Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Trevis. Welcome in weekly podcast Wins and Losses.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys are enjoying this series. We are
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun. If you're enjoying it, go
Speaker 1: give us a five star rating and make fun of
Speaker 1: our most recent guest, Joel Klatt. You can also make
Speaker 1: fun of our current guest, Rachel Bonetta at Rachel Getta
Speaker 1: on Twitter. She is already there and we are ready
Speaker 1: to roll. You can watch her on lock it In
Speaker 1: every single weekday Monday to Friday, now that we're into
Speaker 1: season two, from at four thirty Eastern, three thirty Central
Speaker 1: to thirty Mountain one thirty Pacific. We are on for
Speaker 1: an hour at least five days a week. And uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about Rachel Bonetta's back or
Speaker 1: other than the fact that she's an awful Canadian who
Speaker 1: doesn't chat very often. So I'm actually curious to find
Speaker 1: out some of this information myself. So Rachel, first of all,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on. First off, I'm really sorry I
Speaker 1: did not realize that we were supposed to give you
Speaker 1: five first, I gave you one. I don't think I
Speaker 1: can join the excited to be here, excited to chat
Speaker 1: with you. Um, you're right. We worked together every single day,
Speaker 1: and I think that we know kind of like surface
Speaker 1: level information about each other. But I guess I'm excited
Speaker 1: to spill all my dirty, juicy secrets on this podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say more than surface level because
Speaker 1: your mom and I have been dating for a while.
Speaker 1: But that's how we're gonna start. We really don't talk
Speaker 1: that much about you. It's more about our relationship than
Speaker 1: it is yours with your Oh why did I ever
Speaker 1: agree to do this? That's a good question. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to give me the heisman
Speaker 1: on this because you were nervous. Why were you nervous
Speaker 1: to come on the show? I think it was nervous because,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like every other podcast that I've done,
Speaker 1: which is not many by any means, Um, it's been
Speaker 1: all this surface level again. It's it's all like, you know,
Speaker 1: what have you been doing the last two years, and
Speaker 1: how do you like your job? And what do you
Speaker 1: aspire to do in the future, And it's all been
Speaker 1: very like boring, uh stuff, And I feel like you're
Speaker 1: gonna ask me questions that are going to make me
Speaker 1: uncomfortable answer them because I've agreed new that's already. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited. Let's make you uncomfortable right up. So
Speaker 1: first of all, I hear what I Here's what I
Speaker 1: know about you. You grew up in Canada. You have
Speaker 1: three older brothers, which makes our show almost a little
Speaker 1: bit of a reflection of what your life was like.
Speaker 1: So take me into Canada. I don't know much about Canada.
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of our listeners don't. But if
Speaker 1: we do know something about Candida, it's like, okay, we
Speaker 1: know something about Toronto. We know maybe Montreal, maybe Vancouver.
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up? What was it like when
Speaker 1: you were a kid. I grew up about two and
Speaker 1: a half hours outside of Toronto, UM in a really
Speaker 1: really small town called or Know, and I lived on
Speaker 1: forty six acres. We had a huge property. UM probably
Speaker 1: like middle class family. My dad drove transport trucks and
Speaker 1: my mom was a school secretary. Uh. And I used
Speaker 1: to ride four wheelers and dirt bikes and fight with
Speaker 1: my brothers. There's a huge age gap between me and
Speaker 1: the youngest brother. It's eight years, so they were all
Speaker 1: so much older than me. Um, and it was like
Speaker 1: a dog eat dog world in my house. It's like
Speaker 1: you had to fend for yourself or else you were
Speaker 1: gonna get the crap kind of kicked out of you. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was the only girl too, so I feel
Speaker 1: like the guys really wanted to make me tough and
Speaker 1: wanted to make me one of them. So you know,
Speaker 1: I was like covered in dirt from an early age. Um.
Speaker 1: But it was also a really beautiful place to grow
Speaker 1: up because there was absolutely nothing around, nothing to do,
Speaker 1: so I was all of us, the whole family are
Speaker 1: really creative because we literally had like two blades of
Speaker 1: grass to rub together to kind of entertain ourselves. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, I would we had like this huge woods
Speaker 1: in our back yard and or behind our house, and
Speaker 1: I was like always exploring and um, you know, really
Speaker 1: trying to be a tag team for those guys. So yes,
Speaker 1: it absolutely applies to our show. I feel like I've
Speaker 1: been you know, um, speaking up for myself and fending
Speaker 1: for myself from a very young age. And uh, it
Speaker 1: really mimics my my life because all of you guys
Speaker 1: are quite a bit older than me too, because Todd's
Speaker 1: what ten years older than I am, and he's the
Speaker 1: youngest one on the show. So, um, it's very interesting
Speaker 1: that I've found myself in this exact same dynamic. Uh
Speaker 1: seven years old? All right, so you're twenty seven. You
Speaker 1: grew up on forty six acres. I didn't know this
Speaker 1: at all in are No, Like, how do you spell
Speaker 1: the town that you're from in Canada? It's Toronto without
Speaker 1: the teas? Are No? So how many people live there?
Speaker 1: And and what did you do? So let's say you
Speaker 1: leave the forty acres? What do you do? Like? What
Speaker 1: did you guys do for fun? Is there a mall? Like?
Speaker 1: How close is the movie at? Or like mall? Like
Speaker 1: what did you do for fun? With the clothes? Movie?
Speaker 1: Theater was probably forty five minutes away? Like we are
Speaker 1: around nothing. I we didn't have next door neighbors. I
Speaker 1: would have to like walk ten minutes up the street
Speaker 1: to get to the next person that lived close to us,
Speaker 1: my friend. Um, and we we really entertained ourselves. I
Speaker 1: mean we had like a giant pond on our property.
Speaker 1: So anytime in the summer we were like swimming in
Speaker 1: that and my brothers were my best friends. I was
Speaker 1: like always looking up to them, always trying to hang
Speaker 1: out with them. Um. As I got older and U
Speaker 1: went into high school, that's when I started to be
Speaker 1: more interested in like getting out of the house and um,
Speaker 1: you know, leaving my family and hanging out with my friends.
Speaker 1: And then it was just like sure, we would take
Speaker 1: a forty five minute bus ride to the Oshawa Center
Speaker 1: and like walk around the mall. But um, once I
Speaker 1: grew up in and was in high school, I moved
Speaker 1: to a little bit of a bigger town that actually
Speaker 1: had like stores, so um, but that wasn't until like
Speaker 1: the ninth grade. So I really like I grew up.
Speaker 1: It's insane that I live in Los Angeles now and
Speaker 1: I'm doing what I'm doing because I grew up in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. My high school didn't even have
Speaker 1: a drama program, nothing that would lead one to think
Speaker 1: that I would be in front of a camera. Um,
Speaker 1: And it was just, uh, it was it was a
Speaker 1: very like, you know, my family were my best friends,
Speaker 1: and I was always wanted to wanting to be home.
Speaker 1: But it's also because we had an amazing life, like
Speaker 1: we I could go home and ride my four wheeler
Speaker 1: around for hours until it was like dinner time. So
Speaker 1: it was a lot of time spent solo slash mixed
Speaker 1: with like hanging out with my family. So we're talking
Speaker 1: to Rachel Bannetta. You follow her on Twitter. This Clay
Speaker 1: Travis wins and lost his podcast. How cold was it?
Speaker 1: So you said you had you had like a pond
Speaker 1: to swimming in the summer, Like how cold was it
Speaker 1: in your part of Canada? And how it was? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was cold. We would, Um, we had like two
Speaker 1: really big hills in front of our house, so we
Speaker 1: would like, uh, my dad would take his tractor and
Speaker 1: he would build jumps for us because we all snowboarded
Speaker 1: and skied, so we would. It's a miracle. I didn't
Speaker 1: break a bone until a couple of weeks ago when
Speaker 1: I desiccated my shoulder, but trying. Yeah, exactly, I'm a lizard.
Speaker 1: Um but uh so yeah, we would have like ski
Speaker 1: jumps and like rails and stuff set up in our
Speaker 1: front yard and then my dad would take a giant
Speaker 1: like uh fire hose and put fresh water over our
Speaker 1: already frozen over pond, so it would be a really
Speaker 1: smooth surface to play hockey. And we would hold hockey
Speaker 1: tournaments at our house from like for all of our
Speaker 1: family to come to. So we would have like days
Speaker 1: before Christmas at like all of our aunts and uncles
Speaker 1: and cousins would come. We'd have like huge hockey tournaments.
Speaker 1: Is the most Canadian thing sounding thing. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: we would have crazy hockey tournaments on our pond because
Speaker 1: it was like a beautiful rink. It was like, those
Speaker 1: are some of the best childhood memories for me. So
Speaker 1: the Raptors obviously were a part of your childhood. Were
Speaker 1: you a big hockey fan and how much what did
Speaker 1: the Raptors mean to you growing up? Um? I never
Speaker 1: attached myself to hockey team because my dad hated the
Speaker 1: Leafs for whatever reason. I think that he loved to
Speaker 1: watch them to hate them. So we were raised in
Speaker 1: like an anti trying to make the Leaf's household. But
Speaker 1: we were living in Ontario, so it's kind of hard to,
Speaker 1: you know, really find another team that I loved, so
Speaker 1: not some I played a lot of hockey, played hockey
Speaker 1: for like five years, um, but then basketball. I remember
Speaker 1: waking up on my ninth birthday and I had a
Speaker 1: canopy bed, and I woke up probably like three AM,
Speaker 1: and somehow my brother and his girlfriend had snuck into
Speaker 1: my room and put like a friend. I can still
Speaker 1: remember looking at it, a fresh Crisp White fifteen Raptor's jersey,
Speaker 1: Vince Carter's jersey, and hung it up on my canopy
Speaker 1: with a letter saying like, happy birthday. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this. That dude and the Raptors were pretty new
Speaker 1: at that point, especially Vince Carter. He's like taking over
Speaker 1: the city and I just, oh, my gosh. I did
Speaker 1: not take that jersey off for probably a year. It
Speaker 1: was like you, I see photos of it and it's
Speaker 1: just covered in grass stains. And I was bringing a
Speaker 1: basketball to school. I wanted to be in the w
Speaker 1: n B A, and I was obsessed with Vince Carter.
Speaker 1: I was so in love with him, like watching him
Speaker 1: any chance I could. UM, and uh, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I loved him so much, and
Speaker 1: I why I fell in love with basketball. But then
Speaker 1: I started playing basketball. I was like captain of my
Speaker 1: seventh and eighth grade team. Um. And then as I
Speaker 1: got older, I kind of fell off a little bit,
Speaker 1: uh just because we started sucking a lot in Vince
Speaker 1: Carter left and um you know, ugly fashion. But um
Speaker 1: so it was so beautiful to come back these last
Speaker 1: few years when they started to heat up again, and
Speaker 1: then this year with Kauai. I was like bawling my
Speaker 1: eyes out when they won because I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about that nine year old girl who was obsessed with sports,
Speaker 1: um and and loved Vince Carter so much, and I
Speaker 1: was just thinking about like what I've done with my
Speaker 1: career and my It was like a really like a
Speaker 1: looking inside, deep down moment for me, and I just
Speaker 1: couldn't stop crying on like this is so stupid a
Speaker 1: sports game, and I was. I was really emotion all.
Speaker 1: It just meant it meant a lot to uh younger
Speaker 1: me and and and now me. You got to watch
Speaker 1: it in person, Yeah, I went to go. I went
Speaker 1: to was so lucky. Um one of my friends had
Speaker 1: an extra ticket and asked me to go, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my god, when am I gonna
Speaker 1: We obviously didn't know that they were gonna win at
Speaker 1: that point, but I was like, holy, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be the last game Oracle too so I wanted to
Speaker 1: go see that, um, and I was there to witness
Speaker 1: it in person. There was like a small group of
Speaker 1: us because obviously it's in away game, but there were
Speaker 1: still so many traveling fans. There's probably hundred of us,
Speaker 1: and we just like, uh, congregated in one area after
Speaker 1: they won, and like everyone was emotional. Everyone was wearing
Speaker 1: like old school jerseys and uh, you know Vince Carter,
Speaker 1: DeMar De rose in. Like everyone was kind of all
Speaker 1: over the place and you could just tell like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, we all love this so much that we've
Speaker 1: that we've traveled. It's like almost like the batch of
Speaker 1: the most hardcore Raptors fans that you can find. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we were all there and and they celebrated right
Speaker 1: in front of us and lifted the trophy and um,
Speaker 1: it was just a really really cool moment. I'll remember that.
Speaker 1: I kind of was just like, how do I want
Speaker 1: to go? Like I have to work the next day
Speaker 1: and it's all the way up in San Francisco, Like
Speaker 1: do I really want to do that? I want to
Speaker 1: spend the money, And I was just like, screw it,
Speaker 1: what am I ever going to have this chance again?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna remember. I'm gonna tell my kids about this
Speaker 1: moment um, So it was it was something to remember
Speaker 1: for sure. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked
Speaker 1: the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am
Speaker 1: Eastern three am Pacific. Your seven. You haven't even had
Speaker 1: your ten year high school reunion yet, which is pretty
Speaker 1: crazy to think about giving what you're doing now for
Speaker 1: a living, That is insane. Yeah, So if you had been,
Speaker 1: if if you had been when you were sixteen or
Speaker 1: seventeen years old, asked what do you want to do
Speaker 1: for a living? And everybody at sixteen and seventeen has
Speaker 1: different answers. Had you hit on the idea of I
Speaker 1: want to be involved in media and entertainment in some
Speaker 1: former fashion yet and if not, when did you hit
Speaker 1: on that idea? Yeah? When I was sixteen, I was
Speaker 1: that's like the twelve right. I was volunteering at my
Speaker 1: local news station. So I was like Mike in hand,
Speaker 1: ready to go. I always wanted to be an actress,
Speaker 1: but I was just like that pause here for a second,
Speaker 1: I want to go back and this so you your
Speaker 1: local news is where local news was probably at the
Speaker 1: time forty five minutes away from me like where I
Speaker 1: was going. But it was like local news oshwa, like
Speaker 1: that area, that's what it was. You would you would
Speaker 1: show up and do like you're like, what are you
Speaker 1: doing at the local news? And how did you end
Speaker 1: up going there? So we had a program in our
Speaker 1: high school that you could take a semester off and
Speaker 1: kind of do like an internship if you were at
Speaker 1: a good place with your grades and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Um and so I decided to uh oh they called
Speaker 1: it a co op. So I decided to go. You
Speaker 1: you'd have to go into school maybe like three times
Speaker 1: a month, but I tell the semester off. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was amazing and you get like real experience, like some
Speaker 1: people would go and work, um, like in the trades
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but it was this was this
Speaker 1: one was available and so I applied for it, um
Speaker 1: and uh I got it miraculously. And so I would
Speaker 1: go in every single day. I would take my mom's
Speaker 1: car and I would drive into work as like a
Speaker 1: real reporter. And I was wearing like flax and like blazers,
Speaker 1: and I was learning how to be a reporter everything
Speaker 1: from like you know, gathering information and doing the investigative
Speaker 1: part to the way that you make your voice sound
Speaker 1: like a reporter and first local Rachel Bonetta on the scene,
Speaker 1: Like it was ridiculous the things that they were teaching
Speaker 1: me to do, which just seems so oh so cringing now,
Speaker 1: but um, I was. I just went home actually a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, and I was looking through all
Speaker 1: of my old tapes because I've kept everything, and it
Speaker 1: was like, you can see it on my Instagram. I
Speaker 1: posted when it was like sixteen year old me reporting
Speaker 1: from like a fundraiser and like a school safety meeting,
Speaker 1: and it was all very like, you know, youth reporting
Speaker 1: kind of things. They weren't making me go and do
Speaker 1: the hard hitting journalism, but that experience was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna go to school for broadcast journalism now.
