M.E. Thomas, the author of Confessions of a Sociopath interviews an East Asian woman in her 20's about why it may be easier to "mask" psychopathy in Asian than western cultures.
- There's no real word or sense of meaning regarding psychopath in East Asian culture.
- The social norms are all explicit and easy to follow.
- Public displays of negative emotions are frowned upon as being a burden on the rest of the community, i.e. they require the listener or observer to respond empathetically, which is considered a little rude, too individualistic, and a burden on the community.
We also talk about animal experiments, narcissistic parents, guilt vs. shame, and public shaming and community centric punishments in American law and East Asian culture.
M.E. Thomas: So I said that I was going to start with a funny story and you work in a lab with these mice, right, or rats. So my my cousin who was a doctor told me about this research because I was hungry, you know, I was like I wonder what hunger is, is hunger more like your brain knows that there's not enough blood sugar or it's not high enough or...
Victoria: That's how I experience it!
M.E. Thomas: Oh really? And I was like or, is it your stomach's full, or is it whatever, and then my cousin the doctor was like, actually they've done research on rats where they just disconnected the stomach and they kind of think that it's a little mixture of, you know, a lot of things because the rats who have their stomachs disconnected, the first day they just eat a normal amount. The second day they start eating more and the third day they just eat eat eat eat eat the whole time and I was like, oh that's really interesting and cool, and I was like, but how do they reconnect the stomachs of the rats afterwards? And she looked at me, she was like, they don't. They don't reconnect the stomachs of the rats afterwards, that's not what's happening. I think funny because like my assumption wasn't, you know, I don't know, I just thought they would probably be reconnecting the stomachs of the rats, but clearly they're not, right. It's another good example of how like science has like normalized I think animal cruelty in a way that like seems totally normal for people, like the story that I give in the book about like killing the possum. Some people like hunters and others, like people that live in the woods are like, yeah you kill animals, it's because animals can be dangerous, or you know meddlesome or whatever, so you're not absolutely killing animals, and then other people are like, that's the cruelest thing you could possibly could have done. So it's like people just have kind of different perspectives on that.
Victoria: Yeah you want to hear a cruel thing we do with that? So you know we breed rats, and then not all the offspring will have the genetics that we want to use in the study, so we'll just kill them right away.
M.E. Thomas: Well kill them in that same way that you kill them? How do you kill them again?
Victoria: Uh, carbon dioxide.
M.E. Thomas: Yeah alright, so we have tons of stuff to talk about, so let's start kind of getting talking about things. The first thing that we thought to talk about was masking sociopathy in Asia.
Victoria: Do you think there are more or there are less sociopaths or psychopaths in Asia?
M.E. Thomas: You know I would kind of think, this is just like my guess, I would guess that... Actually I don't know, maybe it is the same, because I know that they're definitely-- I hear all the time from people in Romania that are like, I don't know why Romania, where they're like hey you know, like, I think I might be psychopathic, and it's it's way higher than you would expect and so my assumption has just been, Romania and the Romanian orphanage is that we know in which they treated them kind of poorly, like maybe some stuff was going on in Romania, like during 1980s the 1990s that was causing all these people to have like disruptions and their emotional development, so I would say it's hard to say all of Asia though, because you know you have a bunch of disruptions...
Victoria: East Asia.
M.E. Thomas: Okay yeah well, I mean I think Koreans I would guess lower, Koreans and Japanese I would guess lower and Chinese I would guess a little bit higher.
Victoria: I'll get into the genetics later, but let's talk how to mask sociopaths in Asia. So I worked out a little theory that my Asian connections agree with. So I think there are three main reasons why it's harder to detect sociopaths in Asian culture, and I'm talking about East Asian from now on, so I'll delve into each reason a little bit but just as a preview, the first reason being, sociopathy is not well conceptualized in Asian culture. And then second reason being, due to the high social pressure for obedience and conformity, Asian culture have values and rules that are universal in a sense and therefore very easy to learn and manipulate.
M.E. Thomas: Hmm you know, they're interesting because Arya is Midwestern and her society actually is much more that way than mine is, even though both Americans or something, but she said something like, for instance, if you're at somebody's house eating dinner, you cannot get more food unless they have invited you. Like we'll go ahead and have seconds, you know, unless they did that then you can't do it and she's like, you violate that all the time. I'm like, because I didn't know that was a rule, like, what's the point? We just got this food takeout from Olive Garden, you know, why are we doing this? But it makes sense to me. Keep going.
