Behind the Headlines

Michael Horn:

Hey, Jeff, welcome to 2021, which so far, seems a lot like 2020, doesn't it?

Jeff Selingo:

It sure does, Michael. So we're going to kick it off in a similar way, by talking to our friends in the news media. Last January, we had a reporters round table with those in the higher ed trade press. So today, we're welcoming two reporters who cover higher ed in the mainstream press.

Michael Horn:

I'm Michael Horn.

Jeff Selingo:

And I'm Jeff Selingo. In my twenty plus years of writing about higher ed, I can't recall a period where the sector has been this front and center in the mainstream media. You can't really go a day without reading or hearing about colleges in the press. The coverage is mostly about the pandemic and the response to it, but also about the future of institutions and admissions testing and continued conversations about equity in higher ed. On today's episode, Michael and I are thrilled to be joined by two great reporters who cover higher ed, Melissa Korn of the wall street journal, who is also co-author of a book on the Varsity Blues scandal titled," Unacceptable" and Kirk Carapezza from GBH radio in Boston. Welcome to Future U, Kirk and Melissa.

Melissa Korn:

Thanks for having us.

Kirk Carapezza:

Good to be here.

Jeff Selingo:

So I love to talk with reporters about the business of higher ed. So I'm really excited for this episode, but I'm also interested in your response to this first question, because even though I know both of you, I don't really know the answer to this. Out of all the beats at your publication and at your radio station, how did you get started covering higher ed. Melissa, let's start with you.

Melissa Korn:

Sure. So I got into journalism straight out and I went from undergrad to grad school to Dow Jones and higher ed was something that was relatable to me. Right. I had just come out of the universe. I just stepped down from the ivory tower, if you will. And I had friends who were struggling to pay off loans and families figuring out how to save for school or for my younger kids. So it was relatable to me. And even though I'm at a financial publication, I really liked writing about people. And even though I'm well beyond college years myself now, I still really like writing about people and higher ed as something that's relatable, not just to me anymore, but to so many of our readers.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah. The financial piece of higher ed, it's a big business, right? So it seems to play well with the wall street journal audience. Kirk, how about you?

Kirk Carapezza:

Yeah. I had been a general assignment reporter in Wisconsin and Vermont, always in public media. I had occasionally covered colleges in those towns. I was in Madison and in Burlington. I'm in Boston now. I joke that I only work in college towns, but in 2013, GBH was launching a desk in Boston devoted to higher ed and believe it or not at the time, the Boston globe, which is New England largest newspaper, didn't have a reporter focus solely on this beat. So we thought this was a hole that we could fill. And I always quote the famous line from this is spinal tap. When the bands Boston gig gets canceled and the manager tries to cheer everyone up by saying, yeah I wouldn't worry about it though. It's not really a big college town of course you can't walk a few blocks in Boston without landing on a college campus.

Kirk Carapezza:

So we just thought this is a great opportunity when we announced it GVH made this big deal about it. They sent out a press release to all the all the schools. And I was just crushed with pictures. It was actually disorienting. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, should I be covering this grant and this new Dean and this? And so we kind of, we regrouped editor and I regrouped and we just came up with five or six buckets that we thought are the things that we're really covering. And the great thing about covering higher education is yeah, I occasionally step into a classroom, but it's about so much more than that. It's about access and it's about opportunity and it's about race and class. And as Melissa said, it's about covering people and getting out in the most frustrating thing about this pandemic is that we're all holed up and I can't go out and get that colour and talk to people and spend a day with a student or a professor or an administrator. And we do our best with our iPhones and Zoom technology, but it's really inhibiting,

Michael Horn:

But you do do a great job, Kirk of giving a morning tweet every morning, telling us to get out there, unplug and see the world. So [crosstalk 00:04:35] get out and get your mask on...

Kirk Carapezza:

That's right. It's taken a life of its own. I did that in March because I'm either like a toddler, an old man, I need routines. And so I get out there every morning and I started doing it. Then I stopped. We got out of town for a couple of days and I stopped. And when I came back, I had all these messages from mostly college administrators saying, "What happened to the morning tweet." So I kept it up and I'll keep it up until we're all vaccinated and back on campus.

