October 15, 2025 • 18 mins
In this special anniversary episode of The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol marks two years of thought-provoking conversations with Mary Katharine Ham. Together, they dive into the growing crisis in children’s reading skills, share the wisdom they’d pass on to their younger selves, and open up about overcoming life’s toughest challenges. The discussion also looks ahead to the nation’s fiscal future while celebrating the timeless importance of reading, personal growth, and surrounding yourself with the right people. Mary Katharine offers insightful, practical advice for living a more intentional and fulfilling life. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco and Show
on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
My guest today is.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Mary Katherine Ham, Fox News contributor and my co host
at the Normally podcast, also right here on iHeart Him.
Mary Catherine, how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I am doing pretty good.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I feel like you and I talk sometimes you know
now and then no, we're sometimes on the air together.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
This episode marks two years of the Carol Markowitz Show.
And I do this thing on the Carol Markowitz Show
where I ask my guests a set of three questions,
and I wanted to bring you on to ask you
the three questions from my second year and to be
the first person to answer the three questions, actually just
two new questions one days the same into my third year.
(00:49):
I should also note that you were on in my
first year, so you answered my first set of three
questions when I used to ask what's our largest cultural
or social problem?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And also do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Those two you've already covered, so let's get into it.
My first question in my second year was what do
you worry about?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
What do I worry about?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I would say recently, but I would say in the
past couple of years. The thing that I've started to
worry about a lot is that people can't.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Read good, they can't be good.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
It's a concern that I have, and I'm being silly
about it, but it is very serious. And this is
something that you and I sort of on a gut
level recognized about. The school shutdowns could be a problem
in the future. But I think the sort of loss
of inability to concentrate on reading, yeah, the sort of
(01:42):
scam about the way that kids were taught to read
for about twenty years, that we have to work out
of the system now and then get them back on phonics,
which thankfully has happened in places like Mississippi and Alabama
and Tennessee, and everyone should in Louisiana as well. Everyone
should take note and run with those plans. But I
do think there's a real gap in there where a
(02:02):
lot of people weren't learning to read right, and beyond reading,
not building that skill, not building attention span, not building
critical thinking skills. Yeah, and then that's why you get
people in your mentions just totally misunderstanding everything you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Say, right, And I think that there's this feeling among
people that they don't need it anymore. That you don't
need to learn how to be a strong reader anymore.
That know, chat GPT will just do it for you.
But I still think the people who are able to
read text and understand what they've read and repeat it
back and make it put it in layman's terms or
(02:39):
any of that is going to defeat chat GPT any
day of the week.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
They're going to eat the lunch of people who can't
do that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
In fact, I think that the whole reliance on AI,
it's going to be people who can process information who will.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Be the ones leading the way with AI. And I
think that this idea that we don't need to read
and read.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Is kind of something they did in the old fashioned days,
is silly and ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And I fully agree with you. We saw this coming.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
We knew that the closures of the schools were going
to be problematic in a lot of ways. And look,
I saw it in my own kids. My older two
kids learned to read. They didn't even care what the
memorization techniques were at school. My youngest one didn't do that,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
A real tough road to get him back to where
he needed to be.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, and it's just like reading as fundamental as they
used to say in the eighties, and everything builds off
of it, and even other seemingly unrelated subjects.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
There are studies that show that these correlate.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
If you're building your reading skills, you're building a bunch
of other skills that help you to build everything in
your life. So I do worry about losing that, and
I hope we get back on track.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, my second question is what advice would you give
your sixteen year old self.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, let's see, sixteen year old self.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I don't have have a ton of regrets in life,
so I don't know if there's any any part of
my past that I would change in major ways. But
I would tell my sixteen year old self this and
she probably would not listen.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh wait, no, two things.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Two things.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One, do not pluck your eyebrows.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You had such a great article about that. I think
it was in the Federalist.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Baby. Yeah, I remember sending that.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
To my daughter and being like, don't pluck your eyebrows.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It was an open letter to my eyebrows.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
And I have to say that now I must live
through the humiliation of an envy of watching my exact
perfect brows grow on my daughter's face.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Oh yes, totally.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I add those and I spurned them. Okay, so that's
number two. And I also probably wouldn't listen to this,
And I guess that's just part of growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But Mary Catherine, your mother is lovely and nice. Why
are you being mean to her?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Your mother is lovely and nice. She's a really nice lady.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, and your your whole life, you're gonna learn just
how nice she is because other people very fraught relationships
with their moms.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Other people have and I, you know, that's tough on folks.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
And I didn't realize that this large part of my
life was just taken care of by my mother being
this lovely, selfless woman. Yeah, and and smart and driven
and creative and all these cool things. And she really
put up with a lot with my brothers and me,
but particularly me, probably as.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
A teenager, that she she didn't deserve. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Absolutely, And is one more that one more to that
your dad's right about basically everything.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It turns out your dad's correct. I also met your dad.
