Rosario Dawson & Idalia Rodriguez

[00:00:00] I think that life is for leaving a mark. And even if it feels like you're dealt a hand and you know, you're like, I didn't have this or I didn't have that. I truly believe that whatever you put out will come back to you at some point.

[00:00:16] So I really believe that life is about making yourself useful to this planet, making yourself useful to your surroundings. I'm Courtney Martin and this is The Wise Unknown. Bring to mind the most grounded person you know. Whose advice do you find actually useful?

[00:00:41] Who says things even in an off-the-cuff way that stick with you for days to come? Chances are that person isn't making a living as a quote-unquote wisdom figure. They're your auntie, your pharmacist, your Zumba instructor. They don't have a million followers on Instagram.

[00:01:02] We live in a world that increasingly puts particular people up on a pedestal and pays them a lot of money to at least pretend that they've got this thing called life figured out.

[00:01:11] But I wanted to talk to people with two feet firmly on the ground, people that the folks in the pedestal actually consider the real sources. I wanted to meet The Wise Unknown. So I asked seven famous people to introduce me to the wisest person they know that I've

[00:01:30] probably never heard of. And then I kicked the famous person off the line and talked to the source. Today we're kicking actor, activist, and producer Rosario Dawson off the line. But not until she introduces us to her friend.

[00:01:48] The friend who provides her sanctuary and sustenance, the one who she goes to for the noble should take on everything and anything, her multi-hyphenate, multilingual, chosen family. Get ready to meet the real talkin', real cookin', real wise Adalia Rodriguez. Hi Rosario, it's so good to see you.

[00:02:10] Oh my god I love seeing you. I love technology. It's been way too long. Yes. So thank you so much for doing this. I am so grateful. I would love to meet who you've brought to us today. Who are we talking with? My lady Adalia.

[00:02:27] You know, I became friends with her a few years back. My chosen family cousin, Vanessa, passed. And that was actually when I started more connecting with Adalia. I remember she came in, she had this bed kneel she had made.

[00:02:45] And I just remember it just feeling this sense of family, community home, like just deep soulful kind of connection and the way that Adalia was just talking with everyone and showing up and taking care and just doing this thing that, you know, since my grandmother's passed

[00:03:02] and you know, since moving at the West Coast I don't get very much of. But just that sense of community, like proper community. You know, I grew up in the lorries side in an abandoned building and it was just

[00:03:14] like a lot of potluck dinners and like just people kind of coming together and creating like special moments and really holding each other and being present. And I remember just like how much I needed that in that moment and to see it from someone

[00:03:26] who I just did not know that well up until that point, but to feel how familiar it was and to feel so taken care of. Like she just really created this space of just care with just her being and her

[00:03:39] intention and like the forethought too, coming with this food and like it just was the kind of thing my grandmother would have done and she'd still been there with me. And I just remember just feeling my ancestors like just being taken care of

[00:03:51] in this like really deeply personal intimate way that like is the seat of my relationship with her. When I think of her, I just think of this person who I know is so intentional

[00:04:05] and so conscious and so present and loving and giving and also like does not suffer stupidity or fools like getting to know her over these years and just how brilliant she is multi lingual, just like her life stories.

[00:04:22] It's so incredible and like just what she's just always offered and insight and her vision and the way she sees things. Like it just feels so deep all the time to meet this person who I know is just this touchstone of integrity and just sharp too.

[00:04:40] Like it's a gut punch and you're going to hear what you need to hear. You know, she's a mirror. She's just like all the things. It's just so real. I'm so grateful for it. So she's the first person who pops into my head of like someone

[00:04:50] who just gives you advice that maybe other people don't know, but is just a gift onto this world that you would want to share. And he dolly is the person who popped immediately into mind. I love that. I love that. What was your grandmother's name? Rosario Isabel.

[00:05:08] Isabel loved the idea of people coming into our life who echo the presence and like the care and the emotionality of our ancestors and having that resonance. It's so beautiful. I think, you know, when you get to knowing Dahlia as well,

[00:05:22] like she has such a strong connection to her history and her family background and history in general, like she really breaks it down and is just really happy to share that knowledge with folks so that they can resonate deeper

[00:05:37] in their own lives, you know, and like be more considerate about what they say, what they do. That is the kind of work that makes you hold yourself up better for the next generation. Mima was my favorite person.

