Normally Podcast: Airport Chaos, TSA Shutdown & Failing Schools: When Politics Hurts Real Life

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (Normally)

Episode Title: Airport Chaos, TSA Shutdown & Failing Schools: When Politics Hurts Real Life
Date: March 26, 2026
Hosts: Mary Katharine Ham & Carol Markowitz
Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

In this episode of "Normally," Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz dissect the real-life consequences when politics interferes with daily living—focusing this week on the ongoing TSA shutdown due to a lack of DHS funding, and the mounting dysfunction within American public schools. With intelligence and humor, the hosts emphasize how these issues, often driven by political strategy rather than genuine policy goals, disproportionately affect ordinary Americans. The show closes with a tribute to “normie” women—those unwilling to be subsumed by political extremism or online tribalism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. TSA Shutdown & Airport Chaos

(02:43 – 13:49)

• Democrats Blocking DHS Funding:

  • Senate Democrats are using their minority power to block DHS (Department of Homeland Security) funding, resulting in lack of pay for TSA and Coast Guard employees, even amidst recent security threats ([03:51]).
  • This is a "proactive decision" by Senate Democrats, even though the ICE funding debate they cite is technically resolved ([05:56]).

• Spring Break Mayhem:

  • Travelers endure 4–6 hour security lines, especially severe at major hubs like Atlanta, due to lack of TSA staff willingness to work unpaid ([06:32]).
  • President Trump responds by deploying ICE agents to airports to help with security, freeing up TSA agents for screening duties—a suggestion traced back to a Clay and Buck listener ([07:02-07:49]).

• Immediate Result:

  • After ICE deployment in Atlanta, CNN reports dramatic improvements: "Almost no lines, no waiting," and TSA “breezing people through” ([08:09]).
  • Passengers express pragmatic approval:

    "I don't see how extra security could be bad… extra security is always good to me." – Atlanta Airport Passenger ([08:50])

• Media & Messaging Issues:

  • The hosts argue that if Republicans were responsible for such a shutdown, media coverage would be relentless and much more critical ([10:22]).
  • Delta’s suspension of "special congressional desk" privileges during the shutdown draws the ire of both hosts, who question why lawmakers deserve perks ordinary travelers do not ([10:53-11:07]).

• Political Gamesmanship:

  • Both hosts accuse Democrats of “engineering chaos on purpose” to force attention to their issues ([11:38], [12:20]).
  • Past shutdowns (like for Obamacare subsidies) are cited as similarly overblown, with the “sky did not fall” as predicted ([12:20-12:41]).
  • Internal party dynamics noted: Schumer pushed into this by primary threats from his left ([12:49-13:35]).

Notable Quotes

• Mary Katharine Ham:

  "This is a proactive decision. The party making the decision… is the Democrats in the Senate. They could vote to fund this at any time and they just keep saying no over and over again." ([05:56])

• Carol Markowitz:

  "Delta announced this week that they are suspending its special congressional desk service for members of Congress until the shutdown is over. And I'm like, why do they have a special desk? This is not a monarchy." ([10:53])

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2. Failing Schools, Lowered Standards & The Hidden Toll

(17:11 – 23:53)

• Boston's “Record” Graduation:

  • Boston Public Schools boast an 81% graduation rate, but Carol reveals it's driven by eliminating failing grades and standardized testing ([17:11-17:40]).
  • Schools rely on equity grading consultants and lower standards while celebrating “progress.”

    "Ban failing grades, eliminate testing, line the pockets of nonsense consulting, lower standards, then celebrate the success. Welcome to progress." – Carol, paraphrasing Guy Benson ([17:40])

• Nationwide Trend After COVID:

  • Districts nationwide have adjusted grading and proficiency thresholds after pandemic learning losses, “hiding the ball” rather than addressing the damage ([18:12-18:51]).
  • Mary Katharine questions the integrity of the process:

    "Why are you sitting in a building for eight hours a day if you are not learning actual skills?" ([18:52])

• Remote Learning Overuse:

  • Pittsburgh closes schools citywide for three days for the NFL Draft, despite only one school being directly impacted ([20:51]).
  • "Asynchronous learning" (remote) offered, which both hosts bluntly call a synonym for “not learning” ([21:16-21:18]).
  • Minneapolis previously closed for two days after unrelated city incidents with ICE, offering a month-long remote option ([21:39-22:10]).

