Helen Rothberg: What's interesting about being a college professor is I'm getting young people at a time of their lives, where they're ... I get them later. So, they're graduating. So, now, they're scared. It's like, "I'm going to be leaving the bubble, and I'm going to have to pay back my student loans, and I'm going to have to get a job, and I'm not going to be able to drink every Thursday night through Sunday," and they come in as kids who are going to start becoming adults, and now, they're sort of almost young adults, and they face different kinds of challenges. And they have a different relationship with their parents because they're trying to, as much as they love and are close to them, break from them because that's what college is also about. It's about creating that really independent being.
Jennifer Tracy: You're listening to the MILF podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality with amazing with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a MILF. Now, here's your host, the MILFiest MILF I know, Jennifer Tracy.
Jennifer Tracy: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for listening. This is MILF podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneur, sexuality, and everything in between. My name is Jennifer Tracy, and I'm your host. Hi. Oh, my gosh, so many exciting things. First thing I want to start with is my first live show is happening this summer, you guys. Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited. So, we have a venue, Dynasty Typewriter, a beautiful theater in Los Angeles on Wilshire Boulevard, and it is going to be Wednesday, July 24 at 8:00 PM at the Dynasty Typewriter. Tickets are on sale now. You can go to DynastyTypewriter.com and buy them there. They're also available on Facebook. It's an event on Facebook. So, you can purchase it through there. It'll go to the same link, but whatever's easy for you. So, I really hope to see you there. It's going to be an amazing event. I'm going to have ... There will be pole dancing. There will be merch. There will be several MILFs onstage talking about sex after kids and just plain old sex. It's going to be a really fun night. So, please come and join us, and we'll be recording that, and it'll be a podcast episode later, obviously after the event.
Jennifer Tracy: So, yay. Super excited about that, and just wanted to remind you of the give for this month is Save the Children. You can read more about them on my website or on their website, savethechildren.org, and every time you write an iTunes review for MILF podcast, I will donate $25 to that organization for the month of May. I had to stop and think, "What month are we in?" Because it's all going so fast. I can't believe it. It's going to be my birthday soon, guys. I'm going to be 44. That feels like kind of a magical number, two fours, for some reason. I think that's it. I'm just so excited about everything right now. I'm feeling really good, excited about spring. Oh, I am going to be ... It's already launching. Enrollment's open for my writing course, which starts June 17. It's a six-week writing course that gets you from the seed of your idea to an outline. So, my job is to kind of get you on the road to writing it and getting a draft out there because, man, those roadblocks want to stop us. I don't believe in writer's block, but I do believe that we have things that prevent us from just taking the action, and that's in all areas of our lives, not just writing.
Jennifer Tracy: If you're interested in that, you can check it out on my website, jennifertracy.com. Sign up. Without further ado, I would like to introduce this week's guest, Helen Rothberg. Helen came to me through our amazing show notes writer, Kevin Hunker, Kevin Hunker. And Helen told me they call him Hunker. That's his nickname. I'm like, "Of course it is." If that's your last name, that's the coolest nickname ever. Kevin came to me many months ago and said, "I think my professor from college would be amazing on your show." And I said, "Great." And then, he hooked us up, and then, after one phone call, I said, "I want to elope with Helen. I'm completely in love with her," and we were friends. She's an author. She's a professor. She has a gazillion degrees and a PhD, literally. I mean, she's so over-the-top educated and badass and funny and warm and her story and her journey to motherhood is even more fascinating. I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Helen. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Jennifer Tracy: Hi, Helen.
Helen Rothberg: Good morning.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, my god. This is so amazing. I'm so happy to see your beautiful face.
Helen Rothberg: Likewise.
Jennifer Tracy: So, I've been delighting and reading your book that you sent to me. Thank you so much. Your amazing book, The Perfect Mix: Everything I Know About Leadership I Learned as a Bartender, and we're definitely going to get into that. There's so much to get into in the next hour. But just before this call, I was ... My favorite chapter is chapter six, by the way.
Helen Rothberg: You and the universe [inaudible 00:05:10].
Jennifer Tracy: Really?
Helen Rothberg: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Empathy, Love Your [inaudible 00:05:13]. Well, it's chapter six and the introduction in the first chapter. I mean, I love the whole thing-
Helen Rothberg: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: ... but I just love ... It's interesting. I had an interview with April Uchitel who is the CEO of Violet Grey, which is a beauty company and wildly successful. She talked about work culture, and I was like, "What's that?" Because I've never worked in a business like that. I'm a freelance writer, and I'm solo gig. So, to learn, really, I've been learning because I've been talking to a lot of women entrepreneurs about work culture, and that is so much of what you talk about in this book, and I love so much of it. I love the anecdotal piece of it, but I love how you had that one woman, Pat, and I had a Pat in college because I was a bartender for a minute in Boston.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, cool.
Jennifer Tracy: Because I waited tables, and I was like, "F this. I want to get behind the bar." And this was in the '90s, and she said to me, I remember her name was Gwen. She had fiery, red, curly hair. She was beautiful and funny and sassy, and she had big assets, as you called them in the book. Her boobs were big, and she said, "Honey, honey, you've got to wear a money shirt. You've got to wear a money shirt." And I was like, "What's a money shirt?" And she took her boobs with both hands. She was like, "Money, money." And I was like, "Oh, okay. I get it." And there was no shame about it. It was just like, "This is part of the deal."
Helen Rothberg: It's your uniform.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Helen Rothberg: See, but I don't have assets to put in a money shirt. So, I had to find another way.
Jennifer Tracy: You have other assets. You have different assets.
Helen Rothberg: Right. To attract people to the bar and keep them there for as long as I could.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Yeah. So, Gina was one of the characters that had the assets who was the kind of flaky actress character that used her assets, I'm air quoting, to lure men in, which is ... This tale's as old as time, but Pat was the bartender that basically showed you the ropes, and I love that, and that's kind of the basis for the whole podcast of Moms I'd Like to Follow. I've learned everything I know from other women, a lot more than men. I mean, I don't have a thing against men. Men are fine, but it's the women in my life who have really showed me how it's done.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, how interesting. Yeah. Pat is an interesting person. I just said Joanie because that was her real name, and [crosstalk 00:07:46] made me change it.
