The Karol Markowicz Show: Media Trust Collapse, AI Chaos & Rebuilding Institutions
4/15/202623 mincomplete
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0:47Call 844 -844 -iHeart. Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
1:00My guest today is Alana Newhouse, Editor -in -Chief of Tablet, which she founded in
1:042009. Hi, Alana. So nice to have you on.
1:08Hi, Carol. So that was news to me that you founded Tablet.
1:11I don't know why, but what made you want to start a magazine?
1:16Well, if you think back, Tablet was founded 18 years ago.
1:19And if you think back to 2008, 2009, we all thought the internet was going
1:27to be a really fun, cool place of great discourse.
1:33Wrong. I was really excited about the possibility that the internet had to give me
1:43an audience of people who wanted an in -depth, highbrow, high -level engagement with Jewish
1:51identity and Jewish culture. A lot of the pieces were going to be long.
1:57Some pieces were going to be scholarly.
1:59They were going to be in -depth.
2:01I wasn't imagining a huge audience.
2:03I was imagining a very specific small audience, but the internet would allow that audience
2:09to be found not just in New York, but globally.
2:12Um, so I started Tablet with that in mind.
2:16What I then didn't realize was that all of journalism was coming apart around me.
2:22Um, so that it was a strange thing.
2:27And in the first few years, it was almost like, it was almost unspoken that
2:32we started to do more reportage and more, um, news based pieces, in part because
2:38we intuited these soft spots in what was then the only media there was, which
2:46was, we now call legacy media or, um, mainstream media.
2:50And then as we started to fill those gaps, we started to realize that it
2:57wasn't just that there were one or two areas of weakness, but actually that the
3:01whole structure of, um, um, American public opinion and journalism was decaying.
3:07And so we ended up filling more and more spots in, in, including starting to
3:13cover, um, the world outside of narrowly Jewish life or Jewish issues.
3:19Um, and so that's kind of how we got here.
3:21Yeah. Cause I, you know, I definitely think of you as a primarily, and by
3:25you, I mean, Tablet, a primarily Jewish magazine.
3:28And I would say, I think of it as a right of center Jewish magazine.
3:32Is that fair to say?
3:33I don't see things as right and left.
3:35I really do see things as, um, you know, I wrote a series of pieces
3:39a few years ago about what I think is the central debate, which is really
3:45about the health of institutions or the health of commonly held, um, assumptions and ideas.
3:51And I think that Tablet is, you know, I, I split people up into kind
3:57of brokenness and status quoists.
3:59And I think that Tablet is, uh, with enormous respect for status quoists, increasingly Tablet's
4:08a brokenness magazine, which means that we want to engage with ideas, with the news,
4:16with the world around us, without the assumption that what everyone believes is right.
4:22So now that, that lands different ways politically for different readers.
4:27Right. So Tablet does kind of zig when everybody else zags.
4:32You guys just started a print edition in the last year or so?
4:36Yes. Since June. How's that going?
4:39It's amazing. Because, you know, not a lot of places are leaning into print.
4:45Um, so, uh, I think that that's about to change.
4:49Really? Yeah. I think we're at the tip of the spear here.
4:53Um, I, if you, if you just zoom out for a second and you think
4:58about the effect of AI and the effect of technology on discourse right now, right?
5:04If you go on X and you see ideas getting 200 ,000 retweets or whatever,
5:11and then you have really no sense of who those people are or if they're
5:16people. Right. Um, in a way, I don't even know if you're like, I don't
5:21actually know if you're real.
5:22I might not be. Right.
5:23I, I, I assume. real because you look just like the person that I've seen
5:27in real life. But, but the bottom line is, is I think increasingly people are
5:33going to be looking for trusted media, by which I mean, literally the actual distribution
5:42method. And we moved to print because of our Gen Z readers.
5:48Really? Yeah, it was, it was our youngest readers who basically there was one, I
5:54have WhatsApp groups with different cohorts of readers.
5:58And one of them said it so beautifully.
6:01He just basically said, look, I grew up with the internet was the wallpaper of
6:05my life. I know I could start a website in my basement and call it
6:11the Cleveland post and put up absolute garbage and it will be seen as news.
6:17But when you send me something that is in print, it's not that I automatically
6:22believe it, but somebody paid money to make that and to put that, to print
6:29it and to send it to me.
