Exploring BEAD Blueprints and Tribal Broadband Initiatives - Episode 617 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:07):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I am here with two of my colleagues, one of whom is a fellow Minnesotan, and one is a future Iowan. So we've got Ry Marcattilio. [00:00:30] Welcome.

Ry Marcattilio (00:30):
Thank you, Chris. It's terrible to be here. It's 9:00 AM We're recording a podcast, which either bodes very well for the rest of the day or very

Christopher Mitchell (00:38):
Terribly. Okay, well now people who are listening to this will know that it was prerecorded. It's not coming live to them special and they're just going to turn it off. So you've broke the fourth wall in podcasting and maybe it's the second wall. I don't know which wall it is in podcasting, but it's broken now.

Ry Marcattilio (00:51):
I'm sorry everyone.

Christopher Mitchell (00:52):
We also have Jess our who is apparently making a podcast debut, which is ridiculous for all the great work you've done. Jess, where [00:01:00] are you right now?

Jessica Auer (01:01):
I live in Asheville, North Carolina.

Christopher Mitchell (01:03):
And you are going to be moving to Iowa at some point, which is so exciting for me because Iowa's Okay.

Jessica Auer (01:11):
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (01:12):
Minnesota. So Minnesotans make fun of everyone around us, of course. But Iowa is reserved for particular scorn, so we're looking forward to once you're there to teasing you.

Jessica Auer (01:22):
Well, I'll also be in central time, so I won't be scheduling podcasts at 9:00 AM anymore.

Ry Marcattilio (01:28):
Right. I'm impressed, Chris, [00:01:30] that you knew Iowan or maybe I'm not impressed. That's the kind of thing that you would know.

Christopher Mitchell (01:33):
There's so many things to say about Iowa, but we'll save them for when Jess is down there. Jess, what do you do for us on a regular basis and well, you don't have time for all of it, so just hit the highlights.

Jessica Auer (01:42):
So I'm a Tribal Broadband Policy Analyst and a CLS Leading Edge fellow, and I do research and writing around tribal broadband projects and also broadband policy more broadly.

Christopher Mitchell (01:55):
So prior to that though, you've studied history deeply in labor history [00:02:00] and my assumption is that you fell in love with the hardest, most miserable jobs throughout history and decided to try and do one working for me and that's how you ended up here.

Jessica Auer (02:09):
Yeah, let's go with that.

Christopher Mitchell (02:11):
But anyway, Jess is someone who has been a wonderful addition to the team for the past year and has really made the Tribal Broadband Bootcamps something special, done a lot of work both during the events and leading up to the events to make sure that they are wonderful and enriching activities. So Jess, it has been [00:02:30] wonderful working with you. I'm excited that we can talk today about two projects that you've been working on and are sort of finished To the extent that anything we do is finished, a lot of this stuff is ongoing. We're going to talk about BEAD blueprints, which is a series that I don't know, someone masterminded who wasn't me, I would've called it Snapshots and what those are. And then one that you've just completed, which is focused on a requirement for BEAD awards that they have a low income plan. And then we're going to talk about a amazing [00:03:00] new map that you've developed. You have updated some work, a database that was created by H tro one of our wonderful alums and was in need of updates and so many tribes have moved on to build networks since then or to be moving in that direction. So we'll talk briefly about that as well and where that's going next. So I was going to start by asking Ry, what are the BEAD blueprints?

Ry Marcattilio (03:29):
So Blueprints [00:03:30] for BEAD is just a short series that we started about, I don't know, maybe six months ago or so as we're all kind of wading through what BEAD means today and what it's going to mean in the future. It occurred to us that there are going to be times when we run into issues or problems or opportunities that we want to document or look at a little further. They are a little more in depth when it comes to this particular federal grant program than something that we might [00:04:00] typically do on community nets.org, and we wanted a convenient way to bring them all together and tag them so that today and down the road folks can return to them and see what's going on.

Christopher Mitchell (04:12):
Yeah, I like to think of 'em as just a reminder of what's really happening out there and then also a little time capsule for the future. Jess, how do you think of them?

