Normally Podcast: Government Fraud Scandals, CNN’s Terror Coverage Controversy & The Screen Time Crisis in School

Summary

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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show: "Normally Podcast: Government Fraud Scandals, CNN’s Terror Coverage Controversy & The Screen Time Crisis in School"

Date: March 12, 2026
Hosts: Mary Katharine Ham & Carol Markowitz
Publisher: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz dive into a medley of urgent and sometimes absurd current events. Their main focus is on rampant government fraud scandals, controversy surrounding CNN's coverage of a recent terror incident, and the growing crisis of excessive screen time in schools. Throughout the discussion, the hosts showcase frustration, humor, and exasperation over institutional failures, media spin, and the challenges of modern parenting.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Government Fraud Scandals (05:05–16:03)

Main Thread:
The hosts detail a series of egregious government fraud cases—misused government funds for infrastructure, Medicaid, and hospice care—and expose systemic loopholes.

• The “Information Superhighway to Nowhere”

  • Example: DC requested $4 million to connect 55 “unserved” locations to the internet. Upon investigation, these locations included a shed, an open field, a university field house, and a construction trailer with visible fiber nearby. After scrutiny, DC admitted there were zero actual sites needing funds.
    • Memorable Quote:

      "You end up with piles of money going to utter, utter nonsense."
      —Mary Katharine Ham (05:27)

• Medicaid Autism Therapy Fraud

  • Example: One Indiana business billed Medicaid $29 million in a year to treat just 84 children—over $340,000 per child. Despite suspicion, the business owner openly acknowledged exploiting the system, arguing she broke no rules.
    • Commentary:

      “She bought herself, like, three homes.”
      —Carol Markowitz (08:30) “In a lot of these programs, Democrats insisted there be no rules.”
      —Mary Katharine Ham (08:48) “Am I the last person working?”
      —Carol Markowitz (10:11)

• Hospice Identity Theft and Billing Fraud

  • Example: Medicare was billed for “hospice care” for a living, active patient—while 89 hospice companies registered to a single address in California, a clear sign of fraud.
    • Analysis:

      "They do this with vulnerable populations... so those running off with the money can say, 'How dare you come after the dying and disabled children.' That’s what's happening."
      —Mary Katharine Ham (12:15) “The story here is that they're being uncovered and stopped now. I'd love to see that continue.”
      —Carol Markowitz (14:20)

Systemic Themes:

• Lack of oversight and verification in government handouts, often justified by compassion for vulnerable groups.
• Cultural shift towards normalization of fraud, with ordinary taxpayers feeling like "suckers" for following the rules.
• Media and political reluctance to confront fraud in Democratic-led states or programs.

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2. CNN’s Terror Coverage Controversy (19:54–27:57)

Main Thread:
The hosts dissect CNN's reporting of an anti-Islam protest in New York that turned violent, critiquing perceived media bias in framing the story.

• CNN’s Framing:

  • CNN initially tweeted the story from the perspective of the Muslim assailants, suggesting their experience of being arrested during a warm day in NYC as the angle, rather than their role as perpetrators.
  • Hosts' Critique:
    • “It obfuscates what happened in such a deep way that…this is the kind of thing that leads people to conspiracy theories.”
      —Carol Markowitz (20:48)
  • Abby Phillip's On-Air Error and Apology:
    • Primetime anchor Abby Phillip misreads a teleprompter, incorrectly implying the attack targeted the mayor, not anti-Islam protesters.
    • Phillip later apologized on social media but not on air; the hosts challenge the lack of on-air accountability.
    • Memorable Quote:

      "You need to not Ron Burgundy it, and you need to be aware of what's happening."
      —Mary Katharine Ham (23:56)

• Liberal Media Bubble:

  • Discussion of media insiders’ reluctance to break from the prevailing narrative, and how conservative voices in mainstream panels often serve as the only fact-checkers.
    • “If we get the fact wrong, we're completely dismissed. Liberal privilege like this just doesn't exist on our side.”
      —Carol Markowitz (26:32)
  • Flashback: Abby Phillip, on Joy Reid’s show, touts her role as a “debunker” for liberal audiences—yet, in this instance, she perpetuated misinformation.

Overarching Point:
Failures in journalistic integrity and accountability perpetuate distrust and support conspiracy thinking among the public.