Michael Horn:

Well, we appreciate it. And before we get into story selection and stories for the year ahead specifically, we obviously had some breaking news as we were just about to record this, which is that Betsy DeVos, who has been the education secretary since the beginning of the Trump administration resigned suddenly in the aftermath of the assault on the U.S Capital this month. And as we think about her legacy, I'm curious from both of you, what one thing do you think she'll be remembered for? And Melissa, let's start with you before Kirk.

Melissa Korn:

So I am going to say kind of a theme that she'll be remembered for is deregulation. Specifically I would say probably in my mind based on my preparage title nine specifically, and just the changes she made to how schools are supposed to navigate that very thorny field, frankly, in a way that a lot of schools are really did not appreciate, not that they were super happy with the prior guidance. But I think watching that side though over the past four years is something that well will continue to see effects from that, including possibly reversing a lot of that under the new administration. But I think devise yourself will be known for what she did on title nine.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. That's really interesting. And certainly this pendulum, if you will keep swinging, it seems like between different administrations. Kirk, what about you in terms of legacy?What's your take?

Kirk Carapezza:

Yeah, I'd agree with Melissa. I'd say a policy analysts would say it's her effort to repeal Obama era regulations, whether it's protecting what many in higher ed see as predatory for profit colleges are giving those accused of sexual assault on campus more due process. I was thinking it about this morning. I think it's like anything. It depends who you ask, right? If you ask a political observer, they're going to say it was her nomination we're bent set to walk down there and cast the vote. I think that's going to sear in our memories. Most Americans probably couldn't name the education secretary under Obama, but everybody knows Betsy DeVos's name. Right? And so it's her nomination, but it's also her resignation, how she went out and it's the timing of this, right? This is three years after white supremacists marched of the university of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Kirk Carapezza:

And two weeks before the official end of the Trump administration. Some folks [inaudible 00:07:18] speculating she resigned her post up because of her conscious, but to avoid having to weigh in on the 25th amendment that would remove Trump. So we'll probably never know that, but among independent journalists like us, I think you ask us and for me her legacy is communication style, or her lack of communication with us. I know many journalists who collectively made thousands of requests to the education department to interview her and all of them were either denied or ignored. And I think that's remarkable and the public should note.

Jeff Selingo:

Yeah, I think it was a tweet from Goldie Blumenstyk of the Chronicle this morning that said something like," I guess I'm not going to get that interview request from back in 2017." Or something like that.

Kirk Carapezza:

Melissa, how many requests did you make?

Melissa Korn:

I don't even know from me or my colleague Josh Mitchell in D.C, there were so many times, as you said, not just denied, but that it's ignored. And I think that's the most infuriating thing, right? At least give me a solid no, don't just pretend I don't exist because that's not going to make me stop asking.

Jeff Selingo:

Well, obviously we're going to have a new education secretary coming in and maybe he will give some interviews. And we also have a pandemic raging across the country and on college campuses and in college towns. Is that what the year ahead will be about for both of you. In addition, are there other themes or topics that you anticipate your beat focusing on this year? And I know that everyone's in competition here, so you probably don't want to give away your, your best ideas on your beat but generally what do you think you going to be focusing on?

Kirk Carapezza:

[inaudible 00:08:56] We don't have a payroll, we're free over here and [inaudible 00:09:00] .

Jeff Selingo:

So Kirk, where are you focusing this year?

Kirk Carapezza:

Obviously it's all [inaudible 00:09:05] since March, it's just been all COVID all the time for the most part. Right, it touches everything, but as I said before, it's so inhibiting with the pandemic, we really trying to take it like one week and one story at a time, looking ahead two or three stories were in the past, I'd identify one story and then we'd have a long runway for other stuff, things are changing so quickly. And there's so much up in the air.

Kirk Carapezza:

I just kind of have some big picture questions that start the year. How can colleges improve public confidence in their institutions post pandemic? As we hopefully enter this final phase of the pandemic, how can schools position themselves to survive financially? They've lost so much money in this, and they've lost so many students, but in 2021, I think we'll be focusing on career and technical education. We just did a piece about some liberal arts schools getting into this business as a way to stay afloat, offering certificate programs to adults early this year.

