The Karol Markowicz Show: True Crime, Confessions & Justice with Randy Barnett

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Karol Markowicz Show – "True Crime, Confessions & Justice with Randy Barnett"

Episode Date: March 20, 2026
Host: Karol Markowicz
Guest: Randy Barnett – Georgetown Law Professor, former Cook County State’s Attorney, author of Felony: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago

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Main Theme Overview

This episode delves into the gritty realities of big-city crime, the psychology of confessions, and the inner workings of Chicago’s unique Felony Review unit—told through stories and reflections by Randy Barnett. Drawing on his new book, Felony, Barnett and Markowicz explore how justice is sought, the human motives behind criminal confessions, and how personal ethics shaped Barnett’s journey from prosecutor to constitutional law scholar. The tone is thoughtful, candid, and often humorous.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. From TV Inspiration to Prosecutor (03:05–06:00)

• Barnett’s career origins: Inspired at age 10 by watching The Defenders, a 1960s TV show about father-son criminal defense lawyers.
• Harvard Law & career choices: Faced social pressure to join “big law” but chose being a county prosecutor:

  “I didn't go to law school to do something I don’t want to do. I went to law school to do what I do want to do.” – Randy Barnett (05:00)

2. Chicago’s Unique Felony Review Unit (06:00–07:44)

• What is Felony Review?

  • Only the State’s Attorney can approve felony charges in Chicago; police can’t file directly.
  • A squad of prosecutors works on rotating 12-hour shifts, responding directly to police stations and crime scenes.
  • Their task: vet arrests, interview all parties, get confessions, and prevent wrongful charges.

• Barnett’s real-life crime:

  • Opens with a story of a senseless gang-related murder (“the pointlessness of it”) and how so many crimes destroyed multiple lives.

3. Why Do People Confess? The Psychology of Confessions (07:45–12:47)

Barnett outlines four core reasons people confess—often without coercion or legal counsel:

• Reason 1: They don’t think they’re confessing

  • Attempts to “talk themselves out of trouble” (“I was there, but…”) actually sink their defense.
  • Notable quote:

    “They think they’re talking themselves out of the crime, but they’re actually talking themselves into it.” – Randy Barnett (08:23)

• Reason 2: Pride or Justification

  • Sometimes, as with “Juan Caballero,” they feel their actions were justified or are oddly proud.
  • Barnett’s courtroom moment:

    “If you had it to do all over again, would you do it again?... He said, ‘I’d have killed Michael for sure. I don’t know about the other two.’” (09:11)

• Reason 3: Guilt & Need for Relief

  • Emotional burden of guilt (e.g., the Cesar Marin case):

    “He told me... he had not been sleeping well for a week... He said, ‘I kept thinking about the man.’” (11:18)

• Reason 4: Juvenile Justice Conditioning

  • Many learned as juveniles: talking means more leniency. When adult charges arrive, they don’t realize the rules have changed.

• Who doesn’t confess?

  • Experienced, hardened criminals who have served time:

    “Those were the guys that were very hard to get to confess.” (12:46)

4. Felony Review as a Check on Wrongful Prosecution (17:26–19:38)

• Role in preventing miscarriages of justice:

  • “The original Innocence Project”—Barnett saw their job as preventing charges where evidence was lacking.
  • Approximately 40% of cases brought to Felony Review were rejected.
  • Memorable story: Interviewed a husband at a crime scene; concluded he was innocent and “Felony Review saved him the price of having a lawyer.”

• Barnett on justice:

  “Our job was to say no” if evidence was weak. (18:26)

5. On Talking to Police & Legal Advice (16:50–17:26)

• Advice to young people:

  “You should not talk to the police. It’s very hard not to talk to police, but you should not talk to the police.” (17:03)

  • Recommends everyone read the “viral video” by a law professor explaining the dangers.

6. Justice, Television, and Cultural Portrayals (19:38–22:32)

• Fiction vs. Reality:

  • Wrote letters to TV show creators challenging the mischaracterization of prosecutors.
  • Advocates for more reality-based narratives:

    “Reality is more interesting than what they show us on TV. And The Wire is actually kind of proof of concept.” (20:13)

• Dreams of a “Felony Review” TV series:

  • Played a prosecutor in a courtroom sci-fi movie, Inalienable, with Star Trek actors—relished reliving the prosecutor’s role.