He is actually right about everything. Not all dads are
right about everything, I'll just say that.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
But in my case, those those two insights had I
had them earlier might have helped me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Did you feel from your daughters the same kind of
pushback that you gave your mom?
Speaker 4 (05:51):
We'll see they're they're getting into that territory. And I
will say I deserve someone being mean to me a
lot more than my mother did.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I am much meaner than my mind.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah. My mom's just like coming in my room as
a as a teenager to like gently wake me up
in the morning, like, hey, hun.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Time people a bed. I'm right.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I like to call down to my kids, like get up.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I do hope that as I grow older, and there
is some indication of this that like a lot of
people become more like their mothers, and for that, for me,
that just means like sunnier and nicer. Although my husband
is like, I mean, you could be a lot nicer,
you could be.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
A lot sunnier.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
He's like, when are you gonna be your mother? I
would love to see that.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It's amazing. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I sometimes see people post on the internet like what
kind of people they would be if they had more
love from their moms, And I'm like, oh wow, I
totally had that, and that's a nice thing to have. Obviously,
I have a teenage daughter, and she's way nicer to
me than I was to my mom. So I almost
feel like I didn't get punished enough for it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
But you know, maybe my boys. Who knows boys could
be bad too, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Yeah, well we appreciate it to both our moms from
your former days.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, all right, So my third question stays the same,
so we'll stay We'll keep that for a little bit later.
But the new questions of the third year of the
Carol Markowitz Show is what are you most proud of
in your life?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well, that's an easy one.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
What I am most proud of in my life is
that when really bad things happened to me, I was
able to persevere and raise my children with a smile
on my face most of the time, and to give
them a good stable household. So and many people know
my story, and if you've listened to me on the
Carol marqu Witch Show before, I'm sure you've heard it.
(07:44):
But my husband passed away when I was seven months
pregnant with my second child in twenty fifteen in a
bicycling accident and obviously sudden, obviously unexpected, just a you know,
lifetime movie of a an event in your own lifetime,
and I, you know, never knew that I had built
(08:06):
skills to live through that, or that I had the
personality or the faith necessary to get through that.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But I found out the hard way that I did.
And look, there's.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Tons of times when I was drinking too much wine,
when I was being too angry at the world, when
I was discombobulated, and.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
A little bit falling apart.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
A lot some of it's a blur, but in general,
I had my baby two months after he died. She
was just a gift from God, like the loveliest, sweetest newborn.
And those two gals and I for the next couple
of years until I met my husband and remarried in
twenty twenty, we just had a blast and we lived well.
(08:49):
And I had told myself that I would not live
scared and that I would not be a sad trombone
in every.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Room, a sad trombone line. I remember that. It's really it,
really with me.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah, I ask people not to react to us that way,
because I think, you know, that is a thing that
can happen, Like I'm a pregnant widow. It's very sad, right,
But asking people out loud not to treat me that way,
I think changed the trajectory of what my life became.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, so that's that's what I'm most proud of, is
like holding it together.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Absolutely, You're also I have to tell you that your
open faith then and in other times is just inspiring
to me. I think. I I've always been in Judaism.
I say I'm religious, but not observant, like I feel
very close to God.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I feel very religious.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You talking about your faith and living it so openly
definitely had an effect on me doing the same. I
feel like I talk about God more often because of you.
I feel like I'm not embarrassed about it because of you.
And I think you should know that your faith, your
open faith, has helped me live my faith more openly.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Well, I'm really glad. I think I was not as
open about it until this happened to me. I had
worked in ministry in the past, but it was like
very compartmentalized, right, and then this happening to me gave me, Well,
I really didn't feel like there was a choice, Like
it was the only thing that I could use to
make sense of it. And some people will be angry
at God and turn away from God, and that's a
(10:20):
totally understandable thing.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I have experienced some of that myself, right, But to me,
it was like, oh, we're going to do this.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Yeah, you got to hang with me for that, Lord,
because I cannot do this by myself.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And I really felt that He was with me and that.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Promises were kept, and that that made all the difference.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So I try.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
I try now, actually, inspired somewhat by Charlie Kirk, to
remind myself that you don't need a reason to talk
about it. It doesn't have to be something giant tragedy.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That's just how you live your life, right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It could be you being happy and you being fulfilled,
and it could be anything and having a good day
and thanking God for it at the end of it.
