Hello, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. I mentioned in the last episode that I went to Asia this summer. It was my first time, I mean really going to Asia. I've been to Israel, I've into Turkey, but I think people know what I mean when I say that. We landed in Bangkok and ate our way through the busy, noisy, crowded city. The food was just outstanding. The street food you always hear about was better than you could imagine. The next stop was Hanoi, another carnival
of crowds and food, really chaotic city. And the last stop was Singapore, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We have a family member who lives there and who we hope will come back to the US sooner rather than later. But after this trip, we totally understood why he hasn't. Singapore is a beautiful city, old parts and new parts, clean, orderly, super safe, with just amazing restaurants all around, amazing food. When you're there, you definitely get to thinking why aren't
our cities more like this? And of course they have less freedom than we do. You can't really speak out against the government. Porn is illegal, pod is illegal. A lot of things are regulated there that aren't here, but that doesn't really explain the cleanliness or the orderliness of the city. And the thing I kept coming back to is we have all the same laws about that kind
of stuff that they do. Littering is illegal in most probably all US cities, Sleeping on the street is illegal, theft is illegal, eating on public transportation is illegal in lots of places, including New York. But these things are rarely to never punish in the US. It's not that Singapore has more laws about the kind of things that make society function, it's that they enforce the laws that they have. In a lot of places in America, we've
come to associate disarray with freedom. We don't have more freedom because society is in chaos, We probably have less. I thought New York was particularly dysfunctional, so I moved to Florida, and it's a far more normal, more functioning state, in part because like Singapore, we can count on laws being enforced in Florida. But I worry about the state of mind. That whole thing about chaos being the price that we pay for freedom. I worry about that perspective spreading.
It's hard to preserve an oasis of sanity. In Florida and in other Red states, people worry that outsiders will move in and vote for Democrats and Ruins, and they're a good thing. It makes sense, but I fear the problem isn't just political. Apathy creates the kind of disorder I fear, and I feel that apathy spreading. I feel it spreading through our culture, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm going to spend some time thinking about this, and I'd love to hear your thoughts
on it too. Also, thank you for the fiction book recommendations. I really love hearing from you. Guys. Hit me up on Twitter or My email is Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. Coming up next and interview with Adam Coleman. Join us after the break. Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Adam Coleman, founder of Wrong Speak Publishing and host of Breaking Bread. Hi, Adam, how you doing so Last I saw you, I was
on Breaking Bread, which was a really good time. It's funny because your concept is that we have lunch while we chat, so like in the videos of it, I'm like I'm chewing and trying to make you know, interesting points at the same time. Do people find that to be a challenge or just me?
I'm sure other people at the very start have a little bit of challenge. But I think the nature of the conversation is so relaxed because I don't want people to recognize the cameras, Like, don't look at the cameras.
They're not here.
We're just you go out with your friends, you're eating and you're talking. It's the same type of vibe. So I think in the beginning it's normal for people to kind of be like, I don't want to smack too hard, but then after a while they just like just go with it.
I also, I chose Vietnamese food for our lunch, and you know that involves using chopsticks. I mean, I just I feel like I didn't think it through, like, you know, in retrospect, I should have done like something that was like, you know, one bite, not like, oh, I have this noodle dish with like chicken, and like.
I eat noodles all time, but.
On camera while trying to have a conversation and while trying to you know, look good.
Yeah, because the whole thing is like when you go out with your friends, you're not worried about like, oh do I look this?
What?
Right?
That's what I'm saying, Like it goes with being casual. I think the people who watch it understand, like we're eating like it's okay, you know. So I don't want you to worry about it. I don't think the audience worries about it.
I don't. I don't really get people complaining.
If anything, it gives them something to look at, like that looks good, you know, and they want to watch or they want to or if they're in the audio version.
They're like what are they eating? Like I want to see what it looks like. Then they might want to actually look.
Yeah, So what was the why did you start breaking bread? What was your purpose with it?
That's a good question because for a long time, or resisted doing any any video content. And I give credit to Ed Lattimore for telling me, for like the fifth time, you need to do video content. You know, there was an opportunity. I was supposed to work with a different company and they were looking for video content. They're open to ideas, and so the idea kind of came to me because it's something that I had been doing the aspect of traveling to different countries or just traveling in general.