6:31Interesting. And I just trust it more than I trust the internet, which I use
6:36for a million different things, but increasingly not for trust on opinions or ideas.
6:44So interesting because what we always hear is that the younger set wants fewer guardrails,
6:49but you're saying that because of AI, they might want more of them.
6:53I definitely, I think that it's definitely true of, I mean, I know this sounds
6:58grandiose, but it's true of smarter readers.
7:01Like the smarter readers are looking for, they want to, you know, it's fun to,
7:08to get a million retweets on X.
7:11Right. But then what's hard is that when you realize a month later that you
7:17were wrong or that the person who you retweeted, who you thought was actually had,
7:23didn't have any idea of how the world works and turned out to be completely
7:27misguided. I think it goes the opposite way now.
7:30People that you retweeted and thought were real smart turned out to be completely misguided.
7:33Right. Right. Yeah. But so, but does that mean that you're never going to publish
7:39somebody you regret publishing or, you know, it could, it could happen in real life
7:43too. I mean, I, in real life, I have friends that I don't understand anymore.
7:48You know, what I would say is, you know, I have a weird thing.
7:51I don't ever, I try really hard not to regret anything.
7:54I feel like it's important to be thoughtful.
7:58And even if you make a mistake, it's a mistake and that mistake should teach
8:02you something. Right. I, on the other hand, part of what we've tried really hard
8:08to do at Tablets, not to say that every single piece we've ever published is
8:12a piece we would publish today, but I think every piece, I really can't think
8:18of that many pieces that we published that I feel like that little twinge of
8:24anxiety around. And I think it's okay that we, I mean, I think that one
8:31of the things that's really hard right now is that a lot of people are
8:33losing their minds. Yes, that is very hard actually.
8:36And that's different than having been wrong about something or misguided.
8:41I think that people are becoming weirdly like schizophrenic and bizarre, but that's different.
8:45And I think that that's really, really hard to see.
8:49What were you doing before Tablet?
8:52So before Tablet, I was actually at The Forward.
8:56I was the culture editor of The Forward for seven or eight years.
9:02And I published a line of books and I did the first book, which was
9:07a history of ethnic newspapering through the eyes of, particularly in New York.
9:14And I did a museum exhibit with the city of New York around it.
9:17So cool. It was really, it was fun.
9:20Did you always want to be a writer?
9:23I did. Although I, I, I, I got distracted a little bit at certain points
9:29in my life. You know, I wasn't necessarily a really good student.
9:34I was in high school.
9:36I was really good at only, I was good at a couple of things.
9:39I was really good at putting on lip liner and a dark cab.
9:43Oh yeah, that's a skill.
9:46I had a really steady hand.
9:48So I did really good French manicure.
9:49Um, and I was really good at English.
9:51Um, I was really good at, um, at literature and at writing.
9:55And on the strength of that, I got into Barnard, um, which was a really
10:01strange thing for me because I wasn't necessarily, and it's like, I wasn't looking to
10:07be engaged intellectually, but Barnard really changed my life.
10:10Really? Um, and then at that point I went into politics for a little bit
10:14after college and then went to journalism school and got myself back into writing.
10:19So interesting. So what would you have done if this hadn't worked out?
10:22If, you know, being a writer hadn't happened?
10:24I don't know. Maybe I would become a manicurist.
10:28Right. I was saying manicurist or like makeup artists.
10:31I mean, I could have been a beauty influencer.
10:34Right. Steady hands is actually a tough ask.
10:38Anybody could be a writer, like, but draw, drawing on like a lip line.
10:42I agree. I really agree.
10:45Um, and so, and look, who knows, maybe that's still in my future.
10:48I'm going to hold onto that.
10:49Let's not count you out for that.
10:51And I'm definitely going to have you do my nails.
10:52at some point because I would like to see this perfect French manicure you speak
10:57of. What are you most proud of in your life?
11:01So I have a kind of side gig in my life, which weirdly relates a
11:07lot to my general view of the world, which is I have a side gig
11:12in the world of biotech and gene editing.
11:15I have a son with a genetic disorder and work on helping with gene editing
11:20and run a foundation. It's called the Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics.