Jennifer Tracy: I won't tell anyone.
Helen Rothberg: It was 30 years ago. It would've been fine, but anyway. But she had five children, and she was a single mom, also.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Even more interesting.
Helen Rothberg: Yeah. You would never know it because to look at her, so, we're talking now about late '70s. So, she really did have a blonde helmet hair and the blue eyeshadow and the big lashes and the beautiful skin, and she didn't wear a money shirt, probably because she had five kids, right? But she always was immaculate and tailored, and her hands, I don't know show she did this, were always beautiful, and I guess she saw in me this younger really being abused by these older waitresses who knew I was going to come and go for the summer and that they were born there and would die there, that that was their life, that they could make me do all the crap. She took a motherly, in a way, pity on me and was nice. That's all she had to do was be nice, and then, when she saw that I was really interested in her and what she did and that I got what was going on, I don't know if she experienced that kind of, A, appreciation and, B, adoration before because I was in love. The minute I saw that Pat could just put a glass and a napkin in front of somebody and get a dollar, and I had to carry five different [crosstalk 00:09:24] of food to someone for that dollar, and she was cleaning, smiling, I got there was something there.
Helen Rothberg: And I don't think she ever worked with someone who so quickly understood that, and she was magnificent. She really taught me not just about how to cut a perfect lemon wedge but really how to manage people in a different way because there is this balance, as you know, as a bartender, as a parent, as a worker in the world, as anybody in a culture, and it's funny. Culture is made up of how people relate, and my next thing I'm really writing about is relationships at work. But she understood that beautiful interplay between friendly and professional. She knew where the line was, and I find that line, even to this day sometimes, really squishy. It's hard to identify where the professionalism and the coworker ends and the friend begins where being the mom and the friend, those are really two distinct roles, and as your child gets older, my Zoey is now 33, you're always mom, but you get to be more of the friend. But there's an age where that line is really important, and she taught me that, and that was amazing. Just, I was so fortunate to find her.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so awesome, and I love how you write about it and describe it, and you're such an amazing writer.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: Really. I mean, it's-
Helen Rothberg: It took 12 years to say it that simply.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. That's what it takes.
Helen Rothberg: I'm a professor. I've been taught how to not write. So, I had to go back to my early roots from high school when I had the blessing of being in Frank McCourt's English class of Frank McCourt of Angela's Ashes.
Jennifer Tracy: What?
Helen Rothberg: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, my god. That's incredible.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, my god. Talk about the most ... someone who literally blew my hair back, and I wiggled my way into his class for three years in a row, and he had me wanting that writing thing and then academia, and also, being a consultant in writing reports for companies kind of beat it out of me. So, it took a while. So, I really thank you and the three editors who worked hard with me who don't rewrite anything for you, it turns out. They just say, "There's a better way to say that." And they don't do it for you. I appreciate them and thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I've had to become, also, sort of a pseudo sound engineer because I've learned trial and error, and I have the sweetest, most humble, helpful editor I could ever wish for, and he so kindly will email me and be like, "So, episode such and such, this happened, and this happened." And he explains it, and he's just so kind about it, and there's no condescending tone. It's genuine helpfulness, exactly what you're talking about.
Helen Rothberg: Being a human.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Connecting, and he genuinely wants to help me make the best product I can for my listeners.
Helen Rothberg: See, and that's why you like chapter six because that's about empathy, and if we could care about each other and look at each other's people and know that our lives are filled with so much information, and it's so hard for us to process everything. So, we make these little mental maps, and we put people in boxes because it's just easier for us to manage, and when we do that, sometimes, we forget that they're also people with a story, and we remember that everybody has a story, and everyone's human, and we can care about that, then we can just relate to each other in such different ways. So, your sound guy knows that you are many things, but you're not a sound guy, and he can respect that and talk to you that way, and I love that. I love [crosstalk 00:13:15].
Jennifer Tracy: I'm so grateful. I mean, my whole team, I feel just so grateful. I could never do this whole thing without them, and if I did, it would just look way different and a lot less professional.
Helen Rothberg: And that's why love your [crosstalk 00:13:25], right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Exactly.
Helen Rothberg: You love your support staff. We can only be as good as we are because the people around us are as good as they are. We couldn't do it by ourselves.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, and there's a line in the book, and I don't know if it's in that chapter. I think it is in that chapter, where you say, "I can only be as good as the support behind me." I'm paraphrasing, and that's 100% in ever since, not just professionally but family, who with surround ourselves with friendship-wise, the energy that we put ourselves around in our hobbies and things that we participate in. I mean, all of that affects how we view ourselves and the world and ourselves in the world, right?
Helen Rothberg: And how we impact that world, too. So, my daughter, she's a third grade teacher, God bless her, and she's in a team, and she knows I've done a lot of consulting in team-building. And she said, "How do you build a good team?" And I said, "Well, you want to find people who have skills that you don't have because you should all complement each other. You don't want people who are good at what you're good at. You want the people who are there who can fill in what you're not good at, and you always want some people who are smarter than you because then, you keep learning, and then, everybody's skills come together to create something big instead of creating competition." So, that's how we get to do what we do. We surround ourselves with the right combination of people and ability and heart and soul, and you need someone who's always going to question. You need that devil's advocate, but you also need the person who really can read the room well and pull things off, and you always need someone who's better at technology than you. I've learned that.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, my god. Definitely. Yeah. I need IT people, and all of my people are IT people, and they laugh. It's an ongoing joke. Even this thing with SquadCast we had this morning. It's like, "Oh, Jen's got an issue again with SquadCast," but the SquadCast people ... I'm just going to plug SquadCast for a second. Their customer service is impeccable. They always come right back with a chat. I had an issue last week I had to reschedule. Probably something similar was happening, maybe on her end with the Chrome issue or something, but they said, "We're so sorry. We'll take care of you. We'll schedule a phone call with Tiffany," the woman I'm going to be interviewing tomorrow, "15 minutes before you guys are supposed to log on, and we'll walk her through it." That's incredible customer service, and I feel so taken care of and supported.
Helen Rothberg: But isn't that the way it should be? Why are we still surprised by this?
Jennifer Tracy: It is, but Helen, it's just not the norm.