Sitting down with people and talking politics with something I was doing for a number of years. I started traveling abroad, especially in twenty sixteen, and every time I would travel, I would sit down with people. Sometimes it would be other Americans, but most of the time it'd be people from various countries and we would sit and talk about
where we're from the politics. But a lot of people are interested in American politics and do a lot, so then we would have a discussion about American politics, but they can actually talk to an American to gain an American perspective, and then wherever they're from, I would ask them questions. So I remember one time I was in a hostel with a guy from Sweden, a girl from Korea, and I think a girl from China just asking each other questions. I was like, you're here with an American,
you want to ask me any questions? And we just had an open cannon conversation. So it was something that I was used to doing, and especially like having a meal and discussing these things. I remember one time I had a conversation for about an hour or so with a girl from Australia when I was in Barcelona, well having taught us and it was one of the better conversations that I had, So, you know, I just wanted to kind of bring that to.
Video.
And from the very beginning, I didn't know anything about creating videos. So over the past year it's been a lot of learning, which has actually been something that I've been very excited about, learning about cinematography or i should say videography, how this works, how to improve the quality of this and that. And it's been a lot of money invested and a lot of mistakes and learning from those mistakes and getting better at the craft excellent.
So what kind of questions do they ask you at the hostel about being an American.
That's a good question because I'm trying to remember offhand.
Because I lived in Scotland for a few years during college and I traveled around and the Europeans they would ask such like, it's it's not like American cultures very
in their face. They're they're constantly, you know, getting our culture mixed into their culture, but there's there's still kind of one dimensional about what we actually are, Like they think we are all these you know, you know the picture of like what Europeans think Americans eat for breakfast and it's like a giant stack of bacon with like a gun like right next to it, and like it's not totally wrong, but it's it's a little, you know,
a little far fetched. But they would ask me things like it was during the Clinton era, and they, you know, they'd want to know, like why do Americans care so much about a blowjob? And you know, I'd be like, well, it's not really the blow job that they care that here, but you know because especially in places like friends, they're like, what like cheating on your spouse is like, you know, something obviously all the politicians do. So what kind of things did you get asked?
Well, in that particular conversation, I don't I remember asking questions about China and censorship and their opinion on it, and it was kind of an interesting answer that they gave me. But I can't remember all the questions they were asking me in that particular moment. But if I was to summarized the different conversations that I have with people, a lot of it was very it was all in good faith. So I'll say that it was all in good faith, and they were actually curious, and I was
showing that I'm open to whatever. There's no bad question you can ask, right, I won't take any offense, and so I think that opened them up to ask, like, well, what about this?
What about that?
But what I found was that a lot of the stuff. And mind you, at the time, I was a Democrat. So now that I've I've left the Democrat bubble and I've kind of just I look at everything as an independent, I realize and I kind of realized while I was there, much of the media is very much so left leaning in Europe, and it is very much one narrative.
And I remember being.
In Germany and I saw like this spoof video I might have recorded at the time, some spoof video of like some of Donald Trump, like some like making an ugly face, kind of weird looking thing on TV and they were making fun of Donald Trump. And I thought like, like, it's kind of like this everywhere, Like every narrative that they would talk about is very much so from a left wing perspective, and so their concept of what's going
on in America is very much so one sided. And that's what I realized personally later on, is that the information. Even though I was very analytical about the information that I had, I didn't have the entire source of information to really give a fair assessment as to what was going on. But yeah, I found that much of the stuff that they were hearing is basically stuff that you would see on CNN or you would see CNN International,
and they're watching it from there. So it was very much so one sided.
Yeah, do you have like a particular beat that you like to cover? Is there something that you like to write about more than anything else.
I would say the most important thing I like writing about is families, especially the impact of family separation. But I also put like slash fatherhood, the importance of fatherhood and how it impacted me growing up without my father, but also being a father to my son who's now eighteen and now he's in the stage of being an adult and watching him flourish. So yeah, I would say those things are far more important to me to talk about because I think it's the greatest issue facing all of Americans.
It's not just a black issue.
Well, so I was going to ask, what do you think is our largest cultural problem? And I guess it might be something related to this.
Yeah, family separation. Family separation.
We are number one in the world when it comes to children growing up in separate homes from their parents. The United Kingdom is number two, nearly a quarter of children, and so it's a much bigger issue than I think people led on.
Nearly a quarter of children in America grow up living separately from both parents or from one parent, or what.
