"I Am a Failure": Inside the Minds of Young Men with Russ Ewell

But in my, on the ground experience with young men between the ages of 14 and 40, which is a lot of where I focus now, a lot of negative thinking. I think some of that negative thinking is the nature of, of unbelief, lack of faith, a lack of God in people's lives. I think the more we focus on our human abilities or our human comparisons, the more negatively we will be coming. But also it comes from the, the frame that is put in the media that a lot of them read about, negative thought processes of the culture we're in toward men. It is patently unreasonable to say that young men aren't being affected by how they're being portrayed and how they're being talked about and how they appear in movies and a streaming series. All those things have a big impact that if you're not part of a community, outside of your home, not just school, but a part of your community, then you're going to be a, it's a problem. The thing I've learned, not just with my own kids, but with young men, is be constantly learning and growing yourself. You're listening to the Axis Conversations podcast. I'm Evan Barber and I'm here today with Russ Yule. Russ Yule is the executive minister of the Bay Area Christian Church and author of He's Not Who You Think He Is, exploring faith at the edge of modern life. He's also the founder of Deep Spirituality, E-Life, Digital Scribbler, and Hope Technology Group, initiatives addressing spiritual formation, inclusive technologies, and life span inclusion. With over four decades of leadership experience, Russ helps people discover biblical Christianity that is intellectually serious, emotionally grounding, and transformative. Earlier this year, he wrote an op-ed for Fox News about how 40 years as a pastor is shaping his perspective on why so many young men in America are struggling. We'll be talking about that primarily today. Russ, thanks so much for joining the podcast. It's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me. A recent study from the Institute for Family Studies asked 2,000 men of various age ranges about life, relationships, college, and purpose. One of the survey results found that 46 percent of 18 to 23-year-old men agreed with this statement, all in all, I am inclined to think that I am a failure. My first question for you, Russ, is does this perspective square with how you have experienced young men in your work as a pastor and as a leader, and how they tend to see themselves and talk about themselves? And if so, how do you think we got here? Yes, I think that's accurate. Now, the question about how we got here is how I'll work into the answer. I think that this generation, most data tells us is more aware of mental health, how they're doing. They're more cognizant of it. They're more sensitive to a lot of things that their peers are going through. And I would think that when you go back generationally, genetics, baby boomers, there was less awareness by men of those kinds of things. Now, there's positives and negatives to be overly aware, and you can ruminate, and then that bad becomes a problem. But on the ground, experience with young men between the ages of 14 and 40, which is a lot of where I focus now, a lot of negative thinking. I think some of that negative thinking is the nature of unbelief, lack of faith, a lack of God in people's lives. I think the more we focus on our human abilities or our human comparisons, the more negative we will become. But also, it comes from the frame that is put in the media that a lot of them read about, negative thought processes of the culture we're in toward men. Whether or not that's justified or not is not my space to argue, but it's just the fact that when a young man reads that masculine and a young man or somehow negative, then he's going to embody that. He's going to embrace that. He's going to spiritually inhale that. And so I think when you look generationally, you have older men tend to, I don't know, no one's monolithic, no group's monolithic, they tend to be less aware of mental health, less willing to talk about it. This generation is. So I'll talk to guys who will tell me they have a lot of negative thoughts about themselves. They're not good at things, they're terrible at this, they fail at this. And as we know that the thought processes we have can be life-fulfilling. We can fulfill those even if we have the ability to overcome them. So, yeah, I think that's how we got here. I think I see it all the time. And it's one of the biggest areas that I've learned needs to be addressed. I've had to learn that not everybody is confident, not everybody believes they're going to succeed. And I came from a background and experience where generally that was how me and my friends felt. We're going to succeed, we're going to do well. And that's not the case today. Interesting. So a couple of different layers there that I want to try to pick apart is the idea of this generation being more aware of their own mental health, potentially what maybe previous generations were also having those sorts of thoughts go through their mind that you're a failure, you're not that great, but there wasn't as much attention placed on what's going on inside our minds. And it is that maybe part of what's different now that the same old accusations are coming through, but we just make much more of a thing of it these these days than previous generations used to. Well, you know, the people who the sociologists who look at this and a lot of the studies have been done on this, the ones that I've read anyway will tell you that the decline in the male experience of life began a while a long while ago. And that that data has been increasingly moving toward greater decline. So that's the first thing that the generations before could have, and we're experiencing these things, but society we weren't talking about them as much. Yet I think with the advent, and I'm one of these people who believes with the advent of social media and all of the comparison that takes place with all of the sort of isolation produced by the