Helen Rothberg: I know because we have mega companies in our world that won't even put a human on the phone with you anymore. So, I think that's pretty cool, too.
Jennifer Tracy: So, Zack from SquadCast, shout out to you. Thank you. So, Helen, oh, my gosh, there's so much to cover. We can't possibly get through all of it, which is why I am going to come visit you in New York, and we're going to spend the weekend together.
Helen Rothberg: I would love that.
Jennifer Tracy: And we got to go see some Broadway shows. I haven't been to see a show in two years, and I'm itching. It's been too long.
Helen Rothberg: I would break out in a rash if that happens.
Jennifer Tracy: It's just ... Yeah, I miss it. I miss it. So, where were you born?
Helen Rothberg: I was born in Bronx Hospital, but actually grew up kind of on Delancey Street, the lower east side of New York City in a neighborhood that, now, I can't even afford to live in.
Jennifer Tracy: Isn't that the way?
Helen Rothberg: Oh, my God, but then, it was this teeming melting pot of Jews and Italians and Asians and Latins and African Americans and anybody else who was falling into the island of Manhattan and getting stuck in the southern tip of it for a while, while they were going to figure out where to go next. And it was really quite, when I think back at it, I mean, it was dangerous at times, certainly, and challenging, but when everybody doesn't have anything, nobody knows that they don't have anything. But it was pretty remarkable how, somehow, we all still, most of us, found a way to make it work and get along and share the basketball court and move forward. So, it was a pretty incredible experience. Growing up in New York City in the '60s and early '70s when you could still get on the subway and ride all the way to Yankee Stadium and afford, A, a ticket at Yankee Stadium and a hotdog.
Helen Rothberg: Now, you have to mortgage your house to do that or could just go to a museum or pay two dollars and stand through the ballet, standing room for kids. I mean, it was really, for people who maybe were not considered well of, or we were working class, I would say, there was still everything for us if we just accessed it, and that was my parents' plan. My mom is from Spanish Harlem originally, and my dad grew up in upstate New York, and he found his childhood so limited that even though we couldn't live in the best place, if you will, he wanted us in a place where we have access to great schools and to culture, and I guess it worked.
Jennifer Tracy: That's awesome. I love that. I mean, that just, for me, brings up this fear because my son is almost 10, and we live in LA, and LA is very insular. I mean, you're in your car, or you're in your home. I mean, that's basically ... and he has anxiety. So, he doesn't like to leave the house a lot, and we have way too many electronic devices. It's really hard to get him to go out and do stuff, but then, when he does, he loves it. He and his dad went, by chance, I think it was the American Ballet Theater, just did a version of Cinderella that was set in World War II.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, wow.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, at the Ahmanson downtown, and a friend of ours, she and her son were going to go, but her son was sick, and she called and said, "Do you want the tickets? I know [Gloomsy 00:19:39]," my son, "is obsessed with World War II and history." He's a history buff, and I said, "Yes. They will go. They will go." Because his dad is great like that. He'll just take him and take him to places. He's adventurous. So, they went, and of course, he had the best time ever.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, that's fantastic.
Jennifer Tracy: But he was just bitching about, "I don't want to go to the ballet," and then, as soon as he was there, he was like, "This is so amazing," and it was just beautifully done, and I wish for more of that. I'm hoping as he gets older, he will be into more of that.
Helen Rothberg: Well, I say bring him with you to New York, and we'll throw him right into the pool, so he can learn how to swim and take him to a couple of shows, and [crosstalk 00:20:19].
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, riveted. Yes, absolutely.
Helen Rothberg: Riveted.
Jennifer Tracy: So, you grew up with all this amazing culture around you, and did you have brothers and sisters?
Helen Rothberg: Oh. So, I have a brother, Russell. He is my best friend in the world.
Jennifer Tracy: The writer? Russell the writer?
Helen Rothberg: The writer, and yes, the former TV exec who always only wanted to write, who's now writing. Am I allowed to do a plug?
Jennifer Tracy: Of course.
Helen Rothberg: So, the show that he is now, first time I ever saw it in my life was Monday, and I have no voice because I screamed so loud, but he's the co-exec producer on a show called Nightfall, which is about the Knights of Templar, your son might like it, on the History Channel on Monday nights at 10 o'clock. [crosstalk 00:21:00] nine o'clock out your way, but I think it's 10 o'clock everywhere.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Nightfall. Well, Kevin Hunker, our amazing show notes writer who introduced me and Helen, is going to be doing the show notes. So, he'll include a link to that TV show.
Helen Rothberg: Oh, that'd be great. Thanks.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. He'll include all those links, the link to your book, the link to all the things.
Helen Rothberg: Fantastic. Thank you. Kevin's really great that way. Can I just tell people? He was a student of mine who was really, really kind to my elderly mother, and for any of you who think that the youth of today doesn't get it, I want to tell you that the young people, they're very different. I'm a Baby Boomer. They're very different than us, and that's good, and there's nothing to worry about because they have heart, and they do know what matters. They do. I'm, Kevin [crosstalk 00:21:54]-
Jennifer Tracy: Can you tell the story? I want to actually hear the story. It's so sweet. Yeah. It's so worthy. Yeah.
Helen Rothberg: I would love to tell the story. Is that okay? All right. So, Kevin Hunker was part of a group of boys that really met in college, fell in love with each other, and they were inseparable, and somehow, three of them weaseled their way, it was Kevin, Jake, and Gabe, into my class, and I'm the hard one. So, I had some of them struggled, and some of them did well, and we all became very close. And I had this rule that if you touched your phone or if I heard your phone while you were in my classroom, I would stop everything, and you, on speakerphone, had to call my mother, Frieda, who she's gone now, but then, she was in her late 80s, and picture Seinfeld's mother times five million. She could give you the business, and Kevin did something, and his phone rang, and he had to call Frieda, and they fell in love with Frieda. And they would do things, so they could call Frieda, and then, it would be someone's birthday, and they'd call Frieda, and she'd sing them happy birthday. And I'm teaching business strategy.
