The Karol Markowicz Show: Lee Smith on The China Matrix: U.S.-China Corruption, Trump’s Trade Legacy, and the Future of Media

Summary

The Karol Markowicz Show: Lee Smith on "The China Matrix"

Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show [hosted by iHeartPodcasts]
Episode: The Karol Markowicz Show: Lee Smith on The China Matrix: U.S.-China Corruption, Trump’s Trade Legacy, and the Future of Media
Date: October 29, 2025
Guests: Karol Markowicz (host), Lee Smith (author and journalist)

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Overview

In this episode of The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol sits down with journalist and author Lee Smith to discuss his new book, The China Matrix: The Epic Story of How Donald Trump Shattered a Deadly Pact. Their conversation explores U.S.-China relations, the roots and reality of American corruption tied to China, the legacy of Trump's trade war, the state of media, and broader shifts in American society post-9/11. Lee shares his personal journey as a writer, insights into geopolitical decision-making, and offers thought-provoking reflections on memory, cultural change, and even the role of poetry in a digital world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Lee Smith’s Path to Journalism and Writing (03:34–07:10)

• Family Legacy: Lee describes journalism as a family tradition, with his father and grandfather in the field, and his great-grandfather as a typesetter.

  “My father was a journalist and my grandfather was a journalist too… My great grandfather wasn’t exactly a journalist, but he was a typesetter at the New York Daily News.” — Lee Smith [03:58]

• Love of Writing: Inspired by reading and touched by Delmore Schwartz’s idea that each writer must tell a necessary story no one else will.

  “You have to go out and write those books because no one else will go out and write that story or that article or that poem or whatever it is, because no one else will do it.” — Lee Smith [05:04]

• Professional Evolution: From writing about literature and sports (Village Voice, Weekly Standard) to recent focus on American corruption and foreign affairs, including the Middle East and U.S. politics.

2. Defining the “China Matrix” (07:10–08:51)

• Core Thesis: The “China Matrix” refers to an alliance between American political/corporate elites and Chinese Communist Party elites, forming a system that serves their interests at America’s expense.

  “These two groups of elites… basically become the same thing. They’re fighting for the same thing… for their own money, which is in turn making China an enormous power to replace the United States.” — Lee Smith [07:38]

• Origins of Corruption: Smith traces this entanglement back to Nixon and Kissinger’s 1972 opening to China, which he argues was a strategic blunder, misunderstood by American leaders.

  “Nixon and Kissinger profoundly misunderstood what they were doing… the person who keyed in on this was Donald Trump.” — Lee Smith [08:37]

3. Trump’s Legacy on China (09:12–11:50)

• Trade War as Legacy: Lee positions Trump’s trade war with China as central to his first term, ongoing despite media distractions (Russiagate, impeachment, etc.).

  “While all this stuff was going on, Trump was still fighting China. There was a trade war going.” — Lee Smith [09:46]

• Persistent Threat: Suggests the U.S.-China tension remains although public attention has shifted due to other crises (Israel-Hamas war, Ukraine).
• Trump’s Consistency & Security Concerns: Trump remains skeptical and combative regarding China, illustrated by his distaste for Chinese student presence in U.S. research institutions and refusal to trust Xi Jinping.

  “Trump does not trust Xi Jinping. Trump has not trusted China. He wrote in his 2000 book The America We Deserve… this is not going away.” — Lee Smith [11:43]
  “He does not want even 300,000 Chinese students here. He realizes the threat… to our national security.” — Lee Smith [10:57]

4. The Media, Public Discourse, and Institutional Memory (11:54–14:01)

• Trump as World Memory: Lee likens Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu and Israel to major historical alliances and credits Trump for “remembering” October 7th, positioning him as an international moral reference.

