Offline with Jon Favreau - Do Dating Apps Make it Harder to Find Love?

Episode Date: January 22, 2023

Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz and Lakshmi Rengarajan, hosts of the newest season of The Cut’s Land of the Giants, join Offline to talk about how apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble have redefined romance. They’ve named the season “Dating Games” and ask whether the goals of dating app companies are aligned with our romantic aspirations. Jon talks to them about the ways internet dating has gamified romance, what the current dating app generation has lost, and whether there are alternatives for finding love in a world of swiping. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The amount of time people spend on Bumble a day is 90 minutes. Like, that's the same as TikTok. That's some, like, brainstem shit. Like, what are you doing on Bumble for an hour and a half every day? You know what I mean? Not developing your sort of interpersonal skills. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline.

Hey, everyone. This week, I'm talking to Sangeeta Sankerts and Lakshmi Rengarajan, hosts of this season of Land of the Giants, a podcast from The Cut about big tech's biggest players. On this season, Sangeeta and Lakshmi dig into something we haven't covered yet, the world of online dating. Their first episode, which is out now, details the rise of the world's most infamous dating app, Tinder, and the design decisions made by Tinder's founders to prioritize engagement over the needs and desires of the app's users. A story we've heard quite a few times on this show, but this time it's centered on our need and desire for sex, love, and romance.

Sangeeta and Lakshmi are experts on this topic. Sangeeta is a journalist for New York Magazine who's interviewed hundreds of people about their dating app experiences. And Lakshmi is a former director at Match.com, who, as host of Paired by the People, is on a mission to revive the art of the in-person setup. Together, they interview dating app executives, leading experts on addiction and relationships,

and of course, dating app users themselves to tell the story of how this technology has hurt our ability to meet new people and develop healthy relationships. The show is great. Highly recommend. So, I've never had the pleasure of using dating apps myself since I met Emily right before they took off.

But I have helped plenty of friends carefully curate profiles. And I've watched most of them alternate between excitement and misery while swiping. On this podcast, we've talked a lot about the ways the internet has reshaped our brains or our politics. But what if the internet has reshaped love too? So I talked to Sangeeta and Lakshmi about the ways Tinder has gamified dating, what the current dating app generation has lost, and what the alternatives might be for finding love in the world that Tinder has created. As always, if you have comments, questions, or episode ideas, please email us at offline at crooked.com. And please take a moment to rate, review and share

an episode with a friend. Sangeeta Sankirt, Lakshmi Rangarajan, welcome to Offline. Thanks, Jon Favreau. Thank you. So I've talked to a lot of guests now about the implications of tech companies designing social media apps for maximum engagement. We haven't covered dating apps yet. I loved the first two episodes of the new podcast series you're both hosting on the dating app industry. It's called Land of the Giants Dating Games, and we'll get to that. First, I wanted to start with how you both became interested in this topic. Lakshmi, I know you have a long background in the dating industry.

Can you talk about how you got from Match.com to this podcast? Sure. Well, actually, it started before Match.com. So, the first step was, I think it was like 2009. So, it was pre-Tinder, but definitely post-online dating. And it was just one of those things where I started to notice a shift in people. And I kind of looked at how it was evolving. And I was kind of like, this is really cool. And this is totally going to fuck everybody up. And I want a front seat to this.

Nice. Sangeeta, you said you've spoken to hundreds of people who New York Magazine polled last summer about their experiences with dating apps. Any common themes? Frustration, dejection, burnout, sort of like a cyclical feeling of hope and then just hitting a wall and getting tired of it all. I heard that from so many daters. At first I was skeptical. I was like, you guys have got to be

whining about this. Like it can't be happening to all of you, but it's happening to all of you. Yeah. Very few happy campers. Dating games is about how people have come to feel burnt out by these apps. Your first episode is about Tinder, which revolutionizes online dating in 2012 as a mobile-only app that gamifies the experience with the now-famous swipe. Lakshmi, how did that compare to other online platforms at the time? And how did Tinder change the whole process of matching up with people? Yeah, such a good question. And obviously, we go into it in the episode. But

before that, dating was mostly a desktop experience. So you had to sit down, you had to craft a profile. There was probably people with higher intent at that point. They were looking for a relationship. And what Tinder did, they completely changed the game because all of a sudden it was on your phone and you didn't even really need to be single. You just needed to quickly, you know, use Facebook or whatever login that they had. And you could be on Tinder in seconds. So the fact that it jumped from desktop to mobile is really what changed the game for everybody. And you could just do it from everywhere.

