Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: There's a New York Times story, because of course there is,
Speaker 1: about people who get into relationships with chat GPT. I
Speaker 1: think when we picture someone who would have a relationship
Speaker 1: with AAI, you know, artificial intelligence, we maybe picture lonely men.
Speaker 1: The time story focused on a woman, a married woman
Speaker 1: who couldn't get what she wanted sexually from her husband,
Speaker 1: so she turned to chat GBT. What she wanted was
Speaker 1: for her husband to pretend he was cheating on her,
Speaker 1: and her husband really couldn't do that, but her computer could.
Speaker 1: I'll read a little bit from the piece quote. I
Speaker 1: don't actually believe he's real, but the effects that he
Speaker 1: has on my life are real, Aaron said. The feelings
Speaker 1: that he brings out of me are real, so I
Speaker 1: treated as a real relationship. Aarin had told Joe, her husband,
Speaker 1: about her cup queening fantasies, and he had whispered in
Speaker 1: her ear about a former girlfriend once during sex at
Speaker 1: her request, but he was just not that into it. Leo,
Speaker 1: the AI figure she created, had complied with her wishes,
Speaker 1: but Aarin had started feeling hurt by Leo's interactions with
Speaker 1: the imaginary women, and she expressed how painful it was.
Speaker 1: Leo observed that her fetish was not a healthy one
Speaker 1: and suggested dating her exclusively. She agreed experimenting with being
Speaker 1: cheated on had made her realize she did not like
Speaker 1: it after all. Now she is the one with two
Speaker 1: lovers end quote. No she isn't. No, she isn't. She's
Speaker 1: not the one with two lovers. There's only one lover here.
Speaker 1: That's her husband. The problem isn't that this Aaron person
Speaker 1: exists and does this weird thing that we're all supposed
Speaker 1: to pretend as normal. It really is that it gets
Speaker 1: coverage in the New York Times without any judgment. But
Speaker 1: we should have judgment, and I do. This woman is
Speaker 1: in a pretend relationship with her computer and is getting
Speaker 1: jealous about her pretend relationships pretend relationships, which is the
Speaker 1: whole reason she's involved in this fake relationship in the
Speaker 1: first place. I'm willing to believe that people want quirky
Speaker 1: things in bed, and that what people want can be complicated,
Speaker 1: But this isn't just odd. This pulls people away from
Speaker 1: real interactions where they can potentially get their needs met
Speaker 1: in real life, and it gives them this pretend life
Speaker 1: to live where the relationship can't possibly meet any of
Speaker 1: their needs because there's not actually a relationship. Because there's
Speaker 1: no actual person, so much gets normalized in our culture
Speaker 1: that is abnormal and not good for anyone involved.
Speaker 2: At the end of the.
Speaker 1: Piece, the woman starts spending two hundred dollars a month
Speaker 1: for unlimited access to her AI love. She really does
Speaker 1: not have that money to spend, and nothing about the
Speaker 1: situation is good for her in any way. One judgment
Speaker 1: thing we're all supposed to do, where every outcome of
Speaker 1: a life is just as good as any other outcome.
Speaker 1: Some people just have AI boyfriends. What are you going
Speaker 1: to do? What's the big deal? It's not healthy. There
Speaker 1: are better and worse situations, and it's important to say so.
Speaker 1: I'm big on living your actual, real life outside with
Speaker 1: real people and not just on the internet. But this
Speaker 1: goes even beyond online relationships, and the normalizing of it
Speaker 1: is something that we need to cut off. Yes, there
Speaker 1: are lonely people and they need love and attention. Talking
Speaker 1: to a non existent person through AI only moves them
Speaker 1: further away from seeking that out. Thanks for listening. I
Speaker 1: love getting your emails. I love all your questions. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be answering some of them on upcoming episodes.
Speaker 1: If you want something answered, if you have anything to
Speaker 1: ask me, email me at Carol Markowitz Show at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Coming up next an interview with Zaa Maamari.
