October 1, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode, Josh Holmes opens up about his path into politics — the early influences that shaped him, the winding steps of his career, and how that led him to co-found the Ruthless Podcast. He dives into why authenticity matters in media, what it’s like navigating today’s fraught political landscape, and the risks of echo chambers and polarization. Along the way, Josh offers practical wisdom to younger voices: the value of genuine relationships, integrity, and staying true to who you are. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to the Carol Marcowig Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Josh Holmes. Josh is a partner at
calalry LC and co host of the Ruthless podcast. It's
so nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On, Josh, Oh, it's great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I love your show, I love your twitter feed. I've
been a huge fan of yours for many years, and
I'm really.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Excited to learn more about you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I don't feel like I know a lot about your
background or about how you got into this. You know,
a thing of ours. So how did it start for you?
How did you get into politics?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, the feeling is mutual. Obviously, been an admirer of
your work a lot over the years. Yeah, it's a
roundabout way of getting here. For me. I grew up
in Minnesota and had, you know, the time of my life,
sort of an ideal upbringing in a lot of different ways.
(00:56):
But when it was time for college and like professional
you know, imaginement at some level, like what is that
you do? I went to Arizona State University, and I
wish I could tell you that that was an academic decision.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Hey that's a party school, right, Yeah, well it Wins Awards.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
At the time, at the year that I was going,
it was number one one Wow. And I applied to
two schools, Arizona State and the University of Florida, and
Arizona State said yes first, and so that's where I went,
which is a long way from Minnesota. And it had
absolutely nothing to do with what it is that I
wanted to or thought I wanted to do for a living.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
But which was what what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I didn't know. I mean, you know, like so many
young people, you just have no idea of what it
is that you're good at, you know, And I like,
I think this is at some point an indictment of
education and education systems. At some point I found nothing
that I was super excited about it.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
No, you haven't used the Patagonora theorem since you learned
about it?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, I mean the last math class I took Carol
was called math.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Same I recently learned as a thing as math dyslexia,
and I'm pretty sure I have it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But I mean, so I went down there to basically
have a good time. But I also you know, in
the process, I had a medical procedure when I was
in my second year. I had brain surgery, believe or not.
And you know, I was something less than a good
student the first year year and a half that I
(02:39):
was at Arizona State. I was more interested in the
social scene. But I had this this issue where I
had brain surgery. And I remember sitting in the hospital
bed where all my friends were coming in one after
one just to wish me well and try to cheer
me up. And I was there for several weeks and
(03:02):
they were talking all about what they were doing and
all the career advancement or internships whatever that they were
interested in. And I remember at that moment thinking to myself, Man,
I got to kind of get this thing together, like
I I certainly don't want.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Because had brain surgery. I feel like if you could
take it easy at any point, it might be that moment.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, I think the problem was that I took it
easy for a couple a long time before that, and
it required a kick in the ass, to be honest
with you, it required a observing that other people were
moving on with life after high school and you know,
your early part of college, and they were focused on something,
(03:45):
and so you know, that was kind of the moment
I started focusing a little bit on school, and then
what did I wanted to do?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So what did you want to do?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I didn't I still didn't know. I started doing some
journalism stuff back then, in large part because I grew
up in a family that was really big into news,
really big into politics, although it wasn't my politics. I mean,
I grew up all the way from Ronald Reagan just
being a diehard Republican. Both my parents grew up as Democrats.
(04:24):
But I kind of knew where I was on all
of that, and I thought, well, news and information is
pretty powerful, and maybe this would be a business that
I wanted to go into. But then I spent you know,
the first couple of semesters everybody telling me about the
history of news and Edward R. Murreaw and everything else, and.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was like, no, no, this is not for me.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I was like, this is probably not the thing.
So I got out of it. And you know, both
my parents were attorneys, and so I thought, you know,
maybe pret law, maybe something like that. And they had
a program at the time at Arizona State that was
like a it was like a double minor type thing
(05:08):
was called interdisciplinary studies, whereas justice studies and political science
that kind of combined that where they could get a
lot of people into law school. And I thought that's
what I wanted to do at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
So did you do it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I sure did do Where did you go? Tell us
about it?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I think what happened to me was my dad convinced
me at some level to come out to Washington, d C.
And just spend an internship program. And there was this
Washington semester program through American University that gives you a
little entree into the political world. And obviously, I'm from
(05:49):
the middle of Minnesota. I have no idea. I've got
no connections, My dad's got no connection, my you know,
mom's got no connections, nothing connected to Washington, DC. But
he's like, why don't you just go out and try it?
And I did and I was there for ten days
in nine to eleven. Happened Wow, And that fundamentally changed
(06:11):
the trajectory of me and what I wanted to do.
