Him and welcome back to the Carrel Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Tyler Cowen wrote two articles this week that bothered me enough to discuss them. Both were in the Free Press, an outlet that I really enjoy.
One of them was on how.
The elites got COVID mostly right. If you know anything about me, I very much don't think so, and I'm writing an article about that now, so look for it in the New York Post or maybe on the Fox News website. We'll see. But his other piece is somehow even more wrong than that one. It's called the Case for Living Online, or why I often choose my phone
instead of flesh and blood. He writes, why do I spend so much of my time with email, group chats and also writing for larger audiences such as repressed readers. I ask myself that earnestly, and I have arrived at a pretty good answer. I believe that by spending time online I will meet and befriend a collection of individuals around the world who are pretty much exactly the people I want to be in touch with, and then I will be in touch with them regularly. I call them
the perfect people for me. I recognize that many of these communications are online, and thus they are thinner than many more local, face to face relationships. Yet I do end up meeting most of these people and with great pleasure that in turn enhances the quality of the online communications. And frankly, if forced to choose, I would rather have thinner relationships with the perfect people for me than regular bear hugs and beer guzzlings with people who are in
the eighty seventh percentile for me Endue. The problem with this is that you may meet these people once, twice, even twenty times, let's say, but they're not a part of your everyday life. Their proximity does not allow for true closeness, for true friendship. But I think what Tyler is describing is exactly what people do get caught up in when, for example, they do online dating. Why settle for just eighty seven percent compatible when clearly the one
hundred percentile would be better. But I just think one hundred is an illusion. You can only imagine that you're one hundred percent compatible with someone when you have limited interaction with them. It's the whirlwind romance that you have when you're studying abroad in college. Pablo or Marco or Susette is just your absolute match. You spend three blissful months together eating bagets around Paris or on the back of a vespa in Rome. Nothing could be better and
no one better suited to you. But nearly anyone who has tried to take that relationship yes to real life, where there are bills and jobs and chores and grocery stores, the drudgery of the every day, will find that it all gets old, very very fast. That's what Tyler has with his internet friends. He has the high points and sure he can maintain them for longer because he doesn't have that romantic connection to burnout without ever having anything
like real life and real life. And I know I say this on here A lot is better eighty seven percent compatible with thirteen percent. Where you love your spouse or your friend anyway because their imperfections make them a real person is actually amazing. I've made friends online, Don't get me wrong. I cried when a friend I knew mostly just on Twitter died, But a lot of the time I've watched the death of someone that we all know online hit the end online world, and people are sad.
People might give their condolences or say a word or two about the person or be shocked, but it lasts a minute and then they're scrolling and retweeting like nothing had ever happened. That person's actual family and their actual friends in real life will miss them, and they are who is important. Thanks for listening. Coming up my interview with Libby Emmons. But first, Israel is still under attack. Missile fire has resumed from Israel's enemies, terrorists who seek
utter death and destruction. Here in America, we can't imagine what it's like to live in constant beer like this, but for the people of Israel, it's all very real every single day. Please join me and show the people of Israel you'll help protect them in this time of attack and uncertainty. And one of the best ways to do this is by giving to the International Fellowship of
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Paul eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ that's eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five, or go online at SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. One word support IFCJ dot org. Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Libby Emmons. Libby is editor in chief of The Post Millennial. Thank you so much for coming on.
Libby, Sure, thank Carol.
So we knew each other a little bit in Brooklyn, and I know a little bit about your story how you got into this thing of ours. But you came from the theater world, is that right?
Yeah.
Most of my career was in theater, doing weird, experimental downtown shows and tiny theaters hoping people would come.
And then I spoke out against trans.
And that turned out badly and I had to find a new career and different friends so rather quickly, at like twenty nineteen, early twenty nineteen, and I came up with this idea that I should just walk through any open door, and that's how I got here.
Do you miss the theater world? Yes, yeah, to go back to something if it was normal, if it wasn't insane, but it kind of just as insane.
Right, It kind of just is insane.
I don't know that that door would ever be opened at this point.
I would love to see.
People on this side of things, making art and making theater and doing you know, exploring ideas in that aesthetic kind of way, picking up the threads of storytelling where the arts community has really dropped them years and years ago, going into creating beautiful things, creating artwork that makes you feel something positive when you're sitting in the audience, or even just doing Shakespeare like it's normal, instead of doing Shakespeare like Romeo as a Girl Too, you know, or
doing Mecabeth like it's normal.
