The Karol Markowicz Show: Joel Berry on Satire, Faith, Family, and Fighting Wokeness

Summary

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The Karol Markowicz Show: Joel Berry on Satire, Faith, Family, and Fighting Wokeness

Episode Date: January 9, 2026
Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show presents The Karol Markowicz Show
Guest: Joel Berry, Managing Editor of The Babylon Bee

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Karol Markowicz hosts Joel Berry, the Managing Editor of The Babylon Bee and author of several satirical guides and a novel. The discussion centers on Berry's journey from a corporate sales job to leading one of America’s top satire sites, his perspective on faith and family, and the role of humor in political discourse. The episode explores how satire intersects with current issues like wokeness, the challenges of raising kids in today's culture, the impact of AI on creativity, and timeless lessons from Berry's life and military experience.

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Key Topics and Insights

1. Family Life and Finding Purpose

[03:21–04:29]

• Parenthood as Unexpected Joy: Berry shares how he never envisioned himself as a father of six children, but found joy in embracing family life’s chaos and humor.
  • "Having kids is really fun. It's like having a bunch of cartoon characters in your house." — Joel Berry [03:39]
• Regional Differences on Family Size: Markowicz notes how New York sees three kids as a lot, versus other parts of the country.
• Community Perspective: Berry talks about feeling like a "rookie" among large Catholic families at his children's charter school.

2. Journey to Humor Writing and The Babylon Bee

[04:29–06:33]

• Accidental Career Shift: Berry recounts how losing a corporate job, encouragement from his wife, and early satirical comics led him to writing.
  • "I'm very thankful to God that he led me to a place where I'm finally doing something that I'm good at." — Joel Berry [05:55]
• Finding a Rare Talent: Describes writing for The Bee as a niche skill and his unique path among their writers.
• Evolution of the Bee: The Babylon Bee started as an evangelical church humor site but shifted after Trump’s election, seizing new comedic territory.

3. Writing Books and Satire’s Scope

[06:58–09:22]

• A Serious Satirical Novel: Berry co-wrote "The Postmodern Pilgrim's Progress," inspired by "Pilgrim's Progress," exploring heavy themes like grief and evil but blended with satirical elements.
  • "...it's really kind of a meditation on grief and, you know, dealing with evil and tragedy in the world that sometimes doesn't make sense." — Joel Berry [08:42]
• Audience Reaction: Some fans expecting pure humor were surprised by the book’s heavier, reflective content.

4. The Babylon Bee’s Top Guides and Not the Bee

[09:29–12:13]

• Guide to Wokeness: The most commercially successful and fun to write, as wokeness seemed to provide endless material.
  • "Wokeness was just kind of a punchline in and of itself." — Joel Berry [09:50]
• Guide to the Apocalypse: Described as their silliest, most fun non-political project.
• Birth of Not the Bee: Real-world news often mirrored satire headlines, prompting a spin-off site to cover absurd real stories. Berry mentions their spreadsheet of "fulfilled prophecies"—satirical headlines that soon became reality.
  • "We call them fulfilled prophecies... I think we have like 150 fulfilled prophecies now." — Joel Berry [11:07]

5. Passion, Pride, and the Meaning of Success

[12:13–14:46]

• On Doing What You Love: Berry feels fortunate to combine his creative skills and sense of calling, noting it's rare to find such alignment.
• Legacy Joke: Jokes that if his career ends, he can "hang [his] hat on the fact that [he] wrote the joke that made Elon Musk buy Twitter." [14:23]
• Life’s True Treasures: Emphasizes being most thankful (not proud) for a stable, loving family life and ordinary success.