Victoria: The third reason is emotional display is often seen as disgraceful in Asian culture, so the lack of it doesn't really raise a red flag.
M.E. Thomas: You know this is also interesting because-- do you ever watch Korean dramas?
Victoria: Not that much but I do know what the gist is about, why?
M.E. Thomas: I'm only on my second one, and it's just because my family has been watching it so much. It's Crash Landing Into You, that's on Netflix, and I'm interested in the North Korea angle, right, but I notice they have to put in like the love story, right, in their play times, in which she's like crying and she's like, don't look at me, you know, whatever, and rather than him being like, that's okay I can see her face all messed up from crying, he like respects it and he's like, alright I will just hug you from behind and that's considered like, you know, you could tell that that was like, wow the writers room, who when they were writing the drama was like, that's so perfect, but just little things like that where you can kind of tell like, you know, that's like even if you were like dating someone seriously or in love with someone, you might not be expressing emotion the same way.
Victoria: Yeah so going into the first reason about why it's not well conceptualized in Asia, so language-wise there's no equivalent term of 'sociopaths' and 'psychopaths' in Chinese, Japanese, Korean. In all these languages, 'sociopath' is translated into 'anti-society individual' and 'psychopath'
is translated into 'mentally ill individual'.
M.E. Thomas: Really? So no one would even think to call you a psychopath because there's not even a word for it. You know, I have a second little story about this language thing that my Vietnamese friend says, that there's not a word for blue in Vietnamese. She says that there's just green and that if I'm gonna say blue you have to say green like the ocean or green like the sky or something, and I think that's yeah that's really interesting, you could look it up. This is like kind of, people have done studies about this that like, unless you're told that the sky is blue, that you think it's clear, you don't think that it's blue, so I think language actually does make a big difference in terms of that way people conceptualize things, right.
Victoria: Yeah so like when I tried to like come out to my mother, I had to give her a long-winded description of ASPD, and then her response was oh it's like I have been calling you cold-blooded and cunning since you were little, and then she actually thinks with my intelligence, those traits make me successful. And then I myself and people around me had also attributed my differences to my intelligence and they kind of interpreted my sociopathy as leadership qualities. So when I asked them to describe me, they'll say you're westernized, outspoken, practical, rational, ambitious, which is funny because I don't think my parents are anything like that and I was not raised to be that way. So like most sociopaths in Asia simply got put in the category of "people who don't conform", unless they commit crimes.
M.E. Thomas: Interesting, so they're they're basically-- have you heard the phrase "Type A Personality"?
Victoria: Yes!
M.E. Thomas: That's basically how they think of them, they're just like this is just a Type A person, you know, they're just very on top of things, very good leader, very commanding, and that's fine I guess, in the culture, yeah not like so much of a culture clash.
Victoria: That's what my sister-in-law said when I told her, I said I discovered that I'm what you call a sociopath and she said no you're not, you're just Type A Personality.
M.E. Thomas: Huh that's interesting because it's true, I mean there was that book, Kevin Dutton 's Wisdom of Psychopaths or something, and she's like, you know, you can take this list and kind of look at it as like an ugly list, a list of ugly characteristics, or you could look at it as like a list of great characteristics, you know, just like a little bit of spin on the way that you describe things, kind of makes it, that's what's so interesting I think about the psychopath, it's like, it really is kind of on the razor's edge of seeming like this horrible thing or like this awesome great thing. I get emails from both people being like, oh you're disgusting, and also people being like, I would love to be a psychopath, is there any way I can become a psychopath?
Victoria: Sadly, no, I don't think.
M.E. Thomas: Yeah I don't think so, it's too late. I mean, like maybe through like Zen Buddhism training or something.
Victoria: I can go into the second reason. So that was the universal rule thing. So I feel that as long as you know how to justify your deviant actions to align with the society's fundamental values and moral codes, you can get away with a lot of things, especially when you also provide great utility.