Doing all of these shows.
What was the one they did and they decided the bad guy in Shakespeare was actually Trump?
That was dumb, you.
Know, not any one of them.
Yeah, your poison.
But I would love to see more traditional pieces done like they should be, even Ibsen Moliere, any of these guys, you know, Sam Beckett. I think there's actually a revival of Waiting for Goodo that's going to be up on Broadway this year with the guys from Bill and Ted's Kano Reeves and the other guy, and I really want to see that because Bill and Ted's meets Waiting for GOODO.
That's kind of that's very Bakhetian, that works that kind of thing. But would I make art again for sure? And I haven't.
I haven't stopped making art, I just have not been making theater art.
Were you an actress or were you behind the scenes.
I was writing plays, So my masters is in playwriting and theater, and I was writing plays and producing plays and that was that was pretty much all I wanted to do from the time I was fourteen years old, and so trying to come up with something else to do, it was like, well, everything I loved has kind.
Of been burned down. I don't really know where to go from there.
And the thing about theater is you need an audience, and if you don't have an audience, there's no point really to making the work.
You can write all the scripts that you.
Want, you can do animations of them if you want, but like, you need an audience. And I just did not have the feeling that I in the community where I was doing the kind of work I was doing, I was pretty sure I had no audience left.
So that would that's the key thing that you need, you know.
I think it's such a good moment for something like that. Now, I'm like, I'm going to spend the next, you know, a few days trying to talk you into I mean, I think the work that you do is amazing and I love your just your style in general. You've always been a really interesting follow for me on X and I. You know, I think the work you do a post one it was fantastic, But I feel like you need to be making plays for the stage, and it's such a good moment for that. Our family, we don't watch
a lot of TV. I just I'm just I'm an internet junkie. I'm not like better than anyone. I just I just channel my insanity in a different way. But we started watching that House of David movie series recently, and that's you know, made by conservatives. Yeah, we just we've only we're only one episode in, but it's excellent
and it's you know, for families. But what all the other things suggested to me on Netflix, We're all like America, it's an amazing country, like just very very different than what would have been suggested on Netflix even a year ago. So I think I think this is your moment.
Yeah, well, we only really need fifty thousand dollars in a theater space and we can get that's like going easily done to invest in that.
Let's let's put it together.
I feel like that is an investment that can absolutely happen. I'm gonna, you know, see if we could do that, what would you want to write about? Yeah? What were your shows about? Like, what was your theme?
Did you have one?
I wrote about a lot of different things, and they, you know, pretty different. I wrote satire about I wrote this ridiculous satire that was a send up of everything that they do to women. So there was trans abortion, there was me too stuff in there. There was adoption, surrogacy, like all of this crazy stuff. And it was two hr reps sitting there going through like all having all this crazy stuff happen with no other characters.
That was fun. I wrote replay about.
That would be such a hit, as you know.
I did one about domestic slavery in the United States and that was really fascinating. There had actually been sometimes I would pull stuff from the news and there had been this long island couple. I remember they were from Indonesia or something like that, and they had this perfume empire, and so they would bring women from their hometown in Indonesia and essentially enslave them in their home. So that was, you know, uplifting a lot of but there was a lot of stuff.
There is a lot of stuff.
My favorite play that I wrote was the last one that got performed, and it was called I'm Not an Allegory.
These are people I know and you know, you know from Brooklyn.
So it was about a bunch of people in Brooklyn that were loosely connected and how they navigate their lives. One of them needs a new job, one of them's having sort of like a mental break because of childhood trauma that she never dealt with. Somebody else is like in love with his coworker and he's trying to take her out, and all of the women in the show kind of end.
Up meeting at a dance class. So it's a very Brickland show.
Yeah, do you miss Brooklyn?
I yeah, I love I love Brooklyn. I love New York City.
My Famili's from New York City, going way back to like the Italian immigrants coming over in the nineteen eighteen nineteen, something like that twenty. My grandparents were born in Brooklyn, my mom was born in Brooklyn, my son was born in Brooklyn.
Yeah, I definitely miss it.
And I'm that person who's like always looking at the Zillow.