6. Instilling Values in the Next Generation

[14:46–16:51]

• Modeling and Encouragement: Berry tries to lead by example, hoping his kids desire a stable family life.
  • "The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man, his ordinary wife and his ordinary children." (G.K. Chesterton, via Joel Berry) [15:17]
• Countercultural Message: Describes shifting from the 80s-90s "dream big" ethic to current cultural yearning for stability.
• Parental Perspective: The recent loss of Berry’s mother brought home the importance of prioritizing family over online influence.
  • "Your kids are infinitely more important than all that silly political stuff... Never forget that." — Berry's mother, paraphrased [16:52]

7. Hope and Caution for America and Technology

[18:08–21:23]

• Five-Year Predictions: Expects more "most important elections ever" headlines, but senses the far-left’s cultural grip loosening.
• Golden Age or Chaos?: Hopes for a creative renaissance if the right keeps its composure, but warns of internal conflict.
• The Promise and Peril of AI: AI is a force-multiplier; it could enable creativity but will worsen problems like disinformation and online exploitation.
  • "AI is a multiplier. It multiplies human capacity for evil and human capacity for good." — Joel Berry [19:26]
• Adaptation is Key: Compares AI’s impact to the printing press—initial disruption but long-term social adjustment.

8. Practical Advice: Doing the Hard Thing

[21:34–22:41]

• Discipline and Success: Berry shares a military lesson: master yourself to do what you don’t feel like doing.
  • "If you can just do that simple thing, doing what you don't feel like doing but you know is right, you will be more successful than 99.9% of the rest of the world." — Joel Berry [22:31]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Having kids is really fun. It's like having a bunch of cartoon characters in your house." — Joel Berry [03:39]
• "I'm very thankful to God that he led me to a place where I'm finally doing something that I'm good at." — Joel Berry [05:55]
• "Wokeness was just kind of a punchline in and of itself." — Joel Berry [09:50]
• "We call them fulfilled prophecies... I think we have like 150 fulfilled prophecies now." — Joel Berry [11:07]
• "Your kids are infinitely more important than all that silly political stuff... Never forget that." — Berry's mother, paraphrased [16:52]
• "AI is a multiplier. It multiplies human capacity for evil and human capacity for good." — Joel Berry [19:26]
• "If you can just do that simple thing, doing what you don't feel like doing but you know is right, you will be more successful than 99.9% of the rest of the world." — Joel Berry [22:31]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:21] Introduction to Joel Berry & Family Life
• [04:29] Berry’s accidental path to humor writing
• [06:58] Writing books: From satire to serious themes
• [09:29] Behind Babylon Bee’s guides & joke-come-trues
• [12:13] Thoughts on career satisfaction and success
• [14:46] Instilling values and the importance of family
• [18:28] Five-year predictions on America, culture, and AI
• [21:34] Joel’s best life advice: discipline

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Tone and Style

The conversation is friendly, candid, and reflective with humor characteristic of satirists. Berry’s humility, faith, and affection for his family come through alongside sharp cultural commentary.

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Summary Takeaways

• Joel Berry’s path to satire was unplanned and rooted in both faith and encouragement from family.
• Satire thrives when reality outpaces parody; “fulfilled prophecies” are now a running theme at The Bee.
• Maintaining a stable, loving family life is Berry’s greatest point of gratitude—and, he believes, a true mark of success.
• Culture is swinging back toward valuing ordinary but meaningful life—an idea Berry models for his kids.
• Berry is cautiously optimistic about America’s future but wary about the potential of AI to do both harm and good, comparing societal adaptation to the advent of the printing press.
• His top advice: master self-discipline, persevere through discomfort, and focus on doing what is right even when it’s hard.

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Transcript

[Carol Markowitz]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Hi and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iheartradio. My guest today is Joel Berry. Joel is managing editor of the Babylon Bee, an author and the father of six. Hi, Joel. So nice to have you on.

[Joel Berry]

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm, I'm excited.

[Carol Markowitz]

Six kids. Six kids is a lot.

[Joel Berry]

Yeah, that's what everyone says. You know, I, and this is nothing I envisioned for myself. I never, you know, anticipated being a father of six, but it just kind of happened. I married a great woman, the kids kept coming. It turns out having kids is really fun. It's like having a bunch of cartoon characters in your house. And once you kind of just embrace the chaos and the mess and the, in the joy, it's pretty great.

[Carol Markowitz]

So it's funny because I lived in New York and I have three kids and that was a lot for New York. It was like, wow, three kids. That's so many. Then you leave New York and it's like, not even, not even that interesting to have three.

