Rachel Hardeman, PhD on dismantling structural racism and advice for penguins

Rachel Hardeman, PhD is nothing short of a powerhouse. She is a reproductive health equity researcher, scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and activist. Rachel is Associate Professor and the first Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity. Division of Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health.  Her research links structural racism to health, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist. Two of her most important roles are as PI and founder of the Measuring & Operationalizing Racism to Achieve Health Equity lab and director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity. She has so many other roles and projects that I mention on this episode. Today, Rachel discusses what motivates her to keep doing the hard work in racial justice, what her biggest impact has been thus far in her career, and what she sees as the broader vision of her work. She also tells me about airplane snacks, Prosecco, her love of Prince (RIP), and advice for penguins. I am so very honored Rachel would find time to share with us!

Transcript

Rachel Hardeman:

I have to stay in that lane. I can't do all the things. I can't be all the things, there's so many, the requests, the level of requests I get around antiracism, around policing, speaking engagements, workshops, conversations.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Podcasters.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes, indeed.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Hey everyone. Welcome to Shiny Epi People or welcome back. I'm your host, Lisa Bodner. If you're here for the first time today because you're excited about my guest, I welcome you and encourage you to go back into the show's archive to check out of the other 50 or so episodes on many different topics. The goal of the show, you may not know, is to humanize folks in our field and in science more broadly. And I promise that all of my guests were very human, very authentic. You will laugh and you will feel, my two favorite things. Find the show on Twitter and Instagram @shinyepipeople, support the show at patreon.com/shinyepipeople. There have been new patrons that I have not sent a personal email to because there is simply too much to do but please know how much I value your support.

              Today, I'm very excited to share my conversation with Rachel Hardeman. Rachel is a reproductive health equity researcher and I think it's fair to call her a powerhouse. Her research links structural racism to health, identifies opportunities for intervention and dismantles the systems, structures and institutions that allow inequities to persist. Rachel is a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, an activist and has many other roles. She leads so many projects and grants that I can't even share them all here if I want to keep this episode to 35 minutes or so. But briefly, she is associate professor and the first Blue Cross endowed professor of health and racial equity. She works in the division of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. One of Rachel's most important roles is in her MORhE Lab. MORhE stands for measuring and operationalizing racism to achieve health equity. She's the founder and the PI. The goal of the lab is to explore and develop ways to operationalize and measure structural racism so that we can use these tools in empirical quantitative research.

              Rachel is the director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity. The goal of the center is to identify, explore and dismantle structural racism with antiracist research, engagement and narrative change. Further sending her reach, Rachel is a member of the board of dismantling racism in the Planned Parenthood of the North Central States. She was also appointed to the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review Committee and the CDC Maternal Mortality Review Information Application Bias work group, as well as the Dignity in Childbirth and Pregnancy Project, capacity building for healthcare organizations and providers. She is also a dedicated mentor and teacher and I know that's a long list of things but there are even more that I didn't even mention. I was so honored that Rachel would share her views, her vision and more personal parts of herself with us. I hope you enjoy this chat.

              Hi, Rachel.

Rachel Hardeman:

Hi. Finally, we meet.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Finally, we meet. It's so great to meet you.

Rachel Hardeman:

Likewise.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I've been thinking about you and hearing about you and reading your stuff for so long. What a pleasure.

Rachel Hardeman:

So excited.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Rachel, how long have you lived in Minnesota?

Rachel Hardeman:

I am from Minnesota.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Are you?

Rachel Hardeman:

I am. And so I left for college and then was gone for a few years after college and then moved back for grad school. Minnesota has this way of keeping you here.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I hear you. And so is your family still there?

Rachel Hardeman:

Yeah, my parents live five minutes away. I have an identical twin sister who has lived in. And she and her husband have lived in Washington DC for 20 years but they moved back to Minnesota a couple years ago too.

Lisa  Bodnar:

What do you like most about living in Minnesota?

Rachel Hardeman:

Oh my gosh. That's a good question. I feel like not a lot right now. For a couple of reasons. One Minnesota is ground zero for this whole racial awakening, post George Floyd's murder. And so that's hard and it's not new but it certainly is something that's being discussed more and more, which means that the research that I put out there has even more scrutiny, which has been interesting over the past week. And then, and also, our weather sucks.

