Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Last episode, I talked about how everything seems to get
Speaker 1: crazier as we head toward an election season and more contentious.
Speaker 2: Obviously.
Speaker 1: You know, a friend once said to me that she
Speaker 1: wished Thanksgiving was at right around election. Things would get
Speaker 1: tents in her house, things might get tents in yours.
Speaker 1: Last time I focused on social media, and I would
Speaker 1: say again that social media is a trap for this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. My top suggestion is to keep your
Speaker 1: politics off Facebook. Not one mind has ever been changed
Speaker 1: on there. All the arguments accomplished is divide old friends.
Speaker 1: And look, Facebook's just not made for arguments. It's made
Speaker 1: for seeing pictures of your coworker, you know, three jobs ago,
Speaker 1: their newborn baby. Use it for that, because you inevitably
Speaker 1: end up getting into a fight with the coworker of
Speaker 1: your best friend from middle school. What's the point? But what
Speaker 1: about your real life? What about the aunt who needles you,
Speaker 1: or the cousin who loves bringing up January sixth at
Speaker 1: every dinner. What about the neighbor with the in this
Speaker 1: house sign. I'm not going to tell you that people
Speaker 1: like that don't annoy me too, of course they do.
Speaker 1: Try not to be one of those. This is a
Speaker 1: show about living better and not blowing up your family
Speaker 1: around election time is an example of that. One solution
Speaker 1: I enjoy is to approach arguments with humor. No one
Speaker 1: is open to learning anything be serious, so at least
Speaker 1: try to make it funny. The other thing is no
Speaker 1: personal attacks. If you can't have a spirited debate, argument,
Speaker 1: even yelling match without avoiding personal shots, politics is not
Speaker 1: the game for you. I even follow that on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I unfollow or block anybody who's rude to me. I
Speaker 1: don't accept any of that, and I don't name call,
Speaker 1: and that's very hard for me to do. But I
Speaker 1: find that blocking people who I want to day Paul
Speaker 1: really helps. Finally, I have a friend started ending his disagreements,
Speaker 1: not just about politics, but all arguments with maybe you're right.
Speaker 1: He said he felt better just walking away from someone
Speaker 1: instead of continuing the argument, and maybe not Definitely you're
Speaker 1: right got the job done. This would actually drive me
Speaker 1: absolutely bananas if someone said it to me, so really
Speaker 1: it's a win win switching gears. I'm quickly coming up
Speaker 1: on the one year anniversary of this podcast. Which is
Speaker 1: crazy to me. Longtime listeners know. I ask all of
Speaker 1: my guests three questions. I ask number one, what is
Speaker 1: our largest cultural problem? Number two, whether they think they've
Speaker 1: made it? And number three for them to offer a
Speaker 1: tip for my listeners on how to improve their lives.
Speaker 1: At the one year mark, I'm planning to switch up
Speaker 1: some or maybe all of these. Send in your suggestions
Speaker 1: for questions. I love hearing from listeners. The email is
Speaker 1: Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. It's spelled k
Speaker 1: A r O l m A r KOWI c asn't
Speaker 1: Charlie ZS and Zebra show at gmail dot com. Coming
Speaker 1: up next an interview with Scott Bertram. Join us after
Speaker 1: the break.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My
Speaker 2: guest today is Scott Bertram. Scott is a lecturer in
Speaker 2: journalism and general manager of the student radio station at
Speaker 2: Hillsdale College. He's also the co host of both the
Speaker 2: Political Beats podcast and Wasn't That Special Fifty Years of
Speaker 2: Saturday Night Live. Hi Scott, so nice to.
Speaker 3: Have you on, Carol. It's great to be here. I'm
Speaker 3: honored to be invited.
Speaker 2: So I think back to the first time that we
Speaker 2: really like. We didn't meet because it was online, but
Speaker 2: I was on Political Beats talking about one of my
Speaker 2: favorite bands, Pulp, and you were so polite about how
Speaker 2: much you did not like them.
