It’s All Greek to Me! (with Astra Taylor)

no toilet paper to come by. It felt freaky, legitimately concerning, like why is it hard to get toilet paper? And for me, I had such a mobile life. I was on and off planes constantly. My life was predicated on super spreader events, comedy shows and conferences and fast of Us and all that had come to an end and I was just at home. But I still needed to get out. So I started walking where I used to

fly and I used to be in cars. I would just had my feet and I was walking through my neighborhood every day to get out of the house, get out of this head space of fear, of anxiety, of death. When I turned on the screens in my life they were filled with bad news world surpassing one million deaths

from the coronavirus. President Trump not guilty of abuse of power. Australia, where they're facing those masterupted following the arrest and death of George Floyd Briana Taylor year old ah mod Arbor, twenty seven year old Jacob Blake be about the hundred day of protest in Portland's police declared a riot. Can I find something else out in the world that would give me a bit of where I could see people doing something other than wallowing in the sorrow, you know?

And I found it. Keep in my I found it in the form of wildlife, and I'm talking to all kinds of animals I wasn't used to seeing. It was like some kind of PBS special happening in my own hood. We had hawks and possum and coyotes. I saw Black Lives Matter signs everywhere, and I saw people helping each other. I saw people setting up community fridges and community pantries to help those in need. I remember this sign I

saw it said presidents are temporary, boutang is forever. I love it, and that put a smile on my face and helped me keep walking, and even with all the stress and depression and anxiety and anger and what COVID has brought, I was also grateful to be grounded in some way, and in a lot of ways. Things have started through the past year. At the end of this last twelve months, things have started to look up. I mean, we may have dropped the ball on the masks, but

we're vaccine and like it's going out of style. Not one, not two, but three at last count vaccines available to us. That's dope. We had an historic presidential and vice presidential race, and we've been rewarded for our good works by things like how does any come to be chilled? You know what I mean? Like it's just it felt like candy sugar we deserve. The point is I am proud of us,

we citizens. We turned up, We showed up for each other, and I was starting to feel tentatively good again about the whole project, not just not just my neighborhood, but the wee thing, the democracy thing, and I just I wanted so much for the simple story to be We overcame the darkness and slung ourselves into the light. We took our democracy back and now We're ready to do what's right. And uh, well, the story is not that simple. It's hard to believe what we're seeing right there, they're

just walking through Wearer Capital. Police clearly gets you know, this has gotten out of hand. These protesters got up the steps, they reached the barricades. On the same day that we got Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock and Senator John Assaf we got something else. We got an insurrection. We got an attack on our capital, on our democracy, on the people's house. This is a system built on people power, and our house was invaded by people denying votes, being

unwilling to accept the results of the election. I felt so angry, so angry, in part because I was in a party mood I really wanted to celebrate, and in part because it just it felt like the lesson was it is too good to be true. And it wasn't just because of people with guns who were largely white, waving Confederate flags stormed the U. S. Capital. It was that they had permission to do it. When I saw the attack on the Capitol, I was angry and disgusted.

I must be watching a movie. This can't be actually happening. They knew this was coming. They knew this was coming. If it had been protesters, they would have had the National Guard out. I've seen how the police treat people in Minnesota. Anchor shocked, but I think ultimately mostly sadness. Washington is my hometown. I was taught unbelieved. This is my country. I'm a citizen. The capital is my beautiful house.

Those bastards invaded my capital. They desecrated my house. As this attack on our democracy was unfolding, I felt frustrated, I felt angry, I felt hopeless. I thought maybe things were getting better. And then on January six, I was reminded somewhat naively how divided we are, or how separate we are, and I was left wondering, can this even work?

This being the whole democratic experiment thing, this being us living together with our differences thing, this being making a democracy that works for the many, not just a few. Can we actually do that? This is how the Citizens Season two. I'm barytone Day Thurston, and I want to welcome you. If you are coming back from season one or whether you're new. We are taken on a big topic this season, division and we're digging into the core of what I think creates that division. But more on

that later. In the meantime, let me tell you about the types of folks. We are gonna be talking to, bankers, brewers, social scientists, all kinds of people who are helping us bridge that divide. You need to have that e can freedom in order to have the political equality and the political freedom. First up, Astra Taylor, after the breaking and we're moving there. And then one more record button for good measure? Do you want me to record over here? Yes,

thank you? Director, I play one on TV podcasts. I'm here with Astra Taylor, who wrote and directed the documentary What Is Democracy. For the film, Astra traveled all over the US and even to Greece in hopes of answering this question. It's a question has been on my mind a lot, especially since January. Now, most of us trying to figure out that question. We just google it, but Astra did a lot more than that, and I wanted

to know why. I'm looking for a moment in your life when you started to question the concept of democracy.

