Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Last week I talked about men putting off parenthood and
Speaker 1: delaying having real relationships, but of course it's not just
Speaker 1: men who do this. In twenty twenty two, the average
Speaker 1: age for an American woman having her first child hit
Speaker 1: thirty for the first time. In the never ending mommy
Speaker 1: wars of our time, one of the ongoing battles is
Speaker 1: the ideal age of motherhood. The shots are usually lobbed
Speaker 1: at older moms. They put off having babies because they
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on their careers. Goes this assumption, and
Speaker 1: now they're quote granny moms who lack the energy to
Speaker 1: deal with children. I recently reread a Molly Finn piece
Speaker 1: in The Wall Street Journal from a few years ago
Speaker 1: that fired in the other direction. She argued that being
Speaker 1: an older mother is better than being a younger mother,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that she is indeed sometimes mistaken for
Speaker 1: the child's grand tongue in cheek. Thinn called older or
Speaker 1: geriatric mothers Jerry's and says they're better than younger mothers
Speaker 1: because they're tanned, rested, and ready for motherhood in a
Speaker 1: way younger mothers just aren't, she writes. Quote what about
Speaker 1: the stamina needed to keep up with a child, you ask,
Speaker 1: But we Jerries have the advantage of not being regularly
Speaker 1: hungover from youthful self indulgence. We have only three apps
Speaker 1: on our iPhones, and we waited a long time for children.
Speaker 1: We're energized, focused, and almost always happy to see our kids. Also,
Speaker 1: we have watched younger folks make mistakes and learn how
Speaker 1: to conserve energy.
Speaker 2: End quote.
Speaker 1: I have no quarrel with people who have kids later
Speaker 1: in life. I myself am what used to be considered
Speaker 1: an older mother, though, of course, as the average age
Speaker 1: of motherhood moves ever upward, my ages of thirty two,
Speaker 1: thirty five, and thirty eight at the time of the
Speaker 1: births of my children don't seem quite so ancient. But
Speaker 1: if there was a way to redo everything, my idea
Speaker 1: would have been to have children much earlier. My husband
Speaker 1: and I knew each other for a decade before we
Speaker 1: started dating, and that's like a lot of lost and
Speaker 1: wasted time. I used to say he was the Jerry
Speaker 1: to my Elaine, really minus the romantic beginning. Because Jerry
Speaker 1: and Elaine dated first, we were just friends. You know,
Speaker 1: together all the time, platonically for a long long time.
Speaker 1: In my rewrite of this history, we would have gotten
Speaker 1: together in our twenties and our kids would be heading
Speaker 1: to college right now. Older parenthood is hard, even as
Speaker 1: Finn notes, you know fewer hangovers. Maybe older parenthood takes
Speaker 1: its toll in so many ways. It's harder to lose
Speaker 1: the baby weight. You don't look a little tired when
Speaker 1: you don't get enough sleep, you look like the crypt keeper.
Speaker 1: It's harder to chase around babies you know, who are
Speaker 1: intent on plunging headfirst into everything. And you know the
Speaker 1: lament from a young person putting off parenthood who says,
Speaker 1: I just want to live my life first, explore the world,
Speaker 1: do things. The shocking truth that's unknown to twenty somethings,
Speaker 1: including myself at that age, is that there really is
Speaker 1: no time when you don't want to live your life.
Speaker 1: I'm in my forties and I still want to do
Speaker 1: all those things that people consider living their lives. I
Speaker 1: want to go out to dinner, meet new people, travel.
Speaker 1: My husband and I have been incredibly lucky that our
Speaker 1: children have involved grandparents. We have an amazing situation that
Speaker 1: we get to do all of that. But the older
Speaker 1: you are when you have kids, the older your parents are,
Speaker 1: and the less ability they will have to help. There's
Speaker 1: this idea that there comes a point in your life
Speaker 1: when everything can pause for a bit, as you take
Speaker 1: time off to have a baby, secure in your finances
Speaker 1: and the knowledge that your career will pick right up
Speaker 1: where left off. And it doesn't really work like that
Speaker 1: for women or for men. At the start of your career,
Speaker 1: you're new and mostly expendable. As you climb your career ladder,
Speaker 1: you take on more responsibilities, making it harder all the
Speaker 1: time to step away. And that's the thing about having kids.
