Hey, it's Buck Sexton and you're listening to the Carol Markowitz Show on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton podcast Network.
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show. This is not going to be a political show. It was important to me that this show be on bigger topics and not just news of the day. But the news right now is extremely personal to me, and so I have to say something about it. On Saturday morning, Israel was attacked. I'm sure you've seen the horrifying videos and stories. I'm not going to go over any of that. I've barely slept since Saturday. The images, they really stay on
my mind. We're just getting to know each other on this podcast, so I wanted to tell you a little bit more about myself. I mentioned last episode that I was born in the Soviet Union. I'm Jewish, and that's actually how my family was able to get out. I won't go into the whole history, but I do enjoy noting that my family owes their freedom to President Gerald Ford. He negotiated for Jews to be let out of the Soviet Union because we were being persecuted for our religion.
We couldn't hold various jobs, live in certain places, and so on. I feel like people sometimes don't understand that Judaism is a religion, yes, but we are also a people. That's why I can take a DNA test and find out that I'm Jewish, but you can't similarly take a DNA test for other faiths and find out that you're Catholic or Muslim or something. So in the Soviet Union, we were Jews as our nationality. That's what it said on our papers. It wasn't like you could convert out
of it. Some of you might know Jews from the Soviet Union who live in America and refer to themselves as Russian, maybe not recently, but then you come to find out they were born in Ukraine or Belarus or elsewhere. But that's because we were never Russian or Ukrainian or Belarussian. We were just Jews. My family moved to Brooklyn, New York when I was a small child, and despite the fact that my parents were both atheists, because again Soviet I went to an Orthodox Jewish school for the first
eight years of my life. I mentioned that because I want to give you some insight into what little Jewish kids learn in Brooklyn.
All day.
We learned about peace. Our songs were about making peace, we read books about peace, We prayed for peace. I've been lucky in some ways because my ex Soviet world, and my politically conservative world, and my Florida world are all overwhelmingly pro Israel. So I never fear in speaking
out that I'm going to lose friends or something. And while I noticed the silence of some people I follow, I really don't have any one in my life arguing that murdering babies or kidnapping grandma's is just to be expected. And honestly, I know some Jews are angry about it, but I somewhat understand the people who are not speaking out. If you're not Jewish and you want to stay out
of it, I get it. You can feel disgusted by the images of dead bodies at a music festival but not take to Facebook to let your friends know how you feel. It's understandable. But I am Jewish and I can't stay out of it. I can't be quiet. Those dead people are me. I see my children's faces in the faces of the kids that were taken. I won't pretend otherwise. I can't. Of course, if you comment on every single other catastrophe around the world, and are suddenly
silent on this. Yes, we notice, and there are a lot of people like that, big time activists for every cause, who care a lot about everything except dead Jews. We notice. One of the things that is hard about this current moment is that people hear your support for Israel or just general opposition to rape and slaughter, and immediately imagine you're pushing a policy position. I'm sure there are people who want the US to get involved in Israel's fight.
I'm not one of them. I think Israel can handle her own business and will understand that you're being lied to. If you hear the Jews in general or Israelis in particular, are asking for American involvement, it's simply untrue. We're afraid right now. I always saw America as a safe haven for Jews, and I always referred to American Jews like myself as the luckiest Jews in history. But I'm not going to lie. It's been a tough few years. There was a moment where there were attacks on Jews every day,
and so many people rush to excuse them. It was happening in Brooklyn daily and even other Jews shrugged. I remember Kanye West said Hitler was right, and way too many people invited him on their shows to hear more about that. It hasn't felt great. If you have Jews in your life, understand that they are really going through something right now. None of us are functioning well. All of us are afraid. Good people have asked what they can do and how they can help. There are Israeli
charities you can support. I've listed some on my Twitter. You can check in with your Jewish friends, especially if they have family in Israel, which many of us do. Another thing is, if you go shooting, offer to take your Jewish friend. Silly as that may sound, many of us didn't grow up in a shooting culture, and many of us are very interested in protecting ourselves but don't
know exactly how. Listen. I want my kids to sing those songs of peace, and i want them to work for peace, but I'm also going to teach them how to shoot as soon as they are old enough. And I'm never going to cower to people who hate us for an identity we couldn't shed if we wanted to. So that's it. This is a podcast about life and this is what's going on in my life right now. Coming up next is an interview I did with Clay Travis, recorded before the war in Israel began. Join us after
the break. My guest today is my friend Clay Travis, co host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show and author of the best selling book American Playbook.