Jessica Auer (04:19):
Well, I'll say that I joked with Ry when we were sort of thinking about this that we should title it and another thing because it's just these sort of smaller, more nuanced [00:04:30] points we want to make that don't necessarily need to have a huge splash but are important for people to grab a hold of a little bit.

Christopher Mitchell (04:39):
So what are we talking about today? What's the blueprint that we're going to cover

Jessica Auer (04:44):
Today we're talking about the low cost plan requirement in the BEAD program. This is required from the legislation, the authorized BEAD that each state develop some sort of guidance around a low cost plan [00:05:00] requirement for sub-grantees. These are the ISPs that are getting BEAD money,

Christopher Mitchell (05:03):
And I always like to remind people BEAD is the federal government giving a bunch of money to states, so states are technically the grantees and then the states have to develop a program for ISPs to get that money and to deploy networks. And so they are the sub-grantees. That language may or may not come up depending on how ruthless I am with trying to keep this understandable. So this is something that I [00:05:30] kind of just assumed when BEAD happened, everyone would do $30 a month or $40 a month, and the ACP, the affordable connectivity program would take care of that. What was wrong with that thinking?

Jessica Auer (05:42):
Well, what's wrong with that thinking is that well, it wasn't required and as states developed these plans, a lot of other people had their say and I think a lot of other companies had their say, industry insiders, that sort of thing. And across the board, as these states [00:06:00] open these plans up for public comment, what we saw is that large telecoms, big Internet service providers really pushed back, protested this number and protested really the idea of putting any number down there as a limit on what that low cost plan could charge.

Ry Marcattilio (06:16):
Jess, do you think the flurry around defining what that low cost plan number is would be with us today in the same way if ACP was still around?

Jessica Auer (06:27):
Yes. For one thing, [00:06:30] this piece really looks at Virginia in particular. It says something about the larger debate about low cost plans, but Virginia's plan went out for public comment I think in September of last year. So ACP was still ongoing. This was not a question of what it means that ACP is no longer with us in terms of the pushback from ISPs on how states are developing this plan. The idea of course, is that the NTIA also seemed to think that most states were going to go with $30 with the ACP [00:07:00] covering that for most people. And so it would be a NOCO plan for many people in terms of out-of-pocket expenses. Even then we saw, we see public comments from ISPs that are saying, this is rate regulation, you can't do this. You can't put any number on it, and certainly not a $30 number.

Christopher Mitchell (07:18):
And so this is where, I mean I don't know how much we'll cover it in this show, but Ry and I have been going back and forth in both. I think at least in my case, certainly recognizing some of the ignorance I have because my [00:07:30] feeling has been that it is very difficult and also reading that of Doug Dawson to try to make a rural business plan work on $30 a month because of the high costs of getting out there in an urban area, you could have a technician that is servicing three or four homes a day in a rural area. It's probably one or two, it's probably two I would assume, maybe one if it's a really bigger job. So it's just, you can imagine the costs are much higher to deal with that. [00:08:00] And if you have a significant number of people that are paying $30 a month rather than 60 or 70, that's a hurt.

(08:07):
The only thing that I've assumed would be helpful to that is the fact that you're not going to have any delinquent payments. The federal government under ACP is reimbursing you once you got the system down. It was fairly streamlined on an ongoing basis and it seemed to work pretty well. And so that is a benefit of not having to go through collections or something like that. So I got the impression [00:08:30] R that in the course of this you wanted to push back a little bit harder and you felt that perhaps $30 a month is something that could work. So

Ry Marcattilio (08:39):
I think the two points I would like to make are certainly the business case in rural areas where people are spread much further apart and the infrastructure is longer to get to that last mile, that's a perfectly reasonable case. What that number is for the families out and remember, the BEAD money is largely going to go to the families that have been left behind by the marketplace, [00:09:00] folks who are facing additional socioeconomic challenges. And so they are less likely to be able to pay that 75 or 80 a month or whatever it is comparatively in urban and suburban areas.

Christopher Mitchell (09:13):
They may also be seasonal customers as well, which is yet another wrinkle that we probably won't get into. Sorry.

