Join Malcolm and Simone as they embark on a thought-provoking journey into the nature of truth, the roles of centralized bureaucracy, expertise, and individual discernment in our society. Taking a historical perspective, they analyze the reformation and parallels with today's society, and propose intriguing theories around cultural interpretations of truth.
Starting from their reflections on the expert consensus and personal experiences to their deep insights into the historical Jesus, they conclude with an unexpected yet fascinating connection between different cultural groups, their perspectives on truth, and their propensity to form criminal syndicates in the United States.
In this conversation, you will find a comprehensive discussion that weaves historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives into a compelling exploration of what truth is, how we determine it, and its effects on society at large. Watch now to join the discussion, and don't forget to subscribe for more thought-provoking content!
This is a transcript for SEO - it is not edited after an auto translate
Malcolm: [00:00:00] different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, like the Catholic cultural groups those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.
Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.
Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? [00:01:00] But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracy
Simone: prepare for trouble
Malcolm: and make it
Simone: double. To protect the world from devastation,
Malcolm: unite all peoples within our nation to
Simone: announce the evils of truth and love.
Malcolm: To extend our reach to the stars above Jesse James
Simone: team, rocket blasts off at the speed of light
Malcolm: surrender. Now we're prepared to fight.
Malcolm: Meow. That's right. So, oh God. We had done that at in another, one of our things is like our personal motto because all of the, the, the pers of the song really extend to aspects of our philosophy, whether it is, extending our stories as a bob or seeing love as an intrinsically evil thing, which we have talked [00:02:00] about in other.
Malcolm: Episodes in which we'll certainly do a longer episode on at some point. I mean, is there anything more perverse in a marriage based on love? This, the only reason we feel it's cause our ancestors are felt it had more surviving offspring. And even if you take a religious perspective on this, the devil can use love to manipulate you.
Malcolm: Like what a better emotion to manipulate people. Right? Especially love for a human over love. God or Christ, right? That's, that's an evil thing. So the idea that even from a secular or a theological perspective from our cultural perspective, at least maybe not all cultural perspective, but from ours, love is typically at the very least, something to be suspicious of.
Malcolm: But the one point we haven't really gotten over here is the evils of truth. And so I want to talk and take this episode to talk about how we see truth. How does the diversity of perspectives on truth and Yeah. I, I think right now we're at a turning point [00:03:00] civilizationally for the concept of truth.
Malcolm: Mm. And it's a turning point that is very similar to when we've gone through in the past, and I think we can learn from the last time we went through this. So if you look at society right now, you look at all these conspiracy theories that people have that keep coming up true. People are like, oh no, conspiracy theories don't come up.
Malcolm: True. Yeah. Now, do you remember how insane it was that the idea that there's these like cabals of pedophile among like the wealthy elite in our society and now it's like. After Epstein, it's like, oh, oh. There, there was actually at least
Simone: one major. I mean, it was just one Malcolm. It's fine. It's fine.
Simone: Well, well you
Malcolm: think we would catch a lot of them? I mean, he messed up. I, I don't know. I would, I look at all of them. Do you think that like all of these people had developed like these pedophilic habits and like this was their only source? Like you, it's like, a cop's like, oh, well we arrested a meth dealer in town.
Malcolm: There's no more meth here. It's over. Congratulations.
Simone: The war on drug. Is this over?
Malcolm: Yeah. People clearly only could buy [00:04:00] meth from one person. This is Johnny, the meth dealer. There is. It's in his name. They, they, he can't, they can't be buying meth from other people. But I mean, like what I'm saying is we're, and then with Covid and the, the, the whole vaccine rollout, there was this thing in our society where two groups are forming, right?
Malcolm: And we talk about this in this academic cult that runs their culture right now, which is to say, when people are trying to determine what's true in our society, like the elite was in our society, they go, well look at, look at this priest cast, look at the consensus. What did they say? The academics, right?
