over their
kind of rational selves.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's funny that if you equate that to the drug thing,
which I get. You know, it's people are looking for something, right,
They're looking for something to make them feel better or
to believe in. But you're right, it takes a lot
more work to you know, make the changes that will
make you feel better instead of like popping a pill
or believing in a politician or you know the rest
(26:39):
of that. Do you feel like you live a public life,
like are you recognized a lot?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I try not to, and I guess you know, the
great thing about New York is that there are so
many people here, and you know, everyone's fairly anonymous. And
there's a there's a pub that a lot of New
York Post people go to that we love, Beach Cafe,
and that's about the only place that I will be recognized.
(27:10):
And I like it that way, you know. I I've
always been thought of myself as a writer. I'm now
I'm on Fox a lot as a contributor. And you
know that that changes things because your face and your
personality and people think they know you and and it
gives you a lot more I guess publicity and a
(27:34):
higher profile, which every journalist or every media but we're
not journalists anymore.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We're media. People's close to crave. I don't crave that
at all. I don't like it.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
And I think it also if you're a writer, if
you're a journalist, you meant to be an observer and
you're meant to be fly on the wall. And I
think that's what I'm best at, or have been in
the past anyway. And I think when you become the story,
you lose that and you lose your ability to write
(28:05):
and to sort of reflect the reality that you see
around you.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, so you had this best selling book, Laptop from Hell.
You obviously have a very exciting and interesting and accomplished career.
Do you feel like you've mete it?
Speaker 3 (28:22):
You know, my instinct is to say, oh, gosh, no,
you know, I would never be so presumptuous just to
say that, But to be honest, I have to say that,
you know, so many items on my bucket list so
far I've achieved, and one was to write a book,
and to have it be a best seller is just fantastic,
(28:44):
And especially on a topic I think so important was suppressed,
censored before the twenty twenty election. And I think you
know that the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, but mainly
what it told us about Joe Biden and his corruption,
I think was a story that should have been known
by the American voter. And so it was a big
(29:05):
thrill to be able to write that and and bring
it to so many people, and so that and then look,
I mean, the most important thing for me, and I
think for all of us is family.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
And my kids.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Are now adults, you know, young adults, and they're fantastic.
We just spent Christmas with them and they're just the
most wonderful human beings. And I think I've made it
because as a mother, because my kids are sort of
there there. I mean, if I died tomorrow, I know
they would be fine.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I don't want to. I want to. I want to
be there for grandkids and marriages and all.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
The wonderful things that come with adult children. But but
I think in terms of making it, you know, I
have a happy marriage and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
A great family, So that's that's I think it's well
about Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Well, I've loved having you on Miranda and here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Thanks Carol. Look, I think probably of all the wisdom
that I've.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Accumulated in my now quite long life, I'd say the
only regrets I've ever had have been saying no to
opportunities because I thought, well, I'm too busy at the moment.
You know, I've got kids, I need to concentrate on them,
et cetera. I think if you just say yes, things
(30:38):
will work out. You'll be able to manage whatever burdens
or time constraints you have. And when you say yes
to one thing, other doors open. There are so many
opportunities out there, so that's my advice. Always say yes
to an opportunity. Don't put it off. It won't come
back again. You always think, yea, it will come back.
(31:01):
It never does. You lose it. Other opportunities will come up.
It's not the end of the world, but I think
just always say yes, put your hand up.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Life's for living.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Thank you so much. That was really great Miranda Devine.
Her book is Laptop from Hell. Check it out. You
are fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Thanks so much, Carol. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Last week I talked about men putting off parenthood and
delaying having real relationships, but of course it's not just
men who do this. In twenty twenty two, the average
age for an American woman having her first child hit
thirty for the first time. In the never ending mommy
(00:23):
wars of our time, one of the ongoing battles is
the ideal age of motherhood. The shots are usually lobbed
at older moms. They put off having babies because they
wanted to focus on their careers. Goes this assumption, and
now they're quote granny moms who lack the energy to
deal with children. I recently reread a Molly Finn piece
(00:46):
in The Wall Street Journal from a few years ago
that fired in the other direction. She argued that being
an older mother is better than being a younger mother,
despite the fact that she is indeed sometimes mistaken for
the child's grand tongue in cheek. Thinn called older or
geriatric mothers Jerry's and says they're better than younger mothers
(01:07):
because they're tanned, rested, and ready for motherhood in a
way younger mothers just aren't, she writes. Quote what about
the stamina needed to keep up with a child, you ask,
But we Jerries have the advantage of not being regularly
hungover from youthful self indulgence. We have only three apps
on our iPhones, and we waited a long time for children.