Can you take us there for me? If anything kicked off in September of two thousand eleven to the movement of Occupy Well Street in New York, Thousands of demonstrators descended on the financial district as big Occupy Wall Street started in response to the bailout of the big banks, right, and it was a protest against the fact that even with Obama in the White House, there was a sense that regular people were being left to drown in this epic financial crisis, and that it was a sign of

the fact that our democracy wasn't working. And I was in the streets with others and we were saying that chance that you always hear, this is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. And my my mind would be like, huh is it? Like? What is democracy? Do you even want this thing? Is democracy what the powerful say it is? Or is it really just us, like a few hundred people in this park, like are

we democracy? You know, I like us, but I feel pretty powerless, and you know it's democracy just a protest? Is it just this uprising and the spontaneous thing? Or can it be actually structured? Can we actually make democracy in our laws, in our institutions. And it set me off on this path of writing a book about democracy, making a film about democracy, and also my organizing, which is really what matters to me and is basically, you know, how do you actually do it? It's a verb. You

know a lot of people have opinions these days? How do we do it? That's the greatest T shirt I've yet to see. A lot of people have opinions these days. So what was your definition of democracy before? Um, occupied how would you describe your understanding of it? Before that? I think I would have said, oh, democracies, government, democracies, bureaucracy, It really doesn't have much to do with me, right um.

And Also, I wasn't technically a citizen. I was born in Canada, I spent my whole life in the US. I grew up in Georgia. But I knew I wasn't enfranchised. I wasn't even allowed to do this thing that people associate with democracy, which is voting. And so it felt like something that wasn't really part of my life. It wasn't part of the my daily experience or my daily practice. And I think that's actually true for a lot of

people today, right. I Mean, what I discovered as I started interviewing people many years later and making this film is when I asked Americans on the street, you know, what is democracy? They actually couldn't answer the question that deeply or authentically, because in the end, how do you describe something that you truly don't know? Can you take me into that journey? These questions you were asking, what

are some of the stories you heard? One thing I tried to do in the film was questioned, who's an expert in democracy? So typically when you go to talk to someone about democracy, if you're a journalist or a podcaster or a filmmaker, you'll go to a professor of political science, right, or maybe a professional politician. But democracy involves us all in theory, right, it means the most the people Kratos have power or rule, And so there's no credential you have to have to get into the demos.

You don't need a PhD to be part of the demos. So what I wanted to do in the way a structure of this film was to position these kids from this middle school next to great thinkers, right, to have their voices ring out right next to someone crediting Rousseau or Plato or some great philosopher. So I talked to all sorts of people. I talked to school children, I talked to some some fantastic middle schoolers UM in Overton, Miami. What's what was the in depth analysis of a school

child in Miami. Well, it began where one would imagine about the lunch, and the lunch doesn't taste good. But it's not just that it doesn't taste good. It's coal, which is an insult. And these kids said to me, it could at least be warm, you know, if if it's not delicious, And that became a whole thing about how when they raised their voice to say we want warm lunch, they're punished by the administrators who do things like take the vending machines away. And then they said,

but we know it's not about our teachers. There are the administrators, the principle, and then there's the county, the kids said, and then there's the uh state, and then there's Washington. I mean, these kids were twelve or thirteen, and they weren't just saying, oh, these mean grown ups won't let me eat, you know, donuts all day long. They're saying this has implications. And then they also said,

why do you want to make us real powerless? Shouldn't you want us to be democratic citizens of our school UM, I interviewed trauma surgeons. I interviewed immigrant factory workers from Guatemala who live in North Carolina. I interviewed people on the street. I interviewed philosophers like Wendy Brown and Corner west Um. I spoke to quite a few people who are, you know, politically the polar opposite of me. And then I went to Greece, the supposed mythic birthplace of democracy.

