Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. People who have listened to this show for a while know that one of my things is that I'm actually really worried about people turning to AI to replace actual relationships. Friendship rates are down, people aren't dating, they aren't getting married. All of this is concerning to me. And having this AI outlet that people have now it's worrisome. I think it's a real problem and it could lead us in
a really bad direction. There was a clip that circulated on X of Mark Zuckerberg talking about just this issue about how AI could replicate friendships, and he was kind of talking about it in a positive way, about how it can combat loneliness. Let's roll the clip and I'll discuss it.
The personalization loop kicks in and the AI just starts to get to know you better and better. I think that will just be really compelling. You know, one thing, just from working on social media for a long time is there's the stat that I think is crazy. The average American, I think has I think it's fewer than three friends, three people if they'd consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's
like fifteen friends or something, right. I guess there's probably some point where you're like, all right, I'm just too busy. I can't deal with more people. But the average person
wants more connectivity connection than they have. So you know, there's a lot of questions that people ask of stuff like Okay, is this going to replace kind of in person connections or real life connections, And my default is that the answer to that is probably no. I think it it it, you know, I think that there are all these things that are better about kind of physical connections when you can have them, But the reality is that people just don't have the connection and they feel
more alone a lot of the time than they would like. So I think that a lot of these things that today there might be a little bit of a stigma around. I would guess that over time we will find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable and why the people who are doing these things are like why they are rational for doing it and like and how it is adding value for
their for their lives. But but also I think that the field is very early, So I mean, it's like I think, you know, they're a handful of companies and stuff. We are doing virtual therapist, and you know, there's like virtual girlfriend type stuff. But it's it's very early.
So I get what you're saying that people are hungry for friendship. They're not getting it. Here's outlet for those people. People want to have fifteen friends, he says, but they only have three. Maybe maybe they have three, maybe they don't. Maybe they have fewer than that, so maybe they could turn to AI for that need that they have. But no, no, you can't. If you have three friends and you add AI, you still only have three friends. The AI is something
you spend your time doing, like scrolling. I mean, we don't say Instagram is your friend because you spend two hours on at a night before bed scrolling videos. The AI could feel like a friend sometimes, but it's not because a friend can take in your mail when you're away, or remind you of a funny experience you had in high school, or make you laugh by saying something ridiculous, or go on vacation with you. This idea that oh AI will soon do all these things too, that still won't make
AI your friend. AI will not be sad when you die. AI I will not miss you when you're gone. You get no actual feeling, no reciprocation. You get just the simulation of feeling and know people are lonely and this feels like, well, it's something. But just like online dating is only useful when it translates to real life dating,
AI can never become something real. And every minute you spend talking to let's be serious here yourself alone in your room is a minute you don't spend out there in our big, amazing, beautiful world with real people who exist even when you're not typing anything to let them know what you'd like them to say. It's important to tell your children real is better. Real is the only thing there is. Thanks for listening. Coming up next and interview with Curtis Helck. Join us after the break. Welcome
back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Curtis Helk. Curtis is managing editor at NewsBusters. Hi, Curtis, thanks with you. I'm so glad to talk to you. I love NewsBusters. How did you get into this world?
Yeah?
So, I think my first kind of peak was actually when I was nine years old. I was in third grade, and it was that was in peak, yeah, two thousand presidential election. And you know, just as a little kid, the notion that my parents explains that there'd be an election and then then there would be a president when you wake up the.
Next morning, and then there wasn't. Right as a kid, you're like, you know kind of what you deal with that.
So my teacher, uh, missus Luck and Ball. You know, we all have those teachers who really change our lives, and she did. My third grade teacher, she set me on a special assignment. The American Presidency exhibit at the Smithsonian had just opened, and she sent me on a project to cover pick four or five presidents. And so I picked these really obscure presidents like most.
Do you remember who?
Yes, I did Gerald Ford, John Tyler. I think I did Chester, Arthur or Garfield.
But then I did take FDR as like the more well known president. And so that was kind of got piqued my interests but really set me on the course.
Carol was.
The next year was nine to eleven. My birthday is nine to eleven. Actually, wow, So I turned ten years old on that day and I think, like a lot of people, even adults who probably didn't pay attention to the news very much until then. I know, my wife has said that was when my father in law got cable, because.
I didn't have a TV, and not until people.
Were I mean some people were news junkies and they were really.
Invested in cable even then in its semi infancy, but that really changed things.
And my dad.
I'm from Leicester, Pennsylvania, and so a couple hours outside of New York, but far enough down. My dad who did search and rescue on the side looking for lost children, Alzheimer's patients, that kind of thing in the wilderness. He actually was sent up to Staten Island to go through debrief that was hauled over and he and his friends were there for a few days looking for remains and personal artifacts.