[Joel Berry]

Well, I thought I had a lot, but then my kids went to a charter school that had a lot of Catholic families and I realized that I was kind of a rookie. Like, you know, yeah, you're 8. 9 or 10 is the baseline for like a midwestern Catholic family.

[Carol Markowitz]

How did you get into humor writing? Did you just one day realize, I'm funny? I like to write, and let's do this.

[Joel Berry]

It was kind of by accident, or if you would rather by the grace of God. You could also say, I didn't intend to do this. This isn't something I really knew I was good at. I was kind of a, a mediocre corporate sales guy in the Midwest area. And it took me A long time to kind of figure out that that wasn't my calling. Yeah, until I was pushed out of a job and kind of had to figure my life out. My. My wife has always kind of known me better than I know myself, and she encouraged me to. You know, I was always writing, putting my thoughts out there. When I was in the military overseas, I used to make these little satirical comics about our chain of command. I would make fun of our platoon sergeant or our. Our company commander.

[Carol Markowitz]

And does the military like that, is that.

[Joel Berry]

I did get in trouble a couple of times. Yeah, we. I think I ended up doing some push ups on. On occasion, but that was, you know, I. Nothing, Nothing I thought I could ever make a career out of or. Or make money off of, you know, and so when I was. I don't know, about six years ago, I was pushed out of a job. My wife encouraged me to start kind of putting my thoughts out there, writing. I started a podcast. I started a blog. I started my own little satire website called the Petty Prophet. That kind of snowballed over the course of a year of me just kind of trying out new things. I started pitching headlines to the Bee, and within a year, I was. I was working for them. And so it was really just. I'm very thankful to God that. That he led me to a place where I'm. I'm finally doing something that I'm good at, which is a very, you know, writing short, pithy Babylon Bee headlines is a very rare talent. It's. It's. It's hard to find people who can do it.

[Carol Markowitz]

So it's interesting because. So that means you've only been at the bee for like, five years, right? Maybe six.

[Joel Berry]

Yeah, I started there in, like, like 2018 and ended 2018. So. Yeah, about six years. Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. That. It just feels like I've read you for so much longer.

[Joel Berry]

Well, the b. The Bee feels like it's been around forever, but we actually started in 2016, so we're not even 10 years old yet. When we first started, it was mostly like evangelical church humor, kind of inside humor. And then, of course, Trump was elected in November of 2016, and suddenly we had all this material just laying out on the field for us that a lot of comedians weren't touching, and we just had a ball with it. I love that.

[Carol Markowitz]

So in researching you for this interview, the minimal research I do for these interviews, I saw that you wrote. You've written three Babylon Bee guides. The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, the Babylon Bee Guide to Democracy, the Babylon Bee Guide to Gender. And then you also wrote a book called the Postmodern Pilgrim's An Allegorical Tale. Is that one also humor?

[Joel Berry]

It is. It has humor in it. But the feedback that I've got from a lot of people who have read it is, wow, this is a lot heavier than I thought it would be. It has a lot of tragedy.

[Carol Markowitz]

I was thinking it seems like, not quite funny. Up your alley?

[Joel Berry]

Yeah, well, it's. I wrote it with our. My editor in chief, Kyle Mann. We both grew up reading the Pilgrim's Progress. It's a very, very important, you know, book in the kind of the Protestant reform tradition. Many argue it was the first novel ever written in the English language for many, for a few centuries after that, Christian families would have a copy of the Bible and they would have a copy Pilgrim's Progress. And so it's. It's something that I kind of grew up on. Always loving the book, you know, and for those who aren't familiar, it's. It's kind of a. It's an allegorical tale of the. Of what it's like walking the Christian life. And it's. It follows this guy named Pilgrim. The names are very like on the nose. And he's on this journey to the celestial city, which is heaven. He fights Apollyon, who's the devil. You know, it's very on the nose all the way, but it's very funny. There's. There's a satirical, you know, there's some kind of winks and nods all throughout it, you know, that we always think kind of thought were funny. So, you know, Christian will be going along his journey and he'll come upon a guy whose name is fool, and fool will give him advice. And the reader's thinking, why are you listening to a guy whose name is literally Fool? You know, and so we love the book and we kind of wanted to write an updated, modernized version of it. And so we kind of write our own. Wrote our own little sci fi, you know, postmodern version of it with multiverses and some classic bee humor. But it's really. It's really kind of a meditation on grief and, you know, dealing with evil and tragedy in the world that sometimes doesn't make sense. How can God, you know, being all powerful, allow evil to happen? You know, those classic questions that we all deal with. A lot of people who are. Used to be humor have read that and were kind of taken aback by some seriousness in the book. Yep.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