Speaker 1: There's no right or wrong time to have them. Are
Speaker 1: you ready for a baby? No, No one actually is.
Speaker 1: And the truth is you're still allowed to do, you know,
Speaker 1: the things that we call bucket list, but now we
Speaker 1: refer to bucket list even not kicking the bucket, but
Speaker 1: having a baby. You're still allowed to go bungee jumping,
Speaker 1: or procrastinate on writing that novel you swear you're going
Speaker 1: to write after the babies arrive. There's no rule that
Speaker 1: says you have to own your own home or have
Speaker 1: made partner at your firm and You can have all
Speaker 1: the money and still be a terrible parent, or have
Speaker 1: very little of it and win at parenthood daily. Aim
Speaker 1: for the parenthood winning, and let the rest fall into place.
Speaker 1: The other problem with putting off parenthood, of course, is
Speaker 1: that baby making is more art than science. In general,
Speaker 1: a lot has to go right for a baby to
Speaker 1: be produced. You have to meet the right person, you
Speaker 1: have to be fertile, they have to be fertile, and
Speaker 1: even then, and there's no guarantee everything will work as
Speaker 1: it should. So much of life is luck, and meeting
Speaker 1: the right person is a huge part of that. Putting
Speaker 1: off kids because you haven't met the right person makes sense.
Speaker 1: Putting off kids because being an older parent is better
Speaker 1: is foolishness. Coming up next, an interview with Miranda Divine.
Speaker 1: Join us after the break. Hi, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is
Speaker 1: Miranda Divine, columnist at the New York Post and author
Speaker 1: of the best selling book Laptop from Hell. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on, Miranda.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, Carol.
Speaker 1: So I have an admission to make to you, and
Speaker 1: I remember the very first time I read you, I
Speaker 1: just looked it up. It was twenty nineteen. It was
Speaker 1: your third piece at the Post, and you wrote about
Speaker 1: how marijuana was a really big deal and that it
Speaker 1: came with mental health risks for some people, and that
Speaker 1: it was becoming a pro problem in New York. And
Speaker 1: I remember reading it and being like, I disagree with
Speaker 1: all of this. This is crazy. Who is this person?
Speaker 1: I remember being like, this is so square. And of
Speaker 1: course I've come around to most of what you've most
Speaker 1: of what you wrote there. So how does it feel?
Speaker 1: Do you get that a lot? Like people are saying
Speaker 1: you're right?
Speaker 2: That's so interesting? Yeah, Look, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I guess people don't really like to admit that,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'm.
Speaker 2: Often wrong myself.
Speaker 3: But the drugs thing is something that I've been writing
Speaker 3: about for, you know, more than twenty years. I was
Speaker 3: a police reporter early on, and I just saw the
Speaker 3: detrimental effect that drugs had, particularly on people at the
Speaker 3: bottom of the ladder, and you know, kids who grew
Speaker 3: up with addicted parents. And you know, if there was
Speaker 3: one thing I could do to wave a magic wand
Speaker 3: to cure a lot of the ills that plague Western societies,
Speaker 3: it would be to just ban get rid of illicit
Speaker 3: drug use. And I think it's you know, I mean
Speaker 3: when I was young, I was just as susceptible to
Speaker 3: the sort of pop culture ideas about legal drugs. You know,
Speaker 3: I joined some stupid, you know, marijuana legalization party when
Speaker 3: I was at university.
Speaker 2: You know, it was cool. But when you actually look.
Speaker 3: At the scientific studies that have been done, particularly on marijuana,
Speaker 3: which you're seen as such a particularly in America, seen
Speaker 3: as such a benign drug, and you see that the
Speaker 3: very large risks of psychosis. You know, once your brain
Speaker 3: has become psychotic, has had a psychotic episode, it's more
Speaker 3: prone to them for the rest of your life, and
Speaker 3: that begins the descent into insanity. And you see it
Speaker 3: all around you in the streets of New York and
Speaker 3: other big American cities, with homeless people who are homeless
Speaker 3: because they're mentally ill.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you also you predicted in that piece
Speaker 1: what ended up happening in New York was that the
Speaker 1: full legalization has made it so the whole entire city
Speaker 1: smells like weed now. And you know, people say, oh,
Speaker 1: it was always like that, No, it wasn't. I grew
Speaker 1: up in New York.