So I'm getting this picture. You're traveling around the United States of America, You're tapping into the demos to the people, and then you do this super hyperlink to ancient Greece and ask some of where these ideas started. Why did you ask the question of the ancient Greeks and their attitude store democracy. You know, it's very important to say that democracy is a practice didn't begin an ancient Greece.

I mean, this is something in the historical record shows there are democratic society is all over in what we now call Mexico and what we now call the African continent, in the Middle East. Why it's important to go back to Greece, in my mind, is because it's this mythic birthplace. They did give us the word that we use. The word that we use is from the Greek the most crops. And also the founding text of the Western political and philosophical tradition is Plato's Republic. And I think this is

really interesting. So Plato was anti democracy. He was famously skeptical of democracy, really, so he proposed an undemocratic society as an alternative. But it wasn't a society that would have been very egalitarian in terms of class, and that limited the sort of perverse incentives that can twist the political leaders. So what Plato says, he says, you know the problem with democracy is that it devolves into tyranny.

It just isn't stable. It's an unstable system. And why is it unstable Because they're rich abuse the poor and they bury them in debt, and they know basically exploit them. They extract all of this wealth. So there's incredible income polarization. Inequality is destabilizing, and so then the people vote for a demagogue. What Plato called all this right, and so Plato says, you know what I think we should do to fix this is create a class of rulers who

love wisdom. And there were men and women's a philosopher kings and queens, they called them, and they would have to be indigent. They can't have any property, no kickbacks, right, So impoverished property lists lovers of wisdom and they'll make things better. So we can say, matty professors with no no incentives, you know, no political donations. So I think it's all about letting ourselves be provoked, letting ourselves be

engaged in thought experiments. Of course this doesn't answer our problems, but let it provoke us to think for our own time. We don't need a class of philosopher kings and queens. We need to all be philosophers though, because democracy demands we all engage philosophically, and it will only work if we all have the space to reflect on that level, which means we all have to have the time, which means we all have to be fed, which means we all have to be sheltered, which means we all have

to be okay. So then we can do this work of democracy. I've seen a hand to something here, but before we get there, I just need to understand what did ancient Greek society look like in real life? Was it anything like what we have now? Greeks did have a very unique society. But the Greeks were slave owning society, so a lot like the United States. It was a democracy that was built on these incredible exclusions and exploitation and dehumanization. So it was built an idea of freedom

based on other people's un freedom. Right, So it's a problem at the heart of democracy we have to acknowledge. But they had these amazing systems of participation for people who counted as citizens, and so for example, they compensated poor farmers and artisans so they could skip work so they could be in the Assembly. It was like everybody who counted as citizen could plan on being called up

to the equivalent of Congress in their life. Can you imagine if we all had if we were all selected by lottery, which is how they did it, to serve in congress jury duty, but congress duty. Yeah, and I think that's really important. They thought elections were undemocratic because rich people, charismatic people, well connected people tend to win them. So they thought you should do it like jury duty, random selection. Um. I think that's a very provocative Greek

sound very radical. They sound so committed. Okay, more about how what this practice looked like. No elections can script people into legislative service. So yeah, they m randomly selected people to serve in the council and then they suggested some laws. But they also just ran the city. They provided the social insurance programs, they handled the water and the irrigation. Was based on this idea that democracy is

something you learned by doing. It's not that just a special group of people are born with the ability to run the city. We can all run the city together, but we have to be called to do it. We have to learn to do it. It's something that is a priority for us if we're going to live together as equals everyone I have ever known. I got a jury duty summon It's like, how do I get out of this? I can't imagine getting summoned to run the

water depart of it. What did did people actually serve in these positions where people not trying to wease a lot of their civic responsibilities. Oh, it was the highest honor. And I get frustrated with people when they're they want to get out their dreary duty, because I'm like, this is our duty. We should be called to serve in all of these other ways, um, they were compensated again, so that way poor people could legislate, could govern next

to more affluent people. They recognize you have to compensate folks to be able to do this, and it wasn't perfect. Scholars of the period will say there were aristocrats, right, people had more influence than others. But the point is they were thinking about these problems we're not thinking about, which is how do you create systems of equality? How do you compensate people so they can truly participate? This