M.E. Thomas: You know, this is so interesting because I feel like I already do that in my family. I feel like I'm the person in my family that like, we just went to the lake, right, with my two brothers that are not assertive at all, right, and at the lake and it's like, well where do we rent the boats? What happens here? or something. So it ended up just being me who's like doing it, and I was the one that was like, okay we have to divide up, and the boats, and like, here's this first boat, these people in this boat, these people in this boat... it was me that was doing it and everybody's like, happy, they're just like, you know, this is great, you know, that somebody's organizing this for us. So like a lot of people really do just want to be led as especially when they can see that it's something that benefits them and often something does benefit both, I would guess, the psychopath and the rest of the community, like more a community-based society, because the psychopath is part of the community, you know. I also want to go on a trip to boat on the lake, you know, so it's like well in order to make this happen, if we just have to do this then that's fine. So I can see how they actually would be like maybe less rub there too, because in an individualistic society where it seems like we're constantly being pitted against each other I think, that's what I'm really worried about the psychopaths and they're like, is it somehow an unfair competition? You know, am i competing against these like, villains, these puppet masters--
Victoria: Uninhibited monsters.
M.E. Thomas: Yes, yes, uninhibited monsters, right, and then they're like, that just doesn't seem fair, I think, but if you're being less competitive-minded, I think, that you could see that there's like a lot of advantages that, I'm just like a part in your community.
Victoria: Yeah, I have a little story of about this. So I went unpunished after committing an act that would have gotten me suspended from school when I was 14. So I came from a small town, right, and everyone went to school pretty much with the same cohort for 11 years, and I attended Chinese school where everyone has the same skin color, same hair color, same eye color, we wear school uniforms and that's how boring it is. And I was one of the smartest kids in school, I represented my district and sometimes even my state in many public speaking and academy competitions--
M.E. Thomas: Good for you!
Victoria: Yeah so I was kind of like a star, but because I was clueless when I was younger, which I assume most callous unemotional children are, I got myself a notorious reputation by the time I was 14. So what happened was I was the class monitor and I was collecting mathematics assignments from the whole class after the math class period ended, and our English teacher had already walked in and started the lesson, so I respectfully asked her permission to go to the teachers office and submit the collected assignments. She denied my request and started shouting at me, and she grabbed the whole stack of assignments, and specifically picked out mine, crumpled it into a ball and threw it in my face--
M.E. Thomas: What?
Victoria: I didn't know what was happening or why she did that, I was dumbfounded, I didn't react, I was just confused. And then halfway through the class when she didn't see it coming, my friend picked up a piece of chalk and and handed it to me and said, why don't you throw this at her, kind of like a revenge? So I did. She threw me out of the classroom and asked me to stay for detention, but I went straight home. And that very night, the deputy headmaster called my home and I was the one who picked up, so I explained to him about what happened, and then I said, she's abusing her authority, it's also disrespectful to our math teacher because she's waiting for me to bring those assignments in.
M.E. Thomas: I see, it's not about you, it's about the math teacher and the whole community of students.
Victoria: Yes, and then I said, you know, like, the whole school hated me and I wanted to gain their approval by standing up to this teacher that everyone else hated. So the deputy headmaster ended up telling me how this teacher didn't get along well with all other teachers, and he said she had all these repressed rage because she's in her forties and still unmarried.
M.E. Thomas: Wow.
Victoria: Yeah I was surprised that he said that.
M.E. Thomas: It's very... very personal, but you can tell he's like, frustrated, I mean, he's like on the other hand, you've thrown chalk at her, on the other hand, like, everybody hates her so everybody's kind of happy you did it.
Victoria: Yes, and our school used to do this weekly assembly where students and teachers would gather in the hall for public announcement and it's when they would publicly shame students who broke the school rules, but there was no mention of what I did. I was only asked to write a note to apologize.
M.E. Thomas: You know, this is really interesting that they did public shaming. And we may have to like schedule you for another thing because you keep bringing up these interesting topics. But like, I was reading about the history of American law, right, in the history of American law, it used to be much more about the public shaming and it used to be more community-oriented, like, so they would have like the stocks like where they put their their heads in, their hands, and like have to just be out in the public, you know, in the stocks, they used to do all the executions publicly, and they didn't have things like penitentiaries, you didn't go and just like rot in a prison cell for years. If you were in the jail it was kind of only temporarily until you had your punishment, you know, until we got around to getting your punishment. And the idea was being like, when when you're very community-minded,which even the United States was in the colonial period, because if you only have 300 people that live in your colony, you need every single one of them in order for the colony to survive. You need enough people for wild animals, for the weather, for the Native Americans that like, you know, understandably hostile to you because you've been stealing their lands, right, all these little things, you need people and so this idea of community is like, you know, we cannot ostracize somebody. Like, they basically thought if somebody has done something bad, that's because they are not enough community-minded, you know, we need to do better about integrating them into the community, not to ostracize them. So everything was done with this in mind which was to be, like, that the solution to crime is more community, not less. It's more interaction, not less. And if the community can see that you are being punished and you can kind of see that the community is like reacting to you still, you know, in this punishing way but still, you know, they still want you around, you know, that's better than this could be like a 10-year prison sentence. It was like really interesting that you guys have public shaming, and what do you think about public shaming?