pandemic, I think there's a lot of different things that have gone in to feed into it. And so it's definitely, in my opinion, greater now. Then we have the other layer of it, which is you see more people being diagnosed with mental health. And there's a great debate about that. Is it being overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed? I don't know, but it is being diagnosed. So you have ADHD, you have autism, you have depression, all of these are up suicide amongst young men as higher. So we have to face the fact that something's going on that's different because of the increase in it. Even when you look at happiness, the studies that have been done on happiness, they'll show you that probably 1972 to 2018, it pretty much stayed the same, but after 2018, beginning about 2020, there was a massive decline, a 90% decrease, and the number of people who considered themselves very happy, a decrease by 90%. So that's societally. So something's going on that's different right now, but I do think to be to honor the data, we have to also look back and say, yeah, well, it started earlier. So my generation or my dad's generation or his dad's generation, they were experiencing something, but it wasn't exactly the same. So in a nutshell, yes, it's increased, but it's been there. Yeah, yeah, right, right. That's that's a good nuance. The other layer of your first answer was the sort of maybe prevalence of cultural critique of men, maybe of masculinity, more broadly, that you were saying maybe has caused more young men to internalize that idea and to think, well, yeah, maybe I really am a failure or maybe I really am a waste of space. Is there anything else that goes into that sort of calculus or is it just like, oh, everybody around me kind of seems to hate men. So maybe I'm just awful. Yeah, well, I think we're all very impressionable. And if we look and flip it to the gender women, right, one of the big changes that's had to be made, it's not done. We've not finished it. One of the big changes we've had to make is how women are portrayed and how women are spoken about. And I think as a result, we see it's not arrived where it needs to be, but we see some women CEOs, we see some women VCs, for instance, the Silicon Valley, we see women being more successful politically, got a long way to go again. But I think the way the society talks about any individual gender, any individual race can determine what that race thinks about itself. If you go back with African-Americans, for instance, a lot of the challenge was, can we change the way African-Americans think because they're they're imbibing everything society says. So this isn't unique. And I'm saying that saying that for you, Evan, I'm saying that for those who are listening, it is it is patently unreasonable to say that young men aren't being affected by how they're being portrayed and how they're being talked about and how they appear in movies and a streaming series. All those things have a big impact. Now, one of the things I think is important and not to be political and I don't think it should be is that churches because of the Bible, they have already a construct both spiritually emotionally and socially that helps young men thrive. That's the, that's the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand is the decline in attendance at church has to be tied into this and that's been well documented and a lot of people say see church is dying and it's no good and it hurt society and that's a good thing. No, it's not a good thing. You see a correlation and increased mental health problems. You see a correlation and increased social problems. You see a correlation and the decline of men with and I'm not saying I shouldn't say correlation but there's some kind of causation. You see a decline in how men feel about themselves and what I experience in my church is we have young men when they come they get mentors. I know I'm going to get ahead of myself maybe a little bit. They have mentors. They have not only their dads but they have their peers. They have leaders in the church that also work in the community. So we have people who work in the technology arena and they mentor the younger guys who are coming up. Some of the people have very executives and and product managers and they can tell these guys here's how to build your career with AI coming on the scene. They can they can mentor them. Now does that happen in every a life? Some but not like in church. Why? Because in church you have a community that is like if it's built right it's like family and so a lot of these young men we have are thriving and they're picking trades they want to go into. They're being able to figure out majors. We've had some kids who just can't do school. Just to to to tough but they get they get tutors and mentors that are their friends helping them and their roommates all get together. So I think I'm introducing right now we're underestimating the necessity of church and I include boys and girls clubs. I include anything where men get together but those things aren't as prominent as they used to be. When I was a kid I was in cup scouts, little league football, all these different things that made friendships for me. I didn't become a professional baseball player or a basketball player but I built friendships and so and I had coaches and so I know I'm getting ahead of myself but what I'm trying to say is society we can look at all these problems and the the the media oftentimes will cover the problems but we and comment on the problems but we don't always promote the solutions which is what I love about your podcast is you're talking to parents and to and to Gen Z and and probably alpha kids and saying hey there's a way for us to contextualize all this that we can understand the problem but then we can see that if we build our churches right they can be a huge part of the solution whether someone becomes a Christian or not the influence of church and the building of lives permeate society so those are some thoughts I have on that. Hey I'm Bri I just wanted to pop in and say that today's episode