I think it's such an important thing to do. But also,
but in times of trouble, turning to God. I hope
to give my kids that kind of impulse. When you
are in a dark time, turn to God and he
will help you through it. We're going to take a
quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
(11:16):
All right, my second question of the third year of
the Carol Markowitz Show. Give us a five year out prediction.
It could be about the country, the world, music, anything.
I'm going to send you these questions in advance.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I just know, I know because I hadn't noted I know,
because no, I'm just saying that I love this about you.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You're like, no, no, I got this.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I'm making that face because I couldn't really think of
a sunny one. So we went, we went sunny and
uplifting with some.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Other Okay, yeah, because okay.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
No, My prediction is that in the next five years
we will come nowhere close to figuring out our fiscal issues,
and that that will mean.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Really bad things.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yeah yeah, Like I there there's a thing where we
get so caught up in the idea of American exceptionalism,
which I very much agree with.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Same, Yeah, that we assume we just think it'll work out, We're.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
So exceptional that it'll just happen. But we actually have
to do things, and so we should be proving our
exceptionalism by doing hard things. And I do not currently
see a pass toward doing that. And eventually, like there
just isn't more fake money, Like eventually you hit a wall,
and that concerns me for both myself and especially my kids.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's interesting because on two recent episodes, I've had guests
say that.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Answer was our fiscal situation and how nobody seems to
be worrying about it or caring about it, and how
it used to be Republicans at least just to talk
about it, and now it's like not mentioned at all
that we're spending ourselves into oblivion. And Culture has this
thing where she says that the spending issue on the
right is like climate change on the left. We keep
saying it's going to be doomed, but it never actually happens.
(12:56):
But I do think we're a lot closer to doom
because of the spending than the left will tell us
we are on climate change.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I don't know what we do about that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's a really tough one because there's no great solution.
That we're going to have to live in a completely
different way. We're going to have to make some serious changes.
We're recording this in the middle. You know, the shutdown
is still ongoing about a tiny issue with Obamacare.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
They can't get to the bottom of that. I don't
have that face.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And that in and of itself is like four hundred
billion dollars of totally superfluous spending on subsidizing rich people's Obamacare,
like there's no income cap on it, right, And even that,
we're like, can we actually do away with that at
the expiration date?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
You can, Yes, you can, absolutely, And what we still do, yeah,
that the fact that it just is off the table.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I don't even know. I'm looking ahead to twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Can't think of any candidate who's going to take up
that issue, and that person's going to lose anyway, because
because nobody wants to hear it.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
There's no constituency for that, right.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
I used to say that on CNN, where I would
like occasionally bring up the fact that we were spending
ourselves to death.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'd be like, I know nobody goes about this but me.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, but I will like to point out once again, right, Well,
sometimes people will say to me, how come you don't
talk about spending, and I'll be like, nobody wants to
hear it. Nobody wants to hear it. I feel like
I lost that conversation. I lost that battle. So now
we're like, let's see what happens with all this spending,
and I hope it's not too bad. You know, it's
interesting that you think it's in the next five years.
(14:31):
I still think it's a little bit further down the road.
The fact that you think it's in the next five
years is well, really concerning.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Actually, I'm not sure that disaster I don't want to
be the next album or on the spending thing. I'm
not sure that disaster is five years down the road.
