Hi, Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. When I started this show about a year plus ago, I would talk a lot about the importance of marriage. I really wanted that to be one of the topics that I delved into on this program, and it mattered to me that marriage rates were in such steep decline. It was something that I was very concerned about. I'm still very concerned about. I think marriage is important for
society and very beneficial to individuals. You've likely heard all of the arguments here.
Or maybe elsewhere. I've made them extensively. That married people are happier, they're wealthier, they're more stable, all of the good things, healthier, they have more sex. What's not to like. But as I talked about marriage, I kept looking at the data, and what I started to see is not that people were coupling and just not getting married. It's that they weren't coupling at all either. That was in sharp decline as well. There are a lot of explanations
for why this is happening. Women are overachieving but want men who are a higher status than they are, a pool that is continually shrinking. And I'm not blaming just men here for the decline of relationships. Obviously, there's a lot of data that women all want to date the same few guys. There's a lot of blame to go around. I think it comes down to something even more basic.
People aren't even making friends. And that's something I've talked about on the show a lot, because there's been this great migration over the last few years, and it's very hard to start your life again and make friends as you already have reached an age where people just really don't do that. But the thing is, I saw a recent study that broke this down by education level, and
that was very interesting to me. The study found owned that twenty four percent of people with an education of high school or below reported that they had no close friends at all. The numbers a little better for someone college educated. Only ten percent of college grads say they have no close friends. But it's important to realize that in nineteen ninety the number was two percent for college grads and three percent for high school graduates to say that they had no close friends.
It was a tiny.
Number, so this is a serious, serious jump. Also, in nineteen ninety, forty five percent of college grads had at least six close friends, which makes sense, right Like when I think about college for my kids, I mostly think of it as a social exercise at this point. Who they'll meet along the way, what kind of people, and who they'll stay friends with. I want that for them. Do kids learn in college or anymore? Who knows. I don't even think about that, but hopefully they come out
of school with a few close friends. That number has fallen from forty five percent in nineteen ninety. Again that college grads who had at least six close friends to thirty three percent now, and again it's a much worse decline for high school grads. In nineteen ninety, forty nine percent of high school graduates had at least six close friends.
Now that number is seventeen percent. We should be worried about fertility rates, marriage rates, but the fact is that all relationships are in collapse, and that should really be our first concern. I've had a couple of emails from
listeners asking how to help their kids make friends. Something has happened, something has broken where it's not just something natural that happens, it's something difficult that people find that they need a way to get over it, and they need to seek out advice for how it works and how it happens. My own take is that it's, of course the fault. We don't have to make friends. We carry around a world of entertainment everywhere we go. I don't know how we break that, but we're heading into
a very bad direction. A few years ago I wrote for Spectator magazine an article called the End of Sex. I wrote, quote, men don't really know who they're supposed to be anymore, and women don't either. Is it anti feminists to enjoy male attention? Is it okay to ask out a colleague? Everything is so fraud and challenging that it's no wonder people are opting out of sex. Who needs the hassle. They'll get their dopamine hits from the likes they get on their posts and all the internet
porn they can handle. Why bother with human interaction? When life is un sexy, you get on sexy sex or no sex at all. End quote. The truth is that friendship making is very similar. People are getting the happiness from their phone, so who needs that awkward small talk of the initial stages of friendship. It's a problem. I'm just not sure that anyone will listen to the solution if it means giving up their phone. I'd love to hear thoughts on this from listeners. How do you help
your kids make friends? How do you make friends yourself? Drop me a line, Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. It's Ka R O L M A R. Kowicz Show at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening. Coming up my interview with James David Dixon. But first, after more than a year of war, terror and pain in Israel, there is still a great demand for basic humanitarian aid.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported and continues to support those in the Holy Land still facing the lingering horrors of war, and those who are in desperate need right now. Your ongoing monthly gift of forty five dollars will provide critically needed aid to communities in
the North and South devastated by the ongoing war. Your generous donation each month will deliver help to those in need, including evacuees and refugees from war torn areas, first responders and volunteers, wounded soldiers, elderly Holocaust survivors, families who have lost everything, and so many more. You can provide hope during a time of great uncertainty. Give a gift to bless Israel and her people by visiting SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. That's one word, SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. Or call eight eight
eight four eight eight IFCJ. That's eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five.
