Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Last week, JD. Vance got into this whole kerfuffle from an old video from twenty twenty one, where he said this quote, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does it make sense We've turned our country over to people who don't really have
a direct stake in it. He said the country was being run by quote, a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. I'm going to maybe write about the politics of the comment and the way that Democrats attacked him for telling them how to live their lives, as if they don't do that to all of us
all the time. But Vance went on the Megan Kelly Show and said that people weren't addressing the substance of what he said. So I want to do that here, especially since I frequently talk about what a societal and personal plus it is to have children. My thinking is that Vance's comments are absolutely right on the macro level. Of course, society is better off with people having children. Of course, people have more of a stake in society
if they have kids. It's crazy to believe otherwise. When I worry about Europe or specifically Britain, because the rest of the continent, you know, I feel less about But I've always loved Britain. It's a large part because they're not having kids. It does feel sort of shoulder struggy about the future because their birth rate continues to drop. Yes, they're not you know, super emotional people, stiff upper lip,
et cetera. But it feels very much like they're losing their culture and society to unchecked immigration, and very few feel like fighting back because what's the point. But on a micro level, what Vance said is insulting, and I fully understand that there are people who desperately want to have children and can't. There are people who don't want to have children but still care passionately about the country that will live on after they're gone. Of course, all
of that's true. I can think of many examples in my own life of people representing both of these things. It's funny that people have brought up George Washington as an example of someone who cared deeply for the country despite not having children. I use George Washington as an example for friends who are on the fence about having kids. I wish we had George Washington's progeny around right now. Vance was trying to target Democrats for not being the
party of families, and sorry, I fully get that. It was very obvious when Democrats did everything they could to not open schools during the pandemic. Randy Weingarten was one of the worst villains of that, and obviously she doesn't have kids. But again back to the micro level, some of my greatest allies in getting schools open were childless. Of course, we can't just assume that people without kids
don't have a stake in the future. Vance is a vice presidential candidate now, and his vision should be for the whole country. I'd love for him to cut out the micro. He insulted people who otherwise like him, and
that's a silly thing to do in politics. I'd love to hear him speak more about the macro, about how good it is for all of us to have kids, about how our country needs people to have families, and I'd love for him to get into the decline of marriage rates, because look, while kids are important, I'm most scared about the relationships that the younger generations just aren't having and find so much harder to find. One thing leads to another. Talk about the benefits of marriage and
kids will largely follow. Coming up next an interview with Justin Robert Young. Join us after the break.
Welcome back to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Justin Robert Young, national politics reporter and host of the Politics, Politics, Politics podcast.
Hi, Justin, so nice to have you on.
I'm very excited for a non political show.
I forced you to say politics four times in the first three seconds.
Well, so I was going to say politics, politics, politics. What's your podcast about?
Mostly model train building? You know, we try to diversify.
Yeah.
I came up with a name that was very memorable, but possibly the worst SEO decision that I've ever made in my entire life.
Hi, everybody's googling politics podcasts.
Sure, yeah, and that's the problem is that everything else shows up before my podcast.
I should have. I should have.
My second name was the Carol Mark Wood Show. So I'm glad that.
I used that because that would have been a problem. So we recently met for the first time at the southern border visit.
What do you think of that?
We're all great friendships begin Yes, a talent at the southern US border.
Yeah, the many.
Unfinished walls that you could just walk right around.
That was actually I feel like.
That's a story that doesn't get told enough. That all of the walls are extremely easy to penetrate, Like, well, the Trump Wall is like you literally could just walk around it because it's not finished, and I don't know how it could be finished because there's really nowhere they could go, because they explained to us right that there's nowhere that the wall can continue on to.
Yeah, that was something, you know, it was.