[Joel Berry]

If.

[Carol Markowitz]

If a typical B Reader was like, oh, this is going to be hilarious.

[Joel Berry]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

So which of the bee guides was the fun. Most fun to write?

[Joel Berry]

Well, the one that did the best was our first one, and that was the Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness. And we kind of wrote it at the height of this conversation around wokeness. And that was fun. That was a free for all because there was so much material. You know, Wokeness was just kind of a punchline in and of itself. You could kind of present wokeness without changing it or embellishing it that much. And it was just funny by itself. And we almost. The classic line, the jokes write themselves, but that was the experience writing the Guide to Wokeness. The most fun one that we had was our most recent one. I don't know if you mentioned that one. It just came out. It's the Babylon Bee Guide to the Apocalypse.

[Carol Markowitz]

Oh, okay.

[Joel Berry]

And it's the stupidest thing we've ever written. It's absolutely useless. But it was so fun to write, and it was so fun to write separate from politics, not writing about something heavy, just kind of. Lot of just being silly. Writing a lot of funny jokes and drawing a lot of silly pictures. It's nice when you can do that. You know, we're. We're so steeped in politics to be, you know, I have to. I have to, you know, troll through, you know, dredge through the. Just all kinds of ugly things on Twitter all the time to get material for. For my jokes. And it's nice to kind of take a breather from that every once in a while.

[Carol Markowitz]

Absolutely. You were saying that, you know, the jokes write themselves with Wokeness. Is that how. Not the be started?

[Joel Berry]

So not the be. What, what we found was happening as we were writing jokes for the bee was that a lot of our jokes were coming true. So we actually have a. A bank. We have a little spreadsheet we keep track of now where.

[Carol Markowitz]

Amazing.

[Joel Berry]

We call them fulfilled prophecies. And when one of our headlines actually comes true, we'll. We'll record it. I think we have like 150 fulfilled prophecies now. And there were. There would sometimes be instances where I. I'm kicking around an idea with the writers and we kind of, you know, the process of writing in our little writers group. We have a common Slack channel. You know, someone will have a basic, basic idea and we'll. We'll riff on it for a while. We'll kind of come up with alternate phrasings and punch lines to kind of fine tune it until it's perfect. And sometimes we'll be doing that. And just when we kind of arrive at the perfect form of the joke, okay, this is what we're going to publish. A news notification will pop up on our phones. That that thing that we were riffing on just happened. And now we have to change the joke or we gotta throw it out altogether. And so we started this thing. Not the be to. Okay, we gotta account for the real stuff. That is so ridiculous. It sounds like satire. So not the beast. Kind of a silly kind of clickbaity real news site full of, you know, very serious journalists that will add meme faces and gifs to the news stories to make them a little more fun to read.

[Carol Markowitz]

What would you be doing if not this? What would be a plan B?

[Joel Berry]

I don't know. If I'm not doing this, I'm in trouble. I don't know how this skill translates in a useful way to anything else in the world. You know, I am. I am passionate about politics and the culture and our country. And so I, you know, I can see myself getting into a job if I were to do something else where I'm. I'm doing more serious journalistic work or cultural commentary. I, you know, people who follow me on Twitter will often see how serious my Twitter feed is. It's not full of humor. And that's how I, that's how I relax. I'm funny for a living from 8 to 5.

[Carol Markowitz]

So funny.

