I wasn't always, I'm vegan, and I'm, I, you know, ask me about it, I'll talk about it forever. But I wasn't always. I was a serial, I will never make up for the number of animals I ate when I was a kid. But once I knew what I was doing, I, I made changes. And I think we can all do that, and I think we can all become more aware and, and, and sort of build our observation skills. Is what you're seeing just? Is what you're seeing the right thing?
And at some point, if what you're seeing is not the right thing, you're going to make choices and you're going to take action.
Hi, and welcome to 5 Random Questions, the show where every question is an adventure. I'm your host, Danny Brown, and each week I'll be asking my guests 5 questions created by a random question generator. The guest has no idea what the questions are, and neither do I. Which means this could go either way. So sit back, relax, and let's dive into this week's episode.
Today's guest is IIzolda Trakhtenberg, a former master trainer for NASA, whose approach to training and education has made her a sought after speaker and coach for creatives and companies. She's also written five non fiction books, as well as three fiction novels, including the first book in the Cassie Belmont Tarot Reader mystery series. On top of that, she's recently completed her first play, Listen, and she's written two musicals.
And I feel the need to take a break here just for that bio, but Just to round things up. She's also the host of the Creative Solutions podcast, where she interviews peak performers on creativity and innovation. So after all, that IIzolda, welcome to Five Random Questions.
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
I'd be remiss if I don't ask you about some of that, because that's a really impressive mixture. First of all, NASA trainer, obviously, NASA. You mentioned that name. It sounds cool right away. How did that come about?
It came about strictly by accident. I got out of college and ended up working for the National Geographic Society as somebody who was doing tech support. And I was sitting around with my housemates and lamenting the fact that I needed to work at NASA. And a friend of mine who was there said, NASA, what do you do in National Geographic Society? And I said, I do tech support. And he went. NASA needs a tech support person. Want to come work at NASA? So I went, sure.
And I ended up going to NASA and doing tech support for a while. I'm a complete astronomy nerd and worked with a phenomenal scientist fixing her computer. And I said, Elisa, if there's ever anything you have that I could work with you on, let me know. And she said, well, actually, I just got this funding to do this training worldwide. How would you like to do that? So it's my lesson in. Always ask, just always, always ask for what you want. And when you do, magical things happen.
I ended up traveling the world for NASA, teaching people all about how to save the earth through science. And I ended up teaching scientists how to tell their stories in such a way that even kindergartners would love them. And that kind of communication and science storytelling is one of my great loves.
And I can imagine that'd be like, you mentioned kindergartners. I could imagine that'd be a rapt audience. We have a very well known, known astronaut in Canada where I'm, I'm not from, I'm from the UK, obviously, but I live in Canada. And one of our, one of our famous astronauts Chris Hadfield when he came back from doing a space mission He went around schools talking about what he did and the Canadian, you know, equivalent of NASA, et cetera. And the kids just loved it.
He came to our kids school and they were just like sat out assembly going, wow, taking everything. And it's great to see, as you mentioned, a new generation. of people getting introduced to science and everything about that. So that's, that's pretty cool. And you don't do that anymore. Now you're stopped that.
I actually work with schools sometimes when they want me to come and do assemblies and I work in soil science. So my big job is to go. From ew, dirt to ooh, soil. And and that, that's a lot of what I do when I work with schools, but a lot of, a lot of the work that I did, again, was storytelling and creative based. And so now I work with companies and individuals who want to become more innovative in their lives and in their work.
And NASA comes into play because I sometimes still do little contracts for them, but most of the time I'm working with other people to become innovative in ways that NASA's innovative because I worked there for 20 years and got. Immersed and infused and suffused with all the cool innovative things that NASA does. And now I want to bring that kind of world aware innovation to everybody.
And obviously with NASA, I mean, it's, I would imagine it'd be a high pressure environment at times as well because of what they're doing, you know, who they're doing it with.
And I know this, this wasn't in part of the introduction I did there, but I know you've spoken about your own childhood in a pressure environment there, as you mentioned you know, about being an immigrant while you, while we were in the green room, you were seven years old and you were helping people, you were in a war zone, helping people get to bomb shelters and stay safe. And that must have been. I don't even imagine how that must have been for you.
I think so many of us don't know what we're made of until we're tested. And I didn't realize that I couldn't or I shouldn't do the things that I was doing, but it became my job in my family. I was a, I was an easy sleeper.