• Chronic Absenteeism & Policy Cynicism:

  • Chronic absenteeism in Pittsburgh tops 30%, which the hosts attribute in part to the message that school is not truly necessary ([22:27-23:00]).
  • Carol provocatively muses about the need to “rethink public schools completely,” questioning continued public funding for dysfunction ([23:00]).

• Blame on Education Leadership:

  • Teachers’Union leader Randi Weingarten is blamed for damaging public education's reputation and function ([23:31]).

Notable Quotes

• Mary Katharine Ham:

  "Asynchronous learning is a synonym for not learning." ([21:16])

• Carol Markowitz:

  "At one point are we going to say that's it for public schools? ...It's not functioning because you've chosen not to make it function." ([23:00])

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3. A Tribute to “Normie Ladies” & The Value of Real Life

(26:46 – 30:48)

• Between Extremes:

  • The hosts applaud “normie women” who aren’t swayed by either “girl boss” or “trad wife” extremes, referencing a piece by Bridget Phetasy ([26:46-27:33]).
  • The podcast asserts the value of maintaining sanity and perspective in a tumultuous, online-driven media era.

• Encouragement to Disconnect:

  • Both hosts discuss cutting back on social media (removing X/Twitter from their phones) and the mental health benefits ([29:30-29:56]).
  • Mary Katharine offers personal encouragement:

    "You're a person with real friends in a real life and in touch with the real world… you keep showing up day after day after day. I love that idea." ([28:29])

• Self-Care Rituals:

  • Both share small life improvements, like reading before bed to improve sleep and wellbeing ([30:16-30:38]).

Notable Quotes

• Mary Katharine Ham, quoting Bridget Phetasy:

  "You're not angry or chaste enough for right wing media, and you're not obedient or queer enough for left wing media. And you're too smart for whatever the hell is happening on the View. You're the woman who can hold two thoughts in her head at the same time... life is still beautiful and funny and worth showing up for." ([28:29])

• Carol Markowitz:

  "The normal life is the better life." ([29:20])

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• TSA/DHS Funding Breakdown: 03:31 – 05:56
• ICE Deployed to Airports / Listener Influence: 07:02 – 07:49
• CNN Coverage of Improved Airport Lines: 08:09 – 08:50
• Delta Congressional Desk & Political Privilege: 10:53 – 11:07
• Shutdown Fatigue & Political Manipulation: 11:16 – 12:49
• Boston’s “Success” Hides Lowered Standards: 17:37 – 18:12
• Nationwide Grading Inflation after COVID: 18:12 – 18:51
• School Closures & Remote Learning Pitfalls: 20:51 – 22:10
• Chronic Absenteeism: 22:27 – 23:00
• Rethinking Public School Funding: 23:00 – 23:31
• Tribute to Normie Women & Social Media Detox: 26:46 – 29:56

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|-----------------------|-------| | 05:56 | Mary Katharine Ham | "They could vote to fund this at any time and they just keep saying no over and over again." | | 08:50 | Airport Passenger | "I don't see how extra security could be bad… extra security is always good to me." | | 10:53 | Carol Markowitz | "Why do they have a special desk? This is not a monarchy." | | 12:41 | Mary Katharine Ham | "Sky remains intact." | | 17:40 | Carol Markowitz | "Ban failing grades, eliminate testing, line the pockets of nonsense consulting, lower standards, then celebrate the success. Welcome to progress." | | 21:16 | Mary Katharine Ham | "Asynchronous learning is a synonym for not learning." | | 28:29 | Mary Katharine Ham | "[Quoting Bridget Phetasy] You're the woman who can hold two thoughts in her head at the same time... life is still beautiful and funny and worth showing up for." | | 29:20 | Carol Markowitz | "The normal life is the better life." |

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Tone & Style

The episode is brisk, witty, and laced with skepticism about both political parties’ communications and the broader media environment. Both hosts ground the discussion in everyday experience—spring break chaos, school closures, social media overconsumption—connecting political dysfunction directly to listeners’ lives.

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For Listeners

If you missed the episode, this summary captures its essential arguments, the political and cultural insights, and the call to maintain perspective and normalcy amid the madness of modern America. The hosts encourage active, sane engagement—not only in politics, but in life itself.

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Transcript

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

Hey, guys. We are back on normally the show with normal. It takes for when the news gets weird. I am Mary Kathleen.