  “Donald Trump is basically the world’s institutional memory for October 7th.… it’s not just that Donald Trump is pro-Israel… it’s that this was shocking and moving… not just on the mind of Israelis and Jews.” — Lee Smith [12:50]

• Media’s Role: The conversation reflects on how much anti-China discourse has faded, replaced by other emergencies—yet the underlying threat persists.
• Summary of Trump Doctrine: Lee’s book aims to clarify “Trump’s baseline,” his view of China, and his intent to secure American interests globally.

5. Personal Reflections and Post-9/11 America (18:14–25:22)

• What Would Lee Do If Not Writing? He’d be a baseball coach or teacher; values coaching’s role in youth development and accountability.

  “They’re not just teaching young people a discipline… They’re also teaching them how to be accountable… how to enjoy themselves, how to succeed in sports, how to succeed in life.” — Lee Smith [18:55]

• Proudest Decisions: Leaving New York after 9/11 to understand and respond to the attacks; a quest motivated by loss, anger, and wanting answers.

  “I have to figure out why these people wanted to kill my neighbors and why they wanted to attack my hometown. So that’s really how I started writing about the Middle East.” — Lee Smith [20:47]

• Lingering Trauma of 9/11: Both Lee and Karol discuss the emotional impact and how New Yorkers (and Americans) too quickly forgot the lessons and losses of 9/11.

  “People should not have forgotten 9/11 as quickly as they did.” — Lee Smith [23:25]

• Cultural Change in NYC: Observations about a changed city, political shifts (“globalize the intifada”), criticism of memorial choices, and regrets about collective memory loss.

6. Social Media, the Next Generation, and Hopeful Predictions (25:25–27:21)

• Five-Year Outlook: Lee predicts (hopes) that younger generations and society will move away from toxic digital spaces towards more genuine connection.

  “I think that even people like you and me who probably spend a lot of time on social media will start moving away from it.… it will get worse and worse and people… will return to their senses after… a very dangerous fad.” — Lee Smith [25:29]

• Youth Habits: Karol notes the shift among younger people who increasingly avoid chronic oversharing online.

  “They don’t really use social media anymore… there’s already a move away from living your life online.” — Karol Markowicz [26:30]

7. Life Advice and The Value of Memorizing Poetry (27:39–29:26)

• Lee’s Tip for Listeners: Memorize poetry.

  “Memorize poetry. How’s that?” — Lee Smith [27:39]

• Meaningful Utterance: Lee shares the first stanza of Hart Crane’s “To Brooklyn Bridge,” discussing how internalizing poetry provides a “meaningful utterance in your body”—the opposite of social media’s fleeting content.

  “To have meaningful utterance in your body… is the opposite of social media.” — Lee Smith [28:25]

• Closing Reflection: Recommends memorizing at least one poem, or passage, to ground oneself beyond the ephemeral digital world.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Personal Path:

  “The kind of book that you want to write and the kind of thing you want to read is something that you realize you have to do.” — Lee Smith [05:03]

• On U.S.-China Corruption:

  “American political and corporate elites joined forces with the Chinese Communist Party to impoverish Americans and to damage our peace and prosperity.” — Lee Smith [07:10]

• On 9/11 and Memory:

  “People should not have forgotten 9/11 as quickly as they did.” — Lee Smith [23:25]

• On the Role of Poetry:

  “To have meaningful utterance in your body… is the opposite of social media.” — Lee Smith [28:25]

• On Social Media’s Future:

  “It will get worse and worse and people… will return to their senses after… a very dangerous fad.” — Lee Smith [25:29]

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Key Timestamps

• 03:34 – Lee Smith’s family background and writing inspiration
• 07:10 – The origins and thesis of “The China Matrix”
• 09:12 – Trump’s trade war and consistent stance on China
• 12:50 – Trump as “institutional memory” for world events
• 18:14 – Lee on alternative careers, the importance of coaching
• 20:47 – Why Lee left New York post-9/11 and started writing about the Middle East
• 23:25 – Critique of NYC’s faded 9/11 memory
• 25:29 – Lee’s prediction: moving away from social media
• 27:39 – Closing advice: memorizing poetry for meaning and depth

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Tone and Language

The conversation is reflective, occasionally critical, but consistently thoughtful and nuanced. Lee’s tone balances personal anecdote, historical analysis, and cultural critique; Karol is warm, curious, and candid throughout. Both share a clear skepticism for institutional forgetting and digital distractions, advocating for deeper engagement with history, memory, and culture.

