Public Speaking and Leadership Training in Mormonism

In this fascinating discussion, Trace Woodgrains shares his unique perspective on growing up in the Mormon faith and the lessons that can be learned from this tight-knit religious community. Trace discusses the extensive volunteer work and responsibilities given to members at a young age, the rigorous structure of Mormon missions, and the challenges he faced reconciling his own beliefs with church doctrine. He also explores how secular communities might adopt some of the beneficial aspects of Mormon culture while avoiding its pitfalls.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hi, everybody. I had the best reading experience this week. Thanks to our very special guest, Tracy Woodgrains.

He had actually tweeted on Twitter, someone else's article. Someone wrote for the Atlantic about what happens when America loses its religion. But Tracy included a 2020 sub stack piece that he originally actually had posted on. So it was originally a Reddit thread, but it's on a sub stack now. Related to this article his sub stack write up, which you should all check out at tracingwentgrants.

com is called Mormons and Voluntary Organization. And he brought up basically this article because it. describes the extent to which religious involvement, especially in the LDS church can be very profound and have a profound impact on people and communities. So anyway, I read the Atlantic article, whatever.

It was meh. Like it's nothing that anyone who watches based camp wouldn't be very familiar with. It's something, it's all stuff that we're really familiar with. What happens when cultures lose their religion, not great stuff. But man, [00:01:00] Tracy, your article is great because what you do in it is you detail.

How different the life of a practicing Mormon is vis a vis the life of someone just in a general atomized society. So we would love to have you on today and discuss it cause it's, I think the implications of what you write about here are pretty huge.

Would you like to know more?

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, absolutely. What

Simone Collins: inspired you to write this, by the way?

Trace Woodgrains: So look, I grew up Mormon and I grew up in this somewhat isolated subculture that is so very different to the life of as you were saying, the standard modern atomized individual. And so this was, The water that I swam in, this is the air that I breathed. This was just what the world was like for me.

I was 11 years old before I realized that the majority of the world was not Mormon. That is how much of a bubble I was in and going through that, my whole [00:02:00] childhood, going on a Mormon mission, so forth really it has an impact on whoever goes through that sort of thing and having stepped away from it now I feel like.

My job in large part is to paint a picture of what is possible within something like that, recognizing the flaws that I saw that caused me to step away, but looking and saying, how can the rest of us replicate that? The positive, powerful elements of this, what are the rest of us missing? What have the rest of us forgotten about?

And in particular, I feel inclined towards that because you see a lot of people who step away from Mormonism, who really understandably feel very burned by the whole thing, feel very frustrated that they've given their whole lives to what they, to Feel has been based on a lie and so forth and just get really hostile to it all.

And point feel essentially that there is nothing good there, nothing good worth pointing out. And I had a much happier, gentler glide path out such that I feel [00:03:00] like I am in a much better position than many who have left to look at it and say here is. Here's what I see that I did value in it.

And here is what is worth taking away. So I'd

Malcolm Collins: love it if you could just start going into that for our audience. It's probably immediately obvious why this is so interesting to us. But one of the things that we always say is that the cultural change that's happened in America, as it has secularized, isn't just.

That we stopped believing in God. That was actually the smaller part of the cultural change. The bigger part of the cultural change was all of the changes to the way we interacted with our community and our daily behavior patterns. And I think, to what you said there, a person who has stepped back from that, it is now in a secular world, but can look on it as an outsider, can probably better see the contours.

of what is actually unique about it. So I'd love if you could start by just going into what is it that your average secular person doesn't understand about the daily life of somebody within one of these [00:04:00] hard religious communities?

Trace Woodgrains: Absolutely. So I think that the standard secular view of the standard church going life is basically you do more or less the same things for most of your life and then you go to church on Sunday and you call it good.

And perhaps in some religious communities it is something akin to that. Within mormonism, there's It is a much more all encompassing situation. So the day to day in the life of a Mormon, first off, it's important to understand that almost every clergy member within Mormonism, almost everyone who has any sort of official position in the church is a volunteer.