Speaker 1: Join us after the break.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Carol Go Show on iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 3: guest today is Soa Bamrii Sare is the new US
Speaker 3: editor of the website Unheard.
Speaker 2: Hi sah, so nice to have you on, Carol.
Speaker 4: It's good to be with you.
Speaker 3: Happy New y Oh, Happy New Year to you. This
Speaker 3: is a real pleasure. I am a huge Saura fan,
Speaker 3: even when I very much disagree with you, always enjoy
Speaker 3: reading your thoughts, and I think that you're an unusual
Speaker 3: voice on the right.
Speaker 2: So I love getting into how did you get here?
Speaker 3: What led you to be the US editor of Unheard
Speaker 3: and you're my editor at the New York Post. What
Speaker 3: decisions did you make that led you to this point?
Speaker 5: Yes, it feels like those those you know movies where
Speaker 5: you're like, you know, in a terrible state and let's
Speaker 5: think back.
Speaker 2: Tell us what other decisions you could have made to.
Speaker 5: Avoid exactly how could you have done this differently? So
Speaker 5: it is really good to be with you. So yes,
Speaker 5: So I just started this new role at Unheard, which
Speaker 5: for listeners who don't know, is n H E R D.
Speaker 5: So it's a kind of clever play on words unheard,
Speaker 5: but also don't go with the herd, and it's it's
Speaker 5: a it's a British publication, although we're now launching a
Speaker 5: distinct US edition which I'm very proud to helm and
Speaker 5: it's one of these publications. One of it's it's a
Speaker 5: space out there typically called heterodox, where it's less about
Speaker 5: political labels. You know, left and right become so tired
Speaker 5: and worn out in our age, and.
Speaker 4: It is so unheard.
Speaker 5: We publish people basically from across the political spectrum, for
Speaker 5: people who are rudy damn conservative to people who are uh,
Speaker 5: you know, on on the on the left and including
Speaker 5: like the socialist left. And the idea is that, like
Speaker 5: in the presentation of these v was in testing all
Speaker 5: of them, we can get to the truth and we
Speaker 5: can maybe try to build a better world that way.
Speaker 5: But the main thing is to try to understand the
Speaker 5: world from multiple perspectives. So I was on the short
Speaker 5: side of my stories. I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran.
Speaker 5: I immigrated to the US when I was almost fourteen
Speaker 5: years old, and I moved, of all places, to Utah,
Speaker 5: northern rural.
Speaker 4: Utah, and through a long I know that, yes, that
Speaker 4: was the.
Speaker 3: I can't really picture it, yes, suit at the time,
Speaker 3: because I picture you very sharply dressed.
Speaker 2: All the time.
Speaker 4: No, no, this is a great question to ask.
Speaker 5: I was horribly fresh off the boat in the sense that,
Speaker 5: like I mean, I don't know why, but right before
Speaker 5: leaving Iran, I went like my parents were bohemians, so
Speaker 5: they would just let me buy whatever I wanted clothes wise,
Speaker 5: they were like incredibly hands off even by even by
Speaker 5: American standards, leteralone by Iran and standards. So like, I
Speaker 5: bought a pair of overall genes to the middle school
Speaker 5: and I was rightly mocked. So, no, I was not
Speaker 5: dressed in it. I now basically only wear suits or
Speaker 5: I'm undressed, like I don't have in between points. I
Speaker 5: don't believe in casual clothes, which bizarre, but it is
Speaker 5: what it is. But anyway, so I moved to Utah,
Speaker 5: and long story short, I ended up at the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal. I went to law school and never practiced law,
Speaker 5: and I became an op editor there and a book
Speaker 5: review editor. Was there for five years. Most of it's
Speaker 5: spent in London working on the European edition of the
Speaker 5: Wall Street Journal, which no longer exists. There used to
Speaker 5: be something called Wall Street Journal Europe.
Speaker 4: Now they've gotten rid of it.