[00:05:48] That's what I called her name is Isabel, but she was Mima to me. I've met certain people like that in life. Like I would say, I got to meet Maya Angelou. It was just like this voice that just seems like it comes from roots.

[00:05:58] And it's like it's just so deeply resonant and it feels raw and not like powerful, vulnerable kind of way where it's like, it's not just the beauty like you dolly had beauty. My grandmother had beauty. Like they just there's always something about that that's always really integral.

[00:06:14] I think that's a big part of it. Like she's just stunning and the way she holds herself, there's a presence, but that's also like behind it is just it's fortified not because of shallow beauty or presentation. It's got like a backbone to it

[00:06:29] because it's tethered to history, you know, like that's what made hearing Maya Angelou's voice so resonant because she wore every scar as well as every award. You know, my grandmother Mima is like the way she held her head up high, you know?

[00:06:41] And I just I see that Adalia has that and that's what she's been for me. I've had some moments in my life where I've just been really insecure or any of these things. And she just has this way of not being cynical, looking at it

[00:06:54] and going, yeah, that's fucked up. Like let's just be real clear. That's real. You know, you're responding to reality. Like I'm not going to butter it and pretend otherwise. But also you can fucking handle it like you got this.

[00:07:04] And even if you don't feel like you have it step into the reality that there's people behind you and like who've shouldered it for you. And that's what we come from and feel that, you know what I mean?

[00:07:13] And she just kind of deeply reminds me of where my true sense of power and all of my gifts, everything really truly comes from. And whether it's like a post you doing about thainos or like whatever. It's just like there's just always this kind of groundedness to it

[00:07:28] that keeps me on point. And I wanted to be able to share with everybody else. I love that. And I love that you invoked Maya Angelou. I mean, in part because I'm recording this in my nine year old daughter's room

[00:07:41] and her name is Maya and she's named after Maya Angelou. So that feels very serendipitous. But also because I always think about that Maya Angelou quote that people won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel.

[00:07:53] I mean, you are talking about her articulateness and her brilliance and eloquence, but it feels like Rosario, what you're really speaking to is an essence is like a deeply felt presence that she leaves you with and helps you carry on with yourself.

[00:08:07] And it just makes me think of that quote so beautiful. All right, we're going to kick you off, Ro. You got to go. All right, have fun with this. And, you know, I won't be here, I guess. Thank you, Ro.

[00:08:21] You'll be with us in spirit and you can listen later. Love you. Love you. Thank you so much. Take good care. Love you both. Bye. Adalia, how does that feel to hear? What was that like for you?

[00:08:34] Very heartwarming and I feel very honored to have someone who is regarded very highly, think that highly of me. Yeah, I don't want to cry. You can cry. You can cry. It's it feels really good because you don't know how people see you

[00:08:51] and there aren't that many opportunities to be described by others the way that they see you or, you know, we don't make time to, I think in general. I try to. I try to reach out and thank my friends and acknowledge and not skip over those

[00:09:03] moments, but in general, we don't make the time. There's no place in society really. It's like a special occasion to talk to people about what you see in them and how they benefit your life. It's just easy to say friend, right?

[00:09:15] And we're not very specific or intentional with the way that we connect with others. Yeah. Well, especially with friendship, right? I mean, it's like we have weddings, we have anniversaries. We have these ideas, but it's usually tied to romantic love as opposed to just like

[00:09:32] profound deep friendship, which is what it sounds like you two share. Right. And we will fight like sisters. You know what I mean? Been on road trips where we're both high tense energy, you know, funerals, obviously where we're crying together a whole four day weekend of binge

[00:09:48] watching some show and just like eating food. It's just it's not about the activity. It's about the person. It's not like in your 20s, you have your friends that you go to the parties with and you have your friends that you go to happy hour with.