is made possible thanks to the table that's our amazing community of monthly givers who make sure that access resources stay free for families everywhere so if your family's been impacted by what access does and you want to pass that on to other families I'd love to invite you to join us at the table head to www.access.org/thetable and join us today. Why do you think so many people tend to focus on the problem and on what's going wrong as opposed to what what is actually being reconstructed to make a difference I mean that is that's just because people think that those kinds of articles get more clicks or what do you what do you make of that? Well you know I I was in agnostic when I started out until I got to college and so I never thought of god or religion or any of that is a solution to anything so so I say that to say I I think there are a lot of people who don't have an answer and they they I do think there's a click aspect to it but I actually think people also are genuinely trying to let the world know hey here's a problem I one of the reasons we do our these spirituality site which is really for anyone who's seeking to be spiritual and they're about the spirituality of Jesus but also anyone is not even looking for that who's just like curious maybe they're searching and maybe they're one of those nuns you know in ES one of the reasons we do that is so people can get access to it one of my sort of focuses is making God audible I would think I'm challenged by what you just said that we aren't out there providing enough answers I I read it up on some studies and some commentary about ADHD on TikTok and this may sound like a sidebar issue but it you'll people will understand what I explained it and they said that there's so much false information I I actually did a talk on it there's so much false information about ADHD because many of the people commenting on it and building great crowds of people to follow them have ADHD are talking about what they do and not all of what they do is good and the person said I'm not going to blame those people I think the responsibility is on experts of ADHD that they're not online creating and providing this information yeah so I think part of the part of the problem is people like me people like you have to be on and people that's crowded no one will find you doesn't matter we have to make it so that when some young man who 17 years old starts to search in every 17 year old searches I did everybody does he can find something that says here's the answer so I have to assume at the media and the people in the media don't give the answer they don't have it and it's our responsibility to provide it yeah yeah that's that's a good encouragement I hope that the people listening to that will be able to to feel encouraged to try to play similar roles as well to the extent that they are able and are prepared to do so I want to zero in on a quote from the op ed from Fox News where you wrote this you wrote when discussing how and why young men seem to have lost their way we tend to over focus on the problem kind of like we were just talking about and oversimplify the solution we tend to discuss all the ways these young men's fail themselves and others and focus far too little on what has failed them so let me ask you what in your own words has failed young men well it's society I think we always historically society has always faced some challenge so I think to critique current society and say it's just uniquely failing I think that's a mistake what I believe is that we've done a great job of improving not solving but improving the plight of a lot of people a lot of different groups women minorities you name it and there's some backlash politically about that I think and I'm not going to get us into politics and we say some backlash one of the challenges of society and culture is to balance and I think what we have is we have a balance problem I would say men have been neglected so I'll go back to what I talked about and I was never not a boy scout I did Cub Scouts for a while but it used to be when I was growing up and when many people were growing up there were all kinds of emphasis on scouting scouts there was emphasis on you know I can't remember the name of all the different programs that men got into and boys got into just incredible and sports back then and I guess a little bit of critique of sports sports back then was for everybody when you were young now it's become so you have to be such an elite athlete to be able to be a part of sports programs that I think a lot of kids are being faced out of that before you get to middle school and and unfortunately what that does is it reduces the number of social interaction so I'll give you an example I have two special needs kids and one with Down syndrome one with autism and we started something that's that is ultimately called E-Life now but we started the you started E soccer and it's an inclusive program and for those who don't have special needs kids just bear with me for a moment because what I'm trying to to talk about is how we get young men to thrive and what is not there for them right now and so I was part of a the baseball program look put my son in the Lilly program but I found that where they were going to put all the special needs kids was on one team and or on two team and they would play other special needs teams which was fine but my son had a number of kids who were neurotypical and so they were he was being separated from them or some would say segregated from them so he didn't get that experience and I was like I don't like this because it's not how I grew up I grew up with my families friends and my friends all playing together and that's what young men need they need the families connecting doing something together it could be when I was in high school there was a ski club it could be whatever you can be chess club but boys go hey that's for me right and so I went this isn't working we're not happy and we started with eight kids and eight coaches some of these guys that played college some high school and some some professional