In this episode, Karol and 'Normally Podcast' co-host Mary Katharine Ham share heartfelt, values-based advice for a widower navigating late-in-life dating and the complexities of blended families. Later, author Gregg Easterbrook joins to challenge the media’s culture of doom, making the case that—despite constant negativity—the world is improving. He warns of the real threats posed by unchecked government spending and nuclear proliferation, while calling for fiscal discipline, arms control, and principled leadership. This conversation weaves together practical life guidance and a conservative outlook on optimism, honesty, and America’s future. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexto Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday
Sponsors
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Markwitz Show on iHeartRadio.
My special guest today for the short segment where I
answer listener questions is my friend and co host of Normally,
Mary Katherine Ham. Hi, Mary Katherine. It's so nice to
have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So we're going to do a quick question answer for
a listener who wrote in. I like this question because
it really does hit on some issues that I talk
about a lot. The question is, Hi, Carol, I've been
following you since the Alarming News days. By the way,
side note, Alarming News was my old blog. It's how
(00:40):
I got into the media world, and so this person
has been following me for many, many years, like twenty.
Thank you so much for that. I'm sixty one years
old and my wife died of cancer ten years ago.
We have three grown children. I only started dating again
about a year ago, and I'm seeing a woman in
her early forties. I wasn't looking for I'm one so
(01:00):
much younger, but we met through mutual friends and hit
it off. The problem is she wants children of her own,
and I feel finished with that part of my life.
Sometimes I think I should just have a child with her,
but the idea of a thirty year age gap with
my other children feels ridiculous. I don't want to lose her,
but also don't want to waste her time. I feel
like I need a woman's advice and I trust you well,
(01:23):
thank you for that. I don't know what do you
think about that, Mary Catherine.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, here's what I think is that congrats by the way,
for finding love again. And that's exciting, and given that
it sounds like a healthy relationship, I think you guys
need to have a very frank discussion about this because
time is of the essence.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Time is a ticket, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
For both of you, frankly, particularly for her. If she
really wants this, it would be need to it would
need to be acted upon quickly, and for you, which
I think. Look, I'm an older mom and I understand
and taking that I sort of restarted the clock on
myself as well. And it can be challenging because you
do have less energy and you do have you feel
(02:08):
like the challenge is sometimes hurt your health more or
you lose more sleep or whatever it is right when
you're dealing with young children. So that's something to consider.
So for both of you, the clock is ticking in
a way. Yeah, so you've got to have that honest
conversation now because you really don't want to end up
in a place where she feels like her time did
(02:28):
get wasted.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Right, That's exactly where I am on this. I think
that it's very important not to waste her time. So
you need to make a decision, and you need to say,
do I care about that age spread between my older
kids and potential new baby. Do I want this woman
in my life? Do I need her in my life?
Will I care about losing her if I can't give
(02:51):
her what she wants? I will say, you know, a
lot of people focus on the age or the mom,
but my husband always makes this point that having kids
as a young man's game, it's not that easy for
the dads either, you know, and for every and I
know if you listen to my show you've heard me
say this, But everybody who's always like, well, Mick Jagger
had a baby at seventy five, like you are not
(03:11):
mc jagger, and you will not have a team, You
will not have a squad taking care of your kids.
It'll be you with your kid in the backyard. So
figure out how important it is to you and then
follow Mary Catherine's advice and you know, make the decision
together obviously, but first figure out where you want to
(03:33):
go on this.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, And I would note he uses the word ridiculous
is the thing that he uses to characterize this age gap,
which yes, is out of the ordinary, But ridiculous isn't
that strong a word, And it indicates that his concern
is how it would be viewed exactly, not how it
would feel to have the kid. And I guarantee you
(03:54):
that having a beautiful kid is probably going to override ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I also noticed ridiculous. I feel like you're absolutely
right that word is for the outword world, how it
would look to other people and what they would think
of him, Like, oh, but nobody's thinking of anybody. That's
the other thing. It's like we think that people are
judging us or thinking about what we're are, the choices
that we make or what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They're not.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
They're thinking about themselves and how you're thinking about them
and something that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I really liked this question because I think this guy
has an opportunity at a second love, second life and
all of that, and I kind of hope. He takes it.
Understand that there's concerns about the age, and I understand
that you have grown kids who I don't know, he
(04:46):
doesn't say it in the question, but might not love it.
I don't know, but it might really breathe a new
sense of purpose into your life and you might find
that that's what you needed. But very specifically, I talk
about women wasting their time with guys that can't give
them what they want. So if that's you, I would,
(05:10):
more than anything else say cut her free. If it's
not for you.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, he's clearly thinking about it seriously, and he needs
to think about it seriously quickly.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Absolutely. Thank you for joining me on the Carol Markowitz Show.
She is Mary Katherine Ham. She is fantastic. Check us
on normally watch her on Fox News. Thank you so much,
Mary Catherine.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Thank you coming up my interview with Greg Easterbrook. But first,
it was nearly two years ago the terrorists murdered more
than twelve hundred innocent Israelis and took two hundred and
fifty people hostage. Today, it seems as if the cries
of the dead and dying have been drowned out by
shouts of anti Semitic hatred and the most brutal attack
(05:52):
on Jewish people since the Holocaust has been forgotten. Yet
as the world looks away, a light shines in the darkness.
It's a movement of love and support for the people
of Israel called Flags of Fellowship, and it's organized by
the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And on October fifth,
just a few weeks away, millions across America will prayerfully
(06:14):
plant an Israeli flag and honor and solidarity with the
victims of October seventh, twenty twenty three and their grieving families.
And now you can be part of this movement too.
To get more information about how you can join the
Flags of Fellowship movement, visit the Fellowship online at IFCJ
dot org. That's IFCJ dot org.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Greg Easterbrook. Greg is the author of
fourteen books, including It's Better Than It Looks, which shows
the condition of the world is steadily improving. Also has
a weekly substack at All Predictions Wrong. So nice to
have you on, Greg.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Thanks Carol, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So you have fourteen books, and your most recent one
is about how things aren't as bad as as they
may seem. How did you come up with that?
