Celebrate Your Girlfriends with Rita Wilson

Actress, singer, producer and all-around great friend Rita Wilson stops by the show! Rita’s here to talk about her record “Sound of a Woman,” and how she channels her personal experiences into her artistry. Plus, Rita shares more about her early days on The Brady Bunch, how she continues to evolve, and Michelle gives the story of how they became close friends. Have a question you want answered? Write to us at imopod.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I mean, who would remember that? That's pretty good.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  You could totally learn that cheer. I could teach it to you one day, because she could do it.

• 0:07Speaker 02

  I know the words to it, but, um.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  One, two. Tell me, who are you? The Bears. Three, four. Tell me who's gonna score? The Bears. Five, six. Tell me who's got the kicks? The Bears. Seven, eight. Tell me who's really great? The Bears. Nine, ten. Tell me who's gonna win? The Bears. Say it again? The Bears. Who's gonna win? The Bears. Woo!

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Very well done. Very well.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Hi, Craig.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  How are you?

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I'm good. I'm happy to be back in action with you.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  I know.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  How you doing?

• 0:57Speaker 00

  It's, it's, I'm doing well. I feel rejuvenated.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Anything exciting happening in your life since I've seen you last?

• 1:05Speaker 00

  No, no, just the usual stuff. We're trying to get school done for the year, but, uh.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Are they still both playing instruments? Are they still following their music stuff?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  They, they are. Uh, Austin still takes piano lessons. Aaron is counting the days until he can stop playing the trumpet. And it's a shame, because he, he's such a good musician. Because, you know, he started on the viola. And when he practiced that at home, it was lovely to hear. But he did not like it.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  So he, we told him he had to finish it, because he started it.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  And he, when, when he, and he's in eighth grade, gonna be going to high school. And I think this is the end of the line.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Well, we always tell him, I mean, the, for both of us and for everybody, I know the thing we all wished we had kept up was our instrument. Um, because music, I mean, you know, and our, our next guest is, um, a, a, a living example of, you know, when you hold on to music in your life, um, when you don't let that muscle atrophy, you know, even if you've done a ton of things, you can always go back to it.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  You can come back to it.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But our, our guest today is a dear, dear friend of mine, Rita Wilson.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Rita Wilson.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  And I love her to death.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  You know, there are some people we have on here who are friends of yours. And I, either an acquaintance of mine, but I feel like Rita's my friend too, because, and I'm, I'm gonna wait till she comes out to tell the story, but I, I, uh, I am so happy she's here. And she just brightens the whole room when she walks in.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  She is a, she is a ray of sunshine. Um, but let's do a, a, a proper introduction.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Her introduction. Rita Wilson is a multi-talented singer, songwriter, actress, and producer. She has released six studio albums, one of which we have right here called The Sound of a Woman. And it's her most recent, which is a collection of songs that explores the arc of a woman's life. So without any further ado, Rita Wilson, she's, she's in there being a producer. I, you're the only one who looks. You're the only one who has ever been looking at the screen.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  I was wondering, it's like, why don't you say your name?

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Because she wasn't sitting in the chair. She was not sitting in the chair.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Busybody. Are you thinking of busyboots?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Just want to see you two, my favorite people, that's all.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Welcome to I Am Oh.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  It's so good to see you.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Hi, honey.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  You, you're at, you're at our house.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I love it. It's so nice to be here, because I've only seen it on TV. So I'm very happy to be here.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  You're looking fabulous. What do you, what do you have on?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it takes a village.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  It takes a village. You said you had an alternative outfit.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a little wardrobe malfunction, but this is, this is something that I feel very comfortable in.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  You look great.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  I think it's all about comfort. Like, if it's not comfortable, don't put me in it, you know? Really? Because I can't be myself. Preach. Or like the beatniks.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  And speaking of comforting, comfort. So you probably don't remember this, but I remember the first time I met you. Meech was having one of her dinner parties at a hotel somewhere in DC.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Do you remember?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  You and Tom were there.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I think it's, I think I know which one it is.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  And there were, it was small, because there were tables of just six people, you know? It was really small. And I was the only civilian there. It was just, uh, celebrities galore. And you.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  And I was, he came, he's like, you should, I was like, you should come to dinner with us. And he didn't know, he was just sort of like.

• 5:03Speaker 00

  I was in town, and she was like, come on by for dinner. I thought I was going by their house, so I was on my way over there. She's like, no, no, no, we're at the such and such hotel. And I go over there, and I walk in, and I'm like, oh, geez. I felt underdressed. And everybody in there is just like so nice and nice looking and.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  So clean and fresh.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Clean and fresh.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  And you fit right in.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  I, I was, I felt like an outlier. But you were sitting at another table, but you were sort of back to back, side to side with me.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  And you made sure that I felt included in the whole evening. And you would, you would lean over and say, hey, and you'd talk about somebody. And then somebody would say something, you say, you hear that? And you were so sweet to me. I will never forget that.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Oh, well, thank you.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Thank you. I, I feel like that's important, though.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Well, I can tell.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I do, because I can't, I, I think, you know, this is partly, you know, what we'll be talking about, I think, today. But I think it's so important that there's so many people that feel like they're just invisible, you know? Sometimes, and even if you don't feel invisible, you can be made to feel invisible if you're in the wrong situation or crowd.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Right. It's hard for me to feel invisible.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  It's hard.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  That is true. That is true. But I wouldn't say in your case you were invisible, but sometimes it's just that extra sort of somebody noticing that, you know? Hey, you're here, you know?