Malcolm: Like that is what is true within our society. And when we've done episodes before on all the problems with academic research these days, replicability, crisis, everything like that where things keep showing up wrong. But anyway they say, look at that, right? So the first group says, look, truth should be determined by people who have spent their entire lives studying a subject because like everyone can't study everything these days, right?
Malcolm: And that these people should be certified by central bureaucracy, cuz obviously we need some way to know which of them have like been studying longer. You [00:05:00] can't just have somebody come outta nowhere and say like, I'm an expert in why. Right? And then the other group in our society says Ex, excuse me.
Malcolm: That central bureaucracy is highly prone to corruption. And from all of this data looks like it's already pretty corrupt and is now just trying to serve an ideology rather than an objective truth about reality. And therefore, truth should always be best determined by an individual. And a lot of people look at this and they're like, well, this looks like it's headed for a disaster.
Malcolm: Like society has never been through this before. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like we as a world have gone through this before. This world where one organization says truth should best be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and have been certified by central bureaucracy. And then a second group says, well, that central bureaucracy is prone to corruption.
Malcolm: That's what the reformation was. Like, we've gone through this before, but we haven't just gone through it once. And this is where it gets really interesting is [00:06:00] both of these perspective on truth have merit to them. Most of these perspectives have an element of utility to them, and I think that societies that have both of them actually work better than societies that lean to just one or just the other. An example of a society that left just to trust the experts was China, and that's where you ended up getting zero.
Malcolm: Covid was like people being welded in their apartments and like starving to death, like horrible scenarios came out of saying. Well, we need to trust the experts because then when reality doesn't align with what the experts are saying, you begin to get this doubling down and doubling down because, well then you've overturned your priesthood cast, right?
Malcolm: And to a lot of people who have obtained that level of power, the very last thing they want to do is to lose that level of power. But if you have this constant questioning of authority, Well, then you have the other problem, which is spiraling into conspiracy theories and flat earth ness and, and, and like the most extremes of wacky conspiracy theories because everything needs to be questioned.
Malcolm: But these aren't the [00:07:00] only two frameworks for understanding truth. Well, and
Simone: actually, yes. So let's back up and let's give some context. And I think actually something that foundationally influenced the way that both of us came to view truth and it, believe it or not, has to do with Jesus. Um, That was really what changed the way that I look at truth.
Simone: And I think it influenced you too, whether or not you want to admit it. So, the teaching company, a k a Wondering, a k A, the Great Courses has a really great lecture series on the historical Jesus. It is done by a professor who attempts to go through. Jesus as the life of Jesus as a historical figure.
Simone: So setting aside faith, belief, what anything else? You know what? What can we know from a historical perspective only about the apocalyptic Jew known as Jesus
Malcolm: and well, whether he is an apocalyptic Jew would be up for debate, but this theory typically argue C is
Simone: continue. Right? And [00:08:00] what's. What I think was very foundational in that lecture series for both you and and for me though me much later.
Simone: Cause I think you listened to it as much younger youth and so it like shaped your perception and you don't realize like, it's like it accepted your perception of what truth should be. How truth can be discerned is the lecturer goes through all these criteria for truth. That can be used to determine what is more likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus and what is less likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus.
Simone: And these criteria can easily be transferred to pretty much any domain. And it's some, they're criteria that we absolutely use outside biblical scholarship at least like Malcolm and Simone, that is to say, mm-hmm. I, I wouldn't say everyone necessarily use these criteria, but actually I really wish that they did because they're very, Good for determining truth.
Simone: And I think that a lot of the, even earlier in our relationship before, before you had me listen to the historical Jesus lecture series, actually we had a much more [00:09:00] rudimentary breakdown of how truth was discerning. It was more like, well, do we believe scientific consensus? Do we believe our own personal feelings?
Simone: Do we believe like some other criteria? But now we have a much more sophisticated sort of listing and that I think is broadly inspired by this course. Like I. Oh, what are some of the criteria, like the one for
Malcolm: dis So . We actually have a whole list of these within the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, but essentially we have created our own metric for determining truths within the culture that we're building for ourselves and our kids that we think works within this modern era, which is to say, to draw information from both personal experience and the expert consensus, but filter any information that's coming from the expert consensus.