And I think the rest is history of it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So it's interesting that your dad encouraged you to go
to DC even though you guys were politically opposed. Like
I think about that with my own kids. If my
kids end up being libs. Am I going to be like, yeah,
you go pursue those dreams, you know, you go.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Work for me the matters.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I don't know that I would be so like, you know,
I probably wouldn't like dissuade them, But I also don't
think i'd be like a big cheerleader for it.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
But your dad was, yeah, well, I mean his politics
were changing too, you know. I think I think my
parents had a fundamental realignment after nine to eleven, which
coincided with me. My brother were in Lower Manhattan and
I was at this point an intern in DC, and
(07:07):
if you remember nine to eleven, nobody could get a
hold of anybody. Yeah, and so it just fundamentally realigned
their point of view. But like from a personal experience,
it realigned what I wanted to do and where I
thought I could make a difference in what I was
interested in. And I just really dug in at that point.
And you know, everybody's got a different pathway. But when
(07:31):
you see something that gives you energy, do you think
you're good at do you think you can provide value
for you? Charge forward? Even as a young person. And
I never would have imagined that all of that would
have led to you know, my experiences over the last
twenty years, but it did.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So how did you guys get into cavalry? What was
the impetus for that?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, that's a longer story a little bit. And that
I got into politics. I did the first time I
was in the United States Senate. I couldn't figure out
why it was that everyone spent so much time talking
about things that were never going to happen. You know, Yeah,
it just it frustrated me. And you get that, you know,
(08:21):
I'm sure your listeners all can identify with this. You
get this component somewhere between when you get into the
workforce in your late twenties where you look at things
and you're like, well, I can do the job better
than the person who's like supposed to be managing me,
but I'm not recognized as such. And there's a frustration
(08:43):
involved in all of that. And so I kind of
switched things up and I wanted to go into communications.
I was in policy, and I met Ken Melman, who
was then two thousand and four presidential campaign manager for
George W. Bush, who brought me into the R and C.
At the time, we had a historically bad election in
two thousand and six, but I met a whole bunch
(09:06):
of people who were just really good people, thoughtful people,
and had hilarious, dark humor about it.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
It's really important, actually.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, I mean they could make the worst time not
feel like work. And I was attracted to the whole situation.
And Melman at some point introduced me to McConnell, who
was just becoming leader was elected in the fall of
two thousand and six, and McConnell said to Melman, I
(09:40):
got to revamp all Republican communications at some level. I mean,
if you went into like the Republican conference in the
Senate at that time, they were doing like these weird
tape like pre tape things. It looked like they I
mean I remember walking into one. It was Ted Stevens
and they had this whole bumper music. There was like
(10:00):
did did te today? We bring you the Ted Stevens Show,
And then he would talk about the most boring shit
on the face of the planet. Yeah, and then they
would just take it and ship it back to Alaska.
And I was like, this is like, we're in a
different tyle. The Internet is like a real thing. At
this point, and so, and mcconnor recognized that too, and
(10:22):
so he asked me to come in and help run
this new communications unit that he was using. And my
promise to him was that I would be there for
six months or so to make sure that they got
up and running, and then I was going to go
do a presidential campaign or something like that. And I
remember there was a couple of moments in there that
(10:44):
I was like, Wow, this guy doesn't He's not talking
about anything that's not going to happen. He only talks
about what is going to happen. And it was a
funda fundamental reversal from where my whole point of view
Sentate government was.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So what was the next step? What happened then?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So we got you know, look, there's a ton of
war stories with I would go out and do campaigns,
then I'd come back to the Senate and go out
and do campaigns and come back to the Senate. But
there was a synthesis there where I got to work
with really good people. And I think if there's one
fundamental takeaway from my career at that stage was when
(11:28):
you get good, decent people were doing things for the
right reasons that you understand and you job with and
you can create and do things bigger than you can
do individually. You don't want to lose that. You want
to make that a central part of what you're doing.
(11:49):
And so all of that ran up until twenty fourteen,
where you know, I'd work with John Ashbrook, who was
a co host of Ruthless, and I always felt like,
if the two of us are in our room, we
can figure out any problem, yeah, no matter how bad
it is. And there was a number of other people
that were involved in all of that, and so we
(12:11):
started a company after we got out of government service.
It's called Cavalry, where we tried to basically take what
it is that we learned over the last seven eight
years of government and politics and advocacy and everything else
to try to bring it to a larger marketplace. That was,
i mean largely operating on a nineteen eighties footprint, right.
(12:32):
It was like if you read Gucci gulch of like
shoe leather lobbying, that's basically where things were in the
early twenty tens. And the world had changed, and so
we wanted to get involved in.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
How did Ruthless Start?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
That was a funnier story. So Johnny and I at
that point it worked together, and Duncan and I had
worked together since twenty fourteen since that a great campaign
cycle we had. And so we were watching the change
in media. And it used to be that you would
(13:13):
hire a pr agency or do whatever you can to
fight like hell to get the quote that tried to
refute the premise of a mainstream news studio at some
point in like the sixteenth paragraph, and that was like
considered to be a win. But we were watching audiences change,
and at some level, audiences were becoming larger than the
(13:37):
mainstream media outlets themselves, and so we put a lot
of thought into it. Meanwhile, we were huge fans of.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Smug, competably Smug, my favorite liberal friend.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So on X, his sense of
humor is a reverend sense of humor. His engagement or whatever.
