In this episode, Karol sits down with acclaimed writer Joel Engel, author of nearly 40 non-fiction books, to explore his remarkable career and deep reflections on today’s cultural climate. Engel discusses the power of storytelling, his personal experiences confronting anti-Semitism, and what modern society often gets wrong about empathy and accountability. He also shares practical wisdom on journaling, managing expectations, and finding meaning in everyday interactions. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to the Carol Marketwood Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Joel Angel. Joel is an author, co author,
and even ghost author of nearly forty non fiction books biography, autobiography, essays, history, comedy, health, law,
true crime, adventure, war and corruption. And he's one of
my favorite people on the app that used to be
(00:27):
known as Twitter. Hi, Joel, So nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So great to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So we've never met, and that's crazy because I feel
like I've known you a long time. But I would
love to know how you got into this crazy thing
of ours and what led you to become a writer.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well, let's see.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I for some reason, when I was young, I know
I wanted to be a writer. I don't know why
I wanted to be a writer. I love to read,
so I after college went to school in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
After college, I had well in college, I had read.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A Movable Feast by Hemingway, and I thought, okay, I'm
going to move to Paris after college.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, And because until then I didn't.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Have anything to write about. So if you want to
be a writer, you have to have things to write about.
I didn't have anything to write about it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'll go to Paris, I'll have some adventures, and I'll
have something to write out.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
What happened was I fell in love with a woman
who had a really beautiful voice.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I played guitar, she sang.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
We played in the first in the streets or first
in the subways, in the streets and clubs. Then we
traveled all around Western Europe and North Africa playing and
all of that. And so I had all of these
wonderful adventures for.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
A year or more and she broke my heart and
that was it. I came back.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I was hoping, this is like and we're still married today.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
No, no, no, no. And so all of those adventures
I've written about. None of them. The whole reason I
went there. I had the things I wanted to do,
and I didn't write any When it came back, I
started writing journalism, and then that I got an offer
from an agent to who had read something I think
(02:11):
in the New York Times if you ever thought about
writing books, Yeah, of course I thought about writing books.
And so that's basically how it started. And then it
just kept going. And I never specialized in anything, because
I was always just interested in people and stories and
the best story.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, yeah, everything. So if it was a good story
and I thought I could tell it, I did.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So you've never written about that time in Paris, playing
on the Metro and falling in love and traveling around
Western Europe, because I feel like maybe you should write that.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, I'm actually I'm now writing. I'm literally, I'm.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
About two weeks away from the end of the first
draft of my first novel. I'm actually writing a novel finally.
But it's not anything about that, and I'm calling it
a character driven revenge love story. So literally none of
what happened to me personally is in this, but it's
all everything in there is based on someone I've known.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I guess, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I just I don't feel like it's enough years in
between then, even though it's been decades.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah yeah, I don't feel like.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I need a little more space, a little more space.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So, which is your favorite of your almost forty books
that you've written. Which one feels closest to you?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, I wrote the two best true stories I ever heard.
I wrote books about one of his best true story
I ever heard, and I was told by the detective,
the LAPD detective, former LAPD detective who solved the case.
He told it to me in nineteen ninety, but it
took me twenty two years to figure out how to
(03:50):
tell it properly. The story that had never been told
was about a serial rapist terrorizing the city's Lovers Lanes,
Los Angeles in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Six, posing as a cop.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He was a black man, and the man who was
falsely accused of it and jailed for it was a
black former cop who got fired, they said for kuiding
a check. But really what he had done is he
dated a white woman, and so they thought, and that's
so the story is basically about racism. So the detective
(04:22):
who solved it, he was a Latino man, I think
the first Latina detective in the LAPD named Danny Galindo,
and he solved it. Danny was the guy who was
the technical advisor on Dragnet. So when there would be
a homicide which Dragnet didn't do and they did give
it to Galindo.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That was just the one I got by.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So I wrote that this is called La fifty six, okay,
and then I wrote, I, actually this is a co author.
So he told his story for him. So It's by
him and me. A man named Zelware Junior. He was
black man born in nineteen forty one in the heart
of jim Crow, Mississippi. His mother and father were kicked
(05:09):
out of town by the Kkkin. He was raised on
his grandparents sharecropping, grandparents dirt floor shack. But he had
two dreams in life. One of them was to be
a pilot and the other was to be a general.
These are he may have as well have said, I
want a right heard of unicorns. But he accomplished both
(05:34):
of those in his life. But the story is built
around this. The book is built around his adventure story.
He was shot down in Vietnam. He was a helicopter pilot.
