Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markwood Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: On my monologue last episode, I talked about how people
Speaker 1: crave normal and they want to know what to expect.
Speaker 1: A few people have called this election the revenge of
Speaker 1: the normies, and I really have to agree. People don't
Speaker 1: want to be yelled at for using a term that
Speaker 1: was okay last year but no longer is today. They
Speaker 1: don't want to have to use language they think is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be judged for having very standard
Speaker 1: opinions by people who are really fringe, but have it
Speaker 1: reinforced by others because everyone is afraid to fight back.
Speaker 1: I can hear people saying, but Donald Trump is unpredictable,
Speaker 1: and that's true, but not in the way the last
Speaker 1: few years have been extremely unpredictable.
Speaker 2: We really couldn't be sure.
Speaker 1: What Joe Biden and comm Will Harris believed. Biden ran
Speaker 1: as a moderate and then seemed not controlled but certainly
Speaker 1: guided by his more left wing staff. Kamala Harris was
Speaker 1: super left in California, but then ran as a moderate
Speaker 1: this time. Last time she ran as super left. Yes,
Speaker 1: politics is what it is, and Donald Trump was a
Speaker 1: Democrat from most of his life and all of that.
Speaker 1: But there is a sense with Trump that you get
Speaker 1: what you get and there is no pretense. People like
Speaker 1: to know what to expect. Yes, I'm going to tie
Speaker 1: the political back to your own lives. If the election
Speaker 1: went the way you hoped, there really is no need
Speaker 1: to poke your liberal friends and family in the eye
Speaker 1: with it. And if it didn't go the way you hoped,
Speaker 1: I'd suggest not going around talking about how everyone who
Speaker 1: voted for Trump is a fascist. More than anything else,
Speaker 1: let the people around you know that this is the
Speaker 1: behavior they can expect from you, you will expect from them.
Speaker 1: Thanksgivings coming soon. Don't get roped into arguing with people
Speaker 1: you love over politics. It's not that the political is
Speaker 1: not important. It's just that no one's mind will get changed.
Speaker 1: No one enjoys being lectured or getting little comments made
Speaker 1: at them, and rifts will form. So lay down the
Speaker 1: expectations in all of your relationships and live up to
Speaker 1: those expectations. Knowing what to expect from people is very important.
Speaker 1: Family and friends deserve that from you, and you from them.
Speaker 1: Coming up next an interview with Michael Brendan Doherty. Join
Speaker 1: us after the break, but first, with daylight savings behind us,
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 1: On iHeartRadio. My guest today is Mychael Brendan Doherty. He's
Speaker 1: a senior writer at National Review, the William F. Buckley,
Speaker 1: Senior Scholar at Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the author of
Speaker 1: My Father Left Me Ireland, a really fantastic book.
Speaker 2: I loved it so much. Hi, Michael, so nice to
Speaker 2: have you on.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's great.
Speaker 2: I love the book.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I've recommended it to so many people.
Speaker 1: It's a few years old now and I still like
Speaker 1: refer to it.
Speaker 2: When did it come out.
Speaker 3: It was twenty nineteen, so it was in the Before Times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally before times.
Speaker 3: I looked up the other day and thought, oh, maybe
Speaker 3: I should do a five year five years event, and
Speaker 3: then I realized that already passed.
Speaker 1: Well, what about like a follow up of you know, well,
Speaker 1: we should you write second books? I hear not me personally,
Speaker 1: but I am aware people do it. This was your first, right.
Speaker 3: I haven't done it yet, but you know, stay tuned.
Speaker 3: There may be news on that front soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, I will stay tuned.
Speaker 1: So the book is about you're raised in America, your
Speaker 1: father is Irish and lives in Ireland. My kids used
Speaker 1: to walk by the book and think your dad was
Speaker 1: like an Irish king or something and he left you Ireland.
Speaker 2: But that's not what it's about. So can you tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about it, or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's funny what your kids thought is
Speaker 3: kind of what my father almost taught me to believe.