It was a really interesting trip and I'm glad that I did it because it showed that that problem is so small faceted. When you look at the wall and McCallen, you realize very quickly that America's number one trading partners Mexico, So you kind of the wall makes a lot of sense just to make sure that the money is coming in in this direction, and then anybody who would want to claim asylum would be going in another direction, which just makes sense. It makes business sense for a lot
of different stakeholders. The larger issue I think that we were explained and talked to a bunch of people is just that we have a broken asylum system that has been abused, and that's that's where I think we probably have more of a political issue that will be dealt with, you know, going.
Forward, we'll never be dealt with or won't.
And we'll just continue to have a problem and everybody will raise money on it for the rest of time.
That sounds more plausible.
Yeah, makes sense.
So how did you get into politics podcasting?
What was your background?
So?
I was a bright eyed young journalism student way back in the day, and I got a degree in Syracuse University at the new House School, and I was all excited to begin my career. I was a crime reporter initially, that's really what I wanted to do. And then looked at the landscape of newspapers, which at that point we were at like the final days of newspapers being a relevant thing in.
The world because the timing.
Yeah, so I graduate in two thousand and five, so we are right. I'm super fired up by the Internet and super fired up about blogging.
I look in the field and I'm like, eh, let's give it a couple of years.
So I decided to go and try a few other things in the meanwhile. And by the time that I got back to a position that I wanted to maybe re enter the matrix, everything was on fire. Newspapers were not moving in the position that I wanted to, and so at that point I pretty much began podcasting and blogging, and that kind of started right out of college. It was a horrifying financial decision for me. It certainly was cool among.
Us didn't make that horrifying financial decision, you know.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Pursuing our dreams.
We're so stupid exactly.
Now. The good news is is that now, as we talk in twenty twenty four, it might be investing all this time into the world of free entertainment on the internet might have been the best way to invest my time, as I can now make a living doing it. But boy, in the moment, as I was paying off my student loans, I really felt like a ding donk.
Yeah, most expensive mistake I've ever made is going to graduate school for politics.
You know, I what a huge error? Turned out nobody needed.
That, No, Yeah, thankfully I was. I was so disillusioned with college. As soon as I got there, the concept of finishing my undergraduate was was going to be an upset, which did happen only because I started working at the Daily Orange, which is a student paper that's independent of the university. But I just spent my entire time there actually learning how to you know, report and overseeing a budget and overseeing a staff, you know, actual lessons that
were applicable to my life. If I had only gone to class I, I really would have been a lot more.
Sad than I am now Now I'm happy, which is good.
So what do you consider your beat?
Like, what's what are you most covering?
Politics? Yeah?
So how did I get into politics?
I really kind of backed into it.
Politics was something that I have always been obsessed with. It's always been something that I followed. It's, you know, to.
Give my my druthers.
If I'm re reading a book, if I'm reading newspaper coverage, I'm always I've always been obsessed with politics and political history. And so I'm doing a comedy show that then turns into a one mic show. And I decided in the twenty sixteen election that you want to know what this is getting a little heated let me separate out the politics, so I can everybody can, we can have fun with this other thing, and I can just talk.
Politics on this other show.
I'll quarantine it, right, And it turned out that the audience wanted me. There was a lot bigger audience for me to talk about politics than there was for me to talk about news of the of the day. Yeah, and so it wound up becoming my main gig.
And I feel like you love politics, and I don't mean so. A lot of people love politics. I love politics, but I also hate politics. I feel like you don't have like a love hate necessarily.
I think you really do love it.
I really do, mostly because I don't think that they're are many things on the planet that are the same sociological experiments that we do once every four years.
Specifically, here in America, we have raw crush it up.
And snort it fast, and the furious style first past the post democracy on a level that nobody else in the world has, And so.
It's interesting.
The strategies are interesting to me, The messaging is interesting to me. And the competency of these gigantic machines that sort of battle out in front of us is endlessly fascinating, as is the history to it.
So a question that I ask everybody on this show is what is our largest cultural problem? And so what is it? And is it something that you cover on your podcast.
I don't think it's anything that I cover.
I do think that it is something that is exploited by politics, and that is fatalism. I think that America has a real fatalism problem and it is.
