January 9, 2026 • 19 mins
On this episode of The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol sits down with Joel Berry, managing editor of The Babylon Bee and bestselling author, to discuss his unexpected journey from corporate sales to leading conservative satire. Berry shares how humor became a powerful tool to challenge wokeness and cultural absurdity, and why satire still matters in today’s polarized media landscape.
The conversation explores Berry’s books, the challenges and rewards of raising a large family with traditional values, and the role of faith, discipline, and perseverance in both personal life and cultural engagement. They also dive into the current political climate, the risks and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, and why integrity, family, and timeless conservative principles remain essential in a rapidly changing world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Markuchow on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Joel Barry. Joel is managing editor of
The Babylon Bee, an author, and the father of six. Hi. Joel,
so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Six kids.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Six kids is a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, that's what everyone says, you know, and this is
nothing I envisioned for myself. I never, you know, anticipated
being a father of six, but it just kind of happened.
I married a great woman, the kids kept coming. It
turns out having kids is really fun. It's like having
a bunch of cartoon characters in your house and once
you kind of just embrace the chaos and the mess
(00:44):
in the joy, it's it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So it's funny because I lived in New York and
I have three kids, and that was a lot for
New York. It was like, wow, three kids, that's so many.
You leave New York and it's like not even not
even that interesting to have.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
To me, I thought I had a lot. But then
my kids went to a charter school that had a
lot of Catholic families, and I realized that I was
kind of a rookie, like, you know, not eight nine
or ten is baseline for like a Midwestern Catholic family.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
How did you get into humor writing? Did you just
one day realize I'm funny. I like to write, let's
do this.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It was kind of by accident, or if you would rather,
by the grace of God. You could also say I
didn't intend to do this. This isn't something I really
knew I was good at. I was kind of a
mediocre corporate sales guy in the Midwest area, and it
took me a long time to kind of figure out
that that wasn't my calling until I was pushed out
(01:43):
of a job and kind of had to figure my
life out. My wife has always kind of known me
better than I know myself, and she encouraged me to
you know, I was always writing, putting my thoughts out there.
When I was in the military overseas, I used to
make these little satirical comics about our chain of command,
and I would make fun of our platoon sergeant or
our company commander.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And does the military like that? Is that?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I did get in trouble a couple of times. Yeah,
I think I ended up doing some push ups on occasion,
but that was, you know, nothing, nothing I thought I
could ever make a career out of or make money
off of, you know. And so when I was I
don't know, all about six years ago, I was pushed
out of a job. My wife encouraged me to start
(02:26):
kind of putting my thoughts out there writing. I started
a podcast, and I started a blog. I started my
own little satire website called The Petty Prophet. That kind
of snowballed over the course of a year of me
just kind of trying out new things. I started pitching
headlines to the Bee, and within a year I was
I was working for them, and so it was really
just I'm very thankful to God that he led me
(02:49):
to a place where I'm finally doing something that I'm
good at, which is a very you know, writing short,
pithy Babylon Bee headlines is a very rare talent. It's
hard to find people who can do it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So it's interesting because so that means you've only been
at the Bee for like five years, right maybe sick.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, I started there in like twenty eighteen, and at
twenty eighteen, so yeah, about six years.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, Yeah, it just feels like I've read you for
so much longer.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well, the b B feels like it's been around forever,
but we actually started in twenty sixteen, so we're not
even ten years old yet. When we first started, it
was mostly like evangelical church humor, you know, kind of
inside humor. And yeah, then of course Trump was elected
in November of twenty sixteen, and suddenly we had all
this material just laying out on the field for us
(03:38):
that a lot of comedians weren't touching, and we just
had a ball with it.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I love that. So in researching you for this interview,
the minimal research I do for these interviews, I saw
that you wrote you've written three Babylon B Guides, The
Babylon B Guide to Wokeness, The Babylon B Guide to Democracy,
The Babylon B Guide to Gender. And then you also
wrote a book called The Postmattern Pilgrim's Progress and allegorical tale.
(04:03):
Is that one also humor.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It is it's a it's a it has humor in it.
