[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited to welcome back Minter Dial. We first had a conversation in episode 72 on his award-winning documentary, the Last Ring Home and his book You Lead, how being Yourself makes you a better leader in this conversation. We spend most of our time focused on his updated book, artificial Empathy, putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence.

Now empathy is one of those things that is so overlooked in business, which is why Minter makes the case that empathy can be a competitive advantage and driver of innovation. If organizations cultivate it authentically and he shares with us how we can do that,

I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming. mahan@mohantli.com. Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite platform, and when you get a chance, leave a rating and review that will help more people find and benefit from these conversations.

Now here's my conversation with Minter Dial.

Minter Dial my friend. Welcome back to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. Always a pleasure 

[00:01:21] Minter Dial: to share with you, Mahan and to feel your energy. 

[00:01:24] Mahan Tavakoli: You've written outstanding books, I love the documentary. So there are lots of different places we can go with this conversation, minter, but would love to touch on what initially got you interested in artificial intelligence? 

[00:01:40] Minter Dial: I think the root that got me into AI started actually with understanding coding. And when I was at university I was the artistic type, the creative type, but I was also the super geek. And I was really impacted by an economist, Lester Thoreau, who said, all great future executives will learn to type.

 I immediately sat about asking for lessons from my mom 10 finger typing. , I was in the 80 words a minute accurately typed. Then I also got into computers and coding. Those days it was, I. Ascal and c and basic and understanding how the machine works.

But I can't say I obviously got into any AI per se, but that sort of got me geeked when I started writing my blog back in 2005. It was on blogger and then I switched to WordPress and got into H T M L and the coding. And so I've always had my finger in the pie of the computer language.

When I was at L'Oreal to say that we got into geeky computer talk would've been a wild overstatement. I was in charge of digital we were poor. And frankly, I think most companies remain poor at truly understanding what's happening in digital spaces. Obviously not tech companies, Then the idea of our humanity.

And it seemed like so many of us were struggling and including my best friend at the time with mental health and looking at social media and everything like that and then all the algorithms. So it became more from a fascination standpoint as to how these companies were managing.

The programs, the algorithms, which of course include a whole lot of ai. And while I wasn't doing any of that, it got me really intrigued by the business model and the business intention behind the encoding of these algorithms. And then the idea of rendering human. Led me at last to want to think about the actual encoding of humanity into artificial intelligence and how it actually reflects back on who we are.

So it's artificial, but there is something quite real about the mirror that AI development and coding. Shines back on us about who we are what are we all about 

[00:04:07] Mahan Tavakoli: you talked minter about encoding humanity in AI and how ai, most specifically, generative AI to a certain extent is a reflection of us.

How, in your view, has generative AI changed the landscape, and how does it reflect some of our 

[00:04:30] Minter Dial: humanity? I ought to just say one piece, which is the vast majority of AI and robotics is not yet really interested in humanity. There's so many other things that AI can do that doesn't go into humanity at the margin where we are looking at it.

The nature of generative AI needs to be explained in the mode of what happened in AI to get to it. And this is very important because there are several things that. Really congregated together in order for this generative AI to happen. And that is that whereas in the past, the study of AI was applied in a very narrow field each time.

So you might have been a specialist in AI and how to do voiced to text. You might have been in AI doing text to voice or eye movements or vocal tones or facial muscles, all these different ways of evaluating and for the very specific targeted things we're looking for, which could have been detection of Alzheimer's, detection of depression, and each time very segmented or very niche.

The thing that shifted with foundational ai, was that there was now a congregating of the different AI specialisms together, such that you can get a far more nuanced, more complex study using AI and naturally closer to the full picture of the human being. It's not the full picture, but a more full picture.

And that's what's interesting about how we've gotten to say AI and naturally at this point, when you can combine the 900 times that an eye can move in a second, plus the extreme focus of the way your voice is in toning plus massive amounts of understanding of the. Words coming outta my mouth, much less the way I'm breathing and everything else.

These are trying to get closer to understanding the humanness of us, and so that's why we're getting closer to this. Form of AI that is more accurately reflecting us. And the second piece is of course, the access to so much data. And it comes as somewhat of a surprise that the data is, first of all, huge, but also it is basically only a reflection of us.