7. Philosophy, Ethics & The Drive for Justice (22:32–24:25)

• “Through line” of justice:

  “…the reason why ‘The Defenders’ appealed to me at the age of 10 is because... my overriding commitment is to the idea of justice, seeing that justice is done.”

• Transition to academia: Sought to “change the system” via systemic scholarship after years of case-by-case justice as a prosecutor.

8. Reflections & Achievements (24:25–25:36)

• Most proud of:

  • His children and grandchildren.
  • Work developing the theory of originalism and writing—including his latest, Felony.

• On writing:

  • Emphasizes bite-sized vignettes—“little chunks” that make dense topics accessible.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On true crime writing:

  "You have this very kind of funny way of delivering even stories about a very grisly murder." – Karol Markowicz (04:12)

• On confession psychology:

  “Both involved in the robbery, and therefore both were guilty of murder. So these were confessions given as a way of exculpating himself.” – Randy Barnett (08:57)

• On pragmatic justice:

  "All I could try to see is justice is done case by case. As a law professor, I can try to change the system." – Randy Barnett (24:13)

• On optimism about peace:

  “I'm going to make a prediction that I probably would never have made until about two weeks ago and that is peace in the Middle East.” (30:44) “If we can do what the President is now attempting to do, we have very strong reason to believe... there could be peace in the Middle East.” (31:35)

• On living a meaningful life:

  “Live your life as though you're going to write a memoir about it. …Will I be proud of this moment no matter how it turns out?... If you live your life as though you're going to write about it one day, that will be a way of getting yourself to make better choices.” (33:44)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------|--------------| | Introduction & Inspiration | 03:05–06:00 | | Chicago Felony Review Explained | 06:00–07:44 | | Psychology of Confessions | 07:45–12:47 | | Felony Review’s Role in Justice | 17:26–19:38 | | Advice: Don’t Talk to Police | 16:50–17:26 | | Justice, Philosophy, and TV Portrayals | 19:38–22:32 | | Transition to Academia | 22:32–24:25 | | Reflections, Writing, and Family | 24:25–25:36 | | Predictions: Peace in the Middle East | 30:35–33:23 | | Life Tip: Write Your Memoir | 33:38–35:12 |

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Final Takeaway & Life Advice

Randy Barnett’s enduring advice:

“Live your life as though you're going to write a memoir about it … then write the memoir—even if only for your kids and your grandkids, your descendants.” (33:44–34:52)

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Book Recommendation:
Felony: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago by Randy Barnett – “Told in little bite-sized chunks... makes it easier to digest.” (25:57)

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Overall Tone:
Conversational, intelligent, and wry; rich with real-life reflections, legal insight, and a dash of optimism about both the justice system and the world at large.

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For more, check out Randy Barnett’s book Felony and revisit The Karol Markowicz Show for further legal, philosophical, and true crime conversations.

Transcript

[Randy Barnett]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Hi and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iheartradio. My guest today is Randy Barnett. Randy is constitutional law professor at Georgetown Law and a former Cook County State's Attorney in Chicago. His new book is called Felony Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chic. Get it now, wherever you buy your books. Hi, Randy, So nice to have you on.

[Randy Barnett]

And you forgot to mention I was a part time pirate on the high seas.

[Carol Markowitz]

For those listening on audio, Randy has an eyepatch on. He's looking really cool though, as I told him. Randy, you're a very rare second time guest on the Carol Markowitz Show.

[Randy Barnett]

I'm very honored.

[Carol Markowitz]

I'm really happy to have you. And not just because your first episode here, I think was my biggest episode last year. Yeah, you were very, very popular. The people loved you. So I'm really thrilled to have you on.