He was shot down in the jungles of Vietnam. Had
this three week incredible adventure story in which he'd saved
the life of his white racist captain who he was
(05:54):
shot down with.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's really what is that one called?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
That's called by duty bounds. So that's a very good story,
I have to say. So both of those are my favorites.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I think, did you have a plan B if the
writing thing didn't work out? Would you be busking in
the metro?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You know? That's funny.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
You live in LA there's not even a public transportation
that you could be busking in, right, I was.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I think it was early two thousand and two when
that famous episode of This American Life called Plan B
came out.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Do you know this episode?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I know I always ask about Plan b's on this show,
but no, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah. So I'm driving.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I'm driving along and I think about it, and I
go so all these people talking about their Plan b's,
and I'm starting to feel really terrible about it that
I just I had blinders on and I kept my
Plan A. And then it turns out this is truly funny.
One of the stories they told was the story of
Barry Keenan, who was the man who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Junior.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I remember the story in.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Nineteen sixty three. I had spent a week with him
about a year and a half prior getting his story,
because I was going to tell it because it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Was so amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And then we found that I found out that I
really couldn't monetize it because of the son of Sam
Loss but.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So and then I thought, okay, good, I'm on.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Plan If I know you were going to tell me
he had a plan B.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That was his plan B.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
That was his plan B.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
The kids.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That was the plan A.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
His plan.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
He had been a stockbroker and then the market crashed
and he lost everything, and then he had mental illness,
which wasn't helpful and so his plan. That's the reason
they included him. I see, yeah, included him was because
kidnapping Frank Sinatcher Junior was his plan BEA.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So when I heard.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That, I did a complete three sixty for an hour
in the car love it.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you do still write columns, and you do still
write journalism. It's not just books, right, What do you
enjoy writing about on a more day.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
To day basis?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Well, enjoy is not the I feel an obligation to
write as much as possible about the anti Semitism that's
going on. Which so about a month or three weeks
after October seventh, on a column in the Wall Street
Journal about how lifeless has turned around for American Jews
(08:35):
seeing the explosion of anti Semitism in the country, and
I closed the column by saying, we don't want to
you know, we don't want to redefine never again. To me,
never again. Well, we allow Nazi Germany to kill six
million Jews between January nineteen thirty three and May teen
(09:00):
forty five, But that is what is happening. If you
had told me a week prior that on October eighth
there would be provomos, really river to the sea demonstrations
after something like that, I would have thought you were
out of your mind.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Really, so you were surprised, I was. I didn't feel
that kind of surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, I think about that because I really wasn't shocked.
I had been writing about anti Semitism growing in New
York for a long time, and I guess the thing
was that people had compartmentalized what was happening, which to
me was Orthodox Jews were being daily beat up in
the streets of New York. And yes, to me, that
was a four alarm fire, because I knew the only
(09:49):
reason I wasn't being attacked was because I didn't look
the part. But that's all that was saving me. So
I was fully not surprised about October eighth. I thought
this was clearly where we were heading for a while.
Did you feel maybe was it different in California. I
guess Brooklyn is actually the epicenter of violent anti Semitism.
(10:10):
It's number one in the country for violence against shoes.
So maybe I just had it close up to me.
And could it be the California kept you away from that?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Well, it's that I didn't. I followed the same things
you did. Maybe, well, certainly not to the degree that
you did. But I had no idea how widespread it was.
How the guy down the block for me, yeah, may
very well hate me. And I didn't know that all along.
(10:42):
It never occurred to me that it ran so deep.
But it was like on October seventy, it was like
an on button button was pushed. Yeah, and it continues
to grow. It's like the blob that continues to eat
everything in its way. You look at Zeniels and h
Cohort is so amenable to hitlery youth that it's frightening.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah. And even beyond just about Jews, that Cohort is
extremely supportive of political violence. For example, like you know,
leaving a part Israel, leaving a part Jews. They think
it's okay to kill people when you disagree with them.
In numbers that are astronomical. I think we have a
wider problem. It is an immediate problem for Jews in America,
(11:29):
but I think the overarching issues way bigger and worse,
actually more problematic than it seems.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
But yeah, indeed, you.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Know, not for nothing are Jews called the canary and
the coal mart Yeah, so the horseshoe theory is now,
it's the tips are coming together. It's turning into a news.
Jews will be the first one hang, but not nearly
the last.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
These people that.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You're just talking about, it's sort of like the difference
between what they used to say, radical Muslim and a
moderate Muslim. The radical Muslim is the one willing to
do the killing, and the moderate Muslim stands there and watching, goes,
oh yeah, so these they may not pull the trigger themselves,
these young people, but they they're applauding it. It's just
(12:16):
the weirdest thing to say. We get compared a lot
to nineteen sixty eight. But in nineteen sixty eight, even
which I was sentient enough to pay attention to the center,
held that you would never have seen that sort of thing.
