Odd Lots - Lots More with Kyla Scanlon on the Economic Vibes

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

Kyla Scanlon has a great way of identifying the economic vibes, building up a massive TikTok following with videos about the Federal Reserve, inflation, markets, and more. She also coined the viral term 'vibecession' to describe the mood of many Americans who haven't been feeling the economic growth shown in official figures. In this episode of Lots More, we catch up with the Bloomberg Opinion contributor on what the vibes are right now, what resonates on social media when it comes to economic coverage, and her new book, In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts Radio News. Tracy, do you think that the reason it's so hard to buy houses because of BlackRock is buying all the houses? There's a loaded question. That's like, what's that famous loaded question? Maybe this is more well-known in Britain, but the when did you start beating your wife question? Yeah, no, we have that here. Okay, okay. It's a little different. Yeah, a little different. It's also when did you stop, by the way. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes, that makes more. Oh dear, this conversation has already gone off the rails. I did a deadlift. One, two, three.

Hedgemi. Okay, go. What two? GEMany. Barges. This is an after-school special, except... I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the U.S. Where's the best squid imposten?

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world? No, I think that, like, in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good. job of making the Odd Lots podcast. And people are saying, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have... Cha-ching. The perfect guest.

You're listening to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now. Because even when the Odd Lots is over, there's always lots more. And we really do have the perfect guest. Didn't we learn that big factoid, that really interesting factoid in one of our conversations that actually the single family institutional ownership? includes like individual landlords in addition to huge firms like Black Rock. I just feel like this is what I think about all the time. TikTok macro, which is like Black Rock is controlling all of the market.

No, sorry, Black Rock is controlling all the market. Blackstone is why you can't buy a house. All people in Congress are insider traders. What else is there? What else is there, Kyla? In terms of TikTok. In terms of TikTok and what people talk about it on the end? Yeah, like what are like the sort of like pillars of like modern beliefs about how the public that needs to be educated?

Yeah, I mean, it's always the system is working against you, right? I mean, I think there's so many misbeliefs about the economy, which just it makes it really hard to talk about the economy. Like inflation going down doesn't mean that prices are going down. I think that's a really big one. And then the Black Rock thing really takes hold. That's very, very popular. A big pillar of like how many people see the problems with the economy. Yeah, like ETFs own the world.

ETS, yeah, own the world. I'm trying to think what else. There's a lot. I should say we are speaking with Kyla Scanlan, our good friend, who has just published a new book called Fittingly, I have to say. I love this title, In This Economy, How Money and Markets Really Work. She's also a Bloomberg opinion contributor. She's been on the podcast before.

And congrats on the book, Kyla. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's super exciting. Thank you for coming to chat with us. Oh, no, thank you all for having me. Also, the creator of the word vibe session. Yeah. This is just like become, it is, but it is you, right?

Like you said it first, right? Yeah, no. And now everyone says it. And I was like, oh, people, J.P. Morgan. I know. I saw that. Or claiming this is a vibe session. But you created that.

Yeah, no, I did back in July 2022. But yeah, no, other people have taken credit for it, which is fine, you know. No, it's not fine. No, it's not. It's just how it works. Yeah. But this is sort of the amazing thing about the vibe session, because when you first wrote about it, it was because the hard data was still coming in relatively strong. But all the

survey data, people seemed really, really downbeat on the economy. And now, a couple years later, that's still the case, more or less. Yeah, people are still feeling really bad. I mean, I think about the Harris Guardian poll, which was like 55% of people think that, or 56% of people think that were in a recession, 49% of people think the stock market is down. Forty nine percent of people think unemployment's at a record high. And it's like, man, you know, there's an element of the Vib session that is structural affordability issues, right? Like a hospital crisis, elder care, child care. But then there is an element of the Vib session, which is media, right?

And TikTok, as we were talking about with like the BlackRock ETF and how it's buying up single family homes, apparently. But yeah, it's complicated. Where do you think this comes from? So this sort of, I don't know, people talk about trust and this sort of, you know, people are just not believing, things that are objective facts, the sort of deep skepticism or antipathy maybe towards large institutions. or conspiratorial beliefs?