[Randy Barnett]

Love me, love my books.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right? As long as they're buying the books, that's all we're really looking for here. So I have started reading Felony Review and I love it. I'm really not a true crime person, but I love your writing. I've always appreciated your work so much. And I could hear your voice as I'm reading it. And you have like this very kind of funny way of delivering even stories about a very grisly murder. The book open with a grisly, terrible murder. And really what caught my attention about this murder was the pointlessness of it, that there was really no reason for this murder to have happened. It was some suburban kids trying to buy drugs and they run into some gang members who don't have any drugs for them to buy. But then they pretend to be of a rival gang. And then they get basically tricked into following these gang members elsewhere and being killed and the pointlessness of it, the destroyed lives. Did you see a lot of that in Chicago ago?

[Randy Barnett]

Yeah, elsewhere. All big cities are pretty much like this. I went to law school because I wanted to be a criminal lawyer. In fact, I wanted to be a lawyer because of a television show that came on in the 1960s called the Defenders, which starred EG Marshall and Robert Reed as a father son criminal defense team in New York. It was very gritty, very realistic, filmed on location in New York. And it made me want to be a lawyer. And I stuck with that from that day, from my 10 being 10 years old into law school now in law school school. And I Went to Harvard Law School. There's all these pressures or social pressures to go and do something like big law firms or clerk or other sorts of things. And my fellow classmates, when I told them what I wanted to do, which is basically be a county prosecutor, they said, well, that's noble, but don't you think you might be wasting your degree? And I said, I didn't go to law school to do something I don't want to do. I went to law school to do what I do want to do. And I became a criminal lawyer, a prosecutor in particular. And it was better than anything on television. And in fact, I'm rewatching the Wire.

[Carol Markowitz]

I've never seen it. My brother is a huge fan, always tells me I should watch it.

[Randy Barnett]

Yeah, I mean, another show I'm doing later today asked me, you know, where prosecutors have been accurately portrayed. And I remembered the prosecutor on the Wire. And I went back and I sampled where she appears, and it just made me want to watch the show all over again because that's a show that really captures for the first time what it's like to be in the criminal justice system. And I got to live it for four years. And this book is a compilation of all the experiences I had in four years. And as you know, Carol, it was very varied. It wasn't just being a trial lawyer, it was doing a lot of things, including the Felony Review unit. So maybe I should talk a little bit about what that unit is. It's very unique to Chicago. It was implemented in the 70s. Basically, the Chicago police cannot file felony charges against any suspect until a state's attorney has approved those charges. And in order that for that system to work, there had to be a special unit created of prosecutors called Felony Review. And they were full time. You were. When you're in that unit, you're full time in that unit. You work a 12 hour day shift for three days, 6. 6am to 6pm or then you get three days off. And then you work a night shift, 6pm to 6am and you have offices in the police area, headquarters. You have a squad car. You respond to district police stations where the crime has happened and where there are witnesses to interview. You interview the cops, you interview the witnesses, and then if you interview the accused. And oftentimes what that would result in is a confession, including the confession that starts off confession.

[Carol Markowitz]

Why? How is that?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, that's one of. So one of the things I do in the book, in addition to tell all these stories, is I also tell the lessons that I learned by being an observer of the system as well as a participant in it. And one of the things I observed was people confessing and wondering. I was able to generalize kind of about why people confess or give statements to the police even without being coerced. Because, like, why would anybody confess without being coerced? And I found there were at least three different motives that were operating. I'm giving away some of the choice parts of the book, but I'm happy to do that.

[Carol Markowitz]

Buy the book anyway, guys.

[Randy Barnett]