And when this air raid sirens would go off, I was the one who'd get up and make sure everybody got up and got down into the shelter, and then knocking on doors as we were going, because we all had to sort of file down the stairs into the, into the sub basement to get into the shelters. And then my mom is a singer and I'm a singer, and what we'd do is we'd sing folk songs.
to sort of help everyone stay OK while we were in the shelters and then within generally within a few hours we were allowed back up to our apartments and things but in that moment it's very tense and again creativity, doing something creative together is what helped everybody stay much more calm than they otherwise would have.
And I can imagine that must have helped you in your later life with some of the stuff you've been doing and what you do now obviously with clients it's taking that resilience and showing them. you know, how to overcome challenges, et cetera.
Oh, absolutely. And one, again, one of the things that we learn about ourselves is when we're tested, how can we think laterally? How can we think what they call outside the box? How can we act in a way that is responding rather than reacting? Because reacting is immediate and responding is taking a little bit of time to get inspired, to figure out what's going on. What the answer might be that will be an even better solution than what the immediate answer might have been.
And speaking of responding and speaking of answers, I feel that's a nice little segue. I like the way you led up to that. Kudos to that. So I feel it's a nice little segue into the Five Random Questions that we're going to talk about today. So just a reminder to the listeners, these are completely random. I've never seen the questions before. Is all that hasn't seen the questions before. We'll see where they go. So let's bring up the random question generator. Ooh, this, I like this one.
This ties in nicely to what we've just been speaking about. So IIzolda, question one. Who are you becoming?
Wow, what an excellent question. If I had absolutely any. thing I could become. I would become more myself. I am becoming someone who's directing shows on Broadway. That's my, my goal, my manifestation. And I'm becoming someone who wants to be more peaceful.
If you're asking about people, I would say I'm becoming everyone from Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs to Meryl Streep, to Shayna Taub, who's younger than I am, which is really fun to, to any number of people who use their voices to help those who cannot help themselves.
And I feel that ties in. I mentioned, obviously, you've written nonfiction books and also fiction books and you've got a, you know, the first part of the the Tarot Reader series, but you're also written a play. So does this who you're becoming? You mentioned, you know, you're a singer. You helped people with your voice when you were a child in the bomb shelters.
Is this a sort of natural progression from all the stuff that you've done helping creatives to being your own creative person now as you move into the next stage of your career and life journey?
Sure. Absolutely. I think every experience adds to who we are and makes a beautiful dessert out of it, hopefully. Yet also one of the things that is really important to me is we are, I think we're all creative. We just lose it most of us as we're growing up. So I'm getting back to some roots. Somebody asked me the other day, when was the very happiest you've ever been? And I thought about it and I went the very happiest I've ever been. I was in college and I directed a full length play.
for a women's studies class. That was my, we had to do some kind of an activist thing. And I directed a full length play on a 50 budget with four actors. And we, it was amazing to see that with 50, we directed, I directed a two hour play and I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I lost 15 pounds. I lived that play for the two months that we prepared. We showed it once we ran it once, and it was the best time of my life. And I went and did other things because. There are these other facets to me.
I want to help people. I want to help the earth. I want to help the animals, but that creative facet, the one that goes, I love looking at a play or a musical and figuring out an amazing way to tell those stories that lay dormant for a long time. And now finally, all these years later, it's becoming much more a reality. And I recently made my first few dollars doing musical theater in New York city. And I'm going to hold on to that check and I'm going to.
Put it up on a wall because wow, it's what I've wanted to do for decades. Other things came and went. And now finally I'm getting to a place where I can laser focus on this and that's the dream and the goal.
Very cool. And I'm sure for that student that was doing the directorial debut at the play, that check, even though you mentioned it's a few dollars now, that would have been like a nice. A little amount, I feel, maybe back in the, the college days.
Oh, yeah.
That is awesome. And just to finish off this question, actually, just to tie it around obviously it's about who you're becoming. If there was just one person, maybe, That you could become for a day. Who do you think that would be and why?
I would say Albert Einstein to finally maybe prove the theory that he didn't get to prove before he passed.
Hmm. I like that. That is a good one. We'll see. I can't make it happen. I don't have that power. But you never know with science the way it's going. Maybe. Maybe. Awesome. That's a great start. Alrighty. Let's move on to number two. Question number two. Hmm. Interesting. I feel I might know the answer to this, but let's go. If you had to work, but didn't need the money, what would you choose to do?