Ry Marcattilio (09:18):
Certainly, yes. What I was going to say is this BEAD money is going to start going out the door in 2025. These networks are going to be built in 20 26, 20 27. We're talking about modern fiber infrastructure that compared [00:09:30] to especially the coax that's in a lot of the cities, probably needs much fewer truck rolls than your other average infrastructure out there. So I would say that these networks are going to be relatively reliable. And then the other thing I was going to say is we know that a lot of the BEAD money is going to get snatched up by the biggest providers. They're the best positioned to do it and some of them really, really want it. And so they'll have rural markets, but they're also going to have urban and suburban markets where they're [00:10:00] the only real player in town and they're extracting wealth from the families that live there. And so I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable for us to say in your rural areas, in your BEAD grant areas, you have to offer a 30, 35, $40 a month plan. And if that means that you need to bring some of the profits that you're extracting in urban and urban areas to cover it, then I'm okay with that.

Christopher Mitchell (10:20):
Right. And that's where we focused most of our effort on the bigger companies. We expect them, as you said, to get a majority of it. And that's where we think most of the harm could come from frankly. It's [00:10:30] also where personally and to some extent my politics in that of ILSR line up, obviously in some places they're a little bit skewed, but I'm pretty horrified at the idea of giving taxpayer dollars to a large monopoly who that is going to rip people off and do shareholder buybacks and all that sort of stuff. So I agree with that concern. My concern then tends to be the smaller providers and that's where I want to dive back into Virginia, Jess in the weight of Virginia, maybe we can talk about anything else you've noticed because you [00:11:00] are the kind of person that has really dive into this stuff. It would not surprise me if you have read at least a part of every state's volume one and volume two, and if it turned out that you read every single volume one and volume two, I would also not be too surprised because that is the level of research that you think is appropriate, which I appreciate.

Jessica Auer (11:19):
I will say that I have not read every word of every volume produced by every state.

Christopher Mitchell (11:24):
Okay,

Jessica Auer (11:24):
No worries there.

Christopher Mitchell (11:25):
Now you feel bad about skipping the preface, I'm sure. So [00:11:30] what are commonalities that you saw? You listed some of them in this story, but give us a preview

Jessica Auer (11:37):
To take a step back for a minute. The legislation said that each state has to develop this plan and that it has to work with NTIA to make sure it meets standards. And NTIA said, here are some things we're going to look for and here's a plan that we've created that we highly encourage you to use. It's going to meet all these standards. And that plan was at that $30 price point that we hear bandied about. [00:12:00] And it is absolutely the case that most states took that number and stuck with it through this process. Most states that have been approved have a $30 price point. There are some themes we see where states are allowing that number to be adjusted over time based on inflation or based on changing income levels for the poverty rate. We see that number have a little bit of flexibility, but $30 is definitely the most common number.

(12:28):
And then we see some [00:12:30] states ranging up to 70. A lot of those rural states, Montana, Wyoming, and Virginia itself, it ended up settling on a $75 limit there. There are also other elements of the plan that I think are worth drawing out that I think people should be thinking about. Most specifically that no plan that I've seen requires that any provider, any ISP that takes speed money has to make this low cost plan available across their service territory to [00:13:00] all their customers in that state. This is only going to be relevant to be locations. Now how that's going to be tracked and determined to me seems quite complex. I don't know that I have complete faith in state broadband offices that are going to be able to make sure this number is set at certain houses and not houses down the block that already had some sort of infrastructure.

Christopher Mitchell (13:21):
That is a particularly interesting point to me because one of the criticisms, if you go back and spend hours watching connect this, [00:13:30] which I highly recommend, the past catalog is full of gems. But one of the things we talked about was how it feels like NTIA is falling into what I would call a familiar trap of these government programs where they basically expect not to do any work on the tail end, making sure that people are following the rules. This is my interpretation and a summary of it. And so on the front end, they're trying to have all these requirements [00:14:00] to make sure that everything will work. And then as long as people follow that, it'll be fine. NTIA has a terrible history of actually enforcing its own rules. And so this point that you're making I think is really important about who actually would be going through to make this determination that they are offering the correct homes, the correct prices under the right circumstances. It's complicated and states don't necessarily have that, especially when states are thinking about getting rid of their broadband offices once the money's gone, which I think would be a bad idea generally. But the other [00:14:30] piece of it is, I think part of the reason NTIA has a pressure to do that is because if they required it across the entire ISP footprint, it would be more likely to be called rate regulation.