But the feedback that I've got from a lot of
people who have read it is, Wow, this is a
lot heavier than I thought it would be. It has
a lot of making.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It seems like not quite funny, Aprol Yeah, well, it's
I wrote it with my editor in chief, Kyle Man.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
We both grew up reading The Pilgrim's Progress. It's a
very very important, you know book and the kind of
the Protestant Reform tradition. Many argue it was the first
novel ever written in the English language. For many for
a few centuries after that, Christian families would have a
copy of the Bible and they would have a copy
of Pilgrim's Progress. And so it's it's something that I
kind of grew up on, always loving the book, you know,
(04:49):
And for those who aren't familiar, it's it's kind of
a it's an allegorical tale of the of what it's
like walking the Christian life, and it's it follows this
guy named Pilgrim. The names are very like on the nose,
and on this journey to the celestial city, which is Heaven,
he fights Apollyon, who's a devil. You know, it's very
on the nose all the way. But it's very funny.
There's there's a satirical uh you know, there's some kind
(05:09):
of winks and nods all throughout it. You know that
we always kind of thought were funny. So, you know,
Christian will be going along his journey and he'll come
upon a guy whose name is Fool, and Fool will
give him advice, and the reader's thinking, why are you
listening to a guy whose name is literally fool, you know.
And so we we love the book and we kind
(05:29):
of wanted to write an updated, modernized version of it,
and so we kind of write our own wrote our
own little sci fi, uh you know, postmodern version of
it with multi verses and and some classic B humor.
But it's really it's really kind of a meditation on
grief and you know, dealing with evil and tragedy in
(05:52):
the world that sometimes doesn't make sense. How can God,
you know, being all powerful allow evil to happen? You know,
those classic questions that we all deal with. A lot
of people who are used to be humor have read
that and were kind of taken aback by some of
the seriousness in the book. Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, I was wondering about that if the typical B
reader was like, oh, this is going to be hilarious.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So which of the Bee guides was the fun most
fun to write?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, the one that did the best was our first one,
and that was The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, and
we kind of wrote it at the height of this
conversation around wokeness and that was fun. That was a
free for all because there was so much material. You know,
Wokeness was just kind of a punchline in and of itself.
You could kind of present wokeness without changing it or
embellishing it that much, and it was just funny by itself.
(06:40):
And we almost the classic line the jokes write themselves.
But that was the experience writing the Guide to Wokeness.
The most fun one that we had was our most
recent one. I don't know if you mentioned that one.
We just came out. It's The babylon Be Guide to
the Apocalypse. Oh okay, and we just it's the stupidest
thing we've ever written, absolutely useless. But it was so
(07:02):
fun to write. And it was so fun to write
separate from politics, you know, not writing about something heavy,
just kind of just being silly, writing a lot of
funny jokes and drawing a lot of silly pictures. It's
nice when you can do that. You know, we're so
steeped in politics to be you know, I have to
I have to you know, troll through you know, dredge
(07:23):
through that, just all kinds of ugly things on Twitter
all the time to get material for my jokes. And
it's nice to kind of take a breather from that. Ever,
for once in a while, absolutely you.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Were saying that, you know, the jokes right themselves with wokeness?
Is that how not the Bee started?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So not the Bee. What we found was happening as
we were writing jokes for the Bee was that a
lot of our jokes were coming true. So we actually
have a bank. We have a little spreadsheet we keep
track of now where we call them fulfilled prophecies, and
when one of our headlines actually comes true, we'll record it.
I think we have like one hundred and fifty fulfilled
(07:59):
prophecies now. And there would sometimes be instances where I'm
kicking around an idea with the writers and we kind
of you know the process of writing in our little
writer's group, we have a common Slack channel. You know,
someone will have a basic basic idea and we'll riff
on it for a while. We'll kind of come up
with alternate phrasings and punchlines to kind of fine tune it.
(08:21):
Until it's perfect, and sometimes we'll be doing that, and
just when we kind of arrive at the perfect form
of the joke, Okay, this is what we're going to publish,
a news notification will pop up on our phones that
that thing that we were riffing on just happened, and
now we have to change the joke or we got
to throw it out all together. And so we started
this thing Not the Bee to Okay, we got to
(08:42):
account for the real stuff that is so ridiculous it
sounds like satire. So Not the Bee is kind of
a silly, kind of clickbaity real news site full of
you know, very serious journalists that will add meme faces
and gifts to the news stories to make them a
little more fun to read.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
What would you be doing if not? What would be
a plan be?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I don't know. If I'm not doing this, I'm in trouble.