What do you think, is it like a social media thing? What do you think it's all about? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it's information overload. Like, we just have way too much going on all of the time. And I don't think we're kind of built to process all of that. And then just the framing of things really can be impactful. Like if a media headline is negative, that increases the click-through rate by 2.3%. If it's positive, it decreases it by 1.9%.

So the incentives are very clear there. But I also think, you know, if you're not freaking out, it means that you don't care. And so I think the overall idea, is that you have to be anxious and worried. And there are things to be anxious and worried about, but I think it's exacerbated by the way that we engage with one another online. What sort of engagement do you see on a platform like TikTok?

Because I feel like I'm not on TikTok, but I am on Twitter slash X. And one rule of social media seems to be if you say something negative about the economy, it's almost guaranteed to get more retweets and engagement than something that's positive or nuanced or educational. Is that something that you experience as well? Yeah, I mean, I think the whole thing is doomerism can absolutely take over.

Dumer's sound really smart. Like, if you're like, the world's ending, everyone's like, that guy knows what he's saying. And I think that that is just a great way to sell a newsletter. And so you see a lot of people is telling newsletters by selling a narrative. And I think it's the same on TikTok. Like, all the algorithmic incentives are for you to post very negatively. And it's hard as a creator because you know that.

But there's one of my favorite sayings right now is nuance doesn't sell. And I think that's a big part of what we see on social media is people feel like they have to take a clear side on what they're talking about. By the way, I see your book in this economy, number one bestseller in the business encyclopedias of Amazon. The number two is the audiobook version. And then three and four are both Robert's Rules of Orders. and then five is again is the Kindle edition.

So congratulations on your absolute dominance of the business encyclopedias category on Amazon. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it's funny what they end up categorizing you on Amazon. It's also doing well in the money and monetary policy section, which is fun. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't know it was a business encyclopedia, so it's good to know that it is. That's very cool. What was one of the things that you sort of learned through writing the book? So I was flipping through it.

And first of all, I love the little cartoons and the drawings and the diagrams. They're very, very sweet and also very illustrative of some of the points that you're trying to make. But I'm curious, is there one thing that sort of stood out to you when you were researching the book? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that for me, like, there was two things, right? Like, how do you structure a book and then what should a book be about? This is important for me and Tracy, by the way, because every once in a while we talk about writing a book together. And we're not where close.

So we're going to listen very intently here to learn how. it's done. Well, this is how I did. I don't know what it's done. But yeah, I learned, you know, you have to have a flow to a book and the structure of it really matters. Even though each chapter can be read separately, you kind of have to tell a narrative throughout it. And that's a little bit difficult with something as big as the economy. Right. Because your book is quite wide-ranging. It's basically everything that you find interesting about markets and the economy. Yeah, no. And I rewrote it three times. So the structure of the book was a big one. And then I think, too, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the history of the economy because I felt like

that was really important to include in some of the beginning chapters, like, how did we get here? And so the beginning of the book is kind of like the tapestry of the economy, the economic kingdom. So the Federal Reserve Castle, the monetary policy castle, the fiscal policy, inflation. Oh, I like the inflation pizza, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And all the diagrams are meant to sort of guide people throughout the book. And I guess like the biggest lesson learned for like writing an econ. book. And it was an interesting lesson to learn as the structure really matters and how you guide

people through something as hairy and confusing and big as the economy is important. You say people don't click on nuance. They don't click on. And yet you're into nuance. Yeah. Yourself. And so like as someone who has been a successful financial system educator and now a successful author, it's apparently possible. It's apparently possible to be successful and nuanced at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it totally. is I just think it's much easier to be dumeristic. Yeah. And so I think it's super important to have nuance because that's what the economy is all about.