Speaker 1: Like that just kind of landed in my lap. Part
Speaker 1: of me probably wanted to not go to school and
Speaker 1: go off and try and be like a somewhat of
Speaker 1: a real adult, um, but it ended up kind of
Speaker 1: working my favor. So did these things air on the
Speaker 1: local news or you just did you were on you
Speaker 1: were on local news as a sixteen year old. I
Speaker 1: was on local news. I remember I would go to
Speaker 1: work and I would film whatever I had to film.
Speaker 1: I probably had like four four to five hits a
Speaker 1: week of different stories. I would go to work, come back,
Speaker 1: go to my boyfriend's house, and the whole family would
Speaker 1: gather around and watch the local news until my my
Speaker 1: part came on. It was pretty insane. I was like
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, So what what? I watched a couple
Speaker 1: of these on your Instagram page and one of them
Speaker 1: was like you covered will Blockbuster survive? Right? Or like
Speaker 1: Blockbuster was closing? How did you get these these ideas
Speaker 1: for stories? Did they assign them to you? Did you
Speaker 1: come up with it on your own? Yeah? Like I
Speaker 1: would go out there was like like said, it was
Speaker 1: pretty like loose the broad The Blockbuster thing was from college,
Speaker 1: but all of the other ones were like, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: um picnic benefiting the local animal shelter on Tuesday. Um,
Speaker 1: why don't we send Rachel and a cameraman to that?
Speaker 1: And that's all they gave me. And I would actually
Speaker 1: go and interview all the people that I would have
Speaker 1: to interview and do my research and and you know,
Speaker 1: write everything down and then I would have to do
Speaker 1: all my stand up so it's like being in front
Speaker 1: of a camera holding a mic, being like doing like
Speaker 1: the open and the and the clothes for like a
Speaker 1: one minute peace. Um, and I learned. I learned so much.
Speaker 1: So even going into college, I was just like, screw
Speaker 1: you guys. I was on first local like getting line baby,
Speaker 1: I'm number one. So wait, so you had an adult
Speaker 1: cameraman who would be assigned to you, and like you
Speaker 1: guys would drive around all over town to do local stories. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and I took the school. I was able to do
Speaker 1: like a full full credits like I didn't have to
Speaker 1: spend any extra time in high school, like this was
Speaker 1: something that are are are just our school promoted they
Speaker 1: Still that seems crazy to me that a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old could be on local news. How many people would
Speaker 1: watch this local news broadcast, Like oh, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: very well. We would have people like email in about
Speaker 1: like oh I hated Jones tied tonight, you better pick
Speaker 1: up overalls and I'm not going to watch again. Like
Speaker 1: it was there was some. There was some I was
Speaker 1: like never recognized or anything like that, Like it was
Speaker 1: not that many people tuning in, but for it was like, um,
Speaker 1: that's a huge deal for a sixteen year old. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: the cultination of a bunch of different small towns and
Speaker 1: small cities. Um, because the first local was kind of
Speaker 1: like overseeing a big area and it was the local news,
Speaker 1: so it was like Channel six a lot of people watch.
Speaker 1: So your mom had to be really impressed by that, right, Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that might say, I'm sure we'll get into this.
Speaker 1: My family was going through some stuff when that was happening.
Speaker 1: My dad was really sick. So as much as they
Speaker 1: were like proud of what I was doing, I wasn't
Speaker 1: really the center of attention at the time. I think
Speaker 1: that looking back now, even even myself, I'm like, holy crap,
Speaker 1: why doing that at sixteens. As I'm telling this story again,
Speaker 1: I haven't talked about it really one time. It sounds insane. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she she was. She was super super proud,
Speaker 1: for sure. So you mentioned what your family was going
Speaker 1: through around the time that you're doing that. So what
Speaker 1: were you dealing with in your family at the time. Well,
Speaker 1: when I was about, um, I want to say, like
Speaker 1: eight or nine, my dad started to just be really weird. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I was so young at that point, I
Speaker 1: had no idea what was going on. Um, but he
Speaker 1: just started acting not himself. And he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's a really early like typical Canadian lumberjack as you
Speaker 1: would see it. Like he was a hunter, and he
Speaker 1: drove transport trucks and he took care of our family.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, he was like not feeling well,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, have having trouble walking and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and and I had no idea what was happening.
Speaker 1: And I remember being called into my school and in
Speaker 1: my principal's office and her saying, you know, we just
Speaker 1: want to let you know if you're ever feeling that
Speaker 1: you're going through a tough time, like you can always
Speaker 1: come and talk to us. And I was just so confused,
Speaker 1: just like okay, like whatever, I'm gonna go back to
Speaker 1: class now, Like it's just weird. Um. And then my
Speaker 1: my dad's like physical appearance started to diminish more and more.
Speaker 1: And then it was that he ended up in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And and again like I was so young, so my
Speaker 1: mom was probably shielding me from a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: But it ended up that he had this really rare
Speaker 1: blood disease called amiladosis. And it took them years to
Speaker 1: even identify what it was because it is so rare.
Speaker 1: It's like one and a billion people get this random disease.
Speaker 1: And my mom was actually one of the ones that
Speaker 1: helped diagnose it because she is like such a mom
Speaker 1: through and through and she was like going through notes
Speaker 1: and notes and notes and looking at the symptoms and
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff, and she was the one
Speaker 1: that was just like, well, what about this? And then
Speaker 1: they tested him for it and it ended up being that.
Speaker 1: But um, still like, not a lot of information is
Speaker 1: out about this disease. And basically what happened over those
Speaker 1: years is he started losing a ton of weight. Like
Speaker 1: when I was in the tenth grade, my dad weighed
Speaker 1: less than Iowa and I'm not, I'm like a pounds now.
Speaker 1: So it was really it was really hard and um,
Speaker 1: he was unable to walk. It affected his nervous system.
Speaker 1: Uh so his the nerves and his legs weren't, um,
Speaker 1: you know, acting right. So he had to use a
Speaker 1: walker in a wheelchair, and he was in and out
Speaker 1: of the hospital and they they it's not a treatable disease,
Speaker 1: is a terminal illness, so they were testing him like
Speaker 1: a guinea pig. They gave him chemotherapy, he lost all
Speaker 1: of his hair. They gave him stem cell transplants, which
Speaker 1: is like the huge as needles they put in your back,
Speaker 1: and it was all very painful, and it was all
Speaker 1: just for him to feel better for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and then he would end up going back, and then
Speaker 1: he would try something new, and then he ended up
Speaker 1: going back, and so it was really really hard um
Speaker 1: to deal with us, and and it was so long,
Speaker 1: and it lasted for eight years, so it was a
Speaker 1: really it took up a really big part of my life,
Speaker 1: and I had to grow up really really quickly. And
Speaker 1: my brothers weren't around because they are so much older.
Speaker 1: By the time I was in high school, they were
Speaker 1: in college, they were living in different provinces, they were
Speaker 1: all over the place. So it was really just like
Speaker 1: me and my mom and my dad, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I felt like I was like walking home to a
Speaker 1: very hellish state every single day, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to I wanted to run away, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in that situation. And it was impossible to
Speaker 1: connect with my dad because I was scared even looking
Speaker 1: at him. What do you look like? And it was
Speaker 1: really hard. It was really hard for a really long time.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what we were dealing with. And
Speaker 1: that was tough for my mom also too. Like I said,
Speaker 1: she's such a caregiver and her husband the love of
Speaker 1: her life. They had such an amazing I'm so thankful
Speaker 1: that my parents had an incredible relationship. They were married
Speaker 1: for like thirty one years, um, and you know that
Speaker 1: was like her first priority. So you know, you also
Speaker 1: have this like blossoming young daughter who's trying to pursue
Speaker 1: all of these things, but you know, your first priority
Speaker 1: is going to be making sure that your husband can
Speaker 1: get up and walk down the stairs because he couldn't
Speaker 1: do that by himself. So it was a lot, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a tough few years, sir. So from Mike
Speaker 1: eight to sixteen, this is when this is going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he passed away, she thought the way when I was seventeen, Um,
Speaker 1: I graduated high school in June or whatever, and he
Speaker 1: passed away that February, right before, right before you graduated.
Speaker 1: So I mean a part of this is you probably
Speaker 1: I don't know if you even like sit around and
Speaker 1: try to psychoanalyze yourself a lot. But if you're sixteen
Speaker 1: and you're so driven to grow up that you're doing
Speaker 1: these reporting assignments, I mean, is that partly like you
Speaker 1: were just ready to be off on your own because
Speaker 1: in some way you had to kind of raise yourself,
Speaker 1: right because your mom has to focus so much on
Speaker 1: your dad. Yeah, no, absolutely, I talked about this in
Speaker 1: therapy every week, but um, yeah, it's it's exactly that.
Speaker 1: And it's, um there's like a fear as well, like
Speaker 1: going home. I when it was just my dad and I,
Speaker 1: like sometimes I'd be sitting in the living room and
Speaker 1: I would here like a crash, and it was because
Speaker 1: like my full grown father has fallen to the ground
Speaker 1: and there's like a fifteen year old I have to
Speaker 1: now pick up his like deadweight body and bring him
Speaker 1: into the living room. Somebody can sit like that's not
Speaker 1: only embarrassing for him and hard for him to deal with,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh my god, I can't profess this, Like
Speaker 1: what is this? And so I was constantly I never
Speaker 1: ran away, per se, but I was always running away.
Speaker 1: I was always trying to get out of that house.
Speaker 1: I moved away as much as I wanted to support
Speaker 1: my mom and stay home for even like a semester.
Speaker 1: I went away to college as fast as I can
Speaker 1: and and I was like always out of the house,
Speaker 1: always at my boyfriend's house, who was like a disaster um.
Speaker 1: And it was yeah, it was really it was a
Speaker 1: really dark place. Home. Home's was a really dark place
Speaker 1: for me the first eight years, not right when everything
Speaker 1: before he got sick, and then it's like just all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the chapter changes in your life is
Speaker 1: completely altered. Yeah, I mean the first eight years. I
Speaker 1: think that that's why I am, you know. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's this big goofy side to me, and I
Speaker 1: feel like that comes from early on, like the first
Speaker 1: eight years when I had like free range on creativity
Speaker 1: and I had a great relationship with my parents, and
Speaker 1: my parents had a great relationship, and my brothers and
Speaker 1: I were always like goofing and laughing, and they introduced
Speaker 1: me to comedy and and then I feel like around
Speaker 1: like nine, that's when that joyful side just like culpit
Speaker 1: and stopped. And I feel like a big part of
Speaker 1: my life now is like trying to get that back
Speaker 1: and and trying to really live in this like fun
Speaker 1: space because I love that that, like we always talk
Speaker 1: about in therapy, not to get too deep into this,
Speaker 1: like but that, um my my kids like kid Rachel, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, she needs to be taken care of because
Speaker 1: around like eight or nine, she stopped having people look
Speaker 1: looking out for her. She was looking out for herself
Speaker 1: because everyone else was focused on my father and so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lots. It's a lot to deal with for
Speaker 1: a really young kid. I didn't even know it, Like
Speaker 1: I said, my mom couldn't even explain to me what
Speaker 1: was happening at this point in my life because it's like,
Speaker 1: how do we even tell how old are your kids? Clay, Like,
Speaker 1: imagine telling them no. I mean that's what I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about now. I've got eleven and eight and a four
Speaker 1: year old, and so they've had explained to them totally
Speaker 1: idyllic existence right now, and if if something like that happened,
Speaker 1: it would be like they would be, you know, almost
Speaker 1: full pedaling into a wall, right like everything is perfect
Speaker 1: and then it's like a line of demarcation and everything
Speaker 1: changes in their life. And I think there's probably a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there listening right now who maybe
Speaker 1: not have had as serious of an incident as you have,
Speaker 1: but they can go to a point in their life
Speaker 1: and be like this changed everything, right and and whatever
Speaker 1: else comes afterwards, I can't get over what might have
Speaker 1: happened at this age. By the way, you're listening to
Speaker 1: Winds and Losses. I'm Clay Travis. We're talking with Rachel
Speaker 1: Bonetta and so you you you're doing this thing at
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. You're doing local news and and it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you have a and I'm sure people here
Speaker 1: as this goes on, if they watched the show, certainly
Speaker 1: you know this. You have a really great sense of humor.
Speaker 1: But a part of that a lot of times comedians
Speaker 1: have great sense as a humor because it's a coping mechanism, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, otherwise you just kind of wallow in, uh
Speaker 1: in the things that are bad in your life, and
Speaker 1: that's a way to escape the darkness, right, um. And
Speaker 1: and I think the humor that you have, whether it's
Speaker 1: on Instagram or on social media are certainly on our
Speaker 1: show comes through a lot, but it's almost like a
Speaker 1: self defense mechanism in some ways. Not to mean that
Speaker 1: you're not funny, but it's it's interesting where that comes
Speaker 1: from Yeah, no, for sure. I mean my dad was
Speaker 1: a very quick like honestly, and I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of times he was always trying to lighten the
Speaker 1: mood because he was sick and all of us, like
Speaker 1: he probably felt from his daughter like, Oh, she's afraid
Speaker 1: of me now because she's afraid of losing me. So
Speaker 1: she's gonna push me as far as she can away
Speaker 1: because she doesn't want to get hurt. And so his
Speaker 1: way of cracking the ice with me was being funny
Speaker 1: and like watching funny things in same with my brothers,
Speaker 1: like I was introduced to like sn L and SETV
Speaker 1: and mad TV and in Living color, all of those
Speaker 1: things when I was really young, because it was so
Speaker 1: depressing in our household that what we watched at night
Speaker 1: had to be something that made us laugh. And so
Speaker 1: I'm thankful that I grew up in a in a
Speaker 1: family that had a sense of humor and was able
Speaker 1: to laugh about some stuff. Like my dad would make
Speaker 1: jokes when he was bald and like had peach fuzz
Speaker 1: and um, you know, he he was ridiculous and super goofy,
Speaker 1: and I will hold those memories super close to my heart.
Speaker 1: But um, that was definitely a way to all of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just me. All of us were trying to
Speaker 1: cope with this through our sense of humor because that
Speaker 1: was literally the only way that we could keep breathing.