Speaker 2: No, it was not.
Speaker 1: You know, people used to be covert about smoking. Now
Speaker 1: it's out in the open. I think also, New York
Speaker 1: is the only city where you're allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: All the other kind of hippie cities who legalized it,
Speaker 1: which legalized it, didn't legalize it to smoke in the
Speaker 1: street anywhere you wanted. And I think New York is
Speaker 1: the only place that's okay. So I think that piece
Speaker 1: was really I went back and I read it, and
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. You know, how much I've learned in
Speaker 1: just a few years, but how right you were about
Speaker 1: where New York was heading with that.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that you say that. I mean, why did
Speaker 2: you change your mind?
Speaker 3: Was it just because you saw that hails and disorder
Speaker 3: in New York over the years.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think I had that impression, like you said,
Speaker 1: where look, I you know, I used to be a pothead.
Speaker 1: I you know, was very much into the idea that
Speaker 1: if we just legalized that everybody would be able to
Speaker 1: use it, you know, kind of the way that we
Speaker 1: have a drink and it wouldn't be just a problem.
Speaker 1: And I think that what we've seen, and you're right
Speaker 1: about the psychosis stuff too. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of research that has come out in the last
Speaker 1: few years that does make the link between serious marijuana
Speaker 1: use and psychosis and people who maybe were susceptible to
Speaker 1: it already. But I just think New York I've seen
Speaker 1: such a downward spiral. And one of the things is,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember when we still lived in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: walking by somebody smoking a joint in park Slope, like,
Speaker 1: you know, eight thirty am as I'm taking my kids
Speaker 1: to school, and if we saw somebody, you know, having
Speaker 1: a drink on the corner at eight thirty, we would
Speaker 1: register that that's a problem. But because it's weed, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like, okay.
Speaker 3: It's really odd in America, I think it's a hangover
Speaker 3: from Prohibition. I went to university at Northwestern in Chicago,
Speaker 3: actually in Evanston, a little bit north of the city,
Speaker 3: and that was the home of the Christian Women's Temperance League,
Speaker 3: and really, you know, one of the early sources of prohibition,
Speaker 3: I think. And it's still a dry town. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a university town, but it's a dry town. You
Speaker 3: couldn't get a drink. That was very hard for me
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around that coming from Australia to
Speaker 3: Chicago and realizing that, you know, we had to go
Speaker 3: a long way to get a drink. But there's still
Speaker 3: this attitude, I mean, which is good I think. I know,
Speaker 3: in Australia and Britain, binge drinking, especially among young men,
Speaker 3: is a real problem and causes a lot of violence
Speaker 3: and mayhem, and so it's kind of a good thing
Speaker 3: that people don't get in America with drinking so much.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can go to a Broadway show and
Speaker 3: they will give you a glass of wine which is
Speaker 3: like as big as a bucket, and you can have
Speaker 3: as many as you like, and people are not brawling
Speaker 3: in the aisles at intermission, which would happen if you
Speaker 3: had a lot of hard drinking cultures. And so I
Speaker 3: mean that's kind of a good thing, but I think
Speaker 3: it's gone way over the top. I mean, the fact
Speaker 3: that the drinking age is twenty one for young people.
Speaker 3: I know from my own kids who came to America
Speaker 3: on various sporting excursions when they were at school, that
Speaker 3: you know what that meant was that rather than underage drinking,
Speaker 3: which occurs in Australia and England and places which is
Speaker 3: really I think, fine, it's just experimental drinking with a
Speaker 3: legal substance in America because it's harder to get a
Speaker 3: drink kids, So I smoking marijuana at school, and that's
Speaker 3: that's a much more problematic issue because you know, alcohol
Speaker 3: is illegal, and therefore you haven't broken that kind of wall.
Speaker 3: A child hasn't broken that wall. That's well, I'm taking
Speaker 3: an illegal substance. What's the difference if I take a
Speaker 3: different one, like you know, okay or heroin or you know,
Speaker 3: meth or whatever. And I know that. You know, for
Speaker 3: so many years we've been told about the reefer madness.
Speaker 3: Don't say no drugs, Nancy Pelosi, you know, craziness and yeah,
Speaker 3: sorry Nancy, the.