Speaker 5 (07:11):
I've actually been writing about that topic for several decades.
If you looked at social statistics about the United States,
trends in violence and pollution, longevity, discrimination, things that you
can measure objectively. In most cases, they started improving around
(07:32):
the time that I was born, which was sadly long ago.
But they've improved a lot in the last thirty years.
Of course, I'm not arguing that things are fine. There's
a lot of improvement and reform needed. But we have
so much less pollution in the United States than we
used to, so much less discrimination, most rates and incidents
of diseases during.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Long term decline.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Longevity has increased every year except the COVID year, and
we've always our material prosperity has increased. Per capita income,
if you stated in current dollars, per capita income has
gotten steadily higher, including in the middle class. You hear
people say, oh, the middle class is being hollowed up.
(08:15):
The middle class lives significantly better today than it did
a generation to go, and those are unfashionable ideas An
interviewer once asked me what people react to negatively in
my writing, and I said, what I say that makes
people angry is I'm an optimist. For some reason, this
(08:36):
makes people angry, especially in the New York City environment
that you just put. The only thing that's politically correct
is to feel despair and anxiety. The world is ending.
And if you say no, actually, things are getting better
and yeah we need reform, but in the main a
lot better off than we used to be, that makes
(08:56):
people angry.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Weirdly enough, it makes you unpopular.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
In my case, my popularity has been fine, but I
certainly wouldn't be welcome at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Why do you think people imagine that their lives are
worse and the world is worse. Why do they think
things are worse than ever before?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
There's a couple of reasons.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Human beings are prone to self pity, and saying, oh,
I'll never live as well as my grandparents did is
a form of self pity, even if your grandparents would
change places with you in a heartbeat, if only to
get modern health care. People are prone to self pity,
mythologize the past and think it was much better than
(09:39):
it was. You asked me, whoa boy the past things
everybody had it so good. Well, yeah, to think about
the nineteen fifties. Think about the nineteen fifties when blacks
couldn't ride buses and you could be thrown in jail
for being gay, and prosperity again in current dollars was
but twenty percent of what it is today. You really
like to go back and live in that time. But
(10:01):
people's knowledge is knowledge of the past. Even the recent
past is.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Is slight colored glasses.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Yeah, it's rose colored glasses. And it's also the relentless
negativism of the mainstream media and the two political parties.
And Trump is as guilty as this as the Democrats are.
You remember Trump's American carnage speech and the day you
said American carnage crime had fallen for like twenty years
in a row. The Democratic Party, in all of its
recent presidential elections, has tried to talk America down, down, down,
(10:31):
so bad, so awful, so racist, so sexist, And you
going on the street and you see racism and sexism
were infraction.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Of what they once were.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
But the elites don't want to say that. The elites
think scaring you brings them more money and power, And
sadly they're right about that. Scaring you does bring them
more money in power. So we get this endless diet
of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So what could be done? How do you get the
message out that things are getting better all the time.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
Well, I've long said my one ament is it long
if you and I started a publication called Consensus today,
nobody would buy it because what they're buying is scare tactics.
You've got to say, if you're thinking simply in terms
of the free market, the free market seems to like
scare tactics. That's what it's willing to pay for. These
(11:18):
news channels that people tune in are the channels that
present scare tactics.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
You don't have to you don't have.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
To watch CNN or Fox News in PBS and watch
a classical music concert.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's not what you do.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
What you do is you watch the channels that are
selling scare tactics. And the same is true with publishers
and many others. That people have to stop being eager
customers for the doomsday view if they want the behavior
of the media, especially to change.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Did you get into writing, did you always want to
be a writer.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I did.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
I'm relatively rare. It was my youthful ambition. I'm relatively
rare and someone who's actually accomplished as youthful ambition. We
could talk about that more in a second, but yes,
I always wanted to be a writer, and I'm glad
I did it.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So do most people not succeed in their youthful ambitions?
I guess is the follow up to that, because you know,
I always wanted to be a writer too. My parents said,
don't be crazy. Nobody's a writer. You know, they were
immigrants from the Soviet Union. They definitely didn't want a
starving artists child. Were your parents supportive and what do
you mean by you know, the youthful ambition part?
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Well, my parents were kind of neutral in this because
I put myself through college. I always looked after myself.
My parents were fine, loving people, but they kind of
had nothing to do with my career choices. I think
you can find an awful lot of people who and
you say, I want to be a great musician, I
want to be a ball arena and they ended up
(12:48):
working in Starbucks. And I'm glad that my youthful ambition
was realized at least at some level. I'm actually still
working on it, but because I have some unpublic just
but good luck getting fourteen books out right.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I have one and I'm done, I think.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Right well, I have two completed books that are not
published yet and that I'm arguing them publishers about. So
I'm far from finished with this quest.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Is there a theme through your fourteen books?
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I gotta say, Carol, I've bounced all over the map.
I've written some books that are serious public policy analysis.
I wrote a book about Christian theology. I've written published
three literary novels and numbers four and five are coming.
And to put our kids through college, I wrote about sports.
(13:38):
So my agent has been telling me our entire time
together that the way you make money as an author
is to pick one subject and write about it fennerlessly,
And I'm sure he's right about that. But I've written
about whatever's on my mind and done okay. And it
keeps your brain fresh when you write about what's on
(14:00):
your mind that day.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely yeah. And I hate that. I hate the pick
a lane and just just think about this all the
time and write about this and this is your you know,
this is what you do, and this is what people
know you. As you know, people are multifaceted. They have
all kinds of things that they want to say to
the world. And yeah, I'm glad you're not following that
advice to pick a lane and just do one thing.