It's only up at the top that you start getting actual salaries, actual living stipends, what have you for the global leaders, but everyone on down. So Mitt Romney, for example. Spent years as what's called a stake president, where for no pay, in addition to his [00:05:00] regular job, he had the job of overseeing six or seven local congregations, each of which would have a hundred, a few hundred members where he was on some level responsible for the organization and spiritual wealth and what have you of all the people in that below that you have bishops who, same thing, they have to spend 20 hours a week, however long, in addition to a full time job on all this over a period of, I'm forgetting the exact number of years, something like eight years that a bishop will stay in that position where one day, A regular schmuck working as a computer programmer or a garbage collector or what have you will be called into the office and be told, so how would you like to be given this volunteer position where you will work 20 hours a week for no pay for the next eight years?

Come on in. And every person within Mormonism, every adult and most of the youth will have some sort of position like this, some sort of calling, I would play the organ in church. Someone will be called to teach a [00:06:00] Sunday school lesson. Someone will be told, Hey, you're going to come up and give a talk on Sunday.

Someone will be told, Hey, you're leading the young men's group. So for example, I had, when I was on my mission, I met this professional athlete down in Australia, a rugby player. And he I would go to church and he would be the leader of the young men's church group on Sunday because that is just what they do.

A lot of things like that. So

Malcolm Collins: before we go further, there's a few points here I want to elevate because Simone was talking to me about this today and just commenting on how emotionally Healthy this is because when a lot of people think of community, they think of what the community is going to do for them when what they're actually probably getting the most benefits from is the burdens the community places on them.

And when I say burdens, I guess tasks or responsibilities. And that you have a community where it's an individual rises in status within the community, they are basically given more unpaid labor, [00:07:00] and their skill within that unpaid labor rises their status further which likely has pretty positive effects on an individual's mental health, because the more Independent things you are doing within your life that you feel are things of value and that you are improving on the more areas you have to potentially succeed.

If you're not doing as well at work at least you're doing well within what you're doing for the church or if you're not, and it helps move you forward. And it also allows less time for like rumination. Which, which likely also has a positive effect. Another thing you noted there that I want to elaborate on is you're like, except for the senior people at the church.

But as I remember from Simone discussing your pieces with me, they, the people who are paid by the church, like the very senior people, they don't make like that much money, right? It's like 120k or something.

Trace Woodgrains: They don't make bank. They, yeah about 120k or so, as I recall. So it's, not anywhere near what someone at the head of any secular organization anywhere near that size would be making.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:08:00] Yeah. And I'd love it if you could talk a bit about because another thing that she was elevating was even at a very young age, like speaking to crowds is something that's expected

Trace Woodgrains: a lot. Yeah. There was one funny tweet that I saw recently where someone was talking about at a Quaker ceremony they went to where at Quaker ceremonies, a lot of them will just be silent until people feel moved by the spirit to speak.

And so I was like, yeah, this Quaker ceremony I went to one guy the past couple of weeks has just stood up and given his Dune reviews. Mormonism has that about once a month, it's called fast Sunday fast and testimony meeting where they spend that Sunday fasting, not eating, not drinking for it's supposed to be 24 hours.

And at church they'll get up and rather than having the regular talks that members of the congregation are delivering, it will just be extemporaneous speech from anyone who feels like it, going up to the podium and saying whatever they feel like. And so you'll see adults come up and you'll see kids come up and usually it's fairly generic, I know Joseph Smith was a [00:09:00] prophet.

I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know Jesus Christ is the Savior. All of these standard Mormon beliefs. And sometimes, people go off the rails, but you'll see even very small kids like wander up and stand and say all that. And, there's a little bit of discomfort for me now looking at it and seeing these kids training themselves into these very specific patterns of thought from an early age.

You can examine that. Yeah. But very early, they are getting this experience going up and seeing a few hundred people in the stands, staring at them and speaking to them. And then as they get a little older, as they turn 12, 13, what have you, then usually a couple of the, there will be like three to four talks.

That is short speeches in the first hour of church on Sunday. And usually it. The first one to two of those at least in the congregation I was in would be from youth people, 12 to 18. And so from the time you're pretty young, you're again, standing up in front of a crowd and giving a scripted five minute speech.

[00:10:00] And there is something really healthy, I think, about that. That sort of environment that immediately is training those skills and people you have not just those speeches and stuff you have, say, the young men's group organization, you'll have, the adults tasked with overseeing it and you'll have one of the 13 year olds placed in as the president of it and another placed in as his secretary and so forth.