You know, everything has an opposite and equal reaction. And it's the same in the economy. But I think it's just easier to tell lies. Yeah, Tracy, the last, so my last job, like about 10 years ago, Business Insider, I sort of wrote my last post there was about why I really like covering markets. Like, I sort of thought about the blind men touching the elephant, except the elephant keeps moving. So not only do you never really get the first.

full picture, like at any given time by the time you think you're getting the full picture, it's like there's still, another data point is the elephant has already evolved. The elephant is already involved into a new species. It's not easy. But you know, you know what I think, well, I'm not an authority on this subject by any means, but you know what I think the solution is to nuance is, is like comedy and entertainment in some respects. And that's kind of what you've been doing on TikTok, right? Like you make informational videos, but they're fun and engaging to watch. And so you can still provide nuance, but you still command the attention of the audience because they want to watch them. Yeah, yeah, that's the goal with like making, and that's why the book has

illustrations too. It's like, if you make things fun, people are more likely to pay attention. It's like a game of human behavior, right? And so yeah, if you can like tell jokes about things that are inherently kind of funny, like a lot of stuff in the economy, even though some parts of it are very serious, like unemployment and inflation, like some parts of it you can have fun with. And I try to do that as much as I can because I think that's how you engage people, people who think they're outside of the economy within economics education. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them.

And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You know what I don't know.

How did you realize what your career was? Oh, yeah. That's a good question. It's like, you know, people tweet and people post and then suddenly it's like, oh, like people listen and this is what I do now. Like it took me, it was not until a couple years of being a journalist that I realized like, oh, I guess this is what I'm going to be. I'm a journalist. At what point did you realize that this is what you do? It was really around GameStop is kind of when the video started.

And then I spent probably six months being like, I don't know what's happening. And I was just making these videos. And I didn't know if anything would work. And then I kept on writing my newsletter. And then in July 2022, the vibe session kind of took off. And I think that was kind of when I was like, oh, okay, I'm saying things and people are listening. And I had the New York Times opinion piece, which was really awesome. And that's kind of when I was like, oh, okay, wow, whoops.

So why do you think Vibe Session took off as a term? I think people were just really, or this has been feedback that other people have given me. I think people were just looking for something to explain this discrepancy between consumer sentiment and economic data. Like so many of my conversations are about why do people feel the way that they do. And I think the Vib Session word was at least a step in the direction of addressing, you know, why they're, is such a big gap and why people were a little bit worried about why that gap existed. Neither Tracy and I are on TikTok. Are we, like, at risk of just becoming completely irrelevant?

Like, I don't even use reels. All I do is, like, do the podcast and post tweets and stuff. How separated am I from actually the real world of where people, actual, people are actually getting there. I don't know if TikTok is the real world. But, yeah, I mean, I think TikTok is at risk of being banned in the United States. Which I don't, I'm biased. But that, you know, it's like, okay, well, that.

I was like, that's fine with me. Yeah, that's fine with me. It's like level the playing field for me because I'm so far behind. No, but I have no opinion on this. Yeah. But no, a lot of young people do get their news from social media. And that's why I made my videos on social media. It was because I was like, this is where people are. They need information about the economy where they are. And so that's what I set out to do. But yeah, it's definitely where people, it's like the watering hole of the internet in a big way. But not like Twitter. Twitter's a little bit different. It's very direct on Twitter. You know who I blame for TikTok being a massive, like, whole in our consciousness, Joe? Ironically, I kind of blame Sam Rowe because he amalgamates the best of TikTok and then posts it on Instagram, which means I never have to go on TikTok because he just does all the aggregation work for us. Yeah, it's a public service for sure. Kyla, I want to talk more about like the vibe session and where we are in the economy now. But so inflation has been coming down a little bit.

And yet the sentiment surveys are still coming in pretty. I mean, I'm generalizing here. No, they're dismal. Yeah, they're bad. If this is a structural problem with some of the surveys, if people are too polarized because of the media, or if people are reflecting on the longer term outlook and just thinking, I'm never going to be able to buy a house or I'm never going to be able to retire. And that's feeding into some of the shorter term responses.