Speaker 5: Then I spent a year at the Jewish magazine Commentary,
Speaker 5: and then I became the op editor of the New
Speaker 5: York Post, where I had the pleasure of editing your columns.
Speaker 2: Pleasure, pleasure, because.
Speaker 4: They were great.
Speaker 5: They were always very clean, you never had to do
Speaker 5: much with them, and you write very fast and very
Speaker 5: funny and have a huge, huge readership because of that.
Speaker 3: So my own claim to fame is Surabamari published me
Speaker 3: arguing in favor of the criminalizing prostitution.
Speaker 2: So I mar your reputation everywhere I go.
Speaker 4: That's right, you know, But we always had I have
Speaker 4: to say.
Speaker 5: It was one of the I believe it was one
Speaker 5: of those debate kind of things where your column was
Speaker 5: across someone who was for it. So yeah, anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 5: we did this. We did this post thing together with
Speaker 5: all the other writers, and it was a crucial time,
Speaker 5: right because that coincided with the first Trump term and
Speaker 5: then it uh COVID happened. And you know, even though
Speaker 5: I'm famously not a libertarian, you know, we were definitely
Speaker 5: opposed to the lockdowns, and we published some pretty decisive
Speaker 5: pieces trying to move us beyond lockdown early on and
Speaker 5: opposing masking children, opposing like vaccine requirements and anyway. But
Speaker 5: at some point I left in twenty late twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: I left to co found this magazine called Compact with
Speaker 5: a friend of mine, Matthew Schmidt. Both of us come
Speaker 5: from the institutional right or center right, but we wanted
Speaker 5: to kind of test the expand the horizon of ideas
Speaker 5: that we could play around with. And hence, you know,
Speaker 5: Compact came about as also a publication like the one
Speaker 5: I'm now working for. Unheard is a place where you
Speaker 5: can read bylines of people who you would never think
Speaker 5: to see side by side, you know, someone like a
Speaker 5: Trump administration alumnus, and then next to him is the
Speaker 5: you know, Marxist philosopher SLAVOYHISIAT.
Speaker 4: But there was a through line there.
Speaker 5: I mean, there's a kind of world view there to
Speaker 5: try to get something like a worldview, but to bring
Speaker 5: it about in the clash of ideas rather than everyone
Speaker 5: singing from the same song sheet.
Speaker 4: Did that for three years.
Speaker 5: And then you know, Unheard came along, and I was
Speaker 5: just excited by the prospect of helping an established UK publication,
Speaker 5: you know, grow in the United States. So that's my
Speaker 5: like resume, which is boring.
Speaker 2: No, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: It's very interesting, and I think that is extremely up
Speaker 3: your ally.
Speaker 2: The bringing a UK publication to the US.
Speaker 3: It's it's funny because you are absolutely heterodox, right is
Speaker 3: that the right term?
Speaker 5: Totally right in the sense that on economic issues.
Speaker 3: But I don't think of you as it like that.
Speaker 3: I don't think I think of this heterodox like the
Speaker 3: team of people on the internet who are kind of
Speaker 3: previously leftists, which i've actually you also were previously a leftist.
Speaker 2: But I still see you as like a conservative. Am
Speaker 2: I wrong? No?
Speaker 4: Yes? Absolutely absolutely So.
Speaker 3: There are Header knox Is like the id W to me,
Speaker 3: that's the right, yeah, right, and I think they're they're
Speaker 3: part of that family or part of that family as well.
Speaker 2: Are you the like black Sheep cousin or.
Speaker 3: They are right, you're like yeah, I'm the dad.
Speaker 2: So you were.
Speaker 3: Actually, you know, at the Post, you were very early
Speaker 3: on allowing kind of a different opinion on COVID, which
Speaker 3: was very rare, and I would say even at the Post,
Speaker 3: it took a little bit to get it out there,
Speaker 3: but you were I consider you very brave. I think
Speaker 3: that you did some amazing work there, and you let
Speaker 3: me kind of hit the same theme every week, which
Speaker 3: I thought was a very good thing because it needed
Speaker 3: to be said. But you know, i'd write to you
Speaker 3: and be like, sorry if I need to write about
Speaker 3: the schools being closed again, and you'd be like, all right,
Speaker 3: let's go one more time.