So between those two events.
That really got me interested in the news, wanting to watch the news how it's made. I started actually reading NewsBusters in probably middle school at this point, so I'm a big fan of the work that I now do well before that.
So so that was probably two four, two thousand and five.
Yeah, it's funny because that two thousand election is also what radicalized me. I looked at a little back of the envelope Matt as we were talking. Though I was not ten at the time, I was in my early twenties, and I sought out other Republicans after that happened, because to me, it seemed very obvious that al Gore was trying to steal the election. I was a conservative, but
I didn't care about parties or whatever. But I felt like I needed to go find people to talk to about this because I thought I was losing my mind. I was like, this is the most obvious thing ever. George W. Bush won and they're trying to steal it. So yeah, that was the moment for me too. And then obviously nine to eleven, almost a year later, was also a big, huge event in my life. I was in New York at the time and I didn't have a TV, and I watched it all happen on the
early blogs. I watched it on instapundit for example, early early internet. So yeah, it's interesting. Do you go back to Pennsylvania a lot?
Yeah, my wife and I My wife is from there too.
Actually we met down here in the DC area, but she's from Lynnetts, Pennsylvania. So we both go up fair amount, probably once a month, once every six weeks. Most of our family is still there, cousins, aunts, uncles, her sister's in New Jersey, but my brother's there. Yeah, we're a
lot of our family is still there. We hope to one day move back there, but right now working here in DC, and my wife works at a museum in DC as well, So that feel too kind of limits you a little bit Topaci's in terms of your options.
So yeah, it's a great place.
Do you have a beat at NewsBusters or do you cover all kinds of stuff?
So in my almost eleven years, I've covered all kinds of things. Primarily it started out as the evening newscasts ABCCBSMEC because that's the basis for a lot of our studies that listeners may see. And I also covered everything into cable. I then watch Chris Matthews every night once they became managing editor.
That was something.
Yeah, and and so towards the end of the last Obama year with Josh Ernest, I started taking interest in the White House Press briefing because there would be moments when reporters would ask about certain things that were in the news that weren't then being covered on the broadcast at which repair was covering them on Fox but nobody else was, and so that got me interested. I'm like, why should watch these on a daily basis? So with the advent, then if the Trumpet first Trump administration and
Sean Spicer, I started watching every day. I started watching and consuming that every day before even Jim Acosta really made himself known to the country. So I've been on that beat ever since, and that's my main project. You know, knowing who the reporters are in the room.
It's fun.
I've been told by different people over the years that people in the room definitely care about what I tweet. Ye they noticed when I tweek their question and when I write about them, and they wanted they want to be noticed. And I think I probably, unfortunately, maybe to their detriment with their bosses, it helps probably humanize conservative media a little bit.
That I'm a guy who's called balls and strikes before.
Yeah, absolutely that there are certain moments, there are certain single, singular days, like at least in the Biden administration, where you know, I would watch a press briefing in the press would do their jobs for that forty five minutes to an hour that the questions from Fox news to the New York Post were exactly the same and just as tough as those from ABC, CBS, NBC, and so I think it's helped the NewsBusters readership see too the way the biased media work as well, that it's not
that for some of them it is entirely partisan and they see the world completely differently than us. But I think it's shown that it least for some of them, it is a conscious choice. It is a conscious choice to engage in what they cover and don't cover on a daily basis. So I found that particularly rewarding, and to in my tweeting just tweet the know who the reporter's name is. And I think people appreciate that versus just reporters right right.
Yeah, again, everybody wants to recognition what does the average American normy, you know, who doesn't follow this the way that we do not know or misunderstand about the White House briefing room.
Yeah, that's that's pretty that's a good question. I would say that there's definitely a process too. I think Americans have learned a lot more with the AP situation in the in the role that the AP plays kind of as the gatekeeper for when briefings end.
And you were talking about the ap situation, just so like a fill in my listeners, it's it's when they refuse to say Gulf of America and they.
And remove them from impoval.
From the press pool.
Right, but they still participate in the White House press briefing. But you know, because traditions said so, they always start the questioning, so they set the agenda and then it usually goes to the front row. But what Caroline has done is go around the room. And I think that's something that I don't I probably don't think a lot
of people may have considered or thought about. Right, there was kind of this unofficial way of doing things for a long time, but now it's completely changed where Caroline, you know, and Kaylee did this too, and Sarah did as well on the first arm nization. Yes, obviously you're gonna get to the big TV, but there's a lot of people in there. There's there's dozens of people that cover the White House day in and day out too, and they've got plenty of valid questions too about all kinds of things.
