Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Last episode, I talked about how everything seems to get crazier as we head toward an election season and more contentious.
Obviously.
You know, a friend once said to me that she wished Thanksgiving was at right around election. Things would get tents in her house, things might get tents in yours. Last time I focused on social media, and I would say again that social media is a trap for this kind of thing. My top suggestion is to keep your politics off Facebook. Not one mind has ever been changed on there. All the arguments accomplished is divide old friends.
And look, Facebook's just not made for arguments. It's made for seeing pictures of your coworker, you know, three jobs ago, their newborn baby. Use it for that, because you inevitably end up getting into a fight with the coworker of your best friend from middle school. What's the point? But what about your real life? What about the aunt who needles you, or the cousin who loves bringing up January sixth at every dinner. What about the neighbor with the in this
house sign. I'm not going to tell you that people like that don't annoy me too, of course they do. Try not to be one of those. This is a show about living better and not blowing up your family around election time is an example of that. One solution I enjoy is to approach arguments with humor. No one is open to learning anything be serious, so at least try to make it funny. The other thing is no
personal attacks. If you can't have a spirited debate, argument, even yelling match without avoiding personal shots, politics is not the game for you. I even follow that on Twitter. I unfollow or block anybody who's rude to me. I don't accept any of that, and I don't name call, and that's very hard for me to do. But I find that blocking people who I want to day Paul
really helps. Finally, I have a friend started ending his disagreements, not just about politics, but all arguments with maybe you're right. He said he felt better just walking away from someone instead of continuing the argument, and maybe not Definitely you're right got the job done. This would actually drive me absolutely bananas if someone said it to me, so really it's a win win switching gears. I'm quickly coming up on the one year anniversary of this podcast. Which is
crazy to me. Longtime listeners know. I ask all of my guests three questions. I ask number one, what is our largest cultural problem? Number two, whether they think they've made it? And number three for them to offer a tip for my listeners on how to improve their lives. At the one year mark, I'm planning to switch up some or maybe all of these. Send in your suggestions for questions. I love hearing from listeners. The email is
Carol Markowitz Show at gmail dot com. It's spelled k A r O l m A r KOWI c asn't Charlie ZS and Zebra show at gmail dot com. Coming up next an interview with Scott Bertram. Join us after the break.
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Scott Bertram. Scott is a lecturer in journalism and general manager of the student radio station at Hillsdale College. He's also the co host of both the Political Beats podcast and Wasn't That Special Fifty Years of Saturday Night Live. Hi Scott, so nice to.
Have you on, Carol. It's great to be here. I'm honored to be invited.
So I think back to the first time that we really like. We didn't meet because it was online, but I was on Political Beats talking about one of my favorite bands, Pulp, and you were so polite about how much you did not like them.
I would not say that necessarily other why I remember it. There are levels of like and dislike, and we've done one hundred and thirty episodes at this point in the program, so various bands and artists are like more than others. I wouldn't put Pulp in the top half, but I didn't dislike them. It was a fun show.
So which band did you dislike the most on your Political Beats journey?
Oh, you know, it's probably it's certainly one that Jeff, my co host, has brought to the table. I'm sure Jeff has a Jeff is a big post punk fan, and some of those bands don't quite hold up, hold up and coordinate with my tastes. Although you know what it might be, It might be Nine Inch Nails.
Really I love Nine Inch Nails.
Was not a band that I could throw my arms around and embrace, and that's probably the band I had the most difficult time listening to the entire discography. Yeah, trying to have takes on Nine Inch Nails. Thankfully for that episode. Jane Cousten was our guest for the episode, and Jane and Jeff loved nine Inch Nails so much. I didn't have to talk hardly at all. That might be the episode in which I talked Belieft any of our episodes, so it worked out. Okay.
Still, i'd say nine Inch Nails. I don't know. If I listened to it right now for the first time, I don't know that i'd be like, Oh, Trent Reznor, he's amazing. But you know, when you're seventeen years old or twenty years old or something and like driving around and playing head like a hole, it's great, so good. So and then we met for real for the first time when I did a fellowship at Hillsdale last week, and I loved meeting you, and I really loved my
time there. How long have you been in Hillsdale.