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Summary prepared for listeners who missed the episode:
This wide-ranging interview delivers a candid look at how American and Chinese elites became entwined, changing American life and security; how Trump’s approach broke from the past; and why remembering history, finding meaning in poetry, and turning away from digital noise might be more important than ever.

Transcript

[Carol Markowitz]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Lee Smith]

Hey, what's up?

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[Carol Markowitz]

Hey, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iheartradio. My guest today is Lee Smith. Lee is an author and journalist at Tablet. A new book out called the China Matrix, the epic story of how Donald Trump shattered a deadly pact. Hi, Lee. So nice to have you on.

[Lee Smith]

Hi, Carol. Thank you so much for the invitation. It's a real pleasure.

[Carol Markowitz]

So I don't think we've ever met in person and I'm very excited to talk to you because you make a lot of appearances. In my various group chats, people are frequently sharing Lee Smith's work and talking about Lee Smith. So tell me, how did you become a writer? What was the path you took?

[Lee Smith]

Well, my father was a journalist and my grandfather was a journalist, too. My great grandfather wasn't exactly a journalist, but he was a typesetter at the New York Daily News.

[Carol Markowitz]

Wow.

[Lee Smith]

And so it's a lot.

[Carol Markowitz]

You didn't have a choice? That was.

[Lee Smith]

No, I had, I had a choice. And, you know, had my father been responsible, he would have said, you know, there's, there's other ways to make a living. But, but, but he, he's, he's happy that I pursued the same trade that he did. So, yeah, I mean, you know, and then just when I was a, I mean, I think the biggest thing that what makes people want to, want to write is reading, you know, what you read, right? Oh, wow. That's really. I wish I could. I wish I could. I hope I can make people feel at some point how I feel about reading this, you know. Do you know the poet Delmore Schwartz?

[Carol Markowitz]

No.

[Lee Smith]

Delmar Schwartz was a famous, you know, New York poet in the mid-20s. And very tragic story, very moving story. Saul Bellow wrote a novel called Humboldt's Gift, which is basically Delmore Schwartz. But Schwartz said something which I always keep in mind is I love him as a writer. He's not a great writer, but he's very moving. And he said, you know, he said the kind of, the kind of book that you want to write and the kind of thing you want to read is something that you realize you have to do. There has to be something out there that makes you happy, that it's a special book to. Just for you. And so you have to go out and write those books because no one else will go out and write that story or that article or that poem or whatever it is, because no one else will do it. So, yeah, I find that very moving.

[Carol Markowitz]

Do you have a particular beat that you feel like you cover?

[Lee Smith]

Well, I've had a couple different beats. I mean, right after 9 11, I was writing a lot about the Middle East. Moved to the Middle east for a bit. Then I worked at a. So, you know, I still write about the Middle East.

[Lear Capital Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

It continues to be a topic for some reason.

[Lee Smith]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You know, then I worked at a publication called the Weekly Standard.

[Carol Markowitz]

I remember it.

[Lee Smith]

Yes. And it's more controversial now than it, than it was when it was around. So, you know, but I got to write about a lot of things for them. I got to write about sports, got to write about baseball, which I, you know, which I know a lot about.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

Got to write a little bit about literature. And that's actually where I, I, I come from. I used to. The publication that long no longer exists is the Village Voice.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love the Voice.