And so really early on, all these kids are again, getting experience with the same volunteer positions. Yeah, when

Malcolm Collins: I find it pretty interesting from a social dynamic, what's happening here is that you're having a community of people who differ from society specifically due to their beliefs and practices, affirm those beliefs and practices to each other in a way that like when you are very young because what's being affirmed is the ways in your beliefs that you're different from society.

the other, the mainstream society, likely creates much more a feeling of community, not just a skill set, [00:11:00] which of course can be looked at with malevolent intent by people who choose to look at it that way. But one of the things I always note as somebody who, when I grew up, I was around the Atheist Movement and stuff like that, is in the Atheist Movement specifically the New Atheist Movement and then the Atheist Plus Movement, a Huge portion of the leadership cast of that movement was X Mas which was really interesting to me.

It was almost like they were training the Mormons something that allowed them to out compete other ex religious members in terms of social skills, or at least like mass media social skills.

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, I think there's definitely something to that, and one big part of that, I think, is that, Every Mormon man and many Mormon women, virtually every Mormon man will go on a mission sometime between the ages of 18 and 26, usually towards the early end of that.

So I went at 18 where they spend two years, people here, mission trips and different religions have a lot of different approaches to [00:12:00] whatever mission trips. Mormon missions are hardcore. They are intensive. They are not a time where someone's Playing around and having fun and then taking a few pictures of them building houses or something.

My daily schedule as a missionary every day for two years, pretty much every day, with a few exceptions looked like this 6 30 AM, wake up. Exercise for half an hour, eat breakfast, do independent study personally of scriptures for one hour, do a study of scriptures with my mission companion for another hour, then go out and from 10 a.

m. to 9 p. m. with breaks for lunch and dinner, be knocking on doors, talking to people on the street, going into people's homes and teaching them, going around just looking for people to teach, looking for people to instruct. And this is. You and your companion independently in whatever area you're assigned to.

And you do that until 9 p. m. You come home, you plan for half an hour, you have maybe an hour of [00:13:00] downtime ish, and then you go to bed. Every day for two years. No movies no books except church books, no music except church music, no TV internet once a week to write home to family, and that's about it for that.

Just very, TV. Structured, restrictive,

Malcolm Collins: rigorous. And I note for the audience, you have to pay to do all of this. This isn't paid, you are paying to do this. And you have to pay for training to do this before doing it.

Trace Woodgrains: Yes and no on the paying for training. You pay a flat sum for the Two years, which includes the training and then wherever you're sent.

Oh, okay. I

Malcolm Collins: thought that was separate. So something I, an interesting point I have before we go deeper on this is, or I've wondered, because this is what I've noticed anecdotally, and maybe you've noticed it, is I've always seen the mission trip as actually a huge I guess I'd say like problem with modern Mormonism is it seems to be the part where most people start deconverting is during like when people question their [00:14:00] face Mormons, at least my deconversion stories I've heard, it seems like the majority of the ones I've heard it was during their mission trip.

Is that a trend you've noticed as well? Or am I noticing something that's not there?

Trace Woodgrains: It's a good question. I would say that a mission is really a time. of focusing very intensely on all these spiritual questions and really figuring out where you stand with all of it. And because you're spending so much time and so much focus on it it, wherever someone goes in their spiritual journey from that point, like that is going to be a hinge point, no matter what happens from there.

What I'll say in my own story with it, in my own process before my mission, I always fancied myself a skeptical kid. And so I went in my teenage years and dug into all the apologetics and all the counter apologetics, all the responses, all the like intellectual side of things. And at some point I knew I had questions that I couldn't answer, but felt I, that was causing some distance for me.

It wasn't really something I wanted to address head on. [00:15:00] And it wasn't really something that I figured would be productive from within the Mormon framework. We're within the Mormon framework. It's really emphasis. The emphasis is really on do the basics focus on spiritual things, see whether this is good for you and then develop your testimony that way, pray to God and God will tell you that sort of thing.

And so at some point after those teenage years, I stepped away from. That sort of really intellectual process and just decided I'm going to commit myself to this. I'm going to lean in. I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do. And God is going to speak to me with all of that. And I, for me, it was.