(14:23):
Do you have something that you wish you had written
about but didn't feel like it was your lane?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
No?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Actually no, everything that I've every topic that I've chosen
was my choice and I've been happy with. Like I said,
I have two books that are done and not yet published.
So in men's frustration over that, but those books say
what I want them to say, and that part of
my career has worked out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So if it hadn't worked out, if your childhood ambition
hadn't come to fruition, what would have been the plan.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Be I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
I never I admire the profession engineering, law, medicine. I
never felt drawn to them when I was young, especially
when I was trying to save money to get back
into college. I work as a bus driver and a
used car salesman. I'm glad I'm not a bus driver
or a used car salesman today, but I'm very proud
(15:18):
to say that I'm a Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. You have to be elected to that.
And when you go to their website and look at
these tremendously accomplished people who have chairs at Ivy League
universities and have won great prizes all around the world,
then you look at my bio. I'm self employed, was
(15:39):
a bus driver and a used car salesman. But I'm
actually kind of proud of that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's it's unusual and it
got you to where you are. I feel like and
more than ever, people are recognizing that things like that,
having jobs like that are actually super helpful in other
fields that we don't want people to have no life
experience at all. I can think of a handful of
politicians that that would describe, you know, taking that path
(16:08):
and you know, going from the no life experience at
all to either being in charge of us or or
telling us what we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
More coming up with Greg Easterbrook. But first war is everywhere.
Debt continues to skyrocket, and the dollar is losing purchasing power.
The value of the dollar is falling fast. That's why
more people are converting their IRA or four O one
K to a gold and silver IRA to protect their
retirement savings. In twenty twenty five, both gold and silver
(16:39):
have risen an impressive twenty nine percent, and many experts
project even bigger gains ahead. Convert some of your IRA,
not new money, the savings you already have to a
gold and silver IRA with Leeer Capital. Call eight hundred
seven eight six eight five zero zero for your free gold,
(16:59):
got an IRA transfer kit and with a qualified purchase,
get up to fifteen thousand dollars in bonus gold or
silver deposited directly into your precious metals IRA. Leear Capital,
the nation's leader in precious metals for twenty eight years.
Call today eight hundred seven eight six eighty five hundred.
(17:20):
That's eight hundred seven eight six eighty five hundred eight
hundred seven eight six eight five zero zero. Keep in
mind that any investment has a certain amount of risk
associated with it, and you should only invest if you
can afford to bear the risk of loss. Before making
investment decisions, you should carefully consider and review all risks involved.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I worry, Carol, I have two words.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
I have a national worry for the United States and
an international worry for the world. My national worry for
the United States is our debt cycle. I think you
know that debt is a gloomy topic, and people say, well, look,
we've been borrowing money hand over fifth nothing's gone wrong. Yeah,
but where's it going to leave. The shocking statistic is
(18:12):
that the United States, again, if you adjust the current dollars,
the United States is borrowed and we're money in the
last fifteen years that it borrowed in the previous two
hundred and twenty five years combined, two hundred and forty
five years, I guess, and thirty five years combined. That's
the right number. Boy, it's amazing how much money we've borrowed.
(18:32):
We've gotten away with it so far. It's not gonna last.
It's not sustainable. There's going to be a reckoning for
all that borrowing.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And with the exception of.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
The COVID year, the borrowing has occurred when things were
basically normal, right, The economy was outputting pretty good, when
people unemployment was low. In other words, it wasn't an emergency.
And we've borrowed money anyway, and it's not going to last. Forever,
and we're not going to be happy.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
When it ends.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I'm very afraid of that issue because I feel like
we've lost that argument. I also, I care very much
about our spending and are borrowing and all of that,
and I just feel like there's nobody to argue with anymore.
There's nobody to tell that to anymore. Even people on
the right who used to kind of agree with me,
just it doesn't matter anymore. And Culter described national debt
(19:21):
as the similar to what the left does on climate change, like, oh,
it's going to be real bad any minute now. It's
going to be real bad any minute now. A good point, Yeah,
but how do we convey to people what it will
actually be like?
Speaker 5 (19:37):
But nobody wants to deal with this, and the pressure
points are coming on Social Security and Medicare. Social Security
runs out of money in twenty thirty three, the day
before this happens. Everyone in Congress will say they were
never warned and had no way of knowing at the
very least soci Security, Medicare. Each year that we put
off reform, the problem gets worse. Right with it now,
(20:01):
it'll be better, less bad than if we deal with it.
At three o'clock in the morning and in twenty thirty three,
which is how Congress is going to do.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
How they're going to do it, right, we can make
that prediction right here, right now. That's how it's going
to be. I had some hope that Elon I really,
I know maybe it sounds naive, but Elon Musk gave
me some hope that there was going to be actual changes,
and him being so despondent and disappointed in our government
showed me that nothing is going to change.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
That's because even the right wing wouldn't support him.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Right the right wing in the House of Representatives is
not in any way serious about it. They just want
to borrow, borrow, borrow. They're indistinguished. People say there's no
bipartisanship in Washington. Yeah, total my partisan agreement on borrowing
more and being irresponsible.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Both parties do it now.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
The thing that I worry about for the larger world,
most trends are going pretty well. The reduction of poverty,
especially in Asia, on the global scale in the last
twenty five years is just phenomenal. It's one of the
best thing that's ever happened to the human family. And
most Americans don't even know that it's occurred, so I'm
pretty happy about that. I think environmental trends are mainly positive.
(21:10):
I think global warming is real, it's been proven, but
it's nowhere near the threat that people make it out
to be. What worries me is that there are still
eleven thousand nuclear bombs in the world. Someday one of
those damn things is going to go off, and on
the precipice of the main nuclear arms control treaty between
the United States and Russian Federation expires in February, and
(21:33):
there's no sign that either side is trying to renew it.
There's no sign that we're trying to bring the Chinese
into that treaty. Chinese building nuclear bombs like crazy. You
can now there are fewer nuclear bombs in the world
than before the treaties between Washington and Moscow. That's been positive,
but there's still way to There's plenty to eliminate human life.