In the early days of X like blocked out the sun.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I mean, he was everything.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
He was everything, and one day he asked all of
us to go have a happy hour with him out
of nowhere. We'd never met him, and I was like,
I got to see what this guy looks like. I
have no clue. It's an anonymous figure. And we went
and had the time of our lives and at the
end of it, Smug says to me, Hey, I got
an idea. Do you mind if I come by the
(14:24):
office in the next couple.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Of weeks with smugs idea.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Huh, Well, here's the funny part of the story. He
comes into the office and he's got this memo that
outlines what it would be like to have a media
company and a podcast that basically uses humor in large
part to sort of skewer and make commentary on what's
(14:47):
happening with like a leftist media and leftist narratives and whatever.
At the same time, we had worked at on one
ourselves and presented him with a PowerPoint. It was literally
the same idea. Wow, it was literally the same idea.
And so at that point, like we knew we had
to do something. And then it COVID hits and we're
(15:11):
all sitting at home because nobody in DC. It wouldn't
allow you to come into DC, and uh. We started
this happy hour zoom call where we would have a
bourbon at the end of the day, talk about whatever,
bat on some horses because that was like the only
thing that was still going. They're like sports members.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Shutting down gambling, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Sports were largely canceled, which is what we all do.
And so horse racing was like.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
In baseball, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Like horse racing was it. And so you know, we
bet on some ponies and talk and we were like, no,
this is a good cadence, like maybe we should figure
out how to format this. And when we launched Ruthless,
it was like a a real flyer. Like I don't
think any of us thought it was going to be
the thing I thought. You know, we thought it was
(16:08):
a one point zero version to try to test the
marketplace because none of us knew anything about podcasting.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
In fact, like Duncan and Ashbrook were like teaching themselves
how to edit audio and get it online. But our
third episode, I think was it went to number one
on the political charts, and we thought at that point, well,
I think we got an obligation to try to do this.
(16:35):
And it was a weird period of time. It was
the end of twenty twenty. It was between you know,
the twenty twenty election and January sixth where we were
trying to figure out how to get a foothold and
conservative politics. It was it was tough, and we were
very conflicted about a whole bunch of it. But once
we emerged from that, we realized that the real conversation
(16:57):
we were having is the conversation everybody else is having
at the bar.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, I don't know what you guys do so well,
and if I could just give you some compliments, I
think you're so honest. Like, I don't think any of
you are fronting anything. And there's a lot of different
you know, there's movement in the conservative world. There's changes
all the time, but you guys are who you are.
And you know, I got my jokes about Smug, but
I always thought that about him, that he is who
(17:22):
he is and he is not trying to pretend to
be anything else.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, I mean I think that's a fair assessment. I
mean for Smug and the other three Duncan, Ashbrook and
I it's not worth doing. Yeah, if you have to
come up with some version of yourself, it is not
what it is.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
You're not You're not adjusting to anything.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It is what I mean, Like, you know, you do
see in the conservative You know, things changed very rapidly,
and what was cool a year ago might not be
cool today.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
And I don't think that you guys are like seeking
out the next thing.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
You're not catering to what the next thing might be,
or or trying to find an audience, a newer audience
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah. No, I mean because we didn't have to do it.
It was a luxury. I understand that people who do
have to do it, and this is all they do
for a living. And you know, you want to stay
a step ahead of where the electorate is. But you know,
we had, you know, two advantages in that regard. One
is that our job was to stay ahead of the
(18:24):
electorate in a lot of different ways over the previous
fifteen years. And the second piece of it was we
don't need.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
To do this, right, that's it.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
If it's not fun, and it's not, we can't laugh
back up, man, go do something else.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
That's what makes it so good. I really, I really
believe that we're.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Going to take a quick break and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Show Switching gears. What do you worry about?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Look, I worry about where the information flow is in
this country. I counter so many people and you can
see this play out live on cable news every day,
that exclusively subscribe to one information flow cylinder rather than another.
(19:17):
And they never it's always a self rewarding choice right
where it's like they've got previous convictions about something, anything
that sort of fills that cylinder, that's their exclusive view
of the strate. And you know, in the era of
the Internet and podcasts and all of these other things,
(19:40):
it concerns me now the upside of the era that
we're in is that you have a choice other than CBS,
ABC and NBC right to give you the true story
of what's happening. I think we've found out over the
last eight years or so they're.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Not Yeah, they're a bunch of liars.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yes, they're not equipped to do that, which which is fine,
But I do I do concern myself a little bit
with people self radicalizing. Yeah, And it's not just you know,
this isn't a right or center or a left of
center thing. It's about your choice of trying to be
(20:18):
intellectually curious and understand your neighbor right and and I
think too often your choices of what you consume and
using information affects your interaction with your neighbor. I hate that.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I have a really good friend who works on Capitol
Hill who's just telling me on Sunday that they moved
into a new house next to somebody and they went up,
you know, like a basket of muffins or something, as
one does. Sure, it's like, you know, I'm your new neighbor.