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is James David Dixon, host of the Enjoyer Podcast.
Hi James, so nice to have you on.
How are you, Carol?
Good? So what is the Enjoyer podcast? What do you particularly enjoy?
What I enjoy, Carol, is to like when I have people on, the first question I always ask is what do you enjoy about Michigan? And so you could be, you know, someone in Washington State who's never been here. Perhaps they admire the Michigan football team, you know what I mean? So whatever it is, perhaps they admire me. Whatever it is. We start, we start from that basis, uh And and then that's that's kind of the sugar, because the pill I give is that reality. So so
we enjoy Michigan and we appreciate Michigan. But we also realized that there's some pretty serious threats and that's what I spend the bulk of my time talking about, is the threats and what we should do about.
Well.
I quite love Michigan.
I spent some time at Hillsdale, so I really love that whole area. I've also given a speech I should have had that I should have had that that town name cued, but it.
Was a little north of Flint.
Okay.
I really really liked it.
Such a gay city, Midlands.
This isn't gonna work.
I gave a thousand speeches last year.
But I really like your state.
I like the whole palm thing. I like that you guys show, you know, on the palm where you are.
So yeah, I'm like right down here, you know, under the thumb.
Okay, people listening on audio. He pointed to the fleshy area below the thumb.
Not quite on the water, but yeah, east easterly in Michigan, Southeast Michigan.
So are you a Michigander your whole life? And did I nail them?
Am? You did? You did? So?
You know, it's funny because we have Michigander, which I started off I believe as a slur Abraham Lincoln and then a letter h. And then we also have Michiganian, and anyone who uses Michiganian, you know you're dealing with the Detroit News reader. Because these papers do things to,
you know, to to separate each other. We have two papers in Detroit, the News, which is allegedly conservative, and then the Free Press, which is liberal, flamingly so right, and so the politics separate them, but also little things like michigany and versus Michigander. And so when the News gives their annual award, they give it to like a dozen people a year, it's Michiganian of the Year.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's so interesting because I you know, Michigan is a swing state.
It's a it's kind of you know, a little bit of both.
It wasn't always a swing state, obviously. I remember it being solidly blue and never you know, going.
Red really or rarely.
But it's become quite the swing state in the last few years. And it's so funny that it's so divided even among like what to call themselves.
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's just is that is that.
Is that like the flavor of the state.
There's a lot of Yeah.
I mean, whether it's you know, blue and red for political for politics, whether it's blue and green for Michigan versus Michigan State. We we love these little these little things that you know, the city suburb divide, the suburban versus is you know, out state divide.
We call them out state.
If you don't live in kind of the main like three to seven counties of southeast Michigan, you live out state. People from Michigan might be learning that today. Yes, they don't know what conversations happened about them when they're not in the room. They're learning something today. So right, But yeah, one of my goals in twenty twenty five is I'm
a Southeast Michigan guy. I love Oakland County, I love Detroit, I love Ann Arbor, but I want to venture to other parts of Michigan too, well outside my box.
So we'll see how that goes.
I mean, I again, I really enjoyed the whole area around Hillsdale. I thought it was really beautiful and calm and peaceful, arm and the food was really good, So you know, I recommend it highly. So how did you get into being a local podcaster?
What was the draw to you.
I mean, so many people love talking about national stuff and it's it's tough to kind of focus on, you know something. I don't want to say smaller because it's not really smaller, just more precise or.
You know, we're concentrated, more concentrated.
Thank you very much for the word sist.
Yeah, you know, I think so.
Before I did the Enjoyer, I was with the Macinaw Center and we had a small news outlet called Michigan Capitol Confidential.
They still have it.
They got rid of me because I wanted to do this, and then they saw I had other aspirations, and just as a quick aside, I think it's a great example of how God can take you places that you wouldn't even think to ask. Right, So, if I had what I wanted, I'd be doing the Enjoyer podcast, and I'd still be at the Macinaw Center and we'd be making it work and going up to Midland every other Monday
and all that juggling the two jobs. But instead of that, God said, no, we're going to get you out of there, even if it was painful at the time and inconvenient and all those things. And then what happened A short time later, I end up the second the severance ends. I start with the New York Post on their Swing state team. So I go from working for an obscure policy newsletter in Michigan to one of the biggest news outlets in the world covering the twenty twenty four election.