Helen Rothberg: This is a very heavy duty analytics class, and that semester, my dad passed away right around Thanksgiving, and as soon as the semester was over when young men who are seniors in college would start drinking and not stop til they fall down, Kevin and Gabe and Jake and a couple of others piled into a car, drove to the assisted living home where my mother was living an hour away from campus, closer to where I live, and they spent the day with Frieda at the home. And I'm teary-eyed telling you this. I'll never ever forget that. So, then, I did something really wonderful and dopey. So, then, I was so taken with them that not only did I then make a barbecue for them when they graduated at my home, and my mother came, and they all got to love it up, and I have fabulous pictures from that, but I decided to write a letter to their parents about who their children are. So, imagine that you're a parent, however, but check this one out. You get this letter, and it's first addressed to the parents of Kevin Hunker.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. You're freaking out [crosstalk 00:24:17].
Helen Rothberg: They're like, "Oh, my God. What did my kid do this time?" Right? And then, they open it up, though, and I wrote them this letter to tell them what their child did that was so kind, and I closed it with a phrase from a poem by Khalil Gibran about being a parent, and I told them, "You were the stable bow from which the arrow flies." So, they're crying hysterically, and then, they call their kid crying, "I got this letter from the college," and their kid's like, "Oh, my God. What did we do?" But it was really ... So, I'm here to just tell all of our listeners that our kids are really okay. They're different, and they should be, but if you give them the love, and you raise them with respect and honor, they will show it in ways you could never imagine. So, [crosstalk 00:25:14]-
Jennifer Tracy: And empathy, empathy.
Helen Rothberg: Empathy. Wow, what love. Not only love that they had for an elderly person who just lost their spouse and was living in an assisted living home and all of that, but what love they had for me, their teacher, to give me that kind of honor where they would take time out of their day and travel 50 miles each way to do that.
Jennifer Tracy: Which is a huge reflection of you.
Helen Rothberg: After they got their grades. It wasn't even like they were ... It's reflection of the whole system of what can happen if I show them that I care about whether they learn. I'm not going to care more than they care about it, but I care about what they want to achieve, and if they, then, can give back of the care and say thank you by doing something as human as that, things get rocky out there, but we're really in good hands [inaudible 00:26:09]. Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. I'm so glad we-
Helen Rothberg: Thank you for asking.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, yeah. It's just so good. Okay. So, you grew up in New York City in the '70s. I mean, we're going to gloss over so many things. I could stop at the basketball story where you got elbowed by the guys basically, and you guys will get the book and read it, but Helen had to work her way onto the basketball field ... I mean, the basketball field, the basketball court. I'm not a sports person obviously.
Helen Rothberg: It's fine. The field is perfectly acceptable.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you for being so generous.
Helen Rothberg: It's perfectly fine. It wasn't a stage. You didn't say the basketball stage [crosstalk 00:26:53].
Jennifer Tracy: Right. True. I could've done that, though. [inaudible 00:26:55] to do that. In a very male, boy-dominated culture of the New York City basketball court culture, and you continued to have to do that, it sounds like, through-
Helen Rothberg: Forever, still working it girl. It hasn't ended.
Jennifer Tracy: [inaudible 00:27:15]
Helen Rothberg: A woman in a man's field, which I've been my whole life [crosstalk 00:27:19] have to do that every day.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. So, you graduated high school, went to college, got two Masters degrees. Is that correct?
Helen Rothberg: Two Masters and a dual PhD, a lot of letters because again, I was a woman in a man's world, and we had to do that, but the dual Masters was a ... Let me just clue people in for a minute. Getting a PhD has nothing to do with intelligence. I stupidly thought it would be the Dead Poets Society. We'd read books, and we'd talk about ideas. It's about persistence and humility, and that was before I had my 10 years of therapy, and I didn't know if I'd really ever be able to finish getting through those processes. So, I kind of got the two Masters along the way just in case I couldn't finish, although I never haven't finished anything I've ever started, even a bad book.
Jennifer Tracy: Me, too. I'm so dedicated. I'm like, "Oh, I have to. I'm in this. It's go to ... " Yeah. I'm the same way.
Helen Rothberg: I know. And I'm hopeful that maybe if I just hold on long enough, it'll find me. I'll be surprised, and once in a while, you are, and sometimes, you're not, but to be a strategist in the late '80s, and strategy was a new field, to be one of the first classes of women to graduate with a PhD in that area, and I also degreed in behavioral science. So, I'm dual PhD because I felt I could be a great planner, but if I don't know how to get people to want to implement the plan, it doesn't matter. Was told by the male faculty that I was crazy. No one would ever hire me. I had to choose one, but I did need to have a lot more credential, and I will tell you, and I think I mentioned this in the book, that I would get this work, and I would bill myself as H.N. Rothberg, as opposed to Helen, and I'd show up. And in those days, we really had to be very much like the men. So, we had these Norma Kamali suits with these shoulder pads that made us look like football players.
Helen Rothberg: And we'd come walking in in our very high heels so we could look eye-to-eye with them and our big shoulder pads and our briefcase and had my hair tied back, and I was still pretty young, and I'd put my hand out, give them a strong handshake [inaudible 00:29:32] from the lower east side and say, "Helen Rothberg, nice to meet you." And they would look at me and say, "Well, when will Dr. Rothberg get here." They assumed I was the support person. Never heard a word. Think about the Peanuts cartoon, whatever came out of my mouth wasn't language because they were waiting for the real person. You had to not only need the extra lettering, if you will, to get in the door, but you also had to find a way to make them feel okay with being there because as much as it was hard for us, it was also kind of weird for the men, too. They didn't really know how to behave, not all of them. I've been very fortunate. I have my #MeToo stories like everybody, but I've also been very fortunate to have a couple of men in my life, professionally, who have mentored me and kind of opened some doors and were gracious and lovely, but there weren't a lot of those around, and there were no women at all.
Jennifer Tracy: And how did you segue from that, and all the while, by the way, listeners, Helen was bartending. All through school, that's how she paid for her school. That's how she paid for her life, and that's a great deal peppered, well, it's the basis for the book, but it's amazing to watch you thread in and out of this corporate world and then back to the bartending, but that's it. That's what we have to do. No matter what we're pursuing, really, especially, but so, how did you segue into teaching?
Helen Rothberg: It's a little bit of a crazy story.
Jennifer Tracy: I like crazy stories.