You know, just wanted to get to know you and
this person basically the response was, We've googled you, we
(21:03):
know who you are, we've seen your ex account, we
know what you do. We're not interested in a relationship.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
That is And you know it's a You're talking about
somebody who's a staffer on the Republican side and somebody
who's obviously a dogmatic liberal. And I worry about that,
ye because I just think like the shared experience in
the United States has always been part of our story. Empathy, understanding,
(21:33):
and persuasion. Yeah, and if you don't have that in
some combination, I worry a lot about where that goes from.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, I understand people siloing a little bit, Like, Look,
I moved to Florida.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I wanted to be in a red state.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I you know, I had never lived anywhere where anybody
agreed with me before, So I get the wanting to
be in.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
A little bit of a bubble.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
But you know, if a liberal moves next door to me,
then a liberal moves next door to me, it's not
you know, it's not like I can't possibly be friends
with you. And I think that, yeah, it's it is
really sad that that's where we've gotten. I think that,
you know, I don't want to just blame the left,
but I feel like this happens way more from the
left than I don't.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
It's much more entire Yeah, no question about it. I mean, look,
I all my conservative friends, this doesn't enter their lexicon,
Like whether I can talk to somebody or not talk
to somebody doesn't revolve around whether they're a liberal or
a conservative.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But your friends with smug so.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Exactly exactly, he's going to love this.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
This, this is what it's all about.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Actually, But I mean that is increasingly. It started with
cancel culture, and it started with Me Too movement and
all these other pieces of what has become of the
left left where they're just willing to just cut off
(23:03):
like they don't exist anybody that doesn't agree with them,
and I think that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Very yeah, because you don't know, it could be it
could be your kids again, you know. I think about
stuff like that all the time, and the fact that
people cut off each other of a politics, especially family, like,
don't do that, guys, just don't do it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Dumb.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So, looking back on your life and career, what advice
would you give your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Do you still go to the party school?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I do absolutely like the parties were fun, unquestionably. Look,
I think everybody's different, and this is I think. You know,
when I hear people much more successful than I am
try to give standard advice on a question like that
(23:51):
too often, it's it's it subscribes to an idea of
the we're all the same at every point in our life,
and we're not. I mean, I was sixteen. I was
a reckless, crazy party kid. I needed a little bit
of guidance, but more than anything, I needed something productive
(24:12):
to be inspired by. I went through a long period
of time there where I just wasn't I didn't know
what I wanted to do, but it landed on me
at some point I mentioned that the nine to eleven
thing and it just it created all the energy that
I used to be unproductive. I understood that I now
wanted to do something to be productive. But there are
(24:34):
other kids who you know, they're studying all day and
night in high school and they want to go do me.
But kids, you know, yeah, but they wanted you know
what I mean. And you've met these people. Some of
them are very very successful where they just they're very
focused on we have to do X Y Z, I
need to get into IVY League school and do all
these other things. For those people, I would say, go
(24:56):
have fun.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, like go.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
In less. You understand the full panoply of life and
what it has to offer. At some point in life,
you're going to be resentful of what you didn't do
unless you checked it all out. And you know, you
hear a lot about midlife crisises and all these other things,
(25:20):
like it's going to visit you when you're just monocularly
focused on one thing and you need to be this
one person and at some point it's not authentic. So
you got to find your authentic self. I will say
the second piece of it is prepare when you're a
young person to go through a decade of your twenties,
(25:42):
if you want to be successful of just grinding, just grinding.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
If my twenty year olds still do that, I feel like, no.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Maybe not, but it's going to be a problem for them. Yeah,
I mean, I know, I think some do. I think
there are a lot of people who do. But what's
most important is that you understand that the work that
you put into setting the infrastructure for who you become,
both in terms of what you're able to do and
who you are as a person, is so important to
(26:15):
not be the thirty eight year old, forty five year old,
fifty year old who is resentful, angry, and counterproductive and
is basically going to work every morning just to pay
the bills and get through the day. Right. I mean,
that's where you set the bar. You're building all those things.
(26:36):
If you're demonstrated value between twenty two and thirty five
is such that everybody sort of recognizes what it is
that you do. When you're thirty eight.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That's where you want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It's easier, it's easier, and then your authenticity as a
person can come through and you learn a lot about
yourself in those in those days, because it's not easy.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No, Yeah, I love that I've loved this conversation. I've
loved getting to know you. I think that everything you
do is awesome and I love to follow your career
and wish you all possible success. Leave us here, you
gave us some good advice, but leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives. And maybe maybe it is the live
(27:22):
authentically and and pursue your passions.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's a big part
of it. More and more importantly is do not disregard
the people you surround yourself with. Make sure that those
people are people who lift you up. You're not you're
not associating with him because you think you can get
something out of him. Yeah or right? I mean these
(27:48):
are these are like true blue go to war with
have a great time with people who are just they're
there with you. You can go so far out on
a limb if you look back and you know everybody's
got you, like they're they're going to be there for you,
whether it goes good or whether it goes horribly like
(28:09):
these are these are people who can support you, and
once you do that, you're willing to take risks. Uh
not all of them are going to go well, but
I mean some of them do. And that's going to
ultimately define your professional life in one former fashion.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And if you haven't found those people, keep looking, don't settle.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yep, he is Josh Holmes. Check him out on the
Ruthless Podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Thank you so much, Josh, Thank you, Carol,
Welcome back to the Carol Marcowig Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Josh Holmes. Josh is a partner at
calalry LC and co host of the Ruthless podcast. It's
so nice to have you.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On, Josh, Oh, it's great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I love your show, I love your twitter feed. I've
been a huge fan of yours for many years, and
I'm really.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Excited to learn more about you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I don't feel like I know a lot about your
background or about how you got into this. You know,
a thing of ours. So how did it start for you?