Buy the book anyway. So the first reason is because they don't think they're confessing. This by far is the most predominant one. They think they're talking themselves out of the crime, but they're actually talking themselves into it. Like for example, saying, yeah, I was there, but I didn't pull the trigger. I was there, but I was not part of the robbery. I was there. Well, as soon as you say I was there, you've eliminated witness identification problems. Now the person's there, now we can go out and prove the rest of it. And in some cases, like in the cases of the King brothers I prosecuted in two separate jury trials, the two brothers murdered, robbed and murdered the former cellmate of one of the brothers. And each brother gave a confession saying the other brother had done it, right? And it did, it didn't matter. It, it did mean I had to try the case twice, once against each brother, but it didn't matter which one did the stabbing. Both involved in the robbery, and therefore both were guilty of murder. So these were confessions given as a way of exculpating himself. That's reason number one. Reason number two is like Juan Caballero in the beginning of the book, I think they're somewhat proud of what they did, or at least they feel like they did the right thing. And you'll remember from the end of that confession, after the confession was taken down by a court reporter and signed and sealed and by Juan himself, I turned to him and I asked him, juan, if you had it to do all over again, would you do it again? And the reason I did that is because he's a 19 year old kid or had a very, very limited, very limited criminal history. Look was a clean cut kid, very articulate. And I thought a defense lawyer was eventually going to put him up there and say, look, he got swept up in things, he's just innocent, he didn't really do anything. And so I put it to him, if you had it to do all over again, would you do it again? And he said, if it was a sure thing. And I said, well, there is ain't no such thing as a sure thing. And he said, well, a lot of kings have gotten, you know, have. Commit, kill people without getting caught. By kings, he meant Latin Kings. And I said, I know, but you got caught. Would you do it again? And he said, I'd have killed Michael for sure. I don't know about the other two. Michael were the one that was mouthing off and bragging. So he was. He, you know, he thought he'd done the right thing even after having confessed. Now, the third reason has to do was exemplified by the confession I took from Cesar Marin, who was a Colombian born person who shot and killed a Korean liquor store owner and seriously wounded his wife. She eventually survived, became a witness, and at the end of my confession, at the end of the confession, I took from him a confession, I should say, where I forgot to give Miranda rights at the beginning of the confession and had to somehow fix that. You can read about how that happened and how I made that mistake and how he fixed it. But at the end of that confession, he said that because it took a week before they apprehended him. And that actually will bring me to another thing about felony review. They rested the wrong guy. And because of felony review, they had to let that guy go and find the right guy. So that's one of the things that felony review did. But he. So he was at large for a week before he got caught. And he told me in his confession that he had not been sleeping well for a week. And I said, well, why weren't you sleeping well? And he said, I kept thinking about the man. I just kept picturing the man, the man that he had shot and killed. And I think he felt guilty. And his confession was like. To get it off his chest, you know, to get sort of clarity. And. And it was a true confession, like you do when you confess. And so that's the third major reason, I think, why people talk to the police. There's actually a fourth reason I don't mention in the book.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Randy Barnett]

And that is that juveniles, most of these serious criminals have juvenile records. And their experience in juvenile justice is that if they talk and they explain themselves, they're let go. But they're not let go because they explain themselves. They let go because they, they let everybody go. But if you don't talk, if they act like hardened criminals, then the juvenile justice system might go worse for them. They might say, well, this guy's really bad. We're gonna have to treat him more seriously. So we train them to confess. Then they turn 18. They've now committed a crime as an adult. They don't realize the rules have all changed. Until the jail door snapshot. Now here's the people that hardly ever confess. Anyone who's done prison time and who has sat in a jail for years and thinking what an idiot I was for talking to the police. I'll never make that mistake again. Those were the guys that were very hard to get to confess.

[Carol Markowitz]

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

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[Martha Stewart]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Do you tell like young people in your life don't talk to police? I mean like I, I don't think my kids, you know, they're, they're young but you know, God willing, they're never involved in any crime. But I still say don't talk to police without a lawyer present.

[Randy Barnett]

You should not talk to the police. It's very hard not to talk to police, but you should not talk to the police. And there's a lot of reasons. There's a very good book about this, why you shouldn't talk to the police. And I'm drawing a blank now on the name of the professor who wrote it it. But maybe we can find it and put it in the show notes.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure.