Well, let me let me rephrase it.
America's self loathing complex, I think is its greatest strength, especially strength.
Okay, I didn't think you're gonna say strength.
Okay, Well, what as much as I've traveled around the world, Uh, there's one thing that stands out, and that's America has its own faults, very front and center in its mind, and that goes across all political spectrums. We know what the problem is and we want to address it immediately, and that has been to our great benefit. I think it's been to our great benefit economically, technologically, and socially. We have we have benefited from our ability to identify
problems and go forward. The problem that I see is that there's two ways that you can handle it. When you identify a problem, fix it or wallow in it. And I think that in our modern world, we've wallowed in it a little bit more than I think is healthy.
And that's in politics.
You exploit that a lot because you need a problem to solve, so you can get people to donate money and go to.
The ballot box and hit a button.
But you should take some time off from that and think of why, how far have we come have we been working on this problem?
Look at that?
You know, I think we all see that in our own lives that sometimes you got to take a breath and you got to look at the road behind you and say.
Wow, we've walked a long way.
We should feel good about that without sacrificing the idea that we do have longer to walk.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
I think a lot of people think of Americans because it's funny you said, you say that we're self loathing. I just picture like people in Europe who think that we're like so obsessed with ourselves, like, yeah, well we
are self loathing. We're constantly beerating ourselves and we're constantly I think there's a sense in America that doesn't exist in places like you're, for example, that when there's a problem, it has to be solved, even if we don't end up solving it, which we don't, we at least kind of entertain that.
We should solve this problem.
And I don't.
I don't see that.
Some other countries necessarily have that. I lived in Britain for a while. They're not looking to solve any.
No, and that's we have such a self loathing complex that we go to other countries so if they can complain about us, so we can agree with them, right, Like, that's.
That's that's it. It's a fascinating, a fascinating thing.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, and it's hard to not be obsessed with yourself when you're an American when you go abroad and every news that you go to has like a fifteen minute here's what happened in America today, Yes, right, the way, that doesn't happen in America.
In America, it's fifteen minutes for the rest of you, Like maybe maybe you get a little bit, but.
It's a gigantic, gigantic block in any Western country, Japan or Japan not a Western country obviously, but a First World country, Japan, England, Italy, Germany.
Any place that I have been, they all have the same thing.
So at a certain point you do have to throw your hair back and say, oh my god, why are you so obsessed with me?
Was yours? The Mariah carry line? Though? Why are you so obsessed with me?
Why? Yeah?
Subsessed?
Well that was my first thought when the UK announced that they were having their elections on July fourth.
And I'm like, why are you so obsessed with us?
Like, God, it's been a while, you guys should really get over it.
Yeah, so do you?
Another question that I asked all my guests is do you feel like you've made it? You have a really successful podcast, you talk about what you want to be talking about your you know, self made right, It's it's a big thing.
Uh, you know, it's it's funny as I've thought a lot about you sent these questions, and so I've really wrestled with this and them.
So I'll tell you that I like that. I get a lot of shocked faces of.
People being like, what where did It's all my email? Actually?
Uh yeah, I'm going to say yes because I do believe that I have built something rare for now I think that we will probably see stories like mine a lot more common going forward. But I'm not a satisfied guy. I'm not somebody that that tends to rest well on things, and so there will always be a part of me that wishes I had plugged into the matrix that I had some buzzy you know, I had a a poster a Times pick any of them like next to my name at some point, just because those were the brands
that I was obsessed with growing up. But at the same time, whenever I get into my head of like, well, you know you can apply, like you know people that work in these places, like you could you could go work there, I'm like, yeah, yeah, but then I'd have a boss and I probably wouldn't want to do the things that they want me to do.
And so I talked myself out of it.
So on one level, I do think that I've got miles to go. I do think that what I do could be bigger and better, and I could apply myself more and I could do X, Y and Z. So I will, for motivational purposes say no, but to just point out that you should also take stock of your own life and appreciate what you have, I'll say, yes, that's yeah.