And then also that it was free. That was a big part too. I also found it fascinating how intentional the gamification was. You talk about how the founders actually called the swipe and other buttons on the bottom of the app, the game pad originally. Sangeeta, why was it so important to them to gamify dating? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that they were thinking of gamification when they first made it. We spoke to one of the co-founders, Jonathan Bedeen, who sort of invented the swipe. And he talked about how he came up with the idea. And he was like picturing a college

student on a campus like with a coffee on one hand and like a phone in the other and he just wanted something sort of like that made it easy for people to do like with just their thumb and do it quickly whether you're like walking around or you're in the line at the grocery store whatever so it wasn't that they wanted to gamify it initially. They just wanted to make it fun, easy, quick. And then it just turned out that people sort of treated it like a game. And some people, some of the founders we spoke to, like to distance themselves from the idea of gamification because the connotation is that when something's gamified, you are trying to hook in a sinister way users onto your app. So the swipe itself was sort of just revolutionary

in that before that people were sort of, as Lakshmi said, trudging through these profiles, doing this like solo in their houses on the desktop. But now you could just do it around people. It was normal. It was fun. It wasn't so isolating an experience. You also interview an anthropologist who compares the swiping experience to playing slot machines. She invented a term for it, the ludic loop. What's a ludic loop? Yeah, for me, that was one of our most interesting interviews because this anthropologist, Natasha Schull, studied Vegas gamblers and she likened the sort of endless format of dating apps, the swipe experience to slot machines.

She said that slot machine users like swipers get suspended in the same sort of zone of possibility. And she said that when you go on an app, like when you go to a slot machine, you have this idea that you're going to eventually get closure. You're going to get closure on your romantic life. You're going to make a million dollars, whatever, but you're going to meet someone. And actually what happens is that there's no resolution. There's no sort of like conclusion to the story. You're just in an endless loop of swiping or hitting that slot machine. And if you think about the sort of economic proposition of the companies, they don't

want there to be a resolution because they would have no customers. Right. And I think there was a neuroscientist that you guys interviewed as well, who notes that this is sort of how dopamine hits work. And we've talked about this with other guests on offline as well, which is you don't necessarily need the resolution to feel the dopamine hit. You don't need to have the match, go on the date. When it comes to dating apps, the anticipation that you may get a match

is what makes you feel good and makes you keep coming back. Is that the way it works? Yeah, totally. And to your point, I think we've talked about this with other forms of social media. We seem to be very aware of that when it comes to TikTok or Twitter, that we're in this endless loop. But this was the first time I think people have really talked about it in the context of dating. And that's why I like that those interviews were so important. So Tinder revolutionizes online dating by gamifying it, tracks a ton of users.

And just like with almost every other social media app, there's initially a lot of focus on the more positive aspects, right? More opportunities to meet people, easier process, more choices, less uncertainty, less rejection. Fast forward till today, a lot of people on these apps are miserable. Lakshmi, what happened? What happened? Like so many things. I mean, one of the best terms that someone from the team said was like, that we're sort of unpacking almost like the comorbidities of where dating has ended up. There were a lot of things happening, right? Like, first of all, like I said at the beginning, like all of a sudden, you don't even need to be, you know, single and looking. You just needed to

like have a heartbeat and you could get on these apps. So there were a lot of people, you know, swiping. Then, you know, there are people that are all of a sudden on multiple threads, multiple apps. They're constantly being told that like dating is a numbers game. That's sort of like the advice that's doled out from companies and from their friends and family that they just need to go through as many people as possible. So then you do that and then you have this whole ecosystem where then people are sort of becoming disposable and just sort of, you know, going on tons of dates and meeting a lot of people, but not necessarily connecting. And that's kind of where we're at right now with the exhaustion and the fatigue and the frustration. I imagine that the like other social media apps and like the Internet itself, they can also be sort of addictive because of these ludic loops and the dopamine hits. And so like you may go into the dating app game thinking, okay, I want to find

someone. But then the actual act of being on the app and swiping itself becomes the entertaining experience. And that's got to be pretty tiring after a while, I imagine. Yeah. We heard the word addiction a lot. Obviously, it's sort of a tricky term to apply to these things. But we did hear of people sort of going down a swiping hole, where they're swiping, swiping, swiping, and it feels awesome. But then they're not talking to anyone.