I've been here eight and a half years of the nine years in January.
Amazing. I just thought it was such an amazing place. I was impressed by it on every level. I mean, the students are amazing. I've raved about it on the show before, so this is none of this is new But how did you end up there?
I ended up here by happenstance. I was not looking for a job change or a new job at all. I was working as a morning host at a program director at a radio station in Rockford, Illinois. Had worked previously in Chicago, and I was not looking for a job. But I was a reader of National Review and National
Review Online. And John J. Miller, who's now my boss, oh great at Hillsdale, and I was also on the masthead at National Review, posted this job opening at Hillsdale and it was for the very first general manager of the student radio station here, which they were just starting up, and also to teach in the journalism department. And I looked at it and I thought, if I were to change jobs, that would be one that would really interest me. And the more I looked into it, it was just
it was a perfect fit. And I hesitate to tell the story, but I will anyway do it. I went home to my wife and we had a At that point my son was to My daughter was not even one yet when this conversation, and we lived pretty close to my parents in Chicago, and her family was in the Rockford area. And I went home and I said, look at this job, and I have to ask you, would you be willing to move to Michigan for this job if it meant that you could stay home? At
that point we were both working for a time. It means you can stay home and be farther from your family. But this is a real question. This is not some sort of hypothetical because if I apply for this job, I'm going to get this job. I'm going to get paid for you. Yeah, it's made. So she read the description and I said, what do you think She said, they would have saved a lot of ink by just writing their you know, job for Scott Bertram, because it was it was perfectly aligned with what I wanted to
do and where my skill set is. And and I did get it, which is, you know, the happy end of the story. But it was I was not planning to move, It was not planning to change jobs. It worked out for the best, clearly.
I mean, it was clearly meant for you. So how was it moving from a city to I mean, do you consider Hillsdale like a rural area?
Oh?
Yes, Like for me, it's I felt like it was pretty rural, but I wasn't. Yeah, So what was.
That move like, Yeah, Hillsdale's a ton of about eight thousand during the school year, a little bit fewer when the students are gone. My wife is from a tiny town near Rockford, population fifteen hun stock that in town, those sorts of things, and so in the discussions when we were talking about me coming here, they were warning me, now, you've got to understand how small Hillsdale is, how far away you are from certain things. And I said, look, this is a feature. It's not a bug for my wife.
This is going to be great. And I grew up out just outside Chicago and the suburbs, worked in Chicago, and you know, Rockford's a town of one hundred and fifty thousand metro areas bigger. The older I get, the less I really want to be in the in cities and where the action is necessarily. So I did not have any problems at all. My wife loves it here, loves the small community, and it's been wonderful for both us and for the kids.
It's so great. How old are your kids.
Now, eleven and nine?
Amazing? Will they be going to Hillsdale?
We'll see, I think they both right now. I mean they're eleven and nine, so they might be lying at this point, but right now they have indicated they would love to attend Hillsdale College, so we'll see.
Yeah, I mean that's I think that's where it has to go obviously. So do you think do you feel like you've made it? I mean, you have a job that was literally designed for you, right.
It would be obscene for me to say no, right, this job designed for me that I ended up getting.
I've had multi multi millionaires in the show be like, no, I haven't made it, you know, I've had like just a range of answers. So there's no right answer if you feel like you've made it, or if you still have some way to go.
Yeah, I mean, the fear is right if you say, yes, you've made it, that there's nothing left to do or nothing left to accomplish, or you've hit your ceiling. But I don't feel that way, and I would answer that question. Yes, I think I'm in a position where, you know, if you would have told I always knew I wanted to do radio and audio and podcasting now from the youngest age, So to say that I've never worked a day outside
of the radio industry. In some way shape for incredible and to be here at Hillsdale with tremendous colleagues, a fantastic place to work. Obviously, I'm able to work with our amazing students and help them to improve, to get better, watch them succeed when they leave the college. And at the same time I get to do great things like I'm also the director of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network, so in terms of the college's audio efforts, I'm very
involved there. I host a couple of podcasts for the college, the freelance stuff you mentioned. Otherwise, I do fill in work for a statewide show here in Michigan, so I still get to sort of scratch that itch of being a post which I love. And the main reason I say yes is quite literally, once or twice a week. I wouldn't say I pinched myself. That'd be a lot, but I have to shake my head and say, how
did this happen? Where I am so happy with my personal life, my family, my wife, my kids, and I have this job that suits me so perfectly, it really fits like a glove. And how did I get so lucky to have all those things happen? So, I mean, yeah, that's.
