Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. During a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shack, the ex NBA star had on Jason Kelsey, who is retiring from NFL football after playing for the stinky Philadelphia Eagles. Sorry,
I'm a Cowboys fan. I had to include that Jason Kelcey is married to Kylie Kelsey and the two have been in the public eye more often recently since Jason's brother Travis started dating Taylor Swift and a lot more interest into the Kelsey family and their podcast and everything, so we kind of know a little bit about the relationship. On Shaq's show, Shaq was talking about his own retirement and he told Jason, quote, I made a lot of dumbass mistakes to where I lost my family and didn't
have anyone. I was an idiot. I lost my whole family. I'm in a one hundred thousand square foot house by my end quote. I of course clicked on the comments under the clips of these comments that he made on his show, and they were generally saying that Shaq cheated on his wife with like hundreds of women and destroyed their relationship. I assume that's true, and I assume that
that's what Shack means by the mistakes he's made. I've seen such an uptick in podcasts and just general kind of clips and information aimed at men telling them that if they're on the path to making money, then they'd be suckers to settle down with just one woman. It's such bad advice, and everyone knows that. Like one loser bro who insists that men are only as faithful as their options, implying that men with money should get to cheat, and any man not cheating just doesn't have the opportunity.
That guy is said, don't be like that guy. What Shaq is saying is that you can have all the money, but if you throw away your family along the way, then it will not have been worth it. And you know, that's like the most obvious advice ever. The image of him in his ten thousand square foot house alone is actually really depressing. There's this trope that if you're rich and you're sad, then you could just dry your tears
with your money. Well, here's an incredibly wealthy man issuing a warning to another man to not end up in his same situation, and he seemed to be specifically telling Jason Kelsey this because when Jason retires and suddenly has a lot of time on his hands, not practicing, not playing, maybe Shack understands that times of change like that can make a wealthy man more susceptible to making mistakes or being put in situation where those mistakes are more likely.
I think it's interesting to think about the times in your life where something could trigger you to feel unsettled or uncomfortable in your life. If you get used to doing something like having a career and then you don't have it, that can definitely leave you susceptible to maybe
acting out. For the average person when you're going through a time of change, whether moving like we've talked about on the show, or your kids leaving the house, or making any big changes to your life, I think it's smart advice to be extra careful about what you're doing and who you're doing it with. You don't want to be like Shaq alone in his ten thousand square foot house. Coming up next and interview with Nancy Rammelman. Join us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show
on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Nancy Rammelman. Nancy is a journalist who writes for such publications as Reason and The Free Press, as well as writing the substack Make More Pie, and co host of the podcast Smoke Them If You Got Them. Hi, Nancy, Good morning Carol. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you.
I have to say that we talk on this show a lot about making friends, especially after moves, because so many people have moved in the last few years, you know, the Great Migration, And you moved from Portland to New York. What year was that, July twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. I knew it was pre pandemic, which is rare because most of these big moves are happening, you know, during the pandemic, right and you you know, you already had a lot of friends in New York. But you have this amazing
social gravitational pull. I just see you as this like warm, welcoming person who everyone wants to be around. Like, whenever I see you, I smile. How do you do that? How do you help other people do that?
This is very funny because when we were talking about the questions you're going to ask that you like to ask your guests. I will I will say that one thing is that I love to cook, and it's not so fun to just cook for yourself, so you wind up opening your home. But also I just like it, and people like to not just be on their computers.
You want to meet new people. You don't know what's happening all the time.
And when I got this little place, I had moved Fromland.
Moore, had like, you know, a four bedroom house with a garage, the.
Whole kind of thing, to all of a sudden, this little place in Chinatown, and it was just super fun to build it out and build a sound studio and have people in.
And then, as you know, because you were here a few.
Times during the pandemic, you know, we all kind of went into our houses for about eight weeks and then I was like, no, we're having We're going to have people over for lunch.
We're just going to do it.
And I was back and forth between reporting on the riots in Portland, but when I was home, I was like, let's just let's just open the doors.
And people really needed it, and we just never stopped. Yeah. Yeah, I was at a party at your house in June twenty twenty one, so still you know, pretty pandemic. Ye, it was amazing, and we like we had my husband and I were there and it was just this amazing party. And then like some friends of ours who like aren't in our you know, writer political world, texted and they're like, Hey, we're out in the city. You guys around And I was like, Oh, we're at this party, you know, come
by and they still talk about your party. They're still like that party, you know, June twenty twenty one, just this amazing, amazing time. It was something that people really weren't doing. And again, I just think you have this ability to bring people together, Like, do you have any advice for people on how to be I mean other than learn how to cook like you, how do you navigate having people like you know, how do you attract people to you the way you do? Tell us everything what you see.