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3. The Screen Time Crisis in Schools (31:04–38:02)

Main Thread:
A lively dialogue on the explosion of classroom screen time, sparked by a NYT feature about iPads in kindergarten and children absorbing ads during school hours.

• Personal Stories:

  • Parents (like Claire Benoist) discover their children are watching YouTube and commercials during class, contrary to school promises of limited screen time.
  • “Other parents talk about limiting their screen time at home and working really hard…and then finding out their kids are on for hours a day at school.”
    —Mary Katharine Ham (32:26)

• Cell Phone Bans Aren’t Enough:

  • Carol notes that while schools ban cell phones, kids simply switch to laptops and tablets for non-educational use during class.
  • Memorable Exchange:

    “What have we really accomplished by taking away the phones?”
    —Carol Markowitz (34:26)
    “But if the new tool is making things worse, you need to abandon the new tool and go back to basics.”
    —Mary Katharine Ham (35:36)

• Solutions and Parental Responsibility:

  • Emphasize parent involvement—limiting screen time at home, confronting school boards, and proactively fostering non-digital play.
  • Community Effects:

    “If you get your kids outside and playing, other kids will join. That’s how it works.”
    —Carol Markowitz (36:44) “You have to be more intentional about it than you were in the past.”
    —Mary Katharine Ham (37:13)

Tangible Policy Point:
Highlight: Districts in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which maintain “tech-free” reading instruction, show better results than tech-heavy classrooms.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You end up with piles of money going to utter, utter nonsense."
  —Mary Katharine Ham (05:27)

• "She bought herself, like, three homes.”
  —Carol Markowitz (08:30)

• “Am I the last person working?”
  —Carol Markowitz (10:11)

• “They do this with vulnerable populations on purpose so that…how dare you come after the dying and disabled children.”
  —Mary Katharine Ham (12:15)

• “It obfuscates what happened in such a deep way…this is the kind of thing that leads people to conspiracy theories.”
  —Carol Markowitz (20:48)

• “You need to not Ron Burgundy it, and you need to be aware of what's happening.”
  —Mary Katharine Ham (23:56)

• “If we get the fact wrong, we're completely dismissed. Liberal privilege like this just doesn't exist on our side.”
  —Carol Markowitz (26:32)

• "What have we really accomplished by taking away the phones?"
  —Carol Markowitz (34:26)

• "But if the new tool is making things worse, you need to abandon the new tool and go back to basics."
  —Mary Katharine Ham (35:36)

• “If you get your kids outside and playing, other kids will join.”
  —Carol Markowitz (36:44)

• “You have to be more intentional about it than you were in the past.”
  —Mary Katharine Ham (37:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Gov’t Fraud Scandals: 05:05 – 16:03
• CNN Terror Coverage Controversy: 19:54 – 27:57
• Screen Time Crisis in Schools: 31:04 – 38:02

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Tone & Style

The conversation blends exasperation over the status quo with humor, personal anecdotes, and impassioned calls for accountability. Both hosts use a conversational, slightly irreverent tone, punctuated by moments of genuine outrage and camaraderie.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (Normally Podcast edition) is a bracing, witty indictment of government mismanagement, media distortion, and the technological drift in education. With a mix of detailed examples, policy analysis, and cultural commentary, Ham and Markowitz highlight the consequences of unserious governance, captured media, and modern parenting dilemmas—calling listeners to vigilance, skepticism, and action in their communities and personal lives.

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.

[Carol Markowitz]

I am Mary Kathryn Ham and I'm Carol Markowitz. Are you wrapping up your time at Hillsdale? Mary Kathryn I am.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I'm going out to dinner one last time tonight and teaching my last class today. And I still have no tweed jackets with elbow patches, but I will work on it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, I think that you got to get it when you get back to, you know, the east coast.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

If they're ever going to invite me back again, I really need I was visited by Molly Hemingway came to my lecture.

[Carol Markowitz]

Oh so nice.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That was really nice. And I had a line in my speech not knowing that she would be there. That was a bit of a shout out to you and her because I said it's important to surround yourself with people who will test you on your beliefs and your outfit choices. And I happen to have a group of mouthy broads who are my friends who will not let me give me a pass on everything. And most of them have been fellows here.