I direct plays on Broadway. If I'd had, if I had to, yeah, I would, I would do that. See, that's the problem. I feel like I'm split in many different, Directions. If I had to work and didn't need the money, I would also be doing something that I do. Now. I helped do animal rescue. So I'm a transporter. I take injured animals from one place to another to get to rehab or something like that. So I'd probably do more of that, too.
So I would be split between the creative part and the helping animals part.
And I wonder, would you create maybe like a foundation? Is it a foundation? Not a foundation. Maybe my words have got it. My words have left me. Would you be creating something where you would have people globally that we'd, you know, carry that on for you as well? So you would be the head nut trainer. That's the wrong word.
That's totally fine. Yeah, some sort of a nonprofit like that would be great. And I think that that's a slightly different question.
So if I if money were no object and I could do Anything having some, I, I've often said that if I won a huge lottery, I would take many of the millions and buy up a bunch of land and make that all into animal wildlife refuge so that we could bring animals that were injured or animals that need that, that are otherwise in danger and bring them in somewhere that's very safe.
So, absolutely, having some sort of a worldwide non profit that, that is designed, like my friend Wendy Hapgood runs something called Wild Tomorrow, where they are literally buying up land in South Africa and making that a wildlife habitat. And so I would funnel money to them. I would funnel money to my friend Lisa Robinson, who runs an animal, a farm animal sanctuary in New York state. Lots and lots of different ways to serve. And maybe I wouldn't necessarily be the person.
Handling the money because that's don't ever let me handle the money. I'm I'm rubbish at handling the money Like literally if you give me 55 to count I will count 54 once and 57 the next time and 50 the ladies at the bank when they would see me coming would be Like oh, no, it's her. I was always wrong with the money.
I counted so don't let me handle the money But being the person who gets to talk about why it's important, yeah, I'm right there to talk about why we need to be helping animals, why we need to be preserving and conserving the environment. I'm your gal.
And I think that's like, obviously, it's such a noble cause. And we see more people doing this now as well and, you know, taking and taking the initiative to actually do something as opposed to saying, wouldn't it be great if we could do this and people actually doing it. There's a chap on, well, he's got his own website now, obviously, but I follow him on Twitter or X if you want to call it that. He's called. And he's over in Asia.
He's got a program whose goal is to rescue 10, 000 dogs from abusive environments. And he documents what he's doing and what his team's doing. And you see the dogs at the start of the journey and it's horrible to see. And then you see them.
They're in their happiest place, they're laughing, they've got the big smile, they're wagging their tails, they're running about, and it's amazing to see, and I feel there needs to be more, A, of that happening, and B, just making, you know, sharing awareness of people doing stuff like that.
Absolutely. And the more we do that, the more we allow the opportunity to happen for other people to become aware and do it too. I wasn't always, I'm vegan and I'm, you know, ask me about it, I'll talk about it forever, but I wasn't always. I was a. I will never make up for the number of animals I ate when I was a kid, but once I knew what I was doing, I, I made changes. And I think we can all do that.
And I think we can all become more aware and, and, and sort of build our observation skills is what you're seeing just is what you're seeing the right thing. And at some point, if what you're seeing is not the right thing, you're going to make choices and you're going to take action. And so like the man that you follow on. on Twitter or X. There are people out there every single day.
My friend Jimmy, shout out to Jimmy, who's constantly, he's the one who's aware of where there's an injured bird that needs to be taken to a wildlife rehabber or somebody's found a kitten. My husband and I this lady put out a note, Hey, I, I've rescued these three kittens. Eyes are barely open. I need kitten formulas. So if you knew where Brooklyn in the Bronx is, you would go, Oh, Yeah, that's a long way. But I drove to a pet store, bought kitten formula, took it to the woman.
And then three days later, she said, I need you to come get these kittens. I can't take care of them. So I went and picked them up. My husband and I went and picked them up from the Bronx and drove them way out to Long Island, which is about an hour and a half. But in the meantime, Between that, my husband got to play mom, because I had to go work. So he was mama cat to these three practically newborn kittens in our bathroom, because we have cats.