Lisa  Bodnar:

It does.

Rachel Hardeman:

I am not a winter person. And so I just told you all the things I don't like about Minnesota.

Lisa  Bodnar:

But dude, it's winter there six months out of the year.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yeah. It is. It is. The summers are beautiful, they're just not long enough. But my it's where my people are and so that's what I probably like the most.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah. That's great. Do your kids like growing up there?

Rachel Hardeman:

I have one daughter. She's eight.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Oh, one daughter. Okay.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yep. She's not a big fan of the winter either but my twin sister has a little boy who is four. His name is Leo. My daughter's name is Laila.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Oh, I have a Layla.

Rachel Hardeman:

Really? Oh my gosh, I love it. We always tell Layla and Leo, because genetically they're more like siblings than cousins because my sister and I are identical twins. And so it's like, you guys share more DNA than the average cousin. And so they refer to each other as brother and sister and she could never dream of leaving him and so we're here for the long haul.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Oh, I love that. That's adorable. Are they similar age?

Rachel Hardeman:

There's four years between them. When she found out Leo was coming, she was like, "I am going to be the boss of him." And she has stuck to that to a T. She is the boss of him.

Lisa  Bodnar:

What kind of kid were you growing up in Minneapolis?

Rachel Hardeman:

What kind of kid was I? Oh, that's a good question. What kind of kid was I? It's funny, I was reflecting on this actually because I was saying to my mom, my daughter has so many questions and she thinks she knows all the things and my mom was like, "She's just like you were." I was like, okay noted. I guess I was the kid who thought I knew all the things and also asked a lot of questions, was super curious about things. Also felt I needed to be involved in all of the things. I was very, I did all of the activities. I did sports but I also was student council person, did all the extracurriculars and extra credits. Somewhat of an overachiever, although I don't know that I always achieved but I always tried, let's put it that way.

Lisa  Bodnar:

When did you know that you really wanted to devote your career to addressing issues around structural racism?

Rachel Hardeman:

I think I always knew it. I come from a family that has addressing those issues in some way, shape or form. It was always just part of my childhood. And I was always involved in that work in some, in social justice work and racial justice work in some way, shape or form throughout my entire life. When I was in grad school, when I was getting my PhD, I was working with, I had the opportunity to work with an incredible advisor and mentor Dr. Michelle van Ryn, who's one of the leading researchers on implicit racial bias in the clinical encounter. And she was sort of one of those first people to kind of, when the IOM report, because she contributed to like the IOM report. That unequal treatment where it was sort of that first big discussion of that, that there's bias happening in the healthcare encounter.

              And I was working with her as a grad student and was really, I felt stuck in many ways because we're talking about a clinical encounter, we're talking about interpersonal interactions but what about all the other things that are happening in someone's lives outside of this clinical interaction? And how do we account for them? And how do we talk about that? And how do we acknowledge that part of health and wellbeing or lack of health and wellbeing? And at the time, no one was naming racism or structural racism or any form of racism as a determinant in health and wellbeing.

              It was this, again, this discussion of implicit bias. And so as I was sort of making my way through grad school, it was just this sort of nagging feeling in the back of my head. And I was like, okay, I just got to get this done, get a dissertation done. But I think it's certainly people like her and people like David Williams and Nancy Krieger and and Camara Jones who laid that foundation so that I could one day say, "Here are the words that we should be talking about and this is how we should be framing health inequities based on race."

Lisa  Bodnar:

Can you tell me about your lab, the measuring and operationalizing racism to achieve health equity?

Rachel Hardeman:

I started the lab a couple years ago because as I was doing the work of laying this foundation of structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities and then thinking about as a health services researcher. I'm trained as a health services researcher and someone who has really thought a lot about sort of the intersections of healthcare delivery and health policy, this question of measurement kept coming up. How do we actually capture and measure structural racism above and beyond again, the groundwork that David Williams and others have paved, which has captured perceptions. Perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of racism. How do we actually use data, population health level data really to ask and answer these questions around structural racism that will, in my opinion, sort of better inform policymakers, health policy.

              And so, as I was working through and grappling with a lot of those issues, I started getting requests from students who were also thinking about the same questions or similar questions. And so part of it was just the lab was built out of a need to bring folks together and just be able to have those conversations altogether versus me doing the work of having one off conversations and mentoring students one on one. But the other part of it, I think is that I have always wanted to create an intellectual space and an intellectual home for this work that I didn't have as a grad student.