Hi Clay, how are you, Carol?
I appreciate you having me on. Yes, I've got my own copy. I hope you're enjoying it. It's supposed to be a fun read, and so I hope you're enjoying it. I hope anybody else who's reading it I am.
I haven't reached the part where you are insulting the Dallas Cowboys yet.
I'm always thinking, like, hey, can I write an entertaining book for people who might not otherwise be interested in a politics book?
And I like to think that I am done, So we'll see whether or not that continues to be a case.
I mean, I'm loving it, and you know, I mean, let's just get right into it. But you know, you mentioned in your book that you are a history nerd, and you know this is something that I did know about you already. I have two sons, and you know, one is a sports kid, you know, a superstar in football and nic name every player on every team, and the other one is super into history. I've really never seen anybody kind of merge those two interests. Do you feel like you're unique in that way?
Maybe? I don't know.
I mean, I've always been obsessed with sports and also obsessed with history my whole wife. When I was six years old, I don't think this is in the book, but what I wanted to do for my sixth birthday was go to the Alamo.
So my dad took me to the Alamo.
I wanted to go to every Civil War battlefield growing up and read everything about the Civil War. Also, and when you're kid, I think you think whatever you do is normal, and then you get to be an adult and you raise your own kids, and you're like, yeah, knowing everything about the Alamo when you're six years old is not like a normal thing, right, And also simultaneously knowing everything about let's say SEC football and Major League baseball when you're six.
But uh, I don't know where that all came from.
I was always a massive reader, and uh, you know, I would say maybe the reading thing was abnormal, but being obsessed with sports meant that I couldn't be any body on the planet who liked sports, and I felt like I had always that that dichotomy where you could have like sort of a super nerdy interest. As I know, I say this in the book because my wife still refuses to believe that she married somebody who went to Civil warst sleep away Camp.
And had kids with them, and.
Camp scholarship kid to Civil Wars sleep Away Camp is a different universe, right, But I do think that that that whole aspect to me kind of always felt intertwined, and I see it in my kids. My oldest, in particular, as a monster sports fan, was also great at debate, and whereas I was super interested in the Civil War when he was young, he was very, very interested in World War Two and he would read everything about World
War Two, and so I saw that. I don't know where that comes from, but I saw that a little bit in him, and I said, Okay, this kind of is in some way or reflection I think of me.
Wow, so you have the biggest radio show in the country. Did you always want to be in radio?
No?
I didn't.
I didn't look I growing up listened to sports talker radio as a young kid. And so when my dad would pick me up at school or whatever what we did, and we were driving home, and it's funny, I had my he just turned nine, but I had my eight year old in the car recently, and I was listening to sports s talk radio and he just reminds me a lot.
Of me as well.
But he said, Dad, can you believe there's a radio station where all they do is talk about sports, Like that's the best thing ever. And you know, like he'll just sit there and listen to it, and he knows all the players, and they got the fantasy football teams and everything else.
So I was.
Interested in radio, Like as a kid, I called into local sports talk radio to talk about whatever at the top. I mean I would sit on wait, on hold for forty five minutes an hour or whatever and be super nervous. So I was interested and aware of sports talk radio. But you know that I went to college and then I went to law school, and so I thought that
I would do something with the law degree. And I had what I would call a quarter life crisis where I was in my law firm and I was twenty five years old, and I just almost had like this panic attack come over me because I was like, oh my god, this could be the next forty years of my life. So I thought writing that I would My goal was to make a living as a writer, and in my mind, I knew writing and radio and TV.
I still think of myself as a writer, even though it's a small part of what I do on a day to day basis now.
But that was my love. So I would have said.
You know, if you've been talking to me when I was fifteen, and if you said, Clay, what do you want to do when you grow up, if you had told me that I could make a living as a writer, I'd be like, that's the greatest job in the history of the world. And I went and got a law degree, but I also got an MFA and thought that I would like to teach creative writing, that I would like to teach creative writing as the way in which that
I would make a living. And I taught creative writing at Vanderbilt, and I still think that I'm minored in creative writing in college. I still think that's probably one of the best jobs out there to live on a college campus and just get to teach kids writing, creative writing in particular. But I probably would have said at fifteen, what do you want to do if I could make a living as a writer.
Either.
I would have probably said fiction at that point in time, because I'd always been a huge reader. But that's probably what I would have thought I would do. I never really thought radio or television or anything like that was likely to be a career path.