Specifically on my mission. This is where I'm going to figure everything out. And I would spend 45 minutes a night, sometimes kneeling down, begging for some sort of witness from God, I would go around. I would be trying to be exactly obedient. I would be doing everything I could possibly be doing within the Mormon framework.

And if you have two years where you're really trying to do that and really trying to figure out, is God speaking to me, is God guiding this What's going on? Do I have answers to all these things that I'm trying to [00:16:00] figure out? That's a long time to think through it and to really start settling in on.

I don't fully align with this. Especially as more complicated things started happening towards the end. It really became clear that my differences with it were irreconcilable. So that was my path that very much, I was already on my way out. Then I went on my mission. And knew when I got back from it, I stayed in two years after that, but I knew when I got back from it, that I just didn't, did not fit within and could not answer the questions I needed to, but for others it's hard to say, I will say that the way it's conceived of particularly among the leadership is that this will be the time that will really lock people in and really anchor them in, anchor their testimonies of the church in and make them really stalwart and solid moving forward.

And I. Yeah, I agree that it's a hinge point. I don't know that it's necessarily the cause of any leaving. That's

Malcolm Collins: a good point. Yeah, and that would explain the pattern I'm seeing. So [00:17:00] a question I have in regards to this, because this is another thesis we have, and you can tell me if this aligns with your experience as well or not, is that was in religious communities, The perception is that the reason why people deconvert is often by wanting to do the things that aren't allowed in the community when in fact, I think usually it's specific theological questions that they couldn't make work or what was it for you that, that was like your key, like pushing out point and how could it have been circumvented by the community?

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah. So there was a Mormon apostle, so one of the 12 global leaders of the church some time ago who gave this speech where he was talking about the great threats to Mormonism and he appointed out feminists the LGBT movement and so called intellectuals I was a so called intellectual. So what I would say is that [00:18:00] Mormonism works really well for people outside of those three categories.

I didn't think of myself as gay back then. I thought I didn't really recognize my own sexuality, didn't consider any of that. And that wasn't really anywhere on my radar. What was on my radar was all of these intellectual questions and all these doctrinal questions and just trying to figure out where do I stand on these very specific points of history and very specific points of doctrine and very specific points of theology.

I really liked the commandments structure that I was in. I've always valued structure. I've always valued having a framework and I was able to very easily, Convincingly persuade myself of this is why all these commandments exist. This is why it makes sense that we don't drink alcohol. This is why it makes sense that we go to church on Sundays.

This is why it makes sense that we pay a 10 percent tithe. This is why it makes sense that we don't drink caffeine. This is why all of these very specific rules make sense. This is the broader metastructure like that. I could do. What I couldn't do was [00:19:00] answer some of the very specific theological questions within some of the very specific historical questions with it.

And the more I tried to dig, and the more I tried to answer some of those, and the more I looked through every part of the framework, trying to find the answers for some of these things, The more I realized that the answers really just were not there, but that's not quite what made me step away from activity.

That's what made me realize I couldn't believe in Mormonism. But what made me step away from activity in Mormonism, specifically it's well known at this point that Mormonism changed its doctrine on whether black people, whether black men could get priesthood, that is, have the power of God working through them, whatever within Mormonism in the 1970s.

What's Less well known. So Mormons will internally frame that as, Oh, this was just a policy change. Yeah, what's less well known is just how deeply that permeated within the doctrine. So there were letters that the leadership sent to this sociologist in the forties who was trying to persuade them, God's children are [00:20:00] equal, this or that things that they now in modern times, a spouse and they, Mormon Global Leadership sent this very emphatic letter describing how racial intermarriage had always been wrong since the dawn of time, how the races were absolutely not equal, and how God had definitely cursed Black people, this or that, and just very emphatically that he needed to repent, he needed to get in line.

Or he would be in peril. And that's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really think about. That's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really look at. But what that made me think about, what that made me realize is. I was really letting what the prophets said control the direction of my own thought.

And if my thoughts were out of line with what the prophets said, I would work really hard to figure out how to align them. And in as much as something wrong crept in, and it was really clear to me that was one absolutely wrong per modern Mormonism, absolutely wrong thing that had absolutely crept in and had [00:21:00] absolutely controlled the minds of members in as much as anything wrong crept in.