is why I'm saying that we are stuck. We just aren't being very creative when you think about all the tools at our disposal, and when we think democracy equals elections, I think we have to be honest that that's actually that might be an tradiction in terms We'll be right back. We've been talking about ancient Greek democracy, not a perfect democracy, probably not even the first one, but it does seem like they were really onto something in terms of money

and true representation. So how does money affect our ability to participate in a democracy? So I think you know, we can name different kinds of freedom. So one is political freedom. So this is do you have formal rights? The formal rights that we associate with citizenship. Can you vote, right, do you get social benefits? But there's also economic freedom, right, It's like, well, can you afford to live? And these

things really need each other. You need to have that economic freedom, You need to have that baseline of economic egalitarianism in order to have the political equality and the political freedom. To go back to the Greeks, I think what's interesting is that they recognize that for this class of elites called citizens, that they needed to have economic resources. So that's why they paid the farmers. That's why they

paid the artisans to participate. So I mean today, I think you know, how I would describe our moment that we're in now, is that our political democracy in the United States, you know, doesn't live up to its name because of the intense economic inequality that we have. Right. So it's like, well, sure we all have one person, one vote, but when there's a billionaire who can make endless donations through a million dark money channels, like, that's

not political equality, right. It just makes a mockery of the idea that we're actually equals in this society. I have observed through my life. I was born in nineteen seventy seven, largely a child of the eighties. When I think of when my childhood was and who was president and what I heard on the news, capitalism and democracy have been interpreted broadly and publicly as synonymous in the United States, I'm pretty sure they're not. What do you think?

This question is made for me now. I mean they're not. Capitalism is a system that's based on inequality, right. Capitalism is a system of competition, not cooperation. It's about markets, it is about channeling greed. Right. So, um, can I give another ancient Greek thing really quick? The word idiot actually comes from the ancient Greek as well. Idiotis so in ancient Athens, the worst thing could be was an idiot, and it didn't mean that you were dumb or uneducated.

What it actually meant was that you were a private person. You're only concerned with yourself, and the worst thing you can be in Athens with somebody only concerned with your private being. You're supposed to care about the community. You're

supposed to be a citizen. And that's why I think capitalism and democracy are at odds because capitalism, you know, it encourages us to think in this atomized way, and to think about our personal gain, to see ourselves as in competition with other people, as opposed to seeing ourselves in a kind of cooperative relationship of mutual prosperity and betterment.

How do we take this ancient Athenian vision a step further, evolve it and build or rebuild an economy that actually supports the demos and the power of those people for the many, not just the few. I mean for me. It all comes down to organizing, right, And it's really, actually it's really tough work thinking about the economy. Point right in this idea of leaving the economy of the experts, it's this idea that, you know, let the politicians make the decisions for us, and we need to challenge that

by building power from the bottom up. Tell me a little bit about the Biden Jubilee, which I might add is a great name for something. I'm like, is there a party I didn't get invited to? Like? Who doesn't have tickets to the Biden? Jew? Believe? To tell me about that? So I co founded a union for debtors called the Debt Collective, And so we're fighting to cancels all student debt right now. So it's a hundred people

saying they're not going to pay their student loans. They're not asking for debt forgiveness, they're asking for justice for the abolition of these loans on the grounds that nobody should have to mortgage their future for the chance again education. Um. And so jubilee is you know a biblical term, right, it's this ancient term for the moment the debts are canceled and the land is given back people. Um. Jubilee

was a word that was invoked by enslaved people. It was the name for emancipation, right, it was going to be jubilee. And jubilee was something that happened periodically in the ancient world. The economy would get so out of whack, people would be selling themselves into debt servitude and you know ancient Babylonia, and so periodically the king would say jubilee, wiping up the slates that have been canceled, and now you're free, you can go back home. So there's a

long tradition of jubilees. And so what we're doing is echoing that call and saying this one point seven trillion dollars of student debt that is it didn't exist a few decades ago, right, I mean college was free. I just did the math. Actually, yesterday I found out that a kid going to the same school as Joe Biden did today math and justed for inflation, pays ninety dollars more than Joe Biden did. How much did he pay if he had paid for all women board uh intuition,

he would have paid thirty thousand for four years. He also paid zero dollars to go to law school. So we're just saying we need a jubilee to get us back on parody with what you experienced. Joe Biden, that's the Biden Jubilee one hundred. I personally would argue that education is a democratic good and also because he has the power to do it. Turns out that he actually has the authority. He doesn't have to go through Congress.