Speaker 2: Opposite, yeah, Nancy Reagan. And you know, so it's really
Speaker 2: uncool to be anti drugs, especially.
Speaker 3: If you're from that generation that grew up with chitch
Speaker 3: and chong and a lot of you know, the cool
Speaker 3: or at least in the aftermath of that cool nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties nineteen seventies psychedelic era where drugs, you know, that
Speaker 3: was that was sort of the thing that our elders
Speaker 3: were doing. And so by the time the next generation
Speaker 3: came of age. It was completely normal and it was
Speaker 3: part you know, hooked into music and celebrity and anything
Speaker 3: you wanted to do. And so we've had I guess
Speaker 3: forty years of its normalization of drug use and coolification
Speaker 3: of it, and and I think it's been really detrimental
Speaker 3: to mental health and and you know, I mean just
Speaker 3: to the culture.
Speaker 2: You know, po pot.
Speaker 3: I know from my own misspent youth, it just SAPs
Speaker 3: you of energy and enterprise. It's the most loser drug
Speaker 3: you could ever think of, and it has the cash
Speaker 3: day as being just so safe, zen and hip and safe,
Speaker 3: and so you know, I don't know. I just think
Speaker 3: alcohol is bad. It has problems, but it's been with
Speaker 3: us for a long time. Humans are going to need
Speaker 3: some sort of mind altering drug. We chose long ago
Speaker 3: that it be alcohol, and it's relatively safe. And I
Speaker 3: think we'd be better off just focusing on having fun
Speaker 3: with the one legal drug rather than trying to supplement
Speaker 3: it with all sorts of other crazy drugs, because there'll
Speaker 3: always be something new. And we now see fentanal the
Speaker 3: ultimate expression of optimizing illegal drugs, and it's just you know,
Speaker 3: it's lethal.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned that that piece was from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: I think that's around when you moved from Australia to
Speaker 1: New York, Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So we talk a lot on this show about people
Speaker 1: moving because you know, as you know, there's been this
Speaker 1: migration in America over the COVID years, but you made
Speaker 1: an international move and you did it before COVID. So
Speaker 1: how's that been for you?
Speaker 2: It's been great and weird because of COVID, I guess.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was actually born in Jamaica, Queens,
Speaker 3: so really kind of a native born in New York
Speaker 3: or my accent doesn't doesn't tell you that.
Speaker 2: And my parents were journalist.
Speaker 3: My father was a foreign correspondent in New York, and
Speaker 3: so you know, I was born here.
Speaker 2: We lived, you know, in.
Speaker 3: London, and we lived in Tokyo for six years, and
Speaker 3: I went to an American school. I had this very American,
Speaker 3: strangely American upbringing, which was hyper American suburban upbringing in
Speaker 3: Tokyo because I went to an international school. All my
Speaker 3: friends were American parents were diplomats or my best friend
Speaker 3: lived on the Pan American compound, and that was like
Speaker 3: the Truman Show. It was behind It was a gated
Speaker 3: community with these manicured lawns and culder sacks and little
Speaker 3: American bungalows, and you know, we used to you know,
Speaker 3: I read the Bobbsey Twins and all sorts of sort
Speaker 3: of old American classics, children's classics.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that this.
Speaker 3: Was bizarre and the real America had changed, but we
Speaker 3: were living in this sort of capsule of Americana as
Speaker 3: sort of interpreted through Tokyo in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: And then my.
Speaker 3: Parents decided that the family needed to sort of live
Speaker 3: a normal lifestyle, not next pat lifestyle. So they went
Speaker 3: back to my mother's home country, which was Australia, and
Speaker 3: that was a huge culture shock for us kids, my
Speaker 3: sisters and I.
Speaker 4: How old were you, I was ten eleven, and you know,
Speaker 4: I just thought of myself as an American kid and here,
Speaker 4: you know, speaking Japanese, living this sort of strange international lifestyle.
Speaker 4: And then we were in the sort of the sub
Speaker 4: verbs of Perth, which is a real outpost in western
Speaker 4: Australia and among the sand dunes, and.