But another example is the idea that males would play
female sports, or males would go into female locker rooms
(12:37):
and bathrooms. The center was holding for something like that.
Now I don't even know if there is a center.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I don't know that issue. I feel like the center
is holding. The center's actually saying that they The Democrats
are so fringe about it. Even other Democrats Bill Maher's
of the world and stuff. I feel like they've woken
up to how big of a threat this is.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
But how did we get here?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Oh? Yeah, so how we got here is a terrible
story of allowing people to really bully others into having
the same opinion of that as them, even though we
all knew the emperor had no clothes. That's what it was.
It was a bullying situation.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Cancel culture, Peak, wokeness, met covid Era, and all of
that combined to create a really crazy time. Which leads
me to the most obvious question, when an't you moving
to Florida? Because this is it. We have our little
haven insanity here and this is the only spot in town.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I have spent quite a bit of time in Florida.
My mother Blessed Memory, spent the last thirty years of
her life in Florida, except for the final year of
her life when she lived with us, and if I
was able to endure humidity.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right. Also, my wife went to college in Florida and she.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Goes, never again, No, no, no, I'm never going back.
Are you going to wait out the California in sanity?
Is it crazy over there?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It's it's it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
But then I walk out my backyard there's the Santa
Monica Mountains.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, no, is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It used to be my plan B. Like I was like,
if New York goes to shit, like I'm going to California.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That got really new York.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That got super funny right around twenty twenty, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, since I'm saying the reason you left that that
didn't apply.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It was worse here than where you left.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
California schools didn't open for longer than New York schools.
And yeah, it turned out California was not that great
of a plan B for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That this governor thinks he asked she has a chance
to become president is really one of the most mortally
funny things I can think of.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I'm scared, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh, just all you have to do is run video
of life on the streets in our cities.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, and that if it's not over for that.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Well, on the other hand, you have the Attorney General
of Virginia who is on record wishing the death of
his opponent and his children. Yeah, he's in the once
upon a time in the not very long ago pass
that would be out within four hours.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, and now it's like not a big deal, and
all the Democrats are standing by him. So I don't know.
I'm I'm worried about Gavin Newsom because a lot of
people are under some spell that makes them believe a
lot of crazy things, and the Democrats are very good
at rallying around their people in a way that I'm
not sure Republicans are quite as good.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I whant I The way to watch Gavin Newsom is
with the sound off and you can you see how
holy Agnecy is. But also the thing about Gavin Newsom
is I imagine him with male pattern baldness at five nine,
and his entire reason for being in politics disappears.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's all true because he has nothing.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Else, right, No, Yeah, he has the slimy look that
apparently some people enjoy. Let's keep an eye on that one,
because I do.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I do.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I would like the angles to move to Florida, but
not because the rest of the country has gotten elected.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Gavin Newsom, what's going to happen after your governor is
turned out?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know, I don't know, but that might what I've
what I've been saying the whole time, and when I'm
we moved here. You can't move for a politician. You
can't go somewhere because one guy is doing a great job.
DeSantis has been incredible. I moved here because the sanity
of the people. It was the the people were like, no,
(16:55):
our schools are going to open, you know in twenty
twenty No, our kids are not going to be wearing
masks in twenty twenty one. They just they Even the Democrats,
That's that was the thing. Even the Democrats in Florida
are so much saner than the Democrats or even some
Republicans in New York. So that's what did it for me.
I have faith in Floridians more than I have faith
(17:16):
in any politician. You have to say, California, Now, do
you have that kind of faith Californians?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
No, No, I have. I have zero faith in the
Only thing I have faith in here is the weather
and the topography.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, and listen, those are not going to change hopefully no.
So at least made it one of my three questions
that I ask all my guests, what are you most
proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I am most proud of my marriage, which in a
few days will be forty four years.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yes, my wife super young to have forty four years
of marriage.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I think the La fifty LA fifty sixth book I
talked about earlier, dedicated to my wife, it said, if
I remember correctly, to my wife friend who has endured
the click clacking of a keyboard low these many years
without ever telling me to get a real job. And
(18:17):
the second thing I'm proud of is the product of
that marriage are spectacularly wonderful light on the world.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Daughter mate. Yeah, she's about to turn thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Ah, definitely don't look old enough to have a thirty
nine year.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Old, thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, she's got two wonderful little boys, one of them one, one, four,
And she's just a great moment I great human being
who married a great man.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's so wonderful. That's really that's all I'm looking for
my kids to get married to great people and give
me some grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, well that you a few years down the line.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, my oldest is fifteen, so not not tomorrow or anything,
but yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Really smart you really smart kids. I love when you
post about your kids and your interactions with them. That's
just really one of my favorite things on the thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I really appreciate that they love when I post about them.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
People sometimes say, like, you know, you shouldn't post about
your kids. I never use their real names or anything.