I don't know how this skill translates in a useful
way to anything else in the world. You know, I am.
I am passionate about politics and the culture and our country,
and so I you know, I can see myself getting
into a job if I were to do something else
where I'm doing more serious journalistic work or cultural commentary.
(09:25):
I you know, people who follow me on Twitter will
often see how serious my Twitter feed is. It's not
full of humor, and that's how I that's how I relax.
I'm funny for a living from eight to five. I'm funny,
and so I have to be serious in my off
time to kind of like take the edge off. So so,
I don't know, you know, it's I love being in
(09:45):
this world. I'm passionate about preserving this American Republic, preserving
American freedom, and really any way that I could go
about doing that, I'd be happy to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
We really do have a good thing going and sharing.
It's kind of important. Yeah, what are you most proud
of in your life?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's a hard question because I don't even like using
the word proud because everything good in my life is
like it's a total gift of God's grace. I mean,
I think the thing that I'd be most proud of,
or I guess maybe I would phrase it most thankful for,
is that I've just I've managed to build a somewhat
normal life. You know, it's a crazy world. I look
(10:25):
at the the generation that's coming up, and how hard
it is to get started. Kids aren't getting married anymore,
kids aren't buying homes, kids aren't people aren't having kids.
You know, I just look at what I have. I
have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have six children,
I have a roof over my head, and and all
that kind of standard stuff that seemed like, you know,
(10:47):
middle class. You know, mediocrity is just such a treasure,
you know, And I just thank God that I that
that He's given me all this, you know. And also
just the fact that I'm doing something that I love
and that I'm I'm good at. That's also a rare gift.
Not many people ever ever find themselves in a situation
like that, you know. And if this all crashes and
(11:09):
burns tomorrow, the be goes down, my career goes down.
I can always hang my hat on the fact that
I wrote the joke that made Elon Musk by Twitter,
So you know, I made my marketing. Yeah, I've done
I've done my duty, and I can fade off into
the into the woodwork.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You've changed the course of history. That's really that's.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Eating with a little help from Elon and all his money.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So how do you tell your kids the importance of
that that good life that it seems so hard for
their generation to get to that, this next generation behind us,
or two generations in my case, what do you say
to your kids and say to kind of lead them
to that same good path.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I think, first of all modeling it, you know, to
provide a good example for them, and how I love
my wife and how I lead my kids, hopefully modeling
it in a way that makes them desire it, and
also just encouraging them that it is a truly extraordinary thing.
I think at G. K. Chesterton, one of my favorite writers,
(12:11):
lived about one hundred years ago, said something like the
most extraordinary thing in the world as an ordinary man,
his ordinary wife and his ordinary children. And so I
think I grew up in that time in the eighties
and nineties, when you know that was kind of seen
as like second best. You know, that's something that you
settle for. But you need to dream big, you need
to go and you need to do these great things.
You need to go live in the big city. And
(12:33):
I think I think our culture is changing a bit
to where having left that behind, people are yearning for
it again. And so I hope my kids are growing
up in that time when not only I will be
encouraging them to grow up and have good, solid families,
but their culture will be encouraging them to do that
as well. I hope. Anyway, right, you.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Can sense that yearning. It's all around. It's the how
to get these people there, how to get these young
people onto that good, sane path when there's so many
voices around them saying don't do that. That's lame and
boring and stupid. And yeah, it's tough. It's something that
a lot of my guests talk about, like how to
(13:15):
get their kids to appreciate, you know, getting married, having
children and not having like the flashy career on Instagram
with the yachts and the you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
It's tough. Yeah, yeah, it is. Well, you know, another
thing that puts it into perspective. I you know, my
my mother passed away about a month ago. I'm sorry
and now thank you, And you know, she she had
cancer and so I'm thankful that we were able to
kind of have some time with her and say goodbye
(13:46):
to her. But one thing that she kept telling me
over and over again, she was always so proud of
me and what I've accomplished, and you know, you know,
follows me online and everything, but you know, she would
always tell me in those last weeks, Joel, your kid
are infinitely more important than all that silly political stuff
that you're doing and all those political fights that you're
having and that you're trying to get clout online. The
(14:09):
kids are more important. Never forget that, you know. And
it's it's you know, that means a lot, not just
coming from my mother, but coming from someone who's at
the end of their life and is suddenly you know,
having that being flooded with that perspective of of what's
truly important. You know, my hope is that I I
(14:30):
raised my kids well and that they turn out okay.