I think I just really like having people around and also being able to connect people. I mean, you know this, when we've been at parties here, it's not like everybody has the same opinions or they come from the same world at all, and you sort of put them in the super collider and then you're just all enjoying each other. And first of all, first of all, tell your friends they're welcome back anytime, never the address. And I don't know, I think especially we may have noticed this more Carol,
because it was so stark during the pandemic. I remember when I first started to have the lunches here. I think it was August twenty twenty, which, you know, still really in the thicket things, right.
It was so funny.
People would creep in here like they had not left their house in three months, and.
Then they remembered, Oh, we really really need this and really want this. I just like doing it.
I had people here the other day. It was the super Bowl, where about have six or eight people. I invited a friend of mine who's in a play right here, and he's like, well, I can't come, but the whole cast wants to come.
I'm like sure. I had eight people i'd never met here for the super Bowl and it was great. It was great. So yeah, I just took a lot. So how did you become a writer? What was your path to it? So?
I moved to Los Angeles from New York City, where I'm from when I was twenty four, and I had a baby not that long after, and at the time. I'd gone to La to be a movie star, as I'm sure you can guess. And I started reading scripts for a living when I was pregnant, which is like you'd go Julia Roberts agent would give you a script and read it and do a summation and then recommended or not. And I got really fast at it, and I could do it at home, and I knew I
wanted to be home with my kids. Plus we didn't have any money. It wasn't like I was going to hire someone to raise my kid, right, And then that segued into journalism, and by the time I was thirty, I never had another job. It was also, you know, it was the nineties. There was a lot of money in You could make money pretty easily. You could write for a ton of places, and I just it turned out I was good at it and I.
Loved it, and I've never I knew the minute I did my.
First article of Carol, which was a like five hundred word piece on genital piercing, which is so old.
Whatever it was the next where was that published?
Okay, so it was this lad magazine called Bikini, which was also part of Ray Gun.
Maybe this is a billion years ago. But anyway, they sent me to do this article about genital this salon. I'm like, wow, I go to this place in Lost Bilis. I'm talking to these people. This couple walks in.
They're like, you know, in their twenties, and they said they were getting their engagement rings or wedding rinks. And I was like, well, what are you going to do when people ask to see them? And she's like, well, we'll show them. And I was like, that's it.
I'm never having another job. That's it. Like this is magic and I never have I've never had another job. So do you feel like you've made it? I think it depends on the week.
You know, sometimes you have really good weeks. I can't remember what the exact expression. Expression expression is. It's like, you know, writing is no fun or or not writing is no fun, but having written.
Is the best feeling.
So when you see you know, you know, yeah, you've finished that piece and you just can you can dine out on it for a matter of hours or even days. But then it's like the gas runs out of tank and you just got to just have to keep working.
Yeah, sometimes you feel.
Great, you have a book that's published, or you do a story that really moves people and then you communicate with them and then that leads to the.
Next article and you can feel really good. But then when you're not haven't written for a little while, you just feel crappy and have I made it? I don't know. So, yeah, that feeling of publishing. I mean when I publish in the post, for example, I used to just do it would be Mondays, so Sunday night it would hit the internet and I had like Sunday night, I'd be refreshing, And you know, it was years in. It wasn't like my first, my tenth or my fiftieth article at that point.
It was years and years and years and I still like loved it so much, and I totally get that feeling. And I have to say, I think I avoid places. I avoid writing for places where I don't know when it's going to run, because I'm like, no, I need I need to know. I need to know when I'm going to get that boost of like happiness and my piece is out there. And yeah, when.
You're funny working on a piece for a while in your letter, like when is it going to run? Yeah? Hello, I wrote book reviews for a long time for the Wall Street Journal, and they have a fantastic Saturday section. And yeah, every time I'd be like, I have h yeah, I know, babe had went two weeks, it goes like last Saturday, right, Yeah, there's Saturday newspapers.
It's a great it's a great section. It's a great session. So if you weren't doing this, if you needed a plan B, what would it be. Probably work as a baker.