(21:54):
Human beings. Yeah, most people who run big countries are rational.
They know that you sing a nuclear bombas suicide. But
not everybody who runs a big country is rational, right,
because one and then the human family will will be
no more, and we're not doing anything about it. Yeah, much,
(22:14):
we're concerned about cracker barrel than eleven thousand nuclear warheads.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It's funny because as you say this, I mean not
that I forgot that there's a nuclear war threat, but
you know, it's sort of in the background. Cracker barrels
in the news. I mean, the old man in the
cracker barrel logo has been, you know, front and center,
and the nuclear threat is very, very very in the
shadows and in the background of our concerns. I know,
(22:41):
you know, people used to be asked, you know, what
do you worry about? Nuclear war would be number one?
But I think that hasn't been the case in a
very very long time. How do you Yeah, I was
gonna say, how do you think people should think about it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Should they be pressuring their governments to do more to
have these treaties? Especially would the average person?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Do you think that you think there's nothing I can
do about this? There is something I can do about this.
You can lobby your members of Congress and the White
House to renew the treaty between the United States and
Russian Federation. It's not a panacea, but it prevents.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Right because it also makes me think like, if they're irrational,
if it's an irrational leader, what are they going to
care about the treaty?
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Well, so far, the US, Washington, Moscow have observed that
were on the fourth Nuclear Arms Control treaty, and all
four of them have been strenuously observed by both parties.
I think there's embedded wisdom in Washington and Moscow, and
I think there's no wisdom they said, is there is some?
And one of the wisdoms is we were right on
(23:46):
the brink of obliterating the world, and we were able
to step back from that brink by observing the treaties.
So I think there's a lot of sentiments and both
capitals for continuing to observe the treaty, and must be
sentiment in Beijing for entering into the treaty and observing
the same rules. But because it leaders have to be
(24:06):
pressured to do this, and we're's certainly not. There's nothing
going on in Congress right now to pressure Trump to
renew the treaty.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It just seems like a lot of other things going on.
I didn't even realize, you know, I think that I
haven't seen any news at all about the treaty expiring and.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Eleven thousand strategic nuclear warheads in the world. That's fewer
than there used to be, but studies show that you
really only need a couple hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Of them to go off to pretty much.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
End human life because of the nuclear winter that would
because crops would fail all over the even if you
weren't in the place where when the bombs went off,
crops would fail globally for a decade. And how many
people would still be alive at the end of that.
And so I don't mean to sound like a doomstate type.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, you're a little bit like a doom'sdare I'm not
gonna sleep tonight, Greg, And.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
I don't worry for a minute that global warming is
going to kill us, even though, as I say, it
is a real problem. I do worry that nuclear war
will kill us. And so there's there's the doomsday part
of my personality.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Well, as you look back on your life, what advice
would you give your sixteen year old self, what a
sixteen year old Greg need to know about his future?
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Here's what I would have told sixteen year old Greg.
As we mentioned that my youthful ambition was to be
a writer, and I've accomplished it. But my main ambition
was to be a fiction writer, to write serious literary fiction,
and I didn't start. And I have published three serious
literary novels, great reviews in the New York Times, and
so I've gotten farther than most professors of creative writing
(25:35):
ever get. But I didn't start till I was forty.
And I would tell my youthful self start right away,
don't wait till your forty Hemingway remember, Hemingway started as
a journalist and then he went into serious fiction. And
he said later, if you're in journalism when you're young,
there's no problem. You'll help learn the craft of writing.
(25:56):
But you've got to quit journalism by the time you're
third where it will suck you in and pull you out.
And he was pretty you know, in my key. So
I've done journalism for The Atlantic Monthly, which is pretty
pretty high on the status bull, but still it does
kind of suck you in and pull you down. And
we was right about that. So I would tell my
young self just to switch to fiction, only much younger
(26:20):
than I actually did.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
There's definitely the instant gratification with doing news of the day,
and you know, things that aren't pressing and matter today
and going to expire by tomorrow. Especially with our one
day news cycles, I could see where the general journalism
would absolutely take over the fiction. I have trouble even writing,
you know, my substacks, because it's not news of the day,
(26:44):
it's not happening right the second. It doesn't have to
be out immediately.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
So a great anecdote about that The Atlantic Monthly. I
worked for a sainted editor named Bill Whitworth, who was
a great guy who passed away a year and a
half ago, and this would this would have been maybe
nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I'm sitting there with Bill.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
We're looking at recent issues of Atlantic Monthly, and I say, Bill,
I don't know. This magazine's pretty light on current events.
This is all about things that happened in the nineteenth
century for literary writers or dance companies. Where's the current events?
Well said, I don't want any current events in the
Atlantic Monthly. My goal is to produce a magazine that
(27:23):
you could put the copies into the attic, find them
twenty five years later and still be interested. So after
Bill died, I went up to the attic above me
got out the box of magazines from that year, and
they were still interesting twenty five years later.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It's amazing. I've evergreen. The kids call it right.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
Yeah, but that's the goal you go for in literary
fiction or serious play writing. You want something that will
be of interest and a value regardless of what's happening
in the news.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Well, I've loved this conversation. I love getting to know you.
I've followed you on Twitter and then X for many
many years. Leave us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
I once wrote an article for The Atlantic called Selfish
Reasons to become a Better Person, and the thrust of
that article was the things your grandmother told you to do.
Be grateful, to be alive, be optimistic, be forgiving. We
think of those things as virtue. Actually they're good for you.
They improve your own life. To be grateful, optimistic, and forgiving, yeah,
(28:29):
makes you a better person, but it improves your experience
of life. Also, there's a fair amount of data and
psychology that backs that up. So my main advice would be,
don't be angry at the world, don't be cynical, don't
be anxious. Yeah, you're gonna have moments like this, but
in general you should be optimistic, grateful, and you should
forgive others.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I love that. Thank you so much, Greg Easterbrook. Check
out his book It's better than it looks. Thanks so much,
Greg for coming on.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Thanks Carol,
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Markwitz Show on iHeartRadio.