              I certainly felt in my grad school experience that I was sort of thinking outside of the typical ways that we were being trained to think and do research as a health services researcher. While I was able to find sort of individual mentors and advisors along the way, I didn't have this safe intellectual home where I could pose those scary questions Or throw out an idea that might sound completely insane and feel safe doing that. I didn't have a space where I saw other academics that looked like me. And so a lot of the work of the lab was born from my desire to create that for other folks.

Lisa  Bodnar:

You're so early in your career, even though you haven't been doing this for very long, your impact I think has been really noticeable. What do you think is the most important impact that your work has had so far?

Rachel Hardeman:

Oh, wow. I like talking about myself so this really, it's totally natural.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Hey lady, this is what this show is about.

Rachel Hardeman:

I know. I get it but it always feels awkward.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I hear you.

Rachel Hardeman:

You're right, I've done a lot in a short amount of time. I got promotion and tenure really quickly, really earlier than sort of what we see as the norm or typical. The reason for that is the urgency of the work has kept me going. Some of it is the whole overachiever childhood stuff. But it's the urgency of the work. There's very real people behind every single data point. Some of them are people that I knew or know and love. And so I think that certainly has driven me. When I think about sort of what I've accomplished from a health services research lens, it's that I feel like my work has shifted the conversation in a direction that we may have gotten there eventually but I think we certainly got there sooner.

              Being able to publish in the New England Journal of Medicine, the words White supremacy was a big deal in 2016. I think I'm most proud of the way that I've been able to shape the sort of intellectual environment at the intersections of health services research and policy and racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities. And also the other thing I would say I'm most proud of is all of the amazing students that I get to advise and mentor who are now already starting to go out into the world and do incredible things and it just blows my mind every day.

Lisa  Bodnar:

What is the impact ultimately that you think you want to have or maybe not the impact but an impact that you really want to have kind of as your long-term? And what do you think it will take to get there?

Rachel Hardeman:

Ooh. I love that question because I like to dream big and I like to think big. I always say my goal is to manifest racial justice so that all women and girls but particularly Black women and girls get to live their full greatness and glory. I think about my daughter all the time. She's so much of why I do this work because I want to make sure that I leave both leave a legacy for her but also that she gets to walk through the world in a different way than I did as a Black girl, as a Black woman or biracial woman. She's biracial but I'm not naive enough to think that we're going to solve all of the problems by the time she reaches womanhood. But I have to believe we can do something. I think we all want that for our children.

              And what it will take to get there, man, we need hours to talk about that because certainly my work is focused on reproductive health equity and the reason for that is two things. First, I think focusing on the start of life is this beautiful opportunity to send someone into the world with the resources and with all that they need to thrive. And so we have an opportunity to do that by thinking about how racism impacts infant mortality, preterm birth, low birth weight but also when I think about maternal health and women's health and sort of the intersections of sexism and racism. We have so much work to do both from the sort of maternal mortality and morbidity lens but also from the lens of sexual and reproductive health and who has a right to choose and what they get to choose and all of the things that we're grappling with right now, as we watch the Supreme Court delivery, as we watch Texas and other states put forth these anti-choice, anti-abortion laws.

              I feel like to get to where we need to be, we can't disconnect from sort of all of the ways that these issues are intersecting. Part of the work that we're doing in my lab right now is really around sort of the multidimensionality of structural racism. That you can't focus on just one dimension or domain of structural racism because they're so intertwined. And when you pull one lever or pull one string, it might exacerbate things in another area. If we're not looking at the whole system, we're actually doing a huge disservice to the communities and populations that we seek to impact.

              And then I also think we have to address this whole capitalism thing. I think if we don't get to a point, particularly in our healthcare systems where we are willing to reimagine health and wellbeing and remove it from our capitalist values, we're never going to get there. We never are going to get to a point where we can ensure that everyone thrives. And so we have a lot of work to do. Work that we will not see done in our lifetime but can't live with myself if I don't try.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah. I love that. You're not just an associate professor. You have a long list of other things. I'm not going to read all of them but it's a very, very long list of things Rachel, that you're involved with. And you're a mom and a daughter and a sister and all those other roles and you're a woman separate from everything else. How do you do this and stay okay?