Kirk Carapezza:

I'm going to start exploring how colleges are trying to recruit young men since the numbers out now show that men only comprise about forty percent of all college students and keeping an eye also on the social justice movement after school's professor commitment to diversity and inclusion last year after the murder of George Floyd, we started tracking how much contracting dollars they were giving to businesses owned by people of colour and GBH. My team reviewed seven hundred active contracts that are held by this big college purchasing co-op here in Massachusetts. And we found just fourteen, two percent went to Massachusetts certified minority owned businesses. So we plan to follow up on that piece and see if anything changes.

Jeff Selingo:

Melissa, how about you?

Melissa Korn:

Yeah. So as Kirk said, I think COVID will colour pretty much everything we write about in the coming months and near, and perhaps years plural. So it's been just non-stop. What does this mean for students? What does this mean for campuses? What does this mean for school finances? As we start the new calendar year, my interest in focused largely on access and the impact that the pandemic has had on college access equity, the students for whom college wasn't a sure thing before, what happens to them? How do they still make their way down that path? Who needs to help them?

Melissa Korn:

We've seen really disconcerting numbers in terms of FAFSA completion rates so far year over year down, start 12% right now, if those don't bounce back, what does that mean? And so much of that is because of the pandemic and the fact that everyone's lives have just been abinded by this. So looking a lot at that, I'm also trying to write a little bit more about graduate programs and community colleges and regional publics, some of the schools that don't always get the most attention in the media, but educate the majority of the students in this country.

Michael Horn:

So I want to come back to that, but I think in the immediate term, I'm curious you mentioned the financial future of higher education that touches on a lot of those campuses that don't always get the most attention, the regional publics in particular, we know there have been some stories as of late about their financial futures. We're certainly seeing a lot of conversations around mergers in that space, Pennsylvania being a big one in, in that conversation, but also small private liberal arts colleges.

Michael Horn:

I feel like Kirk, that's the time we get to connect every so often as another school in New England is having challenges. We've also seen, frankly, as, as I've been looking at it, I think fewer colleges closed than I might've expected to this point because they've been unusually adapted closing entire programs and laying off tenured faculty which I didn't expect. What are you all seeing out there? What are you tracking and what do you expect in the spring in particular when maybe some tough calls have to get made on college campuses? Kirk, you want to start first?

Kirk Carapezza:

Sure. In December, I think the New England board of higher ed came out with an estimate. They found that the pandemic has cost schools in our region about a half billion dollars. And that is before you even account for increased COVID expenses. So I think what I wouldn't get is federal and state aid and will that be enough to keep these schools afloat, but in order to cut costs, I think we're going to see more colleges operating on the brink, consider alliances and potentially mergers. And of course those are going on before all of this, I think right before the pandemic, I think Boston college acquired pimerics campus. We had the fiasco here with Mount Ida which shut down suddenly. And that kind of set off all kinds of red flags for schools and the state stepped in and tried to monitor the financial health at schools. I mean, I try not to get ahead of our skis on this and I can look at discount rates. And that as a reporter that tells me a lot about the demand for that degree.

Kirk Carapezza:

And we all know about the demographic cliff, Michael, you've written so much about that, what these schools are facing, but I'm just looking at trying to find schools that are doing innovative things. We just looked at Stonehill college and there they offer a certificate now in photonics, they partnered with MIT and Bridgewater State Care in Massachusetts. And the students are mostly low income. The woman we featured was homeless. She was the mother of twins and she was homeless at the beginning of the semester. And Stonehill came in and gave her a laptop and helped her move out of the shelter and into an apartment. I mean, those are the kinds of, I think we can talk about institutional failure and this in mergers and for my listeners it kind of washes over them, but if we can get in there and really find out what are schools doing to survive and how are they helping students and keep the focus on the students and their stories. That's how we can provide narrative story listeners that they can really grasp.

Michael Horn:

That makes sense, Melissa?.

Melissa Korn:

I think it's what are they doing to survive, but also is it working? We can't answer that question yet. It's going to take a while before we see this play out, but is a merger enough? is some sort of consortium on in particular academic areas enough? Is an extra certificate degree or adult at night classes or online programs? Know when everyone else is also doing those, you're not differentiating anymore that you if lose that edge very very quickly. So I don't think we're in the clear that schools that survived the fall are set and good to go.