Speaker 1: So sixteen year old Rachel is a local news star, Um,
Speaker 1: you're dealing with your dad. You said, I don't even
Speaker 1: know if your your boyfriend might listen to this. He
Speaker 1: probably doesn't want to hear it because you probably that
Speaker 1: you never had a boyfriend before. But you said you
Speaker 1: had an awful high school boyfriend. Oh. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: a jerk. He was a jerk. I didd him for
Speaker 1: like five years to five years of a long time
Speaker 1: in high school. So what initially attracted you to him? Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You have like a shaved head. He
Speaker 1: was a skateboarder. That's why I was really into skateboarders
Speaker 1: at the time. But I started dating him like the
Speaker 1: end of my Our junior high was right next to
Speaker 1: our high school, and still there was probably only a
Speaker 1: total of like five hundred people, um combined with all
Speaker 1: of those grades. So it was partly because there was
Speaker 1: nobody else. But I met him at like the end
Speaker 1: of the eighth grade and I broke up with him.
Speaker 1: As soon as I went to college, I was like, later,
Speaker 1: so what does he do now? I have no idea
Speaker 1: and I do not want to know. So legitimately you
Speaker 1: have no idea, like he hasn't tracked, have no idea. No, no,
Speaker 1: I think that once. Once I got to college, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I gos a jerk. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I'll give you a little glimpse in our relationship,
Speaker 1: um my twelfth grade. Um, you know, it was really
Speaker 1: just like a waiting game when my dad he was
Speaker 1: not doing well. This was probably in November. The doctors
Speaker 1: told us that my dad had until Christmas to live.
Speaker 1: Basically what a date, right, Oh yeah, celebrate Christmas as
Speaker 1: your dad? And I like the next day. Um, and
Speaker 1: so I found out in November my boyfriend broke up
Speaker 1: with me. And I was devastated because literally going through
Speaker 1: the worst time in my life. Now, I've lost the
Speaker 1: only person that I can really you know, he's like
Speaker 1: my number one shoulder to cry on. He broke up
Speaker 1: with me the next day. He's love with my best
Speaker 1: friend and all of this stuff is going on, and
Speaker 1: so I was just like, uh, you know, I stupidly.
Speaker 1: Why am I telling you this stuff? For the first place,
Speaker 1: I got back together with him after my dad passed away,
Speaker 1: and then it literally as soon as I left for college,
Speaker 1: I was just like, get this guy into my life.
Speaker 1: I'm so much better off. So yeah, like high school,
Speaker 1: Rachel was all over the place. She was mess. You
Speaker 1: did not know how to function. The only thing that
Speaker 1: she was like worried about with school and her career,
Speaker 1: which is like kind of still the same. Um, But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going through it. I think about that Rachel now,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't make me cry sometimes because I was
Speaker 1: really being put through the ringer And what you wish
Speaker 1: what do you wish you you could go back in
Speaker 1: time and tell yourself when you were in high school.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but everything's gonna be okay, I guess.
Speaker 1: But I always had the sense that it was going
Speaker 1: to be all right. Like I do think I deal
Speaker 1: with trauma pretty fairly well, whether it's like you know, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody passing away or like me losing my passport in
Speaker 1: a foreign country. Like I'm very I'm a very good
Speaker 1: problem solver. Um. But I think that there's always been
Speaker 1: the fear of I will say this, Ever since my
Speaker 1: dad passed away, and even before that, there's I've I've
Speaker 1: had an irrational fear of people leaving me and death
Speaker 1: and and losing people. Whether I can deal with it
Speaker 1: or not, just the fear of it happening absolutely terrifies me.
Speaker 1: So just like letting myself know when it comes to that,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm okay, I'm gonna be okay, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get through this and at least I'm gonna live.
Speaker 1: We know that I don't even know that it's in
Speaker 1: a rational fear based on what you've been through, uh
Speaker 1: I know. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked
Speaker 1: the Coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern,
Speaker 1: three am Pacific, talking to Rachel Bannetta wins and Lost
Speaker 1: his podcast I'm Clay Travis. You can follow Rachel at
Speaker 1: Rachel bannetto on Twitter. You can watch her every single
Speaker 1: day on uh FS one Walk it In alongside of me,
Speaker 1: cousin sal and Todd Ferman. All right, so you go
Speaker 1: off to college. You've probably given everything that you are
Speaker 1: going through in high school, are desperate to go away
Speaker 1: to college? Where do you go? How do you pick
Speaker 1: it and what is your focus when you go away
Speaker 1: to college. So I moved into the city. I moved
Speaker 1: into the city. I've got Toronto meeting meeting, the city
Speaker 1: of Toronto, Yeah, the big city. I think two of
Speaker 1: my brothers were living there at the time, so at
Speaker 1: least I had some kind of you know, safety with
Speaker 1: having them somewhat close. But I decided that I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to audition, uh to go to school for theater
Speaker 1: because I was too scared. I think that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: everything that had happened. I was just like, I just
Speaker 1: want to go to school for something I know that
Speaker 1: I can get into, for something that I know I'm
Speaker 1: already good at, and for something that I know that
Speaker 1: I'm slightly interested in. And at least, um, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the school processes that I can take improv classes,
Speaker 1: which was so exciting for me and I still take
Speaker 1: those to this day. Um. So I applied for broadcast journalism.
Speaker 1: I think I was a shoe in because, as you said,
Speaker 1: I'm a sixteen year old television star at uh uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I moved into the city. I moved out of
Speaker 1: my house. My mom sold our house and moved into
Speaker 1: like a really small house and like a small town
Speaker 1: far away, further away from me. Um and uh, I
Speaker 1: failed and I feeled hard. I was doing this talk
Speaker 1: about mental health a couple of years ago for the
Speaker 1: Big East, and there were it was like all coaches
Speaker 1: that were in the room, and I was a volleyball player,
Speaker 1: was a varsity volleyball player, and I brought in my
Speaker 1: transcripts from my first semester of my first year, and
Speaker 1: it was all like f f F d F c
Speaker 1: f f F like failed, like literally everything I could
Speaker 1: have failed, I failed pretty much. Um. And it was
Speaker 1: I was telling these people because I was just like
Speaker 1: I was depressed and anxious and going through the dealing
Speaker 1: with the loss of my father and and those times
Speaker 1: the coach, I'm seeing my coach more than I'm seeing
Speaker 1: my teachers. Um. And so I was kind of saying
Speaker 1: that like this is this was my story, and I
Speaker 1: was telling them and oh my god, I just bombed
Speaker 1: so bad because like my I was just going through
Speaker 1: a world of pain and I forgot everything that I learned. Um,
Speaker 1: you know at first local and it was a it
Speaker 1: was tough, It was really tough. I thought about quitting.
Speaker 1: I was just like I'm not I need to take
Speaker 1: some time off, Like clearly my brain is not right.
Speaker 1: I'm not in a right space to be learning and
Speaker 1: to be caring about anything other than thinking about my
Speaker 1: dad dying. Like it was rough. So you went to
Speaker 1: class and you were making it like, I mean, how
Speaker 1: how did you fail? Everything right? Because I mean I
Speaker 1: would go into class, I was listening to the lecture,
Speaker 1: I was being given the homework, and I was saying
Speaker 1: f you, and I was gooding, And I would go
Speaker 1: to volleyball practice and I'd go home, sleep, wake up
Speaker 1: the next day to do it all over again. I
Speaker 1: was not handing in any assignments. I was having trouble
Speaker 1: going to class sometimes because I couldn't get out of bed.
Speaker 1: This was like my first real bout with depression like
Speaker 1: I had never really felt. Not only was I moving
Speaker 1: away um from home and like what I know and
Speaker 1: what I love, and I broke up with my boyfriend,
Speaker 1: which is like, you know, any teenager is going to
Speaker 1: have a problem with that, and it's gonna like face
Speaker 1: some kind of repercussion in their feelings and their emotions.
Speaker 1: But also I just had like a catastrophic event happened
Speaker 1: in my life. Um, and I just couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't deal with it. So I would not get
Speaker 1: into bed, I would not do my assignments. And it
Speaker 1: showed so for a full year or a full semester,
Speaker 1: just a full semester. After I got those the grades back. UM,
Speaker 1: my volleyball coach threatened to kick me off the team.
Speaker 1: UM My mom was very disappointed in me, and I
Speaker 1: just snapped. I had this moment of being like you,
Speaker 1: I had this really beautiful moment with my dad right
Speaker 1: right before he passed away. I'm gonna try and get
Speaker 1: through this. Um. And uh, you know, we we knew
Speaker 1: about a week before he passed away. They pulled me
Speaker 1: out of school and they brought my brothers home and
Speaker 1: we're like, spend as much time as with your dad
Speaker 1: as you can, because he's gonna be he's not gonna
Speaker 1: make it pass this week. He's stopped eating, and so
Speaker 1: all of us took turns going up into his bedroom.
Speaker 1: He had like a hospital bed pulled into our house,
Speaker 1: and um, when he was awake and around and you know,
Speaker 1: with it, we would go up and we would have
Speaker 1: conversations with him, and I got to tell him right
Speaker 1: before he passed away, like a couple of days before that,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna go and kick ass and
Speaker 1: I'm inna I think also the first time that I
Speaker 1: swore in front of my dad, I remember being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I hope it's not gonna be mad
Speaker 1: at me, but I'm gonna go kick ass, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go make you so out, and I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: care of mom. And I'm just gonna go and and
Speaker 1: just kill it at school and I'm going to be
Speaker 1: a star and and you don't have to worry about anything.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take care of everybody. From one of the
Speaker 1: last things that you said to me ever, was seeing
Speaker 1: the movie's kids, Well it makes me want to vomit. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, right, sor right? But I had this moment
Speaker 1: after that first semester that I was like, I have
Speaker 1: not lived up to everything that I told my dad,
Speaker 1: and he would be so disappointed in me. And I
Speaker 1: think even my maybe somebody had said that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: do this for your dad, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: all right, screw this, buckled down started like caring so
Speaker 1: much really put like literally great change from like f
Speaker 1: T A S because I was I'm a smart person
Speaker 1: and I'm creative, and that's exactly what all these things
Speaker 1: we're calling for. It's like make a video, go and
Speaker 1: do a documentary, be an improv class, like you know,
Speaker 1: go and cover Blockbuster, shutting down whatever it is, excuse um.
Speaker 1: And uh I just snapped, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: I this is my chance to prove myself and I
Speaker 1: don't want to fail. And I'm not going back to Orn. No,
Speaker 1: good lord, I'm not going back to Orno. And uh
Speaker 1: I just snapped. And I have not since that moment,
Speaker 1: Since that semester, I have never looked back and have
Speaker 1: just gone gung home with my career. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a huge part of the reason why I'm twenty
Speaker 1: seven and I'm hosting a show in Los Angeles, of
Speaker 1: all places, three thousand, five hundred miles away from where
Speaker 1: I grew up, and I'm still like, not backing down,
Speaker 1: still going full till all right. I want to go
Speaker 1: back to that pivot point because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who face challenges, and obviously for your age,
Speaker 1: the challenges that you faced wor substantial, and is you
Speaker 1: said that like you suddenly had this realization in your mind,
Speaker 1: but you go home for Christmas. I'm assuming I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how the Canadian school schedule is, but you
Speaker 1: have to show your mom the f's and the d's
Speaker 1: that you have made. Where exactly do you make that
Speaker 1: decision that things change for you? It's a pivot point.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you could have ended up back in
Speaker 1: Orno uh and uh and people like you're surrounded probably
Speaker 1: by a lot of the people that you went to
Speaker 1: high school with, and you're living a life where it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a quiet scream of anonymity, right Like
Speaker 1: you're you're feeling like you didn't do what you wanted
Speaker 1: to do. And look, I mean you're still young. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you had made that decision for a few years,
Speaker 1: you could have still had a pivot point. But for you,
Speaker 1: it happened at eighteen or nineteen years old. What do
Speaker 1: you attribute that too to the mental toughness and the
Speaker 1: ability to make that pivot, Because I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening right now the podcast is
Speaker 1: called Wins and Losses who get to that point and
Speaker 1: it may not have as many significant factors that that
Speaker 1: bring it to bear as yours did. But that they're
Speaker 1: at a quarter life crisis or their midlife crisis or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and maybe they're younger and they might
Speaker 1: not go in the direction that you did to pour
Speaker 1: positivity into the situation. What do you attribute to how
Speaker 1: you were able to do it? Um, I think it
Speaker 1: would be easy for somebody. Let let's say my dad
Speaker 1: didn't pass away, and I went to school and I failed.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be easy for me to be like, um,
Speaker 1: is screw this, Like I'm not I'm just not cut
Speaker 1: out for it. But I think that when you have
Speaker 1: a parent pass away or something traumatic happening, you automatically
Speaker 1: become a tougher person because you've been knocked down and
Speaker 1: you've in the process, you've just like grown this like
Speaker 1: outer shield or whatever you want to call it, UM,
Speaker 1: And nothing can hurt you as bad as that first
Speaker 1: thing that happened to you that was traumatic. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. I always just call it snapping.
Speaker 1: I just snapped, and I went home, and I saw
Speaker 1: how disappointed my mom was, And UM, I know how
Speaker 1: much she gave to my dad and to this family.
Speaker 1: I know, like she took so much time off from work,
Speaker 1: she was oh my god, probably in the deepest of depressions.
Speaker 1: She actually just sent me a text with kissing emojis.
Speaker 1: Isn't that weird? She literally just sent me that. That's
Speaker 1: so strange. Um, But you know, she was just the
Speaker 1: toughest of off. And I went home and I saw
Speaker 1: how disappointed she was, and I think that she just
Speaker 1: I was disappointed in the situation. No one did anything wrong.
Speaker 1: My parents didn't treat me like ship like it was
Speaker 1: just a shitty situation. And I think that part of
Speaker 1: her was like, I'm so sorry that this has happened
Speaker 1: to you. Like she was upset and disappointed, but I
Speaker 1: think also part of her was like, I'm just so
Speaker 1: sorry that this is the life. These are the cards
Speaker 1: that you've been dealt, and this is clearly affecting you.
Speaker 1: And maybe I was hoping that it wouldn't affect you
Speaker 1: as much as it as it is. And I just
Speaker 1: remember seeing that face and how upset she was, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, I cannot do this. My mom
Speaker 1: has been through too much already. I need to be
Speaker 1: the tough person that I am that my dad has
Speaker 1: made me and my mom has made me, and I
Speaker 1: need to I need to snap. I need to take
Speaker 1: care of my mom like I promise. I need to
Speaker 1: take care of my family like I promised. And this
Speaker 1: is not taking care of This is adding more stress
Speaker 1: and more pain. And I've already felt the worst of it.
Speaker 1: I can be better and be stronger. And then I
Speaker 1: just went back after Christmas or whatever it was Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: and I just I woke up one day and was
Speaker 1: just like re energized, and I thought about my mom
Speaker 1: all the time, and I thought about how sad she was,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, I am not contributing to that.
Speaker 1: There's no chance that I am going to be part
Speaker 1: of the reason that my mom is worse off than
Speaker 1: losing her husband. Like, I'm not going to add to that.