[00:10:00] And then your friends who have the same kind of work issues, like it's not built on trauma bonding. It's just the understanding that there's an evolution going on for each of us and then not really putting too much weight on the changes. Yeah.

[00:10:17] I remember one time I was in the house and she said to me, she's like, I haven't wanted to be friends with somebody in a really long time, but I really want us to be good friends.

[00:10:28] And I said, yeah, I said, but you know that has nothing to do with how much we like each other has to do with how we fight. Yeah. Yeah. It's the way we argue and the way that we can love each other when we argue

[00:10:40] and we don't get along that really is going to make us friends because it's easy to say, hey, you want to go to the club? Hey, you want to go do this? Let's get dressed up and do that and make it about the activity. Right.

[00:10:50] But it's when you have disagreement and you know the other person sees your point of view and says, OK, well that bothered her, but it doesn't bother me. And it didn't bother her enough to have to cut ties.

[00:11:01] I respect you enough to let you have your feelings about it. And you respect me enough to understand where I'm coming from. And we just now we know. Yes. You know, it's like an allergy, like a food allergy.

[00:11:12] Like now we can't have strawberries and we move forward, you know? Well, and it's also the like crucible through which unconditional love is confirmed, right? Like if you can fight and be like, yeah, we don't agree on that

[00:11:25] and we can repair and we can move on and still love each other. Yeah. So it's like, how do you know you have that unconditional love if you never test it? And it's really an issue of trust, right?

[00:11:34] So when you have a disagreement and you voice your opinion in the immediate, you don't leave too much room for this bacteria of resentment to start building. You know, you kind of, you know, make it airborne and let it fall where it may.

[00:11:49] And so I try to live my life that way and I'm not afraid to not be liked. Yeah, that's a real wisdom right there. I mean, do you think of yourself as wise? Does that word resonate with you?

[00:12:02] It doesn't because I feel like some kids are born into like a very safe loving from my perspective, it seems coddled, even though I know that it's a healthy to others. But so not having that, I had to unlearn and figure stuff out.

[00:12:19] And I believe that because so many people in my childhood were so generous with their knowledge and getting me out of my own way and giving me the skills and the life skills that they knew that I would need,

[00:12:30] that I wasn't learning at home, you know, like how to maneuver in this world. I came here not speaking any English. And so for a multitude of reasons, my mother could not empathize or get the hang of what I was facing in this world.

[00:12:44] So it was a lot of teachers that I was still close with as an adult. I was asked to speak at one of my gorgeous, gorgeous teachers from elementary school, Miss Johnson, who passed. I spoke at her eulogy and I met with her before she died

[00:13:03] when she asked me to speak at her eulogy and she had saved all my clippings and all of my notes. Oof. But yeah, she. She recognized that there were things and there were tools

[00:13:19] that I needed and she was happy to hone them for me and hand them to me. And so I always felt like, you know, love comes at you in so many different ways, you know, we all have a different way that we love and we all become experts

[00:13:32] in a certain type of loving that goes with our personality. So I feel like that way of keeping someone from getting in their own way is a lot better than sometimes giving them a boost. I love that big old toolbox of stories, the good bad and the ugly.

[00:13:54] But it does sound like you have like an exquisitely tuned bullshit detector, which I think I could use more of in my life. I know a lot of us need more of that. Like where did you get that bullshit detector? Where did that come from?

[00:14:08] Knowing too many bullshitters when you're a kid and seeing that things aren't flowing with adults will make you understand that it's almost like an intolerance. You know, we don't have a lot of time here.

[00:14:19] I lost my father when I was very young and my mother was an orphan. So I didn't even meet my grandparents. They died before they were 40. So I think that maybe what triggers me is the waste of time. Yeah, we don't have life for it.

[00:14:35] Maybe you have time, but we don't have life for it. Life isn't for that. What is life for? I believe that for me, ancestrally speaking, I think that the majority of it is advancing, you know, everything that you look at in nature grows, right?

[00:14:50] Every seed we start off as seeds. It grows into something and it grows. And I believe that once we start sprouting and we take inventory of the terrain around us as conscious beings, we have a decision to make as to what we're growing towards,

[00:15:05] what kind of fruit we're going to bear. And I think that life is for leaving a mark. It's for leaving a mark, for finding joy. And even if it feels like you're dealt a hand and you know, you're like, I didn't have this or I didn't have that.

[00:15:20] It's really our job because I truly believe that whatever you put out will come back to you at some point. So I really believe that life is about making yourself useful to this planet, making yourself useful to your surroundings.

[00:15:35] I mean, otherwise we could all just be in a cave by ourselves. It's not about just yourself. Which is harder than it sounds. It's such a beautiful idea and we tend to be so bad at it in many ways as people. We do harm each other, you know,

[00:15:49] to your point of your beautiful metaphor. Like block a window here and there, but yeah, exactly. OK, we have to take a quick pause here, a little break, and we will be back in a minute. We want to hear from you, the wise unknown listeners.

[00:16:09] What's your key takeaway from this week's episode? You know, the thing that you'll share with your partner as you're falling asleep tonight or maybe right on a sticky note and then probably lose somewhere in the growing chaos on your desk. Is that just me?

[00:16:22] Anyway, record a little voice memo and send it to us at thewiseunknown7 at gmail.com. Tell us your name and where you're from and what you think the lesson of this episode is. We are going to talk through all the nominations

[00:16:39] from our awesome audience in the eighth and final episode. We may even use your voice on air and even better, we're going to pick seven of the most resonant lessons and make up poster with collaborator artist Wendy McNaughton. Thanks for listening and learning alongside us. You're so awesome.

[00:17:00] I'm Shankar Vedantan, host of a podcast called My Unsung Hero. It's a show about acts of kindness that changed someone's life. She came straight up to me. She looked me in the eyes and she smiled. And all this and I look up

[00:17:16] and this hand slides two warm chocolate chip cookies across the desk. My Unsung Hero. Listen and renew your faith in humanity. We are back. So it sounds like in part you're talking about legacy and I wanted to ask you about legacy and you said we make our mark.

[00:17:37] How do you think about your own mark? I mean, you are an artist in lots of different ways. How do you think about like what you want to leave behind? I think that I've been fortunate in that

[00:17:50] what I leave behind is not like an artifact or, you know, their experiences. There's something to that. Like I'm not a performer, right? But I do. There is some performance to my culinary arts and, you know, played piano and violin and studied music theory

[00:18:15] in the languages and communication. Yes, there's effectively I am creating something, but they're all fleeting moments. And so I think that what I am leaving behind are those experiences, those memories, those lessons that, you know, even like when Rosario was describing,

[00:18:32] it was a moment where she was transported somehow because I try my hardest to check myself when I'm not being genuine. It's been a long road of having to understand how important that is. So it's been incredible in my career, the amount of people that I've reached

[00:18:51] and the people that I speak to that are my friends. A friend of mine asked me to write a list of the top five most awesome things that ever happened to me and all the awesomes of my life. I think she said, what are the top five?

[00:19:04] Wow. Cool assignment. What a cool assignment. And then I think to myself, I had a famous producer who wrote the soundtrack to my life in hip hop. Have his mentor come to his house to meet me and his mentor said to me, why do you think I'm here?

[00:19:22] You have it. And I was like, this is insane. You know what I mean? That that's even an experience for somebody who I think is just cooking. But it was also in the aftermath of him asking me

[00:19:36] what I could offer him as a chef that other people couldn't. And my answer was empathy that I know you don't actually want to eat that plate of soul food. You just want to feel the comfort of a person who's no longer here.

[00:19:47] And that plate is going to make you feel like your grandma made it and made him like a small tasting of those items. And he realized he wasn't hungry. I'm able to curate and tune into these different personalities

[00:20:00] and I don't see them for what they have or where they are. But I really do see the humanity. I see the child in everyone. And I think that that's really what I nurture. All in all, my legacy would be that I have probably mothered

[00:20:15] most of the people that I met in our child. I fostered a lot of inner children, inner children. That's so beautiful. What an incredible legacy. Introduce us to little Adalia. Who is she? What does she understand about wisdom?

[00:20:32] It's funny because I remember a long time ago when I was little, I was in an elevator with my mom and these elderly women got in the elevator with us. And I was speaking to them. I thought I thought nothing of it.

[00:20:48] I always talked to older people as a kid. They were getting off on their floor and I continued my conversation and they held the door and then they said, OK, bye. It was nice talking to you. So goodbye. I think it was maybe like a few days later,

[00:21:00] my mom told me that she's like, remember those ladies in the elevator that you were talking to? And I said, oh, yeah. She goes, they said that you were really wise for your age. And I was like, OK, now I didn't really speak English that well.

[00:21:14] So I had to look up what that meant. And then I had to look up all the words because I was very detailed, you know, wisdom, a knowledge. OK, but what is a knowledge? Like how many kinds of knowledge? Because there's a knowledge and that means there's several.

[00:21:26] And I really had to look into that. So I was always very curious. I always loved sounds. So communication, music. I've always loved art and color. Little Adalia like to read Vanity Fair and Little Adalia loved to play important papers. I didn't play with dolls.

[00:21:50] I used to cut up paper into different sizes and smear them all over my desk, air quote desk. And then I'd shuffle the ones that were the same size and I scribble my signature and I'd organize them.

[00:22:06] I guess that was my version of an inbox and a stamped, you know, whatever. I had no idea what my office did, but I had important papers and I played piano and I saw some BBC programming in the 80s on TV.

[00:22:22] And I liked accents and learning different accents. And I was very aware of my accent, like sounds and communication and what things were meant to evoke. Like that was always like my thing. I was always fascinated by it.

[00:22:42] Like I was like, OK, so I'm coming from the Caribbean. I'm in the United States. The person that I consider to be a grandmother more than my father's mother was my grandma, Maryam, this badass Jewish lady who had the sense to leave when she thought

[00:23:00] the Holocaust would happen and it did and ended up in Atlantic City. Had a third grade education. She was dating like your Arnold Rothsteins and your Meyer Lanskis and just made millions for herself selling jewelry. She really taught me as much as she could.

[00:23:19] Like she didn't have children. She said that her and her friend, her best friend used to run around town and, you know, her friend had a baby out of wedlock and was considered fast but died during childbirth. So she took on this child.

[00:23:32] And at the age of 12 or 13, he was hit by a horse buggy. In Atlantic City and she. Then was too old to get married. Everybody thought she was loose because they thought that was her kid. So she really had such drive and nerve

[00:23:49] and she taught me the opposite of what my mom was teaching me, which was stay out of the way. That's not for you. That'll never be for you. That's not where you belong. But she never gave me direction as to where I belonged.

[00:24:00] And Maryam, she was so fabulous. She wore her Christian Dior nail polish and Indian red and the matching lipstick. She slathered oil of Ola on her face and we watched Days of Our Lives. She used to wave her cane at the TV

[00:24:13] and yell at Jack for being a jackass, for cheating on what was her name, Rachel or something. Yeah. She once, I remember, because she had the lotion in her hand. She held my face once and she said, you know, there's people who are born rich

[00:24:24] and there's people who are born to be rich. And I said, yeah, she's like, which one are you? I said, like, I guess I was born to be rich. She goes, that's right. She's like, you can't let any of these jackasses get in your way.

[00:24:35] Don't listen to anyone. You know what I mean? She was very much, you know, an insight of that always asking if I ate, asking my mom if I ate, you know what I mean? It was always like the bubby feeding you, teaching me all of the Shabbat prayers

[00:24:47] and having me sit down and have conversations with the rabbi. I remember telling her in elementary schools that I was called a niggerspick and I didn't know what that meant. And she said, who called you that? Just so shocked and vicious by it. And it's the 80s.

[00:25:04] I mean, there was a lot of racism that people think was only in the 50s. I mean, those are the kids from the 50s that were raising kids in the 80s. So when she felt that for me

[00:25:14] and I realized that she was going to raise hell about it in her own way, it taught me about being able to defend myself. And it's something that a lot of the adults in my home community didn't resonate with because a lot of them are immigrants

[00:25:28] and they're like, oh, don't ruffle any feathers. You don't have the right. And I was like, I do have the right. So there's always that little Adalia always had to figure out that the adults didn't get me. I was traversing a world where I was

[00:25:43] a black Native American girl who was not Catholic, who, you know, had Grandma Mary and picking her up in a limo to make sure all the other kids would see and have her driver pick me up and we'd go to tea at the Ritz Carlton

[00:25:58] because how dare they? Right. Oh my God. And, you know, there's all these moments of redemption, like I was saying earlier, it's just a lot of people who stepped in and empowered me because they saw where that snowball could avalanche. Yeah. Now I just want a movie.

[00:26:13] I want to watch a whole movie of you and Miriam. I really would love to do that. I really think a lot about writing my memoirs about her. She was just phenomenal, glamorous, just beautiful. I love it. So much of what I'm hearing from you

[00:26:32] in terms of your own wisdom and your own genius seems like it was born, I mean, certainly it's nature in part. But the nurture part feels like you were this cross-cultural genius that you were like in all these different worlds, reading all these different rooms,

[00:26:49] actually speaking all these different languages, interacting with people of different ages and that that's part of the magic of your particular kind of wisdom. Does that feel right, this cross-cultural kind of genius? Yeah. Also being born of things that, you know,

[00:27:05] my father was very lucky before he passed, he shared so much because he was so brilliant. He really was. There's genius IQs on my dad's side of the family. He just, I think he knew he wasn't going to be here for a long time.

[00:27:18] I just remember him like injecting me with as much stuff that he thought would be useful. And honestly, it's carried me through till now. You know, we came here from Puerto Rico. What he told me was he saw the fear, he understood racially that I was different.

[00:27:35] I presented more like a black child than I do now. But he made sure to remind me in this country, you're going to be told that your lips are too big, that you look like this, that you're too brown.

[00:27:46] But watch everyone get tans and watch everyone get perms to have your curls. And so the idea of holding people to their own standards is what I got from that. And I use it every single day.

[00:27:59] Because I remember when I went to school, no one looked like me. I was an ESL for two weeks and I could already speak English. It was fast. I got out of there really fast because I already knew how to read in Spanish.

[00:28:09] So that and you know, he played conga drums and I have the first beat he ever taught me tattooed on my left arm because he said that was the heartbeat of the beats. And with that came the knowledge of our African ancestry

[00:28:22] and how proud he was of that. Even me, you know, asking and he's like, well, you know your mom, she's India. Like, you know, she's native and you know, my mom is a Mayan descendant. But he didn't mince words with anyone.

[00:28:34] It was very direct but also so loving. Like you can't find someone who will say that he was bad. Like people won't speak ill of him to this day. He was able to somehow get it into my head

[00:28:46] that I could analyze a ton of things in two seconds by just compartmentalizing who's saying it, why are they saying it, do they even believe it themselves? Have they shown you that they believe that that's what that is? Yeah.

[00:28:58] And it was just really easy for me to just shuffle the deck. So that was the seed of your bullshit detection was like the stuff he said to you and helped you read the culture. Yes. And he wouldn't take it. He wouldn't take it.

[00:29:10] Like somebody was saying something that didn't make sense. He wouldn't even give it five more seconds because he already knew, you know, your initial statement is ridiculous. Like I can't honor myself by pretending to honor you in this nonsense. You know? That's beautifully put. I love that. Yeah.

[00:29:26] So part of this podcast is about deconstructing kind of our ideas about who wisdom figures are. You know, we like put someone up on a pedestal and we brand them and they have their website and their million followers on Instagram

[00:29:39] and they get paid so much money to go speak and they write their books. And sometimes, you know, those people are truly wise and it's great that folks are listening to them. But there's something about the performance of all of that

[00:29:50] that we're trying to get underneath with this podcast. So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about kind of do you have any cynicism about wisdom culture or like even that word wisdom? And how do you distinguish like real genuine wisdom

[00:30:05] from the marketed branded wisdom? I absolutely do because I understand everyone's hustle and I understand the time is money so whatever you dedicate your time to should be compensated. However, I see that there's a big culture of selling a personality versus selling the commodity or the service.