Speaker 3: I would not say that necessarily other why I remember it.
Speaker 3: There are levels of like and dislike, and we've done
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty episodes at this point in the program,
Speaker 3: so various bands and artists are like more than others.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't put Pulp in the top half, but I
Speaker 3: didn't dislike them. It was a fun show.
Speaker 2: So which band did you dislike the most on your
Speaker 2: Political Beats journey?
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, it's probably it's certainly one that Jeff,
Speaker 3: my co host, has brought to the table. I'm sure
Speaker 3: Jeff has a Jeff is a big post punk fan,
Speaker 3: and some of those bands don't quite hold up, hold
Speaker 3: up and coordinate with my tastes. Although you know what
Speaker 3: it might be, It might be Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 2: Really I love Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker 3: Was not a band that I could throw my arms
Speaker 3: around and embrace, and that's probably the band I had
Speaker 3: the most difficult time listening to the entire discography. Yeah,
Speaker 3: trying to have takes on Nine Inch Nails. Thankfully for
Speaker 3: that episode. Jane Cousten was our guest for the episode,
Speaker 3: and Jane and Jeff loved nine Inch Nails so much.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to talk hardly at all. That might
Speaker 3: be the episode in which I talked Belieft any of
Speaker 3: our episodes, so it worked out. Okay.
Speaker 2: Still, i'd say nine Inch Nails. I don't know. If
Speaker 2: I listened to it right now for the first time,
Speaker 2: I don't know that i'd be like, Oh, Trent Reznor,
Speaker 2: he's amazing. But you know, when you're seventeen years old
Speaker 2: or twenty years old or something and like driving around
Speaker 2: and playing head like a hole, it's great, so good.
Speaker 2: So and then we met for real for the first
Speaker 2: time when I did a fellowship at Hillsdale last week,
Speaker 2: and I loved meeting you, and I really loved my
Speaker 2: time there. How long have you been in Hillsdale.
Speaker 3: I've been here eight and a half years of the
Speaker 3: nine years in January.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I just thought it was such an amazing place.
Speaker 2: I was impressed by it on every level. I mean,
Speaker 2: the students are amazing. I've raved about it on the
Speaker 2: show before, so this is none of this is new
Speaker 2: But how did you end up there?
Speaker 3: I ended up here by happenstance. I was not looking
Speaker 3: for a job change or a new job at all.
Speaker 3: I was working as a morning host at a program
Speaker 3: director at a radio station in Rockford, Illinois. Had worked
Speaker 3: previously in Chicago, and I was not looking for a job.
Speaker 3: But I was a reader of National Review and National
Speaker 3: Review Online. And John J. Miller, who's now my boss,
Speaker 3: oh great at Hillsdale, and I was also on the
Speaker 3: masthead at National Review, posted this job opening at Hillsdale
Speaker 3: and it was for the very first general manager of
Speaker 3: the student radio station here, which they were just starting up,
Speaker 3: and also to teach in the journalism department. And I
Speaker 3: looked at it and I thought, if I were to
Speaker 3: change jobs, that would be one that would really interest me.
Speaker 3: And the more I looked into it, it was just
Speaker 3: it was a perfect fit. And I hesitate to tell
Speaker 3: the story, but I will anyway do it. I went
Speaker 3: home to my wife and we had a At that
Speaker 3: point my son was to My daughter was not even
Speaker 3: one yet when this conversation, and we lived pretty close
Speaker 3: to my parents in Chicago, and her family was in
Speaker 3: the Rockford area. And I went home and I said,
Speaker 3: look at this job, and I have to ask you,
Speaker 3: would you be willing to move to Michigan for this
Speaker 3: job if it meant that you could stay home? At
Speaker 3: that point we were both working for a time. It
Speaker 3: means you can stay home and be farther from your family.