[Carol Markowitz]

I'm Carol Markowitz. How are you, Mary Kathryn?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I'm doing all right. It's springtime. We're in almost full bloom for the cherry blossoms, which is also the time that my allergies go crazy. But I prepared with two weeks of dosing on Zyrtec, so I'm okay. Nice.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, I'm rooting for you. And you know, the cherry blossoms, they look so good. Maybe a little pain, you know, is worth it.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

The pain can be very real. It took me like 10 years of getting flu, like symptoms on this week every year before I realized, like, oh, maybe it's allergies. So here we are. Yeah, I learn. I learn.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yep. Yep.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

All right.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, the TSA remains largely affected by a lack of DH DHS funding. And we keep getting asked, what is this all about? Now, you and I have covered what it's all about previously on the show, but let's just do it one more time. Let's just tell them again.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. So what's happening is that Democrats are using their one and only minority power within the Senate to block DHS funding, which means that the TSA and the Coast Guard and a bunch of other parts of DHS do not get funding, despite the fact that we have four jihadi inspired attacks on US soil and now spring break being affected by TSA agents who understandably are not excited to come to work because they're not getting paychecks. This happened to them within the count, you know, within a year, twice now that they have been hung out to dry. And though I am not always a great fan of TSA as a tc, I am a fan of people being paid for the work that they are doing. And this is an unnecessary maneuver to try to get ICE funding changes that are not really on the table as part of this at all.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. That's the best part, actually, that there's nothing really that they're pushing for that can happen here because the ICE funding is already over, as you have previously told us. It was in the big, beautiful bill. And so it's. It's not up for debate. It's happening. It's happened. It's already done. The timeline on this is it starts around January where ICE is getting into clashes in Minnesota and Democrats decide to try to punish the policies that they don't like by not approving DHS funding. We have a short shutdown in the beginning of February, end of January, and then they temporarily fix it by having a two week funding extension for dhs. Only then the funding lapses and Congress cannot reach a deal. Democrats are completely pushing something again that does not, is not up for debate. Cannot happen. ICE funding, bye bye. It's gone. It has left the building. And so they continue to target dhs. And only DHS and TSA are affected by this particular shutdown while the rest of the government remains open.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. And it's important to understand that this is a proactive decision. The party making the decision to do this is the Democrats in the Senate because they could vote to fund this at any time and they just keep saying no over and over again. They are, they are filibustering this. This is something that Republicans and Trump should be repeating ad nauseam on airwaves, on X from the Oval Office. And as usual, the messaging is muddy and the media is not going to help you with it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure aren't. Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Trump, for his part, has decided to say, hey, okay, we've got problems with tsa. People are standing in these long lines being told to get to the airport four and six hours before their flight, especially somewhere like Atlanta. He says, okay, well, let's send ICE to the airports. And that actually can help because ICE can do force protection and deal with entryways and doors and other protection that happens around tsa. So more of those TSA agents who are at work can be used to screen.

[Carol Markowitz]

There's some irony in this, right? Democrats are like, we're not going to fund the TSA and we're not going to do that because we don't want ICE to be funded. And Trump is like, hey, here's ICE for you in the airports. I want to also add a shout out to our kind of brother podcast, Clay and Buck, you know, we're on their podcast network. This seems to have been an idea planted by one of their listeners. A woman calls in and says, hey, Donald Trump should send ICE to the airport. And Donald Trump is listening and he's like, yeah, let's send ICE to the airport. He ends up sending, I think the woman's name was Linda, a nice MAGA hat signed with like, what a great idea she had. And here we are. Because you could just do things, says Donald Trump.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

You could just do things. And in one place, Atlanta, which has been greatly affected by this because it is a huge high traffic airport. We have this update from, of all places, cnn, which seems to suggest that right after ICE was deployed, which they note in the Chiron, things got better.

[Carol Markowitz]

Funny. Funny that.

[CNN Reporter]

Well, there may be a celebration here at the airport before it's all said and done, especially for the folks who've been working nonstop extra shifts. If you look right here, you can see this is the main checkpoint. Almost no lines, no waiting. Sarah, this is unbelievable at this point. This morning started briskly with a lot of people showing up here at the airport. Lines were long, people were waiting about an hour. But when that rush hour went away pretty quickly this morning, we ended up with this. And there seems to be more lines open than normal right now with the TSA workers here breezing people through. In fact, a lot of folks have been showing up shocked at how short the lines are. Take a listen to some of the folks we talked to this morning.