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was really sweet.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  I see you. I see you, exactly.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  But I want to know, well, how did you two meet the first time?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Oh, it was at the first inauguration, first inauguration. And I'll never forget this, because it was so impactful to me. But I think it was at one of the events at the Lincoln Memorial. And, uh, Tom was speaking, and, um, afterwards, there was like a little get together in the tent for anybody who had performed or spoke that time. And you and the president got up on stage and you said, "I really want you all to pray for us and keep us in your prayers as we go into this." And that really impacted me, because I thought, exactly right. We do need to do that.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Like, in, in, I'm Greek Orthodox, as you know, but in our church, we always, you know, pray for our leaders and hope that they are doing the right things and, you know, they're for the right reasons. So, and you definitely did that.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Well, it feels like I've known you my whole life, and we've had some just amazing conversations. Um, and in those conversations, I know how important your family is, how much, how important your work has been. But you're, one of your major passions is music, as we talked about.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  And, uh, this is your sixth album, The Sound of a Woman. Congratulations. Congratulations. And we're gonna, you know, we're gonna do something a little bit different, um, today, because we've got a couple of songs queued up.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yes, great, okay.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  And whenever you or one of us thinks it's the right time, we can do a little bit of a listen and talk about it. But I wanted to, um, start by having you tell our listeners what the album is about, why you wrote it, why now?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I love that. Um, okay, so it's called Sound of a Woman. Why? Well, it was really to explore what that experience is like from different phases and experiences of a woman's life. And, uh, my co-writer, Amy Waj, and I, we had, the first song was Sound of a Woman, the title track, because we were like, what is the sound of a woman? So through this process of songwriting, I started, started to really feel like I wasn't alone. Like, it wasn't just my story. So many women are going through these same things and, um, experiencing those, the same things.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  So like, even though it's very specific some ways to what I'm gonna be writing about, personally, it's this experience of it all is, I think, universal.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  So Rita, you, you're thinking, all right, I want, I have something to say. What made you want to say it through songwriting as opposed to screenplay writing or poetry or something else?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Okay, good question.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Ooh, ding ding, Craig gets a good question point.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  I'm getting good at this job.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  You do it enough times, you can get good at it.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  You got it. Um, well, I think you can ask any person alive, like, what did you love to do when you were a kid? And that, well, they'll have an answer for you. And so mine was music. And I loved music, and I would get up and sing at the drop of a hat. I would sing Ode to Billy Joe. Like, just think of a 10-year-old going like, "It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty..." I don't know, I won't sing all of it, because who knows? There might be legal reasons I can't sing it.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I don't think about it. No, stop singing.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  We can't afford it.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, um, but that song was fascinating to me because it really told the story of like, I came from this very boisterous family and then I had this song that people were like going, oh, so somebody just jumped off a bridge and died and threw something off the bridge.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Don't you remember we were playing that game? What song blew your mind? Which is a Tom Hanks favorite where we sat around the table and we talked about the song that blew our mind and then we played it and talked about it. And yours was?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Oh, to Billy Joel.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Oh, to Billy Joel.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was a song that I just thought, okay, why is everybody in this song just going past the peas after this big, huge bomb has dropped on the dinner table, you know?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And you were hearing the lyrics.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I'm hearing them.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  A 10-year-old, a lot of times, they're just like, I think these are the words and they're mimicking it, but you're taking in the content of these songs.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  But my mom was really good at that.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Tell us more about your mom. Yeah, she was a force in her own right.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. She was extraordinary and really an amazing person. You know, the, she was my best friend and she was somebody that I knew I felt so much love. So both my parents gave me that foundation of like, whatever you want to do, you always have a place to come back to. They never stopped me. And you know, she was born in America but raised in, in a little tiny village on the border of Greece and Bulgaria. And they went there for a vacation, the whole family, when she was four years old and her dad died. And the family said-

• 12:11Speaker 02

  During vacation?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  During the vacation, yeah. And, um, they were young and so my grandmother-

• 12:18Speaker 02

  How old was, was your mom?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  My mom was four, so I think her mom must have been 32, something like that. So eventually, when things started getting rough, my mom had to escape with her mom to-

• 12:34Speaker 02

  And by rough, you mean the occupation?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And so she stayed-

• 12:39Speaker 02

  How old was she when she was?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  19.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  19, traveling alone?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly. But yeah, so both of my parents were incredibly courageous, but my mom was probably an artist in some way and I think she loved music. But, um, but one of the songs on the album is called "Your Mother" and it's twofold because one of them is, what are the questions you wish you had asked your mom if your mom is no longer with us? And do our kids really know us? I know so many amazing women who do incredibly wonderful things in their lives, like over the age of 50.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And that is, in some ways, the beginning. I heard a term the other day which I loved, which somebody called somebody over 50 a queenager instead of a teenager.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  I love that. Don't we like that?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I'm like, queenager?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  A queenager. I like that.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  So I liked it too.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Let's, let's copyright that. Put it on shirts. I am a queenager.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  I'm a queenager.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  I'm serious, Dan. Somebody's gonna do that.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Does that make me a kingager?