I had worked as a baker, like when I first went to LA and then when my husband had a series of coffee shops, I'd baked for his coffee shops for about a year.
But I really just bak for pleasure. So I don't know if I want to do it as a job.
You know, I always thought this is going to sound so ridiculous when I go with pharmacy and get my get a prescription filled, and I always watched the farm and it's so organized and clean, and I was like, that'dn't be a bad gig.
Yeah, working, I don't think this sounds ridiculous at all. My plan B is I think i'd be a really good DJ. So so you know, it's dream big on this show is really you know what it's all about. You want to be a pharmacist back there with your clean, organized world, like organizing everything. I see it. I could, you know, I need things orderly? Yeah can Yeah. I feel like yours requires a lot more school than mine, though.
My plan B and you could just do it tonight, girl, right, get everybody's dancing, And that's really I feel like I could. I think I could just organize music well, like I could, Like, I know what people want to hear next, if they're happy. You know, I have zero skills in that area. So I'm coming. I love it. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol marco It Show. So you recently went to Israel, which seemed
like an amazing trip. How was it, As you know, Israel is complicated, It's always a complicated place.
And then to drop in when they have I was on the Bill Schultz Show yesterday and I compared it to be getting kicked in the heart.
They not not just the emotional stuff, but.
They really have to have a real reset in how they think about how their own survival, of their government, of the military, and I it was a difficult trip in terms of the people I hung out with, I hung out for four days, that the missing hostages and families for them, these are I'm talking to mothers whose children are still in Gaza and they're still there now. This is not easy. However, that piece ran in reason.
To see how the country pulled together after October seventh, you know, especially in light of the fact that for the past you know, fourteen months they've been rebelling against their own government, is pretty amazing. And you realize what is baked into the Israeli psyche is that they need to save their own lives. They're never going back to what it used to be. Ever, that's not going to happen, and so to be around that is pretty amazing.
One thing I also love about.
Being in Israel, especially in Tel Aviv, is this constant everybody looks you in the eye, everyone wants to talk to you, and there's just this incredible energy going.
I feel like that might just be you. But okay, no, I know, what do you think? I don't know. I don't know. I love Israeli as I'm married to an Israeli. You know, I have a lot of Israeli friends. I would not say that they are extra friendly. Well, I don't know, friendly is the world. They're very very willing to be confrontational. How's that right, Like right, yes, for sure, yes,
very willing to be confrontation. No, no, no, no, I you know I had I had an Israeli friend say to me something like, you know, the trans insanity that we're going through in America could never happen in Israel because they'd be like, no, what are you crazy? No, like, you know, no, no, biological boys can play in girls sports next, Like, they just they're not polite. They're not polite enough to be like, well, I don't know, let me think about your feelings, like no, you know.
No, they're they're they're like New Yorkers that way, yeah or whatever.
We're just like no, we're just getting onto the next topic here. We're not going to fool around this. Except I feel like New Yorkers have like slid off of that a little bit in the last I mean that the pandemic, you know, obviously crushed my feelings on badass
New Yorkers standing up for it. But you know, and I have definitely concerns about the migrant situation and the fact that New Yorkers are not like kind of fighting back on it, Like, you know, people are suffering in the city, and yet like the people who are coming here legally get all this free stuff. And it's it's hard for me to watch New Yorkers just roll over.
Especially the pandemic was really the that point for me where I don't think, you know, Israelis would necessarily I mean they kind of did also, so I shouldn't say that.
Yeah, New York was a was a strange place. I was traveling a lot during the pandemic because I was covering the situation in Portland.
But I was surprised, as a you.
Know, born and bred New Yorker at how sort of obedient people.
Want complacent like the place and see. Yeah, I remember taking off my mask.
I don't remember the exact date, but it was definitely before we were allowed to and I'm like, screwid, I'm not I'm not doing it. So, yeah, get some dirty hooks on the subway.
I don't care. Right, was it your first trip to Israel? My second?
So you may recall back in November twenty twenty twenty three, No, twenty twenty two.
The reasonally crue ones. Yeah, well not really reason so much. It was the Israeli consulate here took over a bunch of journalists. It was Matt Well to Michael moynihan and me the reason CR.
And we all went over on their dime but zero obligation. And I went over early with and they've talked about it at this point, so it's no with Leifang and Jesse's single and we toured around with bits l M very left wing group, which was actually really.
Smart to do because it was a complicated country. They don't all agree, so you can kind of get a sense.