They're not going on any dates. And the sort of value proposition of the app, the reason why they're there, they lose sight of that. And we heard that from, you know, dozens and dozens of daters. Sangeeta, from your discussions with some of the executives who've worked at Tinder, it does seem like maybe Tinder's goals and the average user's goals weren't always aligned. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, it's difficult because Tinder, when we looked at its sort of origin story, it never promised love, like it never promised romance or marriage or whatever.

It didn't even promise hookups. It promised to match people. It did that successfully and at scale, but matching has become sort of increasingly meaningless. We know this now because we're 10 years down the line on the app. So Tinder, all of these apps, they're motivated to get as many users as possible on their apps for as long as possible and get people to pay as much as possible to use their service. You know, we've seen Hinge just announced that they're going to roll out like a $60 subscription. Tinder is going to roll one out that's $500.

So, I mean, that's like rent money. That's a lot of money. So, of course, these businesses want to make money because they're businesses, but that doesn't mean anything to the users. They want to find a partner. They want true quality connections and the gulf between those objectives. That's obviously enormous. Well, yeah, I was wondering this as I was listening, because if everyone matched up with each other, then there wouldn't be a need for these dating apps, right? Now, I know that Hinge basically ended up coming up with a slogan that was, you know, we want to be deleted or something like that

to try to sort of position themselves against Tinder. But do you think it's intentional on the part of these companies that they actually don't want too many people finding love on these apps because then they'd be out of business? Do you think it's that intentional or do you just think it's a byproduct of maximum engagement as a main goal? I would say two things. I think they need some people to meet, but most people to fail. They need to have the stories. They need to have the examples that this does work and that's what keeps people coming back. Like a lot of tech companies, I don't think anyone sits around and is like, how can we ruin people's romantic lives? I don't think

that that's what happens. But I don't necessarily think that they sit around reflecting on how they're changing the cultural fabric. I think they see themselves purely as a tech company that is trying to maximize profits. And I don't think that their brains or hearts go the extra mile to think about how are we actually affecting demographics and relationships and people's hopes and their dreams. I just don't think they go there. Sangeeti, what do you think? I mean, it's difficult to say. We're still reporting the series. But one question we've been digging into is whether match groups' business goals are at odds with users' romantic goals.

And on the match group side of things, they would say that their business goals are good for users. That what you're paying for is a more effective, accelerated experience of finding your next date, your next husband, whatever. But we've reported this question out, which no one has done before, by the way. And the users that we spoke to, the hundreds of users we spoke to for this entire series, are skeptical that their money is getting them anywhere. They feel like they're throwing it into the void that they're swiping and paying for subscriptions, but the whole process is not getting them anywhere. So what we're learning is that the apps can get you matches, but it's hard, potentially impossible for technology to optimize for like IRL in real life compatibility. You just can't do that.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned the premium versions that, you know, Hinge is currently testing one. Tinder has had them for a while. How do you think that differentiates the user experience between people who can pay and people who can't? Yeah. I mean, there is a freemium model of these that people can use. And the people who built Hinge, for example, say that that version of the app is still usable. When you pay, you get sort of what Tinder calls superpowers. You can be seen by more matches. You can sort of hit the top of the list. You can message matches who are behind a paywall.