So they sometimes have more listeners, followers, you know, viewers than the major networks at this point, right.
Yeah, Yeah, the New York Posts, Daily Wire for sure.
Yeah, a few others. They definitely have more readers. The Daily Caller, so yeah, bringers, The Caller, Mary Margaret, the Daily Wire, Stephen Nelson at the New York Post.
They do incredible jobs representing.
Their viewers and readers, which number, you know, at minimum equal to number, if not greater than some of these broadcast networks on a daily basis.
Yeah, So why should it be only the broadcast networks that get the questions? And I think Americans understand that there is a new kind of media that has emerged. It's not even that new anymore. Right, It's like podcasts and I wouldn't say blogs and that type of things. It's been at this point, you know, a decade plus.
It's not like it just came out last month. So it's interesting that they're getting a chance to actually ask the questions and get to a different conversation than the news media might want to have.
Yeah, they can still coordinate their questions and stack their questions. My boss, Tim Graham was the White House correspondent for World Magazine the first few years of the Bush administration under Ari Fleischer, and he saw that up close too, that reporters could clearly were lining up their questions and considering what each other was saying. That to the point it almost seemed like it was scripted ahead of time.
So you know what we see now is, you know, reporters can still ask their questions, Caroline still calls on them. It's not completely being shut out. It's just that she's mixing in different viewpoints. And I think to the misnomer that people might have too, is the conservative reporters thus far are asking tough questions. You know, Sager and Jetty who you speak the Daily Caller Now he's on his own independent breaking points with Crystal Ball, former MSNBC host.
He asked about Thomas Massey when President Trump called for Thomas Massey to be primaried a few weeks ago, and you know, he pointed out all of these things. Thomas Massey is in support of and locks up with the president, but not on spent a spending bill. So why call for him to be primary? You know, that's probably not a question Carolyn Lovett wanted to be asked, but.
He asked any softballs, Yeah, exactly, or Mary Margaret.
Last week, the Daily Wire asked about Hey, so the Supreme Court draft.
Opinion, Dobb's opinion leak.
Is the Justice Department interested in this because there's still no answer these many years later?
It's interesting.
Yeah, and so you know, liberal media, legacy media may think this is a very niche issue or not, but it's not. It matters to a huge.
Their voice is heard generally in that room. Yeah, Mary Margaret's been on the show. She's fantastic, And yeah, I love that she asked that what would you be doing if it wasn't this, If there was, what would be the plan be for Curtis?
Yeah?
Actually weather was is something that I that was my two That was my other track that I was interested in meteorology.
I there's a picture.
Of sane job like Fox. Yeah.
Yeah, my mom has a picture of me in my playpen watching the Weather Channel, the weather on the eighths the nineties graphics. I mean, people can probably hear this and they're see it in their heads like that just just completely you know, it sucked me in and so I always just again it's part of I guess curiosity about the world around me and extreme weather, how nature can do this or do that on a dime, is just just fascinated me. Math has been a little hard
for me growing up, still is. But so that would be a little difficult because I very quickly learned, you know, involves chemistry and physics, and he got a new geometry and all these things.
Yeah, that's too much.
I try to put that to the wayside a little bit once I got deeper media in college.
Yeah, media it is.
Yeah, that's a lot.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitch Show. What do you worry about?
Elf?
I think always my greatest fear is being alone. You know this, Carol, And this is something.
That I I talk about.
It still my pin thread on Twitter talking about my battles with depression and suicide. And it's coming upon ten years since that really first came up. I think that's one of my greatest fears.
I think I think we all want.
To be accepted, and I don't necessarily always care what people think about me, but just knowing that I have friends, I've always been one of those people that just has a lot of like acquaintance.
I just know a lot of people.
But in terms of like world yeah, but in terms of like close close friends, you know, it's tight or die. It's all That's always been a struggle for me over the years. So that's something that.
I think in the background my mind, it's always something that I really really worry about.
Credit therapy, you know, the Lord, and a lot of different circumstances God moments in my life over the years.
But that is probably.
Something that you know, when I'm like having a really bad day or really struggling, that's something that that that hits me.
That thread was so powerful. I think you gave voice to what a lot of people feel and that comment about you know, having close friends. It is an issue that I feel like comes up on this show a lot. I have people write into me a lot about how to make friends or how to get closer to people. It's tough, it's really tough, and it's it's getting tougher with the phones and the fact that we're you know, kind of a part. But it's so good that you are aware of it and see it as a problem.