Melissa Korn:

We didn't see the closures at the rate that were predicted. We will continue to see more closures. I do believe so, but as you guys all know, it's pretty hard to kill a college. So we're not going to see scores and scores of them in the next few months, but there likely will continue to be some. We'll continue to see schools declare financial exigency so that they can mess with quite the right word, but so that they can adjust their staffing, their faculties happen, kind of get in on those tenure faculty. And I think some schools are going to be continuing to rethink their athletic budgets. If the pandemic continues to affect who can play when. If we lose a spring season entirely, I think we'll have some really big impacts on the finance, on the athletic budgets presume.

Jeff Selingo:

So a word that's used often right now by everybody in the media is unprecedented, which could describe so much that's happening in our lives beyond higher ed, but let's just stick with higher ed for a second. So I'm really curious because everybody talks about, well, this is going to change higher ed forever, and I've written many of those things too. And then of course the pandemic will be over and we'll go back to the old way of doing things, but some things will change. And so I'm just kind of curious, maybe some of the stuff we've already talked about or other things we haven't talked about, what do you think might stick? It's interesting. I was talking to a vice-president at Temple University, Arizona, an event with him recently, and he said, "This might be the end of spring break." And I said, "Really, we're not going to..." Because we were talking about the calendar and I'm like," there's all business operation around spring break. I doubt that but who knows what could happen." Melissa, what do you think might stick.

Melissa Korn:

Yeah, so I will say, I think actually spring break probably will return just because it's used as an opportunity for students to do study abroad without disrupting their semester or trimester. Those short international trips are so popular now. And they're a way that schools can claim that so many of our students go abroad, even if it's for like four days. So I think spring break we'll come back. I think the academic calendar broadly may change a bit. We might see longer breaks between terms or just kind of a different an adjustment of what the academic year looks like more broadly, but not necessarily the depth of spring break. I do think the kind of admissions will change. And this is something Jackie, you and I have talked a lot about, but standardized tests. I think it's really hard to put that genie back in the bottle. [inaudible 00:18:44] Baylor just announced that they're going to extend their test optional for another two years because they saw perfectly qualified candidates apply this round without requiring the exams.

Melissa Korn:

So I'm really curious to see what some schools will do on that front, but I think it's going to be very hard to walk that back once they went to optional. I think we're going to see some shifts in how schools recruit. They're not doing campuses that's as much anymore. They're not going to high schools. High school students aren't going to them. How does that change? And then how schools utilize online courses for things like intro classes, big lectures, some schools have been doing flipped classrooms for awhile, others this was completely foreign to them.

Melissa Korn:

And I think as they continue into the spring semester now and continue to work out some of the things, some may really see that as an opportunity to, okay, let's just keep working side one on one online and we're going to use our classrooms for those more meaningful conversations and discussion groups and things like that. And more students maybe take a semester doing it remotely and then a semester on campus. And kind of that residency element at a lot of schools may shift.

Jeff Selingo:

Kirk, how about you? Maybe it's not the end of spring break, but what might stick?

Kirk Carapezza:

I think this is one of those cases where this will change, if not everything, a lot of things. And the folks I'm talking to, I know it's early on, I think these schools are still just catching their breath after getting all their courses online and figuring out this new model. But I think a few college presidents I've talked to think that this will make the whole system more quite unquote European, where Melissa suggested if the sports programs are cut, there'll be less focused on sports, which is a big part of American higher education. And we'll see more students kind of pick a career track maybe earlier on. Some of the students I've spoken with who are debating whether or not to defer for a year, I saw them struggling with that decision and they would say things like, " I could go on campus and live in the dorm with all my classes online, or I could take some classes at the local community college and volunteer for the fighting campaign in New Hampshire here. And get some work experience under my belt before I decide what I really want to do."

Kirk Carapezza:

I think we're going to see students and families as consumers be much more deliberate in their decisions and what they're doing. And there's such a premium on the in-person classroom experience. Now, I was talking to John Mitchell, the chair of the computer science department at Stanford, and his advice to professors now is obviously there's a premium on in-person instruction. And we all now see how valuable that is now that we're all stuck in these pods on Zoom and how miserable it is. Right. His advice to professors is if you are teaching hybrid or you have students in class don't lecture, right.