[Carol Markowitz]

So yeah, mouthy abroad's for the win.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It's important.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, let's get into it. What is going on in the news? You know, again, we're not talking Iran in this episode because things are just keep on keeping on. I saw news that we're ahead of schedule, which not clear what that means, but glad to know we're ahead of schedule. Better than being behind schedule. But we will update the Normally listeners when we hear of any breaking news or potential news or stories developing there that are different from the day to day.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. But meanwhile on the home front we have lots and lots of fraud. Carol, I know that Vice President J.D. vance has been put in charge of sort of like an overarching fraud fraud busting project. Right. Fraud. Yeah. Fraud czar. And it seems like it's needed. I mean I as somebody who's skeptical of what government does with our money, even I think I didn't imagine the immense ridiculousness that comes with, particularly in the Biden era, handing out millions and billions and then, but simultaneously cutting the verification for these processes. And so you just end up with piles of money going to utter utter nonsense. A couple examples from just this week we have. This is a Wall Street Journal piece about an information superhighway to nowhere. It was a D.C. based thing where they go looking for this money. They say they took, they took two hours looking from address to address because D.C. had asked a government agency for $4 million to connect 55 unserved locations. So a couple people get their boots on and they go walking around looking at these addresses and they find the unserved sites that D.C. wanted taxpayers to subsidize for $4 million. Among them were a shed along some train tracks, an open field, a Catholic University field house, a Pepco utility facility. That's our power company in the area. Construction trailer next to visible fiber. And after they did this review, this little group of lawmakers, D.C. said, okay, maybe actually we had zero things that needed money.

[Carol Markowitz]

Like, yeah, shout out to Ted Cruz, who gets a mention here in 2023, he found dozens of D.C. supposedly unserved locations were inside the zoo.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

So just amazing stuff. And this is. Arielle Ross wrote this. She works for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration inside the Department of Commerce. And they sniffed this out and did the shoe leather work that sometimes reporters have been known to do in the

[Carol Markowitz]

past, right back in history.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Not in, not in this case. But that's, that's just one story. We have another one from the Wall Street Journal. Again, this is about the boom in autism therapy and it's a Medicaid fraud. So listen to this. And I don't think this one might not even technically qualify as fraud because the perpetrator here is just openly saying, this is what I did. Right, here we go. When Megan Mitchell first launched her autism therapy business in 2019, she took aim at an unlikely source of profit. Indiana's taxpayer funded Medicaid program, the public insurance system for the poor. The bet paid off. In 2023, the state paid Mitchell's company, piece by piece, autism centers 29 million to provide therapy to just 84 parent patients. About $340,000 a child, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That amount surpassed what Indiana Medicaid typically spends in a year treating a newly diagnosed wound cancer patient or covering a year of nursing home care. Yeah, piece by piece became one of Medicaid's most expensive providers. And she bought herself, like, three homes.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Like, as she's buying these, you know, they point out a $2.5 million home in Florida, Sanibel island, and $600,000 waterfront house on the Tippecanoe river in Indiana. Like, how is. I mean, she must be aware she's committing fraud. Well, she shouldn't be open about it.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Right? Well, she. She's like, I didn't break any of the rules. And truly that might be the case because what happened is that in a lot of these programs, Democrats insisted there be no rules. Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

She was like the smartest person alive.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And it should be embarrassing because this money is taken from families who probably have trouble getting their children treated for the various things that they need their children treated for while this woman's making off with 340k per kid.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right? Right. One of the comments on the tweets about it comes from KK Bird, and she writes 30 to 40 hours a week of ABA therapy. No way. My kid was lucky if he sat for and was approved for an hour or two a week. It's either a fake therapy or babysitting scam. Absolute fraud. Yeah, it sounds fraud. Delicious. Definitely.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It does. Well. And like, the problem is you. You hit a point with this stuff. I was talking to a friend earlier today about, you know, the future of careers and AI and economic issues and stuff, and she's like, you want to touch back in a couple hours and like, brainstorm some ways to do the fraud? Because it seems like a lot of people are doing the fraud. And eventually people do think, well, this whole process is so fraudulent. Why am I not getting my slice of this pie?