My special guest today for the short segment where I
answer listener questions is my friend and co host of Normally,
Mary Katherine Ham. Hi, Mary Katherine. It's so nice to
have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
So we're going to do a quick question answer for
a listener who wrote in. I like this question because
it really does hit on some issues that I talk
about a lot. The question is, Hi, Carol, I've been
following you since the Alarming News days. By the way,
side note, Alarming News was my old blog. It's how
(00:40):
I got into the media world, and so this person
has been following me for many, many years, like twenty.
Thank you so much for that. I'm sixty one years
old and my wife died of cancer ten years ago.
We have three grown children. I only started dating again
about a year ago, and I'm seeing a woman in
her early forties. I wasn't looking for I'm one so
(01:00):
much younger, but we met through mutual friends and hit
it off. The problem is she wants children of her own,
and I feel finished with that part of my life.
Sometimes I think I should just have a child with her,
but the idea of a thirty year age gap with
my other children feels ridiculous. I don't want to lose her,
but also don't want to waste her time. I feel
like I need a woman's advice and I trust you well,
(01:23):
thank you for that. I don't know what do you
think about that, Mary Catherine.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, here's what I think is that congrats by the way,
for finding love again. And that's exciting, and given that
it sounds like a healthy relationship, I think you guys
need to have a very frank discussion about this because
time is of the essence.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Time is a ticket, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
For both of you, frankly, particularly for her. If she
really wants this, it would be need to it would
need to be acted upon quickly, and for you, which
I think. Look, I'm an older mom and I understand
and taking that I sort of restarted the clock on
myself as well. And it can be challenging because you
do have less energy and you do have you feel
(02:08):
like the challenge is sometimes hurt your health more or
you lose more sleep or whatever it is right when
you're dealing with young children. So that's something to consider.
So for both of you, the clock is ticking in
a way. Yeah, so you've got to have that honest
conversation now because you really don't want to end up
in a place where she feels like her time did
(02:28):
get wasted.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Right, That's exactly where I am on this. I think
that it's very important not to waste her time. So
you need to make a decision, and you need to say,
do I care about that age spread between my older
kids and potential new baby. Do I want this woman
in my life? Do I need her in my life?
Will I care about losing her if I can't give
(02:51):
her what she wants? I will say, you know, a
lot of people focus on the age or the mom,
but my husband always makes this point that having kids
as a young man's game, it's not that easy for
the dads either, you know, and for every and I
know if you listen to my show you've heard me
say this, But everybody who's always like, well, Mick Jagger
had a baby at seventy five, like you are not
(03:11):
mc jagger, and you will not have a team, You
will not have a squad taking care of your kids.
It'll be you with your kid in the backyard. So
figure out how important it is to you and then
follow Mary Catherine's advice and you know, make the decision
together obviously, but first figure out where you want to
(03:33):
go on this.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, And I would note he uses the word ridiculous
is the thing that he uses to characterize this age gap,
which yes, is out of the ordinary, But ridiculous isn't
that strong a word, And it indicates that his concern
is how it would be viewed exactly, not how it
would feel to have the kid. And I guarantee you
(03:54):
that having a beautiful kid is probably going to override ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I also noticed ridiculous. I feel like you're absolutely
right that word is for the outword world, how it
would look to other people and what they would think
of him, Like, oh, but nobody's thinking of anybody. That's
the other thing. It's like we think that people are
judging us or thinking about what we're are, the choices
that we make or what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
They're not.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
They're thinking about themselves and how you're thinking about them
and something that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I really liked this question because I think this guy
has an opportunity at a second love, second life and
all of that, and I kind of hope. He takes it.
Understand that there's concerns about the age, and I understand
that you have grown kids who I don't know, he
(04:46):
doesn't say it in the question, but might not love it.
I don't know, but it might really breathe a new
sense of purpose into your life and you might find
that that's what you needed. But very specifically, I talk
about women wasting their time with guys that can't give
them what they want. So if that's you, I would,
(05:10):
more than anything else say cut her free. If it's
not for you.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, he's clearly thinking about it seriously, and he needs
to think about it seriously quickly.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Absolutely. Thank you for joining me on the Carol Markowitz Show.
She is Mary Katherine Ham. She is fantastic. Check us
on normally watch her on Fox News. Thank you so much,
Mary Catherine.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Thank you coming up my interview with Greg Easterbrook. But first,
it was nearly two years ago the terrorists murdered more
than twelve hundred innocent Israelis and took two hundred and
fifty people hostage. Today, it seems as if the cries
of the dead and dying have been drowned out by
shouts of anti Semitic hatred and the most brutal attack
(05:52):
on Jewish people since the Holocaust has been forgotten. Yet
as the world looks away, a light shines in the darkness.
It's a movement of love and support for the people
of Israel called Flags of Fellowship, and it's organized by
the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. And on October fifth,
just a few weeks away, millions across America will prayerfully
(06:14):
plant an Israeli flag and honor and solidarity with the
victims of October seventh, twenty twenty three and their grieving families.
And now you can be part of this movement too.
To get more information about how you can join the
Flags of Fellowship movement, visit the Fellowship online at IFCJ
dot org. That's IFCJ dot org.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Greg Easterbrook. Greg is the author of
fourteen books, including It's Better Than It Looks, which shows
the condition of the world is steadily improving. Also has
a weekly substack at All Predictions Wrong. So nice to
have you on, Greg.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Thanks Carol, good to be here.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So you have fourteen books, and your most recent one
is about how things aren't as bad as as they
may seem. How did you come up with that?
Speaker 5 (07:11):
I've actually been writing about that topic for several decades.