Is it, separately from at least one.
Parent, at least one parent? Wow?
Yeah, ok, yeah, So there's either a children who grow up in single parent homes where they never live with their it's usually they live with their mother, another father where they never grow up with their father, or children of the four, but somewhere in that spectrum. And then if we were to go out even further, right, so what's the impact of that. I've talked about how the statistics are ridiculously crazy when it comes to children being harmed growing up in an environment with an adult figure
who's not their biological parent. And it's not to say that there aren't good stepfathers, good step mothers out there, but if we were to look at what's the greatest danger facing a child, one of those greatest dangers is growing up in that environment because predators look for single mothers all the time. And I've had these conversations, especially in another podcasts. One particular podcast, after I made this very point, he admitted that was his childhood. You know,
he was molested by his stepfather for years. So I mean, this really exists, but we just don't. We don't like to talk about it. And I think there are many reasons as to why.
So do you think it's something that's solvable. Do you think we can make any progress on this or is it sort of only going to get worse. I'm pretty pessimistic on stuff like this. I don't know how we turn it around.
I think we can turn I'm one of those people.
I have a model that I tell my friends just let it fail, because sometimes you have to fail in order to find success. You know, my life, there's so many areas where I failed, but I found success later on because of those phase and I learned from those lessons. And even for me raising my son, I learned from my father's failure to be involved in my son's life right and not to be like my father. Now, did I need that to be a good father? Maybe I didn't,
but I still use that as a source. And I think there are a lot of children who are becoming let's say the gen Z crowd, who are becoming adults, and they have the Internet, and they have all this information at their fingers tips, and they're asking questions and good questions about the world around them. But their parents taught them. What their parents are leaving them. Are they
set up for the future? Does this work? And I think some of them are asking the right questions as far as I get it, Like I didn't grow up in this environment, but was this the best environment for me to grow up in?
In how I was raised? And I think it's good to ask these particular questions. So I am.
I am relatively optimistic that we will make a turn for the better.
Is that going to look like more people getting married or how like? How do we how does that turn happen? What is the what's the picture you have of a positive change in this way where more kids, you know, don't live separately from a parent.
Part of it is, like I was saying, I think part of it is the internet. We have we have more voices talking about family separation, So that's one I'll throw my voice out there. I'm talking about family separation, the impact on children. We have more reflection that is happening. We have people who not only just take selfies, but they're making videos talking about their emotional state and how they are affected by whatever happened in their life, including
their childhood and what they experienced. The fact that I was on a podcast and a guy was willing and open enough to share how he was molested and how it affected his life, and it just takes one person to hear that and you're like, you know what, maybe I should change how he's doing, or maybe when I do go to have children, maybe this would be very important.
I think part of the culture war that's happening, especially the battle between the sexes, has a lot to do with frustration with wanting to create that, and I think from the male perspective, I think there are a lot of men who feel like it is harder to create that scenario where they are married, where they are in that situation where they can raise their child ldren like
they're fearful of it. Some of that fear is legitimate, some illegitimate, some of its propaganda, but I think it some of that comes from a good place where they
want to have these things. The young men want to get married, they want to have a wife, they want to rise children in that household, especially because I think many of these men who liked this content didn't grow up in that particular environment, so they see the bad of it, and I think that is something that's good because they're recognizing there's a problem, and so you can't change what you don't acknowledge, and by them acknowledge that there's a problem, they're more willing to try to seek
out a solution.
Interesting, we're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. You've written how many books?
Just one so fast? One?
I thought it was two.
The second edition. That's okay.
To tell us a little bit about your book.
Yeah, Black Victim of Black Victor. I started writing it in twenty twenty. I think it was like a few months after George Floyd. I wrote it because I wanted to express myself. I thought there were narratives that are out there. Some I agreed with, some I disagreed with. Mostly I disagreed with. But even the narratives that I agreed with, I didn't like how it was stated and
it didn't sound like my voice. And you know, I had an idea about writing a book a year prior, but I had no idea what I wanted to write about. And I actually got encouragement from free speech forums like you should write more often because of how I was explaining how I felt. And so I was like, maybe this is the idea, Maybe this is it, and I started writing it.
It took me about I.