And uh, you know, it's turned me into a praying man,
a much more devoutly praying man. You know, I realize
as a parent how how powerless you are. You can
do everything that you can, but your kids are still
going to kind of do what they're going to do,
and and sometimes all you can do is pray for them.
And I found myself praying for them an awful lot.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, definitely same. It has made me far more religious
about yeah, we're going to take a quick break and
be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show. Give us
a five year out prediction, and it could be about anything,
the country, the world, music, anything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well. I think in the next five years we will
probably have a couple more elections that are going to
be the most important election in the history of the country, existential,
We're going to die if they go the wrong way.
That'll will probably have a couple of those, like three
or four. Yeah, you know, I think it's it is
exciting at least, you know, politically, it's it's exciting to
(15:36):
see that I think the the stranglehold that the far
left has had on the culture has been somewhat broken,
and if the right can keep its head and not
go completely insane, we can have Yeah, that's a big
if right now, because there's there's a lot of fighting
over who the right is going to be and what
the vision's going to be, and that's an important fight
to have. But if we can keep our heads, I
think we could be headed towards a new golden age
(15:56):
in America. So that's that's something to be hopeful for. Truly,
the thing that I'm very interested in right now is
the impact that we're going to have from AI I
love movies, I love music. I'm really excited to see
what it's going to do in the creative space. I mean,
AI is a is a multiplier. It multiplies, I mean
it's it multiplies human capacity for evil and human capacity
(16:19):
for good. So it's probably going to be more bad
than good. But I think that we're I think we're probably.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You're going in an optimistic direction for a second there,
and then you're like, probably more bad than good.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I think at the very least, we'll finally get some
good movies. I think the now that AI has kind
of brought down that barrier to entry to put amazing
things on screen. As as the technology progresses, I think
we're we're probably going to see a little bit of
a renaissance in creativity in our storytelling and filmmaking. I mean,
(16:51):
we're going to get a lot of slop in the
mix as well, but maybe maybe one or two good
movies from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Get very mixed commentary about AI on here. Some people
are very scared and think doom is headed our way.
Other people obviously are optimistic on it. I guess I'm
somewhere in between. I could see where the bad things are.
We're not considering them. But there's a lot of possibility
for good. Good movies would be a big plus. I
(17:21):
think most movies are pretty terrible.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, yeah, well I think that. I mean the bad
thing is, I mean we're going to have I mean,
porn is already a terrible problem, and it's going to
become even worse with AI. It's going to be hard
to know what to believe because video will become so convincing.
You know, what are our political battles going to look
like when the RNC and the DNC can share endless
fake videos of different candidates doing things. So it's one
(17:47):
thing that I think is we haven't seen this level
of an explosion of information since like the printing press,
and that created so much reformation and cultural upheaval, but ultimately,
over time it turned out to be a good thing.
So I think human beings adjust, you know, I think
we'll adjust to it and figure out how to live
in the new world, and hopefully it'll be more good
than PAD.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
All right, I'm gonna try to be as optimistic as you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
We'll revisit in five years.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
After the robots control us all if we're still alive
they haven't killed us.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
We'll be in a bunker somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Well, I love this conversation, Jauel. I love getting to
know you a little bit and us here with your
best tip for my listeners on how they can improve
their lives.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
My best tip is something that I was taught in
the military. I was kind of a bit of a
lazy slouch in school in high school. I joined the
Marine Corps because I kind of knew that about myself
and I knew I needed to change. The thing that
I got that I took away from the military was
the ability to do things that you don't feel like doing.
And that seems very simple. But if you can master
(18:52):
yourself enough to do things that you don't feel like
doing in the moment, especially in this world of endless
comfort and e and distraction and Twitter feeds and Instagram feeds,
you will be very successful. Do the hard thing. Be
willing to be uncomfortable, follow your conscience. When you know
you should be doing something, do it even though you
(19:12):
don't feel like it. If you can just do that
simple thing, doing what you don't feel like doing but
you know is right, you will be more successful than
ninety nine point nine percent of the rest of the world,
so that would be my advise.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Thank you so much. He is Joel Berry. Check him
out at the Babylon b by his books. Thank you
so much for coming on
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Joel, Thank you for having me appreciate it.