Helen Rothberg: Okay. So, I have to go back a while. So, in third grade, the New York City ... I warned you. The New York City public school system went on strike, and by the third week of my brother and I not being in school, my father had had it, and he marched over to some little yeshiva, which is a Jewish religious school, on the lower east side. I'm saying tiny. I had 11 kids in my graduating class.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Helen Rothberg: And fought with the rabbi for, probably, six hours, and the next thing I knew, Russell and I were going to school there, and probably wound up being one of the best moves, not for the religious stuff at all, but I would say sixth, seventh, eighth grade, I had one of the most remarkable teachers I've ever had in my life. Her name was [Ethel Marks 00:32:00], and she gave us homework in the summer, but her homework was we had to read O'Henry and Steinbeck and write these book reports and et cetera. But my first teaching experience came in the eighth grade. The second grade teacher for the secular studies didn't come in, and she handed me the book of whatever the teaching plan was for the day, and she said, "Okay. You, you're going to teach the second graders today."
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, my gosh.
Helen Rothberg: I was like, "Okay. I'm a second grade teacher today," and I did it, and I really liked it. And that and being a camp counselor in the summers and having 20 10-year-old girls, and back then, they were still 10 years old where they were old enough to do whatever you threw at them but young enough to not have a nasty mouth yet. I just loved it, and I got hooked on this thing that happens when you're teaching somebody how to do something, which really means you're teaching them something about themselves and what they're capable of, and this little sparkle, light, fairy thing happens in their eyes when they get it. And for me, it was narcotic. I loved that. I thought it was incredible, and as I went through graduate school, there was always this dynamic balance between, "Am I going to go into consulting, and you could make some really big money, and it's really cool, or am I going to try to be an academic?" I was asked to cover a class when I was still a doctoral candidate for a student who was much farther along than I. She was taking her comprehensive exam. She was already teaching as an adjunct professor at Iona College, and she said, "You want to cover a week's worth of classes for me?" Oh, my God. Now, I'm going to go up and teach college.
Helen Rothberg: I mean, I was only a few years older than these people. I'm their bartender more than their teacher, but I went in there, and I did it, and I found that I could relate, and I could do it. And I was nervous because I wasn't that much older than everybody, but it worked, and then, I got an adjuncting job at Polytechnic Institute in Long Island. So, I was teaching organizational behavior to engineers from Grumman and Fairchild who could be my dad, and the first class was I saw them looking at me, and they're saying, "I have neckties older than you." And they're engineers, and I'm teaching squishy things, and I realized, "Okay. How do I speak their language?" I learned this at the bar. How do I speak their language? How do you connect with people? Because I had people sometimes at the bar who didn't even speak English, and I had to learn how to connect with them. So, I bought some Lincoln Logs, and I bought Legos. I'm not kidding, and I turned every lesson into a systems diagram. So, I knew I could do that, and then, I would have them physically build and do things and manipulate situations so that they can experience what I mean by teamwork or perception or communication and learn that, oh, my God, there's so many ways that you connect with people.
Helen Rothberg: And I fell in love with it. I never left. 35 years later, I'm still ... I'm an academic, and I'm still part-time consultant, part-time writer. I'm still bartending for the people I love [crosstalk 00:35:26]. What's funny is when I stopped bartending, and I took my first full-time teaching position at William Patterson College in Wayne, New Jersey, it was a huge pay cut. I couldn't believe it.
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting.
Helen Rothberg: Yes. It was very different world. I don't know if I ever caught up, but it's okay.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Isn't that so interesting? Education is worthless than alcohol in some way, right? Not really. Not really worthless, I'm not wording that right, but ...
Helen Rothberg: Yeah. We get paid less, if you think about even-
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. That's crazy.
Helen Rothberg: I think the most important person in a child's life in addition to their parents is their kindergarten and first grade teach because those two people are going to instill the love of learning or not, and if I were the queen, they would be the highest paid people in society.
Jennifer Tracy: Absolutely. Yeah. It baffles my mind, and I think about ... I went to Montessori School, not kindergarten, but my Montessori School teachers, I still remember, and I remember my first and second grade teacher, Mrs. Ryan. Yeah. I mean, I remember a lot of my teachers throughout. I had an English teacher that was like the one you talked about. I mean, it wasn't Frank McCourt, but it was, yeah, Ms. [D'Antoni 00:36:38]. She believed in my writing, and she encouraged me, and it was just throughout that gentle encouragement ... and also pushed me to do more because she knew I was capable of it, and that really was the foundation for my writing. I owe her a lot.
Helen Rothberg: That's lucky. My grandmother used to say if you reach for the stars, you might land on the moon, but if you stay where you're standing, you can only go down, and that really suck with me. What's interesting about being a college professor is I'm getting young people at a time of their lives, where they're ... It's very confusing. I get them later. So, they're graduating. So, now, they're scared. It's like, "Oh, shit. I'm going to be leaving the bubble, and I'm going to have to pay back my student loans, and I'm going to have to get a job, and I'm not going to be able to drink every Thursday night through Sunday," and they come in as kids who are going to start becoming adults, and now, they're sort of almost young adults, and they face different kinds of challenges. And they have a different relationship with their parents because they're trying to, as much as they love and are close to them, break from them because that's what college is also about. It's about creating that really independent being.
Helen Rothberg: And so, they turn to people such as myself for advice and help and talk and turn to me for things that they couldn't go to their parents with. I'm blessed to have my Zoey, but Zoey's my stepdaughter. I got her when she was 19, and she's now 33, but she's mine, and I didn't birth my own children along the way. I never really met the right person, and I had this real ... I was going to adopt a baby from China at one point, and I went through quite a bit of the process until I realized that, well, I live ... That was when I had left New York City, and I was living up here where I live now in upstate New York that I'd have to take every consulting job in the world to have a nanny for my ... but then, if the nanny's going to raise the kid, what am I doing? What am I doing? So, I did what I always would do when I didn't know what to do. I would take a big trip somewhere. So, I took three weeks, and I went to Utah, and I hiked Zion and Bryce and St. George's by myself on a vision quest about what that was really about for me.