Speaker 3: So that was that was quite a culture shock. I
Speaker 3: remember my mother ushering my sister and I, who were
Speaker 3: both very indoor kids living in Tokyo, ushering us out
Speaker 3: for a picnic, which we just didn't want to do,
Speaker 3: but we immediately encountered all these horrible creatures and came
Speaker 3: running back screaming to my mother saying there were dinosaurs
Speaker 3: and blue tongues, and you know, there were just lizards
Speaker 3: and sort of fauna and flora that we didn't enjoy.
Speaker 3: But looking being kids, we adapted. I almost overnight changed
Speaker 3: my accent. I remember practicing in bed at night how
Speaker 3: to save and not bath, and so transformed overnight and
Speaker 3: fit in like a good Aussie.
Speaker 2: And my mother, you know, born in a.
Speaker 3: Farm in western Australia, very Australian, she was horrorfied by
Speaker 3: my accent. She said, Darling, you sound like an Oka,
Speaker 3: which is like a redneck.
Speaker 2: And I thought, I've done it. I've achieved my goal.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, do you feel I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think you'd go back to Australia?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean our grown up children are there,
Speaker 3: and you know we left only for eighteen months. I
Speaker 3: had I lived off.
Speaker 2: And on in America a lot.
Speaker 3: I'd gone to university, as I said, in Northwestern and
Speaker 3: worked in Boston, worked in Chicago, I worked in New York.
Speaker 3: But then when I went back to Australia, I married
Speaker 3: a New Zealander actually, but he was living in Australia.
Speaker 3: And so my married life has been in Australia, and
Speaker 3: our kids are very rooted in that country, and you know,
Speaker 3: we have a house and a dog and the whole thing.
Speaker 3: And I only came to the New York Post for
Speaker 3: eighteen months to cover the twenty twenty election because it's
Speaker 3: sort of an adventure, because our kids had gone off
Speaker 3: to university, and because my former editor in Australia, a
Speaker 3: fantastic journalist called Cole Allen, was the editor in chief
Speaker 3: of the New York Post, and he asked me to
Speaker 3: come over, and you know, I thought it would be
Speaker 3: fun to cover this momentous election. And so we arrived
Speaker 3: sort of midway through twenty nineteen and had about six
Speaker 3: normal months in New York, had its best before Boom
Speaker 3: the pandemic hit and everything the world changed.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Do you think of
Speaker 1: yourself as a New Yorker?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Are you like fully adapted or somewhat. And again, you
Speaker 1: were born there, so maybe you've been New Yorker all along.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I've sort of thought of myself a
Speaker 3: little bit as a New Yorker all my life, only
Speaker 3: because my father was just such a He grew up
Speaker 3: in New Zealand, but he was just such a fan
Speaker 3: of America and used to read Jon O'Hara when he
Speaker 3: was young. And we're so proud to have a daughter
Speaker 3: who was an American and a New Yorker, and so
Speaker 3: my parents used to sort of tease me about it
Speaker 3: and sort of boost it. So I always had a
Speaker 3: great affinity for American and for New York. But I
Speaker 3: guess now i'm here, I just I don't feel like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel very much, you know, a foreigner,
Speaker 3: I guess. But I mean I've felt a foreigner wherever
Speaker 3: I lived, because I was in a way. And so
Speaker 3: and that's what happens to a lot of kids that
Speaker 3: grow up, you know, among a lot of different cultures,
Speaker 3: is that there are chameleons and can fit in anywhere,
Speaker 3: but also don't really fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2: So I guess that's the very definition of a globalist.
Speaker 1: What the Trump people won't tell anyone.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Well, So a question I ask all of my guests,
Speaker 1: and I think your uniquely positioned to answer it, is
Speaker 1: what do you think is our largest cultural or societal
Speaker 1: problem in America? And is it solvable? I feel like
Speaker 1: you have a unique view.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think if you live in America and you know,
Speaker 3: you sort of just used you like a frog in
Speaker 3: boiling water, you haven't really noticed what's been going on.
Speaker 2: But there's a.
Speaker 3: Really peculiar leniency about illegal drug use in this country.
Speaker 2: And you can see it just legally.
Speaker 3: So many states are now legalizing pot or legalizing other drugs,
Speaker 3: and it just has become so normalized. And you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the country that carries on about
Speaker 3: the evils of having two alcoholic drinks or smoking a
Speaker 3: cigarette or vaping, and yet the really harmful substances that
Speaker 3: people are ingesting as a matter of course aren't even mentioned.