[Airport Passenger]

I don't see how extra security could be bad. You know, I mean, they're going to help out and, you know, make things move a little faster, but whether they're doing that or not, we don't know. But extra security is always good to me.

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I mean, you think it's not going

[Carol Markowitz]

to be that bad, but then you

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get here and, you know, you think, oh, man, it's, it really is as bad as they say it is.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

I mean, people like security, who knew,

[Mary Katharine Ham]

by the way, that is like, that's a normal people sentiment if I've ever heard one, where the reporter is like, what do you think? And he's like, well, I don't know. Seems fine. By the way, the ank. The reporter there who, I don't know if, you know, he'll, he'll be reprimanded. But he went on to say that people largely said that the ICE officers were pleasant and that everyone was giving a cheer at the end of that morning shift when it seemed that the slowdowns had been largely fixed by this deployment of extra people. The ICE officers, interestingly, are not wearing masks. They are unmasked and just doing their, their thing in the airport. That is interesting partly because that's one of the things that Democrats have asked for in these negotiations, which are ongoing, sort of. Although both Trump and Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats are like, I don't know if we're for any of these deals. So I, I don't know if it's going to change. But I do think it is important to say, once again, Trump did a thing that seems to have partially fixed the problem. Democrats at any moment could just vote

[Carol Markowitz]

to fund to pay these people Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And it would be done. And if it were Republicans making this choice to not fund them, you would hear no end of sob stories about this. It's just not, you know, that they know who's to blame because they're not telling you the story frequently.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's exactly right. Also, Atlanta is a major Delta hub and Delta announced this week that they are suspending its special congressional desk service for members of Congress until the shutdown is over. And I'm like, until the shutdown is over. Why do they have a special desk?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Like, I know this is not all the time.

[Carol Markowitz]

This is not, you know, a monarchy. They are not royalty. They should be waiting on those three hour lines with everybody else. And the fact that they even have this desk is unacceptable. I think so.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Stand in the line. Yeah. Yeah. Who are you? Why did you get a special line? I am busier than you are. I am sure about that. So, yeah. Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, I'm glad that, that functionally we're, we're solving the problem. But yeah, Republicans need to be talking about this.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Much more often. I understand there's sort of, there is a sort of shutdown fatigue on this storyline because it happens fairly frequently, but in this case over spring break when it's having a real deleterious effect on people's lives. Let's, let's continue to spread that.

[Carol Markowitz]

And there's the fact that these stories are coming out. People are like, should I get to the airport three or four hours early? And then they do. And then they're in the airport clogging the airports because there is no line anymore and it's been sort of solved. We don't get live updates on that or anything. LaGuardia is not like, hey guys, our lines are free right now. Doesn't happen that way. So I, I think this chaos is on purpose. It's by the Democrats to cause problems so that people pay attention to their issues. I, I think the American people should demand they, they fund the DHS and that they fund the TSA agents who are working. And then we should really rethink whether the ts a government program.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. By the way, I just want to remind everyone the last Democratic shutdown was for the additional subsidies for Obamacare. And you'll remember before that happened, it was like the sky is going to fall if people don't get these. They didn't get them, guys.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

They have been gone since the end of December.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sky remains intact.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

You may notice they're not talking about that anymore because it's not the thing getting attention at the moment. It's not the tool they're using. These are all just tools.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And sometimes, as in this case, they do hurt people. In the case of the aca, that was mostly false. Politifact. Mostly false. And so just keep that in mind when each of these emergency situations comes up for Democrats is that three months from now they're not going to be talking about this because it wasn't real. And frankly, a lot of those extra subsidies were fraud and were going to people who had plenty of money to pay for their health care. One last thing. This is being pushed by Schumer in part because he was threatened with primaries if it's being primaried by his own party and upstarts within it if he gave in on this kind of thing in the future. So it's also a political thing with, with Schumer's ambitions.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Chuck Schumer likes your you waiting on a long, long line at the airport. That should be the ad actually right there.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I just wrote your ad gop, by the way. There's a huge, there's some important races in Georgia, guys run some ads there, Right?

[Carol Markowitz]

Not a bad idea. All right, we're going to take a short break and be right back with more on normally.