Do you feel like you've made it.
So?
No? But yes in some ways. Let me explain what I mean by that.
About a decade ago, I was at a minor league baseball game, Triple A, which is one level below the major leagues, and I remember feeling like I was a Triple A media talent. I felt like I could be a major league player, but I was doing local sports talk radio in Nashville.
I was running my.
Own website at the time, out Kick, but I wasn't a major Yeah, I wasn't a major league player yet, but I felt like I had the talent to be in the major leagues. I feel like I'm in the major leagues, and that's great because I don't have to worry about paying my mortgage or whether my kids can afford to go to college. Like those things are great, but I still feel like I'm not at the top
level performance that I can be. So I feel like maybe I'm in major leagues and I still can prove that I'm an all star and so so I feel like I'm fortunate to be in the major leagues, but I don't feel like I've reached, you know, the apex ability of what I could could accomplish.
What's it like living a public life, Like do you get recognized everywhere you go? And like what you know, any any hate.
Or it's mostly positive where I live now. Remember I live in Nashville, and I think that's probably different than if I lived in New York or LA.
Maybe the reactions would be would be different.
But I think about it more in the context of my kids, because they're getting old enough now they recognize that Dad doesn't have a normal job, and like, I had a conversation with them the other day where I said, Hey, you know, you're getting old enough where you may hear people say things about what I do or what I say,
And I said, that's great. You know, I'm fortunate to get to be able to say exactly what I think, But I said, all I ever want you guys to do is judge me on dad, Like, don't let anybody else what they're saying publicly about anything.
That I do.
You know me better than anybody who's going to write about me. You live in the house with me. If I'm doing a good job as dad, which is my goal, then judge me on that. Everybody has jobs. The job you can be good at.
Or bad at.
The praise can come or go. You asked about whether I feel like I've made it. What I would say, and I bet you've seen this too, is media careers are very much like roller coasters. Like you're really high up and you think, oh man, everything's going great, and then somebody like you'll lose something and you go back down,
and then you climb your way back up. And then I've just seen at you know, I've been in media for twenty years now, you know, a generation, and I've just seen that happen so many times, where you think, oh, this is really great, and then you get fired and then work you know, as hard as again, and then.
You know it may not be anything that you did.
You know, like I started out kick because FanHouse shut down the site that I was at.
I loved it. I would have kept doing it for the rest of my life.
So I just think you have to The thing that I would say I'm proud of is I think I'm a pretty good dad. I'm not as good of a dad as my dad was. He was phenomenal, but I think I'm a pretty good dad. And I think I'm an okay husband. And I've been married almost twenty years, and I think I'm pretty good at radio writing and TV. And so when you ask, I think it's such a good question. Do you feel like you've made it? Here's
a way that I would think about it. If I could go back in time right now, would I change anything? My answer is no, because I'm very comfortable with where I am today. That doesn't mean I've not made a lot of mistakes. It doesn't mean that I'm not incredibly
flawed and imperfect like every person out there. But I'm very comfortable in my own skin and with where I am today, and I wouldn't want to change anything, Like I wouldn't want to not go to law school, or I wouldn't want to go to a different college, or certainly I wouldn't want to, you know, not get married. I got married at twenty five years old. Like, I wouldn't change anything. I would the only thing I would want to have had more kids.
I don't think. I don't think I'm going to have any more. I think we got three.
I feel happy that we have three healthy and happy kids right now. But you know, other than like, I would like to have five or six kids because I've got the ability to take care of them, and I think they're so amazing and so unique as I know, you know, as a parent.
But other than that, I wouldn't.
There's not really anything in my life that And I fought for us to have three, so I feel like I won that battle. My wife, I think, would have said stayed at two, but I would have had four or five or six if the timing had worked out a little bit different.
It's funny because in the book you say I don't think I'm going to have a daughter, and I was like, he's thinking about possibly having a fourth. Oh.
I say to my wife all the time, like you're not, you.
Know, I don't think. I mean, I mean that's a maybe.
It's a maybe for me, it's a no for her.
So so and usually mom wins in these battles because having a child for me is a lot less work than having a child for her, as I will readily acknowledge.
But but yeah, I would.
I would. I think it would have been cool to have a daughter and see what it's like to raise a daughter compared to having, you know, three boys.
I'm very happy to have three boys.
Thankful that I don't have three girls, trust me, but I would like to have had three boys and maybe a girl too.