Speaker 1: And so she was a really big part of me
Speaker 1: going back and just going like full till crazy. And
Speaker 1: you are incredibly smart and incredibly talented. Uh, not that
Speaker 1: you deserve compliments from me, but in that uh And
Speaker 1: and I don't want you to get used to them,
Speaker 1: but in that in that scenario, it's also interesting to
Speaker 1: me because people sometimes have talents and they aren't willing
Speaker 1: to acknowledge them themselves that they have them, and so
Speaker 1: they can fall back on Oh, this is just not
Speaker 1: for me. I'll go back to something that's safe. So
Speaker 1: you pour yourself into it. You already knew that you
Speaker 1: were driven in some sense at sixteen, when you're doing
Speaker 1: these local television reports. Uh, and what are you doing?
Speaker 1: And and how quickly does it? The pivot happens. You
Speaker 1: start getting as are you doing more television? Are you
Speaker 1: doing more? Like? What what exactly are you doing while
Speaker 1: you're in school? Um? I started looking for internships, and
Speaker 1: I started being like, I am really good in the field,
Speaker 1: so I need to start looking at like the local
Speaker 1: news stations or um. You know. I was just expanding
Speaker 1: my mind. I was like, how can I get better
Speaker 1: at this? How can I do? I want to start
Speaker 1: branching out and do acting stuff like I was just
Speaker 1: instead of like feeling sorry for myself all the time
Speaker 1: and and thinking about other things that didn't matter or
Speaker 1: didn't pertain to school, it was the complete opposite. I
Speaker 1: was like, how do I be the best of the
Speaker 1: best at this? UM? And I just poured all of that,
Speaker 1: you know, sad energy that I did have into going
Speaker 1: full throttle. So I did an internship with our local
Speaker 1: news station that was in Toronto, which was like a
Speaker 1: much bigger deal. I remember one of my first days
Speaker 1: was like Osama bin Laden being shot and and and
Speaker 1: assassinated or whatever happened. Um, and that was like the
Speaker 1: first taste of like live news, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is this isn't the Picnics that
Speaker 1: I was covering. And on first local I was like
Speaker 1: Allly moly, buckle up. Uh. And then for a really
Speaker 1: long time I thought I wanted to do news, and
Speaker 1: so I was like constantly trying to get in with
Speaker 1: those spaces. Never once did I want to do sports.
Speaker 1: I remember even at school we would have to like
Speaker 1: sporting reports, and I was like, I hate this. I'm
Speaker 1: not interested at all. I played the sports. I played volleyball.
Speaker 1: I'm the athlete. I don't want to be talking about
Speaker 1: other athletes. I just wasn't interested in whatsoever. So it's
Speaker 1: hilarious what I've ended up doing with my life. But
Speaker 1: um so yeah, I just like I just poured myself
Speaker 1: in and I went I would stay up late, I
Speaker 1: would be at school until you know they kicked me out,
Speaker 1: editing pieces and and really branching out and just carrying
Speaker 1: so much more. Really that wasn't were you good at volleyball?
Speaker 1: By the way, I was excellent a volleyball. I didn't
Speaker 1: have crazy hops, like I couldn't jump very so they
Speaker 1: would oftentimes put me in the backup as like a
Speaker 1: designated pass er. Um. But I was pretty good. Our
Speaker 1: team wasn't great, But I played for thirteen years. Like
Speaker 1: that was one thing that I kind of like after
Speaker 1: I played hockey. U my mom was al players, so
Speaker 1: she's like, why don't you try this? And so I
Speaker 1: played rap like travel volleyball for thirteen years. It was insane.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know there was travel volleyball. Is that
Speaker 1: a Canadian thing? I think it might. Well, no, there's
Speaker 1: a big amen travel volleyball in America. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never even heard of anybody doing that. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they do. Um, but there was like a lot of
Speaker 1: girls in my high school were really into volleyball, and
Speaker 1: I played when I was a junior. I played on
Speaker 1: the senior team. That's how good I was. UM, And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty competitive. It was fun. We were playing
Speaker 1: tournaments like every weekend, all right, So you at that
Speaker 1: point then have decided you've come through, Uh, the challenge
Speaker 1: of finding motivation and everything else, and you kind of
Speaker 1: know what you want to do. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: school is unnecessary at that point because you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I know what I want to do for my career,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think about this. For instance, at Fox,
Speaker 1: two of our bosses, I think, uh, Eric Shanks and
Speaker 1: Brad Zeiger, neither one of them finished college because they're like,
Speaker 1: I want to do you know, sports production? I want
Speaker 1: to and now obviously very successful at Fox. Did you
Speaker 1: feel like you were just wasting your time at that
Speaker 1: point in college where a little I mean university in
Speaker 1: college is different in Canada. So if you're going to university,
Speaker 1: you're going for four years, which is college in the
Speaker 1: United States, right, But if you're going to college in Canada,
Speaker 1: it's usually two years and it's usually some kind of
Speaker 1: trade or it's more hands on. So if I were
Speaker 1: to go to university for broadcast journalism in Canada, the
Speaker 1: first two years would be writing essays and theories about whatever,
Speaker 1: and then the final two years would be in studio,
Speaker 1: getting your hands dirty, going out into the field. And
Speaker 1: I was just like, I don't want to waste my
Speaker 1: time with the first two years, like I've already been
Speaker 1: out in the field. So I want to go to college.
Speaker 1: I want to be done in two years, and I
Speaker 1: want to be working in that third year. So um
Speaker 1: so yeah. So by the second year, UM, I never finished.
Speaker 1: I was missing one still to this day, i'm missing
Speaker 1: one credit to graduate. I do not need it now. UM.
Speaker 1: But I was going to go back uh for a
Speaker 1: final semester. And then um or I was gonna go back.
Speaker 1: I was gonna go back to school for theater. I
Speaker 1: decided that I did not want to do broadcast. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do broadcasting anymore. For whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed those improv classes, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to be an actor, Like why am
Speaker 1: I still reading the news? This isn't exactly what I
Speaker 1: want to do. I'm still thinking about acting all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I had one credit left and I was
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not I'm not going to finish this
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna go back to school for something else.
Speaker 1: And then, in that interim period of deciding I wanted
Speaker 1: to leave broadcast journalism behind and applying for universities for
Speaker 1: theater programs, I got my first big job it's like
Speaker 1: by accident. So then that kind of just led me astray.
Speaker 1: So what was the job? So it was Toronto c
Speaker 1: which is Major League soccer. It was the Dream Job contest,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't even a job application. It was a
Speaker 1: contest that I saw on Facebook and it was like,
Speaker 1: whoever wins this contest gets to be on the jumble
Speaker 1: tron at halftime and interview players and do all this
Speaker 1: like fun stuff. And I was like, oh, this could
Speaker 1: be like a perfect side thing while I'm going to school.
Speaker 1: I still get to be in front of a camera.
Speaker 1: I still get to, you know, like play in that space.
Speaker 1: So like, why not, I'm probably not gonna win. I
Speaker 1: don't know much about soccer, so let me just like apply.
Speaker 1: So I applied and just from my so you applied
Speaker 1: by how like doing a video? Like what's what's the application?
Speaker 1: First application process was literally just an application. It was
Speaker 1: like who are you? Why do you want this job? Um?
Speaker 1: And I cracked top fifteen just by my application, and
Speaker 1: my application was a little inappropriated. I made some I
Speaker 1: made some choice. I the first I don't know how
Speaker 1: I got hired off this, but the first line you
Speaker 1: have to kind of like write a like a mini
Speaker 1: essay on why you should be hired. The first line
Speaker 1: of my essay was besides my love for balls dot
Speaker 1: dot dot, this is why you should hire me. That
Speaker 1: got me to crack the top fifteen. Somehow I have
Speaker 1: not some of that must have line must have caught
Speaker 1: somebody's eye. Um so you're handwriting this or do you
Speaker 1: like you're typing this online submission? It was an online submission.
Speaker 1: Did you spend on the online submission? Oh? I remember,
Speaker 1: like just like saying screw it, I'm not gonna win this.
Speaker 1: So I remember maybe like twenty minutes, just like a
Speaker 1: quick type up like who are you? How old? Do
Speaker 1: you send us a picture? And why you want this job? So?
Speaker 1: Um so I cracked top fifteen, and then top fifteen
Speaker 1: had to send in a video, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: oh man, now I got this in the bag. So
Speaker 1: I made uh like a two minute sketch comedy sketch
Speaker 1: on why I should be hired. And I got this
Speaker 1: guy to put on a brown wig and do keep
Speaker 1: you up eas like keep ups with a football with
Speaker 1: a soccer ball, and wear a duke, and we shot
Speaker 1: it as if it looked like I was doing, so
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, this girl is funny. And then I
Speaker 1: cracked the cracked the top five. That video is still
Speaker 1: available to watch on YouTube. By the way, I cracked
Speaker 1: the top five, and I was just like, how do
Speaker 1: you mean you crack the top five? Like people vote,
Speaker 1: like how are you? How do you know where you're ranking.
Speaker 1: I think it was a combination of people voting and
Speaker 1: also uh, their choice, like toront his choice. So I
Speaker 1: think that they thought that was funny and that I
Speaker 1: could do some different things, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: this girl's entertaining, like let's let's bring her in for
Speaker 1: an interview. Um. So then I was top five and
Speaker 1: I went in for an interview and they know nothing
Speaker 1: about soccer, like Toronto captains. I had the captain's name,
Speaker 1: Porston Springs written in ink on my hand for the interview,
Speaker 1: so you could come out and like cheat if you
Speaker 1: need to, So I could look down and say if
Speaker 1: they asked me any questions, I could be like, at
Speaker 1: least I know who the captain is. I can I
Speaker 1: can work Towards and Springs into my bullshitting um and uh.
Speaker 1: And I just like I won them over in the
Speaker 1: meeting I was myself and uh. I remember I was
Speaker 1: working at the time at a bar. There was a
Speaker 1: torontof Sea bar um and so as a bartender, as
Speaker 1: a as a server, and so the final process of
Speaker 1: this contest, that is, they were going to invite all
Speaker 1: of us to center field at half time and announced
Speaker 1: the winner. There was five of us left, but I
Speaker 1: had to work the shift before the game. So I
Speaker 1: was in the in the restaurant serving all of these
Speaker 1: Toronto Sea fans. And then my bosses let me go
Speaker 1: to the game to see if I won the contest,
Speaker 1: and my mom was with me, and it was raining,
Speaker 1: and I remember before we even went in, I was like, Mom,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this, like I'm not gonna win.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be embarrassed in front of the twenty people
Speaker 1: that are sitting in the stands right now. And She's
Speaker 1: like just go, like it's fine. What if you do
Speaker 1: win then? Uh? And I remember a halftime it was raining.
Speaker 1: They pulled us all out in the middle field and
Speaker 1: they called my name and I was just like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I won and I sprinted. I shook some
Speaker 1: hands like oh my god, this is and I sprinted
Speaker 1: to my mom because I knew where she was sitting,
Speaker 1: and we just like held each other and cried because
Speaker 1: this was the first win. This was my first win.
Speaker 1: I didn't finish school. Dad passes away, which procious first semester.
Speaker 1: Holy crap, I just want to I just beat up
Speaker 1: five people for this job that I probably did not deserve.
Speaker 1: So her and I were just sobbing in each other's arms, like,
Speaker 1: oh my God, Like I'm gonna be able to take
Speaker 1: care of myself, You're not gonna have to pay my rent,
Speaker 1: me more, all of these things. It was just like
Speaker 1: a really beautiful moment. Uh. And then I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna blow off school for a little
Speaker 1: bit longer and be this host because they hired me
Speaker 1: for some reason. They hired me Monday to Friday five,
Speaker 1: but I was an arena host, like they wanted me
Speaker 1: to do so much more than the initial job entailed.
Speaker 1: So I was just like, Okay, they paid me forty dollars.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's an instant amount of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're what twenty years old. I'm twenty years old at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. Uh, that's literally the jackpot. You think
Speaker 1: you're rich with compared to the other twenty year olds,
Speaker 1: and so what does that job entail? Held nothing and
Speaker 1: entailed absolutely nothing. I had to go and show up
Speaker 1: on the weekends and be the arena hosts. But because
Speaker 1: I was sitting at a desk every single day and
Speaker 1: going berserk with boredom, YouTube was hot and fresh. I
Speaker 1: started making usy videos, and I started making sketches within
Speaker 1: the office and doing like weekly videos that I would
Speaker 1: put out that the fans could watch, and um, those
Speaker 1: like kind of blew up in in like small YouTube terms,
Speaker 1: and uh, Major League Soccer. The head office in New
Speaker 1: York City started seeing these videos and being like, we
Speaker 1: really like what you're doing, or would you ever be
Speaker 1: interested in moving to New York City? And I had
Speaker 1: been to New York City one time in my life
Speaker 1: before that, and I had um, oh, I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of it. I think a Carnegie Delhi. Does
Speaker 1: that sound right? I had a Deli napkin from New
Speaker 1: York City posted on my cubicle because I just loved
Speaker 1: New York City so much. Um and I even had
Speaker 1: written a contract to myself. I still have it. When
Speaker 1: I was about ten years old, I Rachel Bannetta will
Speaker 1: live in New York City by the time I'm twenty three, uh,
Speaker 1: and like signed with a in and everything. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so I spent a couple of years in Toronto, got
Speaker 1: this email, maybe like a year and a half in
Speaker 1: and they were like, we would like, we would like
Speaker 1: to bring you out to New York City if you're
Speaker 1: willing to move here. And so that's how I got
Speaker 1: to from Toronto to New York. What do you think
Speaker 1: would have happened if you hadn't seen that Facebook ad?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I would probably be a waitress
Speaker 1: in Toronto trying to make it as an actress. And
Speaker 1: that sounds super depressing to me. There's so many points
Speaker 1: in my career, as I'm sure we'll keep on talking
Speaker 1: that I could have gone left, but I went right,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea what would have happened if
Speaker 1: I went left? Like it's insane. So you go to
Speaker 1: you take the MLS job, and I'm curious, I want
Speaker 1: to go back again because you said you're just bored
Speaker 1: at the office nine to five, like you are on
Speaker 1: you know, doing the games for Toronto FC. But that's
Speaker 1: where you come up with the idea of Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do these videos? Do you ask anybody for permission?
Speaker 1: How do you go about taking the initiative there? Well,
Speaker 1: I knew how to operate a camera, I knew how
Speaker 1: to set up a tripod, and I knew how to
Speaker 1: plug plug in a mic. So I was just like,
Speaker 1: do you as mind a Like, I'm just like I
Speaker 1: got an idea. I'm just gonna go like shoot some
Speaker 1: stuff from I'm not doing anything anyways, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go go give it a shot. And I also knew
Speaker 1: how to edit, So I was going around and first
Speaker 1: I did these things called six and sixty, so six
Speaker 1: things to know about the game in sixty seconds. So
Speaker 1: I would go around the stadium six different spots and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, game time is six pm, and then
Speaker 1: like joke, joke, joke and character character character, and then
Speaker 1: number two would be like, you guys are gonna want
Speaker 1: to take the t TC, which is our trans transportation
Speaker 1: um like buses and trains and stuff like that in Toronto, uh,
Speaker 1: and give them like traffic reports. And it was all
Speaker 1: it was like sixty seconds of just like fun. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I shot them myself, I wrote them myself, I
Speaker 1: vowed them, I edited them, and I put them all
Speaker 1: out myself. I just showed them like one or two
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, they look cool. Let's just put
Speaker 1: them on the on my YouTube on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: which was like not of consequence at the time because
Speaker 1: it was brand new and you know, uh, and so
Speaker 1: they put it up. But then people started to like them.