• 13:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  No, it doesn't roll off the tongue in the same way, does it? No.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  But that, that idea that I've met so many women that are doing incredible things and, um, and they're somewhat different than what they were doing in the earlier parts of their lives. And everybody has a gift. And if you have something you want to do, do it, you know? If you do something consistently enough, you do not get worse at it. You can only get better at it. You can't get worse at it. And, and that really supported this endeavor of songwriting because I thought, I would go down to Nashville all the time and just write, write, write, write. And I thought, well, I know from what our color town is, I'm not going to get worse at it.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna keep doing it, you know?

• 14:52Speaker 00

  This back-to-school season, spend less on your kids with Amazon. I remember with my two youngest, one year, what they wanted for the upcoming school year changed four times on the way to the store. They were so focused on which backpacks or lunchboxes they wanted, then they changed their minds minutes later. Do you remember what it was like to go school shopping with mom and dad?

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Oh, when we were kids?

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. I mean, that was like excitement, you know? It was like getting the new box of crayons, you know? Whether you could get the 16 variety or the 64. I mean, there was nothing that spelled, that spelled progress in learning than a new box of crayons, you know?

• 15:41Speaker 00

  When you increased your number.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  I mean, it was like, we are living large now. A fresh spiral notebook, I was ready to fill it up.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  I know exactly what you mean. We had what we needed, but there was always that one thing mom would let us pick out that just made the whole year feel right. And for me, it was always the three-ring binder.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Just the empty three-ring binder?

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, because you could get the binder with the action figure on the front. You know, you could get Spider-Man.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I just never went for the action figure. I liked straight color.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Batman, Spider-Man. What was the item for you?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  It was the spiral notebook with the paper already in it, you know? And I liked the colors because I liked the color code for the subject, you know? You'd get reading, you'd get math, you know? I, I was highly organized. Less into the characters.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  More into the focus on being organized.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember that. School shopping can be so fun, though, the nostalgia of it all. We want the best for them, but we're also allowed to want back-to-school shopping to be a little bit easier and more affordable. It's good to save money. So, you know, you can spend it on your kids later. With Amazon, you don't have to worry about losing that shopping list anymore. They have so many options all in one place. No more driving to three different stores, giving your kids all the time in the world to rethink the erasers you just bought them. So remember, with Amazon's low back-to-school prices, just spend less on your kids because

