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Carol Markowitz
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Carol Markowitz
Hi and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iheartradio. My guest today is Chris de Gaulle. Chris is host of the Chris de Gaulle show, weekdays 6 to 9 on the Salem Radio Network and the Salem News Channel and daily on the Salem Podcast Network. So nice to have you on, Chris.
Chris de Gaulle
We worked hard on that show name, Carol. Thank you so much.
Carol Markowitz
I too struggled with my show name. So I understand. Look, sometimes it just is what it is, you know.
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
That's right.
Chris de Gaulle
That's right.
Carol Markowitz
It's a show with our names in it. So tell me how you got into this thing of ours. Where did you get your start?
Chris de Gaulle
Golly. You know, I started as an overnight DJ in college before I even knew what talk radio was as a thing. I started as a DJ because I thought I wanted to talk on the radio. I was a kid, so I didn't really know talk radio. So I thought, well, the easiest way to get on the radio and talk was through being a dj. So I went through a lot of painful years pretending to care about the music I had to play while I was doing entirely too much talking. And my bosses kept telling me to shut up. And I lost several jobs until finally one boss one day said, you know what, we're getting rid of you on afternoon drive, on our morning on our music station, we're gonna move you to our talk station and see how that works out. Effective Monday. And that was the beginning. Back in 2004.
Carol Markowitz
Were you always right of center?
Chris de Gaulle
I. Yes, I was always a Republican, registered Republican voter. I was raised in a Republican home. But I don't think I knew really what I was as a thoughtful conservative until, honestly, until after 9, 11. That was when I really started to think deeply about it for the first time in my life.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah, I think that's a turning point for a lot of people when something like that happens. You're like, wait, what do I believe here and where do I stand for? Because. Because you could drift along in your day to day life not really having deep opinions about things and I think that makes sense. I always encourage my Normie friends, like, you don't have to be obsessed with politics. It's totally okay not to be.
Chris de Gaulle
You know, I think probably what did it for a lot of the modern era, at least people my kids age is, is probably Covid. I bet they will talk of COVID someday. Like we talk about 9 we gen Xers. Life was pretty easy. The 90s were pretty light and high.
Carol Markowitz
Absolutely. Economy was good history, right?
Chris de Gaulle
Yeah. And I didn't care about anything but just chuckles and laughs and trying to get a laugh and be entertaining. I hope we're still entertaining. But the severity and the weight of the world became very real to me for the first time in my young adult life after nine, 11, you know.
Carol Markowitz
Right. I, I guess that's. The COVID comparison is really good because I know my kids, I mean they're still fairly young, but they're. I don't think they'll be over it for a while. Their lives change. Significant. Significantly. A lot of things changed. And I think that, you know, this is where they develop their first ideals and points of view. So without doubt, what would you have done if this hadn't worked out? What would have the plan B been for Chris?
Chris de Gaulle
True story. I was not having a lot of success. I didn't think when I graduated from school, trying to get my first radio job.
Carol Markowitz
And you have a great voice, I don't know how that's possible that you were struggling. You have a really, really good voice.
Chris de Gaulle
Yeah, thanks. Thanks very much. Face for radio, as they say.
Carol Markowitz
I am same.
Chris de Gaulle
Well, no, no, you're beautiful. A guy called me that I knew through a guy and he said, hey, why don't you come over to this television station in town and talk with me about sales. And this television sales guy sat down with me and boy, I just got dollar signs in my eyes. I mean, I'm a 20, what, two, three year old guy at that time. And he's telling me, oh, you know, you can make a mountain of money selling television ad time. And I thought, well, I guess I should go make money. And then I'll spare you the details, but long story short, I thought my dad at the time was having a heart attack. He wasn't. But at the time he had a sudden health thing that turned out to be fine, and he's fine. But I was standing at his bedside, I was about to take this job and my dad says to me, this is like a movie moment. He says, son, don't, don't sell out. What you want to do for a living, really. You always wanted to be on radio. Don't do that. And that just struck me. And so I went right back to trying to figure out how to get on the air. And I got my first job doing overnight radio not too long after that. So I walked away from the TV sales job and stayed with it.