Congress gave the president the authority to cancel all student debt in the sixties, So with the stroke of a pen, Joe Biden can cancel all student debt, provide an economic boost for all of the country. Helped close the racial wealth gap because we know that actually black women are the most burdened by student debt, and so we're telling

him it's the right thing to do. And so this is one of these little examples of where I take hope because when we first raised this issue ten years ago, the mainstream media just like knocked us, like they were like, these idiots think that the government's going to cancel debt, never gonna happen. And now we have a president who literally campaigned on it. So I'm just like, let's ask for things that seem crazy. My mouth is hanging open, my eyes are wide this Biden jubilee. I'm thinking about

the count of argument. I'm thinking about what incentives are you creating. These people made decisions on their own, and now you're perverting the marketplace to let people off the hook for something they signed up for. That's not responsible citizenship, that's not sound economic policy. And then I remembered, I'm pretty sure this is true, but I'm willing to be wrong. I think the Fed just like brought up a whole

bunch of corporate debt just like we'll take that. I think we've been doing debt forgiveness for certain parts of our society and certain sectors of the economy for some time. So please address this idea, uh, that wiping away one point seven trillion dollars a student debt is actually sound. First off, you made me think of this meme that was going around recently where it said things that are classy if you're rich, and trashy if you're poor. You know,

it's speaking two languages, um, and one of them was bankruptcy. Right. You know, if you're rich and you declare bankruptcy, it's strategic. It's a strategic default, you know. So you're exactly right. May of when the coronavirus hit, the FED took an unprecedented step of stepping in and stabilizing the corporate debt market, which is a way of saying providing debt relief to corporations. I remember when my mother declared bankruptcy. It was not celebrated.

She could never run for president based on that decision. But it wasn't a savvy business. Movie was a move of desperation, and it shifted our family's finances for quite some time and burned some ideas into my head to check book by hand every day, balancing every dollar. Absolutely, and as we go back to the sixties and look at the University of California, college was free for everyone, community colleges, state colleges, and the flagship universities. Why did

that get rolled back? Ronald Reagan was governor. He didn't like that they are all these protesters at Berkeley. He didn't like the beginning of the black power movement Merritt College campus, and he said the state shouldn't be subsidizing curiosity. If we charge these kids, they're going to think twice before going around with a picket sign. I'm not making

these up. These are basically quotes, right, So I think for me as a from a democratic perspective, from a citizen perspective, you know, there's a baseline of like, education is a public good and we should invest in it so much. Research shows that all of that money currently being spent to service loans that go to the government,

the government doesn't need. This money would then be spent in the community, so it would be spent buying things, People would start businesses, it would create Research shows over

a million and a half jobs a year. What's it felt like to see people try to reclaim some lost economic power in our system, even if we don't cancel people's deaths, just the psychological shift, like the fact that something we're basically saying, like you don't have to be ashamed, you don't have to feel like you made a mistake. Like that's such a burden off of people. I see that transformation like all the time of like wow, I'm in this boat and you all are too, So that

that is this immeasurable value. We have one debt relief for tens of thousands of people at this point, mostly for people who went to predatory for profit colleges. And what they've said to us is, you know, I got my future back. Maybe I can say for retirement, maybe I'll be able to help my kids, you know, as they start on their path. I mean, it's life changing. You know, people are so underpaid in this freaking country, and it's like you're talking about getting fifty dollars of

debt canceled. I mean, like might as well be fifty million. I mean, so it's amazing, um, and I wish it for every student debtor. I wish it for every medical debtor, you know. I mean, I think it's like, canceled the debt, man, let people be free. Wow. Do you think we've had a real democracy in the United States? We've never had

a true democracy. We've never had a real democracy, and in fact, you know, if you look at the track record, I mean when we say things like exclusions, but I mean the level of violence and dispossession that has happened in the name of democracy is really profound. And yet