Victoria: It doesn't work on me, I am not sure if it worked on the rest of the school. But yeah, I mean, in America you don't use public shaming to discipline students, right?
M.E. Thomas: We don't, only on Twitter, right?
Victoria: It's common in Asia, right, where I grew up, if you forgot to do your homework then you have to hold up a sign that says "I'm a lazy bug, I don't do my homework" and stand in the hallway, or you just get caned publicly, that kind of things. So we're quite used to it. I don't know? I think it worked well on other students?
M.E. Thomas: So tell me, are you aware of why it didn't work on you? Are you like, oh it's just because of this?
Victoria: I- I just don't feel shame?
M.E. Thomas: It's interesting. And do you distinguish between the words shame and guilt? Are you like, oh guilt means X, and shame mean something different, or they both mean the same in your mind?
Victoria: I think shame is more like an attack on your ego and then you feel upset by it? And guilt I've always thought that if I made the wrong move and got the result that I didn't want then I feel some sort of guilt from it?
M.E. Thomas: So shame is kind of externally imposed and guilt is like internally?
Victoria: Yeah.
M.E. Thomas: I agree with that. I would say for me, like guilt, and then you would add regret, so what you're saying is guilt I would say maybe that's just regret. You regret not doing it in a different way, a better way or whatever. Guilt would be like, oh and for some reason you think that the way that you did it was wrong in a moral sense, but that's interesting.
Victoria: Yeah I found out that people don't use the word guilt the way I do. Theirs are more focused on the means and mine is on the ends.
M.E. Thomas: Okay... yes, that's really interesting. In writing like this second book, that's like this whole chapter about like the means versus the ends. So tell me a little bit more about that.
Victoria: I wouldn't mind doing something people consider immoral to get what I want, that doesn't upset me, but if I don't get what I want, no matter why, I would get upset and I'll feel what you said, regrets, or guilt, that I wasn't smart enough or careful enough.
M.E. Thomas: Yeah that's really interesting. I don't know if you've heard like some of my other clips, but like, my theory about like psychopaths that they're basically all "ends" people, they're all focused on the ends not the means, right, so they're not focused on the process, they're focused on the outcome, but my theory kind of is, the reason why they're all like that is because they can't be process-oriented, because they don't have a strong enough sense of self to just be about the process.
Victoria: So it's like utili-rianism?
M.E. Thomas: Oh yeah, utilitarianism. Interesting. Well let's get back to your masking in Asia you said three and I think we were on the second one, which is there are very clear rules, which I have to say, I don't know if you've noticed this about Americans or probably Westerners in general, but I think especially Americans and for whatever reason especially like Midwesterners, because that's where I went to law school, is that they're super passive-aggressive, I mean--
Victoria: I live here.
M.E. Thomas: Oh yeah yeah yeah, and you can't tell what they're thinking at all!
Victoria: Yes! Everyone's trying to be politically correct that's really-- it seems hypocritical to me.
M.E. Thomas: Yes and it's super hard to understand what to do! I was just telling a friend the other day, like, I went on a full-on date with somebody in law school that I did not understand to be a date, but it was just so kind of passive, and then afterwards the person was upset. They were upset because I guess I didn't treat them, you know, like very well or something, you know, until I told them that I was already in a relationship, you know, and I was just like, this person is my friend I guess? I don't know what's going on, weird misunderstandings like that I mean that just happened more in law school than it ever did any other time in my life, because I just felt like I could not understand. Maybe if I had been raised in that community, I would have been able to, like, pick up on some of these nuances, but I was like, I just feel like I can't understand what these people are even saying! They don't say what they mean, they don't say what they think, so it was really difficult so to have really clear rules-- I mean for me-- that was like growing up Mormon. It was like Mormonism actually they had like this little pamphlet that was like, oh it's for the strength of youth pamphlet, and it had all sorts of rules in there, like about, like don't drink coffee, don't drink tea, you know, wear modest bathing suits, stuff like that, you know. It's like, I mean, the only question there is what does it mean to be modest I guess? Right, at least you know everybody's gonna judge you, you know, if you like roll up to like a church pool party you know wearing like a like a string bikini or something, so yeah its five-year when should the like reading people's nuances.