And he took care of them all day and was feeding them with a little, little plastic syringe. And now these kittens are thriving, and we're going to adopt one of them when they're of adoptable age. But the point is, once you know, once you know what's going on, once you know that these things are happening, You're going to want to do something about it because we are a compassionate species on the whole.
Yeah, no, I agree. And you see it with the younger generation now. I mean, I'm of an age where I'm way past, you know, not way past helping, but we didn't get, we didn't help when I was my kid's age. And, you know, for example, you see it now, kids are so much more involved and so much more aware of the world and environment. Living beings around them.
And it's amazing to see compared to, you know, when I was a kid and using sprays for my hair and all that horrible stuff that you would do, you know, because you didn't know any better. So I agree. I was going to ask you about the kittens. Did you adopt them? Bet it sounds like you're going to have one anyway.
We, we have not adopted one yet, but we're going to. I've talked my husband into it. We adopted one of our current cats from this same rehabber, so we knew exactly where to take these new kittens. And and so Heather, shout out to RTR Rescue. She she's, she's grooming them. She's getting them ready to the point where she is willing to adopt, but she's very specific and very particular about who she adopts out to. She's already told me I can have one.
Yay. But I, if I could have all three in our little in New York apartment, I would, but that would mean we'd have five cats. And my husband has said, no, too many, too many cats for him.
That is awesome. And like I say, it's great to see. You know, this happened and more often and more awareness being brought to it. For sure. Speaking of awareness, I'm aware it must be question three. So let's have a little look what comes up here. Oh, I feel like these questions are really well suited to you, Izolda. Here's question three. Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or have the agility of a cat?
Okay, so I have my scuba certification. And what's interesting about that is the very first time I entered a pool after I'd gotten my scuba sea card, I tried to breathe and it did not work because I did not have a regulator in my mouth. I would much rather have the agility of a cat for sure. They are, I saw a meme the other day that said, Living with a cat is like living with a work of art that periodically throws up on the carpet. And I just thought that was great because it's true.
They are, they are works of art. They are incredibly self sufficient, but also incredibly loving and are able to do Pretty much anything they set their minds to. My, my younger cat plays fetch and we don't play fetch with him. He plays fetch with us. In other words, he will bring us, he loves zip ties. They're her favorite. He will bring you a zip tie. You can throw it anywhere and he will find it and bring it back. And you can throw it somewhere where essentially he can't get to it.
He doesn't give up. 45 minutes later, he has figured out a way to get back to where he needs to get back to behind the dresser. That you cannot get that. I don't know how he does it, but he does it and he comes back 45. He has to object permanence, which I've never seen before in a cat. He brings it back to you and he hands it to you and he goes again. And I just, yeah, agility of a cat without a doubt.
Yeah, I remember we used to have cats. Before our kids were born, we lived in an apartment in Toronto, my wife and I and we had cats there and one of them. Well, you used to love playing soccer with us.
So my wife would be one end of the hallway, I'd be the other end, and we'd have like a little soft bouncy squishy ball or whatever, and we'd kick it upwards about head height, so say about five, five and a half feet, and our cat from a sitting position would jump up, grab the ball, ball in the front paws, and then land with the ball, and then want to play again. It was crazy.
So your ties in parallel there, and you like, so you don't sort of necessarily associate cats with wanting to do stuff like that, you know, but obviously they're up there. They're far more intelligent, far more different from a dog, for example, that most people you know, associated with a game like that.
And I'm wondering, is it because, because I always think of cats and you see the ancient movies where like Cleopatra and the Romans, Egyptians, et cetera, and you've got the cats that were worshipped there. And yet the dogs are supposedly man's best friend. I'm wondering, what's your take on how that came about? How that sort of changed, you know, from cats being Around and doing the thing that they do to dogs being the right hand animal if you like to humans
I think that a lot of it is marketing truthfully And and we Wow, you've opened up such a can so They say that dogs were domesticated somewhere around 70, 000 years ago, and what were they good for, quote unquote? They were guarding, you know, as, as agriculture came to be, they'd help guard the crop or the livestock, whatever. They were there to, to, because they have this incredible sense of smell, they could sense danger, blah, blah, blah. So they were helper creatures.
Cats. weren't specifically helper creatures. They were more as I said, self sufficient, independent and works of art. So you see the one that's going to help you and the one that you kind of revere. And so, so to me, as we become more of a society of people who need help, because we've lost our own senses, you know, we probably had better senses of smell 20, 000 years ago. But we don't have that so much anymore, we've adapted to a different way of living.