Only God, I would have never thought to ask for that myself. I'm not a greedy guy. I don't ask for much, and so he just delivered so much more than I could have ever wanted. But what I learned at the Mackinaw Center is that limitation breeds creativity. We could only talk about certain topics, and we had to cover it as policy and not politics. So you're denied a lot of the red meat and the lures that we would normally use, and so you have to And
so I developed that. I realized, if I'm going to get people reading about boring ass policy, I need to give them something first, and so I look for the angle of absurdity in stories like, for instance, Ford Motor Company took one hundred million dollars from state lawmakers in let's say June twenty twenty two August, So they're going to use one hundred million to hire three thousand factory workers in August. Two months later, they fire three thousand
white collar workers. They pulled the Oki dock of all time. Yeah, that's one hundred million dollar Oaki dough. And so when you connect those dots and show that angle of absurdity, and what you want to look for is the fact that is so absurd it can't possibly be real except.
It is right. And then you draw that, then you can.
Tell them about your boring at you know, policy, But first you have to give them what they want.
So was that Ford's story did it go Did it end up going national because that seems like a big story.
No, because of the nature of it. But it did what it needed to do in Michigan.
And then at the Enjoyer, I ended up just doing a nice video calling out for and saying, Hey, this company is not as good a citizen as you might think. It's the most important company in Michigan. It's the reason there are Dixons in Michigan and there are black people in Michigan. But when you look at how they use HB one, when you look at the one hundred million dollar Oki dook, when you look at partnering with the
Chinese military company to build EV batteries. Harry Ford would be disgraced by what he sees right now, and we need better from a company that important. So it's not super popular stuff. I don't think I'm gonna be invited to get there.
Huh, No, there's not. I've not been asked. I might have missed it.
I don't check my mail every single day, but I might have missed it. But I don't think I'm going to be invited to give the keynote addressed at Ford's you know, a company banquet anytime soon. But what would you rather do? Speak for your neighbors or speak to a small group of elites?
So what do you love about Michigan the most? What do you enjoy about it? You know?
One thing I do need to combat this year is this myth? And everyone I asked this question, Oh, we have four seasons.
No we don't. No, we don't.
We don't have spring. It goes straight from winter to summer. There's no spring. Spring's a myth. It typically never comes and if it does, it'll be maybe two three weeks. So it's not the four seasons. And I don't think for most people it's the four seasons. I think for all of us, it's the people. Yeah, it's the people,
and specifically it's family. Michigan is family. And so when you have a state like this that has they call it a brain drain problem where our college grads leave, that's because we're taking in so many h one beast.
You can't find entry level work. And so that's what makes it especially tragic.
You know, this isn't you know people in Tennessee who might want to go to New York and be a big star someday. These are people, if they had it their way, they would stay with their family and live in their neighborhood all their life. And they don't, and they're leaving by not their choice. And that's what said, that's the tragedy of Michigan, because what happens is so many people end up being denied a relationship with their grandkids. Now there are people you see once twice a year,
your kid moves to New York or San Francisco. You can't afford to move there, right, Yeah, you know.
I actually heard that a lot in Michigan.
I heard that a lot when I was there, that that was the main concern that people were leaving. I was on a very Florida high I had just moved to Florida.
I mean not just it's it's been three years now.
It was like a little over two at that time.
But I was very It was hotter than fire back.
It was super hot.
It was super super I mean it still is in a lot of ways, but we saw lot of people moving in all the time. But yes, it was completely on fire then. And I was very big on if you don't like where you live.
Change your you know, change you know, I do something.
It's hard to move. I can suge that my families are all still in New York. But in Michigan. You know, I heard from people that said, I don't.
Want to leave. It's not like you.
It wasn't like I got tired of of of where I live and I want to I want to change.
I actually want to stay, but I can't. And that's real difference. That's not the same thing as what I did. It's very tough to combat any ideas well.