Speaker 3: But this is a real question. This is not some
Speaker 3: sort of hypothetical because if I apply for this job,
Speaker 3: I'm going to get this job. I'm going to get
Speaker 3: paid for you. Yeah, it's made. So she read the
Speaker 3: description and I said, what do you think She said,
Speaker 3: they would have saved a lot of ink by just
Speaker 3: writing their you know, job for Scott Bertram, because it
Speaker 3: was it was perfectly aligned with what I wanted to
Speaker 3: do and where my skill set is. And and I
Speaker 3: did get it, which is, you know, the happy end
Speaker 3: of the story. But it was I was not planning
Speaker 3: to move, It was not planning to change jobs. It
Speaker 3: worked out for the best, clearly.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was clearly meant for you. So how
Speaker 2: was it moving from a city to I mean, do
Speaker 2: you consider Hillsdale like a rural area?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, Like for me, it's I felt like it was
Speaker 2: pretty rural, but I wasn't. Yeah, So what was.
Speaker 3: That move like, Yeah, Hillsdale's a ton of about eight
Speaker 3: thousand during the school year, a little bit fewer when
Speaker 3: the students are gone. My wife is from a tiny
Speaker 3: town near Rockford, population fifteen hun stock that in town,
Speaker 3: those sorts of things, and so in the discussions when
Speaker 3: we were talking about me coming here, they were warning me, now,
Speaker 3: you've got to understand how small Hillsdale is, how far
Speaker 3: away you are from certain things. And I said, look,
Speaker 3: this is a feature. It's not a bug for my wife.
Speaker 3: This is going to be great. And I grew up
Speaker 3: out just outside Chicago and the suburbs, worked in Chicago,
Speaker 3: and you know, Rockford's a town of one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand metro areas bigger. The older I get, the
Speaker 3: less I really want to be in the in cities
Speaker 3: and where the action is necessarily. So I did not
Speaker 3: have any problems at all. My wife loves it here,
Speaker 3: loves the small community, and it's been wonderful for both
Speaker 3: us and for the kids.
Speaker 2: It's so great. How old are your kids.
Speaker 3: Now, eleven and nine?
Speaker 2: Amazing? Will they be going to Hillsdale?
Speaker 3: We'll see, I think they both right now. I mean
Speaker 3: they're eleven and nine, so they might be lying at
Speaker 3: this point, but right now they have indicated they would
Speaker 3: love to attend Hillsdale College, so we'll see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's I think that's where it has
Speaker 2: to go obviously. So do you think do you feel
Speaker 2: like you've made it? I mean, you have a job
Speaker 2: that was literally designed for you, right.
Speaker 3: It would be obscene for me to say no, right,
Speaker 3: this job designed for me that I ended up getting.
Speaker 2: I've had multi multi millionaires in the show be like, no,
Speaker 2: I haven't made it, you know, I've had like just
Speaker 2: a range of answers. So there's no right answer if
Speaker 2: you feel like you've made it, or if you still
Speaker 2: have some way to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the fear is right if you say, yes,
Speaker 3: you've made it, that there's nothing left to do or
Speaker 3: nothing left to accomplish, or you've hit your ceiling. But
Speaker 3: I don't feel that way, and I would answer that question. Yes,
Speaker 3: I think I'm in a position where, you know, if
Speaker 3: you would have told I always knew I wanted to
Speaker 3: do radio and audio and podcasting now from the youngest age,
Speaker 3: So to say that I've never worked a day outside
Speaker 3: of the radio industry. In some way shape for incredible
Speaker 3: and to be here at Hillsdale with tremendous colleagues, a
Speaker 3: fantastic place to work. Obviously, I'm able to work with
Speaker 3: our amazing students and help them to improve, to get better,
Speaker 3: watch them succeed when they leave the college. And at
Speaker 3: the same time I get to do great things like
Speaker 3: I'm also the director of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network,
Speaker 3: so in terms of the college's audio efforts, I'm very
Speaker 3: involved there. I host a couple of podcasts for the college,
Speaker 3: the freelance stuff you mentioned. Otherwise, I do fill in
Speaker 3: work for a statewide show here in Michigan, so I
Speaker 3: still get to sort of scratch that itch of being
Speaker 3: a post which I love. And the main reason I
Speaker 3: say yes is quite literally, once or twice a week.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I pinched myself. That'd be a lot,
Speaker 3: but I have to shake my head and say, how
Speaker 3: did this happen? Where I am so happy with my
Speaker 3: personal life, my family, my wife, my kids, and I
Speaker 3: have this job that suits me so perfectly, it really
Speaker 3: fits like a glove. And how did I get so
Speaker 3: lucky to have all those things happen? So, I mean, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: The best feeling when you're like, you know, just so
Speaker 2: satisfied with what you have. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: know what a better definition of making it would be
Speaker 2: that I think that's that's it. So what would be
Speaker 2: the future or what would be? Actually I have a
Speaker 2: better question, what would be a plan be? You say
Speaker 2: you've worked in radio from like day one? What if
Speaker 2: you weren't doing this? What would be a different Scott
Speaker 2: Bertram Path?