Carol Markowitz
That's, you know, it's more amazing than it even sounds because I think a lot of parents would want their kids to go towards security instead of, like, the passion that they have. I do think, like, we have these polls all the time. There was a Pew poll a few years ago that the number one thing that parents want for their kids is a stable career, like, where they could make money. And far down the list was getting married or anything like that, of course. But even pursuing your passion, I think a lot of parents would have said, stop with the passion. Do the thing that makes money.
Chris de Gaulle
My dad had two influential moments in my life, very specifically, and the first time was in high school when I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I just thought, well, I'll play football. Because that. That's what guys in high school do. And that's what my dad, I knew, was very good at as a kid. And I wanted to make my dad happy. And I thought, well, that's a good way to be popular. I'll just play football. I was miserable, Carol. I hated it. I've never hated anything more in my life. And I remember my dad came to watch my first game, and I was just. I was. I was a dope. I got mowed over. I just looked ridiculous. There was no reason I was out there. And I walked up to him near tears, and I said, dad, I hate this. I'm sorry. I just gotta confess, I hate it. And he. I remember him saying, well, then, what in the world are you doing? Why are you playing it? I never asked you to play it.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
And that also hit me. So now, as a dad, two things that I remember. Follow the passion, as you just said, but never impose your own dreams or desires or wishes that you had for yourself on your kids. Just let them be, and things are going to work out.
Carol Markowitz
I think it's tough because you do have your preconceived notions and paths that you think are going to be better for the kid, and you want them to have an easier road. So you're trying to give them the best advice that you can muster, and it's going to be the things that you believed in or things that you thought would be good for you, but maybe not for the kids. Kids.
Chris de Gaulle
And now that they're pushing, you know, 21, 20, and 17, it's.
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Chris de Gaulle
That's getting harder. I was not pushy with them in sports and stuff and activities as little kids, but now that they're getting to be young adults, now is when I start to have to really resist.
Carol Markowitz
Really pushy.
Chris de Gaulle
Yeah.
Carol Markowitz
What do you want to push them into? Like, what's the impulse? Well, mine are just a little bit younger than yours, so I'm just wondering where I'm going to be in, like, a few years. My oldest is 16.
Chris de Gaulle
Yeah, it's. It's. It's stuff like they have their own money, and they want to make a big, impulsive decision, like they want their first fancy car and car payment. Yeah. And you have to say, that's a silly waste of money. And they say, well, that's what I want. It's mine. I can. And you say, well, I guess it is yours, you know, and you know they're gonna hate it. And they do, and they inevitably come home and say, boy, that was stupid. I should have listened. Yeah, you should have. Having the grace to just let them fall a little bit. I think it's that thing of letting them know you're there as the backstop. But. Okay, if you want to go out there and walk the plank for a minute, go for it. See how it works out for you. Right?
Carol Markowitz
Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
Just be there when they're done toug
Carol Markowitz
to watch them walk that plank.
Chris de Gaulle
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Carol Markowitz
How has the radio world changed in your time since you got started, Carol?
Chris de Gaulle
You don't have enough show. This is something. I'm living in real time right now. This could turn into a therapy session.
Carol Markowitz
Let's do it. I love it. This show has an advice component. So come on, give it to me.
Chris de Gaulle
You can help me then. I have loved nothing more in my entire life to the story about my dad. I mean, I knew since fourth grade my earliest memories. I wanted to be on a microphone, talking on the radio. I just. I had that kind of feeling for it.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
I just. I felt it in my soul that that was what I wanted. And I worked toward that and only that. And I was lucky enough and blessed enough to achieve that. And here, in just the last. I don't know, let's say five to ten years. Really? Maybe even more recently. Five. Everything has won. Gone video.
Carol Markowitz
Yep.