I like that.
Do you are you open about your own political views or do you just because I you know, I was thinking about this, I just assumed you were a libertarian because we were on a trip with a bunch of libertarians.
A bunch of libertarians here.
Oh, I don't know your political leanings.
Yeah, I don't identify myself as a conservative or a liberal commentator.
I will say that.
Identifying yourself as a libertarian is probably the most sato masochistic thing that you could do, because it just obligates you to have a lot of conversations with libertarians about what kind of libertarian you are, which, having just left their convention two weeks ago, I think I'm full for the next several decades of discussing exactly the font size of the L.
Yeah.
I talk openly about my opinions on issues. But I do think that there is a real worth that I can give to people by not identifying as a political as a conservative or liberal commentator, because what I want to do.
Is just be correct on how I'm seeing the race.
And if I say, oh, here's my opinion on or
like I'm taking I'm looking at this from a conservative perspective. Right, then I'm not providing to conservative listeners because conservative listeners want when something crazy happens, they want to listen to me and trust that I can read the polls, trust that I can see what fundraising is and say, yeah, this did matter, or I'm not If I say I'm liberal, I'm not really serving my liberal listeners because when something happens, they want to come to me and say, hey, does
this matter? Because that's the number one thing I get from either side is thing happens? Does this matter?
And I want to preserve my ability to do that for the listenership.
Because lots of podcasters, I would say that don't say what their political leanings are. But then you just know. And I find it interesting that I don't know yours. Like again, I just assumed you were, you know, cookie libertarian.
Yeah, and I I think.
You know, And I'm very i feel like I identify as a conservative, but I'm very aligned with libertarians.
They are my people. I go to their parties. They are a lot of fun.
So yes, you know, oh yeah and me too.
I I probably the closest I've ever come to identifying is anything personally would have been a libertarian when I was in my twenties and I was first reading Reason magazine the way that everybody gets into the libertarian drug.
Yeah.
I will say also that one of my favorite memories of that trip that we took down to the border happened literally on the plane there where we were all on the same flight down to McAllen and I was with Andrew Heaton, who does the funny videos for Reason, and you just pointed it, just said Brett Kavanaugh, Bret Cavanall.
He had no idea what I was talking about.
Like, so the joke is, you know, he had played Brett Cavanaugh in a video. So I have I have kids, they are fourteen, eleven, and eight, and like I want to get them into politics or at least understanding like political sides, and Reason makes it very easy. They have a lot of these very funny videos that explain a lot of issues very clearly. I don't always agree with them, but in general I just enjoy their content. And so my kids had seen him as Brett Kavanaugh for a
long time. We watched that video a few times. It's really funny, but he doesn't identify himself as Brett kataw He doesn't walk around being like I am Brett Kavanaugh, but I see him, so he was like where. I was like, Brett Kavanaugh is on my flight, and he was like, where where is he?
Yeah, I will say that walking around the Libertarian convention with Andrew Heaton is like walking around with Mickey.
Mouse as a superstar.
Right, Oh yeah, everybody, he might be the most popular person there, and when you get more than ten Libertarians in a group, one person being popular becomes a challenge because there's constant infighting.
But everybody appreciates.
Heat and doing stuff for reasons, So it was definitely very funny.
I went to conference a few years ago, nieces right, I wasn't sure I was saying it right, but I was with Michael Malice. Oh my god, that was like being with I don't even know Taylor Swift.
He was like he was mobbed. I was like, you're famous. Who even knew?
Like, yeah, yeah, he's uh he is definitely he's got.
If he were there, he would have definitely had a lot of a lot of attentions as well. But yeah, I mean, like, i I'm very glad, I'm always very happy. I'm secretly very happy when people can't peg where I come from a politicistrating.
I think it is it's actively hindered my career.
Really will say that I do think that if I were even if I just did exactly what I was doing. But I said, I'm the conservative who believes X or I'm the liberal who believes why that I probably would do better. But I don't think I would feel good because I don't really want to identify myself as either.