Is this discrepancy ever going to go away, or is this something that we and economists are going to have to learn to accept and kind of analyze and digest? Yeah, that's something I've been wrestling with quite a bit ever since the Harris Guardian. And you've got to take all surveys with the grain of salt, but ever since the Harris Guardian survey came out where it was about more than just vibes. Like it was a clear disconnect from reality, right? Like it was like, we're not believing in truth, which is stock markets up, unemployment, Stalin. Right. We're not in a recession. that because of information being a playing field for foreign adversaries, that there is more

and more of an incentive to push consumer sentiment down. People are getting their information from all sorts of disparate sources. And so there really isn't a cohesive way to consume information, like how we used to when it was just like one cable TV show. So I do think that sentiment will be impacted just because of the way that we get our information now is so confusing. But I am very optimistic that it'll improve, but I'm not sure yet how it will. I think it has something to do with transparency and trust and rebuilding that, but that is a big project to undertake. That seems like a really big project. Why can't everyone just do what I do, was you just fire up the Woonberg Terminal, type out top, and look at the most credible selection of news stories related to business in the world.

It's easy. I never get any misinformation. I know. Kyle, don't respond. Just get a Bloomberg. I've learned the best thing to do is just don't respond to Joe. Just get a Bloomberg terminal and then you have your information fire hose solve. There's this crazy statistic about, and it sort of refutes what I was just saying about media being a way that people get confused is like the average American spends like five minutes a month on the top 25 news sites. So people are really just scrolling headlines.

And so I think it's like all of these things. And also I think the decline of local papers. Everything has become very big and national and algorithmically designed, which sounds very doomer of me. But I think we're in a weird spot. And there's so much uncertainty going into the election, too. I think it's just going to be a funky few months. What's your creative process like for creating the TikTok videos? And I have to say at this point, sometimes when I'm imagining like the FOMC meeting around like a big table in a boardroom,

I sometimes have visions of like you talking to yourself the way you do from like different camera angles and Jerome Powell going, I think we should do this. And then Kyla responds like, no, we should do this. Anyway, that's just me. That's so funny. Yeah, the creative process is kind of like whatever I'm into that day on it. I get a lot of inspiration from other videos, all sorts of like movie makers and video creators. And that is how the creative process is driven. What I try to do is a multidisciplinary approach. So in the book, I have a lot of poems and philosophy and literature. And I feel like that's really fun because I feel like with economics, we kind of stay in one line most of the time, which is like money. But you can really, you can have a lot of fun just talking about how all this stuff relates to everything else. Totally. I mean, I think this is one of the things we've learned on odd lots.

There are very few topics that can't fit in in some way. Like in some way, yeah, you just sort of realize in some way it's all business and economics. one of the questions that people ask me, like, well, what should I read or what should I, what do you like to consume? What other books that you like, a media diet or like someone said, like, I want to learn more about the economy. I want to learn more about markets. What should I read? What do you tell people? Well, I have a great book out.

You can read in this economy. But, yeah, I love reading books that aren't about the economy, but like kind of an economics angle. So I'm reading this book called Paved Paradise right now, which is very good. It's about parking lots and, like, the history of parking lots. and that's been really fun. I feel like that's right up your guys' alley. I love single topic history. So good.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And then I just finished cultish, which is about like cults and how they started up. And then I'm reading The Material World by Ed Conway,

and that's been really fun. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. But yeah, I basically read everything. I read a lot of philosophy during the pandemic, which I think a lot of people did.

And now I'm kind of on this like real world kick where I really am obsessed with like geology and materials. and stuff like that and how that can be applied to the economy. So you mentioned, you know, things sort of taking off for you during GameStop. And I think the last time we had you on was to talk about meme stocks. And maybe we did a little bit of crypto then as well. But, of course, in recent weeks, we have seen the return of some meme stocks, although it seems to have kind of gone away.

But GameStop was up. We're recording this May 29. It was up like 25% yesterday. Yeah, it was a lot. But not quite on the scale of the first round of meme mania and it's dropped again. But what do you think is happening there? Why does it seem to resonate, you know, even two years later? Yeah, I mean, I think Roaring Kitty returning, probably that's something to do with it.