Helen Rothberg: And it was around my 40th birthday, and I realized that, "You know what? I might not have birthed my own babies. I am sort of that support influence for a group of young people at an age when they really need someone they can turn to who's not their mom." So, maybe that's what I was supposed to do. Maybe that's where ... because if I did have my own children, I couldn't put as much energy and love and effort into all these other kids. I wouldn't have it left, and they do become ... I mean, some of them, they get married. They bring their babies to me. I get some of them, weddings. I have one coming from the weekend who's a former student of mine. I mean, some of them really just stay in my lives in a very close way, but it's interesting how, if we think about that book from years ago, from Hillary Clinton, about it takes a village to raise a child, it really does, and that kind of nurturing that young people need changes across their lifetime, and some of them can't always get it from their mom and dad. [crosstalk 00:40:00] from somewhere else.
Jennifer Tracy: And yeah, and shouldn't, and shouldn't. It actually has to come from a different source.
Helen Rothberg: Yeah, and I feel very fortunate that I've been able, and maybe that's why the chapter six on empathy is my favorite, too, in a way because I'm a loving, giving person, and sometimes, I have trouble with that line, where that line is between what's the right amount, what's the wrong amount, what's professional, what's not, but what I've discovered in my life is when you let people in, and you let yourself be real and human, you're not perfect, you have feelings, there's so much you can do. There's so much help you can give, and sometimes, you don't even know you're really doing it just by being there for them, and there's something beautiful about that. So, that's part of the whole being a professor thing for me as well. When I left bartending, I was really afraid because being a bartender, you're on stage in a certain way, and people come there. Either they fall in because they fall in, but if you have a smaller place as I said at Cincinnati's and the Maryland Crab House, and you create this community of people, I learned right away that I couldn't be there in the way everybody wanted me to be there for them. So, if I get people to be there for each other, if I could help build a communication at the bar, my life is going to be a lot better.
Helen Rothberg: And I bring people together, and now, they don't have to eat dinner alone, and they're making friend, and when there's time, we talk about their problems, or we talk about sports, and we listen to ... Whatever it is, we all do together in that communication. I'm still getting a lot of attention, and I'm still getting a lot of love in a certain way, and I was a little afraid of what happens when I don't have that in my life anymore, never understanding that it was going to be there, just in a different way. And now, as I approach my sixth decade, I know I still have a lot to give, and I know there's a next for me, and I know at some point in that next decade, that won't be there anymore. So, I'm not afraid anymore of what I won't have because I know that if I'm out there willing, and this is really my mission to help people become the best they can be, or in my personal language, if I keep helping people find the magnificence in themselves, I'm always going to have that kind of contact. So, that's the whole shape shifting and change thing. We're always the same but different, and we have to trust that we are who we are, and that's going to be good, and we'll figure out how to make it work.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I love that.
Helen Rothberg: Sorry. That was a long answer to your short question, but-
Jennifer Tracy: No. That's what this is for. You're great. You're perfect. So, I want to talk about your journey to being a mom because it's such a beautiful journey, and it's such a beautiful connection and story between you and your stepdaughter, but I can't remember. Because we spoke briefly on the phone, were you married before?
Helen Rothberg: Well, I was married for a brief time but never had children, and husband number one didn't have children. Husband number two, Alex, my forever husband ... See, everything has a long story. I'm sorry I'm [crosstalk 00:43:14]-
Jennifer Tracy: No, that's what this is for. Take your time. There's no rush.
Helen Rothberg: I first met Alex when I was 15, and he was 18, and we fell in love, and he was my first boyfriend and my first love, and we promised ourselves to each other, and then, when I started college, Alex went off to medical school in Romania, which is where he had come from. And I had dated, and he came back and dumped me, and he got married to someone and had four children, and-
Jennifer Tracy: Wait. What do you mean you dated?
Helen Rothberg: He was in Romania. So, I went out with people. I [crosstalk 00:43:45]-
Jennifer Tracy: And he dumped you because you dated?
Helen Rothberg: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Got it.
Helen Rothberg: He came back and dumped me because I promised myself to him, and he was in Romania becoming a doctor and building a life for us, and I was here. So, 28 years later, I have a dream about him out of nowhere, and I wake up, and I could swear I could feel his breath on my skin, and I said, "Okay. I'll find Alex." I've learned to follow the signs, and I get online, and I see he's a physician in Geneva, New York, about four hours from here, and I write him a letter on this beautiful lavender paper with rose petals and apologized for the past and hoping he's had a wonderful life and put my phone number in there. And he calls me and has a fight with me the first day but calls me every day, and we were married within the year, and that was 15 years ago. And Zoey is his daughter. Her name was Sarah then. She changed it later, and we got Zoey when she was 19, when we got married. Alex's first marriage was not a healthy one, and his former wife kind of took the kids from him. So, Zoey hadn't seen her dad in six years. We got her.
Helen Rothberg: She wound up coming to us when she was 19, and she was very unhappy and not very healthy and kind of liked me and hated me because she was still that little girl waiting for dad to come home from the hospital, and now, here I was, someone she really liked but was going to get in the way or maybe not get in the way, and I was really the referee between the two of them for a very long time because they didn't know how to be with each other. And at one point, Zoey had decided she was going to go back to Israel and leave us, and I knew she just was lost, and she said, "Well, what happens if this road doesn't work out for me?" I said, "Well, you'll come back, and you'll go to Marist." "What if I don't get in?" I said, "You'll go to Marist." And what I knew about her was, yeah, she had maybe a D average in high school, but her SATs were really good, and I knew she was smart. I just knew she was afraid and untapped, and I also knew that I had formed a very strong community at Marist. I am more than just a professor there. I do anything admissions or advancement or any other group on campus asks me to do, whether it's run workshops for their students or lecture or talk to parents.
Helen Rothberg: So, I knew I had [inaudible 00:46:29], and I went to one of my people and said, "My stepdaughter's coming here, and she's going to live on campus, and she doesn't have the grades, but she's smart enough, and we need to help her, and she's going to come here." And the kind of school we are, they said, "Yeah. We get it. Okay." So, she came to Marist. She found herself. She was still battling with me quite a bit. I understood it. It was hard, I have to tell you, but what's so strange is maybe all of my training my whole life was to be ready for Zoey when I got her because I don't really know what to do with a six, or an eight, or a 10-year-old, but 18 to 24, I could tell you there's nobody who knows them better than me. I've dedicated my life to 18 to 24. So, in a way, I understood it from the outside, not just from the heart side, and she graduated, and she did very well, and then, she went to Israel to get a Masters. And she decided to make Aliyah, right of return, and became a citizen, and she came home for a visit one day. And this is the turning point in our relationship together.