[Carol Markowitz]

Absolutely. Yeah. I can imagine the average taxpayer just being like, I'm a sucker for working a normal job and paying my taxes and not committing fraud. I think after the Somali daycare fraud, I heard a lot of that on the Internet where people were just like, am I the last person working?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It feels that way sometimes. Or it feels like, by the way, if you wanted to start your own practice or Medicaid or a Medicaid funded thing or your own practice or something that worked outside of government, by the way, without any subsidies, the state would give you such a hard time. Right? Like, you can't just up and start a daycare. But it turns out it's real easy as long as you don't follow any of the laws. CBS is also doing some work out in California where they found hospice fraud in LA this is the reporter there saying, at age 69, Len Ianni is a pickleball whiz, zipping from dinks to drives energetically. When she suffered an injury on the court two years ago, she sought physical therapy and was surprised to learn her Medicare insurance wouldn't cover it. She was, according to Medicare records, dying and in hospice. Someone had taken her identity and was making money regularly off of this woman who's out living a life. So we're paying double for this person. And by the way, the, all the illegal immigration makes identity theft and all of these things so much worse because the left doesn't want to deal with any of that crime either.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's right. And this comes out of CBS News and it's interesting because would the old CBS pre. Barry Weiss had done any, anything like this? Obviously this, this fraud is being committed in California. I think they would be protecting Gavin Newsom and not reporting on this. So I love that change has come.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Me too. And in general, reporters think that government money is government money. They do. A lot of left leaning reporters do not recognize it as your money. Right. So they're just like, who really cares? Who needs to check on this? I would note that they found 89 hospice companies were registered to a single building in Van Nuys. You can't have Hospice services for 89 people in Van Nuys. And by the way, this is designed when they do it for autism and hospice. Those are vulnerable populations on purpose so that the people running off with this money and the people facilitating them running off with this money can go, how dare you come after the dying and the disabled children. That's right. And that's what's happening. Because that's not who these people are.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, absolutely. On the story, on the tweet from this story, John Bachman from Newsmax, our friend John writes to the California governor and Governor press office account saying, any comment? You're so worried about our troops getting lobster and steak, you embarrass yourself daily. Because there is a story right now about the amount of money that our military spends on things like lobster or steak for our military troops.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And it's like special occasion dinners for deployed troops.

[Carol Markowitz]

I'm perfectly okay with that. And I don't see any evidence of fraud there. I think that the idea that we can't splurge on meals for our active duty member military members is insanity.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. And by the way, it's worth pointing out that unlike in the Biden administration, Kristi Noem, at least one person has been demoted since Slash disciplined in some way for having misspent money. This happened in his first term, too. I believe Zinke was out for doing similar. And another, maybe a DHS guy at one point. I have always appreciated that Trump can fire people. Biden's mistake was never firing anyone for doing anything. And yet often the misspending of money by actual officials is. Pales in comparison to these massive fraud operations.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Yeah. You know, you. You said you were surprised. I. I feel like Russian from Brooklyn. I'm not that surprised. In fact, I'm always like, please know Russian names in these stories. Right? And you know, by that, I don't mean Russian from Russia. I mean ex Soviets who live in America. But, yeah, like, I think that these broad scams have been so prevalent for so long that really the story here is that they're being uncovered and stopped now. And I'd love to see that continue. I. I really, I had hope in Doge and that kind of thing. And of course, government spending went up even despite Doge. So now my hope is broad busting, really, that that's the only thing we have left.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

The. The Medicaid story comes from a data release from Doge, so that is just an issue of having enough enterprising numbers people to go through the Medicaid info. So I think we'll be seeing more from that. And it did originate from Doge. So getting to the bottom of this stuff is sometimes a slow process. And it turns out. And maybe we should all be inspired to put on our boots and walk around and be like, what is this address again? That is getting all my money. Oh, man.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. You know, I would say just tell my Twitter followers, like, what to do, and they'll.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

They'll.

[Carol Markowitz]

They'll go do it because they are investig of reporters, those people. I have a story. I may have told it on here before, but one time I was in Texas, and I didn't tell my followers that I was in Texas and I posted a tray of barbecue. Didn't say anything except I kind of jokingly said, like, Brooklyn Barbecue. And like, somebody nailed not just the barbecue place, but, like, the. The dish that I ordered.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It was.