Speaker 1: So I started making more and more in depth and
Speaker 1: more creative and more weird, and like someone got really weird.
Speaker 1: But that's what MLS noticed and that's what they liked,
Speaker 1: so led me here. Oh yeah, for sure. Probably if
Speaker 1: you oh gosh, if you searched Rachel Bannetta six and
Speaker 1: sixty t t FC, I'm sure you'd find some real gems.
Speaker 1: So you get So this is pretty wild. It means
Speaker 1: a pretty fast trajectory, right. You you get hired by
Speaker 1: Toronto FC. You you start to establish yourself. You're fortunate
Speaker 1: in that the MLS is still like kind of a
Speaker 1: new league, and obviously you're experimenting in a new arena
Speaker 1: with YouTube and kind of the social ability to advertise
Speaker 1: in that way. And you get to MLS and what
Speaker 1: do you do in New York? What's your job there? So? Uh,
Speaker 1: in New York. It's kind of like Free Range. They're like,
Speaker 1: we want you to be our digital host. So anything
Speaker 1: we need you for, we want you to do, we
Speaker 1: want to develop shows for you. So I got the
Speaker 1: show called Off Topic with Rachel Benetta, which is where
Speaker 1: I would like travel and meet up with an athlete
Speaker 1: and we would go out something, go out and do
Speaker 1: something that had nothing to do with what they did
Speaker 1: on the field. We would like go bowling or go
Speaker 1: you know, seeker shopping or whatever. And I was just
Speaker 1: it was all personality driven. It was like literally just
Speaker 1: me hanging out with these dudes. And again those became
Speaker 1: so popular that we had athletes coming to us and
Speaker 1: being like we would like to do this, which was
Speaker 1: insane because there was still I only spent a year
Speaker 1: with them less. It all happened so so quickly. Um
Speaker 1: so just like really fun, personality driven stuff. And I
Speaker 1: would also still do like comedy sketches that I would
Speaker 1: write and we would put out, um and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like all Free Rangers are like, we willing
Speaker 1: to keep on doing what you like to do, and
Speaker 1: what you like to do is being yourself. So it
Speaker 1: was pretty It was a pretty fun job be sure
Speaker 1: to catch live editions of Out Kicked the coverage with
Speaker 1: Clay Travis week days at six am Eastern three am Pacific. Alright,
Speaker 1: So part of social media and the YouTube universe and
Speaker 1: just people being able to reach out to you comes
Speaker 1: with some negativity. Were you getting almost all positive stuff
Speaker 1: because soccer fans tend to be a happy, go lucky group,
Speaker 1: or were you getting because one of the challenges I
Speaker 1: think people have in general is putting themselves out there
Speaker 1: having this health confidence or the tough skin. And obviously
Speaker 1: just from the lifestyle that you have led, maybe your
Speaker 1: skin was tougher than most. But I feel like that's
Speaker 1: a big challenge, especially for people who were in their
Speaker 1: young twenties, because you may not you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have bubble wrap. People are mean on the internet. Did
Speaker 1: you read any of that or you just didn't read
Speaker 1: the comments or you haven't didn't really have it as
Speaker 1: an issue? Um. I mean, I I feel like, knock
Speaker 1: on wood, I've been really, really lucky even up until
Speaker 1: this point in my career that people tend to be
Speaker 1: pretty nice to me on social media. Um, but I
Speaker 1: think that when I was at MLS, it is such
Speaker 1: a niche sport. There is not a ton of It's
Speaker 1: growing for sure, but there's still a not a ton
Speaker 1: of people that watch. Uh I'm alive. So I was
Speaker 1: putting all these new videos who which were very new.
Speaker 1: They've never seen anything really like this female host digital host,
Speaker 1: she knows a bit about soccer. Okay, this is cool.
Speaker 1: That has probably been the time in my career that
Speaker 1: I have been like wreck niced in airports, more in malls.
Speaker 1: People would come up to me at restaurants because it's
Speaker 1: so niche. People want to soak up like every single
Speaker 1: ounce of content that we have um and and soccer
Speaker 1: fans are hardcore, like they're really into their teams. Um
Speaker 1: So it was really cool, like that was the first
Speaker 1: time that I actually felt like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: is like a nice feeling. People like what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: People are watching what I'm doing. They're starting to follow
Speaker 1: me on social media. People are coming up to me
Speaker 1: in the stands at soccer games and being like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm such a big fan off topic or
Speaker 1: I'm such a big fan to get me in there
Speaker 1: the other show I was doing. So it was a
Speaker 1: really exciting time. I remember the first time I hit
Speaker 1: like ten thousand followers on Twitter. Iuse was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm famous. And then people whenever I would
Speaker 1: go home, people started calling me Hollywood and I wasn't
Speaker 1: even living in l A. But just the even those
Speaker 1: so miniscul members compared to you know, people on social
Speaker 1: media today. Um, but it was a really exciting time
Speaker 1: for me. I so it's like, oh my gosh, people
Speaker 1: like what I'm doing. This is really cool. So it
Speaker 1: was also huge boost and confidence as well. So what
Speaker 1: happens then? So I was about six months into that job,
Speaker 1: and again, um, people started seeing what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I had ESPN and Fox
Speaker 1: Sports knocking on my door. And I have never told
Speaker 1: this story publicly. I told the story to you last week.
Speaker 1: And it took me a while to agree to tell
Speaker 1: this story, but I guess I guess I'll put it
Speaker 1: out there now. Um. So, uh, ESPN gave me a
Speaker 1: really great offer and I was still up to my
Speaker 1: ears in debt, and um, I just started dating somebody
Speaker 1: new in New York City who's still my current boyfriend now.
Speaker 1: And uh, as much as the offer with Fox Sports
Speaker 1: sounded like awesome, like oh my god, I want to
Speaker 1: move to l A. Oh my god, I want to
Speaker 1: work for the same company as Jay and Dan, who
Speaker 1: are like kings Kings Kings Kings from where I come from.
Speaker 1: Um uh, Like every every sign pointed to Fox Sports,
Speaker 1: but I was like, I don't want to move New York.
Speaker 1: I haven't even been living here a year yet, and
Speaker 1: more money, and so I chose ESPN. Plot twist. I
Speaker 1: said not to Fox Sports at first, and I went
Speaker 1: down the route of ESPN and um, everything was Seinfield delivered.
Speaker 1: They gave me my offer. I was like, a yes,
Speaker 1: police bank account is going to be looking good. They
Speaker 1: they got me my visa approved. Like everything was Seinfield delivered.
Speaker 1: And I was about to go to Africa because I
Speaker 1: just started volunteering with a nonprofit. I was like weeks
Speaker 1: away from going Africa. Um, and I was going to
Speaker 1: go to Africa, like the beginning of December and then January.
Speaker 1: Oh one, I was supposed to start with ESPN. So
Speaker 1: what year, Um, this was about like three and four,
Speaker 1: three years ago. So twenty six, you tell your mom, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go work at ESPNE. I said, oh my god, Mom,
Speaker 1: I am gonna make in bee bee beep at ESPN,
Speaker 1: and she's just like, holy ship. It was. It was amazing,
Speaker 1: Like it was such an exciting time. Not that money
Speaker 1: is everything, but it was just like again, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, You're gonna be able to be on your
Speaker 1: own now and I don't have to worry about you
Speaker 1: so much. You're gonna be able to pay off all
Speaker 1: your debt, You're gonna be living in New York City,
Speaker 1: you got a you got a nice boyfriend that I
Speaker 1: really like. Like from her point of view, she was
Speaker 1: just like, thank Jesus all Olivia. Um and so accepted
Speaker 1: everything everything Seinfield delivered. I remember I kept my ten
Speaker 1: that my agent gave me to sign the contract. I
Speaker 1: think I still probably have it somewhere. That is how
Speaker 1: well it's like ESPN, you know, like that's it's like
Speaker 1: a crazy I came from or no, No No, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, now I have Fox Sports and ESPN
Speaker 1: knocking on my door, two of the biggest sports places
Speaker 1: in the entire world. Holy crap. How did I end
Speaker 1: up here? Um? And uh and So I signed everything
Speaker 1: everything Seinfield delivered sent off about a couple of days
Speaker 1: before I leave for Africa. Um My, what would have been.
Speaker 1: My boss and I were chatting. We were like excited.
Speaker 1: We're talking about like where where my guest was gonna be.
Speaker 1: I was gonna still work out in Manhattan. I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna have to go to Bristol um and Uh. I
Speaker 1: on an email from HR and they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: because we offered you the job and everything's like all
Speaker 1: Sinfield delivered. You didn't apply like a normal person, So
Speaker 1: we don't have any information about you. We don't have
Speaker 1: your email, we don't have your phone number, we don't
Speaker 1: have your emergency contact, we don't have your resume, like nothing,
Speaker 1: and as HR, we need all of those things to
Speaker 1: put on file. And I was like, sure, no problems,
Speaker 1: send send your applications like whatever, I'll fill it all out.
Speaker 1: So um, I'm filling it out. It's like emergency contact,
Speaker 1: cell phone number, email, did it out? Where did you
Speaker 1: go to school? What years did you go to I
Speaker 1: went Seneca College from two thousand seven to two thousand
Speaker 1: nine or two eleven whatever. It was not indicating that
Speaker 1: I did not graduate. I was probably making it seem
Speaker 1: like I had because at that point sein Field delivered,
Speaker 1: have this job. Who cares if I went to school?
Speaker 1: Or not period, whether I graduated or not as a
Speaker 1: whole other story. I've been working for like four years
Speaker 1: at this point. Um. And so I sent that off,
Speaker 1: didn't even think about it, flew to Africa, having a
Speaker 1: great time helping the children, YadA, YadA ya. I got
Speaker 1: an email from HR being like, hey, so we called
Speaker 1: Seneca and I was like, oh, no, ps, they're saying
Speaker 1: that you didn't graduate, um, that you're missing one credit,
Speaker 1: cared to explain, and I was just like yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: My dad didn't think it was that big of a deal. Like,
Speaker 1: like I said, signed contracts, everything signed, feel delivered. You
Speaker 1: already have like my direct deposit ready to go virganuary
Speaker 1: oh one, Like I already know where I'm sitting in
Speaker 1: the office. So bad mistake by me, lazy mistake by me,
Speaker 1: just like kind of thinking that this was not going
Speaker 1: to be a big deal because I didn't I already
Speaker 1: had the job. I really didn't think that they were
Speaker 1: going to look into my past at all, minus like
Speaker 1: maybe a what you call it a criminal record, which
Speaker 1: I cleared I used. I'm a perfect person. Um but uh,
Speaker 1: and so I was just like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: this is that like I didn't even know at that time.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, sorry, I didn't pass. I'm missing
Speaker 1: one credit. Here's my transcript something my transcript which was
Speaker 1: showing that I was only missing one and I was like,
Speaker 1: totally my bad. Um. You know, I can talk to
Speaker 1: anybody who wants to to explain the situation, but I
Speaker 1: really don't think it's a big of you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go back to Africa and enjoy this time
Speaker 1: off that I have before I started crazy new job.
Speaker 1: And even what would have been my boss, Cam and
Speaker 1: I were talking. He's like, yeah, sorry, you have to
Speaker 1: deal like you know it's and I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that I had made this MS, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back to what I was doing, still not really
Speaker 1: worrying about it. And then I got a phone call,
Speaker 1: maybe like twenty four hours later, and he's just like,
Speaker 1: are you sitting down house. I was like, oh, in Africa.
Speaker 1: He called me in Africa and was like are you
Speaker 1: sitting down? And ilse just like I am now and
Speaker 1: he's just like hr at ESPN. I guess because they
Speaker 1: are by the book something's happened in their past or whatever,
Speaker 1: or because it's owned by such a big company, Disney. Um,
Speaker 1: they are black and white. By the book, nothing can
Speaker 1: be off even after we've sent you the contract, everything
Speaker 1: sign feel delivered. Nothing can be false on your records.
Speaker 1: And because you put that you graduated, we have to
Speaker 1: revoke your offer. I'm in the middle of nowhere on
Speaker 1: the phone with somebody from New York City telling me
Speaker 1: that when I get back from Africa, I do not
Speaker 1: have a job. And so I was devastated. I was
Speaker 1: absolutely devastated. I was just like, all this hard work
Speaker 1: that I have been kicking my own ask for is
Speaker 1: down the drain because I wrote something on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper that I didn't put enough thought into, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking. I was like, oh my god, they're
Speaker 1: gonna take away my visa. I'm gonna have to move
Speaker 1: back in with my mom. I'm gonna have no way
Speaker 1: to make money. I've already said goodbye to everybody. I've
Speaker 1: already told everyone I'm going to ESPN what the hell
Speaker 1: am I going to do? And thankfully that that what
Speaker 1: would have been my boss. He was very understanding and apologetic.
Speaker 1: He was just like, I am so sorry that this
Speaker 1: is happening. This is insane. I've talked to everybody that
Speaker 1: there is to talk to, but this is the final stance.
Speaker 1: This is what we gotta do. And he was it's like,
Speaker 1: I will talk to people at box, I'll talk to
Speaker 1: people at MLS. Whatever you need to get those offers
Speaker 1: back on the table, Like I will really help you out.
Speaker 1: So did you call from Africa? How did like? So
Speaker 1: you hang up with that guy? You? Uh? And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm Clay Travis is for Rachel ban Ada.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Winds and Losses, you hang up the
Speaker 1: phone and you do what when you're in Africa and
Speaker 1: you get that info? Cried, cried, and I think drank
Speaker 1: a beer because I was in shock. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I didn't even know that this could happen.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, I don't know what. I called my
Speaker 1: mom right away. I think I called my agent because
Speaker 1: I was just like, uh, and I had to explain
Speaker 1: to him when it happened, which explaining it was just embarrassing,
Speaker 1: Like I was like, this is such a stupid mistake
Speaker 1: on my part, Like it was just it was dumb.
Speaker 1: And I was starting to really be self conscious because
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, a sect, these people are gonna
Speaker 1: start thinking that I'm a liar like that I was
Speaker 1: trying to fib about like, you know, what happened at school,
Speaker 1: and that I was trying to pretend that I've asked.
Speaker 1: And so I had explained all this to my agent
Speaker 1: and he was just like Jesus, what did I sign
Speaker 1: up for? So that he immediately put out calls to
Speaker 1: Fox Sports and MLS. Thankfully, after some you know, massaging. Again,
Speaker 1: I had to tell everyone what happened, had to tell
Speaker 1: him LS what happened, had to tell Fox Sports what happened. Like,
Speaker 1: I was devastated. I was like, people are going to
Speaker 1: start questioning my character. This is by far the worst
Speaker 1: thing that's ever happened in my career. Still to this
Speaker 1: day gives me divers um. And uh, you know, I've
Speaker 1: I've never been one to get into trouble. I'm not
Speaker 1: that kind of I'm like a goody two shots minus
Speaker 1: the one time I got suspended in high school. It's
Speaker 1: a different story every day. Um we're talking about there.