But I am sure that in five years we will
have lost another chance to act that would have made
things better, Like if we had done the social security
reforms in two thousand and five, which I will never
be mad at George W. Bush for pitching trying because
(14:59):
it was still respond to do so. Paul Ryan tried
some of his own set like these were all these
were all valiant attempts.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
They really were illustrated.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
No one's interested, but they are going to be interested
when they have to pay the price later on. And
if we'd done it twenty years ago, man, we'd be
in a better place now.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, George, when your social security money, right, George.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Bush was like, what if people could invest one percent
of their social security And people were like that's insanity,
absolutely not And like those people if they invested, would
be so much better off today than they are, maybe
collecting Social Security, which you know, who knows if that'll
still be around when when we get to it going
to be trouble.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, So my third question stays the same.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And you've been on the show before, so I'm going
to ask you and then I'll tell you what you
said the last time that you were on depend here
with your best tip from my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
I would say, well, from there's a parent specific one,
and then I can broaden it to everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Read books with your kids.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Hmm. Yeah, it's so because it's obviously related to the
thing I'm worried about. But when I was stuck in
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one trying to teach my
kids to read, I simply said to myself, I will
read to them and they will read to me.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I will read to them and they will read to me.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
And I did it every day and I didn't worry
about the rest of the stuff. And what I saw
in my life is that that foundation built their skills
for everything else. Plus it's a lot of fun. Right
we are now, we are currently reading pride and prejudice,
which is over there. It's over their heads. So they're
twelve and nine, it's over their heads. The prose is
too much for them, but we talk through it. They
(16:39):
learned some new words. They're using the word countenance now, which.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Is very funny, and then not sure I could use
that in a sentence.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
And then you get like the funniest observations about like
I mean, mom, I think mister Darcy's going to show up.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It's called foreshadowing. So it's very fun.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
You can get them into stuff that is above their
level by reading it to them, whatever their level is.
And in general, I would just say for everybody, read
stuff and do stuff that is not connected to your phone.
And I'm telling myself the same thing because I read
way on my phone and not nearly enough offline.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, and read long stuff and read challenging stuff in classics.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I'm reading The Outsiders with my nine year old right
now and he's enjoying it. It's a little over his
head also, but it's my favorite book from my childhood,
so that's all.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We're giving it another go. So the last time you
were on, you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Gave two answers to that and they were put one
foot in front of the other when you're going through
hard times, and that could just mean literally taking a
walk and surround yourself with parents who enjoy their children,
because it's not that hard to be a parent when
you're with other joyful parents. And if you're going to
have struggle, have struggle with people around you. I really
(17:50):
like both of those. Those are all three I think
fantastic tips for living.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm not mad at them.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, take a walk, read a book, be around happy people.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Who parent their kids in a similar joyful manner to you.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Thank you so much for coming on Mary Katherine Ham
and previewing my new three Questions for the Carol Marko,
which show a third year.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Thanks to everybody for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Catch Mary Katherine on normally on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
see her making really smart points on Fox News.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Thank you, I'm kay, thank you. Congrats on three years
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco and Show
on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
My guest today is.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Mary Katherine Ham, Fox News contributor and my co host
at the Normally podcast, also right here on iHeart Him.
Mary Catherine, how are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
I am doing pretty good.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I feel like you and I talk sometimes you know
now and then no, we're sometimes on the air together.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
This episode marks two years of the Carol Markowitz Show.
And I do this thing on the Carol Markowitz Show
where I ask my guests a set of three questions,
and I wanted to bring you on to ask you
the three questions from my second year and to be
the first person to answer the three questions, actually just
two new questions one days the same into my third year.
(00:49):
I should also note that you were on in my
first year, so you answered my first set of three
questions when I used to ask what's our largest cultural
or social problem?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And also do you feel like you've made it?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Those two you've already covered, so let's get into it.
My first question in my second year was what do
you worry about?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
What do I worry about?
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I would say recently, but I would say in the
past couple of years. The thing that I've started to
worry about a lot is that people can't.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Read good, they can't be good.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
It's a concern that I have, and I'm being silly
about it, but it is very serious. And this is
something that you and I sort of on a gut
level recognized about. The school shutdowns could be a problem
in the future. But I think the sort of loss
of inability to concentrate on reading, yeah, the sort of
(01:42):
scam about the way that kids were taught to read
for about twenty years, that we have to work out
of the system now and then get them back on phonics,
which thankfully has happened in places like Mississippi and Alabama
and Tennessee, and everyone should in Louisiana as well. Everyone
should take note and run with those plans. But I
do think there's a real gap in there where a
(02:02):
lot of people weren't learning to read right, and beyond reading,
not building that skill, not building attention span, not building
critical thinking skills. Yeah, and then that's why you get
people in your mentions just totally misunderstanding everything you.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Say, right, And I think that there's this feeling among
people that they don't need it anymore. That you don't
need to learn how to be a strong reader anymore.
That know, chat GPT will just do it for you.