soccer and we built this program which now we're partnered with the earthquakes and soccer and we're partnered with Golden State Warriors and basketball it's an inclusive program well what what what are young men missing they're missing that experience of going to the Little League field or going to Little League court not because I'm this great athlete but because it's a way to socially be developed get coaches meet other parents my my next door neighbors were interested in what I was doing and even if my dad wouldn't say something to me my next door neighbors dad would go hey why aren't you out practicing or whatever so I think there's a lot of things boys and girls clubs we used to have a partnership with the boys and girls club and young boys that maybe didn't have dads as well as young boys who didn't have financially as much capability to be able to join an AAU team or whatever or weren't good enough, they got to go there and there were tons of kids there all the time. I've seen a decrease in that and we need to emphasize those things again and talk about them again. Interesting. So is it the case that it's largely because of an attempt to optimize how those kinds of things go, we want to take the best of the best and we want to put make the most competitive league over here and then maybe others can play over here and people are trying to tweak the sports element for example and in that process people are getting left out and not given the opportunity to connect in a social way that is shown to be beneficial. Is it fundamentally because we want everything to be so well optimized that that kind of thing is happening and people get -- I don't really, I just think it's the nature of life that people get left out. The question is what do we do with people who get left out and we've not been working hard to solve those problems. I'm going to go back to the client and attendants of church. For many, many decades church was a place you could go and you could be a part of not just Sunday school but how many people they have the friends that go to their birthday party come because socially they're involved with church. They go on trips. They become part of a boy state if any of people remember that and they go to Washington DC. There's so many things that if you're not part of a community outside of your home not just school but a part of your community then you're going to be a -- it's a problem but I think people always left out the job of a lot of us who work in the social fields we should be thinking what are we creating and so with girls for instance here in Silicon Valley the predominant population of engineers have been men for as long as I can remember. So what happened? They started coding clubs for young ladies and that increased the number of girls, young girls, young women who wanted to go into computer science or engineering. Well we have to do that for men now and I don't think we have to indict or see other things as bad. We just have to say we're leaving them out. When it comes to sports I just think it's the nature of it. You know I played basketball and high school and all and I didn't play in college. Why? Because at some point the best people get to do it. That's why you have to have other things and so they have intermural programs in college. We built my friends built a big intermural program and all these guys and we all became friends and that was our fraternity. So I think we just have to have people in society who think about it not just comment on it and that's my goal. My goal is to not just be a commentator but to really do the work in the community to allow it to happen and then to empower young men and that's what that's what we do all all the time. And one word for those who are in churches or league churches having teen camps in middle school camps that's a big deal because what you're doing is you're helping in the big word I didn't like for a long time spiritual formation. I was like that sounds strange. I don't like it but the reality matter is formation is the key and thinking about forming lives and I think I think the church of church decides to get really good at this. It'll change the world and it'll increase the attendance at church and I don't think the goal should be we got to increase the tenants. I think the goal should be this is one of the best places you can find formation. Just out of curiosity Russ what did you not like about the phrase spiritual formation? So you have to first take that I come from an agnostic background. Yeah. So when I heard that term I was like that doesn't even make sense to me like what is that? That sounds clunky. Yeah, sure. So what I had to do is take my perspective and my bent and study it and look at it and find out what it is because what I was doing was I was judging the phrase without totally understanding it and that it was coming from formation as a concept it's also fine. I just didn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. Of course it's a while back and so I had to do and I think that's one of the things is the minister or leader you have to do you have to change your mind when you're wrong and then build on it and so my big thing now is making sure that we talk about it and that we expand and deepen even the understanding of what it means because it's to me it is the crucial problem with young men and I didn't see it before I see it now and so I'm learning. Yeah, yeah. Another one of the points you make in the op-ed that I was alluding to was that as you write the formation young men need is opposed to the kind of autonomy we've unleashed on society in recent decades. I feel like in many ways that's what you've already been talking about but just to to kind of underline the solution oriented element of hopefully this podcast what is it? What does it take? What does it look like to push back against that kind of cultural autonomy? What does it take to create an appetite for more than just that sort of deep individualism? Yeah. First of all, if I can answer that question then I'm going to be a significant human being. I'll share my