If you looked at social statistics about the United States,
trends in violence and pollution, longevity, discrimination, things that you
can measure objectively. In most cases, they started improving around
(07:32):
the time that I was born, which was sadly long ago.
But they've improved a lot in the last thirty years.
Of course, I'm not arguing that things are fine. There's
a lot of improvement and reform needed. But we have
so much less pollution in the United States than we
used to, so much less discrimination, most rates and incidents
of diseases during.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Long term decline.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
Longevity has increased every year except the COVID year, and
we've always our material prosperity has increased. Per capita income,
if you stated in current dollars, per capita income has
gotten steadily higher, including in the middle class. You hear
people say, oh, the middle class is being hollowed up.
(08:15):
The middle class lives significantly better today than it did
a generation to go, and those are unfashionable ideas An
interviewer once asked me what people react to negatively in
my writing, and I said, what I say that makes
people angry is I'm an optimist. For some reason, this
(08:36):
makes people angry, especially in the New York City environment
that you just put. The only thing that's politically correct
is to feel despair and anxiety. The world is ending.
And if you say no, actually, things are getting better
and yeah we need reform, but in the main a
lot better off than we used to be, that makes
(08:56):
people angry.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Weirdly enough, it makes you unpopular.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
In my case, my popularity has been fine, but I
certainly wouldn't be welcome at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Why do you think people imagine that their lives are
worse and the world is worse. Why do they think
things are worse than ever before?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
There's a couple of reasons.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Human beings are prone to self pity, and saying, oh,
I'll never live as well as my grandparents did is
a form of self pity, even if your grandparents would
change places with you in a heartbeat, if only to
get modern health care. People are prone to self pity,
mythologize the past and think it was much better than
(09:39):
it was. You asked me, whoa boy the past things
everybody had it so good. Well, yeah, to think about
the nineteen fifties. Think about the nineteen fifties when blacks
couldn't ride buses and you could be thrown in jail
for being gay, and prosperity again in current dollars was
but twenty percent of what it is today. You really
like to go back and live in that time. But
(10:01):
people's knowledge is knowledge of the past. Even the recent
past is.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Is slight colored glasses.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Yeah, it's rose colored glasses. And it's also the relentless
negativism of the mainstream media and the two political parties.
And Trump is as guilty as this as the Democrats are.
You remember Trump's American carnage speech and the day you
said American carnage crime had fallen for like twenty years
in a row. The Democratic Party, in all of its
recent presidential elections, has tried to talk America down, down, down,
(10:31):
so bad, so awful, so racist, so sexist, And you
going on the street and you see racism and sexism
were infraction.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Of what they once were.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
But the elites don't want to say that. The elites
think scaring you brings them more money and power, And
sadly they're right about that. Scaring you does bring them
more money in power. So we get this endless diet
of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
So what could be done? How do you get the
message out that things are getting better all the time.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
Well, I've long said my one ament is it long
if you and I started a publication called Consensus today,
nobody would buy it because what they're buying is scare tactics.
You've got to say, if you're thinking simply in terms
of the free market, the free market seems to like
scare tactics. That's what it's willing to pay for. These
(11:18):
news channels that people tune in are the channels that
present scare tactics.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
You don't have to you don't have.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
To watch CNN or Fox News in PBS and watch
a classical music concert.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's not what you do.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
What you do is you watch the channels that are
selling scare tactics. And the same is true with publishers
and many others. That people have to stop being eager
customers for the doomsday view if they want the behavior
of the media, especially to change.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Did you get into writing, did you always want to
be a writer.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I did.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
I'm relatively rare. It was my youthful ambition. I'm relatively
rare and someone who's actually accomplished as youthful ambition. We
could talk about that more in a second, but yes,
I always wanted to be a writer, and I'm glad
I did it.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
So do most people not succeed in their youthful ambitions?
I guess is the follow up to that, because you know,
I always wanted to be a writer too. My parents said,
don't be crazy. Nobody's a writer. You know, they were
immigrants from the Soviet Union. They definitely didn't want a
starving artists child. Were your parents supportive and what do
you mean by you know, the youthful ambition part?
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Well, my parents were kind of neutral in this because
I put myself through college. I always looked after myself.
My parents were fine, loving people, but they kind of
had nothing to do with my career choices. I think
you can find an awful lot of people who and
you say, I want to be a great musician, I
want to be a ball arena and they ended up
(12:48):
working in Starbucks. And I'm glad that my youthful ambition
was realized at least at some level. I'm actually still
working on it, but because I have some unpublic just
but good luck getting fourteen books out right.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
I have one and I'm done, I think.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Right well, I have two completed books that are not
published yet and that I'm arguing them publishers about. So
I'm far from finished with this quest.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Is there a theme through your fourteen books?
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I gotta say, Carol, I've bounced all over the map.
I've written some books that are serious public policy analysis.
I wrote a book about Christian theology. I've written published
three literary novels and numbers four and five are coming.
And to put our kids through college, I wrote about sports.
(13:38):
So my agent has been telling me our entire time
together that the way you make money as an author
is to pick one subject and write about it fennerlessly,
And I'm sure he's right about that. But I've written
about whatever's on my mind and done okay. And it
keeps your brain fresh when you write about what's on
(14:00):
your mind that day.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely yeah. And I hate that. I hate the pick
a lane and just just think about this all the
time and write about this and this is your you know,
this is what you do, and this is what people
know you. As you know, people are multifaceted. They have
all kinds of things that they want to say to
the world. And yeah, I'm glad you're not following that
advice to pick a lane and just do one thing.
(14:23):
Do you have something that you wish you had written
about but didn't feel like it was your lane?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
No?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
Actually no, everything that I've every topic that I've chosen
was my choice and I've been happy with. Like I said,
I have two books that are done and not yet published.