I would be doing a very good job persuading myself to think that wrong thing or to think that I was in the wrong for not thinking that wrong thing. And as soon as that really sunk in for me, I felt like I needed to step away.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, and was it in part, if I was going to word this a little differently Did it bother you that if the church could have been quote unquote, wrong about something back then, and you're trying so hard to follow all the rules right now, that how do you know the rules aren't going to change again?

Was that sort of it?

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, so that played in. Again, even at that point, I didn't think of myself as gay, and honestly, all through that point, I was perfectly okay with the church's stance on gay marriage, which was one of those rationalizations that I had, and one of those ways that I was justifying the framework to myself.

I was like, this all makes sense. And at some point, I shifted to, if I stepped away from Mormonism, I would start supporting gay people getting married. Or, sorry, if the church changed its stance on gay people, I would [00:22:00] support gay people getting married, and then I would leave the church, is what I thought about it at that time.

And then, when I stepped away from Mormonism, I was like, okay now my stance has changed. And then after that, I was able to have a better space to think about, What do I want? Realized that I was interested in dating men, fell in love with a man. The rest is history.

But the point is that it wasn't any sort of, I am struggling with this aspect of the doctrine. I am struggling with this aspect of the commandments. I wish this part was different. I want this part to be different. I need this part to be different, but it was very much if the church is wrong on something, it is impacting the way I am thinking about that thing on a very fundamental level.

And that is a problem.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. So as somebody who wants to become a parent, what aspects of these systems are you going to try to incorporate in your own child?

Trace Woodgrains: That's a really good question. I was lucky to have a phenomenal childhood which a lot of it, I do attribute to Mormonism and a lot of it I attribute to my parents.

I had loving parents in a stable home [00:23:00] where, in a neighborhood where I knew all of my neighbors and we had all sorts of. Rich community activities, all within the context of this church. And quite frankly, that's not directly replicable. There is not a structure that I can step into that fills that same role.

So in terms of how I'm going to bring it into the lives of my kids, I can't just go and say, Oh yeah, you'll go to church every Sunday, and you'll go on a mission when you turn this age, and you'll do this, and you'll do this, and you'll do this. You have all the structure to hang on. What I do feel obligated to do Is first of all, I need to find a communities of black minded people and I need to find some place to give the kids a sense of community and I need to find some way to start cobbling together this structure for them, but it is very much a cobbling together structure versus stepping into this pre existing and really solid structure because I don't really see any.

I don't really see any that had. That is lacking really the really major flaws that would keep me away from [00:24:00] it. And so I'm basically looking and saying, I see the value of this. I see what this brought into my life. I want to figure out how to replicate this for my kids. I don't think the world as it stands right now is really equipped for that.

And so it will be a lot more piecemeal figure it out. I

Simone Collins: would like to follow up on that though, cause there's the community aspect that is really important, but then there's also I can't get over just how much responsibility is put on people at all ages. And also the responsibility gets piled on more, the more competent or successful you show yourself to be.

So it's just you get more and more of a burden and it seems to be extremely beneficial. You've left the church, but now you are like doing, you're writing these amazing pieces. You're going through law school. You're going to start a family soon and you are working on blocked and reported.

Like you just keep it going. Do you have any plans? for your kids to give them extra [00:25:00] responsibility in life. And how would you structure that? Because it's not exactly it's not exactly hardship that's being given to people. It's responsibility.

Malcolm Collins: Like maybe you can utilize secular institutions to get, give them or, burden them with this responsibility.

Like,

Trace Woodgrains: how would you do it? Yeah, that dovetails with a lot of my thoughts on education. I do think kids are a lot more capable a lot earlier than we often give them credit for. And I would say that my thoughts on that get filtered a lot more through my thoughts in terms of education than they do with my thoughts on Mormonism at this point, in that I think, particularly early on, I will be really trying to figure out What is the appropriate level and pace of education for them?

What can they handle? What are they going to be able to handle? And yeah, there'll be a lot of fairly academic focus with all of that. I do hope to find organizations that they can participate in and get early responsibility in. There's this idea, let kids be kids. And of course you want to let [00:26:00] kids be kids, but childhood is very long.