How did you get into politics?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Well, the feeling is mutual. Obviously, been an admirer of
your work a lot over the years. Yeah, it's a
roundabout way of getting here. For me. I grew up
in Minnesota and had, you know, the time of my life,
sort of an ideal upbringing in a lot of different ways.
(00:56):
But when it was time for college and like professional
you know, imaginement at some level, like what is that
you do? I went to Arizona State University, and I
wish I could tell you that that was an academic decision.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Hey that's a party school, right, Yeah, well it Wins Awards.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
At the time, at the year that I was going,
it was number one one Wow. And I applied to
two schools, Arizona State and the University of Florida, and
Arizona State said yes first, and so that's where I went,
which is a long way from Minnesota. And it had
absolutely nothing to do with what it is that I
wanted to or thought I wanted to do for a living.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
But which was what what were you thinking?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I didn't know. I mean, you know, like so many
young people, you just have no idea of what it
is that you're good at, you know, And I like,
I think this is at some point an indictment of
education and education systems. At some point I found nothing
that I was super excited about it.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
No, you haven't used the Patagonora theorem since you learned
about it?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, I mean the last math class I took Carol
was called math.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Same I recently learned as a thing as math dyslexia,
and I'm pretty sure I have it.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But I mean, so I went down there to basically
have a good time. But I also you know, in
the process, I had a medical procedure when I was
in my second year. I had brain surgery, believe or not.
And you know, I was something less than a good
student the first year year and a half that I
(02:39):
was at Arizona State. I was more interested in the
social scene. But I had this this issue where I
had brain surgery. And I remember sitting in the hospital
bed where all my friends were coming in one after
one just to wish me well and try to cheer
me up. And I was there for several weeks and
(03:02):
they were talking all about what they were doing and
all the career advancement or internships whatever that they were
interested in. And I remember at that moment thinking to myself, Man,
I got to kind of get this thing together, like
I I certainly don't want.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Because had brain surgery. I feel like if you could
take it easy at any point, it might be that moment.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Well, I think the problem was that I took it
easy for a couple a long time before that, and
it required a kick in the ass, to be honest
with you, it required a observing that other people were
moving on with life after high school and you know,
your early part of college, and they were focused on something,
(03:45):
and so you know, that was kind of the moment
I started focusing a little bit on school, and then
what did I wanted to do?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So what did you want to do?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I didn't I still didn't know. I started doing some
journalism stuff back then, in large part because I grew
up in a family that was really big into news,
really big into politics, although it wasn't my politics. I mean,
I grew up all the way from Ronald Reagan just
being a diehard Republican. Both my parents grew up as Democrats.
(04:24):
But I kind of knew where I was on all
of that, and I thought, well, news and information is
pretty powerful, and maybe this would be a business that
I wanted to go into. But then I spent you know,
the first couple of semesters everybody telling me about the
history of news and Edward R. Murreaw and everything else, and.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was like, no, no, this is not for me.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I was like, this is probably not the thing.
So I got out of it. And you know, both
my parents were attorneys, and so I thought, you know,
maybe pret law, maybe something like that. And they had
a program at the time at Arizona State that was
like a it was like a double minor type thing
(05:08):
was called interdisciplinary studies, whereas justice studies and political science
that kind of combined that where they could get a
lot of people into law school. And I thought that's
what I wanted to do at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
So did you do it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I sure did do Where did you go? Tell us
about it?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I think what happened to me was my dad convinced
me at some level to come out to Washington, d C.
And just spend an internship program. And there was this
Washington semester program through American University that gives you a
little entree into the political world. And obviously, I'm from
(05:49):
the middle of Minnesota. I have no idea. I've got
no connections, My dad's got no connection, my you know,
mom's got no connections, nothing connected to Washington, DC. But
he's like, why don't you just go out and try it?
And I did and I was there for ten days
in nine to eleven. Happened Wow, And that fundamentally changed
(06:11):
the trajectory of me and what I wanted to do.
And I think the rest is history of it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So it's interesting that your dad encouraged you to go
to DC even though you guys were politically opposed. Like
I think about that with my own kids. If my
kids end up being libs. Am I going to be like, yeah,
you go pursue those dreams, you know, you go.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Work for me the matters.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I don't know that I would be so like, you know,
I probably wouldn't like dissuade them, But I also don't
think i'd be like a big cheerleader for it.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
But your dad was, yeah, well, I mean his politics
were changing too, you know. I think I think my
parents had a fundamental realignment after nine to eleven, which
coincided with me. My brother were in Lower Manhattan and
I was at this point an intern in DC, and
(07:07):
if you remember nine to eleven, nobody could get a
hold of anybody. Yeah, and so it just fundamentally realigned
their point of view. But like from a personal experience,
it realigned what I wanted to do and where I
thought I could make a difference in what I was
interested in. And I just really dug in at that point.