Like, what could I take aut to go back wuity loan and buy a new buy place and have two places?
You know? Yeah, I feel like, do the math on a hotel before you do that.
But yeah, right, this is I mean, whenever I.
Think about any property anywhere, I start thinking like I could live there, I could have a second house there, And then I'm like, wait, I could just stay there in a hotel whenever I want to go. But yeah, you know, I obviously I missed the Brooklyn. I miss old Brooklyn. I don't know that I miss Brooklyn right now. But I miss actually your area where you lived Bay Ridge, a lot more than I miss where I lived, which is Park Slope. Don't miss Park Slope at all.
Pretty different neighborhoods.
Although in my neighborhood right outside my building, because I was I was on like right on Fifth Avenue and Ovington, there's like it's a very Arab neighborhood. And every weekend there were these like big anti Israel protests, and they were just getting bigger, you know.
Yeah, and now they're a little.
Bigger, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. When I went to high school in beer Ridge, it was a very Italian area. No, I really did love it. It was it was a great little neighborhood. So what's your life now in Can I say where you live?
Yeah? I live. I live in West Virginia.
Do you love it or what do you think?
I do love it. I love having my own house. I love having a little piece of land. It's a very New Yorker thing for me to say, like no one can kick me out of my house, that no one.
Carries my rent. I love that.
That's great for me. I have my own parking space. It's just right out of my house.
So good.
So these are basic things, but it is interesting. The difference is just.
In lifestyle and what you expect. In New York everything is about quality of life. And here it's like I pay for my water separate and I pay for my trash pick up separate. I just got a bill for the ambulance service and I was like, I didn't take an ambulance. Oh wait, I have to pay Yeah, every it's like.
Wow, super our cart.
I took every libertarian fantasy over.
There, right, So, but I always I love where I am.
It's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful, and I love that I'm a lot closer.
To DC now, so I do more like DC stuff.
Yeah, I have a warm spot for DC, I know. But and you get to have kind of the best of both worlds. You're in somewhere that you could get to have land, you get to have.
A parking spot.
I fully relate to the parking spot things. When I am back in Brooklyn and my brother is like, I have to go move the car, I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't miss that at all.
Or like you do that math, you'd be like, do I move the car? Or do I figure they're not going to tow it? And I'm just paying.
Sixty five bucks for parking this week.
It's like not that cheaper than a garage.
Right.
Whenever anybody would have that conversation and on the park slope boards, like all these people would be like, that's so wrong. You shouldn't do that, Like well the math maths, as the kids say, you know, so what do you worry about?
What do I worry about? In terms of like I worry about the future. I worry about aging. I'm going to be fifty.
This year, and I find that I find that, oh thanks, I just find that crazy, Like how could.
I be fifty? Like how can you see? Can that be? I think that's nuts.
So I think about that, and I think about my grandmom and my mom my grandmother's past. But my mom is like seventy five something like that, and I think about Like, so I think about that because mortality is this crazy thing and you don't think about it for your whole life. You run out into the street, you don't think about anything. You do whatever crazy stuff comes into your mind, and then suddenly you're like, wait, my friends are having their knees and hits replaced?
What is what is is this about? Why is this happening?
So I write in terms of personal stuff. I think about that, like what does aging look like? Is the kid going to put me in a home?
I don't know.
I don't think so interesting.
I worry about my son.
He's fifteen, and I worry about like getting him sort of launched.
Into his life.
Yeah, all of the tools that what tools can I give him? You know, you can save money for them. You can make sure you're teaching them stuff, but there's like all these variables. You have no idea what might possibly happen.
I don't really.
Worry too much about like the broader anxieties of the world, nuclear war, any of that stuff. Like if anything like super crazy happens, it's almost a relief. You're like, oh, I know, I don't have to worry about the stuff that was bothering me anymore.
No worries about that.
Right now, it's all about foraging place moods now, just looking for nothing and berries.
You know.
Yeah, I read too many books about Russia during World War Two and end up looking at our pantry and being like, how long can we survive on just what we have here? Yeah, it's it's I mean, they, you know, they were all starving to death, and that was not that long ago and not you know, not such a crazy thing to have happened. So yeah, I think we'd be okay for at least a few weeks, maybe a few months.
But yeah, it's a you know, I think i'd have like a few months because there's also a ton of flower You can always just make stuff.
Right, Yeah, I guess I feel like a few months of just we'll be eating like a little pasta every day.
Yeah, my son jokes, because during the pandemic I started doing like oh yeah.
Yeah, but I was doing like New York Prepper, right, so it was like fake prepper.
I was like buying cases of pasta, which of course doesn't do anything if the gas goes.
Out, but sure, yeah, yeah, raw. The Russians in my war books would happily eat our raw pasta.
Raw passa. Yeah, yeah, I think about that. My son.
Actually, you just read nineteen eighty four for I think the second time, and he's a little obsessed with.
It, and so we talk about a good one. Yeah, it's good.
So we talked about some of those themes too. I was like, next up, you have to read The Master and Margarita.
Yeah. Wait, is that a good one for you fifteen?
I don't know. Actually, a really good one is we Bai Zimyatun. It's a similar theme to nineteen eighty four. I have a fifteen year old also, my daughter, but she's into like fantasy books. But I should get her to read like nineteen eighty four soon.
Yeah, it's really I've foisted these on him.
It was like a little stack. Was that Brave New World? Fahrenheit four fifty one?
Go read these and then then we'll have something to talk about we have around here on my shelf somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely check that one out. It's a really good one.
Yeah.
So we're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markoitch Show. What advice would you give your sixteen year old self? What does sixteen year old Liby need to know?
What does she need to know?
Oh?
Probably everything you know? Probably.
I think the best advice would be, no one's looking at you, don't worry about it.
No one. You're not in a movie. No one is paying attention to anything you think or what you do. You have more freedom than that.
I didn't realize that until I was thirty two, and that would have been a good lesson to know earlier. No one cares that much about what other people are doing. Everyone's obsessed with their own life. People are as obsessed with their lives as you're obsessed with yours.
So just chow out.
I feel like that would be really good advice for a lot of people on X because they think they are the main character on there and you know, relax a little with your Yeah. Yeah, as a teenager. It's funny because I do you feel like teenagers today like that? I don't know that they are. Is it maybe because they are watched all the time on like social media that they don't feel like it.
That they don't feel like they're being watched Like.
I don't get that sense. I mean I've only met your son a few times, but does he feel like everyone's like looking at him? You know, like the thing that, Yeah, my daughter doesn't feel like that either.
So he's way he's like very chilled out in his life, you know, and he he doesn't really want anything to do with all of the online stuff. You know.
He'll tell me like, mom, stop scrolling, right.
I'll be like, you do scrolling And he's like, no, I gave up scrolling ages ago.
I don't even scroll YouTube shorts anymore. Like, yeah, all right, I will try to stop scrolling.
I was like, what do you do? He's like reading a book mom.
Man, that is h Yeah. I get a lot of that also from my kids, Like, you know, read a book and don't scroll touch grass. That whole touch grass for sure, but the whole like the whole little mini videos. I really feel like they're so bad. It's so interesting that he's identified that because I just don't feel like a lot of people see how bad those shorts are. Like they say TikTok, but everything is TikTok.
Now it's everything. It's exit's Instagram. I had dinner.
I was actually in New York over the weekend, and I had dinner with an old friend of mine.
We've been friends since high school.
And I said something to her about Instagram scrolling and she was like, just stop, I can't even handle the Instagram scrolling.
And she does too. She's like, it's crack, and my daughter, it's up. It's the same.
Yeah, so we are impacted by all this stuff that it's designed to capture their attention, and it's not capturing their attention, right, it's just holding us hostage instead.
Yeah, it's us. And like the generation just below us, like between us and our kids, is the generation I think is most in trouble with it, like they are. They just can't seem to, you know, have conversations. I just I see them. They're they're hanging out together and they're scrolling like just I don't know, no socialize.
I'm disturbing too when you see kids together, well kids the like twenties thirties at a restaurant and they're all looking at their phones and not having a conversation.
Yeah, it's really wild that generation. I don't know, I'm concerned about them, but I do think that next one is kind of over it. And I've seen this somewhere where people say like, it'll be the cool thing that you're not on the Internet, and I already see that developing, that the analog life is going to be what makes you interesting.