Malcolm: Through certain rules to determine how high quality that information is. With an example of like a really obvious one being like, does this support or does it go against an agenda that would advance the careers of the individual saying it? So if a [00:10:00] scientist is saying something that could get them fired, it's more likely to be true than something that supports the ideological agenda, which is dominant within academia.
Malcolm: The same way that. If an oil company said, yes, global warming is real and we need to do something about it, that would be very like, oh, shoot. But if it, if it says, oh no, don't worry about global warming, or if a cigarette, somebody said, oh, no, no, the cigarettes don't cause cancer. Like, I could largely ignore that.
Malcolm: Right. Another is to look for largely unrelated sources which are showing the same thing. So one would be something like are insurance rates going up around like women driving cars versus men and then like a scientific paper says women are worse drivers than men? Then I could be like, okay, so women are probably worse drivers than men, right?
Malcolm: Or you can look at the, the criteria of genuine care. So insurance companies are very good selectors of this and that. An insurance company, when it's pricing things, Genuinely cares. Like if an insurance company says, do this to be healthier, they likely care a lot more than like a [00:11:00] general, a generally random person.
Malcolm: An example of a, of, of a weird one you might see was like historical Jesus, which I really liked and, and was really me meaningful to me. Is a, a piece of information that seems sus when you first hear it, and it seems a little weird when you first hear it, but as you get more information on, it begins to make a lot more sense in a way that the people who were conveying that to you clearly didn't understand.
Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So here's an example. Jesus born in a manger, right? Like in, in his, why would you send them to the barn to have kids? Why wouldn't they have kids in the house? Like if the house is there, like at the, some ladies having you, you literally like, go put her with the animals. Why would you do that? Right?
Malcolm: And this seemed very weird to me. Then I went to Israel and I looked at houses that were common from around that period, and all of a sudden I was like, This makes perfect sense. So the way that the houses were designed during that period was [00:12:00] sort of like, often the, the one, one style of it was to build them into like the sides of hills or something.
Malcolm: And so they'd be semi-circular like this, or, or just like huts that were semi-circular like this. And then down the middle there would be a division. And on this side of the house is where all of the people would sleep. Like there was no need for individual rooms or anything. I mean, this was very, very primitive.
Malcolm: So everyone would basically sleep in a pile. And then on the other side of the divide is where the animals would stay. Right. And of course, oh, all of the family sleeps on this side of the divide. Anything that's not family sleeps on this side of the divide. So that would translate into modern tongue.
Malcolm: In the manger, but historically it was where the animals stay. Which makes a lot of sense when you see it and you're like, okay, so this is probably accurate to where this would've happened. Another example here would be the criteria of like, embarrassment or you would say like, something you, you probably wouldn't want.
Malcolm: So these are people talking about, okay, this is the son of God being born. Well, you're probably not gonna say he was born in a manger, [00:13:00] like where animals are, right? Like, He's the king of kings in, in, in their interpretation, like that seems like it doesn't fit the agenda. You would probably say he was, if you were just making up a story from nowhere, you would say, oh, he was born to a king, or to a secret king, or something like that.
Malcolm: Right? Like born to poor people in a manger. Like, no, that's. That's not what you would come up with, especially now today because Christianity has influenced the world so much and victim narratives are really important and like, oh, this person came from nothing to be something that was not a common story motif of that time period.
Malcolm: It was a common story motif that somebody was secretly born of a king and then grew up with nothing, right? Like that was a common story motif, but born of like actual, like not that important people and then grow up to be something. That was not a common story motif at the time. So, so, that's, that's what we're talking about there.
Malcolm: But anyway,
Simone: yeah, I just, I, I think that it's really interesting, like, I think multiple attestation is there too, like, is this story told, and also how is it told similarly in different [00:14:00] gospels? Like, I, I can't remember exactly how it went, but like different gospels have like, Jesus writing in on one donkey, on two donkey.