And you know, everybody's got a different pathway. But when
(07:31):
you see something that gives you energy, do you think
you're good at do you think you can provide value
for you? Charge forward? Even as a young person. And
I never would have imagined that all of that would
have led to you know, my experiences over the last
twenty years, but it did.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So how did you guys get into cavalry? What was
the impetus for that?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, that's a longer story a little bit. And that
I got into politics. I did the first time I
was in the United States Senate. I couldn't figure out
why it was that everyone spent so much time talking
about things that were never going to happen. You know, Yeah,
it just it frustrated me. And you get that, you know,
(08:21):
I'm sure your listeners all can identify with this. You
get this component somewhere between when you get into the
workforce in your late twenties where you look at things
and you're like, well, I can do the job better
than the person who's like supposed to be managing me,
but I'm not recognized as such. And there's a frustration
(08:43):
involved in all of that. And so I kind of
switched things up and I wanted to go into communications.
I was in policy, and I met Ken Melman, who
was then two thousand and four presidential campaign manager for
George W. Bush, who brought me into the R and C.
At the time, we had a historically bad election in
two thousand and six, but I met a whole bunch
(09:06):
of people who were just really good people, thoughtful people,
and had hilarious, dark humor about it.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
It's really important, actually.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, I mean they could make the worst time not
feel like work. And I was attracted to the whole situation.
And Melman at some point introduced me to McConnell, who
was just becoming leader was elected in the fall of
two thousand and six, and McConnell said to Melman, I
(09:40):
got to revamp all Republican communications at some level. I mean,
if you went into like the Republican conference in the
Senate at that time, they were doing like these weird
tape like pre tape things. It looked like they I
mean I remember walking into one. It was Ted Stevens
and they had this whole bumper music. There was like
(10:00):
did did te today? We bring you the Ted Stevens Show,
And then he would talk about the most boring shit
on the face of the planet. Yeah, and then they
would just take it and ship it back to Alaska.
And I was like, this is like, we're in a
different tyle. The Internet is like a real thing. At
this point, and so, and mcconnor recognized that too, and
(10:22):
so he asked me to come in and help run
this new communications unit that he was using. And my
promise to him was that I would be there for
six months or so to make sure that they got
up and running, and then I was going to go
do a presidential campaign or something like that. And I
remember there was a couple of moments in there that
(10:44):
I was like, Wow, this guy doesn't He's not talking
about anything that's not going to happen. He only talks
about what is going to happen. And it was a
funda fundamental reversal from where my whole point of view
Sentate government was.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
So what was the next step? What happened then?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So we got you know, look, there's a ton of
war stories with I would go out and do campaigns,
then I'd come back to the Senate and go out
and do campaigns and come back to the Senate. But
there was a synthesis there where I got to work
with really good people. And I think if there's one
fundamental takeaway from my career at that stage was when
(11:28):
you get good, decent people were doing things for the
right reasons that you understand and you job with and
you can create and do things bigger than you can
do individually. You don't want to lose that. You want
to make that a central part of what you're doing.
(11:49):
And so all of that ran up until twenty fourteen,
where you know, I'd work with John Ashbrook, who was
a co host of Ruthless, and I always felt like,
if the two of us are in our room, we
can figure out any problem, yeah, no matter how bad
it is. And there was a number of other people
that were involved in all of that, and so we
(12:11):
started a company after we got out of government service.
It's called Cavalry, where we tried to basically take what
it is that we learned over the last seven eight
years of government and politics and advocacy and everything else
to try to bring it to a larger marketplace. That was,
i mean largely operating on a nineteen eighties footprint, right.
(12:32):
It was like if you read Gucci gulch of like
shoe leather lobbying, that's basically where things were in the
early twenty tens. And the world had changed, and so
we wanted to get involved in.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
How did Ruthless Start?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
That was a funnier story. So Johnny and I at
that point it worked together, and Duncan and I had
worked together since twenty fourteen since that a great campaign
cycle we had. And so we were watching the change
in media. And it used to be that you would
(13:13):
hire a pr agency or do whatever you can to
fight like hell to get the quote that tried to
refute the premise of a mainstream news studio at some
point in like the sixteenth paragraph, and that was like
considered to be a win. But we were watching audiences change,
and at some level, audiences were becoming larger than the
(13:37):
mainstream media outlets themselves, and so we put a lot
of thought into it. Meanwhile, we were huge fans of.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Smug, competably Smug, my favorite liberal friend.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So on X, his sense of
humor is a reverend sense of humor. His engagement or whatever.