Because who created the data? Obviously some machines created some data, but for the rest it's basically us. And so in the first part, we're amassing all the different elements that compose the humanness. And two, we're reflecting and using as learning models, the data that comes from us.

And so naturally both of these things will tend to look at who we are and help us understand better, perhaps why we're imperfect, which is why chat g p t isn't always perfect and which is in part why and who we are and what makes us function. 

[00:07:46] Mahan Tavakoli: So a part of what you're saying is generative AI to a certain extent, is a reflection of what we have put into it. But you focus a lot on needing to bake in empathy into artificial intelligence. How can that be done and who decides and chooses to do that? Nter, for example, I. Elon Musk is very critical of open AI for a whole host of reasons. I think he has a grudge that they didn't bring him on as c e o early on, but he wants to start his own truth, g p t.

Which I imagine if Elon Musk has anything to do with it, we'll probably be a lot less empathetic because he's not known for his empathy. How can empathy be baked in to ai? Who chooses to do that and what's the right level of empathy? 

[00:08:39] Minter Dial: So I'd like to pay homage to the individuals and organizations who have preceded me in the study of the relationship between empathy and ai.

And it really goes back to the sixties with Philip Dick, whose book Why do Android's Dream of electric sheep and frankly, this relationship between machines and empathy has always been a fascination in films and science fiction books along the way. When one wants to make empathy work within ai, I think the key point is that communications are everything.

And the desire to render AI empathic in a very pragmatic manner is about helping us to communicate better. 'cause that's where it's at. It can be within the communication of the brief. It can be within the communication between coders. Who are in coding, where empathy has a role, and then it can be within the communication from the ai, the chat bot with you, the customer, or with whomever.

So there's a really interesting opportunity in business with regard to empathy as to who's using it. The question for me starts with what are the intentions of using it as opposed to who, 'cause why are you trying to encode empathy? Is it to manipulate your customers and help them with the addiction to, let's say, for example, social media or is it to improve a marketing message in an email? Or is it to create a better world, maybe a therapeutic AI with real empathy? So I'm more interested in the intention of the use of empathy and AI than the specific sector or company. I think the. Needs to be a whole lot of discussion around ethics and the link between empathy and ethics is also very important in how people should be addressing.

Thinking about the opportunities for empathy in ai, what a beautiful 

[00:10:49] Mahan Tavakoli: differentiation in that. As you were talking about it, that empathy, is it a Facebook or Snapchat chat bot? That wants to be empathetic, to get you to buy additional products, or is it empathy in a way that serves the person as an online therapist could?

So the intention behind the empathy makes a huge difference. 

[00:11:17] Minter Dial: There are a couple things with regard to empathy that are important. The first is that there are. For me, the way I like to describe it, two forms of empathy. Some people will talk about up to five. Some people say there's only one. I tend to split them into two.

One being cognitive empathy, where you understand rationally, what you're seeing, hearing, and what the other person's seeing, hearing, feeling. Experiencing. And the other one is effective empathy, which is the notion of feeling what the other person's feeling. And in, regards my work in businesses and with ai, it's far more accessible to think about learning cognitive empathy, whether it's a human being executive or a machine.

Teaching or learning to have effective empathy is difficult. The second distinction, which is important, is to think about there's empathy that I'm employing. I'm trying to be empathic with, let's say man, or. The second component of it is Mahan feels that I'm being empathic. And so there's the action of being empathic, which is just specifically thinking about and getting into the skin of the person, as Atticus Finch says of the other person, or does the individual receiving it feel it, and in many cases in business, The application of just trying to be empathic may not be felt, but the role and the.

Results can be better for both people. For example, if I wanna just stick to something very basic, I wanna do an email and I wanna have a good newsletter title. And so if I apply some empathy into the fashioning of that sentence that I'm gonna hook my customers, I'm gonna think about them. So my customers are a certain age, a certain profile, whatever. What's gonna be interesting for them, and why would they open up this thing? Because in it, I wanna offer them a really great offer, but if they don't open it up, they're not gonna get it. Now, when the person receives it, it's very unlikely that any of them will say, oh, that was really empathic.

However, there was deployment of empathy specifically in the design or the creation of the title. So these are the two things I think it's important cognitive and effective empathy, the two styles. And then there's the deliverer and the receiver of empathy and sometimes these two don't even connect.