Speaker 3: Yeah, people have asked this, and I don't know. I
Speaker 3: spent most of my youth preparing for a job in radio,
Speaker 3: you know, reading.
Speaker 2: And perfect voice, perfect thank you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I was. I was a double major
Speaker 3: in college. I was broadcast communication and political science and
Speaker 3: so on. Of the obvious answer to that is something
Speaker 3: in politics. Would it be actually running for office, which
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm really well suited for, but something
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, running a campaign, being a consultant. I
Speaker 3: could potentially see myself doing that in a different life,
Speaker 3: but it would not be anywhere near as fulfilling. I
Speaker 3: would not be anywhere near as happy. And people have
Speaker 3: asked that, like, what what would be you know, you've
Speaker 3: always wanted to do it and you do you're doing
Speaker 3: what you wanted to do, So what would have been
Speaker 3: the backup planet? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm
Speaker 3: glad I never had to use it.
Speaker 2: That's that's it. Yeah, I'm just be happy that you
Speaker 2: you never had to execute Plan B.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you like politics?
Speaker 3: I do. It's interesting. I will say this. You know
Speaker 3: you were here on campus at Hillsdale, and there's very
Speaker 3: much an expectation from the outside world. I think that
Speaker 3: the college itself is completely immersed in this world of politics,
Speaker 3: and that's all the discussions that take place on campus
Speaker 3: among faculty or among students, and I hope you would
Speaker 3: agree haven't been here, that that's not really the case.
Speaker 3: Students are very much involved in their effort to gain knowledge.
Speaker 3: Our professors are very dedicated to teaching them those things
Speaker 3: that they want to know, those things they need to know.
Speaker 3: We have the common core that the classes that everyone takes,
Speaker 3: and the atmosphere on campus is such that students are
Speaker 3: talking to each other. They're likely talking about the book
Speaker 3: that they know that everyone else has read on campus.
Speaker 3: They're great books course, so their Western Civilization course that
Speaker 3: everyone has to take. That's where so many conversations take place,
Speaker 3: and oddly, in a way, I think I'm less political
Speaker 3: since arriving at campus. You know, when I was working
Speaker 3: every day in a talk show, a political based talk show,
Speaker 3: you're really really in change. You're in it every day
Speaker 3: and you're talking to people about it every day. And
Speaker 3: there are so many more conversations that take place here
Speaker 3: on campus about life and you know, a student's future
Speaker 3: or what they're going to, where they're going to intern,
Speaker 3: or what their likes and dislikes are. Outside of campus.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things to do, which actually helps
Speaker 3: me remember students' names, is where they're from. I try
Speaker 3: to connect their name to where they're from and then
Speaker 3: have those conversations about what you know, what's cool in
Speaker 3: their city and what to do when you're there, and
Speaker 3: why would someone want to visit this part of the country,
Speaker 3: or you know, you actually have a student right now
Speaker 3: who's from Hawaii, so like, wow, that's a long trip
Speaker 3: from Hawaii to miss change of weather a little bit
Speaker 3: a little bit, especially in our Michigan winters. So I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm still very aware. I'm still very clued in. As
Speaker 3: I said, I fill in for shows, so you need
Speaker 3: to be abreast of the information and I still like it,
Speaker 3: but it's a different way I think than perhaps nine
Speaker 3: years ago before I got here.