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[Carol Markowitz]

We are back on normally where the city of Boston is touting their graduation rate reaching an all time high last year. They are so proud of their record high 81%. It's 8 percentage points behind their state average but nevertheless Boston is really thrilled that they're able to get, you know, four out of five of the kids in their city graduated.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Hey, I mean I'm excited for them. Isn't this good news Carol, it's not

[Carol Markowitz]

actually or it's not real news. They basically banned Fs. You're not allowed to fail classes anymore. In Boston, they eliminated testing. They hired these insane equity grading consultants, and now they somehow got their numbers up. So, you know, our friend Guy Benson tweets, ban failing grades, eliminate testing, line the pockets of nonsense consulting lower standards, then celebrate the success. Welcome to progress. Which is exactly how I feel about it.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and this is the pattern in all of these failing school systems. It's in my local area, of course, because once Covid hit and they realized, okay, we are messing this up and we are going to have to climb back from it. What they did is they changed the grading systems and they changed the thresholds for what equaled proficiency in our area so that they could hide the ball about how much damage they had done.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And that is a problem that repeats itself over and over again. You've got grade inflation across the us. The sat, I believe, just basically admitted that they had lowered their standards and made the test easier.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And I would just submit that. Why are you sitting in a building for eight hours a day if you are not learning actual skills like I

[Carol Markowitz]

baffling, go do something else eventually. Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

You need to know these things. And if you are not doing those things, perhaps you should go work a job like this. This is silly.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. What are we doing here? There's a great article about this entire thing in City Journal by someone named Nitu Arnold. And Arnold writes that, you know, as these numbers have gone down, their scores have gone up, and so it, you know, continues to really make no sense. One thing Arnold writes. Boston has eased its grading policies. Ahead of the 2122 school year. The district published a policy banning teachers from giving no credit grades. Instead, teachers could give students incomplete marks, which supposedly would enable equitable learning recovery. As soon as you hear the word equitable, you know that education standards are about to. To plummet.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yes. And this is, again, it happens everywhere. And by the way, schools that have gotten good at hiding the ball, that have practiced hiding the ball, that have practiced closing down on a hair trigger, that have practiced lowering standards, it all just is a vicious cycle. It gets worse and worse. And there's another story out of Pittsburgh this week that I wrote about for Daily Wire. Pittsburgh is hosting the draft. And the draft, the NFL draft, of course, comes with all this pomp and circumstance and crowds more than it used to. In fact, Detroit hosted it two years ago to 775,000 people in the city. Interestingly. They didn't need to close schools. But Pittsburgh has decided. Pittsburgh has. Like, you're doing worse than Detroit. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has decided that it must close schools for three days while people are in town for the draft. Now, Selena Zito, you know, is a Pittsburghian, and she notes there is exactly one school in the downtown triangle where they're going to be holding most of the draft festivities.

[Carol Markowitz]

But just in case.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Right, just in case, you know, because you got. You gotta go remote. Remote is so good for kids. You know, we learned that the statement from the district was, our priority is maintaining continuity of learning while recognizing. Recognizing the extraordinary circumstance the city will experience during the NFL draft. Transitioning to a asynchronous learning allows us to support students academically. No, it doesn't. No, asynchronous learning is a synonym for not learning.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's a bunch of BS.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That is.

[Carol Markowitz]

We know this.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, and they do this all over the place because again, districts that practiced closing close more now. Districts that practice being open during adversity and Covid are good at staying open and open greater than closed. I don't know how more simple to make it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, this is the whole thing, right? It's like they figured out how to close schools whenever they want, and now they do it whenever they want. We talked about in January that Minneapolis Public Schools were closed for two days because of incidents around the city. That was the ICE incident that happened in Minneapolis. Even if the school's not near it, even if, you know, nothing is happening in the vicinity of the school, they closed anyway for two full days.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and not only that, they allowed a remote option for students who felt like it for a month.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

For a month.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. You know, I would have 100% felt like it in high school.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Oh, exactly. That's the thing. And this is one of the things I think people underestimate. You know what happens when you break a habit? It used to be that maybe you couldn't depend on your public school to actually teach your kid much, but you could depend on it to open its doors.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

