Shannon Watts, FIRED UP: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, thanks for listening and watching another episode of Totally Booked
[0:08]with Zibi.
[0:09]A daily podcast and live show where I talk to authors all the time about their fabulous
[0:15]books and where you get to meet authors who may be your favorites and are as yet undiscovered.
[0:21]Today, we are so excited to welcome Shannon Watts, whose book fired up had a turn
[0:28]at your spark into a flame and come alive at any age.
[0:32]What we're talking about today, here's a little bit about Shannon.
[0:37]Shannon Watts is the founder of Mom's Demand Action, the largest grassroots group fighting
[0:43]gun violence in the US.
[0:45]Known as the summoner of a women's audacity, she has been named one of times 100 most
[0:52]influential people of Forbes 50 over 50 change maker and a glamour woman of the year.
[0:59]I always feel like so insecure reading all these bios and like, what am I doing?
[1:03]I'm like 49 under anybody else.
[1:06]She recently organized the largest Zoom gathering in history, mobilizing more than 200,000
[1:11]voters, and raising over $11 million in support of Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential
[1:17]campaign.
[1:18]Watts is an active board member of Emerge America, one of the nation's leading organizations
[1:24]for recruiting and training women to run for office.
[1:28]So today, we're talking about fired up.
[1:31]Welcome, Shannon.
[1:32]Thank you so much.
[1:34]Thank you.
[1:34]I am so thrilled to be here.
[1:36]Fabulous.
[1:37]OK, fired up.
[1:39]Tell us about your book.
[1:41]So I, as you said, led Mom's Demand Action for 11 years.
[1:45]I was a full-time volunteer.
[1:47]Before that, I had a career in corporate communications.
[1:50]And at the end of my tenure at Mom's Demand Action, I decided to step back after we managed
[1:55]to pass the first federal gun safety legislation and generation.
[1:59]I knew that my tenure would be finite.
[2:03]I didn't want to do it forever.
[2:04]I wanted to hand over the baton to someone with new energy and new ideas.
[2:09]And I thought I'd take a year long break.
[2:11]And I was running on a treadmill one night when I got a call from Maria Shriver.
[2:16]As we do.
[2:17]As one does, I did not know Maria.
[2:19]And she said to me, look, I have a book imprint.
[2:21]I want you to write a book.
[2:23]And I said, OK, about what?
[2:24]And she said, whatever you've learned about women, which is a lot.
[2:29]And I thought, when will I have this opportunity again?
[2:32]And so I spent the next year writing this book on my own and interviewing over 70 women
[2:39]from all walks of life about their experiences in their life, how they've learned to
[2:44]come alive.
[2:45]And the reason this was important to me was because I didn't really figure out what fired
[2:51]me up until I was 41 years old when I started Mom's Demand Action after a failed marriage
[2:56]and a failed career and a failure at a dozen small things that I just kept trying over
[3:04]and over again and finally figured out what the formula was.
[3:08]And it was marrying my abilities, my values, and my desires.
[3:13]And so I talked to these other women about how they did the same thing.
[3:16]And the result is fired up.
[3:18]And I'm so excited to see women in the audience here today who have followed that same
[3:23]formula and tried all kinds of things in their lives and to kind of come together and community
[3:28]right now with other women and realize that we deserve to burn all the way to the end
[3:33]of our lives.
[3:34]Amazing.
[3:35]So let's back up for a minute.
[3:37]Getting Mom's Demand Action.
[3:40]Take us back to that moment and how that started as a tiny little Facebook group in your
[3:44]upset one day and went into yoga or Pilates class and you were like, is everybody not
[3:49]just as upset as me about Parkland?
[3:52]Right?
[3:53]Was it Parkland?
[3:54]Stony Hook.
[3:55]I'm so sorry.
[3:56]About Stony Hook and Sandy Hook.
[3:57]Oh my gosh.
[3:58]Okay.
[3:59]Sandy Hook.
[4:00]Yeah.
[4:01]I actually am part of like Sandy Hook Promise and I'm very, anyway.
[4:06]It made you want to start this.
[4:07]Talk about that.
[4:09]So I had taken a five year break from my career in corporate communications.
[4:12]I was blending my new family, five kids and it was a really cool day in December.