Speaker 2: Right, it's a different when you're not immersed in it.
Speaker 2: It's it's completely different. I mean, I'm married to somebody
Speaker 2: who's not in the political universe, and you know, a
Speaker 2: week after it hits Twitter, he like, find out some information,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'd like to be you. Actually, I
Speaker 2: think that that's not bad.
Speaker 3: I use my wife in that manner and I say
Speaker 3: it to her so it's not a surprise to her,
Speaker 3: but she is not as dedicated or clued in to
Speaker 3: the to the daily news cycle, and so the best
Speaker 3: way to be Yeah, And so I try to bounce
Speaker 3: thing Golfer sometimes like have you heard about this? Or
Speaker 3: is this a big deal? Or is this popping up
Speaker 3: on your Facebook feed? How much do you know about this?
Speaker 3: And it's a good way to sort of take the
Speaker 3: temperature of the no offense that the normies out.
Speaker 2: Normy's exactly the norm every day. Yeah, you know. Also
Speaker 2: about Hillsdale, I think a lot of colleges train kids
Speaker 2: to be activists and Hillsdale does not do that. It's
Speaker 2: and I think people are surprised to find that out.
Speaker 2: I think that they think that, oh, Hillsdale is, you know,
Speaker 2: breeding the conservative activist generation, and I think that they
Speaker 2: really are just educating these kids and letting them bind
Speaker 2: their own path. Again. I was wildly impressed. I talked,
Speaker 2: I've talked about this a lot on the show, just
Speaker 2: how mature the kids are, and how well spoken and
Speaker 2: polite and respectful. And I was on campus during the
Speaker 2: real insanity with the you know, pro Talestinian protests on
Speaker 2: other campuses, and how I felt so safe as a
Speaker 2: Jew at you know, this Christian college, and it was
Speaker 2: just it was a great experience all around.
Speaker 3: I think, I think one of the greatest attributes that
Speaker 3: many of our students have. I don't want to paint
Speaker 3: with a overly broad brush, but you know, you say
Speaker 3: the word activist, and certainly it's not what we do
Speaker 3: in our journalism apartment, and it's not what the college
Speaker 3: does on the whole. I love that our students are
Speaker 3: so curious. They truly are curious. They ask outstanding questions,
Speaker 3: they want to know about things they don't know. They
Speaker 3: want to have the full Hillsdale experience, right, That's why
Speaker 3: they're here. They want to know why things are. They
Speaker 3: want to know, you know, they ask amazing questions of
Speaker 3: guests who are on campus, of professors who are teaching them,
Speaker 3: and I think that's probably my favorite quality of Again,
Speaker 3: I would say a majority, a vast majority of our
Speaker 3: students is that they are genuinely curious about the intellectual
Speaker 3: experience and about the world around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we'll be right back with Scott Bertram, But first
Speaker 4: I wanted to tell you a little bit about Saber.
Speaker 4: In these uncertain times, rise in crime in America's neighborhoods
Speaker 4: endanger the safety of loved ones. Nearly fifty years ago,
Speaker 4: with just two hundred and twenty eight dollars their entire savings,
Speaker 4: Saber's founders set out to make the world safer. Today,
Speaker 4: Saber is the number one made in the USA pepper
Speaker 4: spray brand, trusted by law enforcement and family across America.