And it's hard to say whether that actually works. What we do know is that Match is a conglomerate with millions of users, 45 brands around the world, and these brands use the same business model. And they all promise that if you pay, you'll give users a leg up but while that's making them billions of dollars the users themselves don't feel like they're getting any closer to connecting with real life people so you can pay for a faster experience but that doesn't mean that you're going to reach your romantic goals any faster. Lakshmi it also seems like by creating these premium tiers that people have to pay for, it just ends up giving everyone who doesn't pay a shittier experience on these apps, right? I mean, it can. I mean, I think the other thing to think about with the premium features

is that, you know, for so long, these things were free. And that's how they got the volume that they needed to get to build up. I mean, Sangeeta has this great interview with Alison Davis where people are like, I don't know how to flirt anymore. I don't even know how to approach someone. So it's almost like this dependency has developed that people are now like, do I need to buy the premium features? Because I don't actually know how to approach anyone anymore. Yeah. I wanted to get into that because we've talked a lot on this show about how to buy the premium features because I don't actually know how to approach anyone anymore. Yeah, I wanted to get into that because we've talked a lot on this show about how apps like Twitter and Instagram don't just affect how we treat each other online,

but offline as well. Shorter attention spans, performative politics, body image issues. Lakshmi, you say in the first episode that Tinder has also affected how people treat each other outside of the app. You just alluded to that with some people and Allison talks about that in her great interview with you guys saying that like, I don't know how to flirt anymore. In what other ways has Tinder sort of affected how people treat each other, even when they're not on Tinder? I mean, if you talk to people who are dating, they'll even say things like, I know this isn't me, but this is kind of like what the app brings out in me.

Like I'm actually not that judgmental. I actually do like to give people a chance. I actually do like to do things besides going to restaurants and bars to get to know someone, but I'm sort of in this like vortex. And so in a weird way, like the being on the app kind of primes people

to this most shallow version of themselves. And then that's the version of themselves that's going out and trying to, you know, have a meaningful connection with someone. Yeah. And the ghosting was interesting too, is that it's made a ghosting easier and more common, which you can totally see

because if you're not seeing the face necessarily always behind the app, I mean, if you get a match, you can never talk to someone and that's fine. But even if you go on one date, if you know that there's going to be a whole bunch of other dates, it does seem like it's maybe more common.

Yeah, and another thing that I heard in a couple of interviews was just people, if they hit a roadblock in the relationship, just how quickly people want to hit the eject button because they know that they can go back in and find something else. So I think that just sort of lends to the disposability culture. You mentioned your interview with Jonathan Vadim, who co-founded Tinder. He unsurprisingly takes a different view on all this. He says in the episode, a lot of times it's the technology that people blame as opposed to normal societal things. I think people always have these frustrations with dating. Technology is just bringing people together. What's your reaction to Badin's quote there, Sangeeta? I mean, it's like predictable. I mean, he

said that dating was hard and that Tinder didn't exacerbate things. Of course, he's going to say that. Of course, they're not going to blame the app. But then again, I don't know that like daters necessarily blame the app either. One of them that we spoke to, I think it was Allison described Tinder as like mankind getting fire. Like we got this tool and we didn't know like what it was going to do, but we used it how we wanted to use it. And because we're humans and we're shitty, we just ended up using Tinder for hookups

and catfishing and ghosting and the ultimate destruction of courtships. So I don't know. I don't know whose fault it is, but I think that if we can have an honest conversation about what Tinder hath wrought, maybe there's a different way that we can use

these tools moving forward, but who knows? Lakshmi, what do you think? No, I agree. And I love that image of the fire and I think it's right. And I think part of what Sangeetha and I are trying to do in this series is sort of like lead people through that because I actually think there's more self-blame going on than blaming the companies. People are a lot of times are like, what's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to fix? What do I need to pay for? And I think what we want to do in this series is almost like offer people a primer, you know, and say, hey, there is an industry, there is a business, there is infrastructure behind what you're experiencing.

We want to take that load off of them a little bit. It's wild listening to all this because it does make me feel ancient because I met my now wife probably like right before the apps, the dating apps really took off. So I've never experienced being on these apps. But I do remember right before I met her, like getting really sick of dating, like going on date after date, and then you go on one date, you go on a second date. And there is just this feeling that I imagine people do get from Tinder now and from a lot of these other dating apps, where it's just exhausting meeting new people and telling your life story and hearing theirs over and over again. I'm guessing that the technology and the swipe just sort of accelerates all that and sort of does what a lot of these other social media apps

