Hello, and welcome to the Carol Markowitz Show on the Clay and Buck podcast network on iHeartRadio. One of the things we're going to be talking about a lot on this show is how we're lied to about marriage and kids and generally about family life.
There was a viral video on TikTok recently.
Now I'm not on TikTok, I'm on Instagram like a grown up, and so I see the tiktoks as reels three weeks later.
But I saw this one and it really stuck with me.
In it, the girl is accepting an engagement ring, and as she pushes her finger through the ring, it flashes to her.
Life becoming one of drudgery.
She's doing laundry, she's washing floors, she's rocking a baby, and when she takes her finger out of the ring, it's back to her regular life. The ring is what locks her into this terrible, difficult life. So the conversation around this clip is that some people believe it's anti marriage propaganda from China, and maybe it is. I should ask my EXCIA friend Buck Sexton what he thinks. But
I have a few thoughts overall on this clip. So, first of all, does this woman not do laundry or clean her house currently.
I remember single life. It was a lot of doing.
Laundry alone and making my bed alone and cleaning up alone. Now I do the majority of the housework, but I also work at my job a lot fewer hours than my husband does at his, and I absolutely have help from him, like, Babe, can you put the clothes in the dryer? Babe? Can you unload the dishwasher? Yes, we call each other babe. But two, it's interesting that people think this is propaganda from China. Now, why would China
want to discourage Americans from getting married. Aren't they afraid of independent girl bosses and fifty year old men who act like they're twenty in the club. It's believable that a video like this would come from an adversary because deep down, no matter how many videos Chelsea Handler puts out on how much she loves sleeping alone, we know that marriage is.
A worthy goal.
Couples who are married are more successful, they make and save more money, they live healthier lifestyles.
There's just an array.
Of benefits to getting married that are not debatable, and that maybe China doesn't want our people to have there's also just, you know, being around someone you love and who loves you and wants to make you happy. It's all very nice. I can tell you that I bought into this lie in my twenties, before I started dating my husband. I never wanted to get married. I used to wake up in cold sweats having had a nightmare that I had gotten accidentally married.
Somehow.
I was immature, and yes I was dating the wrong people, but I also believed that marriage was the end of life. Kids were so boring. I did not want to be boring. I wanted to have an exciting life. You know, there's that line in the old movie when Harry met Sally when she says that they always talked about how they could fly off to Paris on a moment's notice, but they never actually did.
That was me.
I wanted to be free and available to fly to Paris on a moment's notice and.
Listen, while I had a good time.
In my single days, stuff like that really didn't happen. I'm much more likely to take a trip to Paris today, and it might not be at a moment's notice because the kids have a lot of sports. The lie is that marriage and family are the end, but it is a lie. Stability and family life opens doors to happiness that were not open before. Doors you might not even
know exist. You're going to be doing laundry and washing your floors with or without your spe may as well have somebody with you through the drudgery and the trips to Paris. The other lie is that you have to pursue your career before settling down, and this lie is often specifically sold to men. This is absolutely backwards. When you have a comfortable home, when somebody loves you and takes care of you, it's a lot easier to do
your job and pursue opportunities. Married men make more money than single men, and this is a fact.
It also just makes a lot of sense.
The guy's wipe being on Tinder every night just isn't going to have the same focus as the man who has a family to support.
But it's true for women too.
A pupil in twenty twenty one found that coupled women were making more money than single women for the first time ever. They were out earning their single counterparts by quite a bit. And I say this all the time, but I've never actually met a woman who didn't get married because she was too focused on her career. I
know that that trope exists. I have heard it many times of the busy career woman who just forgot to get married, but I literally don't know her, and I have met quite a few people along the way, because let's be real, meeting the right person is often also the luck of the draw. You have to be open to it, yes, but there's some luck involved. As I said earlier, I didn't want to get married when I was in my twenties because I was deathly afraid of
having to spend my life with the wrong person. I know that it was luck and timing that led to my husband and me getting together, but it was also discarding the bad ideas that had taken hold in my mind about what marriage is or is not. If you're a single person, whether a man or a woman, and you're listening to this and you're thinking, I get it. I know marriage is the best, but I haven't met my person. Know that I understand. I totally get it.