Speaker 4: As a family owned business, they understand the importance of
Speaker 4: protecting your loved ones, introducing the Saber Pepper projectile launcher,
Speaker 4: a less lethal, fast loading, no recoil solution delivering powerful
Speaker 4: stopping power up to one hundred and seventy five feet.
Speaker 4: The real advantage even if you miss it creates a
Speaker 4: six foot pepper cloud, causing intense sensory irritation which can
Speaker 4: overwhelm anyone in its path, giving you and your family
Speaker 4: the opportunity to protect yourselves and your home. But Saber
Speaker 4: doesn't stop there. In addition to their pepper spray and
Speaker 4: pepper gel, Saber offers stun guns for personal protection and
Speaker 4: bare and mountain lion spray for outdoor adventures. They also
Speaker 4: provide essential home security items like door security bars and
Speaker 4: door and window alarms for securing your entryways. I really
Speaker 4: wish I had that when I lived in New York.
Speaker 4: Protect yourself and your family with Saber's full range of
Speaker 4: defense sprays, home security tools, and exclusive launcher bundles. Visit
Speaker 4: SA b R radio dot com or call eight for
Speaker 4: four eight two four safe today. That's eight four four
Speaker 4: eight two four safe.
Speaker 2: Do you have any cultural concerns? Like you're around students
Speaker 2: all the time. Is there some part of our culture
Speaker 2: that you're more concerned than others? What's our biggest cultural problem?
Speaker 3: I've talked about this with others for at least a
Speaker 3: couple of years, and I'm trying to address it in
Speaker 3: my own way. We have these wonderful program called the
Speaker 3: Collegiate Scholars Program here on campus, and it attempts to
Speaker 3: take the different parts of the college and sort of
Speaker 3: put them together in these unique classes. They're one credit classes,
Speaker 3: so they're not three credit classes. They're meant to be
Speaker 3: small in their own way, but to teach things specifically
Speaker 3: and something I noticed, so I'll do the big thing first.
Speaker 3: My concern is it's a culture that we we don't
Speaker 3: do things together anymore. Outside of the super Bowl. That's
Speaker 3: the one overarching thing that hits everybody. But you look
Speaker 3: at the way that the media landscape is fractured, and
Speaker 3: it's across the board. We don't watch the same TV shows.
Speaker 3: The Cosby Show attracting forty fifty million packs doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: even Seinfeld thirty thirty five million people. Absolutely not. The
Speaker 3: first thing that someone asks if you talk to them
Speaker 3: about a TV show is you know, where's that streaming?
Speaker 3: Where can I find it? Everyone's confused about where even
Speaker 3: find shows.
Speaker 2: We don't have the same TVs anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, Everyone's got their own you know, sometimes it's a
Speaker 3: it's a phone and sometimes it's a monitor. You know, movies, Blockbusters,
Speaker 3: if you're not on the superhero train. You're missing out.
Speaker 3: I'm not so. I can count on one hand number
Speaker 3: of movies I've seen in the theaters in the past
Speaker 3: five years, maybe even ten years. Uh, we're not reading
Speaker 3: the same newspapers. If we're reading newspapers at all, we're
Speaker 3: listening to the same music that is being you know,
Speaker 3: you're siloed in your Spotify everyone. It's fracturing us into
Speaker 3: smaller and smaller pieces and smaller and smaller pods, and
Speaker 3: we don't have that connective tissue as a society. And
Speaker 3: a secondary effect of this, which goes back to something
Speaker 3: we just talked about, is when we meet someone and
Speaker 3: want to talk about something, now we have to sort
Speaker 3: of rely on the one thing that touches everyone and
Speaker 3: infiltrates every area of our life, which is of course
Speaker 3: politics and specifically national politics. And that I think is
Speaker 3: I think it's toxic that that is the only thing
Speaker 3: that we can interesting round about, that we have interested
Speaker 3: and can communicate about. We should be I mean, people
Speaker 3: should be interested in politics and who wins and lose
Speaker 3: this election. It has a big affection all of our lives.