Think eight to nine months, and I self published it and had no idea if anybody would like it or care to read it or anything. But I wanted to give it a try. But my main goal was two main goals. I wanted to express myself into. I wanted to leave something behind for my son to be proud of, and you know, with God's blessing, like all these you know, I'm sitting here talking to you. You know, all these different things have happened that I didn't come close to
ever seeing. And I like to joke about when I was writing my book, one friend told me that, like, you should send an article to the New York Posts. I'm like, they would never publish my stuff.
Now you're right there. All the time.
It's exactly yeah, So you never know.
You never know. Do you feel like you've made it?
I don't know what it is.
All I know is that if I can be a little bit deep. A couple of years prior to writing the book, I was on it. I specifically wanted to think about that. I was on a train in Germany and i was by myself and my headphones on, and I'm just thinking. I wanted to think about what is my purpose in life? And there was one way they came to mind was to serve. Everything I've done is in my life, and the most important thing and the thing I really enjoyed was serving helping people. All of
my jobs were customer service related. You know, my background's in it, but it's dealing with technical issues in person. Let me help you fix that over the phone support, let me help.
You fix that.
And I love helping people, and I'm like, I am built to serve. I'm built to be here to help people. You know, when my friendships with people, I go out of my way to help people because I feel like that is my purpose. My purpose is here to serve in any capacity that I'm doing anything in and so for me, I don't know if I I've made it because I feel like it's a never ending journey of serving, and now, especially with me being baptized, I fully fully understand who I'm.
Here to serve for.
I'm here to serve for the Lord. I'm here to help mankind as much as I can. It's why I don't engage in negative things. I try to stay, stay really really hard away from all the negativity that can come to politics, and talk about the issue, talk about it from a realistic standpoint, be critical when you see evil things, we see bad ideas by trying not to go after people unless they're people in power, which they deserve it. But I am here to serve the public
and any capacity, even on a very personal level. You know, I just had a conversation with a follower of mine who wanted to know about becoming a Christian and was having trouble coming to faith. I gave them my numbers to call me, and I only say this. It's not to brag, but it's to show that I really do care. I want people not only to come to Christ, but I want to help people in any way possible and be a good representation as a Christian especially it's beautiful.
And you just recently got baptized, right, yeah, Saturday. Wow, So that's really amazing. You know, I think that the work that you're doing, it comes across that you really want to help people. I don't. I think that that's very obvious in your writing and listening to you talk about services. It's very much in line with who I think you are. So end here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Oh, best to improve your life is to take responsibility, be accountable for all of your all of life's outcomes. I use the example of if you give from a job, it's very easy to blame your boss. My boss didn't like me, the company was bad. But if you're accountable, you're part of this relationship. You're part of the reason you're getting fired. So why did you get fired? Take accountability for that portion, not everything, but that portion, and
use that and find a way to improve yourself. And so that's why I think that failure isn't always a failure. Like failure, it can be the greatest lesson that you learned in life. Failure could be something that you really appreciate about life. Moving forward, you know, I've been homeless as a child twice, and I was homeless or when I was around twenty one for a few months, and I don't think of it at least anymore. I don't
think of it as a woe as me think. I'm really thankful I went through that because it showed me if I could go through that, I can go through all this other stuff. It showed me the kindness of human beings because while I didn't have a place to go, the people I was working with on their own put me in a hotel room for months till I had enough money to get my own place. They didn't have to and I didn't ask them, and the kindness of their heart, they wanted that and they didn't ask for
any money afterwards. You So, I am thankful for all these people that I encountered, which by the way, these are people of different racial backgrounds, where there's just regular people. And they didn't even know me. I had just moved to Tennessee and they didn't know who I was, but they knew about my situation. They didn't want to see
their coworker sleeping in their car. And I think about all these things as a point of pride and an appreciation for humanity, the goodness that exists in humanity, and I think far too often we're so hyper focused on the negative. There's so many good people who are out here who do things at the kindness of their heart. They don't want anything. They just want to make sure that you're good, because if they were in that situation,
they would want that too. So Yeah, to summarize, be accountable for your life, because that's how you act, actually change your life. Victimhood will never get you anywhere.
I love it. People are so good and I think, you know, encouraging people to be to want to be those good people. It is such a good thing. Thank you so much, Adam. He's Adam Coleman, founder of Wrong Speak Publishing and host of Breaking Bread. Check it out. It's really really excellent. Thank you for coming on, Adam.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.