[Randy Barnett]

And he has a great video, a famous, very viral video on YouTube about why you shouldn't talk to the police. But you shouldn't. I mean, if you want to protect yourself.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Randy Barnett]

And, and there's lots of reasons for that, but that's Really a different show. Let me just say something more about felony review and what. And what good we did. It was like the original Innocence Project. We were there to make sure there was evidence that before charges were brought, of guilt. We couldn't determine, you know, whether people are really guilty or really innocent. Sometimes we had a gut feeling, but our guts are unreliable. We were there to assess the evidence, and if the evidence wasn't there, our job was to say no. And the record, our approval rating was about 60%. We approved about 60% of the charges we were asked for. And every week we turned in our logs, which I still have my copy of, which is how I was able to produce the book. We turn on our logbooks, and they would compile what our approval rate was and keep us in the 60% range. And so we rejected. Rejected 40%. There were 40% of the people, like the first person named Cesar that got arrested and then turned out to be the wrong Cesar that. That went free as a result of felony review. I tell another story about a man who I actually, this is the one time I reported to a crime scene and the deceased, the victim was on the floor. The. The. Just like on the wire. The cops there looked at this young kid and this, this, you know, this 20 something prosecutor as I walked into the room, and they looked up at me and they said, is it okay if we turn over the body now? And they were just pulling my chain, so to speak, but I said, yeah, sure. So they turned over the body. And then the poor woman's hand just clunked on my boot. It just landed on my boot. But I essentially. But I basically let the husband go free because after interviewing him and comparing his statement to the witnesses that we had in neighboring apartments as well as the physical evidence, I decided that his story was plausible. In fact, probably true, and he wasn't guilty of murder. And the difference between. I won't spoil it anymore to say the difference between Char being charged with murder and not, is that the victim, his wife had one stab wound in the chest and not two. If she had had two, probably would have been murder because it was one. It was not murder at all. But felony review saved him the price of having a lawyer having to go through the system just because we were there.

[Carol Markowitz]

So I see you as this constitutional law guy, and yet you have this, this prosecutor felony review background. You know, here's the book. How do you end up there? What led you to love this and to want to do that after going to Harvard Law School?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, as I say it was the TV show the Defenders. And the theme of the book is that being a criminal lawyer is better than tv. And I try to make that argument throughout the book and at the end, actually I include a letter that I wrote when Hill Street Blues came out, which was at that point state of the art in terms of realism. But the Wire puts it to shame. But that was. Was state of the art, original realism. I wrote a letter to Bochco and Kozel, who were the showrunners, and a copy of it to Grant Tinker, who was the president of mtm, married Tyler Moore's husband, about how prosecutors had been misportrayed in popular culture, in fiction and on television for years and years. And it was an eight page single space, lengthy analysis of how prosecutors had been portrayed. And because, you know, I thought I was trying to sell them on the concept that reality is more interesting than what they show us on tv. And the Wire is actually kind of proof of concept. There's a reason why that show is a, is a. Is a classic because it does actually depict what it's like. I mean, I have to say, when I watch. I like watched three episodes last night and I felt like I was back in Cook county, only it was Baltimore.

[Carol Markowitz]

Do you see a TV show or doing something of that in your future? You seem really into that.

[Randy Barnett]

Well, it would be wonderful if a studio picked up Felony Review and made a show out of it. I did, I did play called Daily Wire.

[Carol Markowitz]

You call this kind of stuff?

[Randy Barnett]

Yeah, call Ben or whoever it is that Jeremy's not doing anymore, but call Ben. So I actually, I did portray a prosecutor in a feature film called Inalienable. And that was wonderful. It was wonderful experience. You can watch it on YouTube for free. Look up, just Google, just go on YouTube and go inalienable the movie and the movie will pop up. It's a science fiction movie, but the last third of the movie is a courtroom drama. And I play the assistant to the prosecutor whose name who was played by Marina Sirtis, who played counselor Deanna Troi on the original. On Star Trek Next Generation. It was written by Walter Koenig, who was Chekhov on the original Star Trek. And I had four wonderful days on a standing courtroom set in la, which the courtroom set was so realistic. I really felt like I was back in the Cook County State's Attorney's office as I was portraying prosecutor. And when I came off the set, a lot of the actors and other people who are crewmen, crew who are watching it on the video Village, which are the video array that takes place off the set. They came up to me, they said, boy, you really look like a prosecutor in there. And I said, well, I was one, Right?

[Carol Markowitz]

So how do you go from felony review to being a constitutional law professor? What's the path?

[Randy Barnett]

Okay, well, there's a through line. And the through line is that the reason why the defenders appealed to me at the age of 10 is because it turns out that my overriding commitment is to the idea of justice, seeing that justice is done. And then it turned out I thought, wow, there's a profession in which your job is to see that justice has done. And that's the reason I be one of the reasons I became a prosecutor instead of a defense attorney. A defense attorney whose role is absolutely essential. We have to have good defense attorneys or our system doesn't work. Their obligation is to do justice, to do. To zealously defend the interest of their client, whereas a prosecutor's obligation is to do justice, make sure the just outcome is achieved. And I felt a lot more comfortable in that. That capacity than even as a defense attorney. But then I went to college, and I discovered there's a subject called philosophy. And in philosophy, there's a subject called ethics and politics, and they're all about what justice is. Well, where I grew up in Calumet City, Illinois, I never heard of philosophy. I didn't know there was a whole discipline about that. And I was actually tempted to not go to law school and be a philosophy professor instead. But for various reasons, I stuck with

[Carol Markowitz]

plan A, as my daughter likes to say. Were you going to go work at the philosophy factory they built in your town?

[Randy Barnett]

Well, that's what a law school is. A law school is the philosophy factory, where our job is to train students to go into the justice system and see the justice is done. And also as a law professor and as a constitutional law professor, I can approach the subject more systematically, systemically. So as a prosecutor, I couldn't change the system. All I could try to see is justice is done case by case. As a law professor, I can try to change the system. And that's the reason why I. I switched or segued to this other field.

[Carol Markowitz]

What are you most proud of in your life? Kind of had a lot of paths here.

[Randy Barnett]

I'm. I'm proud of my kids and my grandkids. That's what I'm most proud of. I've got two great kids. They're both very successful. I won't, I won't, I won't. Go on and on about all their accomplishments. And I have six grandchildren. The most recent grandchild was born about, born about two weeks ago.

[Carol Markowitz]

Oh, wow. Congratulations.

[Randy Barnett]

So, and, and I'm really proud of my kids and they found great spouses as well. And so that's what I'm most proud of. Secondly, most proud of it would be my writing about politics and justice. The Structure of Liberty was my first monograph. The subtitle justice in the Rule of Law and Restoring the Lost Constitution. Our Republican Constitution. My last memoir, which I was on your show to talk about, a life for liberty, the Making of an American Originalist, being participating in the growth of original, developing the theory of originalism to make it the theory so robust. It's the theory to beat in academia.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Randy Barnett]

And now I decided to reflect upon my time as a prosecutor, which is unforgettable to me. And I had a lot of fun writing the book. It was actually a lot of fun.

[Carol Markowitz]

You seem like you're having fun in this book. Not that I didn't think A Life of Liberty that you were having fun there too. You have a very playful kind of way about you. But I, I think in Felony Review, you, you're, you're telling the story of again, some really terrible things that happened, but with a lightness that really is part of your personality.

[Randy Barnett]

And the other thing that I hope you know your reader, I mean, I should recommend to your readers and that is, and you'll attest in both books, the books consist of very short vignettes. I mean there aren't very, it's not long drawn out stories. You can read a 5 page, 10 page chapter in a few, you know, a few minutes and wait and come back to it. So it is told in little, in little bite sized chunks, which makes it easier to digest, I think, think I love that.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's a really well done book. I'm going to recommend it to all of my true crime loving friends. I think they're going to enjoy that. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.

[Randy Barnett]

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[Carol Markowitz]

Give us a five year out prediction and it could be about anything. It could be about the justice system or it could be about art or music or anything at all.

[Randy Barnett]

God, I'm going to make a wild. I'm going to make a prediction that I probably would never have made until about two weeks ago and that is peace in the Middle East.

[Carol Markowitz]

Wow.