But I still think the people who are able to
read text and understand what they've read and repeat it
back and make it put it in layman's terms or
(02:39):
any of that is going to defeat chat GPT any
day of the week.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
They're going to eat the lunch of people who can't
do that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
In fact, I think that the whole reliance on AI,
it's going to be people who can process information who will.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Be the ones leading the way with AI. And I
think that this idea that we don't need to read
and read.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Is kind of something they did in the old fashioned days,
is silly and ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And I fully agree with you. We saw this coming.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
We knew that the closures of the schools were going
to be problematic in a lot of ways. And look,
I saw it in my own kids. My older two
kids learned to read. They didn't even care what the
memorization techniques were at school. My youngest one didn't do that,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
A real tough road to get him back to where
he needed to be.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Yeah, and it's just like reading as fundamental as they
used to say in the eighties, and everything builds off
of it, and even other seemingly unrelated subjects.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
There are studies that show that these correlate.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
If you're building your reading skills, you're building a bunch
of other skills that help you to build everything in
your life. So I do worry about losing that, and
I hope we get back on track.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, my second question is what advice would you give
your sixteen year old self.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, let's see, sixteen year old self.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I don't have have a ton of regrets in life,
so I don't know if there's any any part of
my past that I would change in major ways. But
I would tell my sixteen year old self this and
she probably would not listen.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh wait, no, two things.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Two things.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One, do not pluck your eyebrows.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You had such a great article about that. I think
it was in the Federalist.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Baby. Yeah, I remember sending that.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
To my daughter and being like, don't pluck your eyebrows.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
It was an open letter to my eyebrows.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
And I have to say that now I must live
through the humiliation of an envy of watching my exact
perfect brows grow on my daughter's face.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Oh yes, totally.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I add those and I spurned them. Okay, so that's
number two. And I also probably wouldn't listen to this,
And I guess that's just part of growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But Mary Catherine, your mother is lovely and nice. Why
are you being mean to her?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Your mother is lovely and nice. She's a really nice lady.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, and your your whole life, you're gonna learn just
how nice she is because other people very fraught relationships
with their moms.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Other people have and I, you know, that's tough on folks.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
And I didn't realize that this large part of my
life was just taken care of by my mother being
this lovely, selfless woman. Yeah, and and smart and driven
and creative and all these cool things. And she really
put up with a lot with my brothers and me,
but particularly me, probably as.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
A teenager, that she she didn't deserve. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Absolutely, And is one more that one more to that
your dad's right about basically everything.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
It turns out your dad's correct. I also met your dad.
He is actually right about everything. Not all dads are
right about everything, I'll just say that.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
But in my case, those those two insights had I
had them earlier might have helped me.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Did you feel from your daughters the same kind of
pushback that you gave your mom?
Speaker 4 (05:51):
We'll see they're they're getting into that territory. And I
will say I deserve someone being mean to me a
lot more than my mother did.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I am much meaner than my mind.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah. My mom's just like coming in my room as
a as a teenager to like gently wake me up
in the morning, like, hey, hun.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Time people a bed. I'm right.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I like to call down to my kids, like get up.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I do hope that as I grow older, and there
is some indication of this that like a lot of
people become more like their mothers, and for that, for me,
that just means like sunnier and nicer. Although my husband
is like, I mean, you could be a lot nicer,
you could be.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
A lot sunnier.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
He's like, when are you gonna be your mother? I
would love to see that.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It's amazing. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I sometimes see people post on the internet like what
kind of people they would be if they had more
love from their moms, And I'm like, oh wow, I
totally had that, and that's a nice thing to have. Obviously,
I have a teenage daughter, and she's way nicer to
me than I was to my mom. So I almost
feel like I didn't get punished enough for it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
But you know, maybe my boys. Who knows boys could
be bad too, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Yeah, well we appreciate it to both our moms from
your former days.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, all right, So my third question stays the same,
so we'll stay We'll keep that for a little bit later.
But the new questions of the third year of the
Carol Markowitz Show is what are you most proud of
in your life?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well, that's an easy one.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
What I am most proud of in my life is
that when really bad things happened to me, I was
able to persevere and raise my children with a smile
on my face most of the time, and to give
them a good stable household. So and many people know
my story, and if you've listened to me on the
Carol marqu Witch Show before, I'm sure you've heard it.
(07:44):
But my husband passed away when I was seven months
pregnant with my second child in twenty fifteen in a
bicycling accident and obviously sudden, obviously unexpected, just a you know,
lifetime movie of a an event in your own lifetime,
and I, you know, never knew that I had built
(08:06):
skills to live through that, or that I had the
personality or the faith necessary to get through that.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
But I found out the hard way that I did.