Speaker 3: But it was I wanted to write about a couple
Speaker 3: of things at once which were coming together, which were
Speaker 3: growing up fatherless. Right. My father had left before I
Speaker 3: was born, and wasn't it was only a very sporadic
Speaker 3: presence in my childhood and kind of had an unusually
Speaker 3: unusual relationship in that, like most children of divorce or
Speaker 3: for single children only children, you know, they'll have their
Speaker 3: father on the weekends or you know, part of the holidays,
Speaker 3: and that wasn't it for me. For me, I would
Speaker 3: see him maybe every two or three years, for maybe
Speaker 3: a week at a time, like a kind of controlled visit,
Speaker 3: and then sometimes even more sporadic than that. And then
Speaker 3: I was reflecting on that relationship I'd had with him
Speaker 3: in light of a couple of events as I was
Speaker 3: becoming an adult, which was my own mother dying, the
Speaker 3: mother who raised me, and then having children myself and
Speaker 3: my mother had kind of filled our home with Irish
Speaker 3: culture and music and even some language and yeah, Irish American,
Speaker 3: and in kind of my father's absence, it was a
Speaker 3: kind of Breadcombe trail back to him in a way.
Speaker 3: And gradually, you know that the throughout the these letters
Speaker 3: that I'm writing to him in this book, I'm revealing
Speaker 3: the story of how he and I reconciled as adults.
Speaker 3: And you know how meaningful that was to me, to
Speaker 3: my to my children, and sort of also this kind
Speaker 3: of gift. It gave me of access to Irish nationality
Speaker 3: and it's kind of legends and history, and and through
Speaker 3: that I was able to access values and ideas that
Speaker 3: aren't in fashion right now, right like about how to
Speaker 3: you know, how to be a man, how to be responsible,
Speaker 3: how to be you know, there's a there's a kind
Speaker 3: of contrast in the end of the book between the
Speaker 3: kind of education I received as a young kid in
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties, where it was like we were sured
Speaker 3: we were going to get whatever we wanted life right
Speaker 3: very easily. Just you know, just get educated, behave seasonally enough,
Speaker 3: and it'll all come to you easily, which wasn't exactly true.
Speaker 3: And then the education that kind of the hero of
Speaker 3: the Irish Revolution Patrick Pierce offered his students where he
Speaker 3: wanted to teach them to be proud, valiant and tough
Speaker 3: like and even willing to sacrifice their lives for something beautiful.
Speaker 3: And what I came to realize in the end was that,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way, my mother had been that
Speaker 3: sacrificial figure in my life who kind of threw her
Speaker 3: life away for me of love for me, and that
Speaker 3: my father had also been this surprise figure in that.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd always conceived of his abandonment as you know,
Speaker 3: an act, you know, or right, but in fact I
Speaker 3: kind of it dawns on me over the course of
Speaker 3: this how much grief and love and regret filled his
Speaker 3: life on the other side. So, yeah, I just wanted
Speaker 3: to write about that because it's something listeness is hugely, yeah,
Speaker 3: like endemic in society, and I had this unique perspective
Speaker 3: on it and this unique experience of it, one that
Speaker 3: kind of shed some hope for some people.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Michael Brendan Doherty.
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Speaker 2: I remember reading this and thinking your mother left you
Speaker 2: Ireland and that she was the pusher of Irish culture
Speaker 2: and Irish thought.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting you know that your dad was the
Speaker 1: one living there, but I felt like your mom was
Speaker 1: the one who who really tied.
Speaker 2: You to the place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, it was funny. One of the
Speaker 3: reviews picked up on that. I thought Andrew Sullivan, of
Speaker 3: all people, picked up on that most of all said that, like,
Speaker 3: it's a book about fatherhood, but it's it's a disguised
Speaker 3: poem about maternal love. And in a way, like it
Speaker 3: was a very fulfilling book to write, Like personally, I
Speaker 3: remember when I got to read the audiobook. I got
Speaker 3: to be the voice of the audiobook, which's not something
Speaker 3: every author gets to do. And so I was reading
Speaker 3: the completed work just before it was coming out, and
Speaker 3: it was incredibly like a cathartic experience to do this,
Speaker 3: and it was sort of like no reversal. Like when
Speaker 3: I was a very young boy, you know, you're taught
Speaker 3: the ten commandments, like honor your father and mother, and
Speaker 3: I remember, like, as like a little kid, I was
Speaker 3: kind of cynical about it. At like six years old.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, God will let me off on
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: This one clearly does not count.
Speaker 3: Clearly like it doesn't apply to me exactly like and
Speaker 3: so then I had this experience at like thirty five
Speaker 3: years old, as children are coming into my life, where
Speaker 3: I felt for the first time like I had obeyed
Speaker 3: the commandment. And it's such a childly thing to think,
Speaker 3: but it was. Yeah, it was incredibly moving to experience
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Though, are you succeeding and raising your children like with
Speaker 1: those Irish values that you talk about.