And I was in Hebron at that point, and I was back and he Brew on this trip, and that is a weird place, as you may or may not know.
Yeah, very very strange. So what was strange about it for people who may not well? So it's cut in.
It's split into you've got H one and H two and H one and I'm hopefully I'm not swapping these. H one is where it's all Palestinian, right. You live there, there's economy, you.
Walk in bebbe clothes.
Turkish coffee. It's just like a busy busy you know, you pay in Mexico City or something though it's also sort of depressed because it's isolated and it's surrounded and you have to like get in and out of checkpoints that are run by the Israeli military, and certain things were closed down, but it's still very vibrant.
You cross over to the other side and everything is boarded up and sealed up, all the buildings, there's nothing.
It's truly ghosty. It's looked over by the Israeli military. If you are Palestinian, you can live there, but you can't have a car, so you can't really get any place unless you us into H one, which is easy.
Oh, but then getting out.
That's kind of up to the two Israeli guards that are at the gate. So maybe they wait you, you wait three minutes, maybe you wait three hours in the rain with your kids. Like it's weird, it's messed up, and there's reasons. I hung out with the Palestinian activist, I hung out with settlers, and they can both tell you they all want the same thing, but they see it from different ends of the tube. And frankly, they
both have points. They both have points. So that's an interesting piece that I have to get to.
I have to write this. Yeah, I can't wait to read it. Do you feel like you know what you're talking about? Like Israeli unity right now? You know the post October seventh moment. Do you feel like America can ever get to a similar place of unity? Like I don't feel like a terrorist attack like that would unite us. I don't think. I feel like I don't know if those days are even possible, the post nine to eleven unity, for example. I don't think we could ever do that again.
I think that something happened around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, when Trump was stole the nominee.
People kind of lost their minds. On both sides.
You had the Trump derangement syndrome, and then you had the Trump epiphantic love affair. You know, I see the portraits of Trump as Jesus, and I'm like, hi, everyone, maybe stop drinking the kool aid and we It just split people so intensely, and everybody believes not only that they're right, but that the other side is driving this country into hell.
I think, you know, I don't belong to any of either of these tribes.
And as a journalist who absolutely adores getting in my car and driving around this country, and talking to people in Texas, in Kansas, in Oklahoma, in New York State. Most people are pretty awesome.
Okay, I don't care.
Who you voted for. They're like, really pretty great. And we really do. I truly believe.
We agree on more than we disagree on. But it just doesn't seem to pay.
Whether it's our media institution screaming at us or it's us believing me. I will say one of the people I love most in the world, if he were not an emergency room physician.
For children, he would be priest. Okay. He once said to me that he could never be friends with someone that voted for Trump. And I'm like, guess what you already are? Wow, not meaning me? But yeah, no, I know you don't I know meaning you.
But it's like, you don't say that, do not say that about your fellow Americans. And that brings me out because I love America and I believe God like actually got chill saying that, and I believe almost everybody in this country does love America. And that means you should be talking to your neighbors, and you should be looking for the stuff that really meant, not stuff to fight about.
What would you say is our largest cultural or societal problem.
Besides not listening to each other, besides being we could.
Not listening to each other not listening, but also being addicted to the sense that we're right. I mean, people, there was something on it.
I've written a lot about Portland, Oregon, which really drove itself into the ground by making some really stupid decisions in twenty twenty and downstream. It should have been obvious to any grown up that there were going to be really bad repercussions. But I wrote today on Twitter, like the elixir of believing you are right is really super sweet.
Man.
You get addicted to that taste and I you know, go try something else at the soda fountain.
Right do you think Portland could come back? I know you love Portland? Right am I my right that you have like an affection for it? No, because it does seem like when you write about it, it's not like, Haha, you suck. You know, It's very like you care about them and you want them to do bad and you don't want it to fall apart. At least That's how I'm reading you. I don't Portland.
I live there from twenty four to twenty and eighteen, and I watched Portland do some really really cool things, things that couldnot be done in a city where it was more expensive, where it was more like like even a little more urban or lesser. But like they really it was a really interesting experiment, and then they screwed it up. They've screwed it up in a lot of ways. However, it's still beautiful. It is such a beautiful city, and it's a bread basket, and the region is great.
I would hope that they can come back, but they.
Really ding themselves, and financially they just are They're really seeing some problems, and we've seen the problems with Measure one ten, which decriminalized drugs.