The best feeling when you're like, you know, just so satisfied with what you have. I don't know, I don't know what a better definition of making it would be that I think that's that's it. So what would be the future or what would be? Actually I have a better question, what would be a plan be? You say you've worked in radio from like day one? What if you weren't doing this? What would be a different Scott Bertram Path?
Yeah, people have asked this, and I don't know. I spent most of my youth preparing for a job in radio, you know, reading.
And perfect voice, perfect thank you?
Yeah, And so I was. I was a double major in college. I was broadcast communication and political science and so on. Of the obvious answer to that is something in politics. Would it be actually running for office, which I don't think I'm really well suited for, but something behind the scenes, running a campaign, being a consultant. I could potentially see myself doing that in a different life, but it would not be anywhere near as fulfilling. I
would not be anywhere near as happy. And people have asked that, like, what what would be you know, you've always wanted to do it and you do you're doing what you wanted to do, So what would have been the backup planet? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm glad I never had to use it.
That's that's it. Yeah, I'm just be happy that you you never had to execute Plan B.
Yeah.
Do you like politics?
I do. It's interesting. I will say this. You know you were here on campus at Hillsdale, and there's very much an expectation from the outside world. I think that the college itself is completely immersed in this world of politics, and that's all the discussions that take place on campus among faculty or among students, and I hope you would agree haven't been here, that that's not really the case. Students are very much involved in their effort to gain knowledge.
Our professors are very dedicated to teaching them those things that they want to know, those things they need to know. We have the common core that the classes that everyone takes, and the atmosphere on campus is such that students are talking to each other. They're likely talking about the book that they know that everyone else has read on campus. They're great books course, so their Western Civilization course that
everyone has to take. That's where so many conversations take place, and oddly, in a way, I think I'm less political since arriving at campus. You know, when I was working every day in a talk show, a political based talk show, you're really really in change. You're in it every day
and you're talking to people about it every day. And there are so many more conversations that take place here on campus about life and you know, a student's future or what they're going to, where they're going to intern, or what their likes and dislikes are. Outside of campus. One of my favorite things to do, which actually helps
me remember students' names, is where they're from. I try to connect their name to where they're from and then have those conversations about what you know, what's cool in their city and what to do when you're there, and why would someone want to visit this part of the country, or you know, you actually have a student right now who's from Hawaii, so like, wow, that's a long trip from Hawaii to miss change of weather a little bit a little bit, especially in our Michigan winters. So I mean,
I'm still very aware. I'm still very clued in. As I said, I fill in for shows, so you need to be abreast of the information and I still like it, but it's a different way I think than perhaps nine years ago before I got here.
Right, it's a different when you're not immersed in it. It's it's completely different. I mean, I'm married to somebody who's not in the political universe, and you know, a week after it hits Twitter, he like, find out some information, and I'm like, I'd like to be you. Actually, I think that that's not bad.
I use my wife in that manner and I say it to her so it's not a surprise to her, but she is not as dedicated or clued in to the to the daily news cycle, and so the best way to be Yeah, And so I try to bounce thing Golfer sometimes like have you heard about this? Or is this a big deal? Or is this popping up on your Facebook feed? How much do you know about this? And it's a good way to sort of take the temperature of the no offense that the normies out.