[Randy Barnett]

I think we are actually there is, we have a path now forward if we can pull it off, and there's no telling whether we will. There's a lot of people who are opposed to peace in the Middle east, but if we can pull it off, what the United States is now doing with Israel in Iran promises is a completely new Middle East. I mean there's a, you know, there's sort of like an old joke, you know, where, you know, what are you going to do, you know, propose peace in the Middle east as though that you can never do that. I think we actually are on the verge of doing five years from now, five years we could have a absolutely transformed Middle east in which Arab and Jew are, you know, sort of shoulder to shoulder, each doing, you know, each going on tourist destination rides, you know, in each other's countries, doing a lot of commerce together, doing a lot of security together. All we have to do is remove this anchor from both Arab and Jew, from both. I mean, I'm just Arab. I mean we have the poor Persians in Iran are not Arabs, but we should say Muslim and Jews. Remove this cancer which is not the Persian people, it's not the Iranian people, it is the government that they've been suppressed by since 1979 and who has been at war with the United States since 1979 and continues to declare its war against us in the quorum of Death to America. If we can do what the President is now attempting to do, we have very strong reason to believe the Rubin Accords gives us very strong reason to believe that there could be peace in the Middle east, remember, all the countries besides Israel that Iran fired rockets at are all Formula one tournament countries. They all have Formula one speedways. Countries with Formula one speedways, I don't think are countries that we have to worry too much about.

[Carol Markowitz]

Interesting. That's like the old McDonald's thing. If a country has McDonald's, it's probably not going to be war torn.

[Randy Barnett]

Well, it turns out that's less true than we hoped it would be. But Formula One, Formula One, that's a big investment, you know, for sure.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Much bigger than McDonald's. But I love that. And I love that you're optimistic. I, you know, I have my ups and downs on that.

[Randy Barnett]

I don't want to go so far as to say I'm optimistic. I think it's the Middle east in

[Carol Markowitz]

five years is pretty optimistic, Randy.

[Randy Barnett]

Optimism or pessimism are kind of irrational. I'm hopeful about the future. I'm always hopeful. I'm a glass half full instead of a glass half empty guy. That, that defines me more than optimism or pessimism does.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. Well, the one question that I ask all my guests that has stayed the same for the three years of the Carol Markowitz show so far is to leave us here with a tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives. Do you remember what you said last time?

[Randy Barnett]

I bet you I only. I think I do, and I'm going to say the same thing.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right. Yeah, do it.

[Randy Barnett]

Live your life as though you're going to write a memoir about it.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's what you said.

[Randy Barnett]

Why would that be? Why is that? Because if you think about now, you know, I'm 74. I, you know, I've made most of my choices. I've made, I've done most of my deeds. And now that I wrote a memoir, when I look back, I want to be proud of what I did. I want to be able to put it all in the book instead of, oh, gosh, you know, there's a mistake. Here's another mistake. Now, I did put the mistakes I've made in the book. Book, you know, my professional mistakes anyway, not all my personal mistakes. But if you live your life as though you're going to write about it one day, that will be a way of getting yourself to make better choices. Will I be proud of this moment no matter how it turns out? Will I be proud of the choice that I made today or will I regret it? Will I be sort of like, well, ashamed of it? I really don't want it to anybody to know, live your life as though you're going to write a memoir. You'll live a much happier life life and then secondly, then write the memoir even if only for your kids and your grandkids, your descendants. Wouldn't I love to read a memoir done by my great grandfather, Harris Barnett, who enlisted in the army at the age of US army at the age of 18, having immigrated from Russia and enlisted in the army a week after the Little Bighorn and was discharged honorably in the Montana Territory, which means he fought in the Indian War before returning to Chicago, my hometown, to raise his family. Wouldn't I love to have a memoir by Harris Barnett, But I don't have one. So write a memoir for you and your kids and your descendants.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that so much. And I'm gonna make everybody I know write a memoir. He is Randy Barnett. His book is called Felony Review. Please buy his book anywhere you buy books. It's really so excellent. Thank you so much for coming on. Randy.

[Randy Barnett]

Love to see you on I'll see you on the high seas. Coffee Genius here. Most people see a busy cafe, but

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[Martha Stewart]

This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Ever wonder how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret. When prepping for cooking and baking, get ahead of the mess with new Reynolds Kitchens countertop prep paper. Just lightly wet the counter so the paper grips. Lay it down and drips and spills stay on the paper, not on your counter. Cleanup is as simple as lifting it away to reveal clean counters. Effortless it is thanks to Reynolds Kitchen's countertop prep paper. Wet it, set it, prep it. Done. Available in the Reynolds Wrap aisle at Walmart.

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