perspective. I think I honestly think I'm starting a newsletter that'll be coming out called the spiritual frontier. I honestly believe that the journey of learning how to address this and how to talk about this is a big one but what I've seen societally is that somehow forces at work we want to attribute it didn't blame anybody but forces at work have the misconception that when you leave a 12 or a 14 or a 10 or a 17 or a 22 year old person all by their lonesome they're just going to figure everything out. One of the best evidence is of this comes from right where I live in Silicon Valley. When it comes to technology which I'm a big believer in and use I'm not negative about it though some people think I can be because I go why I make it so hard for parents to be able to manage the safety of a device. You have to go through so many hoops and jump I'm jump through so many hoops to be able to go well I don't want my kid to look at this. I want to be the one to introduce my kid to this and some of the companies their fundamental belief is in this freedom and what they should have freedom whereas when you give the kid freedom that the parent doesn't think they're ready for then you put them in a situation where you're forming that kid instead of the parent and that's I think that's an underlying societal debate is there are some people who believe that a kid should be able to make their own decisions at a certain time which obviously I think that's true but I think formation is about guy I was guided my parents I don't think my parents were exceptional in this area but my parents had guidelines and rules it's how we're going to live this is what it means to be a duel and you know this is how you this is how you're part of our family you know they didn't go oh you know you're you're 14 you can start setting the dinner time you know they they just didn't do that and so I think there's attention and independence that people need to develop but I think a young mind I mean even the people who study the brain of young people say it's not developed till probably fully developed till probably 25 26 years old which means impulse control and all kinds of things are not a capable and I see young men reading and learning on TikTok what to do with their life from people who I mean I I'm going to give them the benefits out and say they're well meaning but they're not well qualified they haven't had any experience and sometimes they're undermining parents and I think part of the autonomy thing is and I mean people you understand when you start to undermine parents you're you're doing a lot of damage are there bad parents there are bad everything yeah sure but I think that to not respect what parents can do is a huge mistake and probably tied into why we're seeing a decline in births because when you don't see an emphasis on the importance and the power of family and I think one of the areas that Christians the broader term make mistakes is they turned it into a political statement yeah to focus on family if you're going to be you know and instead of saying no family is just fundamentally important I don't care what you believe you want to have great families and you want to encourage people to have them so I think the autonomy thing in society is you can make your own truth that's autonomy there there is no so in my opinion there's no such thing as your own truth there's truth and then there's what you think is true and and if you don't bring those two into alignment you create a society where everybody does whatever they want and there's some people who believe that's good that they think that's freedom I don't think that's freedom I don't think that's freedom constitutionally I don't think that's freedom spiritually at all and I don't think that freedom leads to anything ultimately that's going to be positive in the long run at least not purposely maybe you'll get lucky but it's not not purposefully so it's it's a dangerous thing now I want to make clear I I believe people need to have independence. I got independence, but here's what I've learned. Teenagers and colonsions are gonna force their independence. There's never gonna be a problem, generally, where the kid not getting his name. There obviously be bad situations, but the average child will grow up and they will gain their independence. The problem comes if they're not prepared for that independence. - Yeah. - And I think that's what formation is about. - And maybe that's the difference between properly prepared independence and maybe the sort of cultural autonomy that you were, as you were calling it, right? That maybe autonomy is independence without preparation to kind of, hey, you should have wrote the article. (laughing) - No, no, no, no, I'm really cool with this. - Why haven't you, Evan, where were you? I needed you, man. (laughing) - Come on. - Yeah, well, you know, good insights from you that led to this conversation, sir. All right, so this month, we've been, you know, we just had Father's Day, we've been talking about Fatherhood more broadly, so I'd love to ask you this, what does it take for Father's today to maybe proactively address some of these issues with the next generation of men? And I'll say, a lot of the different layers that we've been talking about in this conversation are obviously not just about men, right? We've talked about various ethnicities, we've talked about, you know, women, we've talked about all these different layers. Since you were kind of tackling the young men question in the op-ed, I'd love to ask, how can maybe Father's today address that directly? - Yeah, well, one, I think for most of your listeners, they're already doing the right thing 'cause they're listening to your podcast. That demonstrates an awareness, a humility, and a desire to learn. And I think those things are key. For me, I don't consider myself a great parent or not a great parent. I consider myself always and continually learning how to be a parent. I feel like the job, a Scott Gallaby writes this in his book about men that the goal shouldn't be to be a perfect father and never