nevertheless people have made tremendous progress. I mean, you and I are citizens, and it's like, who am I did, like not honor all of the work, all of the energy and hope and like the lives lost to get to this point where we hopefully get to carry the ball even further. So I'm trying to get to that

duality of no, we haven't had a perfect democracy. But I think what's cool about the word democracy is that even the horizon I'm aiming at, like compulsory voting and didn't debt, abolition like that, to me that that would just be like a new beginning, right, So then the question is like where would you go after that? There's a lot of really tough stuff we need to figure out together, and so I very much see democracy as

a horizon point. Let's not aspire to be founding fathers who like put it all on paper, like write a constitution or like we did it. You will live with us for eternity, but let's see ourselves instead. Is perennial midwives like trying to birth democracy and new and passing that on to future generations and letting them take up the challenge and probably make us feel a bit curmudgently. I knew why we invited you, but now I feel it.

Thank you for that. It's uh. It reminds me of something our first guest in Season one, Valerie Corps, talks about. She said, whether this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb. Our nation isn't dying, but we're it's being born and maybe being born again, and that can be a dark and painful and even bloody process, but there's life on the other end of it. I like the journey metaphor rather than the mission accomplished stamp of approval um Astra, thank you so much for

spending this time with us. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Astra reminded me that we can't talk about democracy without talking about the money, about the system of money and finance, which is intertwined with our definition of democracy and which divides us. I think there's a way for us to talk about division that is a little hokey. Oh, this Republican and this Democrat don't get along. They should have a beer together and talk about what

they have in common. There's a deeper way to access what divides us. And I think when we start talking about the wealth inequality in this country, how during a pandemic the very rich got very much richer and the very poor got very much poorer, that's getting at the

heart of the division. So when this season of How the Citizen, we're gonna talk about the money, we're digging into the problems an economy based on exclusion, run by big corporations, built on the backs of the working poor, And like we always do, we're looking at the solutions. I'm not an economist. I don't write economic papers. The point of this is not too investigate economic theories. The point of this is for us to be able to

claim and use our power for our collective benefit. And I am convinced that we can do so much better. I've been reading about wealth and equality forever. It's a big problem. Where the solutions. Who's making it easy for me not to give all my money to Jeff Bezos and Amazon, That's who I want to talk to. I am sure that there are people who recognize that we would all do better if we included more people an economic opportunity, not as charity, but as gaining from their contributions.

Where are they? And I am sure that there is a way for people who work full time, sometimes in three jobs, to make enough to show up for their families and their communities and for all of us and not be categorized as the working poor. I know it because it happens in other nations. So what's happening in the United States that we can celebrate and do more? That's what I want to know, and that's what I want you to help me find out. Join me, be a part of the demos. Let's do this together. This

is how to Citizen with barretton Day m HM. Because we see the word citizen as a verb that involves doing things. So here's our producer Stephanie with some things you can do to citizen in your life. Are you in debt? Check out Astro's Union for debtors, the Debt Collective at www dot Debt Collective dot org. Learn more about how you can wield your collective power. That's right. Being in debt does not make you powerless. You can still citizen with loans. But if you're not in debt,

well lucky you. Seriously though, you can still find strengthen numbers. Find a week, take some time this week to reflect on communities that you are a part of, and research organizations you can join that are advocating for causes you care about. And lastly, you can citizen better by pressing a button, the one that says subscribe or follow. We're not being vain. Keeping up with the podcast is the best way for you to keep up with our incredible guests and all the ways you can citizen better. So

buckle up. It's going to be a great season and there's gonna be a lot more ways that you can get involved if you take any of these actions. First of all, thank you, Thank you so very much. Now make sure to brag about yourself online. Use the hashtag how to citizen to encourage others to do the same. You can send us general or very specific feedback directly two comments at how to citizen dot com and just remember the website how to citizen dot com. Check it out.

You can sign up for newsletter updates, text updates, find out about upcoming guests and upcoming ways to citizen more. If you like the show, please help us spread the word. Share own social media, share at at dinner party. If you've all been vaccinated, put it in your weekly newsletter, because everybody seems to have one of those. Thank you. How to Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of

I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our producers are Stephanie Cone and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our engineer, and Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen. This episode was produced and sound designed by Stephanie Cone. Special thanks to Joel Smith from I Heart Matter