[4:17]I was living in suburban Indianapolis and I saw on the television set that there was breaking
[4:23]news that there was a mass shooter inside an elementary school.
[4:27]And like many of you, you know, I sort of sat down, stopped when I was doing and just
[4:31]watched this horrific tragedy unfold.
[4:35]It's unfathomable even today, you know, so many years later that 20 children and six educators
[4:40]were slaughtered in the sanctity of an American elementary school.
[4:43]I went to bed, in tears, devastated.
[4:46]I woke up some time during the night that had turned into abject rage.
[4:51]And I didn't know what to do with it.
[4:52]As you said, I was in yoga teacher training, which if any of you know me, that's hilarious.
[4:56]I would be a horrible yoga teacher.
[4:58]But I got there and I couldn't believe we were acting like, you know, nothing had happened.
[5:03]And I rolled up my yoga mat and I got my car and I went home and I opened my laptop
[5:07]in the kitchen counter and started a Facebook page, which was, Facebook was a very big deal
[5:12]with middle age women in 2012.
[5:15]And it was a clarion called to action, which was when will women and mothers rise up
[5:19]against the most powerful, wealthy, special interests that's ever existed, one that is killing
[5:23]our children.
[5:25]And obviously that resonated with women all across the country and they began emailing.
[5:28]I mean, if you know anything about type A women, right, like they were emailing and calling
[5:32]me and DMing me and asking, how do I do this where I live?
[5:36]And that was the genesis of becoming an organizer, even though I knew little to nothing about
[5:42]gun violence, the legislative process or organizing.
[5:45]And interestingly, it was Cheryl Sandberg who convinced you to keep going.
[5:49]This one phone call, it was hanging in the balance and she called and it set your path
[5:53]forward.
[5:54]Yeah, you know, I had calls from people like Cheryl and others who said to me, you don't
[6:00]have to do this, but we need someone to do this.
[6:05]And it kind of took the pressure off me because I went from being able to do what I wanted
[6:09]in my life, driving my kids to soccer practice, making dinner, to being busier than I had
[6:15]ever been in my professional career.
[6:16]I would wake up in the morning and go to bed at night with nothing else but working
[6:21]on this.
[6:22]It was like a startup.
[6:23]And it was that pace really for 11 years.
[6:27]But the fact that I was given the option to do it, instead of sort of feeling like I was
[6:31]forced to do it, really helped put that in perspective for me.
[6:35]And it came with some risks.
[6:37]You talk in the book about the deluge of threats and stalker and the crazy ban outside
[6:44]your house and having to go to the police and really having to say to yourself, is this
[6:49]worth the risk and what can I do about this?
[6:52]And then even after you reported some of these things, the police and even people you
[6:58]know were like, well, that's what you get for standing up against this gun makers in
[7:02]a big industry.
[7:03]Yes, you know, they say there's a fine line between naivety and stupidity.
[7:07]I was definitely straddling that line because I had no idea there would be this backlash.
[7:11]I really didn't know that there was sort of this very vocal minority of gun extremists
[7:16]who would be so outraged that I was trying to restore the responsibilities that should
[7:21]go along with gun rights.
[7:22]But eradicate the Second Amendment or ban guns, but simply restore those responsibilities,
[7:28]you know, threats of death, sexual violence to me, to my children.
[7:32]And as you said, I called the local police because there was someone driving by my home
[7:36]and putting things in my mailbox in that officer said, well, man, that's what you get
[7:39]when you mess with the Second Amendment.
[7:42]And so I had to make a decision in that moment as many of our volunteers have along
[7:45]the way, which is to say, okay, am I going to back down or am I going to double down?
[7:49]And I think that's a metaphor for the book, too, right, that so many times in our life
[7:54]all throughout our life, we're going to be given that choice to back down or to double
[7:57]down.
[7:58]And as women, that blowback is fierce and we are expected to back down.
[8:04]And I double down and I think that it is an important safety valve for women to take
[8:12]and to see that they can get through the messy middle and come out the other side.
[8:16]But what did you do in that moment to make yourself feel safe enough to keep going?
[8:22]Well, I happen to be very pugnacious and my husband says I'm like a gremlin and if you feed
[8:27]me after midnight, you know, like the anger comes out, I did not want to be silenced
[8:32]or intimidated, right?