They really have some work to do. I can be hopeful. I'm an optimist. So let's see. I was recently reading Blake Nelson, the writer who you went to college with. Was their connection. I love him, He's you know, so like his books. When I was in my late teens early twenties, I was just such a huge fan, and I happened to meet him in New York and but he recently wrote this whole thing about Portland, and it was I just love reading about old Portland. I guess
that's the same feeling. I mean, it might it definitely has some connection to how I feel about New York and how it used to be. But he wrote this whole thing and it was just Portland sounds so exciting. In the piece he talks about sleeping with Courtney Love, which is like, oh, okay, that's it. Yea.
She has a bit of a reputation there. And also in la Hey question for you, Yeah, do you miss New York.
Like I do? But when I'm there, I'm not like, oh I miss this place. I miss the New York that I feel like it used to be. Like the pandemic really broke New York. I don't know if and when it will recover. It hasn't recovered, I mean by like a lot of the measures. But it really hurt me to see that complacent rule following New Yorker that I always thought would be like badass and thinking for themselves.
And a lot of people left, like a lot of my native New Yorkers left because they couldn't take it anymore. And it's just it's hard to watch. But in the same way that I think you root for Portland, I root for New York. I want to see it revived. I want to see that city that I loved so much back. But when I'm in town, I'm like, I'm a genius. I like, you know, I got my kids out of this, Like it's just guess you know, we
record this in advance. But there was a snow day and New Yorkers were forced to do remote learning with their kids because you know, they discovered remote learning the during the pandemic, and now they want to implement it whenever possible. But like the New York I know would have just had a snow day and had a you know, the kids would play in the snow and it would be amazing and magical and they'd be hot, chocolate and involved. But now they have to like get on zoom because
somebody's bad idea. And that's a small bad idea, but it's still a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. I said this. That was yesterday, this snow day. I was out.
I had to go record midtown. This snow was just wet slush by ten thirty in the morning, so it didn't stick. No, that is true.
I mean it just put your boots on, kids, It's not I don't want to be like in my day. But literally in my day, we would have, you know, two feet of snow and go to school and it would have to be a serious snow stream. Or if we were having off, nobody would be expected to still do busy work. And it just it's hard. I miss the restaurants a lot, obviously missed my family. I should reverse those. I missed my family first, and then I missed the restaurants because no matter what anybody says, there's
no food scene like the New York food scene. Like you know, I could tell you specifically I missed Ti Diner very much. I miss my friend's restaurant Marry them very much. You know, we just don't have that in South Florida.
I will say, you know, I live in Dine Square, that area of Chinatown which never it never closed. I remember during the pandemic, the New York Post was running a weekly like look at the Terrible Things that have happened to my neighborhood, and they asked me to write one.
I was like, can I write that? It's kind cool down here?
He's like, okay, it never really went under, mom, But Midtown, boy, it Midtown is still.
Is still strong. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah, and the outer borrows I think are still like not back, like a lot of things closed and just never reopened. Yeah. Yeah, it's you know, bums me out. But you know, New York has to keep moving forward. I hope it catches, you know, its breath and then it improves itself again. I have high hopes. I you know, I don't want to hate it. I want to be able to visit and see my family and be like, oh, this place is amazing, look at it. Come back so good. I
don't I definitely don't root against it. I don't want to come to Florida. Yeah, I think it definitely definitely deserves some Florida time. Yes. So I love talking to your you know, one of my favorite people end here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. I think my best tip we kind of started with it. I mean, if you're not going to cook for a bunch of people, which is sort of my secret sauce.
I would say, both initiate and attend social events. I remember being I can't remember.
What it was.
I do a lot of traveling, and sometimes it's a tough places for work, and I came back from someplace recently I don't think it is real, and I was. I found it so necessary to go out and see people, whether it's a drink at a bar, down at someone's house, someone says, come to sh your bottom, like, yes, I'm coming. You need to cycle all of this stuff through and share it.
And it just it just grows. I mean your world.
He grows and then you wind up giving it away to the next group. So that would be my That's my best advice.
I love that. Thank you so much. Nancy Rammelman loved having you on. Where can people read you?
Oh, you can go to my substock, which is Make More Pie. You can go listen to my podcast but Sarah pup Love called smoke 'em if you got them. And my work runs in the Free press, it runs in Reason and Real Clearer Investigations and other places, and I would love to.
See you there. Stay in touch. Thank you so much, Nancy, Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.