Whereas that I feel like I hear from a lot of people who are like, I don't have close friends. That's fine with me. It's good that you're like, you know, invested.
In it, name it in putting your putting a finger on it.
Yeah, And that's one of the things about COVID that just continually aggravates me. The social isolation that created it exacerbated it. It was already there, but it just made that even worse. And it's just the epidemic of loneliness in this country.
That's right, And I just think where we have to like identify it and do something about it, otherwise it will obviously spiral. What advice would you give a sixteen year old Curtis help.
That it's going to borrow a Dana Perino book. It's going to be okay book title, It's going to be okay.
I in high school I struggled a lot with acceptance.
I was kind of a drama queen, drama lama of sorts. And I think I worried too about friendship. That kind of that point that I was just talking about that really continued to grow and that it wasn't just that. I realized it wasn't just me years later, so I would tell myself, it's not just you that you're struggling, or just because you're struggling to make friends at this high school. You know, you go to the next high school north of you, and you'll make lifelong friends.
Yeah, you know, I didn't know.
Almost like how I met your mother's situation. My wife was living her life. You know, we briefly. I ran track for a few years. She was a D one athlete, but we were at the same meets. I didn't even know it, team football games. Our teams played each other. She was there, I didn't even know it. So I think I would tell myself that, yeah, that everything's going to be okay, and that, like you're, the insecurities and struggles that you see in yourself and others are valid, and that your hard work.
Will pay off.
It's because, as your band director tells you, and it is true, someone is always watching you in the best way possible.
Love that How did you and your wife meet?
We met online? We met online through uh yeah, through Hinge during COVID, And.
All the people have successful stories in places like Hinge. Because a lot of what I hear is not success.
Yeah yeah, she's uh yeah, that's her friend made it for her. I a few months earlier. I'd been on doing that for years and years and years, all sorts of struggles and you'll learn a lot about people.
And by doing that for a while, yeah, like I did. But that's that's how we met, and we have a lot of the same friends. We learned.
Her parents know even more people, which is crazy. So they're about twenty minutes apart from each other. So so yeah.
It's yeah, you definitely have how I met your mother situation. Would love to like see how you guys actually, you know, just walked by each other at the meets or you know, saw each other at the football games, but didn't really realize it at the time. Do you have mutual friends or anything back in Pennsylvania.
Or yeah, we do?
You do?
Yeah, it was crazy.
I knew some of her friends at Penn I met a friend of hers at Penn State. One of her teammates from track went to Penn State, and yeah, it's it's crazy.
I knew a person from this thing.
And that's just what makes you know, just life so beautiful it is, and particularly our area I just think is really special, Like stir is such a very special place. It's a really good place to raise a family. Fortunately, a lot of people from out of state have moved in, so we kind of have that problem. Yeah, but like they want to get rid of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, we're fleeing higher taxes, but bringing our policies with that issue.
By and large, it's still amazing place, outstanding schools. No, that's why all my family's still there and my brother's there.
I love it. I'll have to visit. I don't think I've ever been to Lancaster. It's is it homage country?
Yes, that is homage country.
But the misconception Carolly people have is that it's not all farmland.
There is a Leicester city.
With you know, an art scene, a lot of restaurants, and then Lyditts. Pennsylvania is famous, always comes up in one of those best small town America blogs that people bring up to.
All Right, I had Selena Zito on the show, so I also have a Pittsburgh trip in my future. But I don't think those two are anywhere near each other.
Right, No, I was gonna say that I.
Feel like about as far away.
Like.
The one thing Selena and I would have in common is talking about the grind of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, you know, just time on the pl she takes the back roads so exactly it's the best reason to avoid it because the company is just so much better.
But yeah, it's uh wait.
Yeah, Well I've loved this conversation. I've loved getting to know you a little bit and us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Yeah. I think.
Do something nice for someone, or reach out to someone you haven't reached out to in a while. I think that is just so important.
I try to do that.
It's always something like I wish other people did for me, Like to just hear from someone that you had to hear phone in a while. I think it's just really powerful. And do one nice thing for yourself every day, whether it's you know, go to Barnes and Noble once a month or something.
Yeah, just touch her books, yeah.
Yeah, Or go to Starbucks and get that seven dollar drink once in a while. I think I've learned through my mental health journey that coping mechanisms are just so invaluable.
They are literally life saving.
Just so just do one nice thing for yourself, and first for yourself and for someone else.
Love it. He is Curtis Holp. Check him out at NewsBusters. He has such an amazing x feed. He really covers so many different things. Thank you so much for coming on, Curtis, Thanks Errol, thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.