I see you. I'm rooting for you. I know it's not easy, and I hate that you get criticized for being unmarried. I hope that the advice that I will offer in later episodes will help you in your search, and I hope that you do find your person because it is something great and I want you to be a part of it. My final comment is that it's very hard for people to see their lives in the future, and this is partially why they're susceptible to the lie
that marriage is the end of the fun life. The guys hanging out with their friends on a Sunday watching football and playing video games, or the girls brunching post college and the big city. They can't imagine a time when one by one their friends will pair off and that is what will happen. They imagine that these fun
times will last forever. So while I do think again that luck is involved in meeting the right person, there's also the people who discount the right person because it might not be the right time and they can't picture their lives beyond the current moment. I think that's where the current push to marry young comes from. It's about encouraging people in their twenties to try to picture their
lives in five to ten years. You're not going to be on the bean bag at Jimmy's house playing Madden eras do come to a close, and that's not a bad thing, but I think it needs to be clarified that sure, marry young if you've met the right person, don't marry young just to marry young.
We'll get more.
Into all of these ideas in future episodes, and I do hope you listen along. If you'd like for me to answer your questions or offer my advice, the email is Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com, and I'd.
Love to hear from you.
My guest today is my friend Buck Sexton, co host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.
Hi, Buck, Hey, Carol, how are you good?
Did you petition to make it the Buck Sexton and Clay Travis Show or no?
No.
I always liked to be the guy that everyone can count on to just carry my side.
The thing, I don't make any petitions, So I.
Wanted to ask you a little bit about yourself.
You know, I feel like I know you quite well, but I didn't know the answer to some of these.
So did you always want to be in radio?
Definitely, definitely not.
I was somebody who was a CIA officer because I had, you know, nine to eleven happened, and I just was one of those people who thought I was in college and I thought, how can I help?
And so senior year, I mean it happened.
When I was a sophomore, I was studying Midia's politics and things like that, and then senior year, the first job I applied for was with the CIA. Everyone else was like, I want to go to Goldman Sachs. I'm want to go to a kids.
And they're like, what do you want to do? Buck?
And it was a little weird because I didn't really I didn't tell anybody because I wasn't really sure if I was going to try to IA material right part of the CIA I was going to do. So I just sort of, you know, did my thing and then figured I'd go through some on campus recruiting just for the for the.
Experience, which was also pretty funny. And I got the CIA job.
So I did that for years, and then I did NYPD and Tellen's Division, and then long story short, Glenn Beck found me, like just found word of me and hired me and convinced me not to go to business school. That's that's about ten years of my life condensed.
Thanks Glenn Beck.
Actually, my very first time on TV was on Blaze TV with you.
So, you know, long long road to get here.
Were we nice to you? There was a lot nice. No, you guys were super nice. Yeah, it was you, It was Will Kine, it was se Cup. You guys were all super nice.
Good.
So you have the best, the biggest radio show in the country, and you know the let's say, you know, I think, so, yeah, do you feel like you've made it?
No?
No, I mean I think that every day I have to do a better show. I think that every day after a show, I think about what I could have done differently.
I think that in our business you have to.
You can really go astray and start to drive yourself a little crazy unless you really focus on the work. And you know, there's a lot of noise and you know, a lot of things going wrong in the background of media all the time. But ultimately, I just try to serve Russia's audience every day because I still it's you know, an audience that rush built over thirty thirty plus years. So no, I mean, I'm writing a book right now which is has gone from being exciting and fun to
a little bit overwhelming too. Now it is like I feel like I am because I'm I don't know, thirty thousand words into it maybe so you know, get and it feels like I'm breaking like rocks with my bare fists.