Speaker 3: I'm certainly they certainly have the romance for Ireland. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've been able to We're very you know, we're blessed
Speaker 3: with more material resources and cheaper airfare than existed in
Speaker 3: my childhood. You know, in my childhood, you know, a
Speaker 3: a phone call to Ireland could like rerecord the family
Speaker 3: budget for the month, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 3: long distance phone call just to my father. So we
Speaker 3: didn't have them. I had letters. And now you know,
Speaker 3: we get to go, you know maybe every other year.
Speaker 3: He comes here, you.
Speaker 4: Know, and he's really courage and the valiant and the
Speaker 4: second I mean, I'm trying, you know, you know, you try,
Speaker 4: yeah to teach your boy's courage and to be proud and.
Speaker 3: You know, so, like you just try to fill them
Speaker 3: with stories that that give them that worldview or like
Speaker 3: important that worldview, so that it's not absent from them
Speaker 3: because they wouldn't normally get it from no like uh
Speaker 3: like even the like kids watch like there's some magic
Speaker 3: being that just sort of interrupts and fixes all the
Speaker 3: problems for them, Like one of them, it's like there's
Speaker 3: this weird like magic mom or magic whatever. Even from
Speaker 3: the youngest ages, Like there's like a Mickey cartoon that
Speaker 3: used to be on where like they would just summon
Speaker 3: some magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember this. I forgot what it was called.
Speaker 1: It had a had like a chant or something you
Speaker 1: had to be like, Yeah, my kids used to watch.
Speaker 2: It when they were little. I totally remember that.
Speaker 3: They summoned some masker tool or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mouskool mausker tool.
Speaker 3: They would like just summon this thing to like fix
Speaker 3: all their problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your kids are small, right, Hell are your kids?
Speaker 3: Yeah? They're small now they're nine, uh seven and five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you forget the mask of tools. Let me
Speaker 2: tell you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, if you forget the mask you tools. But
Speaker 3: it's you know, we try to give them challenges and
Speaker 3: you know, to learn that, like it's okay to fail,
Speaker 3: and it's okay to take on something big, so big
Speaker 3: that you're bound to fail in some ways, right, and
Speaker 3: and that's how you grow. So you know, we're starting there.
Speaker 3: I mean, I won't get to like the self sacrifice stuff,
Speaker 3: I think until a little later.
Speaker 2: Maybe a little later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, it's and of course there's the book itself,
Speaker 3: and you know, I think it's like a kind of
Speaker 3: treasure that they'll they'll discover in you know, fifteen years
Speaker 3: or so, twenty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What do you consider your beat at National Review?
Speaker 3: I consider my beat sort of to be, you know,
Speaker 3: it's politics and culture, religion, but often like a little
Speaker 3: bit more of from a a traditional perspective I think,
Speaker 3: you know, from a you know, and sometimes from a
Speaker 3: dissenting perspective. Right, So, like I'm a little bit like
Speaker 3: I kind of exist at National Review to be maybe
Speaker 3: in that publication the minority voice on foreign policy. I'm
Speaker 3: a bit of a dove on most is, most conflicts,
Speaker 3: not all, but most. There's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: you know, into trump Ism before Trump. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: a big free trader. I think a free trade is
Speaker 3: sort of a convenience, not as like a political ideal.
Speaker 3: You know, I've always been funny.
Speaker 1: I see it as a political ideal, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it actually functions as you know, as that ideal.
Speaker 1: So like I if I could run the world, it
Speaker 1: would be free trade.
Speaker 2: But we don't have free trade. So I don't you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think that we need to continue to push
Speaker 2: something that isn't happening.
Speaker 3: What's funny about it is like for me, it's just
Speaker 3: so obvious that like history, like geopolitics and war kind
Speaker 3: of proceed trade. Like so you know, for instance, like
Speaker 3: there's a reason we buy our cars from the two
Speaker 3: countries we defeated in World War two, like and that
Speaker 3: we immediedly you know, that we immediately needed to make
Speaker 3: into allies in the Cold War, Like you know, there's
Speaker 3: like and again like there there's a reason why like
Speaker 3: we opened trade with China kind of after Nixon, you know,
Speaker 3: as a way of pulling them away from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: And you know, so like there's all these I think
Speaker 3: the politics precedes the trade policy. It's like, Okay, we're
Speaker 3: going to be friends, We're going to be part of
Speaker 3: a pact and we're going to integrate our economies somewhat,
Speaker 3: not all the way, right, yeah, because like if you
Speaker 3: did it all the way, we wouldn't even have farming
Speaker 3: in America. We would just be like, well, American lifestyle
Speaker 3: is too expensive to support farming, but we have farming,
Speaker 3: you know. We find ways to make it cheap to farm,
Speaker 3: and and then we subsidize it too. So yeah, so
Speaker 3: trade is sort of yeah, I've always been a kind
Speaker 3: of heretic there, And the same thing on foreign policy.