Jennifer Tracy: And so, she's 24 or 25 at this time?
Helen Rothberg: She's probably 23. Yeah. 24 here, and she [crosstalk 00:47:38]-
Jennifer Tracy: So, you guys have been on this road for four or five years already together. I mean, just at this point in the story.
Helen Rothberg: Already for four or five years, and she was doing something on my company. I don't know what, and I was out, and I came back, and my computer is my life. I'm a writer. I'm also an academic. So, I do a lot of academic things. I write a little bit for money. I write books. I write for my clients. I do work with my clients. My whole life is in my computer, and of course, being the Luddite that I am, there was no cloud then, I had not really backed everything up nicely. And I come home, and she tells me she doesn't know what happened, but my computer's now a blue screen, and so, what do you do? There were so many. If you could read all the bubbles over my head, I can only imagine what they would say, but I just looked at her, and I said, "Okay. Okay." She had become Zoey by then. "Okay, Zoey. Have you just done the worst thing possibly you could've ever done to me?" And she said, "Yeah." She was ready. She was ready for the fight. She was ready to get beaten, literally, physically, and screamed at, and I said, "Okay. Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. So, you'll take the computer to Best Buy. Make sure it's clean, have it rebooted, and it's now yours. I'll get a new one, but let's go for a walk."
Helen Rothberg: And now, she knows she's really going to get it, right? And so, we're walking. I said, "Zoey, did I yell at you? No. Did I call you names? No. Did I call you stupid? No. Did I hit you? No. Did I banish you from the house? No." I said, "Do you now believe you have a home?" And we didn't say another word, and we just walked for a few miles, came home, and the next day, she said, "Can we go for a walk?" I was still Helen then. I said, "Sure." And she said, "Can I call you mom?" And I said, "Sure." And you can see I'm a little teary.
Jennifer Tracy: Of course. I am, too.
Helen Rothberg: Yeah. So, when she went back to Israel and finished making Aliyah, on her new passport, Helen Rothberg is her mom. So, she's mine.
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, what a journey to motherhood. What a journey to motherhood. What an earned ... I mean, every mom earns it in a different way, but I'm just saying, that is such a beautiful, amazing, authentic, deliberate journey to being Zoey's mom. I just, I love it.
Helen Rothberg: It is, and I can't say to you, as a mom who's carried a baby in her womb and watched it come out of her body and birthed it and grew with it, I can't say to you that I have that same connection because I don't know what that is, but I can say to you that even a stepmom's heart can break when her kid hurts and feels incredible joy when her child feels joy and can only be as happy as she is, right? There's a phrase that you can only be as happy as your least happy child, that there could be a bond there, too, that's so strong where I would do anything to help my child, protect my child, and like on the basketball courts when I was a kid, beat the crap out of anybody who hurts my child and could only wish for her peace and a happy life. So, it's different, and it's possible.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, and so important, and that's why I'm just ... I mean, I fell in love with you the moment we spoke a couple weeks ago, and I love this story so much. I love your story, and it's so important to talk about this story as a path to motherhood because there is no one path to motherhood. There's so many multiple paths to motherhood, and yeah. I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking about it. I can't wait to meet Zoey one day.
Helen Rothberg: Yeah. She's really fun, and motherhood, if I could just share another story I got from one of my students, motherhood is so many different things, and I had this one student who was a lacrosse player, and he would come see me a lot, and I'd work with him a lot. And he was getting really nervous about this big presentation I make them, and I asked him. I said, "Matt, fill me in on the source of the anxiety for so many of you about this." And he said, "Well, you're kind of like our coach, and you're kind of like our mom. You're like our coach because you've taught us everything in this skill, and you want us to go out there and win, but you're like our mom now because we don't want to let you do." So, a lot of the nurturing and helping people grow is probably ... If we wanted to look at motherhood as the biggest construct we could, if motherhood is about growing life and growing people, then it comes from a lot of different places in a lot of different ways. I mean, I don't have to pay for their braces and their college, and that's kind of nice, but if there's care and nurturing, there's a little, little ingredient of that in almost a lot of things that we do.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it, and one of the things I love that you said, I just have to repeat it, that you said everything you had done in your life up to that point had prepared you for Zoey. That is incredible. I mean, and I'm sure there were many, many days, and probably years, where you felt unprepared, and yet, you still had this [crosstalk 00:53:30]. Yeah.
Helen Rothberg: I still feel [crosstalk 00:53:31]. Of course, but yes, but I also had faith, and I'll tell you why. Because I knew the age group so well. I had seen so many people her age go through so many ... When you are close to your students ... So, the college I teach at, Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, we're small. We have 5000 students, maybe six, but our classrooms, you can't put more than 30 in a room ever, and every kid gets at least one academic advisor, and if you're an athlete, you have two, and if you're special needs, you have three. So, we really get to know them in a different way. So, I've gone through some tough things with some of my students along the way, and I had the faith in their resilience to bounce, and I prayed a lot, and I did a lot of yoga, and I still do a lot of yoga, and I climbed a lot of mountains, and I fought a lot with my husband because he has a very different experience and his life experience and how he was raised. And he's a physician. So, he's used to telling people what to do, and they do it sometimes. And he still carried the pain of not being in her earlier. So, it's hard, but I did. I always believed.
Helen Rothberg: I'm a little weird this way, but if you want it to work out well, whatever the "it" is, and you are willing to work really, really hard and believe, it will happen. Maybe not in your time, maybe not in ... I always call it Rothberg time, which is [crosstalk 00:55:15] minutes. It will get there, but if I wanted Zoey to get there in the first year so she wouldn't have to go through as much pain as she did across the years for many different reasons, of course, but I knew the world has to unfold as it does, and if we could be the steady bow from which the arrow flies, they'll get there in their way. It's hard. It's really hard.
Jennifer Tracy: It's so hard. It's so hard, but yeah.