But, you know, one topic I've thought a lot about is financial nihilism. So people sort of not believing in markets. But I also think, like, GameStop is sort of fun. And it is a casino in the way that if you throw some money at it, you could make a lot of money. And so I think people view it that way. But then I do think there's an element of financial nationalism, which I know that you all just covered sports gambling. I think that is maybe sort of in the same bucket. Connorson, also from Bloomberg opinion, has a great theory where he's like, because millennials and young people can't buy a home, they sort of have this extra cash that they're going to throw at things like GameStop and sports gambling.

And I think that all of those things are simultaneously sort of true. Eventually, somehow, you know, even the most online gen Zeres, like eventually they'll get old. Like, we are, and eventually some of them will own homes and eventually some of them will have kids. Do you think that for younger generations, they're just going to permanently see the world differently than many other people? Or do you think it's going to be like, no, the constraints that inevitably happen as people will get older and, having to save and pay for child care and pay for elder care will be a sort of forcing mechanism for having, I guess, views or media diet that we sort of see is a little bit more normy. Yeah, I mean, I think the mean reversion, I suppose, is normy, as you might say.

Yeah, I think that, like, as you get older, you just have more responsibility, so you're more likely to become more normy to say it again. But, you know, people aren't having kids like they used to. Like everybody knows and, you know, it's really tough to get a home. So I think that that will be something that we see. I just think that's something that happens over time. But it'll be interesting to see how the Jin Zers move throughout the world. I wrote this piece for Fast Company this time last year or a little bit earlier about how

Gin Z thinks about work, which is very, very different. Like all the media terms. They're just like quiet quitting and all that stuff. All right. They just had something where it was like a quiet lunch or something where people were like going to lunch And they were like, why would you do that when you could work for a corporation and not take lunch and just work all day? So I think that there is more of a desire for work-life balance. And, you know, corporations don't provide perhaps the same support that they used to, like when there was pensions and, you know, more supportive health care, possibly.

So I think it's just a totally different relationship with work. And I don't know if that will carry through to the future, though. Again, Tracy and I maybe one day will write a book ourselves. So we're curious about this whole. process and what happened. What's next for you now? So the book just came out, came out May 28th. What happens now? What would your book be about? I don't know. That's the problem. We can never think of an idea. You stole her idea. Oh, did I? You know, how money and Mark, no, not really. But that's the problem. I have no idea what it would be

about. Yeah, I mean, you could just do a compilation of all the oddlots episodes. Yeah, we could. We were thinking about something like, oh, like, wait, wait, wait. Can we not have this on the thing? Because We might actually do it. All right, right. We've thought about ideas like that. But what's next? What happens after you write a book? Yeah.

I don't know yet. It was like a really big project for about a year. And like right now I'm just very interested. This is like personal, I suppose, but I'm very interested in learning. You know, everything that I've done has been in my bedroom. You know, it's been like, you know, low resource. It just sort of hacked from zero. And now I have, you know, everybody's been so supportive and kind.

But I'm really curious to explore, like, other mediums, like radio, TV, see what that's like. Maybe you have a Netflix. I could see, like, in this economy, Netflix style documentary, right? That'd be fun. Yeah. I'm really interested in exploring how the government works. I feel like one theory that I had, and I didn't really explore it throughout the book, is, you know, if you don't understand the system that you're in, it's tough to make a decision about the system, but you're also more likely to not trust the system if you don't understand the complexities. And so I think a really useful thing would be to explore the complexities of the system. what is the U.S. post office?

You all do such a good job with this with the podcast. But I think like really going deep into the more government-facing stuff. I think that's a great idea. Like what do all these agencies actually do and how they operate? Yeah. Exactly. And I think that leads to the distrust and the dismay and all the stuff we've been talking about throughout the podcast. But I would really like to explore that.

Like I'm just very fascinated by different mediums to educate about the economy. And like it's this thing that people think they're not a part of. But, like, you know, I got a coffee about an hour ago. And that was like an economic transaction. I took the subway here. That's an economic transaction. We're sitting in chairs, which are made of material and probably, like, put together by hand or a machine. And all of this is, like, part of the economy.