I just use their ages. And they love going back
and looking at like things I tweeted about them five
years ago, ten years ago, and they really enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
That's great. That's just really lovely.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Give us a prediction five years out. It could be anything,
you know, the world, the country, music, whatever you think.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Well, the world in the country obviously primary. I'm not
optimistic that because social media is a centrifuge and it's driving,
it's spinning faster, and it's driving people further apart. There
is no not even in the culture, there's no countervailing
such centripetal force bring anyone together. The Charlie Kirk assassination
(20:04):
had for about fifteen minutes the chance to.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Do that, like Okay, boy, all right, we've stepped over
the line. It's like you know, when you drink too much,
you know much of this?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah yeah, right, So that that didn't that didn't last
immediately or sixteen minutes later, congratulations to the shooter and
all of that started. So I'm not it's weird because
you can have a civil war geographically. So we had
(20:38):
the North against the South. That was that was the
civil war. It was the North against the South. Now
it's my neighbor there, yeah, my neighbor there.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
How do you fight this? Where is it going? How
do how do you do that?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
So I'm not great at predictions. I have lost a
number of bets betting on the future in politics, so
I'm not great at that. But I don't unless something happens,
unless some kind of centripetal force is formed or forms
by itself, I don't see how we're not going to
(21:16):
be separate entities. At some point, you're going to have
to choose where to live and you're going to have
to move there.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Okay, you can move there, like the man in the
high Castle.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
You could move the you know, part of the country
is going to live on the japan East side and
on the German side.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So the thing about that is that I, you know,
people talk about that national divorce all the time. It's
not even I'm not against it at all. I think
that we are doing I have been doing the great
sort in the last few years, and we have been
sorting into where we want to be ideologically and actually
moving to those places. But the thing is, you can't
predict what people. People change, people have kids who are
(21:54):
not the same ideologically as them, because we can't predict
any of that, and because things change, Republican Party today
or the Democrats today or nothing like they were even
thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Correct, I don't.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Know that the national divorce thing will work. So I
fully agree with your prediction. I think that five years
from now, are still at each other's throats and things
are very divided. But I don't think we get over that.
Like I don't think that we somehow divide ourselves into
being happier apart. We were going to have to come
back together eventually or things will get worse.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Really well, I don't know how you come back from
I want you dad.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I just don't know how you come back from that.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I don't know if anyone's ever come back from that, right,
So again, I hope you're right. We do have to
come back, but before we're colonized by really bad people.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, it's that that's really the concern, that our division
makes us so weak that any outside for can can
easily right, you know, TikTok their way into capturing our attention.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, the when, the when the pillars, when the supports
are chipped away and chipped away and chipped away. That's
the problem with the left. They don't build anything. They
only want to tear down things, and they make it
easy for things to crumble by chipping away.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
A little bit, a little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
They're not it's you know, once upon a time that
I don't know when liberalism I'm not sure exactly the
point when liberalism became leftism, but that whatever day that
future historians, if they do exist, if they can pinpoint that,
that will be the hinge of history.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Absolutely, we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitz Show.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Joel, I have loved this conversation. I can't believe this
is the first time that we've ever actually spoken sort
of in person. You are awesome and I'm so glad
you came on the show. And here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I have too ones.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Kind of well, okay, so one is I think everybody
should every day keep a kind of journal or diary
in which you you list the main things that you
did that day, and it could be just bullet points,
and then how you your emotional moods. If there were
more than one during the day, it could be it
could be just five minute entries.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And then every well, then every ninety you go.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Back over the ninety days worth of entries and you
can determine ascertain if you're on some sort of vector
that you didn't know that you were one that oh
this is this is this is vectors leading me in
a place that I don't want to go. So what
are the kinds of things I need to do? And
(24:52):
then you do that for the next thirty days and
see if you have corrected course. So the second one
is one that has a meet it benefits, and that
is when you called any place for customer service, don't
expect it to go well expect.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I think that's because you're in California.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
No matter where you call for support, whether it's your ISP,
whatever it is, just know it's going to go badly,
and that way you won't have given too much emotion
to the disappointment.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
No disappointment if you expect things to go poorly. I
love it. Thank you so much. He is Joel Engel.