[Lee Smith]

Yeah. Well, when I lived in New York, I grew up in New York, and I grew up right around the corner from where the Voice offices were. So later I, I was named the literary editor of the Voice, and there was a publication at the time called the Voice Literary Supplement. That's really, you know, I started off writing about literature and published novelists and poets. And so, yeah. And I, that's some, that's something I still, still like to do, though that's not really, again, the main part of my beat right now. And now my last few books, I've been writing mostly about American corruption, the different efforts to topple Donald Trump during his first term.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Lee Smith]

And then this most recent book, the China Matrix. I mean, I'm not a China scholar. What I know a lot about is American corruption. So this book is really about how American political and corporate elites joined forces with the Chinese Communist Party to impoverish. To impoverish Americans and to damage our peace and prosperity. So that's really what this book is about. Again, it's another story about American corruption.

[Carol Markowitz]

So what is the China Matrix?

[Lear Capital Ad Voice]

Is that.

[Lee Smith]

Well, the Matrix is really how these, these Two groups of cohorts of elites, the Chinese Communist Party elites on one hand and American elites on the other. They basically become the same thing. I mean, they're fighting, fighting for the same thing. And that is for Americans are not. Most of the Americans are not directly fighting to make China the great world power. What they're fighting for is their own money, which is in turn making China an enormous power to replace the United States. But clearly, these Communist Party elites, that's what they want. They want PRC primacy. So that's the corruption. It goes back to 1972 with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's opening to China. That's really the origin of the corruption. A lot of people say, well, wasn't that a really a good interest geopolitical device? No, it was a terrible idea. Nixon and Kissinger profoundly misunderstood what they were doing. Their idea of balance of power. It was really wrongheaded. And actually, the person who, who keyed in on this was Donald Trump. So I have a very long, long interview with the president. Interesting throughout this book.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's interesting because I think we're in a moment where nobody trusts anything anymore, and they are, you know, trying to rethink all previous ideas. And you don't really hear as much about China in Donald Trump's second term. You definitely don't hear the China skeptics that I think existed in the first term. Do you see. See that as well, or am I just missing it?

[Lee Smith]

Well, as, as I show in this book, Trump's trade war with China in the first term started early on. It started March 2017, really sort of ended. Didn't really, really end, but the High point was January 2020, January 30, 2020, when they signed a phase one trade deal. So this went on throughout Trump's term. I mean, you'll remember that, you know, all the other stuff that was taking up all the oxygen, whether it was Russiagate or whether it was the impeachments, Donald Trump, this is one of the astonishing things. While all this stuff was going on, Trump was still fighting China. There was a trade war going. And so right now that's happening. We're still in a trade war. There's other stuff that's rising to the surface, whether it's what's happening, whether it's Israel's war against Hamas, whether it's happening in Qatar, whether it's the Ukraine, Russia war, what's still going on at the same time as the China trade war. And there's a lot of people who are but yeah, it's not. There's so much else going on. It's not right now the main people are concerned about.

[Carol Markowitz]

We used to worry, I would even say, about Chinese influence. It seems like everybody has stopped talking about it. TikTok.

[Lee Smith]

Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

Barely registers as. As a topic anymore. Again, maybe I'm just missing it. Maybe I'm. I'm, you know, pretty involved. Pretty involved in, like, the Israel, you know, Hamas war. Reading about that. Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

[Lee Smith]

Well, there's a stuff pops up. You're right about it, about the TikTok. You're right about the TikTok thing. And you'll remember before that, one of the other things that came up, Donald Trump was talking about letting in 600,000 Chinese students.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

That, of course, made people crazy.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Lee Smith]

I can talk about both of these things. First of all, Donald Trump does not want 600,000 students, Chinese students, in the United States. I have a long section in my book, said during his first term, he was very upset to find out there were more than 300,000 Chinese students in the United States, including many situated at very sensitive research institutions, including US Nuclear labs like Los Alamos. So he was not happy. He does not want. He does not want even 300,000 Chinese students here. He realizes the threat that that poses to our national security. With TikTok, I think it's very important for people to understand that the baseline for understanding stuff, for understanding Trump and China is that Trump does not trust Xi Jinping.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Lee Smith]

Trump has not trusted China. He wrote in his 2000 book the America We Deserve.