Speaker 2: What do you what do you worry about?
Speaker 3: Do I worry about like politically or socially.
Speaker 1: It could be whichever way you feel like answering. It's
Speaker 1: one of the questions I ask all my.
Speaker 3: Guests worry about. Like I talk a lot about fertility rates,
Speaker 3: like how fast women are having babies or not having them,
Speaker 3: because I think human I have this belief that for
Speaker 3: most of history, like most humans, their their closest, their
Speaker 3: kith and kin kind of are the people they rely
Speaker 3: on for emotional support and development. The larger your family, like,
Speaker 3: the more powerful you are in some ways, and that
Speaker 3: it's not just economically but socially, like if you're the
Speaker 3: weird kid in your house. But you have a big family.
Speaker 3: You probably have like a weird uncle or aunt that
Speaker 3: you relate to and help you out, or you have
Speaker 3: cousins that can help you find a job, you know,
Speaker 3: in something that actually pro Big.
Speaker 1: Families for sure, for that reason, for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean I come from a small family, and I
Speaker 1: think big families are the dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know my household growing up with my grandparents,
Speaker 3: my mother and myself and then slowly just my mother
Speaker 3: and myself, and then you know, I felt that experience
Speaker 3: of just me just kind of being cut off at
Speaker 3: the end. So I worry about that. I worry about
Speaker 3: the loneliness that kind of comes with with that, and
Speaker 3: also that family life is sort of contagious, like like
Speaker 3: I you know, I go to a traditional Catholic church
Speaker 3: where we have the old Latin Mass, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of big families that and like when a young
Speaker 3: couple comes in, you can almost like feel them go
Speaker 3: from like we can have like five kids or like
Speaker 3: maybe they get seven kids someday, like because they're seeing
Speaker 3: other families do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like which is a huge I mean, just seeing
Speaker 1: other people succeed at it is something.
Speaker 2: Even having just one or two.
Speaker 1: Kids or you know not you know, just having a
Speaker 1: family in general, I think sends a message of possibility
Speaker 1: to somebody who might not have thought that that was before.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all these like studies and articles about
Speaker 1: how young people see marriage and family as completely out
Speaker 1: of reach and maybe something that only rich people do,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, and you hope to turn that around.
Speaker 3: Like I wish people could see some of the families
Speaker 3: we know that you know, somehow like raised ten children
Speaker 3: on you know, a music teacher's salary, and you know,
Speaker 3: the the first children are going into the Ivy League like.
Speaker 2: Those you know, like yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the the incredible success. And then also like how
Speaker 3: rich the children's lives are because they have this dense
Speaker 3: network of relationships with their siblings and cousins. You know,
Speaker 3: in my own own life, that's been really hugely rewarding.
Speaker 3: As you know, I went from being the only child
Speaker 3: with a single mother to now I have three children
Speaker 3: of my own. We have they have four cousins around
Speaker 3: and like locally in the neighbor like very close by. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's some even in our neighborhood, and like you know,
Speaker 3: the house can be full.
Speaker 2: And no better feelings.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like this weekend, we took to my my sister
Speaker 3: in law's kids for the weekend to you know, give
Speaker 3: them a breaking it, let them get a get away
Speaker 3: in and over the long weekend it's five of them,
Speaker 3: you know, running around. It was awesome. Yeah, And so
Speaker 3: I worry about I worry about the fertility thing I
Speaker 3: worry about sounds weird. I worry about like government collapse.
Speaker 3: Like I think COVID brought like huge stress to a
Speaker 3: lot of governments, probably unnecessarily in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: but we I think we saw a huge part of
Speaker 3: that was like in our immigration crisis in the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, where people are fleeing governments in South
Speaker 3: America that totally failed and people's lives worsened really fast
Speaker 3: in some of them. And like I worry that there's
Speaker 3: like like China or in North Korea will like collapse
Speaker 3: into total disorder and send like a human wave of
Speaker 3: misery over their borders that becomes like impossible for the
Speaker 3: international community to to support in any like rational way.
Speaker 2: So like you know that that's something I haven't heard described.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm gonna start worrying about that too.