[8:33]I realized that if I lose my children, I have nothing left to lose.
[8:37]So only bad things could happen if I refuse to move forward, not just to me, but to
[8:42]people all over the country.
[8:44]And that was the right choice.
[8:47]And it's not always easy.
[8:48]I'm not trying to be flippant, you know, there have been plenty of times when I was scared
[8:51]or when I was overwhelmed.
[8:54]But thanks to this community and I talk about this in the book, too, you know, I call it
[8:58]a bonfire.
[8:59]All of these other women who supported me and gave me comfort and security and told me
[9:04]I could do this.
[9:06]And did that to one another as well.
[9:07]I mean, that's sort of the key of practicing this way of life, right, to have this community
[9:11]of supportive women that you can rely on.
[9:14]Well, thank you from everyone in the world.
[9:16]And as a mother of four, particularly, thank you for using your whole platform, your whole
[9:23]heart, all of your time to stand up for what should be something that we take for granted
[9:27]safety when you go to school.
[9:29]So thank you for that for all those years of service.
[9:31]That's like...
[9:32]That's amazing.
[9:33]Now let's talk about your personal life, which I'm very excited about.
[9:40]You open the book in a doctor's waiting office where you're having a terrible exit
[9:45]on my outbreak and you realize, the doctor says, do you have any stress in your life
[9:50]and you're like, how much time do you have and you weren't kidding at all and you had
[9:54]a face-off and all that.
[9:56]But you realized shortly thereafter that your body was really...
[10:00]responding to the fact that you just like,
[10:02]didn't love your life, you weren't happy.
[10:04]And then you got to the point where you're like,
[10:06]I might not love my husband.
[10:09]Tell me about that moment.
[10:11]So I married right out of college.
[10:13]My parents had a horrible divorce.
[10:15]I was an only child.
[10:16]And I think I was looking to create another family.
[10:19]And I had three children by the time I was 30.
[10:22]I just sort of was on autopilot.
[10:24]I had hoped to be an investigative journalist,
[10:26]but to pay the bills.
[10:27]I went into public relations.
[10:29]And I had married a person that I wouldn't have married
[10:31]if I had waited until I was 30 years old.
[10:33]And my brain was fully developed.
[10:34]And I started journaling after the doctor's appointment
[10:38]you mentioned, where I had sort of a many nervous breakdown
[10:41]in his office.
[10:42]And realized I was at a crossroads
[10:44]that I had made some bad choices.
[10:46]And I either was going to keep living the way I was,
[10:48]where I was going to undo those things,
[10:50]even if it came a great suffering to me.
[10:53]And I did eventually follow my journal's advice,
[10:57]which sort of put a road map forward for what I should do.
[11:00]I ended my marriage.
[11:01]We ended up being good friends and co-parents.
[11:04]I left my career.
[11:06]And all of that was setting the stage
[11:09]for being able to start mom's to min action, right?
[11:12]I had the time and space to start asking myself,
[11:15]what do I want?
[11:17]And imagine if women lived that way.
[11:19]If we asked ourselves what we wanted,
[11:22]so often women are taught to fulfill their obligations
[11:26]and men are encouraged to follow their desires.
[11:29]What would happen if women asked what they wanted,
[11:32]the society, the system is set up to prevent us from doing that
[11:35]because systems would fail,
[11:36]governments would topple, family systems would fall apart.
[11:40]But it's why also the most common deathbed regret
[11:43]is that I didn't live a life that was authentic to me.
[11:45]And I began to create this formula
[11:49]and to put it into motion and to be able to start mom's
[11:52]to min action and to marry the love of my life.
[11:55]And I think it's really important to remember also
[11:59]that every fire we started doesn't have to be as big
[12:01]as starting mom's to min action.
[12:03]It might be having a tough conversation.
[12:05]It might be going to therapy.
[12:07]It might be personal or professional or political.
[12:10]But whatever it is, I really want this book
[12:13]to encourage women to constantly be asking themselves,
[12:15]what is my unique formula for living on fire, right?
[12:18]Figuring out what is holding you back and what is calling you.
[12:22]But also, how do I get to the end of my life
[12:24]and make sure that I burned?
[12:26]So I actually had something similar
[12:29]where I got divorced at 40.
[12:30]I started this.