Hi, and welcome back to Carol Markuchow on iHeartRadio. My
guest today is Joel Barry. Joel is managing editor of
The Babylon Bee, an author, and the father of six. Hi. Joel,
so nice to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Six kids.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Six kids is a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, that's what everyone says, you know, and this is
nothing I envisioned for myself. I never, you know, anticipated
being a father of six, but it just kind of happened.
I married a great woman, the kids kept coming. It
turns out having kids is really fun. It's like having
a bunch of cartoon characters in your house and once
you kind of just embrace the chaos and the mess
(00:44):
in the joy, it's it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So it's funny because I lived in New York and
I have three kids, and that was a lot for
New York. It was like, wow, three kids, that's so many.
You leave New York and it's like not even not
even that interesting to have.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
To me, I thought I had a lot. But then
my kids went to a charter school that had a
lot of Catholic families, and I realized that I was
kind of a rookie, like, you know, not eight nine
or ten is baseline for like a Midwestern Catholic family.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
How did you get into humor writing? Did you just
one day realize I'm funny. I like to write, let's
do this.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It was kind of by accident, or if you would rather,
by the grace of God. You could also say I
didn't intend to do this. This isn't something I really
knew I was good at. I was kind of a
mediocre corporate sales guy in the Midwest area, and it
took me a long time to kind of figure out
that that wasn't my calling until I was pushed out
(01:43):
of a job and kind of had to figure my
life out. My wife has always kind of known me
better than I know myself, and she encouraged me to
you know, I was always writing, putting my thoughts out there.
When I was in the military overseas, I used to
make these little satirical comics about our chain of command,
and I would make fun of our platoon sergeant or
our company commander.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And does the military like that? Is that?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I did get in trouble a couple of times. Yeah,
I think I ended up doing some push ups on occasion,
but that was, you know, nothing, nothing I thought I
could ever make a career out of or make money
off of, you know. And so when I was I
don't know, all about six years ago, I was pushed
out of a job. My wife encouraged me to start
(02:26):
kind of putting my thoughts out there writing. I started
a podcast, and I started a blog. I started my
own little satire website called The Petty Prophet. That kind
of snowballed over the course of a year of me
just kind of trying out new things. I started pitching
headlines to the Bee, and within a year I was
I was working for them, and so it was really
just I'm very thankful to God that he led me
(02:49):
to a place where I'm finally doing something that I'm
good at, which is a very you know, writing short,
pithy Babylon Bee headlines is a very rare talent. It's
hard to find people who can do it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So it's interesting because so that means you've only been
at the Bee for like five years, right maybe sick.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, I started there in like twenty eighteen, and at
twenty eighteen, so yeah, about six years.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, Yeah, it just feels like I've read you for
so much longer.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well, the b B feels like it's been around forever,
but we actually started in twenty sixteen, so we're not
even ten years old yet. When we first started, it
was mostly like evangelical church humor, you know, kind of
inside humor. And yeah, then of course Trump was elected
in November of twenty sixteen, and suddenly we had all
this material just laying out on the field for us
(03:38):
that a lot of comedians weren't touching, and we just
had a ball with it.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I love that. So in researching you for this interview,
the minimal research I do for these interviews, I saw
that you wrote you've written three Babylon B Guides, The
Babylon B Guide to Wokeness, The Babylon B Guide to Democracy,
The Babylon B Guide to Gender. And then you also
wrote a book called The Postmattern Pilgrim's Progress and allegorical tale.
(04:03):
Is that one also humor.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It is it's a it's a it has humor in it.
But the feedback that I've got from a lot of
people who have read it is, Wow, this is a
lot heavier than I thought it would be. It has
a lot of making.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It seems like not quite funny, Aprol Yeah, well, it's
I wrote it with my editor in chief, Kyle Man.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
We both grew up reading The Pilgrim's Progress. It's a
very very important, you know book and the kind of
the Protestant Reform tradition. Many argue it was the first
novel ever written in the English language. For many for
a few centuries after that, Christian families would have a
copy of the Bible and they would have a copy
of Pilgrim's Progress. And so it's it's something that I
kind of grew up on, always loving the book, you know,
(04:49):
And for those who aren't familiar, it's it's kind of
a it's an allegorical tale of the of what it's
like walking the Christian life, and it's it follows this
guy named Pilgrim. The names are very like on the nose,
and on this journey to the celestial city, which is Heaven,
he fights Apollyon, who's a devil. You know, it's very
on the nose all the way. But it's very funny.
There's there's a satirical uh you know, there's some kind
(05:09):
of winks and nods all throughout it. You know that
we always kind of thought were funny. So, you know,
Christian will be going along his journey and he'll come
upon a guy whose name is Fool, and Fool will
give him advice, and the reader's thinking, why are you
listening to a guy whose name is literally fool, you know.
And so we we love the book and we kind
(05:29):
of wanted to write an updated, modernized version of it,
and so we kind of write our own wrote our
own little sci fi, uh you know, postmodern version of
it with multi verses and and some classic B humor.
But it's really it's really kind of a meditation on
grief and you know, dealing with evil and tragedy in
(05:52):
the world that sometimes doesn't make sense. How can God,
you know, being all powerful allow evil to happen? You know,
those classic questions that we all deal with. A lot
of people who are used to be humor have read
that and were kind of taken aback by some of
the seriousness in the book. Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, I was wondering about that if the typical B
reader was like, oh, this is going to be hilarious.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So which of the Bee guides was the fun most
fun to write?
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Well, the one that did the best was our first one,
and that was The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, and
we kind of wrote it at the height of this
conversation around wokeness and that was fun. That was a
free for all because there was so much material. You know,
Wokeness was just kind of a punchline in and of itself.
You could kind of present wokeness without changing it or
embellishing it that much, and it was just funny by itself.
(06:40):
And we almost the classic line the jokes write themselves.
But that was the experience writing the Guide to Wokeness.
The most fun one that we had was our most
recent one. I don't know if you mentioned that one.
We just came out. It's The babylon Be Guide to
the Apocalypse. Oh okay, and we just it's the stupidest
thing we've ever written, absolutely useless. But it was so
(07:02):
fun to write. And it was so fun to write
separate from politics, you know, not writing about something heavy,
just kind of just being silly, writing a lot of
funny jokes and drawing a lot of silly pictures. It's
nice when you can do that. You know, we're so
steeped in politics to be you know, I have to
I have to you know, troll through you know, dredge
(07:23):
through that, just all kinds of ugly things on Twitter
all the time to get material for my jokes. And
it's nice to kind of take a breather from that. Ever,
for once in a while, absolutely you.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Were saying that, you know, the jokes right themselves with wokeness?
Is that how not the Bee started?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So not the Bee. What we found was happening as
we were writing jokes for the Bee was that a
lot of our jokes were coming true. So we actually
have a bank. We have a little spreadsheet we keep
track of now where we call them fulfilled prophecies, and
when one of our headlines actually comes true, we'll record it.
I think we have like one hundred and fifty fulfilled
(07:59):
prophecies now. And there would sometimes be instances where I'm
kicking around an idea with the writers and we kind
of you know the process of writing in our little
writer's group, we have a common Slack channel. You know,
someone will have a basic basic idea and we'll riff
on it for a while. We'll kind of come up
with alternate phrasings and punchlines to kind of fine tune it.
(08:21):
Until it's perfect, and sometimes we'll be doing that, and
just when we kind of arrive at the perfect form
of the joke, Okay, this is what we're going to publish,
a news notification will pop up on our phones that
that thing that we were riffing on just happened, and
now we have to change the joke or we got
to throw it out all together. And so we started
this thing Not the Bee to Okay, we got to
(08:42):
account for the real stuff that is so ridiculous it
sounds like satire. So Not the Bee is kind of
a silly, kind of clickbaity real news site full of
you know, very serious journalists that will add meme faces
and gifts to the news stories to make them a
little more fun to read.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
What would you be doing if not? What would be
a plan be?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I don't know. If I'm not doing this, I'm in trouble.
I don't know how this skill translates in a useful
way to anything else in the world. You know, I am.