Every day. I'm just like, make this stop, make this stop. So yeah, no, I don't.
I wouldn't say that. I feel like I've made it. I feel like I've got more I've got to do every day.
So as somebody who just wrote a book for the first time in the last year, I have to tell you it only gets worse. You're like in maybe the honeymoon period if you're still writing, editing.
Is really well.
I mean, I'll just tell you this. You know, this is something that things get bad. I don't know how much.
People really know about this, but very I should say very few, but most people in the news commentary space don't actually write their own books. And when you meet with publishers, if you have a platform that can sell the book, they're very and this is just a true across the board publishers.
They'll be like, hey, I mean, do you really want to write it yourself? You really?
Are you sure about that? Because like we can get someone that sort of comes in and you guide, and you know, yeah, And I mean I always insist said that I would do the book writing myself, And now I see why a lot of people are just like, I'm going to pay somebody else to do that for me.
Well, just to give you an idea of our different levels of fame. You get asked whether you want to write your own book. I get asked to write other people's books. So, but I've never done it. I you know, I just not not that there's anything wrong with that, but I just, you know, never took anybody up on that offer.
So what's it like to lead a public life?
Like?
Do you get recognized a lot? Do you like it?
It's funny? I don't really, I don't. I don't feel like a public person at all. I don't really. I don't ever think of myself that way. So it does.
And unless you're in the conservative media space, I mean, some people, you know, I've done Bill Maher a couple of times.
I mean, there's some stuff I've done that's a lot.
I used to work at CNN, so there are people who are not just conservative who would somewhat recognize my face. And I am told by people that apparently I do not age and I do not change. So there is that I look the same many many years now into this.
Although I don't have a beard anywhere.
I don't know Carol, do you Carol knows my wife Carrie very well?
What do you? What do you think of no beard? Are you?
I mean, team Carrie? What does she want?
Team Carrie says no beard?
So then no beard. It's easy answer.
So yeah, so that she got Obviously she got her wish.
But it's kind of funny because people in the audience will like weigh in very heavily one with the other on this, and I'm.
Like, whatever you do, look super young, thank you.
I mean, you know, whatever the wife wants is what I'm going to do. I'm I mean, I'm in my forties now, this is like it's real. I'm gonna I mean, I'm an adult human person, which is crazy.
So anyway, where was I to switch to?
You know, a related topic? You got married and the week.
Did I wait? Did I answer? You asked me a question? What was the question?
I feel like, like leading a public life, I think, oh I did? I was I also going to say, You're like, oh, I don't get recognized that much. But I have been sent drinks for free because I was sitting next to you, So you know, well that makes me happy.
That's like a really good thing. That's a really good thing to hear.
I would say this people when they know you from radio, because they spend so much time with you, because radio is a long form and it's a daily thing, and you really build a relationship with the audience. People who know me from radio and they reckon sometimes actually recognize me by my voice instead of my face. Like this is happening with like uber drivers and different cities I'll visit, they'll kind of like look back and then you know,
they'll say, wait a second. But people that know you from radio want to hug you, and just like they'll ask me, like how Carrie's doing, you know what I mean.
They're just like they'll jump right into it. There's no TV. You do Fox. I've done Fox. I used to do CNN.
It's a little more like I think I saw you when I was on the treadmill recently. You don't even it's a different kind of a recognition.
Right, yeah, all right, so are you guys getting married? Radio?
I think people really feel like they get to know you, so, yeah, you got married in the last year and that, you know, that's a bit on the later side. I would say, right, you just told us your age. I got married at thirty one. Also, you know, I think a little on the later side, especially as the conversation right now on the right is you should get married young, you should get married younger.
What do you think about that?
I mean, thirty one for New York.
City, that's like, no, I know, I thought I was babies.
Having babies, but totally standard.