Helen Rothberg: It's not like a client where you tell them what to do, and they don't listen, right? Because then you can decide, "Okay. I'm not working for you anymore." You tell a kid something, and they don't listen, you can't say, "Okay. I'm not your mom anymore." The controls are very different, and that's hard, too, that you don't have as much control.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Helen, we have come to the time in the interview when I ask you three questions I ask every guest, and then, we go into a lightning round of fun, silly questions.
Helen Rothberg: Okay.
Jennifer Tracy: So, the first question is, what do you think about Helen when you hear the word MILF?
Helen Rothberg: Oh, no. Yeah. I never saw myself that way. So, I always think it's somebody else. That's not me.
Jennifer Tracy: And who is it?
Helen Rothberg: MILF or Helen?
Jennifer Tracy: Who's MILF?
Helen Rothberg: Who is MILF?
Jennifer Tracy: Who's the somebody else that you think of?
Helen Rothberg: You are Jessica Rabbit.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, let me just assure you and tell you, I mean, I don't know if you're going to like this, but you, Helen, are a MILF because you are a mom I would like to follow, and I admire and respect you so much.
Helen Rothberg: You're so fun. Thank you, and I have to say I think I've made it through my life with, honestly, being very humble, except for when you say no to me, and then, I'm going to die, or saying I can't. It's going to be like, "F you, babe. F you, babe. I'm going to die doing it." So, I'm just a girl in the world. That's how I see it, and so, it's weird. I don't look at myself that way, and to be honest with you, the first book is Thanks Mom. The second book about relationships ... The first book was Thanks Dad. The second book is Thanks Mom because it's about relationships. She taught me how to related to people in a very specific way, but I really didn't have a lot of women role models in my life ever other than Pat and [crosstalk 00:58:02].
Jennifer Tracy: Pat was a MILF.
Helen Rothberg: She was a MILF.
Jennifer Tracy: Pat was a MILF.
Helen Rothberg: Pat was a MILF. Pat.
Jennifer Tracy: She's a perfect example.
Helen Rothberg: Okay. Pat is the MILF. Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: What is something you've changed your mind about recently?
Helen Rothberg: Eating ice cream at 11 o'clock at night.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, and I hope it's that it's totally healthy and wonderful. Is that how you-
Helen Rothberg: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Good.
Helen Rothberg: Yes. I never would've done it before.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, that's the best time to eat it.
Helen Rothberg: But now, if I'm going to have ... I've learned that, I've decided that you can have anything you want in life as long as you don't have too much of it. So, I won't bring a container in with me, but I'll take a pretty teacup and put some teaspoons in anytime I want. [inaudible 00:58:42] let myself eat ice cream.
Jennifer Tracy: Good. What's your favorite flavor?
Helen Rothberg: Depends on the time of day. I love a really good coffee ice cream, but it keeps me up at night.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. So, at night time, what do you reach for?
Helen Rothberg: At night time, I like a really just good, simple vanilla, but it would be great if it had peanut butter in it. Anything with peanut butter is also perfectly okay.
Jennifer Tracy: Yum. Okay. How do you define success?
Helen Rothberg: Being at peace with yourself.
Jennifer Tracy: Lightning round of questions.
Helen Rothberg: I'm ready.
Jennifer Tracy: Ocean or dessert?
Helen Rothberg: Ocean.
Jennifer Tracy: Favorite junk food?
Helen Rothberg: Corn chips.
Jennifer Tracy: Movies or Broadway show?
Helen Rothberg: Broadway show.
Jennifer Tracy: Texting or talking?
Helen Rothberg: Talking.
Jennifer Tracy: Cat person or dog person?
Helen Rothberg: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: Have you ever worn a unitard?
Helen Rothberg: Yes. I grew up in the '70s. Come on. That wasn't fair.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, we all have. That's the thing. Everybody has. There's only a few women that have been like, "Wait, what's a unitard?" We all have, and then, I would explain it, and they'd go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wore it. I wore it." Shower or bathtub?
Helen Rothberg: Bathtub.
Jennifer Tracy: Ice cream or chocolate?
Helen Rothberg: Ice cream.
Jennifer Tracy: On a scale of 1 to 10, how good are you at ping pong?
Helen Rothberg: Seven.
Jennifer Tracy: What is your biggest pet peeve?
Helen Rothberg: People who text in a busy airport in the middle of the walkway.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, god. Yeah. That's so specific. I love it.
Helen Rothberg: They stop right in the middle. There's a gazillion people coming and going. Come on, people.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, man. If you could push a button, and it would make everyone in the world seven percent happier, but it would also place a worldwide ban on all hairstyling products, would you push it?
Helen Rothberg: Yes. You're talking to a girl who doesn't own a comb.
Jennifer Tracy: I don't either. I never do my hair, which is why I recently cut it short, and it's just heaven. I literally never touch. I mean, I do use some products sometimes, but it's rare. Superpower choice: invisibility, ability to fly, or superstrength?
Helen Rothberg: Invisibility.
Jennifer Tracy: Would you rather have six fingers on both hands or a belly button that looks like foreskin?
Helen Rothberg: Six fingers on both hands, easy. Little contest.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of your first pet?
Helen Rothberg: Maxie.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of the street you grew up on?
Helen Rothberg: Grand.
Jennifer Tracy: So, were you to be an entertainer of the striptease variety or of the sensual films variety, your stage name would be Maxie Grand.
Helen Rothberg: Love that.
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, she is like an old-timey Hollywood star, Maxie Grand.
Helen Rothberg: I always said that I loved the 1940s themed movies. I loved how the women dressed and their hair. I love that [crosstalk 01:01:44].
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. Maxie Grand comes from that.
Helen Rothberg: Love that.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. Helen, you're a treasure and a treat, and I just adore you.
Helen Rothberg: Likewise. Thank you for this opportunity to meet a woman like you who's so smart and so approachable and accessible and fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you.
Helen Rothberg: And thank you very much. I'm grateful.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, such a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening guys, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Helen. Tune in next week when I have Emily Ziff Griffin on the show, author of Light Years. Emily and I sat down in her Glendale home to talk about artistry, motherhood, and writing. I'll talk to you then. Thanks so much for listening. I love you guys. Keep going.