We need creatures in our lives who do have that really good sense of smell. Cats aren't trainable for help this blind person, cat, a cat will go, Oh, I want to go over there and the cat will go over there. And and and the dog is the one that that's going to work to help you. So I think that the temperament of the creatures has sort of dictated how we interact with them.
Fundamentally, also domesticated dogs probably need us, and domesticated cats, you look, I actually took a picture of one of my cats, I have two black cats, and I took a picture of Ninja, who is the softest, squishiest, he loves my husband so much that Rich can't sit down for longer than three seconds, literally, before Ninja's lying on him, but I took a picture of him, and he just looked wild, he looked, incredibly feral, and he's the smooshiest, cushiest.
And yet you look at him and you go, that is a wild creature, one step off. Whereas my dog, who was a husky, you could tell he was right there. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And so the, the temperaments have been bred much more for dogs to be helpers and much more for cats, not to be helpers for cats to be themselves. So
you feel like if there was a massive apocalypse. And for whatever reason, most of humanity is gone. Do you think it would be the cats that would be the survivors over the dogs when it comes to making it work, if that's the right question?
Domesticated cats versus domesticated dogs? Yeah. Absolutely. I do. I think, I think dogs would have to go. a little bit back further or, or go back or go forward further to get back to complete hunting instincts. Whereas cats have them now, you know. But one of the things that's interesting about that, dogs can survive on a vegetarian diet and cats are carnivores. They can't.
So if the, if the food sources were such that cats couldn't hunt because there were no other animals, for example, that would be a problem. Otherwise, I think cats have retained, they've been domesticated something like 3, 000 years.
So cats have retained a lot more of their They're predatory instincts, I would say, than dogs have, and I could be wrong, I'm not, I don't, I'm not particular professional in this, but I've done some studying, because I had, many years ago, my husband and I got a dog who was supposed to be a husky, but turned out, our vet said, no, she's not a husky, she's an Alaskan Malamute with a healthy dose of timberwolf in her, and when you looked at Athena, you got, you
kind of went, Oh, yeah, she could kill me. She could. And she and I, she fought me for alpha status. And it was interesting. I went away once for three days. And the first night, she slept on the floor at the foot of the bed. And the second night, she slept on the foot of the bed. The third night, she slept next to my husband on my side of the bed. And when I came home the next day, she growled at me. So I literally had to, had to put her on her back and put my teeth to her throat.
In order for her to remember, I was the alpha. And once she remembered that she was like, Oh yeah, that's right. You're the alpha. Gotcha. And then we were fine, but she was not happy to see me because Rich was her alpha male and I was the interloper when I came back. So we had to reestablish that hierarchy. And what's interesting, again, many moons ago, Athena was alpha of all the dogs in our little town where we were living at the time. And we, I started this drum circle in the woods.
We had these, these protected woods outside our house. And I started a drum circle in the woods. We're all drumming there, maybe 25 people drumming, maybe 10, 15 dogs. And Athena's sitting, and all the dogs walked over to her and kind of. Touched her shoulder with their heads and and then sort of walked away and the next dog came and sort of paid obeisance, if you will. And then she did something I didn't like and I went, Athena!
And she walked over to me and she put her head against me, and then one by one, every single dog came over and put their head against me because they realized, Oh, we thought she was the alpha, but it turns out you're the alpha. So all 15 dogs came over and kind of touched their cheek to my, to my leg to make sure that, that I knew that they knew that I was the alpha. It was a fascinating thing to watch.
That's amazing. And yeah, I couldn't see a cat doing that. Not ever , you know, the, the cat would be waiting for you to put your head on . That is amazing. Hey there, Danny here. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Five Random Questions. If you're loving the fun as much as I am, I've got something extra special for you. I. The Question Master Membership. As a premium member, you'll get ad free early access to every episode. But that's not all.
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And speaking of leading I'm going to lead us in to question number four. Let's have a look. That was an amazing tale though. Oh, okay, here we go. Question four. Would you rather have a permanently clogged nose or a piece of green food always stuck in your teeth?
Piece of green food always stuck in my teeth, without a doubt.
Not going for the clog. You don't care about the smile and everything or?