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He.

[Lee Smith]

He's. He goes very hard on China there. So this is not going away.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Lee Smith]

It's very consistent. You'll remember that people were worried before the president joined Benjamin Netanyahu and Operation Midnight Hammer to obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. People were concern. What is his. Is Trump fallen prey to the isolationists? What's happening here? You know, he's been talking about Iran, but is he going to do anything? And of course he did. Right. He's very consistent on these things. So to understand which way Trump is moving, I think it's important for people to understand the historical record of what he's talked about. He is a profoundly. Let's go on with other things that we should. Another thing that we should understand about Trump is people are talking about Trump in Gaza, Trump in Israel, Trump, US. Donald Trump's relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, is one of the most important relationships we've seen between world leaders since, certainly since Thatcher and Reagan, maybe since FDR and Churchill. But it's not just that. Remember that Donald Trump is basically the world's institutional memory for October 7th. Right. All the time reporters ask him whether it's in the White House or an ad hoc press conference. Maaz, what about this? Did you see the video from October 7th? Yeah, all the time. So it's not just that Donald Trump is pro Israel and he worked very well with Bibi. It's that this was shocking and moving as it is to people around the world, of good conscience. Right, right. Not just, not just on the mind of Israelis and Jews. It's on the mind of people of good conscience around the world. And Donald Trump is one of them. So that's baseline for understanding Trump's foreign policy. And that's what I do here in the China Matrix. I explain, in addition to the history of this terrible relationship, I explain what Trump's baseline is, what he thinks about China, where he's moving, what he thinks about the United States and how important it is to secure American interest, not just in the Indo Pacific, but globally, because that's how the threat China is.

[Carol Markowitz]

We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.

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[Mario Lopez]

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[Carol Markowitz]

What would you be doing if you weren't writing books? And if you weren't a journalist? What would be what would and be that's Interesting.

[Lee Smith]

That was a. That was a quick transition. I think I would, I would be in. I, I would be in baseball, I think. Really, I think I'd probably be a baseball coach. After I left, when I, After I played baseball in college and then I went to Cornell for graduate school and I was the graduate assistant there. Oh, no, it's great. I mean, coaching baseball, it's fantastic. I like coaching. I like teaching. I haven't taught in a long time. You know, they get to be outside.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure.

[Lee Smith]

Job is outside and teaching young people. You know, I know a lot of coaches now, baseball and other sports. And it's very moving what they get to do. They really. They're not just teaching young, Young people a discipline, a skill. They're also teaching them how to be accountable to themselves, to their teammates, to other people, how to enjoy themselves, how to, how to succeed. Right. How to succeed in sports, how to succeed in life. So, yeah, baseball.

[Carol Markowitz]

I, you know, I love that answer because when I ask that sometimes, I mean, writers will be like, maybe I'd be an editor. It's always like something related.

[Lee Smith]

If you weren't a novelist, what would you do? I'd write short stories.

[Carol Markowitz]

I do get that. I get like, oh, well, I would do fiction, you know, instead of non fiction. Like I'd be a dj, personally.

[Lee Smith]

Really?

[Carol Markowitz]

I don't know. I feel like I can get people on the dance floor.

[Lee Smith]

Oh, that's good.

[Carol Markowitz]

What are you most proud of in your life?

[Lee Smith]

All right, this is, this is. This is a. I, I kind of knew this was coming. I think the thing, the best thing that I did was, as I said, I grew up in New York and so I left New York. You know, I left. It was right after 9, 11. But I remember one time sitting on the subway and I was. I was just looking. I was riding the F train from where I was living in Brooklyn into work. I said, boy, look at all these other people on the train. I mean, I mean, we're all stuck here in New York and I just want to do something else. I mean, I was in my. I guess I was in my 20s at the time. I said, I. I want to. I want to try something else too. And so then it was after 9 11. I said, well, now I got to get out of here. Not because I was, you know, I wasn't scared. I was angry.