So in men's frustration over that, but those books say
what I want them to say, and that part of
my career has worked out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So if it hadn't worked out, if your childhood ambition
hadn't come to fruition, what would have been the plan.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Be I'm not sure.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
I never I admire the profession engineering, law, medicine. I
never felt drawn to them when I was young, especially
when I was trying to save money to get back
into college. I work as a bus driver and a
used car salesman. I'm glad I'm not a bus driver
or a used car salesman today, but I'm very proud
(15:18):
to say that I'm a Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. You have to be elected to that.
And when you go to their website and look at
these tremendously accomplished people who have chairs at Ivy League
universities and have won great prizes all around the world,
then you look at my bio. I'm self employed, was
(15:39):
a bus driver and a used car salesman. But I'm
actually kind of proud of that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's it's unusual and it
got you to where you are. I feel like and
more than ever, people are recognizing that things like that,
having jobs like that are actually super helpful in other
fields that we don't want people to have no life
experience at all. I can think of a handful of
politicians that that would describe, you know, taking that path
(16:08):
and you know, going from the no life experience at
all to either being in charge of us or or
telling us what we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
More coming up with Greg Easterbrook. But first war is everywhere.
Debt continues to skyrocket, and the dollar is losing purchasing power.
The value of the dollar is falling fast. That's why
more people are converting their IRA or four O one
K to a gold and silver IRA to protect their
retirement savings. In twenty twenty five, both gold and silver
(16:39):
have risen an impressive twenty nine percent, and many experts
project even bigger gains ahead. Convert some of your IRA,
not new money, the savings you already have to a
gold and silver IRA with Leeer Capital. Call eight hundred
seven eight six eight five zero zero for your free gold,
(16:59):
got an IRA transfer kit and with a qualified purchase,
get up to fifteen thousand dollars in bonus gold or
silver deposited directly into your precious metals IRA. Leear Capital,
the nation's leader in precious metals for twenty eight years.
Call today eight hundred seven eight six eighty five hundred.
(17:20):
That's eight hundred seven eight six eighty five hundred eight
hundred seven eight six eight five zero zero. Keep in
mind that any investment has a certain amount of risk
associated with it, and you should only invest if you
can afford to bear the risk of loss. Before making
investment decisions, you should carefully consider and review all risks involved.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I worry, Carol, I have two words.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
I have a national worry for the United States and
an international worry for the world. My national worry for
the United States is our debt cycle. I think you
know that debt is a gloomy topic, and people say, well, look,
we've been borrowing money hand over fifth nothing's gone wrong. Yeah,
but where's it going to leave. The shocking statistic is
(18:12):
that the United States, again, if you adjust the current dollars,
the United States is borrowed and we're money in the
last fifteen years that it borrowed in the previous two
hundred and twenty five years combined, two hundred and forty
five years, I guess, and thirty five years combined. That's
the right number. Boy, it's amazing how much money we've borrowed.
(18:32):
We've gotten away with it so far. It's not gonna last.
It's not sustainable. There's going to be a reckoning for
all that borrowing.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And with the exception of.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
The COVID year, the borrowing has occurred when things were
basically normal, right, The economy was outputting pretty good, when
people unemployment was low. In other words, it wasn't an emergency.
And we've borrowed money anyway, and it's not going to last. Forever,
and we're not going to be happy.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
When it ends.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I'm very afraid of that issue because I feel like
we've lost that argument. I also, I care very much
about our spending and are borrowing and all of that,
and I just feel like there's nobody to argue with anymore.
There's nobody to tell that to anymore. Even people on
the right who used to kind of agree with me,
just it doesn't matter anymore. And Culter described national debt
(19:21):
as the similar to what the left does on climate change, like, oh,
it's going to be real bad any minute now. It's
going to be real bad any minute now. A good point, Yeah,
but how do we convey to people what it will
actually be like?
Speaker 5 (19:37):
But nobody wants to deal with this, and the pressure
points are coming on Social Security and Medicare. Social Security
runs out of money in twenty thirty three, the day
before this happens. Everyone in Congress will say they were
never warned and had no way of knowing at the
very least soci Security, Medicare. Each year that we put
off reform, the problem gets worse. Right with it now,
(20:01):
it'll be better, less bad than if we deal with it.
At three o'clock in the morning and in twenty thirty three,
which is how Congress is going to do.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
How they're going to do it, right, we can make
that prediction right here, right now. That's how it's going
to be. I had some hope that Elon I really,
I know maybe it sounds naive, but Elon Musk gave
me some hope that there was going to be actual changes,
and him being so despondent and disappointed in our government
showed me that nothing is going to change.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
That's because even the right wing wouldn't support him.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Right the right wing in the House of Representatives is
not in any way serious about it. They just want
to borrow, borrow, borrow. They're indistinguished. People say there's no
bipartisanship in Washington. Yeah, total my partisan agreement on borrowing
more and being irresponsible.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Both parties do it now.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
The thing that I worry about for the larger world,
most trends are going pretty well. The reduction of poverty,
especially in Asia, on the global scale in the last
twenty five years is just phenomenal. It's one of the
best thing that's ever happened to the human family. And
most Americans don't even know that it's occurred, so I'm
pretty happy about that. I think environmental trends are mainly positive.
(21:10):
I think global warming is real, it's been proven, but
it's nowhere near the threat that people make it out
to be. What worries me is that there are still
eleven thousand nuclear bombs in the world. Someday one of
those damn things is going to go off, and on
the precipice of the main nuclear arms control treaty between
the United States and Russian Federation expires in February, and
(21:33):
there's no sign that either side is trying to renew it.
There's no sign that we're trying to bring the Chinese
into that treaty. Chinese building nuclear bombs like crazy. You
can now there are fewer nuclear bombs in the world
than before the treaties between Washington and Moscow. That's been positive,
but there's still way to There's plenty to eliminate human life.
(21:54):
Human beings. Yeah, most people who run big countries are rational.