11:25And for a variety of reasons that we don't have to get into right now,
11:29it just so happens to be like a neurogenetic disease that's going to be cured
11:33in like the next few years.
11:35It's incredible. And it also has the technology to help other genetic diseases.
11:43But my time at Tablet and the brokenness stuff actually really helped me understand health
11:50and other things about American society and American institutions is very, very central to all
11:56the all these things are kind of they're related in my head.
12:00So I'm I'm really proud of that.
12:03And I feel really grateful that I get to do that work with some amazing
12:08people. That's amazing. I mean, those are two very different things having, you know, something
12:12in science and and something in English.
12:15Those are, you know, tend to be not things that people can do at the
12:19same time. How do you manage it?
12:20Or how did how did you get it?
12:22Like, how did you make it happen?
12:26So basically, the short version is that my son, he has a very, very rare
12:32mutation of this genetic disorder.
12:34And he was very hard to diagnose.
12:36And I've actually written for the free press about it a little bit.
12:41And it's a very long story.
12:44But he when he got diagnosed, it just so happened that I knew the people
12:48who I knew the woman who is a kind of incredible genius, who, who has
12:54a daughter, she's a translational scientist who has a daughter with the same disorder.
12:58And she's been working for 10 years advancing the science.
13:02And so she but she didn't know how to run a nonprofit.
13:06So they roped me in to kind of come and help them just with some
13:11nonprofit organization and structural work.
13:14So now I get to, I mean, truly, I am, I'm technically the president of
13:21the organization. But my role is really to help buttress them, who are the real
13:28the scientists and the staffers who do the work who are the real stars.
13:32Incredible. My kids read your article about struggling with, you know, whether to take up
13:40the advancements that are happening in this genetic therapy, would that be the right way
13:45to phrase it? And you were kind of struggling because you have a belief in
13:49God. And you were wondering if that was appropriate.
13:53And it's just such a beautiful piece.
13:55They all really loved it and thought you absolutely, absolutely should go for it.
14:00And, and my, my daughter, who is very, I would say, God fearing also said,
14:08you know, God wouldn't want us not to use therapies that he helped provide.
14:12So here we are. I do some sort of private conversations, particularly with religious groups
14:20around, around gene editing, which is a very complicated topic.
14:25And I don't want to, I never want to make it seem like it's simple.
14:30But it was fascinating because there were in the conversation, their discomfort, somebody, somebody approached
14:39their discomfort with me. And I said, okay, I get, I get where you're coming
14:42from. Let's talk about this for a second.
14:45So X number of thousands of babies, for example, with Down syndrome have been aborted
14:53in the last decades. If I could fix that chromosome in utero, we would have
15:02saved all those babies. Yeah.
15:04So before we start going to kind of Hitlerian eugenicism, what if we actually understand
15:10the technologies are always dangerous?
15:14They always hold the possibility of danger.
15:16And part of what we do when we build a society is we try to
15:19build guardrails around technology and around capacity that allow us to make the world better
15:26and not worse. Right? Absolutely.
15:29So it's about understanding that that's fundamentally, that's our responsibility, is not to restrain the
15:36technology from advancing, but to engage as citizens and potentially leaders.
15:43And doing nothing, like you said, also leads to loss.
15:47So it's not like, it's not like doing nothing has no side effects.
15:51There, there certainly is. I mean, and here's the bottom line.
15:55China's going to do it.
15:56Yeah. Like China's going to, China's doing it.
16:00So then the question is, is do we want to engage and create a model
16:05for the way to do it right, way to do it morally, or do we
16:10want to just seed the field?
16:12Right. To me, there's no question.
16:15Absolutely. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol
16:18Markowitz show. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international people
16:24using money around the globe.
16:26With Wise, you can send, spend and receive in over 40 currencies with no markups
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16:36in dollars for your side gig.
16:37You'll get the mid -market exchange rate on every transaction.
16:40Plus, most transfers arrive in less than 20 seconds.
16:43Join 15 million customers internationally.
16:46Be smart. Get Wise. Download the Wise app or visit wise .com.
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16:53Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad -supported streaming music from Spotify and
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17:16Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising .com.
17:19That's iHeartAdvertising .com. Give us a five -year -out prediction, and it could be about
17:26anything at all. You know, so part of the thing about, I published that, the
17:32first of my sort of brokenness pieces was a piece called Everything is Broken, which
17:36I published five years ago.
17:38And in it, I basically diagnosed this sense that I felt happening in all parts
17:48of American life of a bottoming out of trust in institutions that many of us
17:54thought were solid and had legitimacy.
17:58Not that they were perfect, but I'm talking about, you know, universities, health institutions, our
18:07doctors, government, media, the arts.
18:13These were places that we could make fun of or tweak or want to be
18:18changed a little different, but we roughly believed that they did their jobs well.
18:23And what I felt was happening was that there was a real bottoming out of
18:28that relationship between Americans, particularly Americans.
18:32I think it's a global issue, but my interest is in America and those institutions.
18:37I think that we're looking at five years of, I don't want to say correction
18:43because I don't think of it that way, but I think we're looking at five
18:46years of Americans starting to ask, what happens if we have no institutions?
18:56What happens if we have no guardrails?
18:59What happens if all we do is burn stuff down or abandon stuff and we
19:04don't invest in institutions to make them what we want them to be.
19:10And I think that you're going to see more, obviously this depends on what happens
19:15in the world, but I think you're going to see more investment, even in legacy
19:19institutions. I think you're going to start to see legacy media, certain brands and legacy
19:24media come back and come back into trust.
19:27I think you're going to start to see investment in certain institutions in higher ed
19:32institutions in, um, in, in culture.
19:36And I think it's going to be really interesting because the question is, is once
19:42you, once you decide that you're going to be, um, skeptical, but engaged to me,
19:51that becomes incredibly rich and very generative.
19:54Wow. You know, I, I just don't talk to that many people who are optimistic
19:58about the institutions and media companies coming back.
20:01I have to tell you, this is a very unique perspective.
20:05Haven't got a five -year prediction.
20:07Legacy media companies are going to return.
20:09That's a definitely unusual. But here's what I want to say.
20:13I want to, just because in case this is, this ever comes back to bite
20:16me, I want to be clear.
20:17It's going to be the legacy media that, um, looks, look, looks in the mirror
20:23and understands why they lost the trust.
20:26Um, and, and realizes that they have gold in their brand awareness.
20:32They have gold that they can save.
20:34It's not going to be all legacy media.
20:37It's going to be some of them, but the ones that I think will are
20:40able to actually be that self -aware have a real future.
20:44I love that. Alana, you're a super fascinating person.
20:47I have enjoyed this conversation so much.
20:50I, I really, every time I see you, I'm like that Alana is very, very
20:53interesting. Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can
21:01improve their lives. Get off social media, um, at least for, um, a little, give
21:06yourself boundaries around it. So I, I know I sound like some fuddy duddy or
21:12some like gross adult or whatever, but you sound like a Gen Z or really,
21:17I really like you, you, you, it's, it's boiling your brain.
21:22And, um, even just saying to yourself, there are going to be three hours a
21:27day where I don't touch it will, you will help yourself.
21:33I love that. And I'm going to try to do the three hours a day.
21:37I always try to like minimize it, but I like the idea of a block
21:40of time every day where I actually don't touch it.
21:44You also can do, you can do three blocks.
21:46So you don't have to do a block.
21:48of three hours, right? You can say, I don't do it 11 to 12.
21:51I don't do it three to four.
21:53I don't do it eight to nine.
21:54Love that. Yeah. Just any time that you remember that you're a human being who's
22:00not ineluctably connected to that machine will help you.
22:05Love it. She is Alana Newhouse.
22:07Check her out at Tablet.
22:08Everything she does is fantastic.
22:10Thank you so much, Alana.
22:11Thanks so much. This podcast is brought to you by Wise, the app for international
22:18people using money around the globe.
22:20With Wise, you can send, spend and receive in over 40 currencies with no markups
22:25or hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond, spending Rai's in Rio or getting paid
22:30in dollars for your side gig.
22:32You'll get the mid -market exchange rate on every transaction.
22:35Plus, most transfers arrive in less than 20 seconds.
22:37Join 15 million customers internationally.
22:40Be smart. Get Wise. Download the Wise app or visit wise .com.
22:44T's and C's apply. This is an iHeart podcast.
22:47Guaranteed human.