Either that or they're actually just using the Internet to talk to each other. Well, my son's best friend from Brooklyn, his family moved to He moved to Morocco, which is where his parents were from, even though he's American. And I was like, he's got his passport right, like you got don't leave anything behind.
He's going to need it to get home.
Yeah, but he's you know, my son will talk to him and his brother. They're all really tight and they talk on this right, So when my son's online.
He's usually just talking to his friends. And I'm kind of I'm okay with that, right.
Yeah, it's a totally different thing than you know, because a lot of the conversations, like, you know, social media is bad for kids, but I'm like social media barely exists anymore. It's like all these mini videos. We're just all carrying around televisions with us and like watching little episodes, and you know, if somebody watched ten hours a day of TV, we'd understand it's bad. But because it's on our phones and small doses, it's like okay.
Somehow, yeah.
And there's all these weird things that pop up on Instagram where it's like some horror, horrifying story from some house in the middle of nowhere, and I'm always like, because I do news, and I'm like, did that really happen? And I go look it up and it's no, It's just some fake thing for Instagram that I'm always talking about.
And you get the other thing too.
I'm sure that you remember this, Like five years ago, you could trust Twitter to give you news and you'd be like, oh, that's a tip, let me go figure out what's going on. I can report straight off Twitter. And in the past like year or so, I appreciate all of the free.
Speech angle of X one, But what I don't.
Like, are all of the influencer slash journalists who don't actually do the digging, and so they'll throw something out there and then you'll go to find it and it doesn't really exist and you're like, oh, this was extrapolated.
It's not actually real.
Yeah, that's extrapolated. I see that all the time. People will post like breaking and then like a headline. I'm like, oh my god, really and then I'll look it up and no, not really at all. But that it didn't actually happen.
Is that people are really quick to post and get the clicks, which I think is in part driven by Elon Musk's whole revenue thing, and so that's you know, that's disconcerting. There's definitely accounts where it's like, oh, you can take this to the bank, but not all of them, and not always the biggest ones, you know.
I agree, Yeah, how does it affect your business? Like, how do you guys vet stories?
Well, you have to take something then go digging around. We also work with and you know, as a senior editor at Post Money.
Great. He's terrific.
He's smart, he's thoughtful, he knows what he's doing. So there's definitely times when him like Andy, what is the deal with this?
You know? Yeah? And sometimes and like you know, he can help us because.
And he's thorough. He's very like I've had breaking news in the past that I've like run by him because he's not going to be the sensationalist just throw something up to throw it up. Yeah, he's fantastic.
You guys, man, you're usually good.
Usually you'll post something if you get like an advance and like watch for this because Carol's probably right, So let's check that out.
There's a bunch that I did not post that I haven't like when I've gotten breaking news and I didn't post it because I could not like corroborate it or I couldn't really really say that it was one hundred percent, so I didn't post it and lost the story. But you know, so what I rather be right, I'd rather be right than first, is.
My you know.
Yeah, that's what we go with too, is like, let's we don't have to be first, we just have to be right because if you're.
A news outlet, you lose your.
Credibility really quickly, and if you're an ex poster, it doesn't matter if you lose your credibility because people are still following and you're still getting it first, and you.
Know people will you'll still get.
What you want from it. So yeah, we go with that too. We decide to be right, not first necessarily. We also we work with Jack Pisovic. He's a senior editor at Human Events, which is also under our media group. And I'll ask Jack things, especially if it has to do with national security or any kind of intelligent stuff, and he'll often say stay frosty, and I'm like, okay, I won't.
We'll just hold on.
Also, you know, yeah, what to say frosty mean.
Say frosty means, don't do anything, don't jump on anything, don't set your hair on fire.
Day, be chill, just be chill.
I like it, you know, don't freak out, hang on, just wait for it.
Love it.
Yeah.
Well, I've loved this conversation. You are so fun. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
How to improve your lives. Exercise in the morning is a good one. I hate exercising. I hate it so much.
Me too, I try and do it in the morning. In the evening, I hate it all the time.
It's the worst, but I try and do it in the morning and then no matter what happens for the rest of the day, you can say like, well, I did that.
See I did that thing.
I've got it.
Yeah, that and turmeric ginger tea. That's all I got.
I like it.
Thank you.
She is Libby Emmon's editor in chief of Post Millennial. Check out her work. She's fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on, Lebby. Thanks so much, Carol, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.