In the early days of X like blocked out the sun.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I mean, he was everything.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
He was everything, and one day he asked all of
us to go have a happy hour with him out
of nowhere. We'd never met him, and I was like,
I got to see what this guy looks like. I
have no clue. It's an anonymous figure. And we went
and had the time of our lives and at the
end of it, Smug says to me, Hey, I got
an idea. Do you mind if I come by the
(14:24):
office in the next couple.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Of weeks with smugs idea.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Huh, Well, here's the funny part of the story. He
comes into the office and he's got this memo that
outlines what it would be like to have a media
company and a podcast that basically uses humor in large
part to sort of skewer and make commentary on what's
(14:47):
happening with like a leftist media and leftist narratives and whatever.
At the same time, we had worked at on one
ourselves and presented him with a PowerPoint. It was literally
the same idea. Wow, it was literally the same idea.
And so at that point, like we knew we had
to do something. And then it COVID hits and we're
(15:11):
all sitting at home because nobody in DC. It wouldn't
allow you to come into DC, and uh. We started
this happy hour zoom call where we would have a
bourbon at the end of the day, talk about whatever,
bat on some horses because that was like the only
thing that was still going. They're like sports members.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Shutting down gambling, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Sports were largely canceled, which is what we all do.
And so horse racing was like.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
In baseball, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Like horse racing was it. And so you know, we
bet on some ponies and talk and we were like, no,
this is a good cadence, like maybe we should figure
out how to format this. And when we launched Ruthless,
it was like a a real flyer. Like I don't
think any of us thought it was going to be
the thing I thought. You know, we thought it was
(16:08):
a one point zero version to try to test the
marketplace because none of us knew anything about podcasting.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
In fact, like Duncan and Ashbrook were like teaching themselves
how to edit audio and get it online. But our
third episode, I think was it went to number one
on the political charts, and we thought at that point, well,
I think we got an obligation to try to do this.
(16:35):
And it was a weird period of time. It was
the end of twenty twenty. It was between you know,
the twenty twenty election and January sixth where we were
trying to figure out how to get a foothold and
conservative politics. It was it was tough, and we were
very conflicted about a whole bunch of it. But once
we emerged from that, we realized that the real conversation
(16:57):
we were having is the conversation everybody else is having
at the bar.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, I don't know what you guys do so well,
and if I could just give you some compliments, I
think you're so honest. Like, I don't think any of
you are fronting anything. And there's a lot of different
you know, there's movement in the conservative world. There's changes
all the time, but you guys are who you are.
And you know, I got my jokes about Smug, but
I always thought that about him, that he is who
(17:22):
he is and he is not trying to pretend to
be anything else.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, I mean I think that's a fair assessment. I
mean for Smug and the other three Duncan, Ashbrook and
I it's not worth doing. Yeah, if you have to
come up with some version of yourself, it is not
what it is.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
You're not You're not adjusting to anything.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It is what I mean, Like, you know, you do
see in the conservative You know, things changed very rapidly,
and what was cool a year ago might not be
cool today.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
And I don't think that you guys are like seeking
out the next thing.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
You're not catering to what the next thing might be,
or or trying to find an audience, a newer audience
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah. No, I mean because we didn't have to do it.
It was a luxury. I understand that people who do
have to do it, and this is all they do
for a living. And you know, you want to stay
a step ahead of where the electorate is. But you know,
we had, you know, two advantages in that regard. One
is that our job was to stay ahead of the
(18:24):
electorate in a lot of different ways over the previous
fifteen years. And the second piece of it was we
don't need.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
To do this, right, that's it.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
If it's not fun, and it's not, we can't laugh
back up, man, go do something else.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
That's what makes it so good. I really, I really
believe that we're.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Going to take a quick break and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Show Switching gears. What do you worry about?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Look, I worry about where the information flow is in
this country. I counter so many people and you can
see this play out live on cable news every day,
that exclusively subscribe to one information flow cylinder rather than another.
(19:17):
And they never it's always a self rewarding choice right
where it's like they've got previous convictions about something, anything
that sort of fills that cylinder, that's their exclusive view
of the strate. And you know, in the era of
the Internet and podcasts and all of these other things,
(19:40):
it concerns me now the upside of the era that
we're in is that you have a choice other than CBS,
ABC and NBC right to give you the true story
of what's happening. I think we've found out over the
last eight years or so they're.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Not Yeah, they're a bunch of liars.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yes, they're not equipped to do that, which which is fine,
But I do I do concern myself a little bit
with people self radicalizing. Yeah, And it's not just you know,
this isn't a right or center or a left of
center thing. It's about your choice of trying to be
(20:18):
intellectually curious and understand your neighbor right and and I
think too often your choices of what you consume and
using information affects your interaction with your neighbor. I hate that.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I have a really good friend who works on Capitol
Hill who's just telling me on Sunday that they moved
into a new house next to somebody and they went up,
you know, like a basket of muffins or something, as
one does. Sure, it's like, you know, I'm your new neighbor.
