FRIDAYS 1PM

Salwa Khan
I'm speaking with Bonita Condi and Peter Roche, and their show is called What We Know and What We Don’t. I wanted to ask each of you, how did you first become interested in radio?

Peter Rosch
That is <laugh>. Good question., I don't know that either of us were interested in doing a radio show. The station manager (Tim Kiesling) had come to me and said, have you ever thought of doing a radio show? And I said, I've considered it; only in that people had said in the past, you got a good voice, you should do radio. And of course you're like, yeah, I wanna do radio. Make me famous. But, I hadn't really ever put much thought against actually doing a show. And Tim said, go away and think about it. And I did. And I came up with, maybe half a dozen ideas for a show.

Peter Rosch
Shortly thereafter in I guess January, February of 2022, Benita and I were talking, and Benita is a life coach, and is also in recovery. She's sober. I'm in recovery, I'm sober. We've known each other two decades. We were brainstorming on a book actually.

Benita Conde
And we had been writing a document together and like playing with ideas, but it all felt like, like stuff that's sort of out there. And then Peter's like, do you wanna do a radio show, <laugh>?

Peter Rosch
I mean, it was really like, it crystallized really fast for me as a concept. I was like, wow, the things that we're talking about and the people that we are referencing, and the way that we converse with each other in those brainstorms on this would make a great radio show. And I wasn't sure that Tim would agree, to be completely honest. And we presented the concept of the show to him; our elevator pitch really the most succinct way that we put it is a show for good. We have slightly longer variations on that, but we were really just trying to create a place where we could bring on voices, opinions and themes that aren't intentionally divisive or anything like that, and that we would learn by basically exploring what we don't know about things.
Because we all, Benita had said to me at one point, we only know what we know. I think that's just so poignant. I mean, we, you can, uh, you can have a lot of opinions about a lot of things based on what you already know about those things. And even if you're super educated on a particular topic, I mean, you're still gonna meet somebody who is gonna bring a ton to the table that you, you didn't think about or a different perspective on it.
We are both fairly calm, rational, and curious, open-minded people, and felt like especially, within the last six years that it just seemed too common that a show picked a side; what is it called, Bonita? Angertainment or rage? And then we said, let's give it a try. And that was over a year ago. And it's been working out pretty good.

Benita Conde
And I would say too, okay, so 'cause we are both sober and have moved through our own processes of recovery, but what we know, what we don't approach is a very intentionally hoping to be humble one, right? Like, we step up to the, uh, subject matter that we cover in each episode, and the person that we're having a conversation with from that place of already saying like, I maybe think I know some things about you or this topic, but I also recognize I don't, and I wanna stay open to that. 


Salwa Khan
Are there certain topics you look at, or just anything?

Peter Rosch
The whole really broad range. We might have at one point called it a variety show for good.The one theme throughout is that everybody that we bring on, we're obviously very interested in the journey that they've had up until the point and where they're headed.

Benita Conde
Our guests all tend to have a life transformation. Some of our guests have had multiple like pivots in their life. And so I'd say it definitely has inspiring self-development. Like how do we move through the world as human beings and evolve and grow. And then some of the main topics have been around creativity, entrepreneurship, self-development, being humans on this earth at this time, whether that's about sustainable living or various different ways, certain products or businesses are evolving with society and on the planet. So, creative living, self-development,

Salwa Khan
What is your process in producing your show?
Peter Rosch
Technically speaking, I'm the producer of the show only because I'm running the board when we do it, but it's pretty minimal because our show <laugh> is just, you know, we come on and we talk for an hour and we leave.

Benita Conde
Brach, I wanna shout out to Brach (Thomas).

Peter Rosch
Yeah. He then takes the show and tightens it up if, if need be for us so that we can release it as a podcast the week after we do the live show. Um, okay. But in terms of who's the, we literally 50 50 co-host.
if we really look back, it probably around 50 50 in terms of the reach out and making connections with the people that we wanna bring on the show. Our show is also unique. as you probably realized is that Benita is in Richmond, Virginia, and I am in Wimberley. Richmond is definitely much larger in population and landmass than Wimberley. We thought there was some benefit to showing that people in different locations were dealing with similar issues.
Benita Conde
And from all over the world, we have guests, global guests, so that's really wonderful.
Peter Rosch
We set up the interview through Zoom, and then we connect the computer to the board in the studio. And sometimes we actually have live guests.

Salwa Khan
If somebody was interested in listening, what can they expect to hear?

Benita Conde
Peter always starts with a bit of a connection point to Wimberly and what might be going on there locally that day. And then we start off with whichever one of us knows the guest better than the other. So then that usually starts off the conversation and it really is a heartfelt, flowing. It goes so fast. I find an hour is very little time to have somebody come on and really talk about whether it’s their whole life journey. And, we wanna amplify and highlight interesting things that our guests are doing.

Peter Rosch
The people who are fans of the show tend to say that, wow, I tune in and I feel like I'm listening to an authentic conversation. It's unscripted. We plot an outline, but very often our guests are taking us into places during the show that we didn't foresee going. Yeah. I love it actually.

Benita Conde
And we approach it as, I would say from the beginning, we have, as well as a grand experiment that we both continue to explore and experience as like an additive property in our lives. We both come from the advertising industry where we worked together all those decades ago. So we've been part of environments that are like very hyper, perfectionistic and super intense, and we have purposefully embarked on this in a really calm, and I would say healthy and balanced way so that we both really enjoy the flow of how we create the show each week. It's really natural.

Salwa Khan
Are there challenges and also rewards?

Peter Rosch
It definitely lifts me. I mean, it's joy. There's so much joy in hearing all of these different origin stories, these journeys and also understanding what somebody is currently engaged in, in the world.

Benita Conde
It's been wonderful. And the rewards for me are the same. An incredible sense of joy and fulfillment after every conversation. Sharing those conversations out into the world more broadly when we do then release the podcast the next week is wonderful. We've had guests move through like new transitions in their life, like more publicly speaking about something that they haven't yet in their life on the show. And I find that incredibly rewarding, creating that space for people.