Kirk Carapezza:

Don't lecture, use all of that time for interaction and group work. And this is part of the moot craze, right? Which you've written so much about Jeff. Why take philosophy at your local community college, when you can take it from Michael Sandel at Harvard, right? So it's kind of this idea where you can assign lectures, whether it's something that you've taped or something that someone else taped and then really make the classroom experience so much more interactive and valuable rather than you're just checking that box.

Melissa Korn:

Yeah. Maybe in a silver lining here, maybe the pandemic actually changes the way faculty teach.

Kirk Carapezza:

How many faculty does it take to change a light bulb?

Jeff Selingo:

Well, we were going to answer that question. Maybe when we come back after this break on Future U, we have a ton more to talk about. We want to talk about a little bit about how the pandemic has changed your jobs a little bit more. And also some of the stories that we're not talking about that we should be. We'll be right back here on Future U.

Michael Horn:

Welcome back to Future U where we're joined by Melissa Korn at the wall street journal and Kirk Carapezza from GBH radio in Boston. And Kirk, I'll let you quickly give us the punchline to the joke you posed at the end, right before we went to break. And then Melissa, I'll ask you a more serious question if you will.

Kirk Carapezza:

Well, how many faculty does it take to change a light bulb? What's changed [crosstalk 00:23:46].

Michael Horn:

We don't have sound effects on this podcast. We're lucky, Melissa, let me take that as a segue into the question that I'm curious about because McKenzie Scott, the American novelist and philanthropist, most stories, note also formerly married to Jeff Bezos, where she got a lot of the wealth from out of Amazon. She's taken a novel approach to philanthropy, and it's had a significant impact for many higher ed institutions, many higher ed institutions at historically black colleges and universities for example, that aren't used to this kind of philanthropy. And I'm curious, what do you make of this? Might this have a broader impact across the field? Do you think it'll change the institutions that even attract attention in the press based on sort of the storylines that she's used as she's made these gifts that have come out of nowhere for most of these scholars and institutions.

Melissa Korn:

I'm really excited to see these gifts. I think it does help us change having write about philanthropy and higher education at the journal. Most of the time, we're not doing a story unless the gift is at least nine figures and kind of well into the nine figures at this point, right? A hundred million dollar donation doesn't blow anyone away anymore. And the universities that often get them are ones that have gotten eight of them already. So I think the fact that these are the first time some of these schools are getting gifts of this magnitude and it's her acknowledgement and recognition that a smaller dollar amount goes a lot longer at some of these schools that have been kind of on shoestring budgets for so long.

Melissa Korn:

And they will likely remain on shoestring budgets, but use this to get some new attention, get some new energy, be creative, think bigger than I've ever been able to before. So I'm really excited by it. I don't know that others are going to follow suit right away.There are still two or three HBC that most of the attention, most of the money. So if others follow suit and give to kind of a broader range of schools, I think that is huge and helpful and long overdue.

Jeff Selingo:

Well, as we hit the home stretch of the show here, I want to dig a little bit deeper into your jobs, because I think that our listeners are kind of fascinated by what you all do. You probably would want to invite them to work someday to show that it's maybe not as fascinating as they think it is, but Melissa, you've obviously written this book on Varsity Blues. And I keep thinking that seems now by the way of like ten years ago, but at the same time, it really started this year. That was in 2019, right. It really started this time period where higher ed was just literally on the front page of the journal and leading the newscasts, both on our radio and television. And now I can't go a day it seems where there's not a higher ed story somewhere.

Jeff Selingo:

Right. There's obviously the pandemic, but there's free college, the equity stuff we were talking about earlier, obviously the continuing fallout from varsity blues, admissions testing, you name it. I mean, all this, all the topics we've talked about today, so we talked a little bit earlier about how you got into these roles. You're probably thinking, higher ed. I could just do a story every couple of days. It would be great, but now just it's breaking news it seems all the time. So how has this kind of, where higher ed is so much further up the pecking order. Now it seems of stories, how has that changed your job? Melissa, let's start with you and then we'll go to Kirk.

Melissa Korn:

Yeah. I think the piece of news right now is astonishing and frankly, exhausting for those reading it let alone those writing or speaking about it or opining on it. I joked about, and we're working on the book that I was really excited that after we finish, I get to take a nap. And then we handed in our manuscript and kind of the world shut down a week later. So that was a very short nap. And I'm still looking forward to sleeping eventually, but no, it absolutely has changed what we do and the case of how we write.