Simone: Like they're like different donkey scenarios. And sort of like,
Malcolm: well, probably a better way to word what you're saying is if across gospels it looks like. Whenever you see similarities, you see almost it in the exact same words.
Simone: Well, yeah. Then, then it's, then it's less credible because they're just copy pasting.
Simone: Yeah. They were copied and its copy pasta. It doesn't get as much credibility, but when you do have the story told in slightly different ways that, that don't seem as copied or that that sound pretty unique, but they have many like core similarities and it's like, oh, well something around this might have
Malcolm: happened.
Malcolm: Right. Well, and that's true today when you're looking at press releases. Like where you'll see a bunch of sources, like if ever I see almost the exact same set of words used across news stories. Right? Yeah. I assume that they're pulling from the same source. Yeah. Which could be something that like the Republican party or the Democratic Party is pushing out there.
Malcolm: Some kind of press release. Yeah. Some [00:15:00] kind of basically press release or organized press campaign, and then I basically disregard everything that's said there. Totally. And then there's other weird things we use, like the criteria of shot calling. Like if somebody says This unlikely thing is going to happen, like I stake my career on it, and then that unlikely thing happens, I can basically trust almost everything they say after that A lot more.
Malcolm: Exactly. And so anyway, we, we've gone over that, but, but here's where it gets interesting is different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So really interesting thing is if you look at cultural groups so like, let's look at the US right now.
Malcolm: Right? So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.
Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the [00:16:00] Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about preexisting native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.
Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracy.
Why does this happen? I suspect the criminal aspect is largely ancillary or irrelevant to the phenomenon. What you're actually seeing is just the groups organizing themselves into a structured hierarchy organically. And because they are often on the outs with society, given [00:17:00] that they are recent immigrant groups, that structured hierarchy ends up becoming a criminal hierarchy.
That's a phenomenon that we're seeing here.
Malcolm: And again, I'm, I'm saying both of these, the Protestant Extreme also has its craziness. Again, they also often go up on crazy conspiracy theories. That's, that's what happens when you, when you question everything, it's, it's also not stable to base an entire country just around that. But what's really interesting is you can also see different country outcomes.
Malcolm: So if you look at countries where the dominant cultural group is, we trust, authority, his, like, we trust people have spent their entire life studying something. Those cultural groups. Were the longest holdout monarchies in Europe. Largely speaking. And the, the quickest conversion to democracies within Europe or democracy like structures were the cultural groups that were predominantly Protestant.
Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And dictatorships seemed to happen in countries that this dominant cultural group believes in.
Malcolm: Let's have truths determined by the people who spent their entire life studying a subject. In [00:18:00] fact, if you look at Protestant majority countries outside of Africa, only one has ever stayed a dictatorship for over seven years. And that is somewhere in East Asia. I don't remember where it is, but, but it, it, it's very interesting where when you look at Catholic majority countries around the world or orthodox majority countries around the world, they seem much more likely to form dictatorships.
Malcolm: And so what we would argue is actually the idea country, and this is why we're so pro pluralism, is you want a pluralistic understanding of what truth is. But again, these aren't the only two systems for truth. So Jews have a completely different system for truth, which is really, really fascinating. We could do a whole different session on this.
Malcolm: But again, i, I, I believe it, it's really well illustrated by the Snake oven story, which I've gone over in an another video. Just really quickly three Rabbis are having a disagreement. One rabbi says, this, this oven is not kosher. The other two say it is kosher, one or the other. I don't remember which way.
Malcolm: The one who disagrees with the other two, he's like, look, I can prove to you that God's on my side. And he points out, he does a bunch of miracles[00:19:00] like the rain will flow upwards. They're like, yeah, I, I get that. God agrees with you. But it's not what the letter of the law says, therefore it is. And, and then God basically comes down, he's like, ah, my own children best in me.