I am passionate about politics and the culture and our country,
and so I you know, I can see myself getting
into a job if I were to do something else
where I'm doing more serious journalistic work or cultural commentary.
(09:25):
I you know, people who follow me on Twitter will
often see how serious my Twitter feed is. It's not
full of humor, and that's how I that's how I relax.
I'm funny for a living from eight to five. I'm funny,
and so I have to be serious in my off
time to kind of like take the edge off. So so,
I don't know, you know, it's I love being in
(09:45):
this world. I'm passionate about preserving this American Republic, preserving
American freedom, and really any way that I could go
about doing that, I'd be happy to do it.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
We really do have a good thing going and sharing.
It's kind of important. Yeah, what are you most proud
of in your life?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's a hard question because I don't even like using
the word proud because everything good in my life is
like it's a total gift of God's grace. I mean,
I think the thing that I'd be most proud of,
or I guess maybe I would phrase it most thankful for,
is that I've just I've managed to build a somewhat
normal life. You know, it's a crazy world. I look
(10:25):
at the the generation that's coming up, and how hard
it is to get started. Kids aren't getting married anymore,
kids aren't buying homes, kids aren't people aren't having kids.
You know, I just look at what I have. I
have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have six children,
I have a roof over my head, and and all
that kind of standard stuff that seemed like, you know,
(10:47):
middle class. You know, mediocrity is just such a treasure,
you know, And I just thank God that I that
that He's given me all this, you know. And also
just the fact that I'm doing something that I love
and that I'm I'm good at. That's also a rare gift.
Not many people ever ever find themselves in a situation
like that, you know. And if this all crashes and
(11:09):
burns tomorrow, the be goes down, my career goes down.
I can always hang my hat on the fact that
I wrote the joke that made Elon Musk by Twitter,
So you know, I made my marketing. Yeah, I've done
I've done my duty, and I can fade off into
the into the woodwork.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You've changed the course of history. That's really that's.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Eating with a little help from Elon and all his money.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
So how do you tell your kids the importance of
that that good life that it seems so hard for
their generation to get to that, this next generation behind us,
or two generations in my case, what do you say
to your kids and say to kind of lead them
to that same good path.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I think, first of all modeling it, you know, to
provide a good example for them, and how I love
my wife and how I lead my kids, hopefully modeling
it in a way that makes them desire it, and
also just encouraging them that it is a truly extraordinary thing.
I think at G. K. Chesterton, one of my favorite writers,
(12:11):
lived about one hundred years ago, said something like the
most extraordinary thing in the world as an ordinary man,
his ordinary wife and his ordinary children. And so I
think I grew up in that time in the eighties
and nineties, when you know that was kind of seen
as like second best. You know, that's something that you
settle for. But you need to dream big, you need
to go and you need to do these great things.
You need to go live in the big city. And
(12:33):
I think I think our culture is changing a bit
to where having left that behind, people are yearning for
it again. And so I hope my kids are growing
up in that time when not only I will be
encouraging them to grow up and have good, solid families,
but their culture will be encouraging them to do that
as well. I hope. Anyway, right, you.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Can sense that yearning. It's all around. It's the how
to get these people there, how to get these young
people onto that good, sane path when there's so many
voices around them saying don't do that. That's lame and
boring and stupid. And yeah, it's tough. It's something that
a lot of my guests talk about, like how to
(13:15):
get their kids to appreciate, you know, getting married, having
children and not having like the flashy career on Instagram
with the yachts and the you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
It's tough. Yeah, yeah, it is. Well, you know, another
thing that puts it into perspective. I you know, my
my mother passed away about a month ago. I'm sorry
and now thank you, And you know, she she had
cancer and so I'm thankful that we were able to
kind of have some time with her and say goodbye
(13:46):
to her. But one thing that she kept telling me
over and over again, she was always so proud of
me and what I've accomplished, and you know, you know,
follows me online and everything, but you know, she would
always tell me in those last weeks, Joel, your kid
are infinitely more important than all that silly political stuff
that you're doing and all those political fights that you're
having and that you're trying to get clout online. The
(14:09):
kids are more important. Never forget that, you know. And
it's it's you know, that means a lot, not just
coming from my mother, but coming from someone who's at
the end of their life and is suddenly you know,
having that being flooded with that perspective of of what's
truly important. You know, my hope is that I I
(14:30):
raised my kids well and that they turn out okay.