Speaker 3: But to have a myopic focus to the detriment of
Speaker 3: having to talk to other people about almost anything, I
Speaker 3: think is a danger. We have to be able to
Speaker 3: work with people, talk with people, have a new co worker,
Speaker 3: how do you connect with them? What do you have
Speaker 3: in common? And I actually think that when we have
Speaker 3: to have the tougher conversations about things that really matter,
Speaker 3: that if we have this baseline of all right, well,
Speaker 3: just going back here, we both like family ties, or
Speaker 3: we both read the Chicago Tribune each morning, and we
Speaker 3: like this commonness, we both like pulp or whatever it
Speaker 3: might be, that you build a base of trust that
Speaker 3: we can have more difficult conversations if we know we're
Speaker 3: alike in these their ways. That fracturing of the media
Speaker 3: really concerns me that we just we just don't experience
Speaker 3: things together. And you know, going back to TV and
Speaker 3: experiencing things together, well, we're not watching it at the
Speaker 3: same time, even if we watch the same show, because
Speaker 3: you're you're binging on a Sunday and I'm watching it
Speaker 3: week by week, and it's difficult to find a way
Speaker 3: forward or find a way through this because we're not
Speaker 3: going back. We want that flexibility to watch when we
Speaker 3: want to watch. We like that the algorithm can tell
Speaker 3: us about new music that we might not have experienced before,
Speaker 3: and maybe a radio stage is not determining which are
Speaker 3: the most important songs we should hear the hits we
Speaker 3: should hear. We like that our we can find information
Speaker 3: from dozens of different sources and not just rely on
Speaker 3: something that plops on our driveway at five am every morning.
Speaker 3: People love that. I love it too, So we can't
Speaker 3: slide back to a three network sort of lifestyle. But
Speaker 3: I do think and I don't know what the right
Speaker 3: answer is. I don't have one. If I did, be fantastic,
Speaker 3: but I don't know how we sort of find those
Speaker 3: things again. We get experience together and have these common
Speaker 3: common touch points between each other, and I think that
Speaker 3: really does concern me.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of it described that way, but you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right that because we don't have other things in common,
Speaker 2: politics has become so much more important. That's it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've for years thought that are just conversations have become
Speaker 2: so much more politicized political, and that's it. That's why
Speaker 2: we have nothing else to talk about. That that's what
Speaker 2: we share in common. And I wish it were some
Speaker 2: other things. I mean, I don't know how to get
Speaker 2: I too have no answers to this, but I like
Speaker 2: that you've identified the problem because that's you know, that's
Speaker 2: definitely step one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and going back to my original I try to
Speaker 3: do this. There's also a problem with both vertical and
Speaker 3: horizontal meaning generations also don't have the same understandings my students.
Speaker 3: I don't blame them, but if you've tried to go
Speaker 3: back more than five years in history, they just don't
Speaker 3: They don't know that. They don't know about things. They
Speaker 3: don't have the experience when you and I were growing up,
Speaker 3: you know, the radio stations. Your parents got to control
Speaker 3: the radio stations every now and then, so you were
Speaker 3: exposed to songs from twenty years ago and thirty years ago,
Speaker 3: and there were only four channels or maybe twenty or
Speaker 3: forty channels on cable, and the same movies got rerun
Speaker 3: over and over again. And so you should have had
Speaker 3: this knowledge and education recent history. And that helps a
Speaker 3: twenty year old be able to talk to a forty
Speaker 3: year old. When I started, yeah, when I started in
Speaker 3: radio in Chicago, I worked for three guys in there
Speaker 3: at that point, they were probably mid to late thirties
Speaker 3: and I was a twenty two year old just out
Speaker 3: of college. That's a full generational difference. But I knew
Speaker 3: the music they liked. I knew the movies that they
Speaker 3: had seen dozens of times, and I could connect with
Speaker 3: them in that way. And so what I do in
Speaker 3: the Core Scholars program is try to at least do
Speaker 3: a little bit of that. I've taught a class on
Speaker 3: the twilight Zone in Cold War America. I've taught a
Speaker 3: class on politics political humor of Saturday Night Live. I've
Speaker 3: taught a course on I called it music of Patriotism
Speaker 3: and protests from nineteen sixty to President Yeah, trying to
Speaker 3: at least with the students who are willing to take
Speaker 3: those classes, to give them a little bit of that
Speaker 3: recent history that is evading them because you know, those
Speaker 3: pipelines of media content don't quite reach them in the
Speaker 3: way that they reached me or they reached you.