Rachel Hardeman:

That's a constant struggle. It is a constant struggle. And I think even more so I think for all of us or for most of us, the pandemic kind of highlighted just how much of a struggle that is. Because I remember early on in the pandemic trying to, I did, I fought to continue things as though nothing had changed. Which was completely ridiculous. Looking back on it, I was like, I don't know what I was thinking. My daughter was home. My husband is a physician and was working on the front lines of COVID.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Wow.

Rachel Hardeman:

I'm homeschooling my kid at the time, almost seven year old and still continuing to work as though nothing had happened. And I share that because I feel for me, the past year and a half has been a reflection, a forced reflection in many ways of how to better care for myself so that I can care for others. And I don't have it down. I'm not perfect. I'm not good at it yet but I'm working on it. I'm working on not sacrificing sleep. I'm working on my mental health and talking to a therapist. And thinking about how do I ensure that I feel whole and healthy so that I can show up to do the work so I can mentor the students that need mentoring, so I can run a research center, so I can take my daughter to dance class because I'm a dance mom these days, six days a week.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I don't imagine you being a classic dance mom.

Rachel Hardeman:

No. No, I am not. And it's funny, my sister likes to tease me. She's like, you're such a dance mom now. Thinking about what radical self care looks like and then going out and enacting it in the ways that it makes sense for me. Over the past six months, I've been really trying to be intentional and thoughtful about what that looks like and taking time away and shutting down my email or my laptop and taking a break and stepping away. It's hard because we're not programmed to do that.

Lisa  Bodnar:

No.

Rachel Hardeman:

In academia it never ends. But I've realized if I don't put boundaries around it, someone else will create them and those boundaries are going to look very different than what I want them to look like.

Lisa  Bodnar:

How did you learn to become a leader?

Rachel Hardeman:

I am still learning every single day. There's no pathway, there's no guidebook. Well, I'm sure there are, there are leadership guidebooks. Of course there are, of course there are. But I feel like it's not this straightforward path. I try to think about sort of who I needed, what I needed when I was more junior, when I was younger, when I was sort of developing my thoughts around these issues. And I try to do that. I also think a lot about people who I admire and who I've watched navigate academia really and leadership in academia and emulate that. But I feel like I'm still learning every day.

              And now as the founding director of a research center in the past year, I've gone from only having to worry about myself and my research and maybe a couple of grad students or doctoral students who are working on a project, to a staff of 12 and I'm not going to lie, every single day, I'm going, I don't know if I should say this, do I know? Am I doing this? Am I doing this the right way? Am I honoring all that I need to be honoring and thinking about? It's an ongoing and iterative process. And one that I think good leaders have to be able to reflect pretty frequently on sort of what they're doing, how they're making decisions, how they're interacting with folks to make sure that it still sort of stands up. And so I'm trying to sort of learn that process right now.

Lisa  Bodnar:

We're always learning so that makes a ton of sense to me.

Rachel Hardeman:

I'm building a plane while simultaneously flying it which is deeply uncomfortable.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I think it's just important for people to know that you don't have to have all the answers when you get to that position, that you're figuring that out.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes. And that it's okay to say that. I think sometimes we forget that we can say, "I'm still figuring it out." Because we're made to believe that. And I don't know. I often feel this that I should have all the answers. That I should know sort of how to proceed and we don't always sort of create that space to both to make mistakes and fail but also just create the space to say, "Well, I don't know so let's think about this a little more. Let's talk about this." And that's okay too.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah. I talk to a lot of students who are not sure that they want to stay in academia and many of them, one of the reasons that sometimes they cite is that they want to make an impact more quickly than if you were an academic. And you're both an academic and someone who makes an impact. Could you speak to that a little bit and I'm sure students say the same thing to you.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yeah, they do. And it's funny because I went into my PhD program with no intentions of being an academic. I was planning to go to a think tank. I was going to do policy research at like a place like Urban or Urban Institute or someplace else. And so I always share with students that for me, particularly as a Black woman, I had never had a professor who looked like me in my graduate career and during my master's program or my PhD program. Part of my thought process was, well, if not me then who? But I also, as I thought more about sort of what I cared about and sort of what was driving me to do the work and have the impact was that I had very specific thoughts and questions that I knew academia would afford me the freedom, the intellectual freedom and intellectual space to ask those questions and do the work that I saw as important versus doing someone else's work.