Check out all of his amazing books and follow him
on x at Joel Engel. Thank you so much, Joel.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Great to be with you, Carol,
Welcome back to the Carol Marketwood Show on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Joel Angel. Joel is an author, co author,
and even ghost author of nearly forty non fiction books biography, autobiography, essays, history, comedy, health, law,
true crime, adventure, war and corruption. And he's one of
my favorite people on the app that used to be
(00:27):
known as Twitter. Hi, Joel, So nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So great to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So we've never met, and that's crazy because I feel
like I've known you a long time. But I would
love to know how you got into this crazy thing
of ours and what led you to become a writer.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well, let's see.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I for some reason, when I was young, I know
I wanted to be a writer. I don't know why
I wanted to be a writer. I love to read,
so I after college went to school in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
After college, I had well in college, I had read.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A Movable Feast by Hemingway, and I thought, okay, I'm
going to move to Paris after college.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, And because until then I didn't.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Have anything to write about. So if you want to
be a writer, you have to have things to write about.
I didn't have anything to write about it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'll go to Paris, I'll have some adventures, and I'll
have something to write out.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
What happened was I fell in love with a woman
who had a really beautiful voice.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I played guitar, she sang.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
We played in the first in the streets or first
in the subways, in the streets and clubs. Then we
traveled all around Western Europe and North Africa playing and
all of that. And so I had all of these
wonderful adventures for.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
A year or more and she broke my heart and
that was it. I came back.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I was hoping, this is like and we're still married today.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
No, no, no, no. And so all of those adventures
I've written about. None of them. The whole reason I
went there. I had the things I wanted to do,
and I didn't write any When it came back, I
started writing journalism, and then that I got an offer
from an agent to who had read something I think
(02:11):
in the New York Times if you ever thought about
writing books, Yeah, of course I thought about writing books.
And so that's basically how it started. And then it
just kept going. And I never specialized in anything, because
I was always just interested in people and stories and
the best story.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, yeah, everything. So if it was a good story
and I thought I could tell it, I did.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So you've never written about that time in Paris, playing
on the Metro and falling in love and traveling around
Western Europe, because I feel like maybe you should write that.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, I'm actually I'm now writing. I'm literally, I'm.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
About two weeks away from the end of the first
draft of my first novel. I'm actually writing a novel finally.
But it's not anything about that, and I'm calling it
a character driven revenge love story. So literally none of
what happened to me personally is in this, but it's
all everything in there is based on someone I've known.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I guess, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I just I don't feel like it's enough years in
between then, even though it's been decades.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah yeah, I don't feel like.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I need a little more space, a little more space.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So, which is your favorite of your almost forty books
that you've written. Which one feels closest to you?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Well, I wrote the two best true stories I ever heard.
I wrote books about one of his best true story
I ever heard, and I was told by the detective,
the LAPD detective, former LAPD detective who solved the case.
He told it to me in nineteen ninety, but it
took me twenty two years to figure out how to
(03:50):
tell it properly. The story that had never been told
was about a serial rapist terrorizing the city's Lovers Lanes,
Los Angeles in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Six, posing as a cop.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
He was a black man, and the man who was
falsely accused of it and jailed for it was a
black former cop who got fired, they said for kuiding
a check. But really what he had done is he
dated a white woman, and so they thought, and that's
so the story is basically about racism. So the detective
(04:22):
who solved it, he was a Latino man, I think
the first Latina detective in the LAPD named Danny Galindo,
and he solved it. Danny was the guy who was
the technical advisor on Dragnet. So when there would be
a homicide which Dragnet didn't do and they did give
it to Galindo.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That was just the one I got by.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So I wrote that this is called La fifty six, okay,
and then I wrote, I, actually this is a co author.
So he told his story for him. So It's by
him and me. A man named Zelware Junior. He was
black man born in nineteen forty one in the heart
of jim Crow, Mississippi. His mother and father were kicked
(05:09):
out of town by the Kkkin. He was raised on
his grandparents sharecropping, grandparents dirt floor shack. But he had
two dreams in life. One of them was to be
a pilot and the other was to be a general.
These are he may have as well have said, I
want a right heard of unicorns. But he accomplished both
(05:34):
of those in his life. But the story is built
around this. The book is built around his adventure story.
He was shot down in Vietnam. He was a helicopter pilot.