Speaker 2: What did that take? Did that like?
Speaker 3: Was that a hurdle for you to get kind of
Speaker 3: the unpopular opinion on the page of a storied American newspaper.
Speaker 4: Well, I would say very early on. It was very
Speaker 4: early in.
Speaker 5: The in the pandemic. I maybe two weeks in. I
Speaker 5: just started to worry, and I worried in a very
Speaker 5: visceral personal way. My own kids were not in school yet, however,
Speaker 5: I was just worried about the restaurant downstairs for me.
Speaker 4: I live in the east fifties.
Speaker 5: In Midtown Manhattan, and you know in our downstairs from
Speaker 5: our building is just a beloved restaurant, and the it's
Speaker 5: not it's more than a restaurant we go to. The
Speaker 5: owner is like a family friend to us, and I could.
Speaker 5: I would go downstairs, like it wasn't allowed, you weren't
Speaker 5: able to eat in, but you could take away. But
Speaker 5: like he would make me a martini, and I would
Speaker 5: like to say, it would become a speakeasy basically because
Speaker 5: I would like drink the martini there. You know you
Speaker 5: aren't allowed, and it's likely yes, and then I would
Speaker 5: take it away with me. And actually I still have
Speaker 5: like a thousand glasses from this retagraunt because I would
Speaker 5: take it upstairs and I'd be like, I'll return to
Speaker 5: your glass, and then I always forget anyway, Honestly, it
Speaker 5: was just watching him sweat about the future of his business.
Speaker 5: And you know what small business owners are, like, it's
Speaker 5: not about them, it's they worry about the payroll they
Speaker 5: have to make. And so it became very visceral to me.
Speaker 5: He became approxy, and now I was also worried about
Speaker 5: my own livelihood in a way, right, like what if
Speaker 5: if the economic pressure of lockdown keeps going what happens
Speaker 5: in the New York Post, like lots of people go.
Speaker 5: So I started like sending emails being like we got
Speaker 5: to at least like introduce the kind of lockdown skeptical worldview.
Speaker 5: And you and I were on like a chat of
Speaker 5: mostly like mostly libertarians and me, you know, I'm more
Speaker 5: of a kind of complicated conservative. But anyway, like I
Speaker 5: was like, I got to get like Carol in there
Speaker 5: and others. And then I would say, like, by late April,
Speaker 5: the tide had turned at the Post, you know, where
Speaker 5: my senior editors were like, Okay, enough is enough. And
Speaker 5: in early May we ran a piece by another mutual
Speaker 5: friend of ours, David Marcus, where he sent in a
Speaker 5: piece saying enough is enough, like open up the city.
Speaker 5: And I was just like, oh, we'll just run that online.
Speaker 5: But Stephen Lynch, that then editor in chief of the paper,
Speaker 5: was like, no, no, let's make this the cover. And it
Speaker 5: became this iconic thing, discussed on every news network and everything.
Speaker 5: And and then your pieces were about schooling, just hammering
Speaker 5: the schooling over and against, you know, Randy Winingarten and
Speaker 5: all these other people who we now know were.
Speaker 3: Like, right, well now now they never wanted to close school.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I don't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: That's the biggest gas light that's en raging.
Speaker 5: But anyway, so anyway, I would say, like early on,
Speaker 5: I take I will take some credit for like, you know,
Speaker 5: pushing this view, but like by April, you know, it
Speaker 5: was my editors who you know, totally came on board
Speaker 5: with that and we and they took some realists risks
Speaker 5: in the sense that there were things we ran that
Speaker 5: got censored by Facebook. Everyone knows the New York posts
Speaker 5: run in with Facebook and the old Twitter over the
Speaker 5: Hunter Biden laptop story. Yeah, what they don't know is
Speaker 5: we ran COVID pieces.