[Joel Berry]

And so I have to be serious in my off time to kind of like take the edge off. So. So I don't know. You know, it's. I love being in this world. I, I'm passionate about preserving this American republic, preserving American freedom. And really, any way that I could go about doing that, I'd be happy to do it.

[Carol Markowitz]

We really do have a good thing going and preserving. It's kind of important. Yeah. What are you most proud of in your life?

[Joel Berry]

That's a hard question. Because I, I don't even like using the word proud because everything good in my life is like. It's a total gift of God's grace. I mean, I think the thing that I'd be most proud of, or I guess maybe I would phrase it most thankful for, is that I've just. I've managed to build a somewhat normal life. You know, it's a crazy world. I look at the, the generation that's coming up and how hard it is to get started. Kids aren't getting married anymore. Kids aren't buying homes. Kids aren't people aren't Having kids, you know, I just look at what I have. I have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have six children, I have a roof over my head, and all that kind of standard stuff that seemed like, you know, middle class, you know, Medioc is just such a treasure, you know, And I just thank God that I, that, that he's given me all this, you know, and, and also just the fact that I'm, I'm doing something that I love and that I'm, I'm good at, that's also a rare gift. Not many people ever, ever find themselves in a situation like that, you know, and if this all crashes and burns tomorrow, the bee goes down, my career goes down. I can always hang my hat on the fact that I wrote the joke that made Elon Musk buy Twitter. So, you know, I. I made my mark.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Joel Berry]

I've done my, My duty, and I can fade off into the, into the woodwork.

[Carol Markowitz]

You've changed the course of history. That's really, that's saying something.

[Joel Berry]

With a little help from Elon and all his money.

[Carol Markowitz]

So how do you tell your kids the importance of that, that good life that it seems so hard for their generation to get to, that this next generation behind us, or two generations, in my case? What do you say to your kids and say to, to kind of lead them to that same good path?

[Joel Berry]

I think, first of all, modeling it, you know, to, to provide a good example for them in, in how I love my wife and how I lead my kids. Hopefully modeling it in a way that makes them desire it and, and also just encouraging them that it is a truly extraordinary thing. I. I think G.K. chesterton, one of my favorite writers, lived about a hundred years ago, said something like, the most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man, his ordinary wife and his ordinary children. And so I think I grew up in that time in the 80s and 90s, when, you know, that was kind of seen as like, second best. You know, that's something that you settle for. But you need to dream big. You need to go. You need to do these great things. You need to go live in the big city. And, And I think, I think our culture is. Is changing a bit to where having left that behind, people are yearning for it again. And so I, I hope my kids are growing up in that time when not only I will be in encouraging them to, to grow up and have good, solid families, but their culture will be encouraging them to do that as well, I hope, anyway.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. You can sense that yearning. It's all around, it's the, how to get these people there, how to get this, these young people onto that good, sane path when there's so many voices around them saying, don't do that. That's lame and boring and stupid. And yeah, it's tough. It's something that a lot of my guests are to talk about, like how to get their kids to appreciate, you know, getting married, having children and not having like the flashy career on Instagram with the yachts and the, you know, whatever. It's tough.

[Joel Berry]

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Well, you know, another thing that puts it into perspective. I, you know, my, my mother passed away about a month ago.

[Carol Markowitz]

I'm sorry.

[Joel Berry]

And no, thank you. And you know, she, she had cancer. And so I'm thankful that we were able to kind of have some time with her and say goodbye to her. But one thing that she kept telling me over and over again, she was always so proud of me and what I've accomplished and, you know, you know, follows me online and everything. But, you know, she would always tell me in those last weeks, joel, your kids are infinitely more important than all that silly political stuff that you're doing and all those political fights that you're having and that you trying to get clout online. The kids are more important. Never forget that. You know, and it's, it's, you know, that means a lot, not just coming from my mother, but coming from someone who's at the end of their life and is suddenly, you know, having that, being flooded with that perspective of, of what's truly important. You know, I, my, my hope is that I, I raise my kids well and that they turn out okay. And, you know, it's turned me into a praying man, a much more devoutly praying man. You know, I realize as a parent, how, how powerless you are. You can do everything. Your kids are still going to kind of do what they're going to do. And sometimes all you can do is pray for them. And I found myself praying for them an awful lot.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, definitely same. It has made me far more religious, devout, all of it. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show. Give us a five year out prediction. And it could be about anything, the country, the world, music, anything.