I mean, that's like, I mean, I don't know any I don't think I had any like you know peers from you know, growing up in New York that in their late twenties early thirties, like that was when it started to happen.
I didn't know anybody who was married by like twenty five.
For example, at the CIA, I did way more common the CIA for people to get married really young. But you know a lot of them are from other parts of the country. Right, what would I say about getting married? I mean, I would say, man, i feel like I'm too early.
That problem.
There are so many things where I feel like I've experienced enough and know enough where I have a lot of worthwhile things to say.
On being married.
I mean it's been less than a year, so I'm still learning very much. I do think here's what I what I can definitely say. People that mortgage their their lives as a possible you know, family, you know, people that give up that for a job, are overwhelmingly not happy with that when when all said and done. I think it's true of men and women. A little bit harder for women because of the realities of of you know,
the biological clock that they have to work with. So I do think that people should If I hadn't made a career, made a massive career change switch cities, if I had been a little bit more in one place and a little more settled in who I you know, what I was trying to do, I would have I would have wanted to get married younger.
To be honest with you, you.
Know, if I could have met Carrie, that's it's ten years ago, I would have been happy to have done that. But the other side of it is, I'm I'm a person who thinks that, you know, it should be one and done. I mean, I know life is not perfect and whatever, and so I would have mind my thinking on it was I'd rather wait until I can get it right than sort of just give it a shot and maybe, you know, take two or three shots at this over my lifetime.
So absolutely, did you see that story you know about Representative Boubert.
You know, she gets handsy in the movie theater. Obviously we all saw that.
But there was a piece in Salon by Amanda Marquotte saying that the reason she's blaming her shenanigans the Bobert shenanigans on the fact that she got married young, and that this is the way that she's acting out because she didn't get.
A chance to do this when she was young.
And of course, you know, Marquote is the one who wrote that piece about the tyranny of the home cooked meal. So obviously take anything she says with a large grain of salt. But is there anything to that where getting married young would have kept you know, Bobert's hands or not getting married young she would have been behaving differently in that theater.
No, I mean, I don't, I don't really see that.
I look, I will tell you, I'm it's funny cause I'm talking to Carol like she's my interviewer, like Carol and I are friends and hang out in real life, so this is a little bit. It's a little funny because she's like, so tell me Buck of the things of which you think on these things. I'm like, yeah, like didn't we didn't I text you like five minutes ago about this offline anyway, I would say, uh, I'm very uh impatient with people who have bad manners in public.
It's it's actually a problem for me. Like in life.
It's a little bit of a challenge because I like to think that I'm very understanding and very reasonable with people, right and you know, I get it, Like, you know, I'm the one who if I can see, you know, a server in a restaurant is busting you know, his or her butt to do everything they can, but they're understaff.
Like I'm the one who tells. I'm like, hey, it's cool, I get I.
Can you know, I can see what's going on, like, thank you for doing what you can, don't worry about it, and I'll give them a big tap.
Like I like to try to be very reasoned about things. If you are.
Blowing vape, smoke or whatever in my face when I'm trying to eat, I become very unreasonable or if I've said I got a theater, right, Like, public rudeness is something that really bothers me.
So it's funny because people are all this is my.
Saying, people are all focused on like the handsy and the light and everything else. And I'm like, she was vaping in an indoor theater and people were asking her to stop, Like that's the part that really that it is interesting.
That that nobody's really talking about that part, like and apparently that was what got her kicked out. It wasn't the handsiness. It was like being loud and like taking pictures with flash. I mean I could just imagine you you know, in a theater where somebody's using a flash camera.
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, if somebody was like, you know, making out let's just say, next to me and it was getting a little you know, a little inappropriate, you know with it, I'm not going to like call security over all, right, you know, I mean, but if somebody like pulls out a cigarette and they just start puffing, like yes, like that's that's so it's interesting me because
that is what she should have been booted for. I also just think it's funny to watch so many people who are willing to justify like just obviously over the line, grotesque, highly sexualized, up in a whole range of different ways, who on this one all of a sudden they've turned into like Puritans, you know, on this one they're like, oh my gosh, there is there something in the criminal code we can go Stern.