(01:28):
We're energized, focused, and almost always happy to see our kids. Also,
we have watched younger folks make mistakes and learn how
to conserve energy.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I have no quarrel with people who have kids later
in life. I myself am what used to be considered
an older mother, though, of course, as the average age
of motherhood moves ever upward, my ages of thirty two,
thirty five, and thirty eight at the time of the
births of my children don't seem quite so ancient. But
if there was a way to redo everything, my idea
(02:00):
would have been to have children much earlier. My husband
and I knew each other for a decade before we
started dating, and that's like a lot of lost and
wasted time. I used to say he was the Jerry
to my Elaine, really minus the romantic beginning. Because Jerry
and Elaine dated first, we were just friends. You know,
(02:20):
together all the time, platonically for a long long time.
In my rewrite of this history, we would have gotten
together in our twenties and our kids would be heading
to college right now. Older parenthood is hard, even as
Finn notes, you know fewer hangovers. Maybe older parenthood takes
its toll in so many ways. It's harder to lose
(02:40):
the baby weight. You don't look a little tired when
you don't get enough sleep, you look like the crypt keeper.
It's harder to chase around babies you know, who are
intent on plunging headfirst into everything. And you know the
lament from a young person putting off parenthood who says,
I just want to live my life first, explore the world,
do things. The shocking truth that's unknown to twenty somethings,
(03:02):
including myself at that age, is that there really is
no time when you don't want to live your life.
I'm in my forties and I still want to do
all those things that people consider living their lives. I
want to go out to dinner, meet new people, travel.
My husband and I have been incredibly lucky that our
children have involved grandparents. We have an amazing situation that
(03:25):
we get to do all of that. But the older
you are when you have kids, the older your parents are,
and the less ability they will have to help. There's
this idea that there comes a point in your life
when everything can pause for a bit, as you take
time off to have a baby, secure in your finances
and the knowledge that your career will pick right up
where left off. And it doesn't really work like that
(03:48):
for women or for men. At the start of your career,
you're new and mostly expendable. As you climb your career ladder,
you take on more responsibilities, making it harder all the
time to step away. And that's the thing about having kids.
There's no right or wrong time to have them. Are
you ready for a baby? No, No one actually is.
(04:10):
And the truth is you're still allowed to do, you know,
the things that we call bucket list, but now we
refer to bucket list even not kicking the bucket, but
having a baby. You're still allowed to go bungee jumping,
or procrastinate on writing that novel you swear you're going
to write after the babies arrive. There's no rule that
says you have to own your own home or have
(04:32):
made partner at your firm and You can have all
the money and still be a terrible parent, or have
very little of it and win at parenthood daily. Aim
for the parenthood winning, and let the rest fall into place.
The other problem with putting off parenthood, of course, is
that baby making is more art than science. In general,
a lot has to go right for a baby to
(04:54):
be produced. You have to meet the right person, you
have to be fertile, they have to be fertile, and
even then, and there's no guarantee everything will work as
it should. So much of life is luck, and meeting
the right person is a huge part of that. Putting
off kids because you haven't met the right person makes sense.
Putting off kids because being an older parent is better
(05:16):
is foolishness. Coming up next, an interview with Miranda Divine.
Join us after the break. Hi, and welcome back to
the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is
Miranda Divine, columnist at the New York Post and author
of the best selling book Laptop from Hell. Thank you
(05:38):
so much for coming on, Miranda.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Great to be with you, Carol.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So I have an admission to make to you, and
I remember the very first time I read you, I
just looked it up. It was twenty nineteen. It was
your third piece at the Post, and you wrote about
how marijuana was a really big deal and that it
came with mental health risks for some people, and that
it was becoming a pro problem in New York. And
(06:01):
I remember reading it and being like, I disagree with
all of this. This is crazy. Who is this person?
I remember being like, this is so square. And of
course I've come around to most of what you've most
of what you wrote there. So how does it feel?