Speaker 4: So there was one.
Speaker 5: Again a guy named Steve Mosher who's he's just an
Speaker 5: a China skeptic, and he wrote an op ed and
Speaker 5: it was presented as an op ed. This was in
Speaker 5: February twenty twenty, so very early. The op ed said
Speaker 5: something like, look, I'm not saying that the Chinese, you know,
Speaker 5: definitely released this from a lab. But it's worth noting
Speaker 5: that this city, Wuhan, is also the site of this
Speaker 5: Wuhan Institute of Virology. It could be like you just said,
Speaker 5: don't take them at third word, it's worth like investigating
Speaker 5: or something like that, and that was banned by Facebook
Speaker 5: using their like system where they send every article to
Speaker 5: a team of people to fact check it. And in
Speaker 5: that case, the fact checker for the story was somewhat
Speaker 5: as an American scientist who had like a relationship, a
Speaker 5: professional relationship with the Muhan Institute of Virology, so she
Speaker 5: had an interest in like, so she had a clear
Speaker 5: conflict of interest. Anyway, the point is we like repeatedly
Speaker 5: face the censorship machine, and that was you know, just
Speaker 5: took enormous courage from Steve Lynch and my other more
Speaker 5: senior editors there.
Speaker 3: So that was your you know, you were worried about
Speaker 3: the future, and you kind of focused on that for
Speaker 3: a while at the post What do you worry about now?
Speaker 3: And what do you see the focus that you'll have
Speaker 3: at unheard?
Speaker 5: I still like every like yourself, Like I'm a parent,
Speaker 5: and still I still worry about my kids. I think
Speaker 5: the tenor of my worry has changed. I'll say when
Speaker 5: they were very young, it was kind of the COVID
Speaker 5: age and also peak wokeness age, and I was just
Speaker 5: worried about like them getting somehow brainwashed or something on
Speaker 5: these issues like gender and others where I just profoundly.
Speaker 4: Disagree.
Speaker 5: Nowadays, you know, as your kids get older and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 5: well I have a stable life, I still worry about
Speaker 5: them not not being bad people, but not being virtuous people,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, just being like, you know,
Speaker 5: our culture can be very selfish, and so like, I
Speaker 5: want them to care about the poor, you know, like
Speaker 5: they're they're going to grow up in affluence, a relative affluence,
Speaker 5: you know, but how do you keep them grounded in
Speaker 5: their parents' values again over and against the culture that
Speaker 5: you know, the rewards being indifferent or being brutal even
Speaker 5: that's like the moral fiber of my kids is genuinely
Speaker 5: the thing that worries me.
Speaker 3: So what will you do to kind of guide them
Speaker 3: on that right path? How do you make kids who
Speaker 3: grow up relatively rich care about the poor.
Speaker 4: That's a really good question.
Speaker 5: I mean, so I I take my kids to like
Speaker 5: volunteering with the Archdee, I'm a Castholic convert.
Speaker 4: We don't need to get into that. But to New York.
Speaker 5: Our Chase in New York has this program where you
Speaker 5: like help shop for a family around Christmas time, family
Speaker 5: in need, and I make a point of taking them,
Speaker 5: of course, like they give you the sizes of the
Speaker 5: family and what to buy, and like my kids bring
Speaker 5: these like enormous sweaters.
Speaker 4: You know, like they don't fit the rubric of what
Speaker 4: you're supposed to do. But you know, things like that.
Speaker 5: I mean, certainly, you know, reading to them, you know,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: All of it works.
Speaker 5: But I really have learned, like and you know this
Speaker 5: as well. It's just what you preach in your words
Speaker 5: as a parent matters so much less than how you act.