Howard Stern is all offended by this and thinks that she should resign.
I have never been a Howard Stern fan, so this is so funny to me.
Yeah, I think what little I know of his work, and I you know, I occasionally would hear it a little bit back in the day in the nineties when I was, you know, younger and everything. I always just thought it was and I know, this is like, oh, you're such a nerd. I just always thought a lot of it was really distasteful and kind of mean.
And not fun.
I would have been okay with the crudeness if it made me laugh, but it never made me laugh.
If you strike me as.
In good I always felt like it was there was a level of the where where it was kind of like mean humor for malcontents, like people that want to see somebody humiliated and laugh at that it was and look, I'm not I wasn't an aficionado, but I'm just saying I've never been a fan.
And so now that he's like a lockdown free wants mask. Yeah, and you know it is trying to police Bobert and like come on.
Right, yeah, all right, We're gonna, you know, wrap up with some really easy questions like what do you think is our largest societal problem in America?
Wait a second, Wait a second. I thought this was like Rogan doing I get like three hours here and.
You know, you know, nice and fast, get all your best advice.
And what is our biggest our biggest societal problem is uh self obsession?
Do you think it's solvable?
Well, like any problem, the first step is understanding what the problem is. I think as a culture we have turned or what I actually say is it's actually not. There are the American people, and this I would compare to people all over the world that I've met interacted with. American people in general are actually quite generous and have a public spirit. That is, it's especially if it's not you know, for a lot of them, if it's not compelled, they're very generous.
With what they want to do for, you know, for their country.
And but I think the culture has become overwhelmingly self obsessed in a way where now anyone who wants to sort of make a good faith effort about how we can be better towards others or how we can grow and things like that's just all mocked and ridicule. Like it's just how famous can I be on TikTok? How much money do I have? What car do I drive?
How how hot do I look on Instagram? Like all of this is kind of overwhelming because people say, oh, it's always been like this, No, because now everyone's kind of everyone's a brand, right, everyone thinks of themselves as something beyond just who they are day to day and how.
They interact with people.
It's now what is the online perception and the mass media perception of who I am, even if you're not a public person, because everyone's kind of a public person now in some way. And so I think that that's created some really challenging and really kind of negative feedback loops and things like that.
So that's, for a broad stroke answer, that's not.
Joe Biden's ruining America, which I could also say, so.
Would the Buck Sexton plan, be get everybody off social media? Or what limit social media? Maybe limit how we use it. What's the like, you know, you.
Could do the ancient Greeks we're big into.
They were big in to moderation as a as a concept, right, you know, And and that's something that I think is important. I mean, I think whether you're talking about your your alcohol intake, your sugar intake, your just go down a list of all these different things, it's about balancing it. I mean, I saw recently there was a debate. I think Cernovich said something about sports, and all these people get upset because he basically says, you know, why are
all these adult met obsessed with sports? And I mean I largely agree with Cernovich as a side note, and I think it is obviously I think this has become crazy. And you know, yeah, if you want to watch a football game on Sunday, fine, like you know, relax, kick back, like I'll watch whatever TV. Sometimes I viewed as like playing video games. Want to play a video game, fine,
play video game. But if you tell me that you're going to spend all of Saturday and all of Sunday watching and betting on sports, and you're going to watch three games each day and you can spend like nine ten hours Like it's excessive, right, So I think, what was it? What was your initial pues? Now I'm running off into.
How are you solving? How are you selling the you know, self obsession.
Just to tell to tell people to try to achieve to a degree that can balance and balance and moderation and things, and you know, think about taking a lot. I think most of society can be boiled down to a short term versus, like the fight between short term and long term thinking, because most people assuming that they're capable of baseline long term thinking, most people know deep
down that that's going to be better for them. Yeah, but it's it's you know, dealing with those sort of initial impulses.