[Carol Markowitz]

Shook everything up.

[Lee Smith]

And I was angry and I was sad. It changed a lot of things. And I said, this is my hometown. I have to figure out why these people wanted to kill My neighbors.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

And why they wanted to attack my hometown. So that's really how I started writing about the. That's really how I started writing about the Middle East. It came from a personal sense of, I would say a loss. But it wasn't just loss. It was anger. I was furious. And it wasn't until I was living in Cairo that I realized how. And all the fights I was picking, how angry I was about, about what happened. So it was very important for me to, to leave New York at that time. So I'm not sure if it's what I'm most proud of, but I think it's one of the, the, one of the best choices I made, you know, professionally. Right. Personally as well. To understand, to get a sense of something that just get a sense of something that was Brought despair and angered many people.

[Carol Markowitz]

Leaving New York is very hard. Publicly left New York almost four years ago. I talk about it all the time because I can't get over it.

[Lee Smith]

Now that you've written about it, about it.

[Carol Markowitz]

No, it's hard. It's not. I don't feel like it's like leaving other places. It seems like the pinnacle, like you've gotten to the top and you're like, no, I gotta get outta here. This is, this is actually not, not it at all.

[Lee Smith]

I was there recently. I was there this past weekend and you know, we were staying at a hotel. My wife and son and I were staying at a hotel, a lovely hotel about two blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge and about three blocks from ground zero. And I went down there and it was, you know, it's always a hard visit to be, to be around the World Trade center. But this also. There was something I realized at a certain point. I said, you know, I realized my. And my son is young, so he loves trucks and fire engines. We wanted to stop wherever we go around the world.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

We go to a fire station, you know, and I remember one. When I left New York nearly a quarter of a century ago, Ironman played a very. After nine, 11, of course.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

You know, and it was just, it was just different because I realized that wait, all these guys are really young. I mean, they would. Some of them born, some of them were seven or eight years old. And so just to feel, to feel both the, the shock and also, you know, how, how, how long it's been and how much. But it's how much that has shaped the city. And I would say in many bad.

[Carol Markowitz]

Ways, in fact, really, like what, what's an example of that people should not.

[Lee Smith]

Have forgotten 911 as quickly as they did. Right. Like, one of my colleagues at Tablet, David Samuels, wrote an article about two months ago which was about a building that they built right at ground zero. It was amazing to me. I didn't know until I read the article. It was a great article. David's a great writer, great friend, but I didn't know. What they've done is they've built a building that is exactly modeled after the Kaaba. It was mind blowing to see it and it was, frankly, I'm sorry, it's sickening. That was very shocking. And you know, I mean, the guy, the guy who appears to be the front runner for the, you know, for mayor. Yeah. Mayor of the city is a guy who, you know, says globalize the intifada.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Lee Smith]

You know, it's, it's, that's, it's hurt the city to have forgotten these, to have forgotten these different things, you know.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. It's a very different New York than it was then.

[Lee Smith]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

You know, have a hard time picturing a Giuliani as a mayor ever again.

[Lee Smith]

I still, Well, I mean, that's another thing, of course. I mean, the way that people have turned on Giuliani. I mean, the guy was, you know, the guy was heroic what he did, and also, you know, he served the city, you know, as, as did Michael Bloomberg in many ways. But now, now we're onto something entirely different. And you'd like to think that if people did have a little more sense of what, of what 911 meant, that we might, we might be in a. We. We'd be in, in a different place right now. Not, not that we should be at war with the.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure. No, I know what you mean.

[Lee Smith]

Like, look, let's respect our own traditions. Let's understand our own history. Let's understand what happened here, who suffered, who's still. It's amazing. Just when you think about the number of people who have died from nine, 11 related injuries, you know, respiratory, respiratory diseases.