Chris de Gaulle
Like us right now. Number two, Everybody has gone to. I don't need live anything. I'll Just stream it on my schedule.
Carol Markowitz
Right.
Chris de Gaulle
So two things that I loved was just the intimacy of the audio and live appointment listening.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
Both of those things are effectively dead or becoming more. More dead, if you want, I guess. And there's still a place for it, and there will always be a home for it to a degree, but it's. It certainly is not what it was. And so I'm trying to kind of accept that and not be too old man on the porch shaking my face.
Carol Markowitz
It's tough. Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
Evolve. But I miss it. I miss what it was because it was magic. And. And it still is. It's just, you know, people's needs change, their desires change. I get more email now about a problem with Apple podcasts. Not downloading then. Hey, what's wrong? I didn't hear you on the radio this morning. And that's. It's just a weird thing that I've got to evolve with, and I'm. I'm learning.
Carol Markowitz
Right. So this show is mostly audio. I use clips for promo from the video. But a lot of people say to me, oh, you know, you have to get into video. You have to start streaming it. But I feel like. I don't know, maybe I just don't know better. But I feel like my listener base listens on audio only. They're not on the YouTube. I mean, of course they're on YouTube, but they're not looking for me on YouTube. And it's something else that we do together.
Chris de Gaulle
Carol, it's the strangest thing. You probably experienced this with your show. I've heard, and I see this with my own kids. Young people, they don't video. What. Yeah, listen, whatever. It has to be video and not because they're watching video. There's just something about the physical video playing. Even if they're not watching it, they need that visual thing there. I don't know if that's.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah.
Chris de Gaulle
Attention deficit disorder or what that is, but that's my kids. They prefer to listen to a YouTube video that's on playing. They may not be looking at you, Carol, but they're right for having you visually there while listening.
Carol Markowitz
Something comforting about that, I guess. Right. Like they. To them, just like they're having a conversation with somebody, they're sort of listening to somebody who's talking to them if they have the video on. Right.
Chris de Gaulle
Here's my intimacy. My memory was with my kid, my parents. Growing up as a kid, what I loved was my mother putting on makeup, my dad shaving in the kitchen making breakfast. And there's this guy on the radio that they're listening to and laughing with or tuned into something he was saying. And I just thought, now that is the most captivating job in the world. This guy in a box has my parents full attention this morning as they're getting ready for work. And I just thought, oh, that I want that. That's the job I want.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah. And there's something about that like just a voice in a box. And if you're still able to connect with everybody or a lot of people, there's something very. You're right. Intimate is the right word for it because I think there is something intimate about it versus having somebody on television, which doesn't feel int. And that, to me, is what YouTube feels like. But, you know, we're both just shaking our fists on the lawn.
Chris de Gaulle
I know this is.
Carol Markowitz
We're gonna have to go video, Chris. So.
Chris de Gaulle
Well, here we are. I've done it. We're doing it. I do it every morning on the Salem News Channel. So I've adapted. I don't necessarily like it, but I've got.
Carol Markowitz
I haven't entirely yet, but I may. I may. I may have to. This is where the world is going, right? You have to meet people where they are. What is the thing you're most proud of in your life?
Chris de Gaulle
You know, I would have told you once upon a time that it was the fact that here, for now, 26 years, more or less, I've made a living doing this thing that I dreamt of doing as a kid. But I realize now in my more mature years that to have pride in that or to have pride in anything I've accomplished at all is sort of silly because it's. And it's weird to say that I'm proud of this, but my faith in Christ is something, Carol, that for me, it's something that took a long time to walk alongside him and defer to him and hand the controls over to him and say, none of this is mine. I don't control any of this. It's always been a gift. And I've been trying to hang on to it so desperately for so long. When I finally figured out, let it go and let him have it. I'm proud of that. But in an extraordinarily humble way. When I say proud, if that makes
Carol Markowitz
sense, that's so beautiful. I really love the way you said that. And I think that being proud in your career, it's an important thing. And I think it's a good thing to be proud of what you've accomplished. But the faith part is absolutely more important. And finding your faith, I think, is an accomplishment that a lot of people don't get to have.