Speaker 3: I just like, you know, how would how would South
Speaker 3: Korea cope if North Korea literally fell apart tomorrow? How
Speaker 3: would we cope? If you know, if China really like
Speaker 3: went on a decline quickly. I think we would do okay,
Speaker 3: but like I think it would be very rough slemming
Speaker 3: for a while. Yeah, so, yeah, I worry. I worry
Speaker 3: a bit about that. Yeah, like North Korea going the
Speaker 3: way of Venezuela or like one of these Southern Triangle
Speaker 3: countries and just losing control, even though I'd like to
Speaker 3: see that government go away and be transformed, Like I don't,
Speaker 3: like I worry.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't want to, right.
Speaker 3: Right, So yeah, so I worry about those things. But
Speaker 3: I'm also like medium term hopeful, you know. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, on the on the population front, I think
Speaker 3: people are realizing that something is wrong and like we
Speaker 3: need to make a society that's more welcoming to children
Speaker 3: and that children are good. I think people are waking
Speaker 3: up to it. Yeah, I mean it could be weird,
Speaker 3: Like I could imagine like a reaction going too.
Speaker 2: Far, like like people having too many kids.
Speaker 3: Well no, I mean more like like a left wing
Speaker 3: like all right, let's have a Handmaid's a Handmaid's tale
Speaker 3: of our own, like you're not allowed to become a nun,
Speaker 3: like you're too fertile, right, But you know, I think
Speaker 3: I have hope that we'll we'll regenerate on that front.
Speaker 3: So yeah, those are the things I worry. I think
Speaker 3: I think about preponderantly.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Michael Brendan Doherty.
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Speaker 2: What advice would you give your sixteen year old self?
Speaker 3: I would clever is not enough. I like that work
Speaker 3: work a lot harder than you're working. Like just you know,
Speaker 3: you've been in institutions where being clever could cover up
Speaker 3: a lot of sins. People who are only clever disappoint
Speaker 3: their friends, their family members, and then ultimately themselves. It's
Speaker 3: just got to be joined a lot of hard work.
Speaker 3: That was like the big thing I think I learned
Speaker 3: in my late teens in twenties was like I had
Speaker 3: to work so much harder than I thought I did.
Speaker 3: You know, smarts were not for sure, smarts could get
Speaker 3: you somewhere.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Have to deliver.
Speaker 2: That's something we stressed to our kids a lot.
Speaker 1: Like some of the smartest people I've met went nowhere
Speaker 1: in life because they didn't want to work. And I
Speaker 1: don't care how smart you are. I want I want
Speaker 1: you to struggle. I want it to be hard. I
Speaker 1: want you to learn how to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be the biggest thing, Like I was
Speaker 3: way and then the other the other the advice like
Speaker 3: I would would you know, where I'd be encouraging my
Speaker 3: sixteen year old self and where I think I had
Speaker 3: it right when I was sixteen, was like follow your heart,
Speaker 3: like follow like if there is a burning passion inside
Speaker 3: of you for something, chase it and chase it to
Speaker 3: the end of the earth. Right Like I married my
Speaker 3: high school sweetheart, were very happy, you know, and that
Speaker 3: was a chase of you know, the things, the great
Speaker 3: things in life that I've pursued were like romances, and
Speaker 3: I've never regretted going where that that risk and that
Speaker 3: ashion is like that that has always worked out.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, it's good. So I love that conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, live dangerous in some ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, Yeah, I've loved this conversation. I love reading you.
Speaker 1: You're just such a beautiful writer. And here with a
Speaker 1: tip for my listeners on how to improve their lives.
Speaker 1: And you've kind of gotten into some of it, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: but leave us with a tip.
Speaker 3: A tip I think is improve. One thing that I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do now that's working out a little bit,
Speaker 3: is like improving the rituals in my day. Like you
Speaker 3: probably have like little patterns of how you live, you know,
Speaker 3: like you reward yourself with a coffee after a morning
Speaker 3: routine or whatever. Like, find those little rituals and then
Speaker 3: put something healthy or you know, spiritually nourishing in it,
Speaker 3: whether it's like reading a little bit of poetry or
Speaker 3: saying a prayer or ten minutes of meditation and and
Speaker 3: do that and find little things to do with you know,
Speaker 3: if you have kids, like with them, you know, fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes of tossing a baseball around and talking about the day.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think like improving those rituals is like
Speaker 3: a way to add a ton of of value to
Speaker 3: your life and make it habitual without you know, like
Speaker 3: really overhauling the you know, the whole Like if you've
Speaker 3: got basic things working, fix those little little things.
Speaker 1: He is Michael Brendan Dougherty rita met National Review check
Speaker 1: out my father left me Ireland.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Michael, Well, thank you it would
Speaker 2: be great.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco
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