All right, Well, I was going to ask you how long you've been married. You said almost twenty years. Do you have any advice for newlyweds.
Oh, that's a good question.
I mean your co host is a newlywed.
Have you.
Yeah. We've not talked about this with Buck.
I mean because Buck's in a unique spot because he didn't get married till after he was forty. And you know, men get so set in their ways that I think it's actually more challenging for men if they stay single for that long to get married than it is depending on how old your husband is. I think women are way more mature than men. And what I mean by that is like a lot of the whole marital process, Like I never really just thought about it that much.
Like I feel like, you know, for instance, the age at which you should have kids. My wife just said she's two years older than me. She was like, yeah, we're going to start trying to have kids now. And like, as a man, I think because you have the luxury of like, you could have a kid at sixty, right, Probably not advisable, but you could. Like so that the clocks are different for women than men, and so I would say women probably need, in my.
Opinion, to.
Be more linient with men, particularly early in marriage, because they're not what you want them to be.
What I have come to find out is, yeah, most men.
When they get married, in my experience, would love for their wives to stay the exact same forever, right, especially if you're getting married young. We would like, we would like, we love everything about you. We would like for you to be eternally the exact same way you are right now. Every woman basically gets married to a guy in my experience, with the idea being he's okay, but I'm gonna you know, like you women go into like, hey I'm going to rehab this.
We see potential.
Yeah, you guys invest in potential. Men invest in the reality of now, and so men are very comfortable I think oftentimes in the now, and women are very comfortable with the He isn't just kind of okay now, but in ten years he can be a good dad. I think he's gonna have a good future. Like that's what I'm saying about. You guys see a longer trajectory and range than I think a lot of men do.
And I'll give you an easy example.
Every man when they get engaged has no idea what the next step is. Every woman is like ready to figure out every aspect of the marriage within, like in terms of the ceremony and everything else where it should happen, what the time is, or you know, it gets on the phone with her mom and like it's it's like the whole apparatus is moving in place. Because you guys have all been thinking about it. I can barely even you know, like conceive of all the details that were involved.
So I just think women are way more involved.
I wasn't one of those women who had thought about what her wedding would be like, and that was a mistake because you can't figure it out in a short period of time. You need those years of planning, like which I realized, you know, I realized in retrospect I hadn't done. Yeah, so I you know, I think it's I think it's the right way to go. That women think about it for a long time before and then you get to the most expensive event of your life and you kind of.
Know what you're doing.
And the other thing I would say was I was very conscious of what I wanted. I wanted good looking and super smart. Those were my two criteria, right, and I think I went I hit a home run on that. But you got to I think a lot of men focus on the good looking and they don't necessarily focus on the like idea of hey, you're potentially going to be having children with this person, like I want, you know, the offspring to also be successful, so you know, and also thinking about.
What was not pretty dumb, Yeah, what kind of mom h your potential significant other would be.
So I would say two men focus less on the immediate Oh she's really pretty, I really like her right now, and more on okay, ten years, twenty years, what's the trajectory.
So the potential you want to think about than we do. M Yeah, so what do you think are like some of our largest societal problems in America, Like, what do you worry about for your kids?
Yeah?
So my thing that I hammer home to my boys, and I try to say this every time I go talk to young audiences is focus on what you can control.
I'm big on individual.
Responsibility, but also just the only thing you can really control is your work ethic. You can't control how the world around you responds to you, but I can control that. I work super hard every day. So I say, graduate from high school. These are minimum standards, by the way, but if every kid could do this, I think the
country would be far better. Graduate from high school, get a job, get married, don't have a kid until you're twenty five, white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight male female. If you do that, your poverty rate is zero, no matter how poor your family circumstances were for your upbringing, and then you can provide a better opportunity for your kids.
That would be my pitch.
My concern, and I write about this a lot in the book, is that we have allowed identity politics to completely take over our body politic. And what I mean by that is you'll often hear somebody say, hey, as a transgender woman. I believe, and I always think like, if you put your identity in front of your opinion, why should I care your opinions either a valid and a good argument or it's not. I don't care about
the things you didn't control. And I'm concerned that when we were growing up, because you're around my age, it seemed like what we were taught was most people are pretty similar, right, whether despite your background, your common humanity.
In America, most people are pretty similar. And now I think what we're often teaching kids is you're all very dissimilar, and that's because of things you didn't choose, as opposed to things you did choose, like the idea that that your race and your your your gender, to me are two of the least interesting things about people.
The things that you don't the things that you.