Speaker 3: And and and it's it's odd. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it really is like a multi decade propaganda mission by
Speaker 3: a global group of people who for some reason are
Speaker 3: into drug liberalization. And this is you know, the World
Speaker 3: Health Organization has been doing it there's there's been this
Speaker 3: push in.
Speaker 2: The medical, you know field, to sort of equate alcohol
Speaker 2: with other drugs.
Speaker 3: They've callt alcohol and other drugs, even though one is
Speaker 3: a tried and trusted through the centuries legal drug and
Speaker 3: the other are illegal and we don't know exactly how
Speaker 3: they work on the brain. And the addiction is shoes
Speaker 3: with them, and and.
Speaker 2: So and and and.
Speaker 3: Americans also have this peculiar relationship with pharmaceuticals, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, you watch television, They're a ceremony. Nowhere else
Speaker 3: in the world have I ever seen so many drug ads,
Speaker 3: and you know that they're just people prancing through meadows
Speaker 3: with daffodils and funghine and you know, some awful sounding
Speaker 3: drug is going to transform their life, take away their pain,
Speaker 3: make them have happy families.
Speaker 2: You know, Americans pop a pill for everything. You know.
Speaker 3: If they're constipated, instead of changing their diet and eating healthily,
Speaker 3: they take a constipation pill. You know, if they're fat,
Speaker 3: instead of not eating, they take a pill. If they're sad,
Speaker 3: they take a pill. Like life's normal realities.
Speaker 2: That you you know that that.
Speaker 3: People through the eons have dealt with by changing their
Speaker 3: behavior or changing their environment or getting rid of toxic people.
Speaker 3: The American culture is to pop a pill, and so
Speaker 3: I think that's hand in glove with this illicit drug culture.
Speaker 3: And I think it again, is just symptomatic of a
Speaker 3: spiritual absence, which is odd because I think America is
Speaker 3: the most religious country I've lived in it, certainly in
Speaker 3: the West, and you know, people are very overt about
Speaker 3: their religiosity, and almost to a fanatical extent in some quarters.
Speaker 3: You know, I admire the religious faith that Americans are
Speaker 3: happy to exhibit. I like the fact that their churches
Speaker 3: and their synagogues in so many places are overflowing, unlike
Speaker 3: say in Europe. But by the same token, I think,
Speaker 3: you know, for instance, the sort of religious fervor around
Speaker 3: Donald Trump just seems to me insane. There really are
Speaker 3: people who think that he's the second coming of Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ and that Joe Biden is Satan. Now, I like
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and I don't like Joe Biden. I think
Speaker 3: Donald Trump was a good president and Joe Biden is
Speaker 3: a complete disaster. But I don't I don't see Joe
Speaker 3: Biden as Satan, and I don't see Donald Trump as God.
Speaker 2: And yet some.
Speaker 3: People do see that, and I think it it sort
Speaker 3: of unpicks their brain because they're not making rational decisions
Speaker 3: and they're sort of allowing fate to take over because
Speaker 3: they think that there's this existential battle. And again, you know,
Speaker 3: that's that's sort of the opposite of what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And I think that there's such a schizophrenic attitude in
Speaker 3: America towards you know, religion, spirituality.
Speaker 2: You've got the.
Speaker 3: Real godless crew who are looking for anything to fill
Speaker 3: that spiritual gap.
Speaker 2: And then you have people at the other.
Speaker 3: Extreme who have just you know, allowed their belief in
Speaker 3: in in all their religious beliefs to take over their
Speaker 3: kind of rational selves.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: It's funny that if you equate that to the drug thing,
Speaker 1: which I get. You know, it's people are looking for something, right,
Speaker 1: They're looking for something to make them feel better or
Speaker 1: to believe in. But you're right, it takes a lot
Speaker 1: more work to you know, make the changes that will
Speaker 1: make you feel better instead of like popping a pill
Speaker 1: or believing in a politician or you know the rest
Speaker 1: of that. Do you feel like you live a public life,
Speaker 1: like are you recognized a lot?