And look, there's.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Tons of times when I was drinking too much wine,
when I was being too angry at the world, when
I was discombobulated, and.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
A little bit falling apart.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
A lot some of it's a blur, but in general,
I had my baby two months after he died. She
was just a gift from God, like the loveliest, sweetest newborn.
And those two gals and I for the next couple
of years until I met my husband and remarried in
twenty twenty, we just had a blast and we lived well.
(08:49):
And I had told myself that I would not live
scared and that I would not be a sad trombone
in every.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Room, a sad trombone line. I remember that. It's really it,
really with me.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Yeah, I ask people not to react to us that way,
because I think, you know, that is a thing that
can happen, Like I'm a pregnant widow. It's very sad, right,
But asking people out loud not to treat me that way,
I think changed the trajectory of what my life became.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, so that's that's what I'm most proud of, is
like holding it together.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Absolutely, You're also I have to tell you that your
open faith then and in other times is just inspiring
to me. I think. I I've always been in Judaism.
I say I'm religious, but not observant, like I feel
very close to God.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I feel very religious.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You talking about your faith and living it so openly
definitely had an effect on me doing the same. I
feel like I talk about God more often because of you.
I feel like I'm not embarrassed about it because of you.
And I think you should know that your faith, your
open faith, has helped me live my faith more openly.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Well, I'm really glad. I think I was not as
open about it until this happened to me. I had
worked in ministry in the past, but it was like
very compartmentalized, right, and then this happening to me gave me, Well,
I really didn't feel like there was a choice, Like
it was the only thing that I could use to
make sense of it. And some people will be angry
at God and turn away from God, and that's a
(10:20):
totally understandable thing.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I have experienced some of that myself, right, But to me,
it was like, oh, we're going to do this.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Yeah, you got to hang with me for that, Lord,
because I cannot do this by myself.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And I really felt that He was with me and that.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Promises were kept, and that that made all the difference.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
So I try.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
I try now, actually, inspired somewhat by Charlie Kirk, to
remind myself that you don't need a reason to talk
about it. It doesn't have to be something giant tragedy.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That's just how you live your life, right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It could be you being happy and you being fulfilled,
and it could be anything and having a good day
and thanking God for it at the end of it.
I think it's such an important thing to do. But also,
but in times of trouble, turning to God. I hope
to give my kids that kind of impulse. When you
are in a dark time, turn to God and he
will help you through it. We're going to take a
quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
(11:16):
All right, my second question of the third year of
the Carol Markowitz Show. Give us a five year out prediction.
It could be about the country, the world, music, anything.
I'm going to send you these questions in advance.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
I just know, I know because I hadn't noted I know,
because no, I'm just saying that I love this about you.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
You're like, no, no, I got this.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I'm making that face because I couldn't really think of
a sunny one. So we went, we went sunny and
uplifting with some.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Other Okay, yeah, because okay.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
No, My prediction is that in the next five years
we will come nowhere close to figuring out our fiscal issues,
and that that will mean.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Really bad things.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yeah yeah, Like I there there's a thing where we
get so caught up in the idea of American exceptionalism,
which I very much agree with.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Same, Yeah, that we assume we just think it'll work out, We're.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
So exceptional that it'll just happen. But we actually have
to do things, and so we should be proving our
exceptionalism by doing hard things. And I do not currently
see a pass toward doing that. And eventually, like there
just isn't more fake money, Like eventually you hit a wall,
and that concerns me for both myself and especially my kids.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
It's interesting because on two recent episodes, I've had guests
say that.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
What do you worry about?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Answer was our fiscal situation and how nobody seems to
be worrying about it or caring about it, and how
it used to be Republicans at least just to talk
about it, and now it's like not mentioned at all
that we're spending ourselves into oblivion. And Culture has this
thing where she says that the spending issue on the
right is like climate change on the left. We keep
saying it's going to be doomed, but it never actually happens.
(12:56):
But I do think we're a lot closer to doom
because of the spending than the left will tell us
we are on climate change.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I don't know what we do about that.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's a really tough one because there's no great solution.
That we're going to have to live in a completely
different way. We're going to have to make some serious changes.