[12:31]I'm not married to the love of my life.
[12:33]I feel like there might be something with this custody
[12:37]schedule.
[12:38]I feel like if you want new women business leaders,
[12:42]like just like maybe partner with a divorce lawyer or something
[12:47]because the people who are going to have the time and energy,
[12:50]not to joke too much, but it is really hard when you're
[12:54]in the stick of it and at home with kids
[12:56]or working and balancing kids in life
[12:58]to then be creative and form things.
[13:01]And so hats off to everyone who does that
[13:03]and has kids full time and all of that.
[13:06]What do you think it is about your break
[13:09]or your having time or just the mental space
[13:12]to be able to be yourself again?
[13:14]And also, why did you have the courage or the conviction
[13:19]or whatever to actually decide, OK, I'm switching my life?
[13:23]I'm turning a different corner.
[13:25]And I know you write all about this in the book.
[13:28]Yeah, and I don't know that it's courage as much as it is
[13:32]just that I had reached the point where this wasn't the way
[13:36]I wanted to live for the rest of my life.
[13:37]And I think we can all identify what
[13:39]there's something in our life that isn't quite right
[13:41]or there are things that we want to do
[13:42]but we're scared to do them.
[13:44]And I am very lucky.
[13:46]I always think you're talking about your joking about divorce,
[13:48]but if you have three parents, that is ideal.
[13:52]Whether your divorce or not, it really
[13:56]did force both my ex-husband and my husband to step up
[13:59]and to go to the soccer games and to do the driving
[14:02]and to make the dinners.
[14:04]I haven't cooked a dinner since mom's
[14:05]to be an action started.
[14:07]And to kind of do their part, one of my very favorite
[14:10]photographs is one of my kids getting an award, a soccer
[14:14]award, their junior year of high school.
[14:16]And my ex-husband is on one arm and my husband's
[14:18]on the other.
[14:19]That never would have happened had I
[14:21]continued to be the helicopter parent
[14:22]that I was before mom's to be an action.
[14:25]What's really interesting is that I interviewed,
[14:28]as I said, 70 women for this book.
[14:30]And I asked every one of them, what are you
[14:33]worried your deathbed regret will be?
[14:35]I'm obsessed with this idea of continuing
[14:37]to do things till the end of our life.
[14:39]And these women, almost all of them
[14:42]said the same thing, which is I am worried
[14:44]that I am sacrificing the quality of being a mother,
[14:48]like my ability to mother for pursuing what I want.
[14:52]Have you ever heard a man say that?
[14:53]No, because we are trained to fulfill our obligations
[14:56]before we follow our desires.
[14:58]I'm on the other side of that chasm now.
[15:00]My youngest is 24.
[15:02]And I can promise you, none of them say,
[15:04]when we look back, oh, I can't believe
[15:06]you didn't make that soccer game in 2006.
[15:08]Or I can't believe you didn't go to the fifth showing
[15:10]of my Peter Pan play.
[15:13]What they all say is, I'm so proud of you.
[15:16]I'm so grateful that you did something
[15:19]that lit you up besides just being a mom or just being
[15:22]our mom.
[15:24]And you said an example for me to be able to do the same thing.
[15:27]So I don't want that to hold women back.
[15:29]This fear of I can't do both because you can't.
[15:33]So how do women who are thinking or they just
[15:37]know something might be off?
[15:39]They don't know the next step to take.
[15:40]How can they leverage the formula that you
[15:42]outline in the book to take action in their own lives?
[15:46]The book is really a roadmap, one that I followed,
[15:49]one that so many women have followed.
[15:51]And it breaks down all of the steps.
[15:54]But also it has really helpful exercises.
[15:56]The first thing I suggest readers do
[15:58]is to get a journal like I did.
[16:00]And to begin journaling, there is scientific data
[16:02]that shows journaling is incredibly helpful.
[16:05]I couldn't afford a therapist.
[16:06]I couldn't provide in my husband.
[16:07]And so I went to journaling.
[16:09]And I have never stopped since that.
[16:11]And I think it's an incredibly useful tool.
[16:13]But also, because I think community
[16:16]is so important to figuring out who we are and what we want,
[16:20]I'm starting Firestarter University.