He was shot down in the jungles of Vietnam. Had
this three week incredible adventure story in which he'd saved
the life of his white racist captain who he was
(05:54):
shot down with.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's really what is that one called?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
That's called by duty bounds. So that's a very good story,
I have to say. So both of those are my favorites.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I think, did you have a plan B if the
writing thing didn't work out? Would you be busking in
the metro?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You know? That's funny.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
You live in LA there's not even a public transportation
that you could be busking in, right, I was.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I think it was early two thousand and two when
that famous episode of This American Life called Plan B
came out.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Do you know this episode?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I know I always ask about Plan b's on this show,
but no, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah. So I'm driving.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
I'm driving along and I think about it, and I
go so all these people talking about their Plan b's,
and I'm starting to feel really terrible about it that
I just I had blinders on and I kept my
Plan A. And then it turns out this is truly funny.
One of the stories they told was the story of
Barry Keenan, who was the man who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Junior.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I remember the story in.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Nineteen sixty three. I had spent a week with him
about a year and a half prior getting his story,
because I was going to tell it because it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Was so amazing.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And then we found that I found out that I
really couldn't monetize it because of the son of Sam
Loss but.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So and then I thought, okay, good, I'm on.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Plan If I know you were going to tell me
he had a plan B.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That was his plan B.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
That was his plan B.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
The kids.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
That was the plan A.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
His plan.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
He had been a stockbroker and then the market crashed
and he lost everything, and then he had mental illness,
which wasn't helpful and so his plan. That's the reason
they included him. I see, yeah, included him was because
kidnapping Frank Sinatcher Junior was his plan BEA.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So when I heard.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That, I did a complete three sixty for an hour
in the car love it.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We're going to take a quick break and be right
back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you do still write columns, and you do still
write journalism. It's not just books, right, What do you
enjoy writing about on a more day.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
To day basis?
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Well, enjoy is not the I feel an obligation to
write as much as possible about the anti Semitism that's
going on. Which so about a month or three weeks
after October seventh, on a column in the Wall Street
Journal about how lifeless has turned around for American Jews
(08:35):
seeing the explosion of anti Semitism in the country, and
I closed the column by saying, we don't want to
you know, we don't want to redefine never again. To me,
never again. Well, we allow Nazi Germany to kill six
million Jews between January nineteen thirty three and May teen
(09:00):
forty five, But that is what is happening. If you
had told me a week prior that on October eighth
there would be provomos, really river to the sea demonstrations
after something like that, I would have thought you were
out of your mind.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Really, so you were surprised, I was. I didn't feel
that kind of surprise.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well, I think about that because I really wasn't shocked.
I had been writing about anti Semitism growing in New
York for a long time, and I guess the thing
was that people had compartmentalized what was happening, which to
me was Orthodox Jews were being daily beat up in
the streets of New York. And yes, to me, that
was a four alarm fire, because I knew the only
(09:49):
reason I wasn't being attacked was because I didn't look
the part. But that's all that was saving me. So
I was fully not surprised about October eighth. I thought
this was clearly where we were heading for a while.
Did you feel maybe was it different in California. I
guess Brooklyn is actually the epicenter of violent anti Semitism.
(10:10):
It's number one in the country for violence against shoes.
So maybe I just had it close up to me.
And could it be the California kept you away from that?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Well, it's that I didn't. I followed the same things
you did. Maybe, well, certainly not to the degree that
you did. But I had no idea how widespread it was.
How the guy down the block for me, yeah, may
very well hate me. And I didn't know that all along.
(10:42):
It never occurred to me that it ran so deep.
But it was like on October seventy, it was like
an on button button was pushed. Yeah, and it continues
to grow. It's like the blob that continues to eat
everything in its way. You look at Zeniels and h
Cohort is so amenable to hitlery youth that it's frightening.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah. And even beyond just about Jews, that Cohort is
extremely supportive of political violence. For example, like you know,
leaving a part Israel, leaving a part Jews. They think
it's okay to kill people when you disagree with them.
In numbers that are astronomical. I think we have a
wider problem. It is an immediate problem for Jews in America,
(11:29):
but I think the overarching issues way bigger and worse,
actually more problematic than it seems.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
But yeah, indeed, you.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Know, not for nothing are Jews called the canary and
the coal mart Yeah, so the horseshoe theory is now,
it's the tips are coming together. It's turning into a news.
Jews will be the first one hang, but not nearly
the last.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
These people that.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
You're just talking about, it's sort of like the difference
between what they used to say, radical Muslim and a
moderate Muslim. The radical Muslim is the one willing to
do the killing, and the moderate Muslim stands there and watching, goes,
oh yeah, so these they may not pull the trigger themselves,
these young people, but they they're applauding it. It's just
(12:16):
the weirdest thing to say. We get compared a lot
to nineteen sixty eight. But in nineteen sixty eight, even
which I was sentient enough to pay attention to the center,
held that you would never have seen that sort of thing.