[Joel Berry]

Well, I, I think in the next five years we will probably have a couple more elections that are going to be the most important election in the history of the country. Existential. We're gonna die. If they go the wrong way. That'll, I think we'll probably have a couple of those, like three or four or more. Yeah, I. You know, I think it's. It is exciting, at least, you know, politically. It's. It's exciting to see that. I think the. The stranglehold that the far left has had on the culture has been somewhat broken. And if the right can keep its head and not go completely insane. If. Yeah, that's a big if right now because there's. There's a lot of fighting over who the right is going to be and what the vision is going to be. And that's an important fight to have. But if we can keep our heads, I think we could be headed towards a new golden age in America. So that's. That's something to be hopeful for. Culturally. The thing that I'm very interested in right now is, is the impact that we're going to have from A.I. i love movies. I love music. I'm really excited to see what it's going to. In the creative space. I mean, AI is a. Is a multiplier. It multiplies. I mean, it's. It multiplies human capacity for evil and human capacity for good. So it's probably going to be more bad than good. But I think that we're. I think we're probably going in an.

[Carol Markowitz]

Optimistic direction for a second there. And then you're like, it's probably more bad than good.

[Joel Berry]

I think at the very least, we'll finally get some good movies. I think the. Now that. That AI has kind of brought down that barrier to entry to put amazing things on screen as the technology progresses, I think we're probably going to see a little bit of a renaissance in creativity in our storytelling and filmmaking. I mean, we're going to get a lot of slop in the mix as well. But maybe one or two good movies from.

[Carol Markowitz]

I get very mixed commentary about AI on here. Some people are very scared and think doom is headed our way. Other people obviously are optimistic on it. I guess I'm somewhere in between. I could see where the bad things are. We're not considering them, but there's a lot of possibility for good. Good movies would be a big plus. I think most movies are pretty terrible.

[Joel Berry]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that. I mean, the bad thing is, I mean, we're going to have. I mean, porn is already a terrible problem, and it's going to become even worse with AI it's going to be hard to know what to believe because video will become so convincing. You know, what are our political battles going to look like when the RNC and the DNC can share endless fake videos of, of different candidates doing things. So I. It's one thing that I think is we haven't seen this level of explosion of information since like the printing press and that created so much reformation and cultural upheaval. But ultimately over time, it turned out to be a good thing. So I think human beings adjust, you know, I think we'll adjust to it and figure out how to live in the new world and hopefully it'll be more good than bad.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, I'm gonna try to be as optimistic as you.

[Joel Berry]

We'll revisit in five years after the.

[Carol Markowitz]

Robots control us all. If we're still alive after they haven't.

[Joel Berry]

Killed us, we'll be in a bunker somewhere. Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, I've loved this conversation, Joel. I've loved getting to know you a little bit. End us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. Lives.

[Joel Berry]

My best tip is something that I was taught in the military. I was kind of a bit of a lazy slouch in school and high school. I joined the Marine Corps because I, I kind of knew that about myself and I knew I needed to change. The thing that I got that I took away from the military was the ability to do things that you don't feel like doing. And that seems very simple. But if you can master yourself enough to do things that you don't feel like doing in the moment, especially in this, this world of endless comfort and, and distraction and Twitter feeds and Instagram feeds, you will be very successful. Do the hard thing. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Follow your conscience. When you know you should be doing something, do it even though you don't feel like it. If you can just do that simple thing, doing what you don't feel like doing but you know is right, you will be more successful than 99.9% of the rest of, of the world. So that would be my advice.

[Carol Markowitz]

Thank you so much. He is Joel Berry. Check him out at the Babylon Bee. Buy his books. Thank you so much for coming on, Joel.

[Joel Berry]

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

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[Carol Markowitz]

This is an Iheart podcast guaranteed human.