Oh, I right now I have a clogged nose and I'm miserable. I'm a singer and I'm a professional speaker and I'm a podcaster. I train people on how to communicate. If I had a permanently clogged nose, I wouldn't be able to do my life's work. So I have no problem with spinach in my teeth for the rest of my life as long as I can keep speaking and singing.
And that makes sense. And so with a clogged nose, obviously you mentioned you got one at the moment, what's your sort of remedy for clearing that? Is it just sort of Lots of like steamed water, stuff like that, or
there's an I'm I was born in the former Soviet Union. And what my mother used to do, she used to boil potatoes and you would sort of stick your face in the steam of the potatoes boiling weirdly. That would help. I also use the neti pot and I gargle like nobody's business every half hour. And that's what I tell my singing students too, is if you have a sore throat and you have to perform tomorrow, gargle every half hour. religiously, and it's amazing.
And then hot water with ginger and lemon helps all. There are lots of things that you can do. The big thing is don't overuse your voice.
And I was going to say, obviously you mentioned you're a singer, you're a podcaster, so you speak a lot as well. Has there ever been a time where it's just been so bad you couldn't sing? can't perform or you think, you know what, I can't do this show or just, just crack on through it.
Oh, I've canceled shows for sure because there are times when my voice goes to this and there's nothing. On the other hand, interestingly, I was auditioning for the Michigan state honors choir. I grew up in Michigan and I had lost my voice, but weirdly I lost my speaking voice, but not my singing voice and not my, and I was auditioning as a soprano singing high up and I was able to sing, but I couldn't speak. So I walk into audition. And we had to sing these two songs.
One was in Latin, one was a spiritual. I sang, and after I was done singing, the, one of the judges asked me a question, and I said, I'm sorry, I can't speak. And they went, wait, what? You just sang. I know, I know, I just sang, but I can't speak. And they said, wait a minute, you sing right now, but you can't say a word. No, I cannot. And they went, okay. And I got in and I think they thought, wow, if she's saying like that when she can't speak, she must be pretty good.
And so, so yeah, I, I've also in the middle of singing, performing. I had turned out pneumonia when I was doing Kurt Weill's Down in the Valley and couldn't, couldn't breathe in without coughing. So we had, there's the end of Act One, there is there's a, my character, Jenny Parsons, is supposed to let out a huge scream. Well, to let out a huge scream, you have to take in a deep breath. I couldn't take in a deep breath.
Then there was this young, young ninth grader named Mario Gardner, shout out to Mario, who could scream like the Dickens. And so what we did is he stood right next to me, and when I was ready to scream, I would touch his arm, and I would mime screaming, but he would scream. Because if I tried to breathe in enough to scream, I would just cough up a lung. So everybody was like, Wow, Zold, you have a great scream. And I'm like, Nope. Mario has a great screen, so you have to do what you have to do.
And sometimes you just make modifications in order to have the show go on.
And that's almost like I mean, it's not quite like it, but it's almost like having your early version A. I. replacement for voiceover. You've got Mario's at the side ready to come on there. Absolutely. We'll definitely keep the, the green food away from the teeth and we'll go with the, no, no, that's not right. We'll keep the clogged nose away and we'll keep the green food and the teeth. Let's get it right, daddy.
Speaking of clogged and not being clogged up, we're going to move on to number five because we're not clogging up the four questions that came before. So we're, we're doing well here. We're coming up to the final hurdle here. Okay, Izolda, here we go. Question five. We're almost at the end here. What part of the human face is your favorite? The human face? The eyes, for
sure.
Now, is that because you like the typical, we always speak of them being the windows to your soul? Or is it something just specific to you? They're there and you can't ignore them because you'd look weird if you didn't have eyes or?
Yeah, I, no, I mean, yes, windows to the soul. They, first of all, I, I have always had a thing for what someone's actual iris looks like. You can get really in and they're never just brown or just blue. There's, there's a cornucopia of colors and patterns and things in every single iris. None, no two are alike. They're so beautiful. And also around the eye, you know, how the eye is formed, how it's shaped, the type of lashes, the type of brows, but also minute expressions.
You can see the smallest expressions on someone's face change, even if the rest of their face stays identical to what it was before. The tiniest, you can tell someone when someone becomes brilliantly happy or, or very angry just by what their eyes do. And I actually was talking about the movie, The Devil Wears Prada the other day in that Meryl Streep in the last, in her last 10 seconds of that movie gives a masterclass in acting with just her eyes.