And you know, I wish I ate less chocolate. You know, I don't want to tell you.
I just I love a little bit of chocolate here and there, and sometimes it turns into a whole bar.
So that's my way of trying to solve things.
I mean, we didn't even get into politics that much, which I appreciate because these days, I feel like, you know, politics needs it really beats people down, and I wish it was. I wish it was a little more inspiring, more inspired. Instead, it just feels like we're all in the middle of like a Yeah, do you ever do you ever see a fight? I don't know what kind of school you went to, but do you ever see
a fight that in school? That at first was everyone's like, yeah, fight, fight, And then someone got like really hurt.
You're kind of like, oh, God, like you know, someone like hit their head on the ground or something.
Politician and that who's the which politicians are you talking about there?
Who's getting their head beat in?
I mean, I think there's a lot of them.
I mean, I think we're at a point now where also people, really people are really wanting to see their political opponents like locked up in a prison cell and and shut off from their families and to be treated like to be treated like a convict and all this stuff, and like this is heavy stuff, and it's becoming all very normalized, and it's like, oh, we just and this is not a good place for society to be in.
And and I don't know how that's something. I don't know how we turn it off.
I don't know how we get people to scale back a little bit and I'm somebody who for years has been saying, you know, we need to like throw down harder, we need to get more into the into the fight on some of these political issues. But I mean, we're now at a place where if the other guy doesn't get thrown into prison, half the country is going to be upset. And that's just that's just crazy. I mean, that's that should not a place to be.
Be where we are.
So I know I've taken up more of your time, look at and see, so we need to just see, you know, Carol a radio host.
We will all talk forever because there's something a little wrong with those.
You podcast Apparently I can cut you off at any time, or we could just keep this rolling, you know, indefinitely. But okay, my last question, and here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. Like, what's the one thing that you recommend people do to just better themselves better their own lives.
So it will sound I think tright, maybe a little bit, but I think it's very true. Protect your time.
I think people all allow themselves to get drawn into things, or they feel like they have to do something, or they feel like so and so wanted them. Your time is valuable and you need to You're the only one who can do it for yourself, right, I mean, unless you've got like some chief of staff or something, you're
some big important person. Learning to protect your time, I think is one of the most important and underrated skills that people have, which includes things like, you know, when you're invited to something and you don't think it's gonna be that fun and you would be better serve like working on a project ever the weekend.
Like don't go.
You love saying no to stuff like that.
I do love saying no to things that is.
This is also a fact of my reality in my life, Like I just if I'm not looking forward to something and it's and it's a like the craziest thing I come across all the time are people who spend their free time doing things they.
Don't really like. They're like, oh, it was.
So hot at like the golf course, and I was, you know, I was out there for like ten hours.
I'm like, why are you doing that?
Right?
Do something else? So protect your time is a mantra for me.
I think it's very important, and that means protect the time you spend with loved ones and family and protect some time to read.
Every Everyone thinks they read, Carol, most people don't read.
Yeah, I think that's true.
If you ask anyone if you read, they'll go, oh yeah. I'm not saying can you read.
I'm saying, do you make it a point like I fall asleep reading a book. I fall asleep reading a book every night. Now, I'm not saying I'm some huge yeah or something, but I just mean like it's a part of my daily I will read for thirty minutes before I go to sleep every night.
That's really awesome. I mean I used to do that and then I got married and that ended.
But yeah, well, when I.
Have kids, which you know, God God willing hopefully will be soon, I may be up, you know, reading bedtime stories instead, but I'll work on something.
Well.
Thank you so much, Buck Sexton, Thank you for being on my first episode. Loved having you on, and I hope you'll come back when your book is out.
Hopefully it's a good book. Thanks Carol too, Thank you.
So much for listening today.
I hope you had a good time, and I hope you'll join me next time on the Carol Markowitz Show. Thank you