Do you get that a lot? Like people are saying
you're right?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
That's so interesting? Yeah, Look, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Sometimes I guess people don't really like to admit that,
and you know, I'm.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Often wrong myself.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
But the drugs thing is something that I've been writing
about for, you know, more than twenty years. I was
a police reporter early on, and I just saw the
detrimental effect that drugs had, particularly on people at the
bottom of the ladder, and you know, kids who grew
(06:49):
up with addicted parents. And you know, if there was
one thing I could do to wave a magic wand
to cure a lot of the ills that plague Western societies,
it would be to just ban get rid of illicit
drug use. And I think it's you know, I mean
when I was young, I was just as susceptible to
(07:10):
the sort of pop culture ideas about legal drugs. You know,
I joined some stupid, you know, marijuana legalization party when
I was at university.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, it was cool. But when you actually look.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
At the scientific studies that have been done, particularly on marijuana,
which you're seen as such a particularly in America, seen
as such a benign drug, and you see that the
very large risks of psychosis. You know, once your brain
has become psychotic, has had a psychotic episode, it's more
(07:47):
prone to them for the rest of your life, and
that begins the descent into insanity. And you see it
all around you in the streets of New York and
other big American cities, with homeless people who are homeless
because they're mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Yeah. I think you also you predicted in that piece
what ended up happening in New York was that the
full legalization has made it so the whole entire city
smells like weed now. And you know, people say, oh,
it was always like that, No, it wasn't. I grew
up in New York.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
No, it was not.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
You know, people used to be covert about smoking. Now
it's out in the open. I think also, New York
is the only city where you're allowed to do that.
All the other kind of hippie cities who legalized it,
which legalized it, didn't legalize it to smoke in the
street anywhere you wanted. And I think New York is
the only place that's okay. So I think that piece
(08:42):
was really I went back and I read it, and
it's really interesting. You know, how much I've learned in
just a few years, but how right you were about
where New York was heading with that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's interesting that you say that. I mean, why did
you change your mind?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Was it just because you saw that hails and disorder
in New York over the years.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yes, I think I had that impression, like you said,
where look, I you know, I used to be a pothead.
I you know, was very much into the idea that
if we just legalized that everybody would be able to
use it, you know, kind of the way that we
have a drink and it wouldn't be just a problem.
(09:24):
And I think that what we've seen, and you're right
about the psychosis stuff too. I think that there's a
lot of research that has come out in the last
few years that does make the link between serious marijuana
use and psychosis and people who maybe were susceptible to
it already. But I just think New York I've seen
such a downward spiral. And one of the things is,
(09:47):
you know, I remember when we still lived in Brooklyn
walking by somebody smoking a joint in park Slope, like,
you know, eight thirty am as I'm taking my kids
to school, and if we saw somebody, you know, having
a drink on the corner at eight thirty, we would
register that that's a problem. But because it's weed, it's
sort of like, okay.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It's really odd in America, I think it's a hangover
from Prohibition. I went to university at Northwestern in Chicago,
actually in Evanston, a little bit north of the city,
and that was the home of the Christian Women's Temperance League,
and really, you know, one of the early sources of prohibition,
(10:25):
I think. And it's still a dry town. I mean,
it's a university town, but it's a dry town. You
couldn't get a drink. That was very hard for me
to wrap my head around that coming from Australia to
Chicago and realizing that, you know, we had to go
a long way to get a drink. But there's still
this attitude, I mean, which is good I think. I know,
(10:46):
in Australia and Britain, binge drinking, especially among young men,
is a real problem and causes a lot of violence
and mayhem, and so it's kind of a good thing
that people don't get in America with drinking so much.
I mean, you can go to a Broadway show and
they will give you a glass of wine which is
(11:07):
like as big as a bucket, and you can have
as many as you like, and people are not brawling
in the aisles at intermission, which would happen if you
had a lot of hard drinking cultures. And so I
mean that's kind of a good thing, but I think
it's gone way over the top. I mean, the fact
that the drinking age is twenty one for young people.
(11:31):
I know from my own kids who came to America
on various sporting excursions when they were at school, that
you know what that meant was that rather than underage drinking,
which occurs in Australia and England and places which is
really I think, fine, it's just experimental drinking with a
legal substance in America because it's harder to get a
(11:55):
drink kids, So I smoking marijuana at school, and that's
that's a much more problematic issue because you know, alcohol
is illegal, and therefore you haven't broken that kind of wall.