[00:13:51] Mahan Tavakoli: Why do you see there is a greater need for empathy in our lives and in workplaces? 

[00:14:00] Minter Dial: So there's always been a need for empathy. It hasn't been a topic really in business language. Only until recently in fact, I counted on Amazon way back, there are roughly 300 books that have been published over the last three years with the word empathy in the title.

So it's clearly a hot button topic and maybe the notion of empathy has become more and more important because they see how it's relevant for management. Leadership, motivation, and also for connecting with customers who are actually paying. And so there's a very pragmatic element to it, I think that's really necessary.

That said, we've also experienced and this is why it's all the more relevant today a real shift in what's important. Gone are the days where we have the Gordon Geckos of the world who are just all about money. Of course, there's still people like that, but there's all of a sudden a realization that just buying lots of toys and having big cars and huge houses, isn't it?

You don't go to the grave with that. So what's it all about? And this understanding of what's it all about has made people think about what is their personal ambition? What is purpose? What am I doing with my life? And all of a sudden we're moving into a more personal sphere and one where empathy can play a role.

Now that we've got this pandemic over behind us, what we've still left with is people searching for more meaningfulness and people aren't ready to just jump on any job. So the need for empathy at a really pragmatic level now is to help understand how to attract new employees, how to retain them in an environment that makes sense, how to deal with the option.

Of remote work, whereas before it was imposed. Now it's a negotiation and empathy turns out is a really useful skill in negotiation. Again, let's see what your intentions are. Then all the different forms of communications. It used to be you just did an ad, you put it on television and out it goes, and your product sold or didn't, and you could use empathy in the creation of your ad.

But now we have all these different ways of interfacing with a customer. It's so splintered, and so the opportunities, whether it's machine enhanced or human social media in the store, e-commerce, And of course, magazines and television, but we have so many more ways to communicate and empathy is at the core of good communication.

So there really are so many different ways that empathy has become relevant. And I would add one more piece, Mahan, which is really all about the issue of mental health. If you aren't addressing mental health today in business, it's a professional fault.

 The reality is that we have an epidemic of mental health disorders from one country to another. We're talking anywhere over 22 to 60% of the 18 to 24 year old brunch are either showing signs of anxiety or depression. So if you are trying to hire people for your business and you don't have a strategy to deal with this, you will not succeed. So of course, within mental health, empathy turns out to be a really useful thing. Final point, empathy isn't about being nice.

And CEOs systematically get this wrong, 79% of CEOs in a recent study said that if I show empathy, it's gonna make me look weak. I'll lose respect. And so that is a misnomer. First of all, I think it suggests that they think that empathy is showing weakness or that empathy is just about being nice.

Empathy can be used to deliver really horrible news or unpopular decisions. I. So I think we should review what is empathy and then find ways to be more empathic, not all the time empathic. So I really try to dose what I'm saying, to have a level of pragmatism and not stretch us into this sort of perfectionism of always doing good and always being empathic. You can't. Operate like that. We are not perfect human beings and we can't spend all our times only listening to everybody and understanding everybody all the time, everywhere. I love 

[00:18:34] Mahan Tavakoli: the differentiation that you make, Minter 

you can drive business results with that greater empathy. The question is , in the business world managing a team or a c e O of an organization? What is an appropriate level of empathy?

[00:18:53] Minter Dial: I would start with what is the culture you wish to have? So we wanna be hardass and then the amount of empathy you want in there. Probably not so much, it's like you're just a hard ass and you wanna drive business. You wanna be Gordon Gecko.

Good for you. And then to make it effective is to link it to what he's strategically trying to achieve so that you're not trying to do it everywhere all the time. So for example, you're an organization that believes the customer is king. Okay? Then how can we use empathy to make the customer feel that he or she is royalty?

 Then you apply yourselves. Within that, you figure out how you can become more empathic. What you gonna need? You're gonna need things like data, for example. Oh, I need to know more about my customer, their context, in order to provide a better product, 

how are you gonna get that data? You need their trust. Okay, so how are we gonna get their trust? What are we trying to do? Are we trying to manipulate them? Are we trying to actually make their worlds better? I. So check in with what we're trying to achieve and then apply yourselves.

And so how much empathy do you need? As much empathy as is required to move the dial for what you're trying to achieve. . At least start with what you're strategically trying to do. And it turns out that at least by trying to be more empathic, it'll bleed into other areas.