[16:22]So for those people who pre-ordered the book,
[16:24]they get enrolled in a year-long program
[16:26]that will start in September with guest speakers from the book
[16:29]and really walking through all the components
[16:31]and all the exercises together.
[16:33]Yes, look for that on Instagram.
[16:34]There's a whole little write-up.
[16:36]It looks amazing.
[16:37]I'm like, I'm signing out for a Firestarter University.
[16:42]So how do you, though, go through the things
[16:45]that hold people back?
[16:47]There's fear.
[16:47]There's lack of resources.
[16:49]There's like, there could be a million reasons.
[16:53]And yet, they want to follow their hearts.
[16:56]I feel like we all know deep down what
[16:59]isn't working in our lives.
[17:01]But yet, it's not always so easy to just say, yes,
[17:05]I want to follow my desire.
[17:06]How can you get past the hurdles?
[17:08]There's so much conversation, and I'm so glad about that.
[17:11]But there's a lot of conversation right now
[17:13]and as I guys about what women are doing, right?
[17:17]All different kinds of podcasts, Julie and Louis Dripas,
[17:19]they're amazing what women can accomplish,
[17:21]especially now in midlife and beyond.
[17:24]What I wanted to get to was the how, not just the what.
[17:27]How do you get there?
[17:28]And one woman said to me, I wish there was a manual,
[17:33]a handbook for how do you navigate the blowback
[17:35]that you're going to get as a woman any time
[17:37]you enter the arena.
[17:38]Anytime you do something that people don't like,
[17:40]that can be getting a divorce, that
[17:42]can be starting an organization, that
[17:44]can be asking for promotion.
[17:46]And so this includes, this book includes all
[17:49]of the potential I call them extinguishers,
[17:51]sticking with the fire metaphor, whether it's perfectionism
[17:55]or fear of failure or self-sabotage.
[17:58]There's a list in there of an examples of women
[18:01]who have experienced these extinguishers.
[18:04]And it's also the messy middle, because when you take
[18:06]on a new challenge, it's not going
[18:08]to be smooth sailing the whole way through.
[18:10]I mean, there was so much messy middle and mom's
[18:12]human action in writing this book.
[18:15]And so really understanding how women navigated that
[18:19]and understanding that happens to all of us,
[18:21]I think is helpful.
[18:22]And the exercises that people can do in the book help
[18:27]you think through, OK, what can I expect as an extinguisher
[18:30]when I pursue this thing I want?
[18:32]And what are my plans for navigating it?
[18:34]And did you have any of those extinguishers
[18:36]or any fears when it came to even writing fired up?
[18:39]Oh, I mean, so many.
[18:41]What would people think?
[18:42]What have it failed?
[18:43]All the things I list in my book, a fear of perfectionism,
[18:46]self-sabotage, everything.
[18:47]Am I good enough?
[18:48]I think that's a question women ask themselves a lot.
[18:50]I meet so many women who have brilliant ideas
[18:54]or they have incredible desires and wants.
[18:56]And they sort of put them on the back burner,
[18:58]because I think we're taught that a woman who fails
[19:02]has to disappear, has to go away.
[19:04]But if the worst thing that fails that happens
[19:07]is that you fail, you've simply learned more
[19:09]to win the next time.
[19:10]That's actually our motto at Monster Man Action.
[19:12]We call it losing forward.
[19:14]And so I had to kind of journal through that
[19:19]and to think about what was really holding me back.
[19:23]Was it something society put in place?
[19:26]Was it something I set up?
[19:27]And I refer to this as a women's author writes in the book.
[19:32]It's called C-I-Y-O-O, complicit in your own oppression.
[19:36]How are we complicit in buying into what society tells us?
[19:40]It's holding us back.
[19:42]And I think examining those things is really free.
[19:45]So aside from launching the back and fire starter
[19:48]university and all of that, what else are you fired up about?
[19:52]Oh, so much.
[19:54]I think there is a moral imperative in this country
[19:56]for women to run for office.
[19:58]And women only hold.
[20:00]Hold about 25% of the 500,000 elected
[20:03]positions in this country.
[20:04]We're only about 5% of Fortune 1000 CEOs.
[20:08]We don't have access to the levers of power
[20:11]that protect us, protect our families, our communities.
[20:15]And so I don't care if it's County Coroner or Sheriff
[20:19]or School Board or City Council.