Speaker 1: It was I, uh, this was like the first time
Speaker 1: that I ever felt like I was in trouble. Was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. And uh so they put out a
Speaker 1: bunch of calls to people that knew me, that had
Speaker 1: worked with me before, and they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: as Rachel Shady, like what should we think about this?
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh my god, no, she's hard working.
Speaker 1: That like basically everything that I've told you about my career,
Speaker 1: people very much vouched for me, and they were like,
Speaker 1: this is a mistake. You need to hire this girl
Speaker 1: a sap And thankfully Fox Sports uh came back and
Speaker 1: they're like, we still really want you, and and even
Speaker 1: up to their offer in the first place, which was insane,
Speaker 1: like sinisoun heard of if anything, they would say any
Speaker 1: any other company would probably offer less because you could
Speaker 1: would have gone there for ten bucks um. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, yes it yes, fun for the yests.
Speaker 1: I wanted to sign with you in the first place.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes, I says a Jest signed Field.
Speaker 1: Fluid was like, looked. I had to tell all this
Speaker 1: to my boyfriend too. I was just like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be living here in a week because everything happened
Speaker 1: so fast. I had to get rid of my apartment.
Speaker 1: I had to go to l A. I had to
Speaker 1: find an apartment. I had no money at the time,
Speaker 1: saved for a big cross country move like that, because
Speaker 1: I assumed that I was saying in New York, um,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, we gotta break up. I'm
Speaker 1: moving to l A. And this is devastating and but
Speaker 1: my career is number one and I gotta go. And
Speaker 1: so UM, I moved to l A and started working
Speaker 1: with Fox Sports and started working on their digital team,
Speaker 1: and um, they've been absolutely mind boggling incredible. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've resigned a new contract just about every single year
Speaker 1: that I've been here because they keep on making they
Speaker 1: they kept on making my role bigger and bigger. At
Speaker 1: first I signed on to do a digital thing, and
Speaker 1: then I signed on to do digital TV, and then
Speaker 1: I signed on to do digital and even more TV,
Speaker 1: and now I'm a full TV contract. Like they've just
Speaker 1: believed in me and pushed me. And I mean that
Speaker 1: that's insane. I've signed a new contract basically every single
Speaker 1: year that I've been here because my role just keeps
Speaker 1: on changing. Um. So, who went to bat for you
Speaker 1: at Fox? Um, Matt Schneider who ended up hiring me.
Speaker 1: And now it's one of my really good friends who
Speaker 1: is a good guy, and I hope he's listening here.
Speaker 1: So so he would that great higher, great Higher now
Speaker 1: at the NFL network. Yeah. And uh and Scott Riddell,
Speaker 1: who's still a reducer at Fox Sports. He was the
Speaker 1: one that kind of called around to a couple of people.
Speaker 1: Him and I were friendly, and he's just like, I
Speaker 1: know you're not this person, but I am going to
Speaker 1: go call some people that you've worked with and just
Speaker 1: kind of get an over, you know, more people who
Speaker 1: have your back. And so he called a ton of
Speaker 1: people and we're like, yes, hire her, yes, hire her,
Speaker 1: yes higher. So he could bring that to Schneider and
Speaker 1: be like, there's so many people vouching for her, like
Speaker 1: we need we need this girl. Um and and madel
Speaker 1: is also an awesome guy, by the way, and both
Speaker 1: of them, when we'll get to this in a minute.
Speaker 1: When walk it In happened, they immediately called me and
Speaker 1: they're like, you're gonna absolutely love working with Rachel. She's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Um And So, but did you think going back to
Speaker 1: that Africa when you get that call, did you think, like,
Speaker 1: my career is over? Oh? I remember sitting out. We
Speaker 1: would wake up early early because we were going into
Speaker 1: these really small villages that were like hours away. I
Speaker 1: remember sitting out at three thirty in the morning. We
Speaker 1: were getting our car packed and I was like three
Speaker 1: or four and the early morning prayer was happening, and
Speaker 1: so I remember sitting Maybes later on the day, I
Speaker 1: was remember sitting on the stoop listening to this prayer
Speaker 1: being just like shouted into one of just like sirens
Speaker 1: all over, just being echoed all over, and just looking
Speaker 1: into like this guy and being like it's over. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help to go home and face the music.
Speaker 1: And I've really messed up this time and I need
Speaker 1: to grow up. And I was just really angry at
Speaker 1: myself because at that point, I was just like, this
Speaker 1: was an incredible experience. Now with the what am I
Speaker 1: gonna do? What which path am I on? Now? Like
Speaker 1: I just had no idea what was in store, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea that Fox was gonna put the
Speaker 1: offer back on the table. Thank thank god. I was
Speaker 1: just like, thank you so much. I would absolutely love
Speaker 1: to take this, but I'm going to go with option
Speaker 1: A because A, B, and C and I was actually
Speaker 1: Matt Niner the one that I turned down, and I
Speaker 1: think he understood. I was just like, I need to
Speaker 1: stay here. I've got a new boyfriend. I'm close to
Speaker 1: my family. My dad passed away a few years ago.
Speaker 1: I still need to be close to them. Um, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: And he was super understanding in the first place. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad that him and I had such a great
Speaker 1: connection because it was easier for me to call back
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, so this is what happened. Please
Speaker 1: take me back. So what do you do with Fox?
Speaker 1: You have Fox? Yeah? Started your digital videos, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I started working at this thing called at the Buzzer.
Speaker 1: So it was like any video of a guy getting
Speaker 1: like a softball to the nads, we would be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, check out this viral video. Then maybe
Speaker 1: like thirty second things that we would Sometimes it would
Speaker 1: be like during commercials they would roll on Fox, So
Speaker 1: I was getting on TV in that way. But usually
Speaker 1: it was just like videos, like viral videos that we
Speaker 1: would put back out on Twitter. Um. But that ended
Speaker 1: about like a year after it got canceled a year
Speaker 1: after I started with Fox, and they're like, we still
Speaker 1: really want to use you, so we're gonna keep you around.
Speaker 1: You're gonna still do more digital videos, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep you in the soccer space. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: when I veered off at Fox and started doing like
Speaker 1: only soccer um And so I was doing soccer digital
Speaker 1: like literally up until last year, like last summer when
Speaker 1: I got locked in. I had just gotten back from
Speaker 1: the World Cup in Russia. So we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a second. But so you and I meet for
Speaker 1: the first time that I remember at the Fox super
Speaker 1: Bowl party because you had done what did you do?
Speaker 1: Like a Lady Gaga video? Yeah, I wrote a sketch
Speaker 1: that they were actually gonna put in the pre show, uh,
Speaker 1: the night before the super Bowl, which was like still insane,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, uh, And so I wrote a sketch. So
Speaker 1: I was going for that, and then we were also
Speaker 1: just like going to go shoot some fun stuff for
Speaker 1: that was a beautiful thing about digital. It's just like,
Speaker 1: let's just go hang out, let's make some videos, let's
Speaker 1: put them up on Facebook and they'll probably get insane
Speaker 1: amount of views because that was just like the Facebook
Speaker 1: algorithm at the time, and and on Twitter and stuff
Speaker 1: like that too. So I went there and then I
Speaker 1: was also I did some stuff for Garbage Time for
Speaker 1: Kan Nolan Show, which was super fun. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: branching it. That was like the first time that my
Speaker 1: current boss, now Charlie, our crew boss, was just like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we want to start getting you more on TV. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna come to the super Bowl, You're gonna do
Speaker 1: garbage time, You're gonna do a couple of hits for them.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, okay, let's do it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, constantly just like putting me in situations so
Speaker 1: we're terrifying. But that made me grow so much in
Speaker 1: the process over the last two years. All right, so
Speaker 1: then you like do what like so you you had
Speaker 1: you set in for Cowherd a couple of times, like
Speaker 1: as as Fox starts to think, okay, maybe this girl
Speaker 1: can be on television. You said earlier you wanted to
Speaker 1: be an acting and actress and things like that. Were
Speaker 1: you doing any kind of any kind of things in
Speaker 1: that respect? And I think probably this is a long question,
Speaker 1: but people who have listened and are listening now can
Speaker 1: tell you're quick. Right, Like you said, you do a
Speaker 1: lot of improv but you think and talk rapidly, which
Speaker 1: is which is obviously good for unscripted television. What were
Speaker 1: you doing, like, what was the transition point from video
Speaker 1: to television. I is a part time student. Basically I
Speaker 1: was in class four times a week, whether it was
Speaker 1: like straight up acting class or improv classes that I
Speaker 1: was taking at ground Links, which is like ground Links
Speaker 1: is home to so many s and l alums like
Speaker 1: You've got Will Ferrell, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiggs just to
Speaker 1: name a few, like Phewee Herman went there. So it
Speaker 1: was it's like the ultimate school for comedy in l A.
Speaker 1: So I was going to that taking uh, like straight
Speaker 1: up acting classes and just like really fully immersing myself
Speaker 1: into the creative process, which was all all helping with
Speaker 1: all of the comedy sketches that I was writing for
Speaker 1: the Fox digital side as well. UM. And as I
Speaker 1: was starting to do more comedy sketches like this has
Speaker 1: just been a trend in my career, like doing more
Speaker 1: creative stuff and putting it out there, I started getting UM.
Speaker 1: I started getting meetings with people on the studio side,
Speaker 1: on the TV side, and they're like, who are you,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, where did you come from, and
Speaker 1: how do we get you to do more? So it
Speaker 1: was UM I've always said over the past few years,
Speaker 1: as like I've develop a deep Fox from the beginning.
Speaker 1: I want to grow up here. I want to grow
Speaker 1: and become whoever I'm supposed to be at Fox, because
Speaker 1: they're so nurturing and so patient, and we'll we'll let
Speaker 1: you make a mistake, uh, and we'll let you grow
Speaker 1: in your space. And I feel like so many times
Speaker 1: people are like it not doing so good, let's grab
Speaker 1: her off, and they let me squirm and kind of
Speaker 1: figure it out myself, which I'm so thankful for. UM.
Speaker 1: But it was it was just a lot of meetings
Speaker 1: and sometimes I would get a chance. I remember the
Speaker 1: first time I filled in for on Coward Show, Chris
Speaker 1: Carter and Nick Wright. We're doing like a test run
Speaker 1: for their show that was being developed, and so they
Speaker 1: were filling in, so it wasn't even the herd. It
Speaker 1: was a three man team. And maybe they were testing
Speaker 1: me for to host that show as well, although that
Speaker 1: was pretty surely on. I don't think they were doing that.
Speaker 1: UM and I bombed, Oh my gosh, I bombed so hard.
Speaker 1: I could not figure it out because it was the
Speaker 1: first time I was on television and then in the US,
Speaker 1: and I remember somebody came out. I kept on screwing
Speaker 1: up because I was doing what would have been Christine
Speaker 1: like he's role at the times to just like the
Speaker 1: news updates, and there was like a um, you know,
Speaker 1: Colin would be like okay, and over to Christine with
Speaker 1: the news, and then there was like a doo doo
Speaker 1: doo dooo, like a musical thing, and I would never
Speaker 1: stop for the musical thing. I'd be like, Okay, the
Speaker 1: net of the day is And I did that like
Speaker 1: four times in a row, over talking over the music.
Speaker 1: You can't even hear what I'm saying anyways, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just kept on forgetting about it. And I was
Speaker 1: also so nervous, and I remember somebody coming out I'd
Speaker 1: done it twice, somebody and I had a third hit
Speaker 1: in the show. Somebody came out and was just like,
Speaker 1: he screwed this up twice, don't take it three for three.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, I'm fired. I'm
Speaker 1: fired from a job. I don't even have um And
Speaker 1: it was just a bad day. I did you screw
Speaker 1: it up the third time or did you get it
Speaker 1: right on the third chap? I think I got it
Speaker 1: right for the third time, thankfully, but Chris and Nick
Speaker 1: were probably like, who is why were we up with her?
Speaker 1: Where's Christine? Uh? And so it was a while. It
Speaker 1: was it was a while where I was back on TV.
Speaker 1: Gave me a second to figure it out on the
Speaker 1: digital side. Um. But then uh, I just started feeling
Speaker 1: in like randomly, randomly here and there, uh for Christine
Speaker 1: and I actually got to sit in with Colin one time,
Speaker 1: then another couple of times. It was like Doug Gottlieb
Speaker 1: who fills in for calling sometimes. And then uh, I
Speaker 1: think the kicker was going away to the World Cup,
Speaker 1: and I was doing a lot of TV at the
Speaker 1: World Cup because we had so um, we had so
Speaker 1: many different programs happening. We had Tonight Show, we had
Speaker 1: a daily show, I had my digital show, which very
Speaker 1: much felt and looked like a television show. I was
Speaker 1: reading off prompter and we were doing it live and yeada, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, no, just once, I've been to Germany.
Speaker 1: Just that's it. So that's a big deal for people
Speaker 1: who don't realize you went over to Russia. The US
Speaker 1: misses the World Cup, which is like just devastating to
Speaker 1: be so bad. Where were you when the US got
Speaker 1: beat by Trinidad into Artago. I think it was right
Speaker 1: where Um. I was at a bar. We were doing
Speaker 1: a live stream we were doing I was doing a
Speaker 1: lot of soccer covers even leading up to the World Cup.
Speaker 1: We had like a pre show in a post show
Speaker 1: anytime the US had a qualifier. So I was at
Speaker 1: a bar and we had to go live seconds after
Speaker 1: they had gotten knocked out when I was just stew Holden,
Speaker 1: who used to be on the national team. He is
Speaker 1: an analyst for FS one now and calls crazy games
Speaker 1: like the World Cup final on Fox, and um him
Speaker 1: and I just had to like go through this fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty minute live show of being like, Okay, so the
Speaker 1: US is in the World Cup, but we're still going
Speaker 1: to the World Cup. We're gonna be in Russia in
Speaker 1: the summer. And it was just like a weird It was.
Speaker 1: It was a weird balance of like being excited and
Speaker 1: being sympathetic to all the American people watching that they
Speaker 1: didn't just make it into the World Cup. So um
Speaker 1: so I covered it every second leading up to it
Speaker 1: and then was there for the actual thing, which was
Speaker 1: pretty incredib ball, so it was incredible for everybody who
Speaker 1: watched it you also ended up hospitalized. What happened there? Um,
Speaker 1: I woke up. We were working insane hours, like I
Speaker 1: was doing my show like I mentioned, and then I
Speaker 1: was also doing this tonight show. So oftentimes I was
Speaker 1: working like twa like full days and uh and then
Speaker 1: also like going home and watching the games too, so
Speaker 1: it's not like I ever stopped. And um. So I
Speaker 1: woke up one day and I was really sick. I
Speaker 1: just did not feel good. I couldn't get out of bed.
Speaker 1: I showed up to work and they were like, go home.
Speaker 1: You look bad. If you get anyone else sick, we're
Speaker 1: in trouble. So you need to go home and rest. Um.