But another example is the idea that males would play
female sports, or males would go into female locker rooms
(12:37):
and bathrooms. The center was holding for something like that.
Now I don't even know if there is a center.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I don't know that issue. I feel like the center
is holding. The center's actually saying that they The Democrats
are so fringe about it. Even other Democrats Bill Maher's
of the world and stuff. I feel like they've woken
up to how big of a threat this is.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
But how did we get here?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Oh? Yeah, so how we got here is a terrible
story of allowing people to really bully others into having
the same opinion of that as them, even though we
all knew the emperor had no clothes. That's what it was.
It was a bullying situation.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Cancel culture, Peak, wokeness, met covid Era, and all of
that combined to create a really crazy time. Which leads
me to the most obvious question, when an't you moving
to Florida? Because this is it. We have our little
haven insanity here and this is the only spot in town.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I have spent quite a bit of time in Florida.
My mother Blessed Memory, spent the last thirty years of
her life in Florida, except for the final year of
her life when she lived with us, and if I
was able to endure humidity.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right. Also, my wife went to college in Florida and she.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Goes, never again, No, no, no, I'm never going back.
Are you going to wait out the California in sanity?
Is it crazy over there?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It's it's it's crazy.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
But then I walk out my backyard there's the Santa
Monica Mountains.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, no, is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It used to be my plan B. Like I was like,
if New York goes to shit, like I'm going to California.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That got really new York.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That got super funny right around twenty twenty, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah, since I'm saying the reason you left that that
didn't apply.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It was worse here than where you left.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
California schools didn't open for longer than New York schools.
And yeah, it turned out California was not that great
of a plan B for myself.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
That this governor thinks he asked she has a chance
to become president is really one of the most mortally
funny things I can think of.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I'm scared, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh, just all you have to do is run video
of life on the streets in our cities.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, and that if it's not over for that.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Well, on the other hand, you have the Attorney General
of Virginia who is on record wishing the death of
his opponent and his children. Yeah, he's in the once
upon a time in the not very long ago pass
that would be out within four hours.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, and now it's like not a big deal, and
all the Democrats are standing by him. So I don't know.
I'm I'm worried about Gavin Newsom because a lot of
people are under some spell that makes them believe a
lot of crazy things, and the Democrats are very good
at rallying around their people in a way that I'm
not sure Republicans are quite as good.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I whant I The way to watch Gavin Newsom is
with the sound off and you can you see how
holy Agnecy is. But also the thing about Gavin Newsom
is I imagine him with male pattern baldness at five nine,
and his entire reason for being in politics disappears.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's all true because he has nothing.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Else, right, No, Yeah, he has the slimy look that
apparently some people enjoy. Let's keep an eye on that one,
because I do.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I do.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I would like the angles to move to Florida, but
not because the rest of the country has gotten elected.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Gavin Newsom, what's going to happen after your governor is
turned out?
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know, I don't know, but that might what I've
what I've been saying the whole time, and when I'm
we moved here. You can't move for a politician. You
can't go somewhere because one guy is doing a great job.
DeSantis has been incredible. I moved here because the sanity
of the people. It was the the people were like, no,
(16:55):
our schools are going to open, you know in twenty
twenty No, our kids are not going to be wearing
masks in twenty twenty one. They just they Even the Democrats,
That's that was the thing. Even the Democrats in Florida
are so much saner than the Democrats or even some
Republicans in New York. So that's what did it for me.
I have faith in Floridians more than I have faith
(17:16):
in any politician. You have to say, California, Now, do
you have that kind of faith Californians?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
No, No, I have. I have zero faith in the
Only thing I have faith in here is the weather
and the topography.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, and listen, those are not going to change hopefully no.
So at least made it one of my three questions
that I ask all my guests, what are you most
proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I am most proud of my marriage, which in a
few days will be forty four years.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yes, my wife super young to have forty four years
of marriage.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
I think the La fifty LA fifty sixth book I
talked about earlier, dedicated to my wife, it said, if
I remember correctly, to my wife friend who has endured
the click clacking of a keyboard low these many years
without ever telling me to get a real job. And
(18:17):
the second thing I'm proud of is the product of
that marriage are spectacularly wonderful light on the world.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Daughter mate. Yeah, she's about to turn thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Ah, definitely don't look old enough to have a thirty
nine year.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Old, thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah, she's got two wonderful little boys, one of them one, one, four,
And she's just a great moment I great human being
who married a great man.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
That's so wonderful. That's really that's all I'm looking for
my kids to get married to great people and give
me some grandchildren.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, well that you a few years down the line.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yes, my oldest is fifteen, so not not tomorrow or anything,
but yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Really smart you really smart kids. I love when you
post about your kids and your interactions with them. That's
just really one of my favorite things on the thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I really appreciate that they love when I post about them.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
People sometimes say, like, you know, you shouldn't post about
your kids. I never use their real names or anything.