You can watch her think of all the different choices she made in her life. How proud she is of Andy and Hathaway's character, how happy she is that Andy made the choices she did, and the realization that she is in a car about to be driven to a very important meeting, and her driver isn't driving. And she flows from this happy, nostalgic, wistful moment. To go with just her eyes, and it is just watching Meryl Streep do what she does is brilliant. Plus, the eyes do something so incredible.
Being able to take in, even though I know our sense of smell is the closest to memory, being able to take in the vast amounts of data our eyes take in and help our brain function. Interpret is mind boggling to me. Plus the rods and the cones. Come on, cones see color and rods see black and white. And why you don't see well in Twilight is because the eye doesn't know whether or not the rods or the cones should be the ones it uses. Brilliant and mind boggling and so complex. I love it.
It's like they always say, like the something that seems so simple, not simple because it's an eye, but on the surface it's a ball. And it's got an iris and a global, but it's fairly simple. When you look at it, you see that's an eye, but it's like, see all the stuff that's going on behind it to make this work and to recognize and to separate and diffuse colors and spheres and everything. It's just crazy.
And your point about Meryl Streep, who I think is a phenomenal actress, probably one of the best ever. If you look back, I think that's why I really enjoy the old movies from the thirties and forties, because a lot of that was down to the actors and actresses and their Yeah. Their eyes and what they portray, you know, with the music behind them, because there wasn't a lot of effects and you couldn't do a lot of, you know, special AI generation, et cetera.
And it was all on their face and their eyes. And it just told you so much more of a story about them and what they were acting about at the time.
Oh, for sure. I mean, you watch Rosalind Russell and his girl Friday, she does such an amazing job. I mean, that movie moves so fast. So many words. I think a typical movie. will have 120 script screenplay pages. That had 192. There were so many words packed in, but at the same time in the, in the very few quiet moments, you see her and Cary Grant exchange these looks and you go, yeah, that's what it's all about. And Cary Grant was phenomenal at that too.
Watching him into Catch a Thief when you're not sure who he is and in Notorious, watching him be so in love, but be unable to declare himself to the woman he loves because he's got this job to protect. everything and how you, his agony and the Philadelphia story, the same thing. He did the exact same thing there as Dext. He was in agony. And the only way you saw it was by looking at his eyes because the rest of the time his character was very devil may care, but he wasn't.
And it was brilliant bits of acting from, you know, these incredible superstars.
And as you mentioned, it all comes from the eyes, which, and I guess that's why they always say, you know, you mentioned about, you can keep your face like a really good poker face. But your eyes may just give you away because you've got that little tinkle there that someone can pick up on.
Absolutely.
So, that's awesome. I really, you know, I've enjoyed hearing your answers to these five very random questions. To be fair, because I put you on the spot over the last half hour or so, to be fair, it's only fair that I offer you the chance to ask me a random question of your own. So, I'll fire away with you if you wish.
What is your favorite memory from fourth grade? And why
Fourth grade? So I was in the UK then. So that would be fourth grade is nine years old. I think in North America. Yep. So nine. Okay, so nine. I'd be still in primary school. Who? I think nine years old. Okay, so this is Yeah, that ties in actually. So when I was nine, it was a pretty bad summer because both my grandad's died within about a month of each other. And my School friend, Corinne she died from an asthma attack in the summer, during the summer holidays.
I know this sounds really weird because it's not a favourite memory of a grade 9, but I'm getting there, I promise. So, I always remember that summer because obviously it was a very destructive summer from a personal point of view. I knew my grandad's, they were old and both of them were suffering from cancer. So we kind of knew they were coming to the end of their lives. But Corinne, same age as me just out of the blue, she had an asthma attack.
Nobody could get to her in time because it was very different then. You're talking like the 78, 77 time. Very different, you know, emergency services and medications, et cetera. And unfortunately she went. Now, about that time Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie had come out in the U. S. and it was a huge amount of Huge amount of excitement and expectation about this movie. It was like breaking records all over the place in the US, but we had to wait because we were in the UK.
We always got stuff six months to a year later in the US. So that came out in I think it was the summer of 78. It was like winter 77, summer of 78 maybe in the UK. So my uncle Because my, my stepdad was also going through his own cancer battle at the time, just to add to the joy. So my uncle took me to see Star Wars and we waited in line for about two hours, but we got in there and it's always been my favourite movie scene and will remain so.