You know, just wanted to get to know you and
this person basically the response was, We've googled you, we
(21:03):
know who you are, we've seen your ex account, we
know what you do. We're not interested in a relationship.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
That is And you know it's a You're talking about
somebody who's a staffer on the Republican side and somebody
who's obviously a dogmatic liberal. And I worry about that,
ye because I just think like the shared experience in
the United States has always been part of our story. Empathy, understanding,
(21:33):
and persuasion. Yeah, and if you don't have that in
some combination, I worry a lot about where that goes from.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, I understand people siloing a little bit, Like, Look,
I moved to Florida.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I wanted to be in a red state.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I you know, I had never lived anywhere where anybody
agreed with me before, So I get the wanting to
be in.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
A little bit of a bubble.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
But you know, if a liberal moves next door to me,
then a liberal moves next door to me, it's not
you know, it's not like I can't possibly be friends
with you. And I think that, yeah, it's it is
really sad that that's where we've gotten. I think that,
you know, I don't want to just blame the left,
but I feel like this happens way more from the
left than I don't.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
It's much more entire Yeah, no question about it. I mean, look,
I all my conservative friends, this doesn't enter their lexicon,
Like whether I can talk to somebody or not talk
to somebody doesn't revolve around whether they're a liberal or
a conservative.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
But your friends with smug so.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Exactly exactly, he's going to love this.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
This, this is what it's all about.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Actually, But I mean that is increasingly. It started with
cancel culture, and it started with Me Too movement and
all these other pieces of what has become of the
left left where they're just willing to just cut off
(23:03):
like they don't exist anybody that doesn't agree with them,
and I think that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Very yeah, because you don't know, it could be it
could be your kids again, you know. I think about
stuff like that all the time, and the fact that
people cut off each other of a politics, especially family, like,
don't do that, guys, just don't do it.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Dumb.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So, looking back on your life and career, what advice
would you give your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Do you still go to the party school?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
I do absolutely like the parties were fun, unquestionably. Look,
I think everybody's different, and this is I think. You know,
when I hear people much more successful than I am
try to give standard advice on a question like that
(23:51):
too often, it's it's it subscribes to an idea of
the we're all the same at every point in our life,
and we're not. I mean, I was sixteen. I was
a reckless, crazy party kid. I needed a little bit
of guidance, but more than anything, I needed something productive
(24:12):
to be inspired by. I went through a long period
of time there where I just wasn't I didn't know
what I wanted to do, but it landed on me
at some point I mentioned that the nine to eleven
thing and it just it created all the energy that
I used to be unproductive. I understood that I now
wanted to do something to be productive. But there are
(24:34):
other kids who you know, they're studying all day and
night in high school and they want to go do me.
But kids, you know, yeah, but they wanted you know
what I mean. And you've met these people. Some of
them are very very successful where they just they're very
focused on we have to do X Y Z, I
need to get into IVY League school and do all
these other things. For those people, I would say, go
(24:56):
have fun.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, like go.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
In less. You understand the full panoply of life and
what it has to offer. At some point in life,
you're going to be resentful of what you didn't do
unless you checked it all out. And you know, you
hear a lot about midlife crisises and all these other things,
(25:20):
like it's going to visit you when you're just monocularly
focused on one thing and you need to be this
one person and at some point it's not authentic. So
you got to find your authentic self. I will say
the second piece of it is prepare when you're a
young person to go through a decade of your twenties,
(25:42):
if you want to be successful of just grinding, just grinding.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
If my twenty year olds still do that, I feel like, no.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Maybe not, but it's going to be a problem for them. Yeah,
I mean, I know, I think some do. I think
there are a lot of people who do. But what's
most important is that you understand that the work that
you put into setting the infrastructure for who you become,
both in terms of what you're able to do and
who you are as a person, is so important to
(26:15):
not be the thirty eight year old, forty five year old,
fifty year old who is resentful, angry, and counterproductive and
is basically going to work every morning just to pay
the bills and get through the day. Right. I mean,
that's where you set the bar. You're building all those things.
(26:36):
If you're demonstrated value between twenty two and thirty five
is such that everybody sort of recognizes what it is
that you do. When you're thirty eight.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That's where you want to be.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
It's easier, it's easier, and then your authenticity as a
person can come through and you learn a lot about
yourself in those in those days, because it's not easy.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
No, Yeah, I love that I've loved this conversation. I've
loved getting to know you. I think that everything you
do is awesome and I love to follow your career
and wish you all possible success. Leave us here, you
gave us some good advice, but leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives. And maybe maybe it is the live
(27:22):
authentically and and pursue your passions.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, I think that's I think that's a big part
of it. More and more importantly is do not disregard
the people you surround yourself with. Make sure that those
people are people who lift you up. You're not you're
not associating with him because you think you can get
something out of him. Yeah or right? I mean these
(27:48):
are these are like true blue go to war with
have a great time with people who are just they're
there with you. You can go so far out on
a limb if you look back and you know everybody's
got you, like they're they're going to be there for you,
whether it goes good or whether it goes horribly like
(28:09):
these are these are people who can support you, and
once you do that, you're willing to take risks. Uh
not all of them are going to go well, but
I mean some of them do. And that's going to
ultimately define your professional life in one former fashion.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And if you haven't found those people, keep looking, don't settle.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Yep, he is Josh Holmes. Check him out on the
Ruthless Podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Thank you so much, Josh, Thank you, Carol,
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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.
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Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.