There are very many hours in a day and there is There is plenty of time, both for kids to enjoy a lot of unstructured play, and to take on more serious structure and more serious responsibility. So both with my thoughts on Mormonism and my thoughts on education dovetailing, I think that a lot of it really will come down to, I think there is a lot of productive structure to Mormonism.

That you want to stick into people's lives. Not so much that it is overwhelming, but enough that it gives them something to build off of something to hang on and something that gives them an idea of just how much they can do.

Malcolm Collins: Something that Simone touched on today when she was referring, like talking about your story to me, it was that you did the math on how many hours a day you actually spent on religiously dedicated activities growing up.

And it was something what Two hours a day or something, Simone, including

Simone Collins: your mission. And then it was, if you took out your mission, it was still about one hour a day.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And like when you think about this, how, do you think that this is [00:27:00] broadly beneficial to people? And if it is, how can you structure it secularly?

Trace Woodgrains: I think that it could be a lot more beneficial. I think that if you look at the specific activities Mormons are doing, a lot of those specific activities, some of them are good uses of time in a, General distance. You sense some of them, Mormons will go into the temples and sit and watch a two hour video, the same video on repeat fairly regularly throughout adulthood and it's and do go and do baptisms on behalf of dead people, things like that and things like that they have sense and structure within the Mormon theological context, but outside that theological context, it just looks like a lot of very confident people spending a great deal of time On nothing in particular.

And I think that if you redirect that same energy towards more explicitly altruistic, more explicitly outward facing ends that lack the same theological context, I do think there's a lot of potential, but you need [00:28:00] something to get that energy and something to get that drive towards building those structures.

You need the organized structure to do it. You need the organized framework to have permission. For people to do it. It's not something that you can just go out and do on your own Without the backing of a community and the backing of expectations and the backing of a framework within which to do it And so I think that's a major task for secular people now is to build that sort of structure

Malcolm Collins: Interesting.

Yeah, and something we haven't talked about on this Did you ever do one of those mormon trips where you like? You tried to reenact what the founders, like the first people who moved to Utah went through?

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, I did a pioneer trek.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, a pioneer trek. Can you talk to that a little

Trace Woodgrains: bit? Yeah, so that's a shorter experience.

That's just a few days where you get thrown into a quote unquote family. You have your people volunteering as parents and you have the other youth around you who are siblings and you'll all just drag this handcart together and walk, all day long dragging this handcart and then camp at night and eat what the pioneers ate and, share your testimonies of Mormonism and [00:29:00] your testimonies of this and that and do it again the next few days.

And it's this fairly short, fairly intensive, really spiritually meaningful for the people in it experience that's just basically, camping on steroids.

Malcolm Collins: Would you do something like that for your kids, or do you think it's like too intense?

Trace Woodgrains: Yeah, it depends on it depends on the ritual context.

It depends on what the opportunities are, it depends on what the situation is. I think it's hard to Invent things like that from scratch. It's hard to just pull something like that from scratch and say, we're going to do this and we're going to make it meaningful. But if there's something that makes sense, if there's something that fits a role like that, I think something like that is helped.

Yes. I think it's cool. That's really fascinating.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When you do have kids, we would love, you can reach out to us. We'll be putting together like pseudo religious stuff for our kids to try to recreate some of this technology. And we'd love to, give you like our contact when we do it, because, the more people we can have our kids around that are like thoughtful and intentional the more, the larger a community we could build the more effective these sorts [00:30:00] of rituals are.

But yeah, I have absolutely loved having you on. And this was really fascinating to

Simone Collins: learn about. Yeah, we're really big nerds about finding a better way to build culture. Like just going back to the old ways, going back to tradition, we think is not the right solution. You seem to share that sentiment to a great extent, and we're really interested in how can you make it better from a first principle standpoint?

So to come across this right up to come across your thoughtful commentary and analysis makes us so excited because it means that you're going to really take a crack at this and the more people doing this, the better. So thanks for that. And everyone makes sure. To check out tracing woodgrains. com and at Tracy woodgrains on X.

He's really awesome.

Trace Woodgrains: All right. Thank you guys so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. All

Malcolm Collins: right. I'm going to hit in recording here. Cool.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Thank you so much.