At nine years old, you're sat in a darkened theatre, you're a little kid and this huge spaceship comes over with the noise and the rumbling and everything that seemed to go on forever. And then the next two hours made me completely forget about what was happening in my life. But also introduced me to the spectacle of what a massive summer movie was going to look like.
So that's probably my favourite memory, even though it's tied in because it sort of countered all the bad stuff that was going on with this positive, good memory.
Wow, that is incredible. First of all, that's a lot of losses for your very young life then, and wow, and it's it's amazing to listen to you talk about it because on the one hand you're very matter of fact, but on the other hand, obviously you, you love these people so very much. So thank you for sharing that, unbelievable. And I noticed the Boba Fett actually behind you, the baby Boba Fett. I am. a ginormous Star Wars nerd, completely ginormous.
And yes, I did celebrate, you know, May the 4th be with you, of course, but Towel Day and Star Wars Day, May 25th, 1977, that whole summer of 1977, I saw Star Wars. I've seen Star Wars 72 times and counting because I used to I used to take my little sister and we would go to the first show and then we would hide when they emptied the theater and then we would stay for like three showings a day every single day. That's I just as often as possible watch that movie.
And then the people I babysat for had two movies on Betamax. They had Jaws. And they had Star Wars. And so what did I do every Saturday night? I watched Star Wars. I, yeah, so I share that with you. I had a, in a different way, I had a very challenging childhood. And so, that notion of being able to see something like, I know they call it a new hope, like Star Wars. And, and see what was possible. It changed so many lives.
I mean, say what you will about Lucas and the first three movies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He changed billions of lives with that story. And and I know it's the hero's journey, and I know he studied Kurosawa, and I don't care. It's still brilliant.
No, for sure. And I'm sure Kurosawa was inspired by someone before him. So it's just a journey, like you mentioned, you know, the hero's journey book. It's just, it's part of that, right? Everybody has someone to inspire and take it to the next generation if you
like. It's okay to stand on the shoulders of giants as long as you thank the giants. I think that's the, that's the way to, if you honor the giants and shoulders, you stay. I mean, he talked, you know, Lucas talks about how much he appreciates the work of Joseph Campbell because Campbell He, you know, he wrote The Hero Within. He wrote Myths of Magic. He wrote all of that. And he got his research and his inspiration from people who came before him.
So, I am okay with standing on the shoulders of giants, again, as long as you honor and thank them.
And speaking of thanking, I'm going to thank you now for appearing on today's episode, because it has been a real joy to chat with you, Zelda, and learn more. About your own experiences and the things that we talked about with the Five Random Questions for anyone that wants to connect with you directly. Whether that's through your coaching, for your education, for your podcast, come see your play, anything like that at all, where is the best place to connect and then catch up with you?
Oh, thank you so much for asking that. I appreciate it. So if you want to find out more about me, the best places is Izoldaspeaks. com I Z O L D A. Speaks. com. If you want to know more about the speaking, which is interesting, or the singing that's voice mastery studio or voice mastery dot studio, it's all confusing. A lot of what I do. You can find me on the creative solutions podcast on Instagram.
And at IIzolda T, pretty much every social media channel, if you look for at IIzolda T, except for Facebook, because at IIzolda T on Facebook is a porn star. So don't go there. But everywhere else. Yeah, I, I got, I was there too late. Most things at IIzolda T, I've been able to grab. That one I did not get to. And if you go there. Use at your own risk. It turns out a lot of IIzoldas are Eastern European porn stars. And let me tell you, I have gotten some really bizarre spam. So, ew.
I can imagine. And to make sure you get to the right IIzolda tea, I'll be sure to leave all these links in the show notes. So whichever app you're listening on, Be sure to check them out and that will take you to the right person. with the right experience, . So again, is Oda. Thanks for appearing on this week's Five Random Questions. Thanks Danny. Thanks for listening to Five Random Questions.
If you enjoy this week's episode, be sure to follow for three on the app you're currently listening on or online@fiverandomquestions.com. And if you feel like leaving a review, well that would make me happier than that time I played the Fairy Godmother. and got to sing alongside my crush at the time who plays Cinderella. But seriously, leaving a review or recommending it to your friends would make my day. Until the next time, keep asking those questions.