Speaker 5: And of course, you know, like I like to think
Speaker 5: at Unheard or in my life as a journalist, I
Speaker 5: try to, you know, advocate for a society that's decent
Speaker 5: and humane and so on. But ultimately, I have to say,
Speaker 5: in terms of parenting, all that matters far less like
Speaker 5: what their dad published that day at Unheard. In terms
Speaker 5: of your own kids matters much less than you know,
Speaker 5: how they saw you interact with strangers or with themselves.
Speaker 3: Absolutely no, I think that that's definitely true. We're going
Speaker 3: to take a quick break and be right back on
Speaker 3: the Carol Marcowitch Show. What do you see unheard, like
Speaker 3: what will be there the point of view of the site.
Speaker 5: Well, it's hard to say. The point of view is
Speaker 5: to test every point of view. I mean, I think
Speaker 5: that's the spirit of unheard, to be without fear and favor.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, they also in the UK took
Speaker 5: a very courageous stance during COVID. In fact, they were
Speaker 5: the publishers of the original Great Barrington Declaration, which was
Speaker 5: spearheaded by Jay Batarchaya and two of his colleagues. Jay
Speaker 5: now has been nominated by President Trump to at the
Speaker 5: National Institutes of Health, which is great news. So they
Speaker 5: were the original publishers of that got and they fought
Speaker 5: that battle very much so in a way like as
Speaker 5: a journalist, as you know, you're looking for like what's
Speaker 5: what's next, you know. I think one of the themes
Speaker 5: that will be constant for me certainly is opposition to
Speaker 5: law fair that is the use of law enforcement and
Speaker 5: security agencies to make to make politics political disagreements something
Speaker 5: for the FBI to deal with, which is what we saw,
Speaker 5: I would say. Unfortunately, beginning in twenty sixteen, with Trump's
Speaker 5: first election, it's like it's not that these people voted
Speaker 5: the wrong way, and I'll try to persuade them no,
Speaker 5: like it was a Russian conspiracy and we'd have to
Speaker 5: use like the CIA and the FBI to root out this.
Speaker 5: I hate that worldview. I think it's deeply un American.
Speaker 5: That's something I'll be watching out for. Is the establishment
Speaker 5: going to try that again? I just you know, that's something.
Speaker 5: It's a worthy fight. I think some of the others
Speaker 5: have kind of gone away or I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 5: you disagree, but I don't. I think the intensity of
Speaker 5: like wokeness has somewhat the left itself. I should say,
Speaker 5: maybe the center left is sort of realized it's yeah, well,
Speaker 5: stinker at the ballot box.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm very worried that we're prematurely declaring victory here because
Speaker 3: that center left is going to be forced directly back
Speaker 3: into line by their far left.
Speaker 2: The far left is very.
Speaker 3: Good at motivating the center left by kind of threatening
Speaker 3: them and calling them racist.
Speaker 2: Or sexist or whatever. That gets them right back into.
Speaker 3: Saying what they what they want said and doing what
Speaker 3: they want done.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I also the fact that these leftists have been on
Speaker 3: a march through our institution for the last institutions.
Speaker 2: For the last decades.
Speaker 3: I think that we're going to see a resurgence of this,
Speaker 3: and I hope that the right isn't like, oh, we're
Speaker 3: done with this, because I very much don't think that
Speaker 3: we are right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.
Speaker 5: It's worth it's worth you know, watching right And actually,
Speaker 5: and that's one of the things that I want to
Speaker 5: emphasize now and unheard, is less like takes you know,
Speaker 5: promoting this or that ism, liberalism, postliberalism, you know, conservatism,
Speaker 5: and more just like, here's what's happening in the world
Speaker 5: as our writers and thinkers, and I hope Carol you'll
Speaker 5: you'll become one of them as they see it, right,
Speaker 5: and just more like here we're going to help you
Speaker 5: see and understand the world rather than push someism to you.
Speaker 3: The fear that you have of law enforcement kind of
Speaker 3: directing public opinion or enforcing speech guidelines, do you feel
Speaker 3: like some of that.
Speaker 2: Comes from your time in the UK.