And uh, you know, it's turned me into a praying man,
a much more devoutly praying man. You know, I realize
as a parent how how powerless you are. You can
do everything that you can, but your kids are still
going to kind of do what they're going to do,
and and sometimes all you can do is pray for them.
And I found myself praying for them an awful lot.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, definitely same. It has made me far more religious
about yeah, we're going to take a quick break and
be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show. Give us
a five year out prediction, and it could be about anything,
the country, the world, music, anything.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well. I think in the next five years we will
probably have a couple more elections that are going to
be the most important election in the history of the country, existential,
We're going to die if they go the wrong way.
That'll will probably have a couple of those, like three
or four. Yeah, you know, I think it's it is
exciting at least, you know, politically, it's it's exciting to
(15:36):
see that I think the the stranglehold that the far
left has had on the culture has been somewhat broken,
and if the right can keep its head and not
go completely insane, we can have Yeah, that's a big
if right now, because there's there's a lot of fighting
over who the right is going to be and what
the vision's going to be, and that's an important fight
to have. But if we can keep our heads, I
think we could be headed towards a new golden age
(15:56):
in America. So that's that's something to be hopeful for. Truly,
the thing that I'm very interested in right now is
the impact that we're going to have from AI I
love movies, I love music. I'm really excited to see
what it's going to do in the creative space. I mean,
AI is a is a multiplier. It multiplies, I mean
it's it multiplies human capacity for evil and human capacity
(16:19):
for good. So it's probably going to be more bad
than good. But I think that we're I think we're probably.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You're going in an optimistic direction for a second there,
and then you're like, probably more bad than good.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I think at the very least, we'll finally get some
good movies. I think the now that AI has kind
of brought down that barrier to entry to put amazing
things on screen. As as the technology progresses, I think
we're we're probably going to see a little bit of
a renaissance in creativity in our storytelling and filmmaking. I mean,
(16:51):
we're going to get a lot of slop in the
mix as well, but maybe maybe one or two good
movies from Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Get very mixed commentary about AI on here. Some people
are very scared and think doom is headed our way.
Other people obviously are optimistic on it. I guess I'm
somewhere in between. I could see where the bad things are.
We're not considering them. But there's a lot of possibility
for good. Good movies would be a big plus. I
(17:21):
think most movies are pretty terrible.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, yeah, well I think that. I mean the bad
thing is, I mean we're going to have I mean,
porn is already a terrible problem, and it's going to
become even worse with AI. It's going to be hard
to know what to believe because video will become so convincing.
You know, what are our political battles going to look
like when the RNC and the DNC can share endless
fake videos of different candidates doing things. So it's one
(17:47):
thing that I think is we haven't seen this level
of an explosion of information since like the printing press,
and that created so much reformation and cultural upheaval, but ultimately,
over time it turned out to be a good thing.
So I think human beings adjust, you know, I think
we'll adjust to it and figure out how to live
in the new world, and hopefully it'll be more good
than PAD.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
All right, I'm gonna try to be as optimistic as you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
We'll revisit in five years.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
After the robots control us all if we're still alive
they haven't killed us.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
We'll be in a bunker somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Well, I love this conversation, Jauel. I love getting to
know you a little bit and us here with your
best tip for my listeners on how they can improve
their lives.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
My best tip is something that I was taught in
the military. I was kind of a bit of a
lazy slouch in school in high school. I joined the
Marine Corps because I kind of knew that about myself
and I knew I needed to change. The thing that
I got that I took away from the military was
the ability to do things that you don't feel like doing.
And that seems very simple. But if you can master
(18:52):
yourself enough to do things that you don't feel like
doing in the moment, especially in this world of endless
comfort and e and distraction and Twitter feeds and Instagram feeds,
you will be very successful. Do the hard thing. Be
willing to be uncomfortable, follow your conscience. When you know
you should be doing something, do it even though you
(19:12):
don't feel like it. If you can just do that
simple thing, doing what you don't feel like doing but
you know is right, you will be more successful than
ninety nine point nine percent of the rest of the world,
so that would be my advise.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Thank you so much. He is Joel Berry. Check him
out at the Babylon b by his books. Thank you
so much for coming on
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Joel, Thank you for having me appreciate it.
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