• 17:24Speaker 00

  every dollar you don't spend on them is a dollar you haven't spent on them, you know, yet.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  They're gonna get you some way.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Well, let's, um, let's, let's take a minute because we've got "Your Mother" queued up. Can we hear that while we're talking about our mothers? Because the, the lyrics on this song are amazing. Let's take a listen.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Another.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Don't make me cry.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  This is my favorite part.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Wonderful.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you got good at songwriting.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  You didn't get worse.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  And just from a technical standpoint, so did you come up with the lyrics and then say, I gotta figure out a melody to this? Or did you have the melody and then say, I gotta write something to this beautiful song? How does that work?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Every song is different. Amy Watch, my co-writer and I, we, we knew, you know, sort of what the arc was gonna be. And sometimes, like in this song, we wanted to just, you know, say to our children, we weren't always just your mother. Our kids come into the world and they're like, oh, you're my mom. They don't know you before. They just meet you as mom.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  They didn't know you were fast.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  They didn't know you could run.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Our mothers were really zipped up. They did not talk about stuff that generation.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  No way.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And I also feel that I, I, I'm on the cusp of sort of this, you know, my mom's generation, which was very traditional and, you know, patriarchal, because mom stayed home, dad went to work. And then there's my little interim generation, the cuss. And then right ahead of me was Gloria Steinem and, you know, Bella Abzug and all the feminists that were sort of paving the way for women's rights. I always felt like I was straddling this balance of like, who am I? Am I my mom's values? Am I these ladies' values, you know?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Well, I think we're growing as women to understand that it's not a zero-sum game. You can, you know, I know, as I grow, I'm learning to appreciate all that my mother was in that tradition and the strength. I mean, like you said, we, we don't know who they are, as the song says. So, you know, and sometimes we don't take the time to listen, as the lyrics say.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Listen, because they're never, that generation of mother was never gonna tell you outright, but she was telling us about herself in little ways.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  If we would listen.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the, the album follows your arc as a woman. And to sort of create some context to that, I wanna, I want you to take us on your arc, starting with.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Childhood.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Because you've alluded to the fact that you are a Hollywood, California girl. That, you know, even though you are the child of immigrants.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  You grew up right down the street. What was Rita like? What was little Rita like?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Little Rita. Little Rita. Well, I went to Hollywood High School, right down the street.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Which we pass every day coming to the studio.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I know, it's crazy.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  It is remarkable. Same, same building and everything.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything looks the same, pretty much. Although now there's fences around the school. You can't just walk up onto the lawn and go into the classrooms. I was a cheerleader. I was happy. I was part of a church singing group. I had great friends. I started modeling, like the first day of high school, a photographer who had had permission from the school to be there, asked if he could take my picture. I said, yes. That turned into, I didn't realize it at the time, but he was shooting a layout for Harper's Bazaar magazine. So they asked me to be in Harper's Bazaar magazine. So I, that got me started.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  You know, as a teenager, your mom agrees that you can go off and model in, in Europe.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and she came with me because, you know, I was 15. But back in those days, I had an agency in LA. And in the summer times, they wanted their models to go over to Milan and get a portfolio together and get some experience working. And that's what I did. I'll never forget, because you remember the things that you wear. I was wearing like a little red and white checked gingham suit that my mom made me.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Like, like little pockets here and little, I looked like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, literally. It was so, so sweet. And, you know, in some ways, you're going into the lion's den. Cause all the Italian playboys would just hover and vulture like around the lobby to the hotel, like, who's coming down today?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  And it's like, Rita's fresh meat.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. You did feel that. And I, you know, had my mom with me. So they're like, oh, not, not her. Okay, fine. But, but I, I do feel like my parents gave me that foundation of, just a foundation. Like, you can do this and we will be there. And if you ever get tired of doing it, you don't have to do it. So it was, I, I did have a sense of adventure in that way, to be able to like, try different things and not feel confined by anything.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  And at this point, were you thinking, I'm, I wanna have a career in acting?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Because I read, I read in, oh, man, I can't remember the periodical, where you said, well, if I wasn't, if I didn't get into show business or acting, I was either gonna be an athlete or a detective.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  And I, so I have many questions.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  But I'm only, I'm only gonna ask a couple. First of all, what, what sport would you have been an athlete? And what kind of a detective?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  I like both of those.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Okay. I, I would have been in track.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Or skiing. I didn't play tennis as a young, you know, as a teenager, but I loved skiing and I loved track.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I love being outside. I just, oh, that, I love that. And then detective, I like to get to the bottom of stuff. And so just put me in there, like, I need to solve this crime.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Were you like that with your friends?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Probably, I don't know. I just like, I would wanna get to the bottom of, like, why did they say that? Well, why did they do that? Well, what did that mean? How does that work? And I remember someone told me a really valuable thing when I was a teenager. He was an older guy and we were having a conversation. I can't remember what the circumstances was, probably a work situation. And he said, he was talking about something and I didn't know what it was. And I said, I'm sorry, can you explain what that is? I don't know what that is. And he said to me, that is so great that you asked when you didn't know something.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Because most people are too afraid to ask and to look stupid or, you know, whatever. So I just wanna get to the bottom of it. It's like, it's a form of FOMO, like, I need to know.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance, a company committed to helping people move forward and live fully. What advice would you give young people today as they approach bigger and bigger life choices, like purchasing their first home?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Well, I would say, talk to people who've been in your shoes. You know, I think our parents were never homeowners, right? So we didn't really have them as a guide. So I would say to young people, if you don't come from a home-owning background, ask questions, you know? If you're buying a home, you're gonna need a bank. You should sit down with someone who has an expertise to help walk you through the process and help you think about how much you should be investing, how much you should be saving, so that you're not going in blind.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Exactly. Fortunately, there are resources available for all those first-time homebuyers out there right now. For example, Progressive's Up Payment Program is part of their Open the House Initiative, a multi-year commitment to making homeownership a reality for more people. As part of that effort, Progressive is expanding their Up Payment Program in 2026, offering down payment assistance of up to $13,500 each to at least 200 eligible first-time homebuyers. And since 2024, Progressive has committed more than $16 million toward making homeownership feel more achievable.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  Learn more about the Up Payment Program and Progressive's commitment to first-time homebuyers at progressive.com/openedthehouse, where homebuyers can discover more about housing challenges and access resources and support to empower them in their housing journey. I have quite a few creative entrepreneurial friends, and all of them rave about Shopify for online selling. Shopify is the platform that lets you build and grow your business while actually owning your storefront, your customers, and your brand. It handles so much of the heavy lifting, so you can stay focused on creating something people are excited about.

• 28:14Speaker 00

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• 28:55Speaker 00

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• 29:36Speaker 00

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• 30:16Speaker 00

  So at what point in your development did the acting hit?

• 30:23Speaker 00

  I mean, because it's like you grew up on the South Side of Chicago, on 74th and Euclid.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Sleeping in the back of the backfield.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Isn't it so crazy?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  And then now I'm going to be on The Brady Bunch.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  It's like...

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Trust me, I was amazed.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  I so, I so remember, I mean, I told you this. I am a Brady Bunch aficionado.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Yes, she is.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I can name that episode in two words. You know?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  And yours, which was Jan tries out for cheerleading, and you...