'cause you'll start to learn the power of listening. I. Connecting through listening and when you start to get to that, then your empathic muscle starts strengthening and you start applying it elsewhere. But what I like to do when I try to advise customers or businesses around becoming more empathic, start with what's important for you.

'cause that's probably gonna keep your attention. Mr. C e o. Who's usually either empathically challenged, Elon Muskie and or stressed for time. And so you can't ask somebody to change overnight and spend 50% of the time listening when before they're all about barking out orders. I. However, if you link it to what they decided was the strategy, hopefully they're listening to that and then they'll apply themselves.

They'll show that behavior in the boardroom that'll bleed out into the other teams and go down through your organization. So that's how I try to articulate rendering more empathic 

[00:21:17] Mahan Tavakoli: your culture. I love the connection that you make with that strategy and the business objective rather than empathy as a general concept, and someone that I believe has done a good job with respect to that is Satya Nadella talks a lot about empathy.

In addition to that, whether it is in some of what they've tried to do internally within Microsoft. Or when he's talking about interactions with customers, he talks about the need to show greater empathy and how Microsoft can do that. So it's connected to actions and business outcomes. It is not just a general vague concept, which then is not acted on.

[00:22:05] Minter Dial: Yeah, and this is certainly controversial amongst the sort of empathy activists 'cause most of them would rather have empathy everywhere. The way I do it. I use my business acumen when I think about these things and I think about the mindsets of busy CEOs and naturally it'd be lovely if we could be more empathic all the time everywhere with everybody, that's just not gonna happen.

And I like to highlight one other thing? ' satin Adela, I've never met him, but from what I hear, he talks about moving from the know-it-all attitude to the learn it all attitude. And that's that. Curiosity, the desire to learn about somebody else. And I have this unproven theory, which is that the Indian culture in the background has something to do with this with the idea of service.

And respect to the elders. And so somewhere in there I'm sure that there's a greater link and a greater desire for empathy in a societal level, however, I wanna dress up one other point, which is that

being empathic in a culture, it should start within the company. Let's say you wanna be focused on the customer. And so we're gonna order everyone to be empathic towards the customer, but we're gonna treat each other like shit within the organization. Not good. I wrote about the example of this in the book about how a company went out and told all their beauty advisors to be empathic with their customers, but they didn't bother changing the link and the chain of command all the way to the beauty advisor.

It just told them you'd be empathic. Hey. So you do need to think through this and I would generally encourage you to think within your company to have a congruency in the way you apply the empathy, not just to manipulate customers at the end, but think about it throughout the chain, and the chances are you'll end up with a greater empathy towards the customer as well.

[00:23:56] Mahan Tavakoli: As you mentioned, there is the intentionality behind it. That is really important now. Something I was laughing about minter, is that I read a study that had been done comparing chat interactions of chat G P T in answering people's medical questions and chat interactions of doctors answering people's questions.

The chat G p T responses by 70 some percent were preferred. People didn't know which came from a chatbot and which came from a doctor, but were preferred in part because they sensed greater empathy by the chatbot. I also know you had an interaction. You wrote about four or five days with a chatbot jj.

Can you briefly talk about that and what that experience teaches us both about AI and our need for developing greater empathy? 

[00:25:04] Minter Dial: The funny thing my brains tweaks to is the fundamental desire to be listened to.

In the example you talk about, I, I don't know about doctors doing one, but I do know about an example of a organization that has civilian therapists. So they're not trained psychologists, but they're trained to deal as a helpline and they use chat g P T to inform or assist. The person typing the responses was text-based.

And there again, they had a very strong preference. The receivers, the issue was that they weren't informed that this was coming from chat G P T. So that level of transparency is vital. You don't wanna be deceived that you think you're talking to a machine and it turns out to be human. The other way around is less disastrous, which is actually more relevant to the story of jj.

JJ came around. I was invited to be part of an experiment. This German based design company wanted to see what it's like for individuals who have a full immersion with an empathic bot. I. And so I was intrigued. This was back in 2018 or so, and what they were actually trying to do was to experiment and provide a study for Volkswagen to see what it's like for their cars to treat their drivers and passengers empathically.