Speaker 2: Right, It's such a funny thing that they have this
Speaker 2: hurdle and they look, you know, no matter how much
Speaker 2: things change, you still want to connect with your boss.
Speaker 2: For example, fine common ground and your boss wants to
Speaker 2: connect with you. But it's really saying that how much
Speaker 2: harder that is for this generation now, and I don't
Speaker 2: know whether they realize that something has been lost in
Speaker 2: all of this, but this has been awesome. I really
Speaker 2: like these ideas. I think that's going to keep me
Speaker 2: thinking for a while. So Scott, and here with your
Speaker 2: best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their.
Speaker 3: Lives, My best tip for listeners and how to improve
Speaker 3: your life. I'm asked often because I do so much
Speaker 3: here at the college, and I also have, of course
Speaker 3: family at home, freelance stuff. How do you do all
Speaker 3: that stuff? How do you find the time? And the
Speaker 3: best way that I explain this to people is you
Speaker 3: have to be intentional with your life. You have to
Speaker 3: be intentional with your time. I am really hyper specific
Speaker 3: about when I do things and the amount of time
Speaker 3: I allow to do something. And then I've got to
Speaker 3: do this, but I know what all the deadlines are,
Speaker 3: and so I know I have more time to finish
Speaker 3: this and less time to finish that. And this goes
Speaker 3: for not just work, but also I mean slot in
Speaker 3: time to relax. I still do. I still read the
Speaker 3: Sunday Paper physical Sunday Paper, Wow, every Sunday, and I
Speaker 3: carve out time intentionally to do it because I love it.
Speaker 3: I've done it for decades. It helps me relax. I
Speaker 3: read the physical So being intentional with your plans, being
Speaker 3: intentional with your goals, being intentional with your time, I
Speaker 3: think is extremely important. And connected to that very quickly
Speaker 3: is write stuff down. It was a great piece of advice.
Speaker 3: It sounds so obvious that someone had to take me
Speaker 3: aside and tell me when I was just starting in
Speaker 3: radio actually producing, like you're gonna forget this stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I take notes on everything. Yes, I have
Speaker 2: the memory has I think Douglas Copeland wrote about this
Speaker 2: in one of his books, but he said memory is
Speaker 2: water into an overflowing cup a certain age. That's what
Speaker 2: I feel like. I know all the words to like
Speaker 2: the songs that I liked when I was like ten
Speaker 2: years old, but sure not any of the names of
Speaker 2: the moms I met yesterday.
Speaker 3: And there's something there really is something to the physical
Speaker 3: process of writing it. And I know you could put
Speaker 3: it on your phone and type it in, but they're
Speaker 3: writing it and then they're scratching it off when you
Speaker 3: complete it. There's something that is both satisfying and I
Speaker 3: think helps you toward that goal when you actually have
Speaker 3: it written down in front of you, so be intentional
Speaker 3: write stump down the two things.
Speaker 2: Love it. Thank you so much, Scott. He's Scott Bertram.
Speaker 2: Check out his Political Beats podcast and wasn't that special?
Speaker 2: Fifty years of Saturday Night Live. Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: coming on my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Carol, Thanks so much for joining us on
Speaker 1: the Carol Marco Which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.