Speaker 3: I try not to, and I guess you know, the
Speaker 3: great thing about New York is that there are so
Speaker 3: many people here, and you know, everyone's fairly anonymous. And
Speaker 3: there's a there's a pub that a lot of New
Speaker 3: York Post people go to that we love, Beach Cafe,
Speaker 3: and that's about the only place that I will be recognized.
Speaker 3: And I like it that way, you know. I I've
Speaker 3: always been thought of myself as a writer. I'm now
Speaker 3: I'm on Fox a lot as a contributor. And you
Speaker 3: know that that changes things because your face and your
Speaker 3: personality and people think they know you and and it
Speaker 3: gives you a lot more I guess publicity and a
Speaker 3: higher profile, which every journalist or every media but we're
Speaker 3: not journalists anymore.
Speaker 2: We're media. People's close to crave. I don't crave that
Speaker 2: at all. I don't like it.
Speaker 3: And I think it also if you're a writer, if
Speaker 3: you're a journalist, you meant to be an observer and
Speaker 3: you're meant to be fly on the wall. And I
Speaker 3: think that's what I'm best at, or have been in
Speaker 3: the past anyway. And I think when you become the story,
Speaker 3: you lose that and you lose your ability to write
Speaker 3: and to sort of reflect the reality that you see
Speaker 3: around you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you had this best selling book, Laptop from Hell.
Speaker 1: You obviously have a very exciting and interesting and accomplished career.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you've mete it?
Speaker 3: You know, my instinct is to say, oh, gosh, no,
Speaker 3: you know, I would never be so presumptuous just to
Speaker 3: say that, But to be honest, I have to say that,
Speaker 3: you know, so many items on my bucket list so
Speaker 3: far I've achieved, and one was to write a book,
Speaker 3: and to have it be a best seller is just fantastic,
Speaker 3: And especially on a topic I think so important was suppressed,
Speaker 3: censored before the twenty twenty election. And I think you
Speaker 3: know that the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, but mainly
Speaker 3: what it told us about Joe Biden and his corruption,
Speaker 3: I think was a story that should have been known
Speaker 3: by the American voter. And so it was a big
Speaker 3: thrill to be able to write that and and bring
Speaker 3: it to so many people, and so that and then look,
Speaker 3: I mean, the most important thing for me, and I
Speaker 3: think for all of us is family.
Speaker 2: And my kids.
Speaker 3: Are now adults, you know, young adults, and they're fantastic.
Speaker 3: We just spent Christmas with them and they're just the
Speaker 3: most wonderful human beings. And I think I've made it
Speaker 3: because as a mother, because my kids are sort of
Speaker 3: there there. I mean, if I died tomorrow, I know
Speaker 3: they would be fine.
Speaker 2: I don't want to. I want to. I want to
Speaker 2: be there for grandkids and marriages and all.
Speaker 3: The wonderful things that come with adult children. But but
Speaker 3: I think in terms of making it, you know, I
Speaker 3: have a happy marriage and.
Speaker 2: A great family, So that's that's I think it's well
Speaker 2: about Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, I've loved having you on Miranda and here with
Speaker 1: your best tip for my listeners on how they can
Speaker 1: improve their lives.
Speaker 2: Thanks Carol. Look, I think probably of all the wisdom
Speaker 2: that I've.
Speaker 3: Accumulated in my now quite long life, I'd say the
Speaker 3: only regrets I've ever had have been saying no to
Speaker 3: opportunities because I thought, well, I'm too busy at the moment.
Speaker 3: You know, I've got kids, I need to concentrate on them,
Speaker 3: et cetera. I think if you just say yes, things
Speaker 3: will work out. You'll be able to manage whatever burdens
Speaker 3: or time constraints you have. And when you say yes
Speaker 3: to one thing, other doors open. There are so many
Speaker 3: opportunities out there, so that's my advice. Always say yes
Speaker 3: to an opportunity. Don't put it off. It won't come
Speaker 3: back again. You always think, yea, it will come back.
Speaker 3: It never does. You lose it. Other opportunities will come up.
Speaker 3: It's not the end of the world, but I think
Speaker 3: just always say yes, put your hand up.
Speaker 2: Life's for living.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. That was really great Miranda Devine.
Speaker 1: Her book is Laptop from Hell. Check it out. You
Speaker 1: are fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Carol. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show.
Speaker 1: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.