              But more directly related to your question around impact. I think we are led to believe that impact is slow in academia but it doesn't have to be. The antiquated sort of notions of academia of just doing research, publishing, going through the long pipeline of publishing and then letting it sit on a shelf are starting to shift, slowly starting to shift. And what I have intentionally done in my career is to really make sure that anything I'm doing, if I'm going to put the time into asking the question, getting the funding, doing the project it's because I believe A, it's going to make a difference in the communities that are involved or at a policy level or whatever that sort of intended audience is. And B, then I need to be able to say "Here's how that's going to happen."

              And so I think, I do have to give some credit to also to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program, which I was fortunate enough to be selected for when I was very junior, in my first year on the tenure track. And part of the goals of that program are to carry out in a community based research project where you really have to be thoughtful about dissemination, in addition to sort of the community engagement part, it's about the dissemination and the impact and really determining early on sort of who your audience is, why that's your audience and how you're going to speak to them to make sure that the work you're doing has that impact. And so I think it's possible. I know it's possible. I've done it.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah. You've done it.

Rachel Hardeman:

I have. And I can name others who have done it as well. I think it just, it requires finding the right mentors and the right teams to do it and being very clear about why. The why behind it. I think some folks forget sometimes why they're doing the work. And so for me, always returning to the fact that I am doing this work because there are moms and babies who are dying every day because I have family members who, like my grandmother who died in her early sixties because of kidney failure and because she was tired of going to dialysis every day and was tired of battling with a clinical team that didn't frankly didn't care enough about her and her wellbeing. And so when you think about it from that perspective and not just from the data points, that impact is vital.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Do you want to talk about some fun stuff?

Rachel Hardeman:

Sure. It's all fun.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Oh, it's absolutely all fun. Some funny stuff? Where we get to laugh a lot?

Rachel Hardeman:

Sure.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Okay. Ignoring the date on the calendar. When do you know that spring starts in Minneapolis?

Rachel Hardeman:

Oh, well I would say when it starts to rain but it rained yesterday. It is not spring.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Well climate change.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes. Climate change is real. And even my eight year old yesterday was looking outside the window and was like, "How do people think that climate change is not a thing? Look at this." But I think spring to me is that moment where I can step outside and I'm not freezing and want to go take a walk or go on a bike ride or go sit on a patio, have a cocktail.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah, right. What's your cocktail of choice?

Rachel Hardeman:

Prosecco always.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Always.

Rachel Hardeman:

Always, always.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Even if you're not celebrating, you're just like you like the bubbly.

Rachel Hardeman:

Even if it's Wednesday. Bubbles are always the solution. They can fix a lot of things.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I wish we would've done this at happy hour time we both could have enjoy a drink.

Rachel Hardeman:

Well, we could still, we could do that another time.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I would love it. I would love it. Let's say you have a private plane and you were told that you can fly direct anywhere in the world. Where would you tell the pilot to go?

Rachel Hardeman:

Oh wow. I have lots of places. First I'd say Paris and that's because it's on my mind because my husband and I were supposed to go to Paris two weeks ago and we had to cancel because Omicron variant. And I was just really looking forward to just doing something after not having done anything for a very long time. I would also say South Africa because the week that everything shut down in March of 2020, we had tickets to go to South Africa and had to cancel the trip of a lifetime. And it's every week my daughter says, "When do you think we're going to go?" I don't know, I've been thinking a lot about other parts of Africa as well. I really want to go to Kenya and to Ghana. And as I think about the origins of Black motherhood and birth and going sort of back to where it all began is something that, and bringing my mom and my sister and my daughter with on that journey is something that I have been thinking a lot about lately.

Lisa  Bodnar:

That's lovely. Do you have a celebrity crush?

Rachel Hardeman:

I have a lot of academic crushes. I don't know what celebrity is.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Will you tell me one of your academics crushes?

Rachel Hardeman:

First I will say here is my celebrity crushes, Lizzo. I'm obsessed, obsessed with Lizzo. I adore her and then Prince, may he rest in peace. I think academically, academic crushes, I'm kind of obsessed with Tressie McMillan Cottom and Roxane Gay. And their Here to Slay podcast just makes me happy every single day.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Okay. Penguins mate for life. What advice would you give a penguin?

Rachel Hardeman:

That is a great question. I think I would say flexibility and forgiveness are so important.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I can imagine penguins needing a little flexibility.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes, you're going to need that.

Lisa  Bodnar:

If you're going to migrate a day or two late, it could be fine. You don't need that much control. For a month, would you rather for a month have to use cheese flavored toothpaste or ham scented deodorant.

Rachel Hardeman:

Definitely. The cheese toothpaste.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I agree.

Rachel Hardeman:

100%.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Who wants to smell like ham?

Rachel Hardeman:

No. No. Oh man. That might make someone happy to smell like ham.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah, that's true.

Rachel Hardeman:

I don't eat ham. I don't like ham and I definitely don't want to smell like ham.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah, I agree.

Rachel Hardeman:

And cheese is delicious.

Lisa  Bodnar:

You were a traveler before the pandemic, what's your favorite airplane outfit?

Rachel Hardeman:

No one has ever asked me that question.

Lisa  Bodnar:

That's what I'm here for. I'm here to ask the hard hitting question.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes. I love it. I love a big, I have this light pink cashmere scarf that is huge. And so you can also use it as a blanket and it's so comfy. I’m a big Athleta fan. The leggings or joggers or whatever and a nice comfy sweater.

Lisa  Bodnar:

What's your favorite airplane snack?

Rachel Hardeman:

What is my favorite airplane snack? I don't know if I have one.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Do you keep stuff in your bag? I feel like I've always got snacks in my bag.

Rachel Hardeman:

I always have like a protein bar. And I always have a bag of like almonds or trail mix and a water bottle. And then I always have a glass of Prosecco at some point on a plane, something with bubbles.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Dude, I want to travel with you. Loan me your big pashmina, let's have a drink of wine together. That's great.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes, that sounds lovely.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Do you have favorite concert or show that you've been to?

Rachel Hardeman:

Yes. Here's something that, oh, maybe some people know about me. I've seen Prince. I saw Prince in concert before his death probably 12 to 15 times.

Lisa  Bodnar:

No way.

Rachel Hardeman:

Yeah. I'm pretty obsessed.

Lisa  Bodnar:

That's a lot of times.

Rachel Hardeman:

And my very favorite time was when he was in residence in Vegas. My husband and I were there and we went to his big show and found out that he was having an after show in this small restaurant on the property. I was like, I have no idea how we're going to get into this thing, but we're going to try. We essentially sat outside the door of this restaurant for hours and then because they wouldn't let us in because we weren't VIP. Then we started talking to the sort of the security guard at the door. And then long story short, a comedian, I think it was Bernie Mac. Some comedian did not show up and claim his spot. And so it was 2:00 AM at this point and they let us in, it was Prince and his band and probably about 20 people.

Lisa  Bodnar:

You are kidding me.

Rachel Hardeman:

No. No.

Lisa  Bodnar:

That's amazing.

Rachel Hardeman:

It was the best night ever. I was standing like right next to him. He said, "Hey." And we were standing this close to each other.

Lisa  Bodnar:

And I assume this was before selfie times.

Rachel Hardeman:

Oh yes, yes.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Yeah. There was no photographic.

Rachel Hardeman:

No, it's only in my, and it just, it was. And now I can't even imagine seeing up that late, which is a whole nother story. When we left there, the sun was coming up. But so different lifetime but it was amazing.

Lisa  Bodnar:

What an awesome memory. I love that. Rachel, I'm really glad that we got to know each other. This was such a pleasure. What a delightful hour.

Rachel Hardeman:

So much fun.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I really enjoyed it.

Rachel Hardeman:

I agree. Me too. I love that you do this by the way.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Do you?

Rachel Hardeman:

It's so amazing.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Oh that's so nice of you.

Rachel Hardeman:

I've listened to the episodes. It's great. It's really great.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Thank you.

              Have a good rest of your day.

Rachel Hardeman:

Thank you. You too.

Lisa  Bodnar:

Enjoy that Prosecco later on tonight.

Rachel Hardeman:

I will.

Lisa  Bodnar:

I'll be thinking of you.

Rachel Hardeman:

All right, thanks.