[Carol Markowitz]

We just have a very short memory as a country. I think we move on from things so quickly and it's sometimes like, sometimes.

[Lee Smith]

It'S good, sometimes it's terrible, you know, Terrible.

[Carol Markowitz]

Give us a five year out prediction. It could be about anything.

[Lee Smith]

I want to give an optimistic prediction, has this. I want to say that. I think that people will. I think that even people like you and me who probably spend a lot of time on social media will start moving away from it. We'll realize how destructive it is. We already do. See how destructive it is. But I think that it will get worse and worse and people, for generous reasons, will move away from and said, I don't need this in my life because it's so destructive. And we're seeing all this stuff now, you know, I'm sure you're paying attention to it. I mean, the anti Semitic stuff coming from the right as well as coming from the left. And I mean, it's just, it's painful at times to look at this stuff and the idea that our children are going to be exposed to it too. So. No, I, I don't, I don't. I'm not saying that we're going to move into an era past technology, but I just think that people will, will return to their senses after what's been extraordinarily what's turned into a very dangerous fad.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Yeah, there's something about that where I think that the younger generation is already less interested in social media. Like they don't really, they don't use social media anymore. They don't, they don't, you know, post their lunch or, or even take selfies with their friends. Yeah, they watch like the TikTok style videos. But there's already a move away from like living your life online. It's entertainment and it's bad in its own way. But I, I already see a change and a shift from that's good. Constantly being online.

[Lee Smith]

Right. That's good. I didn't know that. So maybe my prediction is, yeah, I like that. Accurate than I imagine. But yeah, that's certainly what I hope for, that people will become, you know, that people will, I don't know, we'll embrace their families, embrace their, embrace their neighbors. Spend that sort of time as, you.

[Carol Markowitz]

Know, go live in real life. It's definitely important and so much better. Well, I love this conversation. Lee. You're really one of my favorite writers. Wait to read the China Matrix. End here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.

[Lee Smith]

Oh, okay, good. I'm glad you asked that. Memorize poetry. How's that?

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. Do you have one? Do you have one for us?

[Lee Smith]

You know, I knew, I knew you were going to ask that. And so I rememberized. This is a New York story. So there's a great. One of my favorite poets, Hart Crane, he wrote a poem about the Brooklyn Bridge.

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[Lee Smith]

And, and it's, it's very long. It's 2 Brooklyn Bridge. So I'll just, if I can, I'll just, I'll recite the first, the first stanza so how many dawns from his rippling rest the seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him, shedding white rings of tumult, building high over the chain bay waters of liberty. So it's a beautiful poem.

[Carol Markowitz]

Beautiful.

[Lee Smith]

Highly recommend it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Everyone check it out. Yeah.

[Lee Smith]

And whether, whether it's, you know, some people maybe would prefer to memorize scripture, but I remember the most important lesson I ever learned in college was an English professor who said, who made us memorize a short poem. She told us which one to memorize. She said, you have to memorize this and come back next week and I'm going to give you a quiz on it. And like, ah, what a drag. But it was great because to have to have meaningful utterance in your body and this is of course the opposite from social media. To have something meaningful, something that someone, someone spent time thinking, a rhythm, a rhythm, a pace. And to have that not just in your head and in your mouth, but to live with that in your body. And that's, that really is the opposite of social media.

[Carol Markowitz]

It is. Nobody's going to remember tweets, right?

[Lee Smith]

You might remember some goofy video, but get a poem in your body. Do it. Maybe just one or one a month or maybe one a week at a certain point, but have a poem or a part of a poem in your body.

[Carol Markowitz]

So good. He is Lee Smith. His new book is the China Matrix, the epic story of how Donald Trump shattered a deadly pact. Thank you so much for coming on, Lee.

[Lee Smith]

Thank you so much, Carol.

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[Lee Smith]

Hey, what's up?

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[Carol Markowitz]

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