A child hasn't broken that wall. That's well, I'm taking
an illegal substance. What's the difference if I take a
different one, like you know, okay or heroin or you know,
(12:18):
meth or whatever. And I know that. You know, for
so many years we've been told about the reefer madness.
Don't say no drugs, Nancy Pelosi, you know, craziness and yeah,
sorry Nancy, the.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Opposite, yeah, Nancy Reagan. And you know, so it's really
uncool to be anti drugs, especially.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
If you're from that generation that grew up with chitch
and chong and a lot of you know, the cool
or at least in the aftermath of that cool nineteen
sixties nineteen seventies psychedelic era where drugs, you know, that
was that was sort of the thing that our elders
were doing. And so by the time the next generation
(13:01):
came of age. It was completely normal and it was
part you know, hooked into music and celebrity and anything
you wanted to do. And so we've had I guess
forty years of its normalization of drug use and coolification
of it, and and I think it's been really detrimental
(13:24):
to mental health and and you know, I mean just
to the culture.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
You know, po pot.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I know from my own misspent youth, it just SAPs
you of energy and enterprise. It's the most loser drug
you could ever think of, and it has the cash
day as being just so safe, zen and hip and safe,
and so you know, I don't know. I just think
(13:54):
alcohol is bad. It has problems, but it's been with
us for a long time. Humans are going to need
some sort of mind altering drug. We chose long ago
that it be alcohol, and it's relatively safe. And I
think we'd be better off just focusing on having fun
(14:14):
with the one legal drug rather than trying to supplement
it with all sorts of other crazy drugs, because there'll
always be something new. And we now see fentanal the
ultimate expression of optimizing illegal drugs, and it's just you know,
it's lethal.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
So I mentioned that that piece was from twenty nineteen.
I think that's around when you moved from Australia to
New York, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yep, that's right, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
So we talk a lot on this show about people
moving because you know, as you know, there's been this
migration in America over the COVID years, but you made
an international move and you did it before COVID. So
how's that been for you?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
It's been great and weird because of COVID, I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
And you know, I was actually born in Jamaica, Queens,
so really kind of a native born in New York
or my accent doesn't doesn't tell you that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And my parents were journalist.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
My father was a foreign correspondent in New York, and
so you know, I was born here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
We lived, you know, in.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
London, and we lived in Tokyo for six years, and
I went to an American school. I had this very American,
strangely American upbringing, which was hyper American suburban upbringing in
Tokyo because I went to an international school. All my
friends were American parents were diplomats or my best friend
(15:45):
lived on the Pan American compound, and that was like
the Truman Show. It was behind It was a gated
community with these manicured lawns and culder sacks and little
American bungalows, and you know, we used to you know,
I read the Bobbsey Twins and all sorts of sort
of old American classics, children's classics.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I didn't know that this.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Was bizarre and the real America had changed, but we
were living in this sort of capsule of Americana as
sort of interpreted through Tokyo in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
And then my.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Parents decided that the family needed to sort of live
a normal lifestyle, not next pat lifestyle. So they went
back to my mother's home country, which was Australia, and
that was a huge culture shock for us kids, my
sisters and I.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
How old were you, I was ten eleven, and you know,
I just thought of myself as an American kid and here,
you know, speaking Japanese, living this sort of strange international lifestyle.
And then we were in the sort of the sub
verbs of Perth, which is a real outpost in western
(17:04):
Australia and among the sand dunes, and.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
So that was that was quite a culture shock. I
remember my mother ushering my sister and I, who were
both very indoor kids living in Tokyo, ushering us out
for a picnic, which we just didn't want to do,
but we immediately encountered all these horrible creatures and came
running back screaming to my mother saying there were dinosaurs
(17:28):
and blue tongues, and you know, there were just lizards
and sort of fauna and flora that we didn't enjoy.
But looking being kids, we adapted. I almost overnight changed
my accent. I remember practicing in bed at night how
to save and not bath, and so transformed overnight and
(17:51):
fit in like a good Aussie.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And my mother, you know, born in a.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Farm in western Australia, very Australian, she was horrorfied by
my accent. She said, Darling, you sound like an Oka,
which is like a redneck.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And I thought, I've done it. I've achieved my goal.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So yeah, yeah, do you feel I mean, do you
think you'd go back to Australia?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Oh yeah, I mean our grown up children are there,
and you know we left only for eighteen months. I
had I lived off.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And on in America a lot.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
I'd gone to university, as I said, in Northwestern and
worked in Boston, worked in Chicago, I worked in New York.