There was a habit. Everybody went to the school, you did the thing. And then we broke that habit, just as we did going to movies or going out to restaurants or, you know, any of these things. It turned out rebuilding that was pretty hard. And here we are with Pittsburgh. By the way, you'll be interested in this, Carol, your old adage that if you say school's not necessary, people might believe you. You're going to be shocked to find out that chronic absenteeism is in the extreme category in Pittsburgh public schools at 30 plus percent of chronic absenteeism.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, I mean, we're not going to get into the side topic of do we have to just rethink public schools completely, like, because we don't have time for it on this half hour show. I mean, we already are ending the TSA in the first segment, but I'm kind of thinking we spend so much money on this and it is not effective. At one point are we going to say that's it for public schools? They haven't worked. It's not functioning. You don't want it to function. It's not functioning because you've chosen not to make it function. And I don't know that we should be paying for it anymore.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, I mean, that's the bottom line. Randy Weingarten did more damage to the reputation and the function of public schools than anyone in my lifetime. Any activist on the other side, on the other side, which is teaching children, she did the most damage of all of them. And the damage continues and children will lose out from these three days.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's right. All right, we're going to take a short break and be right back with more on. Normally

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

all right, we are back on normally with, appropriately enough, a tribute to the normie ladies. Our friend Bridgettes, one of our favorite normies. Yeah, one of our favorites, our friend Bridget Fedisi wrote a piece where she's given it up for the normie ladies who are out there, who are somewhere between girl boss and trad wife, who look around them and see the world and think, is everyone going crazy? Am I in this alone with my still sane mind? And we would just like to say,

[Carol Markowitz]

you're not alone, baby.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Bridget's friends and to our audience, none of us are alone. We're all trying to wade through this as normie as we can. And I appreciate Bridget's. Bridget's tribute to all of us.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

If I may be so bold as to say I remain sane.

[Carol Markowitz]

Absolutely. I think this is. Look, this is what normally is all about. We talk to the normal person. We talk to somebody who doesn't think of themselves as a caricature of trad wife or girl boss or whatever and that they don't spend their time thinking about, you know, how the bullet fragment worked with Charlie Kirk and how Candace is You know, exposed the plot to murder him.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That is in her 61st part of a documentary.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. And all of that is to say that being online too much is not good for you. I know this. You know this. We all know this. We all probably are still online too much. But what I would say to people listening is, you have to cut it down. I have to cut it down. We have to all work together to cut it down. The online world, it is real. It's not that it's not real, but your actual life outside your door. The normal life. That's the better one.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. You're a person with real friends in a real life and in touch with the real world. Bridget writes the algorithms don't know what to do with you because you don't fit in a demographic bucket. You're not angry or chaste enough for right wing media, and you're not obedient or queer enough for left wing media. And you're too smart for whatever the hell is happening on the View. You're the woman who can hold two thoughts in her head at the same time. And the world is a dumpster fire. That the world is a dumpster fire. And that life is still beautiful and funny and worth showing up for. And you keep showing up day after day after day. I love that idea. I frequently feel torn between these poles and like, why can't we just live in a place where you can hold the two thoughts right? And you are not a caricature. And I just appreciate so much that Sunny view. Even in the dumpster fire.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Same, same. Look, again, I think that the normal life is the better life. And Bridget lays it out very nicely, by the way.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I this week took X off of my phone so that I have to use it intentionally on my laptop.

[Carol Markowitz]

Ye.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, it. It's better. It's better, guys.

[Carol Markowitz]

So much better. I do it. I do it like twice a year for about a week at a time when. When we take trips. But, you know, I. I've said this before, but my finger still goes to the spot on my phone. It's like it just automatically is trying to press a button that's not there anymore. That's always really scary to notice.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That's a little bit of addiction for you folks. And I. But it has been better. Like, I'm. I'm not picking my phone up in the morning. First thing, I find that I'm hitting that spot, but the. It's not there anymore, so I don't worry about it.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Anyway, let's work on it. Let's get our workouts in and touch grass.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, absolutely. My My middle son and I have promised each other that we will read more before bed. We both enjoy the reading and don't feel like we're doing it enough. And before bed's gonna be our time. There's actually a study out today. Like we talked about this yesterday, but out today about how if you read before bed, your brain just shuts down so much better and you need a Runway to go to sleep.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I definitely need something I've been reading David Copperfield. Look at me. I got many hundreds of pages to go, so I'll be working on that.

[Carol Markowitz]

Love it. Well, thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcast. Get in touch with us@ normallythepodmail.com thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.

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Poshmark has millions of new and pre lived pieces. Vintage, luxury, men's, women's, children's, everything from Carhartt to coach.

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There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still. Not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now we are here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more when your

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.