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Marsha, Marsha tried out.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, Marsha tried out. And you were Pat Con... Conway?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, my God. You really remember.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  You were the good cheerleader. My God.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  So Greg had to choose between his girlfriend and his sister.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And his girlfriend was a bitch. She was just using Greg. She was such, she was fast.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Wait, were you the girlfriend?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  She was the, she was the Greg's solution to the problem.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, she just wanted to be the cheerleader. And she thought, if I can work my boyfriend in the voting for me.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  So she wasn't interested in Greg?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Until she found out that he was gonna be on the judging committee.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  It was outrageous.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  That was a funny story.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Mind you, she remembers this on one hour of TV a day. That's all we could watch.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Because it was like... We watched The Brady Bunch.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. But we only got The Wizard of Oz once a year, too. But we remember everything.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Nowadays, people can watch everything millions of times.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  But you were saying that...

• 32:00Speaker 01

  But it was, it was cool. I didn't expect to audition for it. But a girlfriend of mine was auditioning for it. And she, it was for the role of a cheerleader. And she didn't know how to cheer. So she asked me if I could teach her how to do a cheer. So I said, sure. And then she said, just come with me on the audition. And I said, OK, you know, it was great. Go to Paramount Studios, drive through the gate. And...

• 32:26Speaker 02

  And you're 15 at the time?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, 15. And she, we're in the waiting room. And she goes into audition. And she comes out. And she wasn't really an actor either. But I think her mom was in the business or something. And, and we're still friends, by the way. And so the casting person came out and said, are you here to audition? And I was like, no. Would you like to? And I'm like, OK. So I go in. I don't get the, that part. But they needed a girl who actually could be a good cheerleader.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And you were so good, Rita.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Because I wasn't cheerleader.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. The Bears. Who's gonna win? The Bears!

• 33:05Speaker 00

  The fact that you can still remember that.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  It's so good.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Now you can't give me any crap about remembering plays in a game.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  I don't care.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  I mean, who would remember that? That's pretty good.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  You could totally learn that cheer. I could teach it to you one day. Because she could do it.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  I know the words to it, but...

• 33:27Speaker 01

  One, two. Tell me who are you? The Bears. Three, four. Tell me who's gonna score? The Bears. Five, six. Tell me who's got the kick? The Bears. Seven, eight. Tell me who's really great? The Bears. Nine, 10. Tell me who's gonna win? The Bears. Say it again? The Bears. Who's gonna win? The Bears!

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Very well done. Very well.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  No, it was not.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  This was a precursor to my rapping, of course.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  We've never done that together. I've never talked to you about work.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  So this is a very different kind of conversation.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  It's so funny.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  So would that like your big break?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Oh, totally. That's how I got my Screen Actors Guild card. And once you had a Screen Actors Guild card, then you could audition for commercials and other TV. It wasn't really until my 20s that I, I thought...

• 34:28Speaker 01

  There was, I was doing a play. And the director of the play was like, you seem to like being on stage. Like, have you ever thought of getting any formal training? I'm like, was that? I mean, I had taken an acting class, but it was like for film. I didn't know about formal training. And so he told me about these drama schools. There was Lambda in London, RADA in London, and Juilliard in New York. So I was like, fantastic. So I applied to all of them. I got rejected from Juilliard, rejected from RADA, and waitlisted at Lambda. And then I just kept calling them all the time. Like, hi, have there been any people who have dropped out yet? I sure would love to come, you know? So I ended up getting in and going there.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Because that's when I realized, like, maybe this is my real job, you know?

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Wow. And how long was that program?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  That was a one-year overseas program.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  So while you're acting now, and you got this, at the time, job going on, right? At what point do you start thinking, boy, it sure would be nice to do music?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  I didn't think that. I tried. There were always movies or things that were coming up that had singers in them. And I'd be like, great, I'm gonna go and do that. There was a little club out in the valley called the Palomino. And it had like an open mic night. So my girlfriends and I would go out there. We'd try to, you know, get up on stage and sing. But I also had a part-time job as a ticket taker at the Universal Amphitheater at Universal Studios. And I would take the tickets. And then you were allowed to watch the shows. So this is like 74, 75, 76, somewhere around there. And I would watch the shows. And everybody came through, you know,

• 36:19Speaker 01

  my heroes, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Elton John, comedian Steve Martin, you name, Jackson Brown. They were all performing. And I would sit on the stairs, watching them. And having an actual ache, like a longing, a yearning, like it's something that, someone that you love, that you'll, like, they'll never look at me. They'll never see me. It was that kind of pain. Like, how do you do it? How do you get to be a musician and sing? And get on stage? How do you find a band? I didn't know. But I knew who everybody was.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  I knew all the songwriters on the album covers, all the studios, all the musicians who played on which albums, who sang harmonies. I knew it all. And so when it, when it happened through Cara Dioguardi, this amazing woman who was a songwriter, she said, great, I'll write your first songs with you. And she did. Shout out to Cara Dioguardi.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  What I'm hearing is that you were a hustler. You were courage, courageous. You were already kind of a producer, right? You were producing your life. You were producing your situation. You were doing it all. But I know in you, and I know a lot of women and women in various businesses feel overlooked, underappreciated. And I'm just, you know, I just want you to talk a bit about that. Because when we talk about the arc of your growth as a woman, you know, so many women go through that period in life when they doubt

• 38:07Speaker 02

  what they can do, even in the face of them demonstrating all that they can be, just like our mothers.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  You know? And here we are, a whole generation away, having had more opportunities than our mothers, but still carrying some of that. Do I really have anything to say?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Can you talk more about that?