[Carol Markowitz]

It was wild.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

I was like, okay, I can't. I can't do this anymore.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, be careful. Amazing. Well, I'm glad you got some non Brooklyn barbecue.

[Carol Markowitz]

Hey, Brooklyn barbecue is not bad.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Except for that one notorious picture, which was.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

If y' all didn't see that, that's an old. That's an old meme, basically inside Twitter joke.

[Carol Markowitz]

But Brooklyn barbecue. If you happen to be in Brooklyn and wanting some barbecue hometown. And Red Hook is legit nice, by the way.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Can I just point out that I thought somebody had this genius idea and I can't even tell you who it is right now, but I'm gonna say the genius idea. There's two dudes who are running around New York City alphabetically trying to have food from every single nation on earth.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's cool.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And it's so fun. They just go to these tiny little places. So I believe in New York. I believe that New York can produce Southern food. But I'm glad you pointed us to the right place.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, we're gonna take a short break and be right back with more

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

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[Carol Markowitz]

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[Carol Markowitz]

We are back on normally where CNN has been just painting itself in glory since the attempted terrorist attack in New York City on Saturday. We talked about various media outlets miscovering. You know, I can't even call it miscovering, right, because they weren't doing it accidentally. This is on purpose covering the attack by two young Muslim men on anti Islam protesters. This attack has now been portrayed as somehow on Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City and his wife, and not on the people who would actually was targeted to and not from these two young Muslim men who have affinity for isis. So yesterday on Tuesday, CNN tweeted a story where this is how the tweet went. Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day, enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zoram Mamdani's home. Here's what we know so far. I mean, it obfuscates what happened in such a deep way that I go back to the point I made on our show on Tuesday, which is this is the kind of thing that leads people to conspiracy theories. They see blatant lies and they start not to believe anything. And I understand that this path, this is where it comes from. And CNN really needs to be held accountable. However, of course they won't and they haven't been. And lead us into the Abby Phillips story that released this Mary Kathryn Guy

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Benson and I call this anti journalism. Like your object here is to tell your audience the opposite of what happened because you don't like the thing that happened. And Abby Phillip was engaged in that on her show in primetime last night. Here's Abby Phillip.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

Okay, so yeah, man, number one, the focus is already Islamophobia. Right from Mamdani and from Abby Phillip on the news. So we've already turned the, the story is over of the actual homegrown terrorism. We're not going to address that. We're going to address how people react to the terrorism and the people that we don't like, we're going to punish them for reacting in bad ways. But we're the bomb throwing sort of a side issue for her. And then Mamdani's house is not the target. American protesters saying that they don't like Islam were the target. Now that speech is protected and they weren't doing anything violent. You may think they're being jerks, but they weren't doing anything violent.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yep.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And this, this makes people watching that show think the opposite of what happened happened. The proximity to Gracie Mansion is because the anti Islam protest was happening outside Gracie Mansion.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. It's done on purpose to cover what happened. Abby Philipp took to Twitter today to apologize for what she said. She says she read it off a teleprompter. But, you know, I mean, you tweeted that. The fact that she didn't notice it until the next day and issues a correction online and not on air, that's the whole ball game to me. Like, is she going to get on the air tonight and say, I'm sorry, I, you know, made a mistake? But how does that kind of mistake get made? How does that get into the teleprompter? How do you just read that and not think it over and not say this is not what happened? How do you not come back and say that was a mistake right away?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yes.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's all kind of a big tell.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

So, yeah, I think that she is reading prompter. This is a tease. It is not necessarily the anchor's job to fact check every tease, but I would suggest if the words are going to come out of your mouth. You need to not Ron Burgundy it, and you need to be aware of what's happening. The problem is that at every step of the way, each person involved in this process, writing the prompter, checking it, sending it to her, her reading it, all of them have sent, systematically misinformed themselves. Right. About what happened on this day. And the fact that nobody in her circle during commercial break was like, dude, do you know what you just said? Right. No one did that. You know who did do that is Joe Borelli.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

The conservative sitting on set who has to correct her. And I used to play this role at CNN a lot because everyone at the table agrees with each other and doesn't know certain things. And so then you have to be like, actually, Ana Navarro, who is inverting this incident. What happened is these guys were not attacking Mamdani. They were attacking these protesters.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Anna Navarro, by the way, seems super out of it on this clip. I feel like you're too nice to say anything like this, but I'm just going to say it. She seems a little drunk. She's, like, slurring and yelling at Joe Borelli, and she's like, I believe Merriam Dani was raised Muslim. Like, it's just all unrelated. And she's saying that finally, Republicans are talking about anti Islamic rhetoric because of this attack. Like, again, ma', am, the rhetoric is not the problem here.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It's not really.