I just use their ages. And they love going back
and looking at like things I tweeted about them five
years ago, ten years ago, and they really enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
That's great. That's just really lovely.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Give us a prediction five years out. It could be anything,
you know, the world, the country, music, whatever you think.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Well, the world in the country obviously primary. I'm not
optimistic that because social media is a centrifuge and it's driving,
it's spinning faster, and it's driving people further apart. There
is no not even in the culture, there's no countervailing
such centripetal force bring anyone together. The Charlie Kirk assassination
(20:04):
had for about fifteen minutes the chance to.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Do that, like Okay, boy, all right, we've stepped over
the line. It's like you know, when you drink too much,
you know much of this?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yeah yeah, right, So that that didn't that didn't last
immediately or sixteen minutes later, congratulations to the shooter and
all of that started. So I'm not it's weird because
you can have a civil war geographically. So we had
(20:38):
the North against the South. That was that was the
civil war. It was the North against the South. Now
it's my neighbor there, yeah, my neighbor there.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
How do you fight this? Where is it going? How
do how do you do that?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
So I'm not great at predictions. I have lost a
number of bets betting on the future in politics, so
I'm not great at that. But I don't unless something happens,
unless some kind of centripetal force is formed or forms
by itself, I don't see how we're not going to
(21:16):
be separate entities. At some point, you're going to have
to choose where to live and you're going to have
to move there.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Okay, you can move there, like the man in the
high Castle.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
You could move the you know, part of the country
is going to live on the japan East side and
on the German side.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So the thing about that is that I, you know,
people talk about that national divorce all the time. It's
not even I'm not against it at all. I think
that we are doing I have been doing the great
sort in the last few years, and we have been
sorting into where we want to be ideologically and actually
moving to those places. But the thing is, you can't
predict what people. People change, people have kids who are
(21:54):
not the same ideologically as them, because we can't predict
any of that, and because things change, Republican Party today
or the Democrats today or nothing like they were even
thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Correct, I don't.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Know that the national divorce thing will work. So I
fully agree with your prediction. I think that five years
from now, are still at each other's throats and things
are very divided. But I don't think we get over that.
Like I don't think that we somehow divide ourselves into
being happier apart. We were going to have to come
back together eventually or things will get worse.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Really well, I don't know how you come back from
I want you dad.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I just don't know how you come back from that.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
I don't know if anyone's ever come back from that, right,
So again, I hope you're right. We do have to
come back, but before we're colonized by really bad people.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, it's that that's really the concern, that our division
makes us so weak that any outside for can can
easily right, you know, TikTok their way into capturing our attention.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, the when, the when the pillars, when the supports
are chipped away and chipped away and chipped away. That's
the problem with the left. They don't build anything. They
only want to tear down things, and they make it
easy for things to crumble by chipping away.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
A little bit, a little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
They're not it's you know, once upon a time that
I don't know when liberalism I'm not sure exactly the
point when liberalism became leftism, but that whatever day that
future historians, if they do exist, if they can pinpoint that,
that will be the hinge of history.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Absolutely, we're going to take a quick break and be
right back on the Carol Marcowitz Show.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Joel, I have loved this conversation. I can't believe this
is the first time that we've ever actually spoken sort
of in person. You are awesome and I'm so glad
you came on the show. And here with your best
tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I have too ones.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Kind of well, okay, so one is I think everybody
should every day keep a kind of journal or diary
in which you you list the main things that you
did that day, and it could be just bullet points,
and then how you your emotional moods. If there were
more than one during the day, it could be it
could be just five minute entries.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And then every well, then every ninety you go.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Back over the ninety days worth of entries and you
can determine ascertain if you're on some sort of vector
that you didn't know that you were one that oh
this is this is this is vectors leading me in
a place that I don't want to go. So what
are the kinds of things I need to do? And
(24:52):
then you do that for the next thirty days and
see if you have corrected course. So the second one
is one that has a meet it benefits, and that
is when you called any place for customer service, don't
expect it to go well expect.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I think that's because you're in California.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
No matter where you call for support, whether it's your ISP,
whatever it is, just know it's going to go badly,
and that way you won't have given too much emotion
to the disappointment.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
No disappointment if you expect things to go poorly. I
love it. Thank you so much. He is Joel Engel.
Check out all of his amazing books and follow him
on x at Joel Engel. Thank you so much, Joel.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Great to be with you, Carol,
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