that we've come to rely on does to us, which is just sort of flattens us, brings out the most base impulses in all of us, the most shallow version of ourselves, makes people disposable. It seems like that's sort of what the technology speeds up. Totally. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, like I said, I haven't't used these myself but i've been with friends who've created profiles um i was just with one who did uh over the weekend and it really it took like five people in an hour-long session to like figure out the right prompts for hinge and and go through every photo in the photo library to pick out the best ones. And you're just like, yeah, this is performance at its best right here. This

is really just nothing natural about this. Yeah. And I mean, we hear that a lot, like people, you know, kind of getting, you know, trying to get support from their friends or something. But the other thing that the apps have done is like, it's made it a very solo experience. It is like Home Depot, like you're doing it on your own, right? It's, it's you and only you. And so that like a lot of people talk about just not knowing how to get help or not knowing, you know, like it's something that they have to absolutely resolve on their own. Whereas like dating used to be much more community driven. And, you know, there used to be a lot more people like you'd meet through your friends or you'd meet coworkers or like, you know, your aunt would try to set you up. But a lot of those other branches

of meeting people have kind of died on the vine as the result of the app. So one thing you'll hear people a lot is like, I don't, you know, not only do I not know how to do anything anymore, but like that entire web that used to lead people to a relationship has kind of withered away. Wow. And that must lead to sort of a loneliness and sort of more of that self-blame and self-doubt because you don't have that support network of friends that you usually have when you're all going out and sometimes meeting other people and meeting people through friends and all that. Right. And one of the reports that we reference in the episode a lot and the one that we turn to is it's a pretty recent report from Stanford, and it talks about how now meeting online is the number one way that people are meeting

and all the other ways. And there's a a chart and it's like meeting through coworkers, meeting through friends, meeting at a bar and meeting through a club. All of that had just like declined and just like shot down. And I just think that's like worth, you know, reflecting upon. I looked at this old survey that New York Magazine did in 1999 before we released our 10 years of dating app issue this year, and it asked, you know, how many people have met their partner online? And it was 0%, and now it's like in the 90s or something. It's the dominant way that people meet each other. So I think there's this general feeling too amongst daters that this is the only option.

Right. The writer Nancy Jo Sales, who wrote the big piece about Tinder and being the dating apocalypse, said something to you both that reminded me a lot of the conversations we've had on this show. She said, there's just too many people. If you have too many choices, then you can't make a choice. Do you think we're meant to be connected at this scale? This is a question I've asked a lot of the guests on the show about other apps. Sangeeta?

No, absolutely not. I think it's crazy. I mean, Lux, we touched on this earlier, but it's like people are paralyzed, paradox of choice, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, we just heard that having this many people is what leads to this feeling of burnout. You can't respond to any of those messages.

You know, you don't know who to go out with next. And people just like don't engage in the first place to avoid what is basically like their dating inbox. So absolutely too many options in romance is not good for us. Yeah, I mean, I think this is like the trick and this is what's hard. On the one hand, we talk about the paradox of choice. And then on the other hand, there's this very strong message of, well, you just have to find the right person and you just have to play the numbers game. And those two ideas are sort of in conflict with each other, which is why I think dating can get really hard. Cause I think what people have focused on is I need to find the right person

as opposed to developing the skill of actually getting to know someone deeply. Which requires time, patience, understanding, empathy, all qualities that don't come easily when you are spending all of your time on the internet. Exactly. Which, by the way, is a lot of time. Like, we have an episode on Bumble, and the stat I saw for what people, the amount of time people spend on Bumble a day is 90 minutes. Like, that's the same as TikTok.

That's some, like, brainstem shit. Like, what are you doing on Bumble for an hour and a half every day? You know what I mean? Not developing your sort of interpersonal skills right well it's just that it's the sort of least common denominator of things i mean i think about this with you know we just did an episode on sort of the value of writing and there's like you know scrolling reading then there's like reading an article online then there's reading an actual book and then there there's actually writing in terms of like the scale of how much of your