I have to tell you, in that graduate program that is the most expensive.
Mistake I've ever made.
They told us that you can't be an independent, like you have to be a Republican or Democrat. And I was the only Republican leading person in my class. Obviously it was NYU.
So but there was one liberty universe. Yeah, there was.
One girl and she was independent.
And they were like, you got to pick a stop Like, yeah, right.
Now, knock it off. There's there's no money there.
And that's that's the funny thing is, Yeah, I've talked to a friend of mine who is flirted with the idea of running for office, and she's very much an independent, and I was like, well, you got to pick you got to be the conservative leading Democrat or the liberal leaning Republican or yeah whatever, you guys.
Know somewhere in the center. You got to pick one because that's where.
The money comes in, that's where you get a ID, that's where you know, and just nobody.
Has the time to figure out what you stand for.
I mean they barely.
People barely do it. Like with candidates that they that they know everything about. They're not going to research an independent candidate and see which issues which size.
It's just I will say that that's one of the things that I very much have a a a very serious opinion on. In terms of journalisms. They do think that journalism is draft drifted into activism from a reporter level. You know, columnists are always going to be bringing the spice. That's fine, that's what there's there's a carved out niche for it. But reporting has either gotten activists in that you're searching out activist positions or lazy in that you are just taking copy pasta from an activist.
Point of view and pretending that it's the news.
And that's one thing that I want to if I do have a principled stand it is it's good to be able to say you don't know where I'm coming from, because at the very least you know that you can't discount what I'm saying. And there's a real value of that that I think has been eroded in journalism.
I really love that, and I think that everybody should be listening to your podcast, Politics, Politics, Politics, and here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. This is a podcast about life and not about politics.
Even though we.
Touched on it a little bit, touch, yeah, touch, it veers this way sometimes, you know.
So I will say this, like many people, I hit a certain level of rock bottom emotionally and physically during the lockdowns. I was in I know, you're in Florida now, right, but you're in New York. Similarly, I was in the Bay Area. I was in Oakland, so places that were very right. You know. It wasn't that you couldn't leave your It was just that society had decided to shut down, so even if you left your house, you couldn't really go anywhere.
At that point. And I was.
Overweight, drinking way too much, and very very sad. I had fallen off a scooter drunk and broken my hand. I just felt like, all right, we got to start making some decisions here that are going to like we can control what we're doing.
Let's go forward. And the number one thing, the number one thing that I found sleep.
If you are in a bad situation, any you want to improve anything in your life, and you do not go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, Like.
That's what else?
Because that makes so I started working out more. But before when I didn't have a set go to sleep, wake up schedule, it's harder to work out because your body doesn't know when everything. Everything gets built from the foundation of sleep, diet, your exercise, your productivity, everything starts. This is the ground level foundation of trying to get better sleep. Now I'm talking to you now, my firstborn
daughter will arrive at some point in August. This will probably be going out the window with Yeah, I will probably not.
Be able to manage my sleep in the way that I.
Was comes back.
Scare you it really People make too much of a deal about those early few months. Yes, you don't sleep for a few months, but then it all kind of evens out.
Yeah, and I'm holding on loosely.
That's that's really my philosophy throughout everybody that I've talked to. But yeah, sleep, sleep is the number one thing if you If you can figure that out, you've gone a long way toward making everything easier, making all the stuff that we think of as hard, including diet and exercise and productivity.
It makes it easier when you have your sleep on a rail.
I'm going to go nap right after this.
So he is justin Robert Young his Politics, Politics, Politics podcast. Where could people find your show? Where could they follow you?
Not only everywhere that you get your audio podcasts, including Spotify and Apple, but on YouTube, YouTube dot com. Slash at part of Politics Politics Now, a fully video show that only started about a few months ago. So we're very excited to bring that to you. The listener of the Carol Markowitz Show.
I love it.
Thank you so much for coming on, Justin, Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Markowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.