Don't choose are are are far more interesting to me, so far less interesting to me than things that you do choose. And I think we focus on identity over everything else.
So is that solvable?
Is that? Yeah? I think it is what.
I think we have to have a landslide election, and we have to have somebody who can speak to and I think we're starting to see it right, because the argument when Trump won in sixteen was oh, he's super racist and Republicans are doomed forever to only have white voters.
And then what's happened.
Hispanic, Asian and Black voters have actually become more likely to vote Republican in twenty twenty and in twenty twenty two.
Than they were before Trump.
Because I think the fundamental lie that Democrats and I should say left this because there's some Democrats who would reject this, but the fundamental lie that Democrats tell is that America is an awful racist place and that's just simply not true.
That brown people are dying to.
Literally every day black and brown people die trying to get into this country. If this were the most racist country out there, their decision to do that would make zero syd. So I think that's the fundamental lie that Democrats have brought into Then I think it's rooted in identity politics because this idea that all white men are evil. I used to joke and I still do make this joke visually, but like I pick the worst time ever to become a rich white guy for basically all of
American history. If you're a rich white guy like everything you were, like you the best person ever, and now I suddenly I was poor. My family was poor, you know, basically our whole life, and now I'm a rich white guy like that? How dare you be a rich white guy? You're you've done everything that's wrong with America. I'm like, I went to public school. I didn't even grow up in a part of Ashville.
And here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. What's what's the advice that you think people should follow to make their lives better.
I think it has to be that you completely own your own success or failure, and whatever you find that you have a skill in that you enjoy spending time in. I said, I had a quarter life crisis. Being a lawyer's not an awful job. My grandfather's worked in factories their whole lives. There are a lot of bad jobs, trust me, I know, and a lot of jobs that stink and also don't pay well, which is a double combo.
But I think if you can find something that you don't look at the clock while you do over time, you will win.
If you can find a way to do that.
I looked at the clock all the time when I practice law, I couldn't wait for the day to be over so I could leave and no longer be required to be practicing laws. I don't look at the clock when I sit down and write. I don't really look at the clock other than to make sure we hit time breaks. When I sit down to do radio, I haven't looked at the clock from this entire conversation.
That you and I are having.
That's because I enjoy it, and I think you can't fake enjoyment because over time, if you like what you do, you will be more successful at that than someone who does not like what they do.
So if you can.
Mirror your your advocation with something that you enjoy spending time doing, you're going to be successful in it. I also would say this, figure out. If you have a job, look and see what your boss's boss does. If you don't think that you would like to do what your boss's boss does, then you probably shouldn't be in that profession because what are you building toward what I think you know? Like in the law firm, I'd be like, oh, the name partner, Well, he just gets paid more to
do basically the same thing that I do now. I was in a small law firm, so I could see kind of what they did that wasn't for me. Doesn't mean I couldn't have been successful at it, but ultimately I would have never succeeded like someone who loved it. And I think the reason I've had success in media is because I genuinely love what I get to do. And the final way, by the way Carol, would be
when I sold out Kicked two years ago. I feel like I kind of won the lottery, and I think everybody sits around and thinks, oh, what would I do if I won the lottery? How would I spend my life? Like everybody has had that fantasy and everybody's played through it. That's the entire basis of why the lottery works as a business, right, It's that fantasy fulfillment. To me, the ultimate answer is I would wake up and.
Keep doing what I'm already doing.
If you answered that, then you are living a life that you can be. I think successful and proud and happy in And I felt like I had that experience where I woke up, Okay, I won the lottery. I've got money, I've got the ability to do lots of things. What do I want to do? Oh wait, I want to keep doing exactly what I'm already doing. I think that's why I ended up winning the lottery, because I had already worked myself into a place where I was so happy doing what I was doing.
Thank you so much. I really love that answer. That's some really great advice. I think our listeners should definitely listen to that. Thank you Clay for coming on. Loved having you, and please come back any time.
Well, by the way, you are killing it. I love reading your columns. You are super talented.
At your show.
You probably shouldn't expect to get praised all the times by the guests, but I am really impressed with how talented.
You are the work that you are doing.
The only negative thing I can say is that your poor Cowboy fan son is going to be miserable for most of his life because he's a Cowboys fan.
I really hope we play the Titans sometimes.
Well. Titans fans are definitely my courage.
Thanks Clay, Thanks so much Clay Travis for joining the Carol Markowitz Show. We'll see you again on Mondays and Thursdays. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.