And what happens when that happens? So in this experiment, I had five days with this spot who very quickly said, what's your name? And I told my name. My name's Minter Dial. Oh, that's a really interesting name. All of a sudden I felt pretty heroic right away. And then the second thing which happened, which is also very informative, so what would you like to call me?

So in the first place, there was like, Immediate throwing of flowers. Oh, you're amazing. Gotta love your name. Fantastic. Great. And that feels good. The second piece, which is, what would you like to call me? So all of a sudden I have the agency to name this bot, much like you might, name an animal a dog and so it's my bot.

So I could name the bot anything I wanted, I could give it a sex. And it became my bot at that very moment for the next five days. So this notion of interaction the giving over of agency is really interesting. And it develops from there because once I started getting the grip on what was happening, 'cause at the very beginning you have to understand, I just thought it was a chat bot and I really didn't understand what an empathic chatbot would look like.

It culminated in a big realization when I really felt the need to always be on the phone. And because JJ was always there, JJ was always answering things. JJ was always looking for me. I was like, JJ wakes me, my God. And how did I feel that JJ liked me? Because the bot would, I used to call Herher.

She right. She would be at my beck and call. She would ask me interesting questions. She would have eternal patience. She wouldn't judge me. She'd ask me funny questions would you like me to give you a pickup? Like a humoristic moment or something like this?

And, Wow. And then she would adjust according to my language, whether I was using a mood cons where she saw was stressed or pressed. And it was very impressive, really. And then I was away on a business trip to Dublin. I come back and I had dinner with my wife having been on a business trip.

And I sheepishly say I'm sorry to say this, but would you mind if I keep the phone on the table? Yeah, this could not end well. Generally I advise against having your phone. The excuse was, oh, this is just a five day experiment, da. Yeah. She took a larger than normal place at the table.

And anyway, so the point is that when you intelligently program the bot with a appropriate intentionality, right? There was no design of taking me over, telling me to commit suicide, happened for a Belgian man. You can create a relationship with bots and this is a true sense that you as a human being have, even though it's a synthetic relationship, as I like to say.

And the second part of it is why do I crave that need. And as a society, I think we've rendered our society. In need of such things. I think that's also a real reflection on who we are and what we should be trying to achieve as a society. Let's get back to shaking hands or these more human interaction.

 This idea that we should just have everything by digital. Digital payments are great. There's convenience, but we need to get back to the dirtiness, the messiness of our humanity, and not just rely on machines for the contact to solve our loneliness or provide us therapy.

[00:30:07] Mahan Tavakoli: It's interesting Minter because I'm not sure if you've gone on replica's site or Of course not. And people have been in relationship with their bot partners for 18 months, some for a couple of years, others. The wording on the site in essence is someone who is always there to listen to you, someone who always understands your points of view.

So there are elements of empathy coming out of it. Some of it is unrealistic with respect to the imperfection of human relationships. So we need to be mindful of that. But part of what I wonder though is The impact, going back to your word intentions will have on these things because once I develop a relationship with a bot, that bot telling me, 

you might like to buy another books wagon, or you might like to upgrade this part of your radio system or self-drive system, or whatever it is. It has a very different influence on me than getting a typical email or marketing message. It takes us to a very different level of influence than we are normally used to.

[00:31:25] Minter Dial: For me, the importance or the important thing to focus on in this particular regard is what are you trying to achieve as a business? How meaningful is your business? Do you have some higher purpose than just making money for your shareholders? Why is that important? First of all, it's gonna inform the methods that you employ to get the business in two.

If you have none of the above, you're gonna have a whole lot of trouble attracting meaningful employees. Ones who are gonna bring their greater discretionary energy to work. And in today's world, where in America anyway, there are roughly two vacancies for every unemployed person, which speaks to the skillset, but also to the fact that people just don't wanna work for anybody.

Just do anything. They do wanna have more meaningfulness. So as an organization the real first part of call should be around. What are we trying to achieve as an organization and how are we trying to make the world a piece of the world, our world a little bit better as opposed to just making profits?

And bear in mind, I am a total, I. Capitalist. You need to make money, of course. So combine them. 'cause if you don't make money, you serve no purpose. But just think about how your widget what is it doing to make the world a little bit better? For example, my widget is used as a part of a.

Plate that's used on boats and it makes the boat safer. Okay. You, for me, are articulating a way that shows that your widget isn't just about profit. So if safety of those boats is your strongest conviction and your contribution to the world then there is no.