(14:41):
And that's a big piece that we want to talk about some. So we'll come back to that in a second. I guess, what are other commonalities that you saw?

Jessica Auer (14:46):
One thing I would say it's not necessarily a commonality, but it's something to think about as well, is that particularly as you note that some states are talking about disbanding broadband offices when this money is out the door, is that these plans are meant to be required to be [00:15:00] available for the useful life of the assets. And some states are giving that a year number, how many years that's going to be eight years, 10 years, five years, and other states are just leaving that language intact like that. Sorry,

Christopher Mitchell (15:14):
I'm assuming that if at t builds a network that in 55 years people will still be using significant components of that as they refuse to do any upgrades,

Jessica Auer (15:22):
But they certainly won't be getting this low cost plan in 55 years.

Christopher Mitchell (15:25):
No, I assume not. Okay. Ry, anything you want to add in on that? Anything that [00:15:30] you saw in that process?

Ry Marcattilio (15:31):
No, I think Jess says it particularly well. The one thing that I kind of wanted to underscore is, so we're in the context of BEAD here and we're defining what a low cost plan is ostensibly to help folks who need assistance with their monthly bill. Jess mentioned most states are doing $30 per month. We threw a map in that blueprints for BEAD story on the website, so you can see where the different states stack up. And in fact, yeah, most people are doing 30, but some states are going higher. Montana is doing 70 [00:16:00] and Jess notes in the piece that Montana specifically pegged its low cost plan at quote, the median cost of the 100 by 20 megabit per second plans in the Western United States. So it's a little bit strange to me there that Montana went and said, let's find out what the median is that people are paying for advertised plans in the Western United States, and let's just peg our low cost ceiling at that number. Media at low cost don't mean the same thing to me.

Christopher Mitchell (16:26):
Yeah, no, it's good points. I do want [00:16:30] to move on a little bit. So Jess, what other key points that we want to, I don't want to talk about rate regulation. Is there anything else we want to hit in terms of the story?

Jessica Auer (16:38):
As I said, I've not read every single plan, and I have certainly have not read every single public comment, but I asked Virginia to provide the public comments that were made on this plan, and other states have made those public comments available as well. And we saw mostly large telecoms make comments. We saw some cooperatives [00:17:00] make comments, and they were also critical of this plan for the same reasons, but we don't hear much from communities about what low cost will mean for them, how their communities are going to be able to get access to the Internet, true access to the Internet. And we also didn't hear much from what we might call small ISPs about whether this is going to be feasible for them. And I think part of that is just that smaller ISPs and municipal networks and all [00:17:30] the other kind of options for Internet service provision have been a little bit run out from the BEAD program or shut out from it or have heard that this is not going to be a program for them. And so what we are looking at are large telecoms having their say in how this program should be run. And in that context it does become, I think, particularly important to have some guardrails on what they can charge customers in these places. So yeah, I [00:18:00] think that's just what we're hearing loud and clear are the perspectives of large ISPs. What we're not hearing so much are communities themselves, individuals themselves, and smaller ISPs, honestly.

Christopher Mitchell (18:13):
Right. I'm sitting here with two historians by training, and I'll just say that that's what we would expect to hear from the course of human events more or less. I mean, I'm actually not a very cynical person. I am way too optimistic for any kind of reason, but I [00:18:30] do think it's worth noting that when it comes down to it, Congress is much more concerned about how AT&T and charter react to this program than how 20 million American families do. That's not a controversial statement AT&T and Charter wield far more political power than perhaps 30 or 40% of the lowest income US households. And that's the way it is. The program is shaped by it, and I think a lot of us are trying to change those kinds of dynamics, but that's what we see. And it, [00:19:00] it's not too surprising to hear that on rate regulation.