In the tragedy of it, Carol, is that we lose two groups who are really valuable. You lose your recent college grads who could be your future and they carry your family's legacy with them, and then we lose retireeves who stacked up cash and might have something to pass down, some wealth. And so the retirees, some of those people always want to move to a warmer place or split time or whatever, but to lose the future. So what I think we need Michigan needs to build a wall, not to keep anyone out.
Keep Mulley, to keep our kids in. Yeah, we need to have some kind of problem.
A company like Ford should be part of the solution, one of the most iconic companies on the planet. Kids who grew up here do dream and should dream about working at Ford someday, and every effort should be made that, hey, you go get that engineering degree, you go do whatever you need to do to add value, and we have
a spot for you. So we need a nativism. When when I hear a street that at our a congressman here in Detroit, or if Ivey Kramaswami talk about h one B's, what I hear is Indians viewing the world as Indians and being extremely comfortable with nativism. In that context, they have no problem saying I want to do for me and mind right. So nativism does not bother shre does your conscience bother you?
I know the reference, So I love that reference. And that's what we we have to get.
Comfortable, very comfortable choosing our own people, our own country, even the citizens of the States. We live over this idea, this kind of that there's special knowledge that could only be conferred by foreigners, or there's moral authority that could only be conferred by diversity. What if we thought of ourselves as image bearers of God?
And enough?
Yeah, what do you worry about?
I worry about the twenty twenty sixth election in Michigan. Okay, I liken.
You know this inauguration week, you know, watching everything, it's kind of like when your friend gets the toy they like, or or they get, you know, the new video game unit, and they got all like five new games for Christmas. They call you over afternoon and you're sitting there hot chocolate, cookies, games warm. It's great, but then you got to go home eventually and you don't have that game. And so
we watched everyone celebrate America and it's great. It's great, and we hope some of it trickles down to Michigan, no doubt some of it will, but then you go home and you don't have the game. And so what I'm trying to get everyone excited about is Project twenty twenty seven. Imagine this week two years from now, except we've saved our state from a world where in twenty forty we're going to be running on solar panels and windmills.
Project twenty twenty seven bad news, guys, you won't be able to vote for Donald Trump.
Only for your kids, only for your future. I hope that's enough.
And so that's what we're going to be trying to do, is make sure it is enough and make sure people understand the stakes. We won, but we didn't win enough to just to rest on Laurels, right, So I hope everyone had fun, but there's a future to win.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Do you have a particular candidate that you want to see in twenty seven?
No, So twenty twenty six, it's the ultimate Battle of Michigan. Free seat in the House. So we got one hundred and ten House seats, thirty eight Senate seats, Governor, Lieutenant Attorney General, Secretary of State, also the Gary Peters Senate seat.
A lot of big jobs, a lot of opportunities.
When I look across at the Democrats, I see Jocelyn Benson, who is like, she's like if a Barbie doll was made out of wood instead of plastic, kind of a wooden Barbie doll. Dana Nessel, who is just so singularly unlikable. All I have to do is say her name. You're like, oh, yeah, that Dana Nessl's gonna have sometime. Then you have Pete boodage Edge, who's a midget who doesn't even know when the Lions play right.
That's an unexceptionable also a Notre Dame fan.
So that's not going to do you any favors, Pete. And then you have Mike Duggan, who is such a coward that, after being a Democrat all of his life, the mayor of Detroit says, I'm not a Democrat anymore.
Sorry, Mike.
I must have missed all the times when before the Titanic hit the Iceberg, you were telling them Iceberg right ahead. I must have missed all that, right, must have missed your leadership in that moment. And so he waits until the ship crashes to abandon, never led and didn't say he didn't do what Donald Trump did, which is saying the Republican Party sucks, I'm gonna take it over.
That's what a leader would do.
But a guy who's in it for himself says, oh, those people make me look bad, so I'll go my own way.
It's not going to work.
So I look over at the left and I see clowns.
You see opportunity.
We got a guy, Eric Nesbittt he's the Senate Minority leader. Uh. Kind of this, this big strapping guy. Uh, it's not unusual. John Engler was a senator in Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer was a senator in Michigan. So it's not an unusual path. And so where Jocelyn Benson might have name recognition right now, Eric nessbitt has the advantage of if people don't know who you are, then what they know about you is what you tell them.
You can define yourself.