Malcolm: And, and what he's saying is basically, this is not my jurisdiction. Thank you for calling me out on that. And that this is an ultra legalistic understanding of truth. Which is to say, and, and here's where you can see this in terms of identity, right? So our kids, Simone, is. Matrilineally Jewish, like, your grandmother is Jewish.
Malcolm: Basically. But from our perspective your culture is, is a mix of the different people who make you up. Yet when I talk to Orthodox Jewish people about my kids, they're like, no, your kids are Jewish. I'm like, well, I mean, they're barely Jewish. And they're like, no. Technically they're Jewish.
Malcolm: They're Jewish e especially if you raise them Jewish like we've talked about sending them to, to Jewish schools or whatever, because, the good schools in our areas they're, they're definitely Jewish then. [00:20:00] And I think that that really shows this different understanding of truths. Now, the Jewish understanding of truth is actually a lot more nuanced than just legalism, because to say it's legalism also really misstates it.
Malcolm: Mm-hmm. It's more, I, I describe it more like, In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Earth is this giant computer where if everyone does their roles, then it will come out to a correct answer. And so it's more like truth is a cultural machine then truth is any, any, the legalism itself.
Malcolm: Truth is the cultural conversation. And that is why sort of the rabbinic debate is so important within Jewish culture's understanding of truth. And then another example of truth is Quaker understanding of truth. So Quaker understanding of truth is truth is this fire that burns within every individual.
Malcolm: And truth is what moves you or the little voice inside your head like it is your. Emotion speaking to you, that [00:21:00] is truth. Yes, truth is best determined at the personal level, but truth isn't best determined by an objective investigation of reality. Truth is best determined by how you feel. Mm-hmm.
Malcolm: Whereas if you look at the Calvinist understanding of truth, truth is, and that's my cultural tradition, and it's, it's Simone's predominant cultural tradition. Truth is best determined by personal research, but personal like. Scientific research of reality. And this is where again, like you see the Catholic perception of truths actually being much better.
Malcolm: So if you look during the witch trials or the Inquisition, the Catholic Inquisition was actually pretty kind in that, yes, they did some harsh stuff, but they very much. Still believed in interviewing lots of witnesses. They believed in discounting witness testimony if those witnesses seemed like they had Quas with the community.
Malcolm: But then you had the Calvinist communities, which were the Puritan communities in the us. And these communities almost didn't really believe that people could lie. Like they didn't believe that anyone from their culture would lie. So if anyone was saying [00:22:00] anything, well, it must be true. Like one that was where they just.
Malcolm: Like spiraled into psycho really quickly. But then the second was, Is that they believed that they could investigate reality through like natural experiments. Mm-hmm. They're like, ah, the world is very ordered. So what we're gonna do is, well, witches must resist the baptism. Right? Like, because they can't be accepted to to Christ.
Malcolm: So like if we throw them in water, they're gonna flow, right? Because they resist water. And so let's try that. That would be a good way to test if someone's a witch. And you didn't, you saw this a little bit within, but this didn't really happen that much within, within the, the Catholic inquisition.
Malcolm: One, they didn't even really believe in witches at all. It was more like, let's find heretics. Yeah. So he much more like moderated in learned. Yeah. And that's the thing with expert consensus, it is really prone to corruption, but the answers it comes to for reality. Are always going to be much more [00:23:00] moderated and less insane than the answers that can come to predominate within cultural groups with like my own.
Malcolm: The thing that you should always investigate everything independently, and this is why I think that pluralistic cultural groups like the US where you have both of these cultural groups to a large extent, living in harmony and working together, that's where you're gonna get the best answers. That's where you have the least chance of either a dictatorship forming.
Malcolm: Or, a, a mob that, that goes off and does crazy things for me. Yeah.
Simone: Yeah.
Simone: Well, also don't forget about the, the criteria of truth that you like the least, which is that most associated with like modern woke progressivism, which you like to call, and the pragmatist's guide to crafting religion, just equalism. Right. Can you walk us through that?