But then when I went back to Australia, I married
a New Zealander actually, but he was living in Australia.
And so my married life has been in Australia, and
our kids are very rooted in that country, and you know,
(18:53):
we have a house and a dog and the whole thing.
And I only came to the New York Post for
eighteen months to cover the twenty twenty election because it's
sort of an adventure, because our kids had gone off
to university, and because my former editor in Australia, a
fantastic journalist called Cole Allen, was the editor in chief
(19:18):
of the New York Post, and he asked me to
come over, and you know, I thought it would be
fun to cover this momentous election. And so we arrived
sort of midway through twenty nineteen and had about six
normal months in New York, had its best before Boom
(19:39):
the pandemic hit and everything the world changed.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Do you think of
yourself as a New Yorker?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Are you like fully adapted or somewhat. And again, you
were born there, so maybe you've been New Yorker all along.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, I mean I've sort of thought of myself a
little bit as a New Yorker all my life, only
because my father was just such a He grew up
in New Zealand, but he was just such a fan
of America and used to read Jon O'Hara when he
was young. And we're so proud to have a daughter
who was an American and a New Yorker, and so
(20:22):
my parents used to sort of tease me about it
and sort of boost it. So I always had a
great affinity for American and for New York. But I
guess now i'm here, I just I don't feel like that.
I mean, I feel very much, you know, a foreigner,
I guess. But I mean I've felt a foreigner wherever
(20:42):
I lived, because I was in a way. And so
and that's what happens to a lot of kids that
grow up, you know, among a lot of different cultures,
is that there are chameleons and can fit in anywhere,
but also don't really fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So I guess that's the very definition of a globalist.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
What the Trump people won't tell anyone.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well, So a question I ask all of my guests,
and I think your uniquely positioned to answer it, is
what do you think is our largest cultural or societal
problem in America? And is it solvable? I feel like
you have a unique view.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
I think if you live in America and you know,
you sort of just used you like a frog in
boiling water, you haven't really noticed what's been going on.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
But there's a.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Really peculiar leniency about illegal drug use in this country.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And you can see it just legally.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
So many states are now legalizing pot or legalizing other drugs,
and it just has become so normalized. And you know,
I mean, this is the country that carries on about
the evils of having two alcoholic drinks or smoking a
cigarette or vaping, and yet the really harmful substances that
(22:09):
people are ingesting as a matter of course aren't even mentioned.
And and and it's it's odd. I mean, I think
it really is like a multi decade propaganda mission by
a global group of people who for some reason are
into drug liberalization. And this is you know, the World
(22:31):
Health Organization has been doing it there's there's been this
push in.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
The medical, you know field, to sort of equate alcohol
with other drugs.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
They've callt alcohol and other drugs, even though one is
a tried and trusted through the centuries legal drug and
the other are illegal and we don't know exactly how
they work on the brain. And the addiction is shoes
with them, and and.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So and and and.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Americans also have this peculiar relationship with pharmaceuticals, you know,
I mean, you watch television, They're a ceremony. Nowhere else
in the world have I ever seen so many drug ads,
and you know that they're just people prancing through meadows
with daffodils and funghine and you know, some awful sounding
(23:26):
drug is going to transform their life, take away their pain,
make them have happy families.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
You know, Americans pop a pill for everything. You know.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
If they're constipated, instead of changing their diet and eating healthily,
they take a constipation pill. You know, if they're fat,
instead of not eating, they take a pill. If they're sad,
they take a pill. Like life's normal realities.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That you you know that that.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
People through the eons have dealt with by changing their
behavior or changing their environment or getting rid of toxic people.
The American culture is to pop a pill, and so
I think that's hand in glove with this illicit drug culture.
And I think it again, is just symptomatic of a
spiritual absence, which is odd because I think America is
(24:21):
the most religious country I've lived in it, certainly in
the West, and you know, people are very overt about
their religiosity, and almost to a fanatical extent in some quarters.