Victoria: That's kind of in my third reason where Asian people, like, see emotional display as disgraceful.
M.E. Thomas: How disgraceful is it? Is it kind of like, oh you know, like can't they control themselves? Like why is it disgraceful?
Victoria: Okay so, sharing negative news or emotions is generally discouraged in Asia, because you are creating work and burden for people on the receiving end, because they would feel obligated to give an appropriate empathetic response without crossing the line. And that's a lot of work, so by doing that you're, we call ruining the atmosphere. And the most important concept for understanding Asian culture is the Japanese term which translates to reading the air, and the Korean language has an equivalent term 눈치, the Chinese term is 察言觀色, meaning observing speech patterns and facial expressions, so that's kind of what you mean by, like, reading all these nuances. Asians prefer subtlety and they avoid showing emotional disposition towards most topics, so I feel that makes unmasking a sociopath difficult.
M.E. Thomas: Oh yeah, super difficult, and I can see why do I actually like the Asian approach here, because it kind of acknowledges something that I feel like Westerners, definitely Americans, you know, I can at least speak for them, seem to not acknowledge, which is that when you are being constantly emotional, you really are putting a burden on other people, and in fact, I like written a little bit about this and maybe talked a little bit about this, but I found that like you know the psychopaths tend to be on one extreme of empathy, you know, feel little to no empathy, at least affective empathy, and then there are other people, and it makes sense, it's a spectrum or whatever, there are other people that are on kind of the opposite extreme, I sometimes call them like uber empaths, like, you know, super empaths, like, they're like extremely empathetic and I actually find that I can be friends with those people very easily. In fact much easier than the people that are kind of in the middle and the reason being is that they empathize with even me, like, oh what would that feel like to be you, you know, I definitely can understand it, I see why you live the way that you do, and they like being friends with me because I'm just so emotionally silent all the time.
Victoria: Balance them out.
M.E. Thomas: Yes, because it's like, if you're just living in a world in which people are constantly emoting all the time and you're like that, you're very sensitive to emotions, it would be exhausting, right, they got exhausted. And then to hang out with me is just like vacation. I think that's super interesting that there's that concept, you know, I wish Westerners were like a little bit more aware because there's constantly this idea that it's like you can share your emotions whenever you want and people are like, well I'll share my emotions, but they're also critical about you and it's like, well I mean, NO, you can't just be critical about me, you know, like there's a lot of sloppiness emotional sloppiness going on, I think, in Western societies. And it's like, it really is an imposition but people think totally it's like there's a sense of entitlement, I am allowed to just say whatever I think whenever I think and it's like, well okay, but then it kind of creates problems or issues for other people, it does you know, that's just like the facts of it.
Victoria: Yeah I think people in Asia are expected to think collectively, and to understand situations without the need for explanation. People are expected to behave based on their assigned roles in the community. So like the structure of boundaries is very universal and clear-cut throughout probably the whole East Asia.
M.E. Thomas: Which is awesome!
Victoria: Yeah, it's very helpful in managing sociopaths.
M.E. Thomas: Yes, I think so too, because this is what I think we mentioned this our first call too, when there are very clear boundaries, psychopathic relationships flourish. Like I think psychopaths in a relationship need those firm boundaries, otherwise you know they're gonna accidentally kind of like, you know, do things that are hurtful, harmful to their partner. I believe so. If you already have like these very explicit boundaries, you know, it's kind of like my friend who got married, she finally told her husband, like, look, I don't want you to brush your teeth in front of me, you know, you can just go in the bathroom and shut the door, you know, she just didn't want to see him brushing his teeth and I think it's like, that seems to me to be more like the Asian approach, which is like, I don't need to see you on the toilet, you know, I don't need to see you brushing your teeth, you know. It's fine that you do these things, and it's fine that you have these emotions, but you don't need to be like, you don't have to constantly be exposing people to it, you know, and we have like that concept in like Western thought, except we don't really think of it in terms of emotional things. Like, I think Midwesterners are more like that, maybe that's why they are the way they are, and because we're so worried in Western land of being, like, repressed, you're repressing your emotions unless you tell people all the time what you're feeling, then you're somehow repressing your emotions. But, you know, I think the answer is much more nuanced than either, like, never show your emotions and always show your emotions, but it's interesting that there is a distinction. That's very interesting.
Victoria: Yeah, and Asians are also conditioned to maintain a facade of tolerance and inclusivity, so even if they sense a disconnect, they usually would not confront you, and most of the time they'll even protect this from public knowledge to uphold the community's reputation.
M.E. Thomas: Interesting.
Victoria: Yeah, especially within the family. The perfect example is my parents, so my father is an abusive alcoholic, narcissist, right, and he has moved out five years ago, but no one among our relatives, no one in our neighborhood, no one from church, know any of it. So, it's easy to mask assholes I guess?
M.E. Thomas: Yes, so you're protecting him, and you're protecting you, and you're protecting the community from like this kind of unpleasant thing that nobody really wants to address anyway, and like, is he gonna change? He's not gonna change, so like, why not just sweep it under the rug? I get it. I can see it. That's interesting man. Do you think that, you have mentioned this, it's not on our list of things to talk about, but do you think there's a connection between narcissistic parents, like having at least one parent who is a little bit narcissistic, and having a sociopathic child?
Victoria: I don't have enough sample size to say that, but in my case, it is.
M.E. Thomas: In my case it also is. I think there's something to it, doesn't have to be narcissistic parent, it just has to be a parent that is like willing to do this, and they do it on the regular but violate the personal boundaries of the child, you know, to see the child as an extension of themselves, that's enough. I think because if they do that, then the child gets such an injury, you know, like the self doesn't develop naturally, it doesn't develop like it normally would, and then you end up at least with the personality disorder, and then if you have a genetic predisposition, you end up, I think, as a psychopath, that's like the particular personality disorder you develop, that's kind of like my basic, based on who I met, I don't know if I have met a single-- there's some psychopaths I've met, where it's like, their parent isn't exactly like that, and you wonder, was there some other things? So sometimes people have said to me before, like, oh it was my schooling that did that, you know, my parents were pretty okay, but my school was so strict, you know, my school like stifled myself, or perhaps the culture, or perhaps the extended family, but I do think that if you have a narcissistic parent that, I'm like, my little sample size, it's not huge, it's like, you know, dozens, that's like probably at least 50% that's their situation is they have a narcissistic parent.
Victoria: Yeah and also when they are narcissists, people outside the family can't see them as what they truly are, so they would think that your parents are perfect, why do you turn out to be this way?
M.E. Thomas: Yes, and so you kind of like also, yet you're right, it's kind of like this double whammy of where you don't trust anything, then you're like, you know, like these people's morality, their sense of community, all of it is just a farce, you know, it's all just "think", because look, nothing's happening, you know, like nobody sees things as they really are, whatever, and so like truth, I think, truth seems to be much more relative to you. You're like, well, truth is kind of in the eye of the beholder then I guess, truth is like whatever I say it is, in this situation I'm gonna say it's X, the next situation I'm gonna say it's Y. Why? Because I just want a particular outcome, you know, I'm willing to do that. So it's interesting, I even say to my siblings, because some of my nieces and nephews are a little bit more on the spectrum than others, right, and one of them in particular is like a little bit more extreme, and I always have to say, you know, like we have to be very careful with her, because we need to help her understand that truth is a good thing, you know, to value these things to, like, being very respectful to her so she learns to value respect, to be very truthful to her so she learns to value truth, and to be very loving to her so she learns to value love, because then you don't learn to value those things, like, even if you're a psychopath, and you value those things, you'll have a much different life than if you don't value those things, right.
Victoria: Yes. I think you mentioned your book that you're interested to see if identical twins who have sociopathic traits or genes grow up in different family backgrounds and environments, and how they would turn out, right. So two years ago there's a documentary called Three Identical Strangers...
M.E. Thomas: We're running out of time though, but do you want to start with this, and let's schedule something in a couple weeks, start with this story?
Victoria: Okay, sounds good.
M.E. Thomas: Sorry everybody, and I also didn't get to the last question in the chat, but I will see you guys all next week for Arya and one of her friends, and we'll see Victoria again soon. Okay thanks everybody.