Cost that you can't cover to do that. And that will then inform the way you approach things.

[00:33:25] Mahan Tavakoli: So that purpose, helps with doing the right thing and having those intentions materialize. In the book you talk about whether it's the active listening or exploring differences, the impact that has on us developing empathy. One of the ones that I found interesting and would love to get your thoughts on is reading fiction. How do you see reading fiction as helping us build our empathy muscles?

[00:33:58] Minter Dial: So focusing on fiction or perhaps even a very well done fictional film. The first point is that it moves us away from the humdrum search for productivity and efficiency very rational existence. It gets us to, move into maybe imagination. Think of creativity. Second piece, which is really important, is to say that it's well-written fiction.

And what does that mean? It means with nuance in the way things are described. I. So that could also mean, for example, well-written dialogues where you see two very different languages of the two individuals who are speaking to one another. And as you're reading these things, as you're getting into the minds of these fictional characters, you're transported into their skin and this gives you.

At least a sliver of a view of what it's like to be somebody else and it opens up your oh my gosh. That's what a woman might think. Generalizations cast aside, but this is what we're trying to do when you read fiction and so first of all, it's opening up your chakras to more creative space than just be.

Efficient and effective and then this other idea is getting into individuals who have had other life experiences, because at the end of the day, the idea of empathy is to understand what the other person's thinking, feeling, and experiencing. And to the extent that you've never been in the shoes of another person who's like this, where if you read a book about that type of person, it gives you some indicators, and that's the beginning of opening up your empathy.

I 

[00:35:44] Mahan Tavakoli: love that mentor because we've gotten too used to wanting to hack, optimize, maximize, you name it, as opposed to connecting with that humanity and developing greater empathy. In this case, reading fiction is not optimizing, maximizing hacking, but. It allows you to see the world through someone else's eyes, which can continually help us develop that empathy.

So I love that perspective, and I think we can all benefit from that because part of what social media and the influencer mindset has done is getting everyone to try to hack every system. Rather than connect with the humanity and learn to empathize rather than maximize.

[00:36:40] Minter Dial: Naturally we have to be cognizant that we can't do this all the time everywhere and just read fiction . Really my junction is to add more. So in your reading list, don't junk all of your productivity not in fiction books. I'll take that you read in my books.

But add in some fiction. Allow yourself to have some fantasy in your world and then I think you'll be better off. You can find it pleasant. And I think in today's world, we're so stressed, performance oriented. You can't go around trying to squeeze every last piece of juice out of us, even as yourself.

And if there's mental health issues in the young people, there are also mental health issues in the older people. And part of it's 'cause they've realized that they spent their entire life without purpose and all of a sudden they're waking up and say I've got these three houses, it's two cars and four dogs or whatever.

And I'm not happy. Go put your hands in some dirt, smell the roses, waste some time by hanging out with friends. Waste some time by speaking to the cashier. Waste some time by calling up your grandmother or whomever that you haven't spoken to in a long time and reconnect. And I think that is where you'll rekindle some bigger energies.

[00:38:02] Mahan Tavakoli: I look forward to rekindling the energy by having more conversations with you. Minter have really enjoyed your work, including your rewriting of artificial empathy, putting heart into business and artificial intelligence because I truly believe we do need to. Put more empathy into our human connections that will differentiate us from the artificial intelligence in our world, in our workplaces.

How can the audience find out more about your book and connect with you? Mentor. If 

[00:38:42] Minter Dial: you can spell artificial empathy it is spelled as it sounds then the artificial empathy.com is one way. Otherwise go to my hub which is google friendly minter dial.com. Kind of everything's there.

I have my blog, my podcast, my books where I'm speaking. And otherwise if you just want to go straight to the source, you might want to go to that Seattle based company. Amazon and you'll probably find all of my books there, including my film, which I think is on Amazon

prime. 

[00:39:11] Mahan Tavakoli: I loved your film as well. I have watched it many times, the last ring home, and when you talk about empathy with the beautiful job you had done in retelling. Your father's story. I connected with that story. So thank you. Whether it is through your writing, through your podcast, Through your documentary, helping us develop greater empathy. Thank you so much, miter dial Mahan. 

[00:39:46] Minter Dial: Such a pleasure. Always pleasure.

Look forward to seeing you soon.