[00:30:33] When you've convinced enough people that your personality is wise, you stop offering wisdom or you package it. You know what I mean? You have your five for one packet of wisdom and you call women into a room and throw this amazing brunch, this wisdom brunch

[00:30:48] and no one learns anything and you talk about how rich you've made it because you've manifested it's like, no sis what you've done is you've sold tickets promising people a Dalai Lama with Lubutans on and then you shake their hand and they've paid you for scrambled eggs

[00:31:05] and some English muffins and they feel empty after meeting you. The value that people place on this marketing and all of that outside of a monetary value like you want followers but where are you leading them? How much are you adding to people's lives?

[00:31:22] How do you make them feel after they've been around you? As far as my career and food and all of these other things I just I think I do great one-on-one and most people don't forget something that I make for them

[00:31:35] and I've tailored that in my culinary experience like I think the majority of my clients will tell you they remember exactly how something tasted and they want it again and again and again because even when it comes to food

[00:31:47] like cooking for you if you ask me for a waffle I ask you what your ideal waffle was and I make it that way like if it was spongy did it have crispy corners? You know what do you mean your grandma had a syrup that wasn't syrup

[00:32:00] and I'll recreate those experiences so I think that the idea of wisdom coming in a one for all is the antithesis of it and I think that people are so comfortable with the type of wisdom that's palatable you know it's like nobody wants a banana flavored Laffy Taffy

[00:32:18] they want the strawberry one so as long as you always have strawberry if you're sale you're going to have a guaranteed customer these crazy blanketed statements what you see in others is a reflection of you well I don't see the librarian in me

[00:32:32] when I look at a librarian you know what I mean like that's what does that even mean? Gina you look over yonder and you put these words together and it's very performative because you sigh and you look off into the distance and people are like wow

[00:32:47] but I'm always the one in the corner it's like what the hell does that even mean right you're like I call bullshit yeah well and it sounds like you're saying wisdom doesn't come in these universal bromides that we think we can like package it's like about relationships

[00:33:04] and authenticity I really believe that what works for me is that I think about what I don't want to feel comfortable in my environment so maybe to that whole bullshit factor I don't allow a lot of BS so therefore people who are performative

[00:33:27] and opportunistic they don't feel comfortable around me we came back to Rosario and our friendship there isn't anything that she like you know she's had moments where I've told her you can just come and stay at my house if you have nowhere to go

[00:33:37] when you're upset or you're being followed by paparazzi or whatever just sit in the family room you don't have to talk to anybody just sit in there if you need to sit in there creating an environment where everyone just doesn't come into my house

[00:33:47] everyone isn't just invited over I don't allow everyone in there's a safety in that so that's what wisdom is to me it's the micro the holding people to their own standards holding yourself to your own standards aspiring to different standards

[00:34:00] you didn't even realize you should hold yourself to yeah that's so beautiful I love the like no bullshit zone of Adalia's living room that seems like a very special place yeah you can't do that here I love that okay we're already over time so we got a wrap

[00:34:15] but I'm just so grateful to you thank you so much for doing this I feel like I have just soaked up your amazing way of being in the world I can see why Rosario and so many others are so attracted to it because it's magnetic to be

[00:34:30] listening to someone who is so clear and has that like North Star that you know one just wants to follow so I know you don't want followers but unfortunately you got a new one sorry no I'm happy to have people

[00:34:43] I'm happy to have a tribe and a herd that walks with me no one needs to follow I think we can all see cool stuff together and you know the more the merrier that's so sweet I appreciate you so much thank you for this

[00:35:02] The Wise Unknown was made possible by the Reese Foundation where Kyle Reese is a force for good an Einhorn collaborative which just gets wisdom way better than almost any foundation we know the show was produced by the amazing Gold Arthur our associate producer is Jessica Martinez-Dejas

[00:35:21] and our sound engineer is Eric Gomez our music is by public school teacher and musician Kumar Butler and our art is by the indomitable Wendy McNaughton