[Carol Markowitz]

The bombs being thrown are the problem here.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I really think the bombs are the problem. We should also do a quick flashback of Abby Phillip talking to Joy Reid about what she believes her role as a newscaster is.

[Ad Voice]

Conservatives are living in a completely different information world.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Absolutely.

[Ad Voice]

Than liberals. And breaking that down needs to be done. Because when you don't ever even hear the facts, it's hard to even know that you're wrong. And that happens a lot. I think that one time that that person brings up something that is debunked and false, and I debunk it at the table. Might be the very first time that someone out there has heard an alternative point of view.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. It looks like she gets all things opposite. Because what happened at that table is that Joe Borelli was the one person debunking the thing, and the rest of them hadn't heard it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Or were just willfully lying.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah. And again, whatever you think of conservative media, we know what the liberals are saying. We know what you know. Yeah. Right. We are fully aware of what the other side believes. We are fully aware of all of their positions. We take extra care to get the actual facts right because if we get the fact wrong, we're completely dismissed. It's just, I mean, again, liberal privilege like this just doesn't exist on our side.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, just, just even even though there are people who are bad actors on both sides, our ability or our incidental running into liberal thought is just off the charts like it happens all the time. It's the world that you live in. If you're consuming news, you have to go out of your way to get alternative viewpoints. Not Abby Phillips viewpoint. That one is everywhere. So we just hear it all the time. They do not. But she seems to think with this blind spot that she has on Joy Reid show that she's the one who's the arbiter. I hope she doesn't on air apology. She may do a correction on this.

[Carol Markowitz]

What do you think? She will. We'll talk about this on our next episode.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I'm gonna go with no. Yeah, you're gonna say no. Okay, I'll go with it. Okay, okay. Okay. Credibility on the line here. Right?

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. And I hope you're right. I hope she does because that's the right thing to do. And I hope she does the right thing. All right, we're going to take a short break and come right back with more on normally

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[Carol Markowitz]

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stay in your home, what you love gets to stay too. From the gardens that grow wild to the grandkids that run wilder. From the Friday night baseball games to the Sunday morning brunches, Even the daily crosswords and weekly book clubs, there's room, room for it all. With help from Home Instead, the largest in home Senior care network. With over 30 years of trusted experience delivering the peace of mind you deserve, Visit Home instead online for a better what's next? Wasn't that delicious?

[Carol Markowitz]

So good.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Rock, paper scissors.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Shoot. No, the Wells Fargo Active Cash credit card. Visit Wells Fargo.com ActiveCash Terms apply Alrighty, this is a bit of a Now it can be told, right? And definitely we're still mad bro. About too much technology in the classroom. The New York Times did a feature iPads in kindergarten YouTube on breaks the school screen time battle and what you find out in the article that is that some places the battle has been lost. The battle has been lost. And why are we surprised by this? By the way the entire education public education system told you in 2020-2023 that it was not just something that worth doing for survival, but good for your kids to be online listening to their teacher in a zoom for six to eight hours a day. That's what they told you. It was a lie. And now we have this. This is an anecdote from the story A few months before her daughter started kindergarten, Claire Benoist saw a Facebook post that stunned her. Another family with an incoming kindergartner was wondering if it was true that children in the Croton harmon School District, 40 miles north of New York City, receive iPads when they start school. Other parents confirmed that during school, kindergartners often use iPads to play games and watch television shows and YouTube videos. School administrators assured her that iPad time would be limited to 15 minutes a day. But once school started, her daughter suddenly knew jingles from the diaper and car commercials that would play before YouTube videos she saw in the classroom. Other parents talk about limiting their screen time at home and working really hard to do it and then finding out their kids are on for hours a day at school.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I remember during the pandemic where my kids suddenly knew commercials, they'd be like, in this company, we believe, you know, and they'd be like, we're a car company, but we have values, you know?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, you're like, where did you get that?