Yeah, you can define yourself and you can be known for the first time. And so he has that same opportunity that Gretchen Whitmer had, which is to define himself.
Uh.
Then you have Mike Cox, he formed an exploratory committee. This guy used to be Attorney General of Michigan. He's held state wide office in Michigan. He needs to get serious about social media. His social media president reads like his grandkids told him about it but didn't show him how to use it, right, So he's just kind of winging it based on what he's seen and heard about it. Uh, he's gonna need to get serious about that, because Eric
Nestlitt is serious as a heart attack. So even if it was just those two versus those four Democrats, I'd like that race.
You like your chances?
Yeah, all right, we're gonna wait and see, and you're gonna keep us posted because I feel like you, you know, you're you're really representing local Michigan and telling us what's going on over there.
Absolutely, we're gonna get you in one of these shirts, Carol. We're gonna get you making news local again.
Yes, So what advice would you give yourself at sixteen years old?
Did you always plan to be here?
No?
But there was always signs, you know, from the earliest pictures. My mom and her mom used to argue all the time because I always had a pen in my hand as a baby, and so I'd be running around. He's gonna he's gonna poke his eye out. Now, if I write some story and the cartel gets pissed and they pluck my eye out, I guess Grandma will have been right in the end.
Right they don't want, you know.
So there was always a sign that I was gonna be speaking out or something. My mom wanted to name me David because she had a dream where she saw me giving a speech and my name was David.
So that's why I used the David. To this day.
Mom's not with us anymore, and it's a damn shame too, because she saw just it was like Moses. It was, I mean literally the forty year journey to get here and gets right to the promised land where you see evidence of it. You can see the olive trees. Man, even with old eyes, you don't make it.
So I'm carrying on her name and all that.
But my advice to that young person, I would say, be nicer, Be a little bit nicer along the way.
My whole thing is built around telling the truth. You seem pretty nice, and that can come off, you know what I mean.
I think if people follow me on Twitter, who don't know me personally, they might imagine that I'm more confrontational than I am.
That's who among us.
Right, right, But I think if you were.
But that's also because I'm talking about stuff that pisses me off, and oftentimes I'm talking to people who piss me off. So if I'm sitting here with a friend, if I'm strategizing with the fellow traveler, you know, I'm sure I could be charming and things like that. So the other thing is I consider who you're spending your time with. You know, when you It's the same advice I gave my stepkid, which is any career field, there's a type of person who gets in that career field.
Is that the type of person you want to be with. I don't know. I went through this like misanthroat phase where journalism was not a great fit, and then I was a breaking news reporter in Detroit at that exact same moment. So I've had to come through a lot of that, fought through anxiety, seasonal depression, all kinds of things. And so my advice is put one foot in front of the other, and also God helps those who help themselves.
There's something you could do right now to improve your situation, however bad it is, in fact the worst it is. Probably anything you would do would be an improvement over what you have. Yeah, so what can you do? Everyone in this world has reasons why not? What can you do today, here and now? Any plan you're serious about does not start with the word tomorrow. So you can. Yeah, you can tilt the playing field in your favor. And
as a man, it's your job to do it. The second woman is born, she has everything she will need to be a success in you think. So, men are made, not born, And so the good news is if you ask God to order your steps, then you have help on that path going it alone. You know, if you look at where the Israelite started and where they ended up,
that wasn't a forty year walk. It becomes forty years when you're hard headed, when you're stiff necked, And so ask for help, ask God for help, ask friends for help. And if you're going to be a journalist, you better get real comfortable asking for help. I'm now addicted to asking for help. I seek out reasons, I seek out problems. So I have to seek out a source who can help me.
I love that, so.
And here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives, and maybe you've already given it to us.
The best thing you could do to improve your life is get in the gym regularly, work out, regularly, bring your body to a sweat. God gives you one and only one body, so everything else you're going to run through cars. You're going to live in several homes in your life. You may even there's people who get married multiple times in life, but you're given one body. That's the first gift you were given. Your spouse was the second gift you were given. What are you doing for
that body and for that spouse? So preserve your ability to be there for that person. Preserve your ability to be there with that person.
Love it. Thank you so much.
His name is James David Dixon, host of the Enjoyer podcast check it out.
Thank you so much, James.
Thank you, Carol, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marko which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.