Malcolm: Yeah. So. Many times within this community, you will see them, like when they're trying to decide what's true about the world, and there's a few [00:24:00] possible paths of what could be true. They choose what would make the world most fair. Mm-hmm. What a fair reality would create as truth. So if you're asking are there systemic differences between like the way men and women process reality, They'll be like, well, it wouldn't be fair if there were systemic differences, therefore there aren't systemic differences.
Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Even if it like clashes with other aspects of their worldview, you see this over and over again within the woke community and it's, not everyone was in the woke community, but there's definitely a portion of the woke community that does practice jism and it, it, it's terrifying to me because it can lead to.
Malcolm: A lot worse outcomes for everyone, but outcomes really don't matter in how they're determining truths. So I look at the way that Protestants try to determine truths, and I'm like, I get that, I may, I may think that it could use some tweaks, but I get why they do it that way. I look at the way Catholics determine truth, I'm like, yeah, that seems like logically consistent.
Malcolm: I can see how it can lead to abuse, but like, yeah, that makes sense to me. Like they're genuinely trying [00:25:00] to get to a good answer for the world. I look at the way it's, choose, determine truth, and I'm like, look, this is one of the oldest most successful cultural traditions in human history. Like they're, they're clearly onto something.
Malcolm: Then I look at the way that Jessica, it's like, this doesn't even seem to be like, honestly trying to help people. It just seems to be trying to protect their self identity as good people. And this is where when I look at the world and I'm like, there's a diversity, I think that we do well within a diverse world.
Malcolm: And a lot of people are like, how dare you say, these different groups see truth differently. Right? It's like, what's the point of diversity of everyone secretly sees the world the same way? Like the point of diversity is that we see things differently. That is where strength and diversity comes
Simone: from.
Simone: Yeah. Here, one second though. I'm just gonna push back. I think the, the core of just Equalism is maybe that. If you choose to see truth that way, that you can make it that way. I think it's a sort of manifesting I mean, and this is a more spiritual group, right? Like my good faith interpretation of [00:26:00] that criteria for truth is I'm going to believe, for example, that there are no differences between men and women.
Simone: And then that belief will indeed shape. Whether or not there are differences. And some of that's based in science, like understanding of the placebo effect and understanding of the power of narratives and examples. But I think that, that there's also this manifesto, like I said, element of it.
Simone: So I think that a lot of it's like I just want, I want there to be a world in which that's true, and so I'm gonna believe it's true until it becomes true.
Malcolm: I disagree with you. I think it's all about protecting their ego and protecting their image as virtuous people, no matter what they do. I don't think so.
Malcolm: And I want people in the comments to to, to weigh in on this. Yeah. Which, which side of this,
Malcolm: and then again, I wanna, I wanna point out before we leave, like these are all like, Obviously not everyone from these cultural groups sees truths this way. We're just talking about the way these cultural groups differ from each other. Because I think that through looking at the way they differ from each other, we can learn things that are especially pertinent to our [00:27:00] current time with this current debate over this system of truths our society is using.
Malcolm: If we can look to historic parallels, there's a lot we can use, especially in building new and potentially. Better systems or in coming to appreciate why, even if I don't understand different people's understanding of truth, I can appreciate that our society is stronger for having that diversity. Because I can look historically and see what happens when we lack that diversity, whether it's the Puritan colonies or the, historic Castle Church.
Simone: Well, All I can say, Malcolm, is I know one thing is true and that that is, you are a sexy beast and I know it because of your face. That is my criterion of truth. I love you. I think that's
Malcolm: subjective. That's subjective. It's true, but no, it's not subjective that you are a sexy beast. It is subjective that I am.
Malcolm: Because my perspective on reality is the ruler from which [00:28:00] truth is measured, and all truth is determined by how far it differentiates from my perspective of reality and within my perspective of reality. You're a sexy piece, so that's true.
Simone: How convenient. I love you, gorgeous. Looking forward to our next conversation.