Chris de Gaulle
And may I say Covid off the top. We said it. Covid did it to me. I mean, I really had to do some deep, deep soul searching, really, a little before COVID to be honest. I'll bore you with that story some other time, but.
Carol Markowitz
No, bore me with it now. What was the impetus?
Chris de Gaulle
Well, I was a terrible drinker, to be perfectly honest with you. I had a real alcohol problem. And for years in this business, that's what drove me to it. I mean, I loved this business with my whole heart, but the stress of it was great and still is, but I couldn't cope with it. And so I drank heavily for a long time. And it was finally then that in 2019, after a long battle with it, I finally. I had a real moment. John 5 moment, if you want very specifics. It was in a service and it was on John, chapter five, the man of. At the pool of Bethesda. And I just had this moment with the Lord where he said, are you going to walk with me? Are we doing this? You go to church every Sunday. Do you believe what you say?
Carol Markowitz
Wow.
Chris de Gaulle
Do you really want to be the drunk at the bar, or are you going to represent me and walk with me in trust here? What's the deal? I just had this kind of. It was like a coach sitting on the sidelines. Are you ready to play by the rules and walk with me and do this the right way, or are you going to keep trying to handle it yourself? And I. I had this real moment where I finally just kind of collapsed and gave it over in a pretty physical way. I literally just kind of. I fell in a heap and wept for a while and handed it over, and I quit drinking that day. I'm really seven years sober now. Yeah.
Carol Markowitz
And incredibly impressive. Yeah, thanks.
Chris de Gaulle
And I don't. Again, I'm not saying it to boast. It's not my own power.
Carol Markowitz
It's something you accomplish. And with the faith component, I think all of that is an important story to tell. It's so hard to convey to young people what faith does for them. And I think that's such a point A to point B story where here is something that my faith has helped me achieve. I don't think there's anything wrong with boasting about that.
Chris de Gaulle
If you can relinquish this perceived power that you think you have over your circumstances, I think we'd all be A lot better off.
Carol Markowitz
Wow. Yeah. Very well said. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.
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Carol Markowitz
Give us a five year out prediction and it could be about anything at all.
Chris de Gaulle
I would think. I this is my hope. I'd like to predict this out of both hope and that sincerely, humanity will go this way. This AI thing, yeah, I think is going to drive people to a place where they're going to demand proof of authenticity. I think we may go retro and people may start demanding somehow whatever that looks like. I don't know if that's laws, I don't know if that's stamps of approval. I don't know what it looks like, but I think people are going to really hunger for a day when human created art forms, human created content, human interaction, the human written word. I think that's going to be invaluable eventually when we go so far the other direction with AI.
Carol Markowitz
So I get a lot of AI answers to that question, but most of them are very pessimistic and this one is far. Or if they're optimistic, they're optimistic in a. AI is going to be so amazing for everything and it's going to be, you know, it's going to take over all of our jobs, but that's going to be the greatest thing ever. Yours is a little different. It's that you're optimistic about AI's future in bringing us back to more of an analog time. Would you say that? That's right.
Chris de Gaulle
I do. And the reason I think that's true again, I hate sounding like a broken record. I see what Covid Did. And I specifically see it in a
Carol Markowitz
lot of ways, Covid was extremely life changing for me. So please don't worry about talking about COVID too much. I could talk about it all day.
Chris de Gaulle
Carol. I think the women in this country, I have seen such an inspirational change in the women, not even the men. And I'm not saying it to Pand. I have seen women become some of the most unbelievably traditional, conservative, grounded. They've become these kind of tiger mom types in the best way. It's about homesteading in the home and homeschooling and bread making and raising.
Carol Markowitz
Nothing else matters. You know, it turns out that everything we thought mattered didn't. And Covid really put that into focus.