make mistakes, but to be better than your father. Not because your father was bad, but to each generation gets better. And I think that's happened in my family, not only with me, but with my cousins that we've learned that. And men today, most of the data I've seen shows are doing a better job at being fathers in the amount of time they're willing to invest in kids, and the roles they're willing to play at home. It's rare for me to run into a father. Like, I've run into a lot more millennial fathers now, right? It's rare for me to run into a father who doesn't want to be involved. Who thinks to the white, you just go do that. There are various models like some of the men stay home, some of the women stay home, and stay with the kids. Some of them are both working and they go back and forth. So I wanted to just say that most people who listen to the spot can should be encouraged. There are things that they can do. One is work on yourself. That's the thing I've learned, not just with my own kids, but with young men. It's be constantly learning and growing yourself. And I share my challenges, my struggles, my dreams, with everybody that I work with from age 14 to 40. I just try to make it relatable to a 14-year-old. I may tell them about my challenge by talking about what I went through when I was that age, but I think that's a big part of it working on yourself. And sometimes, societally, and with us as men, we don't work on a specific area, which is emotion. The emotional lives have been. One of the most important ways to help your son be able to build a great relationship with God, be able to follow Christ, be able to experience the Holy Spirit is making sure that he can develop an emotional relationship with God, which is intimacy, which we'll meet as needs. And also, if you teach him well, he'll learn how to have internal strength. That's what I didn't have. As a teenager and an agnostic kid, I didn't have the kind of internal strength that I think Christian kids had that allowed me to endure pressure and stress more eloquently and more gracefully. And sometimes, kids who grow up and go into church can be made fun of, but the reality is, they will thrive when we teach them emotionally. So for a man, I think it's being aware of your own mental health, being aware of your ability to communicate emotion and your ability to listen to emotion. One of the big things I work with older men on, father's on is, I've had to learn it myself. So that's why I talk about it. Being able to handle the emotions of marriage and parenting and work. And then at one point, not wanting to shut one of them off, you know, not wanting to turn one of those knobs off, you know. It's like you got your stove and all the burners are on. And then you're like, man, I'm getting hot. And you want to turn one off and it's developed that capacity to keep listening and keep talking. And young men model the emotional vocabulary and depth of their fathers. That's where they learn it first. Then they're able to build it with other young men and they're able to build it with young women. And that's something that I had to be mentored in a lot. So that's a big thing. The other thing for dads, it's really important, is make sure you have other men involved in their life so it doesn't all land on you. So if I'm got a son and I'm, and I'm you and I are friends, Evan, I'm going to want you to influence his life. And the trick there, some dad said, well, I don't, you know, Evan likes ice hockey and I want my son to be a tennis player. And now Evan's got him all in ice hockey. You know what? Let the kid play ice hockey because he's got another mentor now. And it's more important to have more mentors than it is to get your kid to do exactly what you want him to do. So I think mentoring is huge. Find the coaches and look for them. Also pay attention to your kid's friends. Yeah, I'm not saying control it. But we all know that character and friendship are destiny. You're probably going to become like the people you hang out with. And so really help them make decisions. And I try to teach my kids and everybody I know, you need to be selective about the people you allow to influence you. You can be, you can care about everybody. You can be friends with anybody. But who influences you? You've got to be selective because it's going to determine a lot about your life. And then the last thing is make sure you as a father have friends yourself, people that you spend time. Because sometimes parents end up being so involved in parenting. They cut off all their relationships. And that's not only support, but it's an opportunity to grow yourself and share things so that when you run into those teen years, which every parent's going around those teen years, you're going to need friends. I trust me. And you're going to need some friends because nothing's going to make. So those are some things that I think. Yeah, wow. That was a tremendous list of very practical and very insightful ideas. Russ, thank you for going there. I'll say listeners next week, Russ is going to be coming back to help answer a listener question about fatherhood, particularly parenting kids who are neurodivergent. So please come back next week, check out that podcast episode. And Russ, we'll look forward to talking to you again then. Thank you for having me on. It's been awesome. You do great interviews. I'll tell you that. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening. This podcast is made possible because of our generous donor community, the table to help us support more parents and caring adults through culture translation. We'd love to invite you to check it out by visiting access.org/thetable. Also, if you've been impacted by what we do, would you consider helping us get the word out by leaving a five-star review on whatever podcast platform you use and even by sharing this episode with someone that you think could benefit? Finally, you can now find this podcast on our YouTube channel as well at Access Conversations. Thanks so much for caring about having intentional conversations with the next generation.