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Yes. The best way to describe it is, you know, the song Michelangelo, that hopefully we'll play a little bit of, too, is a lot about this process. Because there was this quote that I had on my bulletin board for many years. And it was one from the sculptor Michelangelo. And somebody had asked him, and thank God somebody wrote this down, but somebody had asked him, how in the world do you make these incredible sculptures out of these massive chunks of marble that are just there? And he said, I see the angel in the marble, and I carve until I set him free.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  And that, to me, was a perfect metaphor for having a vision for who this person is inside of you. And being able to chip away at the marble of your humanity, of your woman-ness, so that we can become ourselves. And I, that took me a long time to get there. It really did.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Well, before we talk more about that, why don't we play some of Michelangelo?

• 39:45Speaker 01

  OK, great.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  We've talked about it, I've talked about it on this show. It's, you know, it always amazes me how long we as women take to fully accept and know ourselves. How are you supposed to know all of this?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  You're not.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  You just know where you can.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  But why is there that pressure that you're supposed to know all of it? Like, I really do feel like that shaping that we come into, the shaping of ourselves, you know, that's the gift. Like, I don't know when it happened, but I knew it was happening because it happened in sometimes small ways where you just thought, I'm gonna say no to that, or I, that doesn't work for me anymore, or this isn't, um, uh, an area I wanna go down anymore. And it's that idea that I could actually have a boundary about something, you know, like, everybody talks about boundaries,

• 41:27Speaker 01

  but if you've never had them and then you start having them, people get a little, they don't like it. There's an expression that I love, which is, when people pleasers stop pleasing people, people aren't pleased. Right?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Rita, how, how did, as you were building your career and becoming the woman that you are, how did you, early in your career, how did you start thinking about family? I mean, were you someone who knew you always wanted to get married and have kids? Were you kind of devoted to your career and, you know? Did, or did you think about it at all?

• 42:10Speaker 01

  I thought about it, but I was engaged before I got engaged to my husband.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  And if I had married that person, I would have been divorced within a year. I thought that was what you were supposed to do at a certain age. And I actually thought, because I had never really fallen in love with anyone, that I was just, I would be okay. And my mom, when I, when I told my mom that, I'm like, I don't know though, should I marry him? I'm not really in love with him. And this was her generation. Don't worry, you grow to love him.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  And I was like, Mom, that's not my generation, like, you know? But her generation was like, is he a good man? Will he provide? Will he, there wasn't any of this, I have to be madly in love and I have to, you know? And I'm, it was just like, they thought of things differently. And my parents were married for 59 years, so whatever they figured out, they figured out. But it was, I still wanted to hold out for that falling in love thing. So when I finally met Tom and fell in love with him, that was like, oh, wow, well, this is very, very different than what I had before.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  And I, that would have, marriage would not have sustained that relationship.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Were you thinking about, well, what if I never have kids? I should have kids, this, did the biological clock thing? Or were you thinking, look, let me find love, and if I do, I'll see where it goes, but if I don't?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was more like that. It was more like that, um, I did know that I wanted children, but I didn't, I didn't wanna have children with the wrong people or person. And so, um, that definitely, you know, falling in love with someone really, really helps.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  And Tom had two children, so I already saw that he could be a good dad. So I was like, okay, good, that, that's helpful, a little example here. I really wanted to maintain being able to work and being able to keep my foot in the creative door, except for being in the dishwasher, not the dishwasher, the washing machine.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  The being the whisk girl.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And then, you know, having children when you become a mom, that I just could not get over how amazing it was. I loved everything about being pregnant. I loved everything about giving birth. I loved everything about nursing a child. I loved everything about having a baby and raising children. And even in the really difficult times, because every kid is different, I still knew, well, we have a foundation here. And this foundation, which I was trying to give to our kids,

• 45:27Speaker 01

  was, you know, different than the foundation my parents gave me. But I wanted to give that to my children, to say like, there's always a place that you can land. And there's, we're always gonna be here. We may not be here in the way you want us to be here. That might be challenging, but we're gonna be here for you. But there might be some, you know, things around that.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  I know that I carried that around for a while, that there was this sort of bedrock stability.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  You know, and here I was, you know, I'm married to somebody who's going into politics, and I have a career myself, and I'm not home. And, you know, so I'm thinking, is this gonna screw up my kids? And then we're in the White House, and it's like, oh, my God, my mother didn't do this.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Right, like, how do you, how do you pave that way?

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Right, and you were living a completely different life than, than your mother in the household that you raised. How did you think about that?

• 46:29Speaker 01

  It was hard because I, it did, I did feel torn and felt a little guilty if I was working or if I couldn't be in two places at one time. You know, I also, Tom was really, you know, when we got together, he had only done, I think, three films. And I think we met on his third or fourth film. And then he, his career was really taking off. And what I would have been working in at that time was series television. And back then, if you were doing a network show, you would have to sign on for a seven-year contract.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  And I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to be working on a series, having a husband who was also working all over the world, not being able to then keep the family together. And at the same time, how do I keep working? So I think not, not being able to really take advantage of those years when I would have probably been in a television series probably had some effect on my career professionally.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  How did you keep your creative muscle flexed during that time?

• 47:54Speaker 01

  It wasn't very flexed at that time.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  It wasn't.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  It was a little flabby.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very flabby, and I remember feeling frustrated.

• 48:10Speaker 00

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• 48:54Speaker 00

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• 49:36Speaker 00

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• 50:52Speaker 02

  Talk about the role of friendship in this journey. And friendship among women and friendship among your partner. And, you know.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Well.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Say, say more.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  What is, what the blessing is about friendship. Oh my God. Boy.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Your husband, your partner cannot supply everything that you possibly need. That's why God invented girlfriends.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Cause you.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  And that helps you guys too.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yes, it totally does. And I think that is massive. You know, they've been, my friends have been there to celebrate. My friends have been there to get me through crises. I remember when I had cancer.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And you invited me down to visit you when, you know, you were First Lady. And can I say where we went?

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Okay, we went to Camp David. And it was, I can't tell you the feeling because I was maybe four weeks out of having breast cancer surgery, bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction. And Tom had to go, he had been gone to do a movie. So I was like, what am I doing? And you said, why don't you come down and we'll just have a weekend down here.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  You were like, can I come without Tom? I was like, screw Tom.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. But you know, it's like, you just don't know, right?

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  You were so, I don't know. It, it made me feel so vulnerable. And it was also like, it was, I was already in a sort of vulnerable state just having gone through that, you know, process. But then to be there by yourself, but to feel that I wasn't alone was huge. That's what a girlfriend is.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  That sets us up perfectly for our listener question.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Okay, dude.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  It does.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Very well done, Rita, very well done. It's as if you know what our listener question is.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  And this is from Lucy.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  I have a close group of girlfriends I've known for years. Our kids grew up together and now that they're all adults, I still meet up with this group of women regularly for dinner or for our book club. Recently, though, I've started to feel a lot less close to them. I've found that our conversations feel pretty surface level. And when they do go deeper, I often get frustrated with them because our politics have really drifted in recent years. I recently started a ceramics class and I love it. I've realized I haven't actually done something for myself that's totally new to me since having kids. I've thrown myself into it and I've also become friendly with some of the people in the studio. And it's put into perspective how toxic my friend group can be for me. Suddenly, this group of women, who were truly some of my closest friends for years,

• 54:14Speaker 05

  feel stifling to be around. My question is, do you think this is a phase that is typical with friends? And should I try to put distance with them? How? Is it normal to outgrow people at this stage in life? Or do I owe them more?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Wow, that's really great. I'm supposed to answer that?

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Well, we will all discuss. But what are you, what are your thoughts? What advice would you give?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  It sounds like she's growing in some ways. And it sounds like she's shifting, who, you know, like from one phase of her life to another. And doing that sort of, that transition can be difficult for, for the individual, but also for the friend group. Because she may not be, feel like she's being seen as this new person in the friendship group that is, wants her to stay in a certain lane or bucket, right? And yet, if there are people in that group that you really, really love and you really want to be with

• 55:18Speaker 01

  and, and continue that relationship, maybe it's good to do more individual, one-on-one stuff together so that you can check in with them and say, hey, I'm kind of feeling this way and, you know, what's going on? And, you know, can we talk about this? Even if it's a difficult conversation. Cause I wouldn't throw out the old friends if they, if they, you have so much history with each other. Because every relationship is going to go through phases. But I'm a big believer about pausing. If you don't feel good or safe or whatever. Not really disconnecting or cutting people off, but just pausing and kind of saying, I'm gonna take a little breather here for a minute.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  I think I'd, I agree with you, Rita, that, you know, things, she shouldn't feel bad that things have shifted because it isn't unusual.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  It's, and it's okay. It may shift back again, you know? You may, you know, you may get into some new interests, develop some other new friends, get to know them, circle back around in five years, run into somebody in your old group and something clicks.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  You know, and it's like, wow, I missed this part of you, you know? So I like what you say, sometimes you do need to take a break.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  From people. Sometimes you need to take a break from your family, you know? Without cutting ties completely. But I have, that's why I always try to encourage my daughters, my nieces, nephews, young people that I know is just to stay open to people.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Because I have made, and I've said this time and time again, some of my, the, the most special people in my life came into it after the age of 50.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Right, wow, that's amazing.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  And that doesn't make the people who were there before any less special.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  I've tried to do my best to keep blending people, you know?

• 57:19Speaker 01

  You're really good at that.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  And it's the fun of watching people get to know everybody. And then all the mixies don't always work.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  You try it out and go, oh yeah, ooh, that, that wasn't good. I gotta take a little salt out of that and put it over here. You know, you, you, you learn. But I get a lot of pleasure out of my friends becoming friends.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Me too, I love that.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Craig, how does, how does the male gender? Because you were representing all men.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  I am, so there's gonna be some wild generalizations.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  That's why he's wearing blue.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  He's blue for the boy.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  I like both of you all's advice for, for Lucy and agree with every part of it. The only thing that I would add is that I think for me and a lot of guys, when you're, when you feel that growth and that need to sort of stretch your arms and, stretch your arms and legs in different direction.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  I tend to, and my friends tend to try and bring that group along.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  A good deal of my friends now have become golfers. And because of my, of my life, golfing was never a part of it.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  I mean, it was back when I worked in corporate America, but that was so long ago, I'd never became a golfer.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  And they always try to include me in golfing, even though I'm not a golfer. And I have to be open to vulnerability of not being a golfer.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  But how do you get included if you're not a golfer? Like, do you just walk around with them or?

• 59:08Speaker 00

  I can do either.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  You could go on the golf cart?

• 59:10Speaker 00

  I can, I can drive the golf cart.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  I can.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  That's a good compromise.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  And bring my clubs and I can play a few holes.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  Or I can play the whole thing. Or I can just be there for comedic relief, you know? But it's, it's, it's, we all, we, it feels like we all try to keep the team a team.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  That's kind of cool. I like that.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's kind of neat. And everybody has their specialty or their lack of specialty. And everybody gets a chance to be the one who's sort of spotlighted as the one to get the special treatment, even though it's teasing.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Special treatment.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  I don't think it would work if I said, okay, everybody, we're gonna take a watercolor class together.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  No, it wouldn't.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  I don't think it, I mean, how great would that be? If you could do it that way, that would be a blast.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Well, I sort of had a version of that when I forced all my friends into a quarterly boot camp.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember, yes.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  That was, that was.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  That was insane.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  But I think I was in a special position where I was trapped. And in order to see them, I was like, you have to come here and this is what we're gonna do.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  And they didn't have to do the boot camp. I mean, I used to even think, I never said any, I've never said anything to you about that boot camp, but I was like, man, that's, that's rough.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  It was hard.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Well, well, that was not the version. So Rita came along to one of these sort of really hard health and fitness retreats off of boot camp.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Where we, you know, you'd walk for four hours.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  So like you were walking like seventeen miles.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  You'd get an almond, you know, as a break.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Well, you know, well Rita didn't do it.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  No, I was like, I was at the back of the line. And the first day, you know, they gave everybody walkie talkies because you're in the mountains, you know, they give everybody walkie talkies and they're like, um, if you need anything, just let us know. And I'm like, maybe ninety minutes into the walk and I'm like, hi, hi, it's Rita.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  When are we done?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  And there were also two lines that they told you about. There was the private line where Rita could be talking just to the people or the party line where everybody's walkie talkie is going off. So we're all like on mile one hundred and Rita's like, um, where are the cars? And it's like, we're all like, damn, Rita's going home. And then she got back to the ranch and she's like, hi, I'm in my room. Can I get some tea? And we're like, bitch.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Um, I'm by the pool and it's going over and we're all still talking about that.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Self-care, self-care.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  She left the hikes.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  See.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  She's back at the ranch and she's ordering drinks.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  That sounds like something guys would do. See, guys would do that.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  We're sucking up, we're taking our, we're eating the third of four almonds. You know?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  It's so true.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  And she's like, hi, Rita here. And that's how she would start. Rita here. And it's like, fucking Rita.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  I still lost weight on that and I lost inches. Oh my God.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  But you didn't lose your mind.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  I did not lose my mind. I did not.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Rita was just like, I'm going back.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Wow, I've never been back to that place. No.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I haven't gone back again either.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Wonderful.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  But it was still a bonding experience.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  It was still, it was super fun.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  We laughed about it.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  That was really fun.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  And we still do. And all my other friends there, like, remember Rita?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  So, um, sound of a woman, woman, beautiful.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  I mean, you make us all fall in love with, um, whatever you're doing because you just approach it with the right spirit.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  You're here.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  And we are grateful that you've come to share just a little bit of it with us here at IMO.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  What a joy today has been. Thank you so much. This really has been absolutely great.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  See, you get to talk to her all the time. I'm like, oh man, thank you so much.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Well, we got you today. We got you today.

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  But yeah, thank you so much.

• 1:03:55Speaker 06

  I'm Emma Grede, host of Aspire with Emma Grede, the podcast where I sit down with people who don't just dream big, they build big. If you love Michelle and Craig on IMO, just wait until you hear their episode on my show. Michelle told me about the moment at twenty-six when she lost her father and her best friend in the same year. It made her walk away from her corporate law career to figure out her why. That's the kind of conversation you get on Aspire. We talk about mindset, ambition, and doing the work that actually moves the needle. So if you're ready to raise your standards and take charge of the life you're building, Aspire is where you start. Follow and listen to Aspire with me, Emma Grede, available wherever you get your podcasts.