Speaker 1: And I didn't like vomit or anything like that. I
Speaker 1: just felt really weird. I felt weak, I felt like nauseous,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't know what's going on
Speaker 1: with me. So went home, slept for like fifteen hours
Speaker 1: something crazy, and then woke up the next day and
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I feel pretty good, showed up to work,
Speaker 1: worked another crazy day. The next morning. I woke up
Speaker 1: usually because of the time difference, we were shooting later
Speaker 1: on in in the night, so I would finished until
Speaker 1: like three am, and I go home and then I
Speaker 1: would sleep until like noon or whatever. Um. I woke
Speaker 1: up at eight am the next day and I was
Speaker 1: just like, this is not good. I still need to
Speaker 1: be sleeping for a few hours if I'm going to
Speaker 1: be able to stand. Uh. And I felt really sick again,
Speaker 1: like super nauseous, and I just like I I just started
Speaker 1: huking like so bad. I texted our team doctor who
Speaker 1: was kind of like traveling around to all the different
Speaker 1: hotels that was in charge of Fox, and Uh. I
Speaker 1: was just like, I'm putting bad shape. You need to
Speaker 1: come to my room, like, please tell me. And he
Speaker 1: when he found me, I was on the bathroom floor
Speaker 1: because it was cold the tile, and I was like
Speaker 1: burning up and I just couldn't move. I was just like,
Speaker 1: if you touch me, I'm gonna throw up. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: throw up around your face, so we better not touch me.
Speaker 1: And uh. He took a shot of morphine and put
Speaker 1: it in a butt and that helped me to not vomit.
Speaker 1: And they've transported me from the tile floor in my
Speaker 1: bathroom to the hospital and uh and not in an ambulance, No,
Speaker 1: we had like some security cars so they transport transported
Speaker 1: me to the hospital, and um, I went in there
Speaker 1: and had like a bunch of scans and they're like,
Speaker 1: your gall bladder is more than twice its normal size
Speaker 1: and we have no idea why, so we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do some tests. Um. At that point, thankfully I did.
Speaker 1: The morphine had made me stop vomiting, vomiting and feeling
Speaker 1: so nauseous. So I was like, Okay, at the time,
Speaker 1: you're in a Russian hospital, right, I'm in a Russian hospital.
Speaker 1: And as you can tell by my history, I hate hospitals.
Speaker 1: They give me anxiety. They freaked me out. I spent
Speaker 1: way too much time in them as a kid. I
Speaker 1: cannot stand hospital. So I'm like literally watching Netflix on
Speaker 1: my phone because like I can't think. I cannot be
Speaker 1: here in my mind, I Am not going to sit
Speaker 1: here and stare at the ceiling feeling like super nauseous still.
Speaker 1: And I remember at the time, I hadn't been fully
Speaker 1: admitted yet because they hadn't figured out my insurance, and
Speaker 1: so I was in like a weight like one of
Speaker 1: those like waiting rooms where there's like a ton of
Speaker 1: beds and you're only really separated by like a sheet. Um.
Speaker 1: I was in one of those for like probably three hours,
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember the wheeled this guy in. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind, I'm so nauseous. They wheeled this guy in
Speaker 1: from Boston of all places, and this guy has severe
Speaker 1: diarrhea and has had diarrhea for forty eight hours and
Speaker 1: would go into full detail in length for the next
Speaker 1: twenty minutes while I sat and choked down my vomit
Speaker 1: for it was it was laughable. I was just like,
Speaker 1: this is not happening to me. Why why are we
Speaker 1: both in this Russian hospital? So they ended up admitting me.
Speaker 1: I spent the next three days in the hospital begging
Speaker 1: them to let me go because I wanted to get
Speaker 1: back to work. I had to have a fill in
Speaker 1: which was just like this is my show. I need
Speaker 1: to get through the World Cup like this, I need
Speaker 1: a medal of honor. Once I finished it, uh, and
Speaker 1: I was, I was like devastated, and I just like
Speaker 1: watched TV and ate crutons and waited until my goldbladder
Speaker 1: went down to normal size. Fox Sports Radio has the
Speaker 1: best sports talk a lot end up in the nation.
Speaker 1: Catch all of our shows at Fox sports radio dot
Speaker 1: com and within the I heart radio app search f
Speaker 1: s R to listen live. I'm Clay Travis. Is Rachel
Speaker 1: Bannetta talking about our gallbladder on Wins and Losses and
Speaker 1: they figure out what caused your gallbladder to just like
Speaker 1: double in size. They said, it's a combination of things.
Speaker 1: It was like, it could have been stressed, it could
Speaker 1: have been eating different foods, which we absolutely were. The
Speaker 1: food in Russia was um as you can assume pretty
Speaker 1: different um not sleep, all of these things, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I check all those boxes. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that I have a large callblatterer. But it
Speaker 1: just took. It took like three days and I started
Speaker 1: feeling a little bit normal. But then I couldn't eat
Speaker 1: normal food for like a couple of a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: I had to have like boiled chicken and rice just
Speaker 1: until my my body went back to normal. So you
Speaker 1: come back from you survive living in Russia, you come
Speaker 1: back and you want to do television maybe? And when
Speaker 1: did you hear so walk it In is being worked on.
Speaker 1: I guess that we're like the next summer, right, like
Speaker 1: the next summer after the after the World Cup? Or
Speaker 1: was it the same summer, I literally from from Russia. Like,
Speaker 1: let's say on a Friday, and I got an email saying,
Speaker 1: Charlie Dixon, who's our boss now, wants to have lunch
Speaker 1: with you on Monday. Are you around? And I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, sure, And so I come to the Fox
Speaker 1: lot and I have lunch with Charlie and Charlie's is
Speaker 1: like there, I'm developing a show, um and uh Chris,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna host it. And I really want you
Speaker 1: to be the fill in, like whenever she's sick or
Speaker 1: wants to go on vacation. I want you to be
Speaker 1: the designated number one fill in. That way, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get reps on TV, you're gonna learn this space, You're
Speaker 1: it's it's just like the perfect place for you. And
Speaker 1: he says like, if it's not this, if you're not
Speaker 1: interested in this, it's something else, like we definitely want
Speaker 1: to get you on TV this year and and like
Speaker 1: you know, more experience in yeah, yah YadA. And I
Speaker 1: was just like I'm absolutely down, Like I will start
Speaker 1: tomorrow whatever you need. And he's like, okay, great, good here,
Speaker 1: glad you're into it. Blah blah blah blah. Somehow from
Speaker 1: that Monday to literally the following Monday, ship hit the
Speaker 1: van and he called me on money. He was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so how would you actually like to host the whole
Speaker 1: thing because that's that's that's up for graps now, UM.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, yes, yes, yes that's terrifying,
Speaker 1: but yes I'm in UM. And so he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna like test it out and you can meet
Speaker 1: the guys and and we'll see. He's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: promising anything, but let's just you know, go to the
Speaker 1: next step and and see what this looks like. And
Speaker 1: so we were all I mean, you guys were flowed
Speaker 1: to l A still had no idea. I think in
Speaker 1: their minds they were like, okay, well she's gonna host it.
Speaker 1: Still to me, I was just like, okay, this is
Speaker 1: very much like a tryout. I need to be very
Speaker 1: proper and like just like really well everybody. And uh
Speaker 1: so I showed up to the meeting, um Met stal
Speaker 1: Met Todd had met you once before, and uh we
Speaker 1: just had like a really great first table read. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was, um, but do you remember
Speaker 1: that like all of us were just like clicking and
Speaker 1: driving and like making fun of each other from the
Speaker 1: get go. From the beginning, this is like how we
Speaker 1: have done this show. Uh. And I remember like people
Speaker 1: looking around at each other at the table and they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is it. This is a group. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: like a couple of days later, they Charlie called me
Speaker 1: into his office and he's like, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: host this show, and I just pretend vomited. I was
Speaker 1: like okay, and uh yeah, and then we just did
Speaker 1: like a bunch of trier and so a bunch of
Speaker 1: rehearsals leading up to the show and then it was lunched.
Speaker 1: So probably from the time that I found out I
Speaker 1: was getting the show, it was like two weeks until
Speaker 1: it actually happened two weeks three weeks to be And
Speaker 1: by the way, Charrissa decided she had so much going
Speaker 1: on she couldn't do a daily one hour show, which
Speaker 1: then left it open for who was going to be
Speaker 1: the host, and you just swept right in. But talking
Speaker 1: about taking risks, and I'm Clay Travis, Rachel Barnetta Wins
Speaker 1: and Losses. You've taken a lot of risks and a
Speaker 1: lot of creative risk in your career, but you didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about gambling like that. You you you were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do the show, but you're I mean you said
Speaker 1: earlier like you didn't know much about soccer when you
Speaker 1: started MLS. You just kind of threw yourself into to it,
Speaker 1: and they gave you like a binder to try to
Speaker 1: learn as much as you could before gambling started. Right.
Speaker 1: One thing that I'm really saying full for is I'm
Speaker 1: a quick learner. If I'm if I'm like dedicated to something,
Speaker 1: then I will pick it up. Um. And so that, yes,
Speaker 1: they gave me a binder, the Gambling Bible, and I
Speaker 1: went home and I just started pairing through that thing
Speaker 1: and had somebody like sit with me and kind of
Speaker 1: like understood, like because gambling, I feel like when you
Speaker 1: first look at it's a lot of numbers. It's like
Speaker 1: super intimidating. It's like WHOA, this is the language that
Speaker 1: I don't even understand sometimes until somebody sat with me
Speaker 1: and talked to me as a human being and like
Speaker 1: discussed every kind of game that you could play in
Speaker 1: terms of sports gambling, and I just got it. I
Speaker 1: picked it up, and then I just had to learn
Speaker 1: the terms and like how to say the numbers and
Speaker 1: the way that we say it with the halves and
Speaker 1: and the plus and minus and YadA YadA, YadA um
Speaker 1: and then I just figured it out. But also, football
Speaker 1: is not something that I was like, I've covered soccer
Speaker 1: for the past few years, and even if it was
Speaker 1: something that I was watching, I haven't. I haven't covered
Speaker 1: in a way that you're full on talking about it
Speaker 1: every single day, especially on TV, and TV basically have
Speaker 1: to be pretty bang on about everything that you're talking
Speaker 1: about in terms of like facts, unless you're Clay Travis. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was also something I was having to learn
Speaker 1: as well. Uh So I dove into sports gambling, I
Speaker 1: dove into football, and I picked it up relatively quickly.
Speaker 1: But then it was also like finding the confidence to
Speaker 1: talk about it too, um and talk about it in
Speaker 1: like a way that you would talk to your friends,
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what our show is like, a bunch
Speaker 1: of people chatting about, you know, what games they like
Speaker 1: and what kind of bets they like. So it was
Speaker 1: a lot of work. It was a ton of work.
Speaker 1: I remember like being very close to panic attack a
Speaker 1: couple of the nights leading up to our first show
Speaker 1: because I was like, I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: do this, Like I think they've got the wrong person. Um,
Speaker 1: But thankfully things things went the right way. How So
Speaker 1: we talked about that first table read. We were it's
Speaker 1: not on the lot. We're sitting there. For people who
Speaker 1: may not understand what that's like. It's there's no cameras,
Speaker 1: there's no dress up, like, there's no you know, makeup
Speaker 1: or anything, or nobody's dressed in fancy clothes or any
Speaker 1: thing like that, but you just kind of do a
Speaker 1: mock show. And almost from the get go it was
Speaker 1: really really smooth. I mean, I knew Furman, I didn't
Speaker 1: know sal at all. I didn't. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: other than to have met you at that Super Bowl party,
Speaker 1: and so I don't think you knew anybody, right, Like
Speaker 1: you didn't know any of the three of us. No,
Speaker 1: I I didn't know anyone. I remember our boss calling
Speaker 1: me and being like, do you know who cousins Salas?
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, that's that name. Sounds really familiar.
Speaker 1: And I had my computer in front of me and
Speaker 1: I looked it up and I'm like, oh, yeah, Jimmy
Speaker 1: kimbl Okay, I got that uh, and then I had
Speaker 1: met you literally one time before, um, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know Todd Furman, So I was just like I was
Speaker 1: going in pretty blind for sure. So how so first
Speaker 1: of all they announced the show and are you like
Speaker 1: people immediately are going to say things bad about me? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: I did anybody say anything bad about sal Or Furman
Speaker 1: to you? Um? I don't think so. I think it
Speaker 1: was all yeah. I remember my mom calling me and
Speaker 1: being like who, Like what is this Clay's guy? What
Speaker 1: is this deal? Like? Why is everyone one? You know?
Speaker 1: You would sink when you announced the show that everyone's
Speaker 1: going to be like raw raw raw, Yes, like this
Speaker 1: is amazing, congratulations and they're like I would watch it
Speaker 1: if Clay Travis wasn't on it. It's like what am
Speaker 1: I signing up for? Oh my goodness? Um, but I
Speaker 1: was excited. I remember there's a photo of my mom
Speaker 1: that my aunt's hook when I called her and told
Speaker 1: her that I got the job, and it's just like
Speaker 1: her with a huge smile on her face being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. So that was pretty cool. But it's exciting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a new venture and people that
Speaker 1: have watched you grow for as long as people have
Speaker 1: been watching me grow. I think when I say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm moving on to TV, people are like
Speaker 1: that is awesome. Like I said, I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of I've been really lucky and had a lot of
Speaker 1: uh positive people following me, and so I I don't
Speaker 1: really get a lot of nasty stuff unless you're Tom
Speaker 1: Allen Bauld. Yeah, of course. So how nervous were you
Speaker 1: before the first show? Um, I was freaking out. I
Speaker 1: was freaking out, and I was freaking out for a
Speaker 1: long while after that. Like I the first half of
Speaker 1: of our season, I probably didn't sleep much. Like I
Speaker 1: was just like constantly in fear of getting something wrong.
Speaker 1: And like that dates back to when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't have somebody who was being like great job,
Speaker 1: Like you should have all the confidence in the world, because,
Speaker 1: like like I said, my parents were busy with other things.
Speaker 1: And so my therapist has helped me and navigate that road. Um,
Speaker 1: but uh so I'm constantly just in fear of like
Speaker 1: being wrong, saying the wrong thing, not doing well, screwing up,
Speaker 1: getting fired. I mean even yesterday we had our you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've had our season premiere of of season two
Speaker 1: of Blocking In, and um, my boss was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got I got a couple of notes. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to call me tonight and tell
Speaker 1: me those notes now or else I will think about
Speaker 1: it until tomorrow morning. And they were all good notes.