Chris de Gaulle
That's it. And I've seen it in my own family with my wife and my sister in law and friends of mine, really. Women out in the COVID era. I think homeschooling, Christian education, abandoning the traditional public school system, that's all been shattered thanks to Covid, actually.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah. Moving from blue states to red states, that was my Covid story.
Chris de Gaulle
Where did you go? Where did you go?
Carol Markowitz
From New York to Florida? Very, very public move where. I was never going to leave New York. I was a lifelong New Yorker. I was, you know, I was the kind of person that would tweet stuff like, I'm sure your city's nice, but come on.
Chris de Gaulle
I think you were on my show talking about that probably.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah, I'm sure I was. Yeah, it was. I wrote about it quite a bit. It was life changing. Oh, so happy. It's four years and so happy. And the thing that you were saying to bring it back to the five year prediction, but like it and change, times of change can make you refocused. And I thought that that's what Covid was to me too. It was a moment where you realize things that you thought mattered. Like, I thought being a New Yorker was very important to me, very central to my identity. I tossed it so fast that it never even. I never even looked back. Like it mattered so much more to be a mother who was taking care of her children and bringing them to like, more freedom and, you know, doing what's best for them and taking them out of a bad situation. All of that, you know, was just again brought into focus in a real way with COVID And I think your analog example with AI is hopeful because so many people are afraid. And I think that you could absolutely have a return to what's real and maybe we can refocus on that.
Chris de Gaulle
It's what you said was so brilliantly put. It was exactly the same for me professionally. When your identity is tied up in being a New Yorker or a talk show host or whatever thing, in my mind, that's not the right way to be wired. And sometimes it takes really dramatic things for you to assess what am I really? Whose am I really? Right.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah. Yeah. Worldwide pandemic is all it took.
Chris de Gaulle
That's all.
Carol Markowitz
Well, Chris, I have loved this conversation. I've loved getting to know you a little bit more. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Chris de Gaulle
Spend time in the word of God. God. Spend time around people of God who appreciate and understand and share your values. And. And third and final, I just say shut social media off. Oh, yeah, schedule sometime with it. Shut it off. Get away. Turn me off. Turn Carol off. Turn and I. And you know, make time for Carol.
Carol Markowitz
Yeah, sure.
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Carol Markowitz
Yeah, that's right.
Chris de Gaulle
Schedule it and then put it away. And then spend time out outside or in the Word or in a book or with people you love. We shouldn't be too consumed with all consuming media.
Carol Markowitz
That's right. He is Chris De Gall. Check out the Chris De Gall show on the Salem Radio Network and the Salem News Channel and daily on the Salem Podcast Network. Thank you so much for coming on, Chris.
Chris de Gaulle
It was my pleasure, Carol. Thank you so much for the invitation.
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Carol Markowitz
Guaranteed Human.
Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (iHeartPodcasts)
Episode Date: March 27, 2026
Guests: Chris Stigall (Host, The Chris Stigall Show)
Host: Karol Markowicz
In this episode, Karol Markowicz sits down with veteran broadcaster Chris Stigall to discuss his unconventional path into talk radio, the evolution and challenges of media in an age of AI and streaming, the transformative impact of 9/11 and COVID on personal and generational beliefs, and Stigall’s journey with faith, sobriety, and parenting. The conversation weaves together heartfelt stories, candid admissions, and practical advice, focusing on finding authenticity and connection in a rapidly changing world.
Early Days in Radio
Political Awakening
Parental Influence & Choices
Parenting Reflections
Audio vs. Video & Streaming
Media Nostalgia & Adaptation
Finding Purpose through Faith
On Authenticity and Surrender
Refocusing on What Matters
AI and the Return to Authenticity
For listeners seeking heartfelt reflections on faith, authenticity, and adapting to cultural change—with practical wisdom and an honest look at radio/media’s past and future—this conversation between Karol Markowicz and Chris Stigall is candid, warm, and memorable.