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, that. You know, every time I'm asked to talk about cell phone bans in schools, I say it's a good start because that's what it is. And the thing is that I, you know, in a perfect world, we would have mechanisms by which we would limit screen time use and not just take it away. Like my 16 year old daughter, her school had banned, has banned cell phones. She says that one of the things her and her friends used to do is like snap a picture of each other when they would see each other across campus and now they can't do that anymore. Little cute things have been lost. And, you know, her and her friends are not super screen time teenagers. So they just feel like they've been punished because other people are playing video games all through school. I get that and it does suck. But in lieu of having policies that are, you know, sane and limit, you kind of have to take it away completely. And what we have now is they've taken away the phones, but people in classes, the kids are on laptops or tablets and they're playing games, they're watching videos, they're having chats, they're fully having, you know, conversations with their friends on various chat programs. What have we really accomplished by taking away the phones? Like now the kids don't have access to it between classes, but if they have screens in classes, it really doesn't do that much to limit their actual screen time. I don't know how we walk this back. I think you're right that the battle has been lost.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And in Some places for sure, but because part of it is that, well, parents got sold a lie and then a lot of them during the pandemic kind of had to lean on devices because they had to work at home. And I get it, but you gotta pull out of the dive as a parent. Like they are sabotaging you at school. You need to take that to your school board. You need to make noise about this. And with your kids, you need to say no to them. At home. You need to say say no to them. A lot of parents are like, well, it would be really hard to say no. Yeah, that's. But you have to.

[Carol Markowitz]

Parenting, it's really hard.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Jonathan Haidt said, even beyond the phone problem, as you note that there was some charts showing that the drop off in ability to read and have attention span for a long text starts dropping as soon as ed tech is introduced into the classroom. And I can understand for a short time being like, this is the new tool, we must use the new tool.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

But if the new tool is making things worse, you need to abandon the new tool and you need to go back to basics. And I would just point out also my friend Karen Vates, who covers literacy notes that in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, guess what they use in classes, not at paper. Yep, they use paper. They use full books. They are tech free zones for teaching reading for the most part. And it turns out that that's makes your brain work.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, going back to basics is what it's all about. And you know, there's also this thing on Twitter where people are always like, oh, look what was taken from us. And I got into a conversation with Matt Walsh the other day where he was saying like, he posted a picture of some kid riding his bike at like dusk. And he's like, you know, this no longer exists. And I was like, that could actually be my kid, like with the bad haircut and all. This could be my child on his bike at dusk. I'm like, it does exist. It's outside my house. And he commented back to me that, well, okay, even if you're. You limit screen time in your house, the other kids don't. I'll just say if you get your kids outside and playing, other kids will join. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked. You, you go outside and you start playing and other kids see you and they start playing. And yeah, maybe they're more screen time kids than they used to be. My kid, you know, my, my younger son referred to one of his friends as an indoor kid. Oh, that kid. That kid's an indoor kid. But there have always been indoor kids. They've always been indoor kids who didn't want to be outside with the rest of the gang. I think that you can make the changes in your own house and you can watch it flourish in your neighborhood. It's completely possible.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I agree. And I think the thing that many people might be missing is that you have to be more intentional about it than you were in the past. You could count on the community to perhaps be passively the default is that everyone's outside and playing. Maybe that's not the default now. And maybe your kids are the ones who go out and play. This is what ours do. They go out and play. And we limit the amount of indoor time they get to do at other people's houses. We're not just going to mooch snacks and screen time elsewhere. Right?

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

What we're doing the snacks.

[Carol Markowitz]

Okay, they can mooch the snacks. They go to my neighbor's house, they eat all their snacks, knock on the

[Mary Katharine Ham]

door, say, can Johnny come out to play? And if Johnny doesn't want to come out to play, you go to the next house and find another kid. But it has. I have found that a lot of kids end up outside. When you have that as the environment, right?

[Carol Markowitz]

Be the leader. Make it happen. Thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us@ normallythepodmail.com thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.

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[Carol Markowitz]

So good.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Your bill, ladies. I got it. No, I got it. Seriously, I insist. I insisted first. Oh, don't be silly.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Rock, paper, scissors.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

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