You know, I admire the religious faith that Americans are
(24:44):
happy to exhibit. I like the fact that their churches
and their synagogues in so many places are overflowing, unlike
say in Europe. But by the same token, I think,
you know, for instance, the sort of religious fervor around
Donald Trump just seems to me insane. There really are
(25:05):
people who think that he's the second coming of Jesus
Christ and that Joe Biden is Satan. Now, I like
Donald Trump, and I don't like Joe Biden. I think
Donald Trump was a good president and Joe Biden is
a complete disaster. But I don't I don't see Joe
Biden as Satan, and I don't see Donald Trump as God.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And yet some.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
People do see that, and I think it it sort
of unpicks their brain because they're not making rational decisions
and they're sort of allowing fate to take over because
they think that there's this existential battle. And again, you know,
that's that's sort of the opposite of what I'm saying.
And I think that there's such a schizophrenic attitude in
(25:49):
America towards you know, religion, spirituality.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
You've got the.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Real godless crew who are looking for anything to fill
that spiritual gap.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
And then you have people at the other.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Extreme who have just you know, allowed their belief in
in in all their religious beliefs to take over their
kind of rational selves.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's funny that if you equate that to the drug thing,
which I get. You know, it's people are looking for something, right,
They're looking for something to make them feel better or
to believe in. But you're right, it takes a lot
more work to you know, make the changes that will
make you feel better instead of like popping a pill
or believing in a politician or you know the rest
(26:39):
of that. Do you feel like you live a public life,
like are you recognized a lot?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
I try not to, and I guess you know, the
great thing about New York is that there are so
many people here, and you know, everyone's fairly anonymous. And
there's a there's a pub that a lot of New
York Post people go to that we love, Beach Cafe,
and that's about the only place that I will be recognized.
(27:10):
And I like it that way, you know. I I've
always been thought of myself as a writer. I'm now
I'm on Fox a lot as a contributor. And you
know that that changes things because your face and your
personality and people think they know you and and it
gives you a lot more I guess publicity and a
(27:34):
higher profile, which every journalist or every media but we're
not journalists anymore.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
We're media. People's close to crave. I don't crave that
at all. I don't like it.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
And I think it also if you're a writer, if
you're a journalist, you meant to be an observer and
you're meant to be fly on the wall. And I
think that's what I'm best at, or have been in
the past anyway. And I think when you become the story,
you lose that and you lose your ability to write
(28:05):
and to sort of reflect the reality that you see
around you.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, so you had this best selling book, Laptop from Hell.
You obviously have a very exciting and interesting and accomplished career.
Do you feel like you've mete it?
Speaker 3 (28:22):
You know, my instinct is to say, oh, gosh, no,
you know, I would never be so presumptuous just to
say that, But to be honest, I have to say that,
you know, so many items on my bucket list so
far I've achieved, and one was to write a book,
and to have it be a best seller is just fantastic,
(28:44):
And especially on a topic I think so important was suppressed,
censored before the twenty twenty election. And I think you
know that the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, but mainly
what it told us about Joe Biden and his corruption,
I think was a story that should have been known
by the American voter. And so it was a big
(29:05):
thrill to be able to write that and and bring
it to so many people, and so that and then look,
I mean, the most important thing for me, and I
think for all of us is family.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
And my kids.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Are now adults, you know, young adults, and they're fantastic.
We just spent Christmas with them and they're just the
most wonderful human beings. And I think I've made it
because as a mother, because my kids are sort of
there there. I mean, if I died tomorrow, I know
they would be fine.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I don't want to. I want to. I want to
be there for grandkids and marriages and all.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
The wonderful things that come with adult children. But but
I think in terms of making it, you know, I
have a happy marriage and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
A great family, So that's that's I think it's well
about Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Well, I've loved having you on Miranda and here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Thanks Carol. Look, I think probably of all the wisdom
that I've.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Accumulated in my now quite long life, I'd say the
only regrets I've ever had have been saying no to
opportunities because I thought, well, I'm too busy at the moment.
You know, I've got kids, I need to concentrate on them,
et cetera. I think if you just say yes, things
(30:38):
will work out. You'll be able to manage whatever burdens
or time constraints you have. And when you say yes
to one thing, other doors open. There are so many
opportunities out there, so that's my advice. Always say yes
to an opportunity. Don't put it off. It won't come
back again. You always think, yea, it will come back.
(31:01):
It never does. You lose it. Other opportunities will come up.
It's not the end of the world, but I think
just always say yes, put your hand up.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Life's for living.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Thank you so much. That was really great Miranda Devine.
Her book is Laptop from Hell. Check it out. You
are fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Thanks so much, Carol. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
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