time and effort it takes, but also how fulfilling it is. And I do think if you're on an app, just swipe, swipe, swipe, and you're not like building the muscle of figuring out how to converse with someone, get to know someone, build a relationship, then you're not going to get the fulfillment that usually comes with that. Right. I know that you were saying like you were, you know, like older of a different generation. I'm just like, I am also older. But I guess the reason why I wanted to call attention to that is I think when people hear like apps and dating games, they think it's like a young person's domain, like a young single person. And I just like, one of the reasons I'm like, we're both so passionate about this topic and why we want

to lead people through this journey is that like, really nobody ever knows when they're going to be single. Right. And actually one of the fastest demographics of single people is people over the age of 50. So I think sometimes we forget that like we may be in the market for a relationship multiple times during our lives. And so it is worth kind of understanding how this industry has grown and developed. that could work or a dating app alternative that could work? I mean, you know, we talked about how Hinge says it's designed to be deleted. But like, are there designs to dating app technology that could make the experience better for people? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the exact feature is. I'll leave it to the architects of the industry. But I think anything that can slow you down and is sort of

like trying to acknowledge that this is the side of you that's coming out. That's always the thing that I've been interested. Like, how do you kind of delay people's judgment? How do you slow them down? How do you better help them share? Not the, the, their hooks. I think when people are developing their profile, they're like, how do I hook somebody in, but kind of maybe go like a level deeper. And then I'm, I mean, I'm very much into sort of analog meeting and, and making sure that we resurrect that. So I'm very much into, you know, setups and going to events and, you know, trying to meet people in real life. I'd love to hear you talk more about that. Cause I know you've done a lot of work helping people make connections offline. Can you talk about some of that work and do you think it's possible to go back to something like that

in this age of dating apps? I think people are craving it. So I actually started before I went to Match. I was trying to reimagine the singles event. So like if a singles event wasn't horrible, what would that look like? And so I spent about three and a half years trying to make singles events like a really good experience for people, which is how I ended up at Match. I mean, I definitely learned a lot about that from like an environmental standpoint. But most recently, I've studied the art of the setup, which is like, how do you set people up? I think people have this idea that it's like this pushy, nudgy, you know, auntie that's trying to, you know, fix you up. But I found all of these incredible ways that people are sort of taking matters into their own hands and trying to meet people through friends.

And so it's kind of an art and I've spent a lot of time unpacking that art. It sounds like because it's an art that it needs a human touch and not necessarily something that technology can do on its own. That's correct. Yes. In the meantime, I'll just end by asking, you know, is there a healthier, more sustainable way for people to be using the apps that we currently have? Like, how do you recommend people meet people in this online dating first world? Sangeeta? I have no idea. I have no idea.

I do want to harken back very quickly to your last question about people going back to matchmakers. And we have an episode about like what the future of dating is going to look like. The architects of the future industry are the same people who made, you know, Tinder, Hinge, etc. They're just looking to the future. And it's not more human driven.

I mean, I don't think the apps are going away. And we're definitely going to be exploring and answering that question throughout the series. Like we're going to go into the niche apps. We're going to go into the future of dating, as Sangeeta alluded to. I really do think the first step is, I mean, what we're doing in the podcast is actually understanding that it's an industry. Like it sounds so obvious, but people forget. Like they know who's behind Netflix, Amazon, Facebook. They have no idea who's behind match.

They don't know the names. They don't know the players. So kind of like get informed and understand that. And then I'll be super practical and we're going to get deep into it in the podcast, but like almost like limit, limit like yourself to like sprints on the app, you know, and really take the time to focus, which I know sounds very easy. It's actually quite hard. So you're really focusing on a few people instead of trying to do the sort of pray and spray like method that I think a lot of people fall into. And then I would say also keep those other

channels open. Like, if you're in an office, like, get to know people at work. Go to places where you meet people multiple times so you have, like, an arc. Back to what Natasha was saying, like, people don't have an arc with people anymore. They either like them or they don't like them. They don't give themselves the chance to have their feelings evolve for somebody. So I think all of this awareness, I think is just like really important. That's very good advice. Lakshmi Sangeeta, thank you so much for doing this. Everyone go check out Land of the Giants, Dating Games. It's a fantastic series. And I can't wait to hear future episodes. So thanks for joining Offline, both of you. Thank you so much. Thank you, John.

Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau. It's produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor. Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Fotopoulos sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Amelia Montooth, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Narmel Konian, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.