[20:21]I think we should all be thinking
[20:23]about how we can serve our communities
[20:25]by running for office.
[20:26]So interesting.
[20:28]You also put something in the book
[20:29]about Founder's Complex.
[20:31]Founder's Syndrome.
[20:32]Founder's Syndrome.
[20:33]Yes.
[20:33]Talk a little bit about that.
[20:34]Yes.
[20:35]So when I started a Monster Man action,
[20:37]I got a call from a volunteer who was sort of my right-hand
[20:41]woman for many years.
[20:42]I didn't know her.
[20:43]And she had worked in Silicon Valley.
[20:47]And we were getting up on a call one day.
[20:50]And she just said to me, whatever you do,
[20:51]don't get Founder's Syndrome.
[20:52]And I said, of course not.
[20:53]And I had no idea what shit that was.
[20:55]So I had to Google it.
[20:56]And turns out what it means is that when people
[21:00]found organizations, their identity
[21:02]can become so enmeshed in what the organization is,
[21:06]that when they eventually leave,
[21:08]and that should be your goal, is to always leave at some point,
[21:11]that either the organization fails
[21:14]because they're not there or they burn it all down,
[21:16]because they can't stand to have it live without them.
[21:19]And I wanted to make sure that I was practicing managing
[21:24]my ego and the finiteness of this role from year one.
[21:29]So every year I would ask myself, is this the year I leave?
[21:33]And it would always be no, there's legislation that
[21:35]has to pass, or this horrible shooting
[21:37]tragedies happened, or I'm really
[21:40]needed on something else.
[21:42]And it was finally in 2022 when I was standing in the Rose
[21:46]Garden as President Biden signed the Bipartisan
[21:49]Labor Communities Act, the first federal legislation
[21:51]in generation to pass, that I just heard this voice say to me,
[21:56]this is the book end to your work as the mom's
[21:59]to be an action leader.
[22:01]And I did, I handed over the baton
[22:03]to a woman with a much different background
[22:05]and experience than I have, a black woman
[22:07]with four children who lives in Washington, DC,
[22:10]and has experienced gun violence differently than I have.
[22:12]And I think that's what will help the organization
[22:14]live into perpetuity, the new energy and ideas.
[22:17]And now I have all that experience and all those skills
[22:21]and all those interests that I can now move on
[22:23]and take into other fires that I'm going to start in my life.
[22:27]So you've spoken to so many women, do you feel hopeful?
[22:31]Do you feel there's hope that things will change,
[22:34]that gun violence will add that just in general,
[22:38]are you feeling hope or are you feeling tired?
[22:41]I think you can feel both.
[22:42]But I will tell you that I really believe
[22:45]and an activist said this,
[22:47]Miriam Campbell said hope is a discipline.
[22:51]I do believe it is a practice that you wake up every day
[22:53]and you decide I'm going to be cynical
[22:54]or I'm going to be hopeful.
[22:56]It is very easy when you're taking on the gun lobby
[22:58]to be cynical.
[22:59]But I think that can be an excuse for an action.
[23:02]You know, this idea that I'm going to sit on the sidelines
[23:04]because nothing gets better and nothing ever does.
[23:06]And I find that people who think the gun safety
[23:10]activism hasn't changed to be someone who is not involved in it.
[23:13]So we passed over 500 good gun laws.
[23:16]We changed the culture.
[23:18]We helped elect hundreds and hundreds of women to office
[23:22]and survivors, you know, because we had this great community.
[23:27]And so I just, I think there's so much to be hopeful
[23:30]about politics is cyclical.
[23:32]Everything always changes.
[23:34]But if you give up, you can't win.
[23:37]And so I think to stay hopeful,
[23:39]to find a piece of the work you're passionate about,
[23:41]to commit to doing it and to understanding
[23:44]that that's just part of living in a democracy.
[23:46]Alice Walker said activism is the rent I paid
[23:48]to live on the planet.
[23:49]And I believe that's true.
[23:50]Amazing.
[23:51]Shannon, thank you so much for coming on totally but thank you.
[23:53]Thank you.
[23:54]Thank you.
[23:55]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[23:58]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[24:01]If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[24:03]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[24:07]and spread the word.
[24:08]Thanks so much.
[24:09]Go and buy the books.