Melissa Korn:

I think for me, it's a constant challenge, more so than ever before, to juggle kind of bigger picture dramatic pieces with the breaking news, right. I'll have the best of intentions to spend a day writing. And then three things happened something from DOJ, a school is postponing reopening. And I don't even know if I'm disinclined to even come up with an idea of what it might be for fear of jinxing myself for the rest of the day, but it is astonishing just how much news there is right now and how central it is to so much of what we talk about in our daily lives. Right. I mentioned earlier, this higher ed is about access, is about equity is about workforce path and we're seeing so much of that play out right now.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. Kirk, how about you?

Kirk Carapezza:

When I kind of think about the beat and how we fit into the national conversation over the last four years, there was just so much noise with the Trump administration. It was just constant. Right. And I thought we had to break through that and the varsity blues case for higher education journalists as shocking as it might've been, it was kind of this gifts for journalists, right? I mean, I was in the room when U.S Attorney, Andrew Welling announced the charges here in Boston. And I remember we got the press release and my editor and I looked at it and we were like major admissions scam should we even cover this? It's usually like something about the TOEFL and some Chinese nationals cheating.

Kirk Carapezza:

I wasn't even going to go. And then he goes, well, he says it's major. And they usually don't send out this announcement, go down and check it out. And in that case, when he announced the charges and kind of laid out exactly what they did and we were holding the indictment in our hands and I'm frantically flipping through it. You kind of feel that the light in the room shifts and I'll admit as a public media journalist, I have to Google Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin. I didn't know who they were, but [inaudible 00:30:03] my heart was crushed because I had spent part of my childhood with full house. I always joke that while they're pre COVID the higher ed beat in new England kind of ricocheted between the Moakley courthouse in Boston, where you had selective college admissions on trial in two separate cases, the Varsity Blues case, and then the Harvard discrimination case, which was also from my beat, that was also breaking news.

Kirk Carapezza:

And we were able to lead newscasts with that. And then so it's basically ricocheted between the courthouse and these small private colleges like Hampshire in Amherst that's just trying to hang on and fill up the seats and keep the lights on. And that story, in my opinion is just as important, if not more important than varsity blues and the Harvard discrimination case. And I think part of the job now is just being that much more deliberate about what stories are we telling right now and why, why is this a story? Is it a story because it's on TMZ. And I found myself in a courtroom next to the TMZ reporter and everyone else covering Lori Laughlin and Mossimo Giannulli's sentencing, or is this a story of a broader consequence that affects the future of this country and whether we can remain globally competitive and provide enough affordable high quality degrees to enough people in enough time to turn things around.

Michael Horn:

So just as we wrap up one final question for both of you, and I'm going to ask you to keep it brief. So like one or two word answer, but what's the story we all should be talking about that we're perhaps not right now, because of all the news you just listed that is overwhelmed, the beat, what's the one or two things on your mind that we're, we're sort of missing right now. Kirk, go for it.

Kirk Carapezza:

One word? [Crosstalk 00:32:01]. I don't know. I mean, preserving democracy, how's that? [crosstalk 00:32:13]. Is that too broad or do you want something more narrow?

Michael Horn:

Good. That's helpful, Melissa. What's on your mind ? The story that we should be talking about that we're not.

Melissa Korn:

[inaudible 00:32:26] certainly hope to be talking about is who's not going to college right now?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, that's perfect. And that missing generation or a year or two right now...

Jeff Selingo:

Which by the way, is related a little bit to Kirk's preserving democracy. [crosstalk 00:32:41]

Kirk Carapezza:

They're related, yes.

Michael Horn:

We're tying it together, but that is all the time we have for now. And just a huge thank you to Melissa and Kirk for joining us and kicking off the 2021 year in a better fashion than perhaps we had hoped from other outside events bringing us into this new year, but it's going to be a fascinating year ahead in higher ed. And we look forward to engaging with you and Future U. And to that end, Jeff and I plan to devote time to each episode answering listener questions. So please tweet or facebook message us with what's on your mind, and we'll do our best to answer. Thank you for joining us on this episode and until next time. Stay well. Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future U. And just a reminder to please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. And if you like the podcast, rate us so that others can find us and find out about the good conversations that we're having here, as always thanks so much for listening.