Normy's exactly the norm every day. Yeah, you know. Also about Hillsdale, I think a lot of colleges train kids to be activists and Hillsdale does not do that. It's and I think people are surprised to find that out. I think that they think that, oh, Hillsdale is, you know, breeding the conservative activist generation, and I think that they really are just educating these kids and letting them bind
their own path. Again. I was wildly impressed. I talked, I've talked about this a lot on the show, just how mature the kids are, and how well spoken and polite and respectful. And I was on campus during the real insanity with the you know, pro Talestinian protests on other campuses, and how I felt so safe as a Jew at you know, this Christian college, and it was just it was a great experience all around.
I think, I think one of the greatest attributes that many of our students have. I don't want to paint with a overly broad brush, but you know, you say the word activist, and certainly it's not what we do in our journalism apartment, and it's not what the college does on the whole. I love that our students are so curious. They truly are curious. They ask outstanding questions, they want to know about things they don't know. They want to have the full Hillsdale experience, right, That's why
they're here. They want to know why things are. They want to know, you know, they ask amazing questions of guests who are on campus, of professors who are teaching them, and I think that's probably my favorite quality of Again, I would say a majority, a vast majority of our students is that they are genuinely curious about the intellectual experience and about the world around them.
Yeah.
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Do you have any cultural concerns? Like you're around students all the time. Is there some part of our culture that you're more concerned than others? What's our biggest cultural problem?
I've talked about this with others for at least a couple of years, and I'm trying to address it in my own way. We have these wonderful program called the Collegiate Scholars Program here on campus, and it attempts to take the different parts of the college and sort of put them together in these unique classes. They're one credit classes,
so they're not three credit classes. They're meant to be small in their own way, but to teach things specifically and something I noticed, so I'll do the big thing first. My concern is it's a culture that we we don't do things together anymore. Outside of the super Bowl. That's the one overarching thing that hits everybody. But you look at the way that the media landscape is fractured, and it's across the board. We don't watch the same TV shows.
The Cosby Show attracting forty fifty million packs doesn't happen, even Seinfeld thirty thirty five million people. Absolutely not. The first thing that someone asks if you talk to them about a TV show is you know, where's that streaming? Where can I find it? Everyone's confused about where even find shows.
We don't have the same TVs anymore.
Right, Everyone's got their own you know, sometimes it's a it's a phone and sometimes it's a monitor. You know, movies, Blockbusters, if you're not on the superhero train. You're missing out. I'm not so. I can count on one hand number of movies I've seen in the theaters in the past five years, maybe even ten years. Uh, we're not reading the same newspapers. If we're reading newspapers at all, we're listening to the same music that is being you know,
you're siloed in your Spotify everyone. It's fracturing us into smaller and smaller pieces and smaller and smaller pods, and we don't have that connective tissue as a society. And a secondary effect of this, which goes back to something we just talked about, is when we meet someone and want to talk about something, now we have to sort of rely on the one thing that touches everyone and infiltrates every area of our life, which is of course
politics and specifically national politics. And that I think is I think it's toxic that that is the only thing that we can interesting round about, that we have interested and can communicate about. We should be I mean, people should be interested in politics and who wins and lose this election. It has a big affection all of our lives. But to have a myopic focus to the detriment of having to talk to other people about almost anything, I
think is a danger. We have to be able to work with people, talk with people, have a new co worker, how do you connect with them? What do you have
in common? And I actually think that when we have to have the tougher conversations about things that really matter, that if we have this baseline of all right, well, just going back here, we both like family ties, or we both read the Chicago Tribune each morning, and we like this commonness, we both like pulp or whatever it might be, that you build a base of trust that we can have more difficult conversations if we know we're
alike in these their ways. That fracturing of the media really concerns me that we just we just don't experience things together. And you know, going back to TV and experiencing things together, well, we're not watching it at the same time, even if we watch the same show, because you're you're binging on a Sunday and I'm watching it week by week, and it's difficult to find a way forward or find a way through this because we're not going back. We want that flexibility to watch when we
want to watch. We like that the algorithm can tell us about new music that we might not have experienced before, and maybe a radio stage is not determining which are the most important songs we should hear the hits we should hear. We like that our we can find information from dozens of different sources and not just rely on something that plops on our driveway at five am every morning. People love that. I love it too, So we can't
slide back to a three network sort of lifestyle. But I do think and I don't know what the right answer is. I don't have one. If I did, be fantastic, but I don't know how we sort of find those things again. We get experience together and have these common common touch points between each other, and I think that really does concern me.
I've never heard of it described that way, but you're absolutely right that because we don't have other things in common, politics has become so much more important. That's it. I mean, I've for years thought that are just conversations have become so much more politicized political, and that's it. That's why we have nothing else to talk about. That that's what we share in common. And I wish it were some
other things. I mean, I don't know how to get I too have no answers to this, but I like that you've identified the problem because that's you know, that's definitely step one.
Yeah, and going back to my original I try to do this. There's also a problem with both vertical and horizontal meaning generations also don't have the same understandings my students. I don't blame them, but if you've tried to go back more than five years in history, they just don't They don't know that. They don't know about things. They don't have the experience when you and I were growing up,
you know, the radio stations. Your parents got to control the radio stations every now and then, so you were exposed to songs from twenty years ago and thirty years ago, and there were only four channels or maybe twenty or forty channels on cable, and the same movies got rerun over and over again. And so you should have had this knowledge and education recent history. And that helps a twenty year old be able to talk to a forty
year old. When I started, yeah, when I started in radio in Chicago, I worked for three guys in there at that point, they were probably mid to late thirties and I was a twenty two year old just out of college. That's a full generational difference. But I knew the music they liked. I knew the movies that they had seen dozens of times, and I could connect with them in that way. And so what I do in the Core Scholars program is try to at least do a little bit of that. I've taught a class on
the twilight Zone in Cold War America. I've taught a class on politics political humor of Saturday Night Live. I've taught a course on I called it music of Patriotism and protests from nineteen sixty to President Yeah, trying to at least with the students who are willing to take those classes, to give them a little bit of that recent history that is evading them because you know, those pipelines of media content don't quite reach them in the way that they reached me or they reached you.
Right, It's such a funny thing that they have this hurdle and they look, you know, no matter how much things change, you still want to connect with your boss. For example, fine common ground and your boss wants to connect with you. But it's really saying that how much harder that is for this generation now, and I don't know whether they realize that something has been lost in all of this, but this has been awesome. I really like these ideas. I think that's going to keep me
thinking for a while. So Scott, and here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their.
Lives, My best tip for listeners and how to improve your life. I'm asked often because I do so much here at the college, and I also have, of course family at home, freelance stuff. How do you do all that stuff? How do you find the time? And the best way that I explain this to people is you have to be intentional with your life. You have to be intentional with your time. I am really hyper specific about when I do things and the amount of time
I allow to do something. And then I've got to do this, but I know what all the deadlines are, and so I know I have more time to finish this and less time to finish that. And this goes for not just work, but also I mean slot in time to relax. I still do. I still read the Sunday Paper physical Sunday Paper, Wow, every Sunday, and I carve out time intentionally to do it because I love it.
I've done it for decades. It helps me relax. I read the physical So being intentional with your plans, being intentional with your goals, being intentional with your time, I think is extremely important. And connected to that very quickly is write stuff down. It was a great piece of advice. It sounds so obvious that someone had to take me aside and tell me when I was just starting in radio actually producing, like you're gonna forget this stuff.
Oh yeah, I take notes on everything. Yes, I have the memory has I think Douglas Copeland wrote about this in one of his books, but he said memory is water into an overflowing cup a certain age. That's what I feel like. I know all the words to like the songs that I liked when I was like ten years old, but sure not any of the names of the moms I met yesterday.
And there's something there really is something to the physical process of writing it. And I know you could put it on your phone and type it in, but they're writing it and then they're scratching it off when you complete it. There's something that is both satisfying and I think helps you toward that goal when you actually have it written down in front of you, so be intentional write stump down the two things.
Love it. Thank you so much, Scott. He's Scott Bertram. Check out his Political Beats podcast and wasn't that special? Fifty years of Saturday Night Live. Thanks so much for coming on my pleasure.
Thank you, Carol, Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marco Which show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.