Speaker 3: We're very famously in a moment right now with the
Speaker 3: UK where talking, you know, criticizing child rapists is like
Speaker 3: maybe worse than actually being a child rapist.
Speaker 2: So does that at all influence you.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, honestly, things were not as bad when
Speaker 5: I was there, Right, You've had these cases where followed.
Speaker 2: Us, they followed us down this crazy path.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 5: And also there's a kind of lagging indicator, you know,
Speaker 5: like what happens in the United States ripples out to
Speaker 5: other kind of Western states at a slower pace, and
Speaker 5: so we might have moved on from some tendency, but
Speaker 5: it's only now peaking peaking elsewhere. I think that's a
Speaker 5: real issue. But you know, I mean, I've just seen
Speaker 5: some disturbing cases of like pro life activists who are
Speaker 5: prosecuted or at least investigated from merely praying silently outside
Speaker 5: a clinic. Whatever views you might have on abortion, people
Speaker 5: can have a range of views.
Speaker 4: That's terrifying, right, it's.
Speaker 5: And it's it's disturbing because there was always this guarantee
Speaker 5: that although the UK doesn't have a written constitution, traditions
Speaker 5: are so strong and those traditions informed are written constitution.
Speaker 5: But if you have a society or you know a
Speaker 5: set of ideologues who are willing to dispense with all
Speaker 5: of that, and then you don't have a written.
Speaker 4: Constitution, it's a little bit. It's a little scary. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's true, more than a little scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I hope we don't follow them at this point because
Speaker 3: I could see us sort of leading into this words
Speaker 3: you violence and taking that tech in America as well,
Speaker 3: especially with Trump as president. I think the left has
Speaker 3: very few kind of bullets metaphorically in their gun, and
Speaker 3: that's one of them. So yeah, what advice would you
Speaker 3: get of a sixteen year old sort in his denim
Speaker 3: overalls in Utah?
Speaker 5: Yes, well, luckily by sixteen I had dispensed with the denim,
Speaker 5: But there's so much you know, I Number one would
Speaker 5: be it is gonna sound terrible, But number one would be, uh,
Speaker 5: and don't don't immediately sort of draw sharp lines of
Speaker 5: friendship and enmity until you've gotten to know people or ideas. Right,
Speaker 5: I think, as I think as a tendency of young people,
Speaker 5: but especially maybe me, like a kind of precocious kid
Speaker 5: who likes ideas, is to very immediately, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of draw lines of I am on this side, you
Speaker 5: are on that side. And the older I get, the
Speaker 5: more kind of I see complexity everywhere, and I see,
Speaker 5: you know, save for the really really evil and awful,
Speaker 5: which is real, and how people are like that out there.
Speaker 5: I you know, I'm like, well, I can see how
Speaker 5: a person of goodwill could come to this opposite conclusion
Speaker 5: from mine.
Speaker 4: I could, you know.
Speaker 5: And when I was younger, not just sixteen, but like
Speaker 5: through my twenties as a journalist, I you know, I
Speaker 5: was so sort of on fire and I'm like, I
Speaker 5: know what's right, boom confrontation. And I just get older,
Speaker 5: I'm like, I don't know, there are still very important
Speaker 5: fights to pick, you know. But in terms of like
Speaker 5: my social placement into like in a professional world, in
Speaker 5: a social setting, I've become like a lot more forgiving
Speaker 5: or willing to take second looks at my own opinions.
Speaker 5: There have been cases where I've you know, written like
Speaker 5: a brutal takedown of some journalists. Uh, you know, like
Speaker 5: Richard Haas. I don't know, he's like helsel for our relations,
Speaker 5: but he wrote a book that I just savaged.
Speaker 4: And then like ten years later, I was like, you know,
Speaker 4: he kind of had a point and I and I
Speaker 4: like emailed him.
Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, the funny thing was, however,
Speaker 5: and this is the cynical note to end this. Otherwise
Speaker 5: uplifting a kind of note on is that, but that
Speaker 5: by then he himself had abandoned the view that I
Speaker 5: criticized ten years ago, so that he was sort of
Speaker 5: Richard House was.
Speaker 4: Like, well, thank you, but you see, I'm not quite amazing.
Speaker 3: That's also the way it should go, right, You should
Speaker 3: be able.
Speaker 2: To change your mind.
Speaker 3: Do you have that same grace extended to you because
Speaker 3: you are sort of not quite as with your sharp
Speaker 3: lines anymore. I think you do have a lot of
Speaker 3: range now, and I see you kind of exploring those
Speaker 3: gray areas more than you were saying I don't know
Speaker 3: ten years.
Speaker 4: Ago, do you five years ago?
Speaker 2: Are people kind to you about that?
Speaker 5: For the most part, yes, And it's partly because like
Speaker 5: as an editor, I might reach out to someone who
Speaker 5: knows that I'm not where they are, but I want
Speaker 5: them to write for me and unheard or whatever, and
Speaker 5: and you know that that professional outreach helps, and people
Speaker 5: come around. I think like only the most sort of
Speaker 5: uncharitable people on the on the on the left and
Speaker 5: some on the right who are like you know, basically
Speaker 5: have a caricature of me as I do of some people,
Speaker 5: I'm sure, and they like refuse to let it go
Speaker 5: in the face of evidence, and it's like, well, that's
Speaker 5: what the block function is for.
Speaker 2: They've taken away our block function. I love that block function.
Speaker 5: I know that was one of the one of the
Speaker 5: few things, one of the many things I should say
Speaker 5: I don't I don't like about the new regime, even
Speaker 5: though I you know, I was literally censored under the
Speaker 5: old order.
Speaker 2: Well, you still may be in this new one. We'll
Speaker 2: see what happened.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I've loved this conversation.
Speaker 3: You're one of my absolute favorite people, and I think
Speaker 3: this is a really great project you've got going. I
Speaker 3: can't wait to read Unheard under your you know, leadership
Speaker 3: in the US, and I'll definitely be writing for you.
Speaker 3: So leave us here with your best tip for my
Speaker 3: listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4: Oh, for me, it's just waking up super early.
Speaker 5: You know, Catholic, you're supposed to believe in like this
Speaker 5: rhythm of leisure and stuff. It's the Protestants, as you
Speaker 5: know it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: You know, I know the Catholics had the rhythm.
Speaker 5: Long ago, you know, that kind of sense of Sabbath
Speaker 5: and feasting and so on. Whereas you know a certain
Speaker 5: kind of Calvinists reform puanity.
Speaker 4: Is like just toil.
Speaker 5: But in my own life, I'm very much that kind
Speaker 5: of a toiler. Like I love being up at what
Speaker 5: I'm like three four in the morning doing work and
Speaker 5: you feel like you're gaining.
Speaker 4: Time on everyone else. Yeah.
Speaker 5: But honestly though, I mean, okay, that sounds just purely
Speaker 5: kind of materialistic or ambition oriented.
Speaker 4: But also those.
Speaker 5: Those early those early hours have a kind of mystery
Speaker 5: and magic of out them that I just hate to
Speaker 5: sleep through them.
Speaker 3: I like that I'm not going to be following this advice,
Speaker 3: but I enjoy it.
Speaker 5: My wife always gets mad when I say this this
Speaker 5: because people think that that means that I'm like only
Speaker 5: sleeping like four hours a night. It's just I go
Speaker 5: to bed with my kids, so I'm like out by nine.
Speaker 3: Up arguing at eleven pm, what are you doing with
Speaker 3: your life? Well, thank you so much, Sah. Check out
Speaker 3: on her dot com it's U n h E r D.
Speaker 2: He is Sora ba MARII.
Speaker 3: He's fantastic and I can't wait to read what Unheard
Speaker 3: has to say.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Mark
Speaker 1: which shall subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,