They know that you sing a nuclear bombas suicide. But
not everybody who runs a big country is rational, right,
because one and then the human family will will be
no more, and we're not doing anything about it. Yeah, much,
(22:14):
we're concerned about cracker barrel than eleven thousand nuclear warheads.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
It's funny because as you say this, I mean not
that I forgot that there's a nuclear war threat, but
you know, it's sort of in the background. Cracker barrels
in the news. I mean, the old man in the
cracker barrel logo has been, you know, front and center,
and the nuclear threat is very, very very in the
shadows and in the background of our concerns. I know,
(22:41):
you know, people used to be asked, you know, what
do you worry about? Nuclear war would be number one?
But I think that hasn't been the case in a
very very long time. How do you Yeah, I was
gonna say, how do you think people should think about it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Like?
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Should they be pressuring their governments to do more to
have these treaties? Especially would the average person?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Do you think that you think there's nothing I can
do about this? There is something I can do about this.
You can lobby your members of Congress and the White
House to renew the treaty between the United States and
Russian Federation. It's not a panacea, but it prevents.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Right because it also makes me think like, if they're irrational,
if it's an irrational leader, what are they going to
care about the treaty?
Speaker 5 (23:24):
Well, so far, the US, Washington, Moscow have observed that
were on the fourth Nuclear Arms Control treaty, and all
four of them have been strenuously observed by both parties.
I think there's embedded wisdom in Washington and Moscow, and
I think there's no wisdom they said, is there is some?
And one of the wisdoms is we were right on
(23:46):
the brink of obliterating the world, and we were able
to step back from that brink by observing the treaties.
So I think there's a lot of sentiments and both
capitals for continuing to observe the treaty, and must be
sentiment in Beijing for entering into the treaty and observing
the same rules. But because it leaders have to be
(24:06):
pressured to do this, and we're's certainly not. There's nothing
going on in Congress right now to pressure Trump to
renew the treaty.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It just seems like a lot of other things going on.
I didn't even realize, you know, I think that I
haven't seen any news at all about the treaty expiring and.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Eleven thousand strategic nuclear warheads in the world. That's fewer
than there used to be, but studies show that you
really only need a couple hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Of them to go off to pretty much.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
End human life because of the nuclear winter that would
because crops would fail all over the even if you
weren't in the place where when the bombs went off,
crops would fail globally for a decade. And how many
people would still be alive at the end of that.
And so I don't mean to sound like a doomstate type.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, you're a little bit like a doom'sdare I'm not
gonna sleep tonight, Greg, And.
Speaker 5 (24:51):
I don't worry for a minute that global warming is
going to kill us, even though, as I say, it
is a real problem. I do worry that nuclear war
will kill us. And so there's there's the doomsday part
of my personality.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Well, as you look back on your life, what advice
would you give your sixteen year old self, what a
sixteen year old Greg need to know about his future?
Speaker 5 (25:14):
Here's what I would have told sixteen year old Greg.
As we mentioned that my youthful ambition was to be
a writer, and I've accomplished it. But my main ambition
was to be a fiction writer, to write serious literary fiction,
and I didn't start. And I have published three serious
literary novels, great reviews in the New York Times, and
so I've gotten farther than most professors of creative writing
(25:35):
ever get. But I didn't start till I was forty.
And I would tell my youthful self start right away,
don't wait till your forty Hemingway remember, Hemingway started as
a journalist and then he went into serious fiction. And
he said later, if you're in journalism when you're young,
there's no problem. You'll help learn the craft of writing.
(25:56):
But you've got to quit journalism by the time you're
third where it will suck you in and pull you out.
And he was pretty you know, in my key. So
I've done journalism for The Atlantic Monthly, which is pretty
pretty high on the status bull, but still it does
kind of suck you in and pull you down. And
we was right about that. So I would tell my
young self just to switch to fiction, only much younger
(26:20):
than I actually did.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
There's definitely the instant gratification with doing news of the day,
and you know, things that aren't pressing and matter today
and going to expire by tomorrow. Especially with our one
day news cycles, I could see where the general journalism
would absolutely take over the fiction. I have trouble even writing,
you know, my substacks, because it's not news of the day,
(26:44):
it's not happening right the second. It doesn't have to
be out immediately.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
So a great anecdote about that The Atlantic Monthly. I
worked for a sainted editor named Bill Whitworth, who was
a great guy who passed away a year and a
half ago, and this would this would have been maybe
nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
I'm sitting there with Bill.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
We're looking at recent issues of Atlantic Monthly, and I say, Bill,
I don't know. This magazine's pretty light on current events.
This is all about things that happened in the nineteenth
century for literary writers or dance companies. Where's the current events?
Well said, I don't want any current events in the
Atlantic Monthly. My goal is to produce a magazine that
(27:23):
you could put the copies into the attic, find them
twenty five years later and still be interested. So after
Bill died, I went up to the attic above me
got out the box of magazines from that year, and
they were still interesting twenty five years later.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It's amazing. I've evergreen. The kids call it right.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
Yeah, but that's the goal you go for in literary
fiction or serious play writing. You want something that will
be of interest and a value regardless of what's happening
in the news.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Well, I've loved this conversation. I love getting to know you.
I've followed you on Twitter and then X for many
many years. Leave us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
I once wrote an article for The Atlantic called Selfish
Reasons to become a Better Person, and the thrust of
that article was the things your grandmother told you to do.
Be grateful, to be alive, be optimistic, be forgiving. We
think of those things as virtue. Actually they're good for you.
They improve your own life. To be grateful, optimistic, and forgiving, yeah,
(28:29):
makes you a better person, but it improves your experience
of life. Also, there's a fair amount of data and
psychology that backs that up. So my main advice would be,
don't be angry at the world, don't be cynical, don't
be anxious. Yeah, you're gonna have moments like this, but
in general you should be optimistic, grateful, and you should
forgive others.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
I love that. Thank you so much, Greg Easterbrook. Check
out his book It's better than it looks. Thanks so much,
Greg for coming on.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Thanks Carol,
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.