Speaker 1: But he called me like, I know, I had to
Speaker 1: call you because you're just gonna go crazy over these things.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I'm guess I'm glad that you know
Speaker 1: the kind of person I am now. Um, but it
Speaker 1: took a while to kind of find my footing and
Speaker 1: get comfortable. And live television is terrifying when you're first
Speaker 1: starting out, and I think people, I'm sure people realize
Speaker 1: that it's a scary thing, but when you're sitting in
Speaker 1: front of the camera, you feel so I felt like
Speaker 1: a kid. I felt like a child that first day, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, somebody please hold my hand and walk
Speaker 1: me through this because I cannot do it alone. But
Speaker 1: thankfully I just like blacked out and got through it
Speaker 1: and got through the next day and the next day
Speaker 1: and the next day, and now I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty used to it and feel much more confident about
Speaker 1: everything in terms of you know what, we're talking about,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty scary there for a while. So
Speaker 1: what I think is fascinating about you in particular is
Speaker 1: you're young, um, but you don't like you can be
Speaker 1: made fun of on the television show in a way
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people can't. Um, and
Speaker 1: like people make fun of me all the time. Whatever
Speaker 1: I'm forty, I've been through, you know, like that's kind
Speaker 1: of been my life story for a while. But I
Speaker 1: feel like in this Instagram age that we're in, so
Speaker 1: many people are like they want to put out a
Speaker 1: version of themselves is perfect, but you're comfortable in the imperfect.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? Um? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I just want to be I know it's
Speaker 1: gonna sounds so losory, but I just want to be
Speaker 1: me because I look at so many other people on
Speaker 1: Instagram they're like putting out this perfect version of themselves
Speaker 1: and like, to be honest, I definitely curate my Instagram
Speaker 1: to what I wanted to be. I'm not like showing
Speaker 1: all the sad stuff that I've talked about on here, um,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it would be so easy for
Speaker 1: me to post photos where I'm like looking good and
Speaker 1: you know, feeling good, and I feel like my followers
Speaker 1: would probably jump way up. And you know, anytime I
Speaker 1: even post a selfie on my Instagram, it's like astronomically
Speaker 1: more like said, if I were to post the sunset picture,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I can see what works,
Speaker 1: but I just don't want to be that. I feel
Speaker 1: like I absolutely want to be an advocate for women
Speaker 1: in this space in sports and in television, and there's
Speaker 1: not a ton of us. And so when I'm looking
Speaker 1: at somebody, whether it's on social media or TV and
Speaker 1: I and they've got like, you know, gigantic boobs and
Speaker 1: they look perfect, I'm like, I can't do that. I
Speaker 1: can't be that person. But maybe if somebody's watching me
Speaker 1: and I'm being a goofball and totally imperfect and messing
Speaker 1: up my lines and laughing at myself, and maybe they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can do that and be probably better than that.
Speaker 1: I just I do think about that a lot, and
Speaker 1: I would never want to be somebody that I'm not
Speaker 1: and and that version of you know, and kudos to
Speaker 1: those women who can feel comfortable in their skin and
Speaker 1: be sexy and all that stuff. That's just like not
Speaker 1: who I am, and I never want to be like that.
Speaker 1: I just want to be the goofy me that I am.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
Speaker 1: the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox Sports
Speaker 1: Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app
Speaker 1: search f s R to listen live. We're talking to
Speaker 1: Rachel bonetto wins and Losses. You get tagged a lot
Speaker 1: on things that I say or do, and people are like,
Speaker 1: how in the world can you stand that awful human being,
Speaker 1: Clay Travis. People, A lot of people who are listening
Speaker 1: to this right now are already going to like me
Speaker 1: or at least tolerate me. But also there will be
Speaker 1: people who are listening to this right now that are
Speaker 1: fans of yours that don't really know me, or they
Speaker 1: are fans, or they're just finding this, And I hope
Speaker 1: this is something people will listen to for a long
Speaker 1: time in the future, and they're listening to this after
Speaker 1: you just won an Emmy or after you after you
Speaker 1: just won some award for an acting related venture. But
Speaker 1: what I would argue is people don't have to agree
Speaker 1: on everything to like each other, right, And I address
Speaker 1: this because I'm sure that you're gonna get tagged as
Speaker 1: soon as I put it up, Like, how in the
Speaker 1: world can you spend time with Clay like you and
Speaker 1: I don't agree on a lot of different things in
Speaker 1: the world. I don't agree on one of different things
Speaker 1: with my wife or my parents everybody else. I tend
Speaker 1: to get along with everyone. And I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a sort of zeit guest that's out there right now
Speaker 1: of if you don't agree with everything, you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: hanging out with this person. And I feel like, even
Speaker 1: though we disagree on things, you probably agree with me.
Speaker 1: That life would be kind of boring if you only
Speaker 1: hung out with people who agreed with you on everything.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. And I think that, if anything,
Speaker 1: you have taught me that this year, because I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm, you know, pretty to the left and
Speaker 1: I don't agree with some of the things that that
Speaker 1: you post, and um, same with some of my family,
Speaker 1: Like some of my family voted for Trump and I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily agree with that, but um, that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean they're an absolutely atrocious person. And I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: it's like our society is a mess right now because
Speaker 1: all of us hate each other because of where we
Speaker 1: stand politically, and that's just never really been the case before,
Speaker 1: and it's only going to make problems worse. So I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, going into this show, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm gonna have to Travis. He was
Speaker 1: just talking about boobs on CNN, Like, how am I
Speaker 1: going to what you think? By the way, when you
Speaker 1: heard that, I said that I was the first amendment
Speaker 1: in boobs absolut you know, like you were Dingleberry, I
Speaker 1: was like, this guy's a loser. What is he doing?
Speaker 1: He's trying to get a right, like a rise out
Speaker 1: of women. And I was, I was, I remember you.
Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody, one of my girlfriends who
Speaker 1: was also working in sports, and we were talking about
Speaker 1: it the day that you did that, and I was
Speaker 1: just like I was pissed because it was at a
Speaker 1: time I think, like the me too stuff was happening,
Speaker 1: and it was just a time to be angry as
Speaker 1: a woman. And I was just like, how dare he?
Speaker 1: Like that's just so stupid. Give us a little bit
Speaker 1: more than that, and like talk about women in a
Speaker 1: way that we deserve to be talked about, not just
Speaker 1: like from our boobs, and I was. I was genuinely angry.
Speaker 1: And then you know, people I say stupid stuff too,
Speaker 1: and not to say that, you know, you should have
Speaker 1: said that. You shouldn't have said that. We don't need
Speaker 1: to go back into that. But I think that just
Speaker 1: because somebody tweet something or says something that does not
Speaker 1: tell you totally and completely who that person is. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's what I've learned this year from
Speaker 1: doing the show. And sal and I had a lot
Speaker 1: of conversations about this in the beginning because him and
Speaker 1: I are, you know, relatively similar, and you know what
Speaker 1: we what we think and what we feel. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to speak for him, but um, Tim and I
Speaker 1: have this conversation like we totally thought we were gonna
Speaker 1: hate you because we thought you were gonna be a
Speaker 1: butt head, and you're not. You invited my mom into
Speaker 1: your home, and my mom's met your mom, and our
Speaker 1: families have come together and you've been nothing but nice
Speaker 1: and supportive to me and my career. And it's a
Speaker 1: little bit disappointing that you're not as big of an
Speaker 1: asshole as I thought you were going to be, because
Speaker 1: I was fully prepared to hate you you are. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that you're right. I think that um, you know,
Speaker 1: I I'm not going to agree with everything that you say,
Speaker 1: and you're not gonna agree with everything that I say.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that we should not try to
Speaker 1: be friends. Because what I've realized is that you and
Speaker 1: I do have a lot in common and we stand
Speaker 1: on the same ground in some places, and that's what
Speaker 1: makes people friends, and that's what makes relationships happen. And
Speaker 1: I think that more people should have, uh an outlook
Speaker 1: on that. And in fact, I spend some time with
Speaker 1: my my uncle who you know, otherwise I'm I have
Speaker 1: nothing in common with a couple of weeks ago and
Speaker 1: him and I had a conversation which we hadn't had
Speaker 1: in like a couple of years, and I tried to
Speaker 1: be on common ground because that's trying, like, that's me
Speaker 1: trying to look at the world in this light. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, last couple of questions for you, and
Speaker 1: thanks for all the times. Uh, the last couple of
Speaker 1: questions for you. You're not even ten years out of
Speaker 1: high school. If that's weird, Yeah, And I still think
Speaker 1: that's crazy. And I think there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are going to be listening and think that's crazy too,
Speaker 1: because you remember your ten year high school unions or
Speaker 1: whatever else. But if you were about to have your
Speaker 1: twenty year high school reunion, so eleven years from now,
Speaker 1: a decade plus, what would you hope you have done
Speaker 1: by thirty eight that you haven't done b by thirty eight.
Speaker 1: I hope that, first off, I really just hope that
Speaker 1: I'm happy, because we can. I feel like this phase
Speaker 1: of my life, I'm realizing like I've already done a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff with my career, and um, that's it.
Speaker 1: It's it's not everything. Money, isn't everything your accolades, like,
Speaker 1: it's just not It's not what you want to leave
Speaker 1: the world with. So I hope that I'm in a
Speaker 1: place that I am happy and not so career obsessed,
Speaker 1: which I am right now. I hope that that kind
Speaker 1: of like dies down a little teeny tiny bit and
Speaker 1: I'm at a place that I'm happy with. But also
Speaker 1: that I just like keep on growing and taking on
Speaker 1: more opportunities and and just staying the same person and
Speaker 1: not becoming, um a jerk or an asshole. And I
Speaker 1: feel like going home helps that a lot, because my
Speaker 1: mom still lives in a very very small town with
Speaker 1: only like a hundred people. And so going back to
Speaker 1: those places where no one knows who you are and
Speaker 1: um you're treated like everybody else is is very grounding
Speaker 1: and a beautiful thing for me. And then I just
Speaker 1: keep on making stuff because we can, so we can
Speaker 1: get caught up in our busy day to day, Like
Speaker 1: we do a live show every single day, it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to go home and have energy to do anything
Speaker 1: like a freaking two hour podcast right now. But UM,
Speaker 1: I hope I came on writing and making something that
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of. And um, I've got some projects
Speaker 1: on the on the back burner that I'm going to
Speaker 1: try and put my all into this year and snap
Speaker 1: again like I did when I was like ten years ago. Um,
Speaker 1: And I just hope I'm happy, I said last, this
Speaker 1: is the last question. So you are what I like?
Speaker 1: Is I like people who are honest, right and authentic
Speaker 1: and just saying what they think and what they feel.
Speaker 1: Um do you worry at all about being so open
Speaker 1: and you know sort of an arrow where there are
Speaker 1: almost no privacy at times? Right? Um? Or is that
Speaker 1: just something you're naturally comfortable with because there's people who
Speaker 1: are listening to this right now and they're going to say, Wow,
Speaker 1: I love Rahl. I didn't know her before, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna be like this. Every thing that she said in
Speaker 1: this podcast was so honest and I knew you would,
Speaker 1: but sometimes in our society that's rare. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think that, Um, I don't know for me, Okay, when
Speaker 1: when I think about mental health, and I think about
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety, and I also have obsessive compulsive disorder
Speaker 1: that was really bad when I was younger. That used
Speaker 1: to make me feel crazy. I used to think that
Speaker 1: I was a crazy person and that nobody else on
Speaker 1: this planet felt that way, and that made me feel isolated.
Speaker 1: It made me feel disgusted when I thought about myself.
Speaker 1: I hated myself for that. And it wasn't until you know, recently,
Speaker 1: people have been more open about their mental health, and
Speaker 1: I've learned more about obsessive compulsive disorder because people talk
Speaker 1: about it more, and um, I've been able to feel
Speaker 1: more comfortable in my skin, and so I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's nothing that I feel to attached
Speaker 1: to in my personal life beside maybe like my personal relationship.
Speaker 1: Would you guys like to make kind of almost every
Speaker 1: single day. Don't know that he's ever going to propose
Speaker 1: to you, to be honest. Besides that, like you know,
Speaker 1: every everything that I've been through, I hope talking about
Speaker 1: it helps other people go through it. Like the loss
Speaker 1: of my father, that was something that I was really
Speaker 1: really hard to overcome, and I can only hope. That's
Speaker 1: why I talk about it, is that people talking about
Speaker 1: things that pertain to me, when they're open about it,
Speaker 1: it's made me feel better. So then I realize, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if I keep on pushing this and keep on talking
Speaker 1: about whether it's mental health or grieving and death and
Speaker 1: or success or being a female in sports, um or
Speaker 1: being really lucky, you know, there's so many people that
Speaker 1: could hear my story and be like, oh ship, like
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, Like if I work hard, I could
Speaker 1: get lucky and and have this career that I've been
Speaker 1: been I've been hoping for. So I think it's so
Speaker 1: beneficial on in so many ways to be open about
Speaker 1: your struggles and also your winds as well, because you
Speaker 1: don't know who's listening, You don't know who it can
Speaker 1: eventually help are you happy now. I'm pretty happy. I'm
Speaker 1: getting there. I'm working on it. I go to therapy
Speaker 1: every single week and that's been really helpful. It's do
Speaker 1: you go to therapy? Do you talk to anybody? You
Speaker 1: probably should? I have so many, so many voices in
Speaker 1: my head. I just talked to them. Um No, I'm I'm.
Speaker 1: I can say I'm definitely working on it. I think
Speaker 1: I'm really I'm I'm finally this year, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I've done so much, even even like
Speaker 1: taking moments like this when I'm like looking back on
Speaker 1: my career, even though it's been fairly short so far,
Speaker 1: it's like I've done a lot and I've worked my
Speaker 1: butt off, like I'm exhausted, and I'm still going and
Speaker 1: I'm still so hungry for more. Um So, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the lever be uh. I hope that one
Speaker 1: day I can fully be like I'm good, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really happy in this space. I think that I'm just
Speaker 1: so hungry right now for everything that's coming down the pipe,
Speaker 1: and and for this new season will block it in
Speaker 1: and next year and next year and next year, and um,
Speaker 1: I'm just like so excited. I just want to do more.
Speaker 1: I want to be exhausted at the end of every
Speaker 1: single day, like you do Ray Go Show, you do
Speaker 1: a podcast, you do television, Like do you probably feel
Speaker 1: so fulfilled when you hit your pillow everything that you're
Speaker 1: you're mentally and physically exhausted. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to be feeling those things. Rachel Banantta Go follow her
Speaker 1: on Twitter. She is outstanding. If you haven't before, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you that in the years ahead, and I rarely
Speaker 1: say this, in the years ahead, you're gonna do pretty
Speaker 1: awesome stuff, and I'm excited to see all the things
Speaker 1: that you're gonna do. But in the meantime, she's hanging
Speaker 1: out with us on lock It In every single afternoon.
Speaker 1: Go follower, And if you're listening to this year's down
Speaker 1: the line, I think it'll be cool if you tag us,
Speaker 1: assuming Twitter still around in ten years or My hope
Speaker 1: is in doing these long form podcasts that they almost
Speaker 1: stand as like, uh, you know, like different sort of
Speaker 1: seminal moments where people can go back and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope that this is just as good to listen
Speaker 1: to in a decade as it is next. Pretty cool,
Speaker 1: very cool. Thanks for having anybody. Thank you. This Wins
Speaker 1: the Losses. I'm Clay Travis Ratis on iTunes. This has
Speaker 1: been wins and losses. Sorry Clay Travis and Joe Banana.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
Speaker 1: the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports
Speaker 1: Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app.
Speaker 1: Search f s R to listen live.