We're recording this in the middle. You know, the shutdown
is still ongoing about a tiny issue with Obamacare.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
They can't get to the bottom of that. I don't
have that face.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And that in and of itself is like four hundred
billion dollars of totally superfluous spending on subsidizing rich people's Obamacare,
like there's no income cap on it, right, And even that,
we're like, can we actually do away with that at
the expiration date?
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
You can, Yes, you can, absolutely, And what we still do, yeah,
that the fact that it just is off the table.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I don't even know. I'm looking ahead to twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Can't think of any candidate who's going to take up
that issue, and that person's going to lose anyway, because
because nobody wants to hear it.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
There's no constituency for that, right.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
I used to say that on CNN, where I would
like occasionally bring up the fact that we were spending
ourselves to death.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
I'd be like, I know nobody goes about this but me.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, but I will like to point out once again, right, Well,
sometimes people will say to me, how come you don't
talk about spending, and I'll be like, nobody wants to
hear it. Nobody wants to hear it. I feel like
I lost that conversation. I lost that battle. So now
we're like, let's see what happens with all this spending,
and I hope it's not too bad. You know, it's
interesting that you think it's in the next five years.
(14:31):
I still think it's a little bit further down the road.
The fact that you think it's in the next five
years is well, really concerning.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Actually, I'm not sure that disaster I don't want to
be the next album or on the spending thing. I'm
not sure that disaster is five years down the road.
But I am sure that in five years we will
have lost another chance to act that would have made
things better, Like if we had done the social security
reforms in two thousand and five, which I will never
be mad at George W. Bush for pitching trying because
(14:59):
it was still respond to do so. Paul Ryan tried
some of his own set like these were all these
were all valiant attempts.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
They really were illustrated.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
No one's interested, but they are going to be interested
when they have to pay the price later on. And
if we'd done it twenty years ago, man, we'd be
in a better place now.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, George, when your social security money, right, George.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Bush was like, what if people could invest one percent
of their social security And people were like that's insanity,
absolutely not And like those people if they invested, would
be so much better off today than they are, maybe
collecting Social Security, which you know, who knows if that'll
still be around when when we get to it going
to be trouble.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, So my third question stays the same.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And you've been on the show before, so I'm going
to ask you and then I'll tell you what you
said the last time that you were on depend here
with your best tip from my listeners on how they
can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
I would say, well, from there's a parent specific one,
and then I can broaden it to everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Read books with your kids.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Hmm. Yeah, it's so because it's obviously related to the
thing I'm worried about. But when I was stuck in
twenty twenty and twenty twenty one trying to teach my
kids to read, I simply said to myself, I will
read to them and they will read to me.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I will read to them and they will read to me.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
And I did it every day and I didn't worry
about the rest of the stuff. And what I saw
in my life is that that foundation built their skills
for everything else. Plus it's a lot of fun. Right
we are now, we are currently reading pride and prejudice,
which is over there. It's over their heads. So they're
twelve and nine, it's over their heads. The prose is
too much for them, but we talk through it. They
(16:39):
learned some new words. They're using the word countenance now, which.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Is very funny, and then not sure I could use
that in a sentence.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
And then you get like the funniest observations about like
I mean, mom, I think mister Darcy's going to show up.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
It's called foreshadowing. So it's very fun.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
You can get them into stuff that is above their
level by reading it to them, whatever their level is.
And in general, I would just say for everybody, read
stuff and do stuff that is not connected to your phone.
And I'm telling myself the same thing because I read
way on my phone and not nearly enough offline.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, and read long stuff and read challenging stuff in classics.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I'm reading The Outsiders with my nine year old right
now and he's enjoying it. It's a little over his
head also, but it's my favorite book from my childhood,
so that's all.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We're giving it another go. So the last time you
were on, you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Gave two answers to that and they were put one
foot in front of the other when you're going through
hard times, and that could just mean literally taking a
walk and surround yourself with parents who enjoy their children,
because it's not that hard to be a parent when
you're with other joyful parents. And if you're going to
have struggle, have struggle with people around you. I really
(17:50):
like both of those. Those are all three I think
fantastic tips for living.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I'm not mad at them.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, take a walk, read a book, be around happy people.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Who parent their kids in a similar joyful manner to you.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Thank you so much for coming on Mary Katherine Ham
and previewing my new three Questions for the Carol Marko,
which show a third year.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Thanks to everybody for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Catch Mary Katherine on normally on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
see her making really smart points on Fox News.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Thank you, I'm kay, thank you. Congrats on three years
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