(19:04):
This is one of those things where those big companies are screaming about rate regulation. I don't know those words don't mean what they think it means if you don't want to be a part of this, don't participate in the program California has, and it's a federal funding account money that's distributing right now. They have some pretty tough requirements and for making sure that things are affordable is my understanding. [00:19:30] I don't right now, I'm struggling to recall exactly what they are, which is wonderful. I should reacquaint myself with that. But people can choose not to participate, and that's just the nature of it. I'm so tired of hearing that everything is rate regulation when it's obviously not, but that's the sort of thing that people are hearing. That's not the only thing you've been working on. I've also been bugging you from time to time on what is a very challenging task given that of the, IT [00:20:00] is almost 580 federally recognized tribes. Some have virtually no online presence, and so it's very difficult to figure out which ones have their own networks. But H TRO took a run at that years ago and we published an indigenous networks map and you have updated it. What are the top lines that you're taking away from it?

Jessica Auer (20:22):
Yeah, so H'S work was really foundational and was a great starting point to try to expand [00:20:30] this research. And what we found, and I think it's not so much that they didn't find it as things have changed in the past four years, what we found is almost a doubling in the number of tribes that are operating or operating networks or owning to provide Internet to their communities. We count nearly 80, so I think the number is 79. Most of those are retail networks selling or [00:21:00] providing Internet to individual homes and customers. But some of those are institutional networks that we think are maybe the foundation for a broader expansion of their offerings.

Christopher Mitchell (21:10):
So does that note 79 number include partnerships as well? That's the model that we see in some places.

Jessica Auer (21:16):
So I included those public private partnerships or something of that sort if it was clear or if it was mostly clear that the tribe retained ownership of the assets in question. If [00:21:30] it was just a partnership in which a provider received funding to build out in an area, we didn't want to count that. But certainly we see particularly actually in your area in the Midwest, some successful partnerships developing with between tribes and electric cooperatives where the cooperative is building out the network and operating it, but that the tribe is owning and considering the possibility of taking over that management eventually.

Christopher Mitchell (21:58):
And it seemed to me like [00:22:00] there was more than 79 dots on your map.

Jessica Auer (22:03):
Great. Yeah. So we have 79 whose networks we think are active, another 50 who we expect to come online soon because they have really shown a strong commitment to building this out or have received grant funding, and it's just in the process of construction. We didn't want to count that as lit just yet. And then another board dozen in five dozen [00:22:30] who have expressed interest look like they're going after grants but don't necessarily have the capital expense in hand to begin that construction.

Christopher Mitchell (22:39):
I think that's pretty remarkable. And do you have a sense of the federally recognized tribes, roughly half of them are in Alaska, so how does that break down Alaska being so much harder to connect? I'm guessing it's not roughly even between the tribes that are located in Alaska and those [00:23:00] that are within the 48 states.

Jessica Auer (23:02):
Thank you for raising that because that's point I should have made is that we have not gone through systematically the federally recognized tribes in Alaska because of just the complicated nature of some of the land ownership and whatnot there. But we have identified some active networks already there, so I can't really speak to how that's playing out. It does look on first glance, far fewer in Alaska [00:23:30] are owning the infrastructure, but many are really going after this funding that's available to tribes to build infrastructure. They're just doing it perhaps more in partnership with large GCI is a very common one up there, and it's not clear that they'll own the fiber in the ground.

Christopher Mitchell (23:48):
Yeah, I appreciate that. I know very little about Alaska and the Alaska native villages, but I'm hoping that as Matt Rantanen and I do work up there, which I think might be happening soon, [00:24:00] then I'll start to learn a lot more. But it is a remarkable picture that you've drawn. You have detail about all of the networks we could find detail about. That link is in the show notes rise. Is there anything that you saw in the course of this work that you wanted to raise up?

Ry Marcattilio (24:17):
No, I just wanted to give Jess her do. This is an incredibly complex and difficult undertaking precisely in part because Chris, you mentioned a lot of the tribes have little to no online presence. Certainly it's not [00:24:30] incumbent upon them to share with external folks what they're doing. And so putting this together, putting the map together and then accompanying the map is a brief description of dozens upon dozens of tribes doing Internet infrastructure projects. And so it's wonderful to have this resource updated after a few years where we kept talking about wanting to do it and didn't have the capacity or somebody crazy enough to try and do it. So thank you so, so much, Jess. [00:25:00] I noticed a lot of some partnerships going on there. There's I think a pretty good split between fiber and wireless projects on the map. It would be interesting to see how that breaks down even more a few CBRS related projects on there. So that's always exciting to see as the FCC considers changing the CBRS rules a little bit to give communities a little more power to go after solutions in their area. And then I'm also excited about folding this data into our new community networks [00:25:30] map, of course, in the near future so that tribes can join municipalities on that map.