And I think that the more that people can sort of resonate with that and see themselves as part of the economy, the better off we could be. And so that's my soapbox on it. But I think it's important. So I remember actually going back to Game Stuff. And maybe this, you know, gets into the nuanced thing. I remember we did a handful of. Like, there was a lot of financial nihil, you know, you mentioned the term financial nihilism and, you know, people are just doing their yellow bets and their yellow losses. It's the lottery ticket philosophy.

But there were a few people who, like, actually use that moment to learn more. And, like, we did a few episodes on how, you know, what is, like, gamma squeezes and stuff. And, like, probably most people didn't care. But there were a handful that's like, oh, I really, like, want to learn more. And then actually use that moment, like, I don't understand about how, you know, the Greek letters work. options of math and stuff like that. What have you found, like, is there like a cohort of people that you've been able to connect with online who, like, through your stuff, like, have really gone deep into these topics? Oh, yeah. I mean, I get, like, really special messages from people

being, like, I majored in economics because of you. Oh, that's the best feeling. Yeah, it's so kind. Or, like, you know, I passed an e-contest because of your video on VEBlin goods. And, yeah, so, like, I don't know if that's exactly what you're asking, but there's been a lot of, like, really kind notes about how people have realized, like, the economics world can be fun, that they're a part of it, that you can understand it. It doesn't have to be a bunch of charts on the screen, right? And so, yeah, and I think also GameStop kind of opened up to people's minds to investing. Like, before, when I talked to my friends about investing, they would be like, that's not something I'm ever interested in. But now with GameStop, they're like,

oh, okay, I could make like a million dollars. But they're just more likely to be receptive to the knowledge because GameStop streamlined so many conversations about the stock market. Well, this is the other thing about your content and your approach to economics especially is I feel like you take into account human behavior in a way that traditional economics, with the exception of behavioralist economics, obviously, doesn't necessarily do. So in like a classical interpretation of the economy or even the market, stuff like GameStop isn't really supposed to happen and people are always supposed to act rationally and things should eventually balance out. And yet we've seen time and time again that the economy is, you know, the result of individual

human decisions and sometimes it doesn't work precisely as expected. Yeah, humans are irrational, which kind of goes against, you know, what we think they should be, which is rational. But I think that's what I tried to do with the book because there's so many like brilliant economists out there. Like this book is a consolidation. It's not Kyla's big original ideas. It's all these other ideas from all these other amazing economists, like basic economics by Sowell, you know, economics and one lesson by Hasley. Like all of those books are so good, but they're so dense. And like sometimes they don't attach back to the real world. And so what I really wanted to do with this book was get into theory and like why stuff happens, but then also be like, oh, look, like this is how inflation impacts you and this is how the labor market impacts you. And this is how the labor market impacts you. And here are real world examples of all of those things. And yeah. And, and so, instead of being like, here's a supply and demand graph, and that's all you get to know about.

I just want to say economics in one lesson is the biggest lie there is. That's a 218 page book. Someone handed me that to me when I was like in college, Henry Haslett's book. I don't understand how they got away with titling at that. Just on us marketing. Yeah, one lesson is a 220 page book. You mentioned charts. Do people still Twitch stream?

And could we have a show, Tracy and I, where we look at charts on the Bloomberg Terminal Live on Twitch and talk about that? Would that be a hit? You're really innovating on show format right now. I'm talking about you. I'm talking about you. You know, I think people just like to watch people talk about stuff. Okay.

That's like my big theory. Like, I think people love watching podcasts because it kind of feels like you're just hanging out. So I think you all could definitely get on Twitch and stream some charts and show people the Bloomberg terminal that's... We got to do like competitive charting or something. You should. Like competitive Excel. Someone could say like housing. Yeah.

And then we race to see who has the most interesting housing chart. That's a lot of it. That'd be fun. I like this. Oh my gosh. Lots more is produced by Carmen Rodriguez and Dashel Bennett with help from Moses Ondom and Kale Brooks. Our sound engineer is Blake Maples.

Sage Baumann is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Odd Lots and Lots More on your favorite podcast platforms. And remember that Bloomberg subscribers can listen to all of our podcasts ad free by connecting through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.