Christopher Mitchell (25:35):
Yes, and one of the things that I'll note is that doing this work is also somewhat challenging as I think many people have spent very little time trying to understand Indians in the United States. And so there's a variety of cultures and approaches, and doing this work always makes me nervous. We don't want to say anything that's incorrect or is culturally [00:26:00] insensitive. And so I really appreciate Jess putting herself out there to do this work. And also, if we got anything wrong, people should let us know and we'll correct it as soon as possible. If we've missed anything, please let us know. If you have additional information that you think should be displayed, we would love to get it up there. But I'll just note that for me, for a lot of years it was intimidating to work in Indian country, and so I didn't do it. And then Matt Rantanen told me to pull my head out and [00:26:30] to actually get some stuff done. And I've been trying since then and it's been wonderful, but I'm also, you have to grapple with ignorance when you're coming from a perspective like I am. So that's something that just I think is worth noting. I've always felt great grace from people we're working with when I've made errors and things like that, but we do the best we can when we're doing this work. Absolutely.

Jessica Auer (26:51):
Yeah. We want to learn. We want to be responsive. And to that end, there is a link on the webpage that asks if there's anything [00:27:00] that's wrong or anything that needs correction, we're happy to hear it. To the point about the diversity in Indian country, I do want to underscore how many different approaches that we are seeing tribes take, and we're seeing tribes with smaller land bases and larger land bases and different sort of assets to put into the game, and it's really inspiring to see this kind of creative and community rooted responses. [00:27:30] One interesting thing just before we leave is a business model we don't see much of, but I just spoke to the Southern Ute Indian tribe a few weeks ago about their new project that just was lit up in, I want to say April, may, something

Christopher Mitchell (27:46):
Like that. This is in the southern part of Colorado, largely I think

Jessica Auer (27:49):
Colorado. And they are operating an open access network, something like 500 miles of fiber eventually in the ground. And it's exciting to see [00:28:00] a new kind of approach and we'll see how that works out for them.

Christopher Mitchell (28:03):
Yeah, everything I've heard about that is positive, and that's one of the other things I'll say about this too, is that there is a history of consultants that is mixed. Some have really done wonderful work with tribes in helping them build networks. Others have done less so and so I would expect as the tribal broadband connectivity program money moves through, we will see some really wonderful successes and some consultants that are proving to [00:28:30] be great. We'll see some that are not getting the job done, and we'll have to try to figure out how to step in to make corrections there and to try and help tribes do what they can with what they have. But it is an unfortunate situation. There is such a range, as you noted. Just to give people a sense, there's some tribal reservations that have a few homes on them. There are a few acres, and then there are some Navajo would being the biggest, that are larger than many states.

(29:00):
[00:29:00] We've been down, Jess and I spent a little bit of time in Tohono O'odham, which is, I don't know, a quarter of the state of Arizona or something like that. It's, it's quite large. And so there's a lot of different challenges, whether it's the technology, the business model, or a variety of other factors that go into finding a solution that will actually help people be able to take advantage of modern technology in ways to make sure they're getting healthcare and all the other [00:29:30] things that can help with that. I think we're about out of time, but we are excited for this work to continue, expect to see more blueprints for BEAD on other topics. In fact, we didn't really scratch, there's a lot more detail on Jess's one about Virginia and this low cost plan, and so highly recommend reading that. But Jess, thank you so much for all your work. Thank you for overcoming your fear of podcast to come join me. I look forward to hearing Sean's comments [00:30:00] as a new convert to the Church of Podcasting.

Jessica Auer (30:04):
Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (30:05):
No one tells Sean. We'll just see if he actually listens to it and then tells us. So thank you, Ry.

Ry Marcattilio (30:11):
Thank you, Chris. Good to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (30:12):
Alright, we'll be back next week with another show. If I get around to it, that's about how it comes down to it. So thank you all for listening. Have a great day.

Ry Marcattilio (30:20):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email [email protected] [00:30:30] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at Community nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. [00:31:00] While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments.