The Brothers Howell

Episode 1: Ladies' Night - Blue Origin Style

Michael Howell Season 1 Episode 1

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In the inaugural episode of 'The Brothers,' Steve and Mike discuss an April 14th space trip featuring an all-female crew, including celebrities like Katy Perry and Gail King, as part of Blue Origin's 'New Shepherd' project led by Jeff Bezos. They explore the implications of celebrity endorsements for space tourism, highlighting criticism from the public and other celebrities about the misuse of resources. The hosts also debate whether these women should be considered astronauts and touch on the competitive landscape between Blue Origin, SpaceX, and NASA. The episode delves into the legitimacy and impact of private space missions, and the push for making space exploration more mainstream.

Steve:

So back on April 14th, ladies Night turned into a trip to space and everybody went a little crazy. And we're gonna talk about that today on the inaugural episode of The Brothers. How? I'm Steve. And I'm Mike, welcome to our show.

Mike:

Alright, so we get to talk about. I think you introduced the idea of some celebrity posity into this episode as we're gonna talk about the celebrities that went to space for some reason or another.

Steve:

Yeah. b list of celebrities, Katie Perry and Gail King, and then for other people I've never heard of. Well, one of is one of Ms. Laura Sanchez. Lauren Sanchez, who is Jeff Bezos's fiance.

Mike:

You know, there has to be a joke in there somewhere where you just sent your, he's already done. Whether he sent her to space, I don't know. She can never ask him for another thing ever again. Jesus Christ. I sent you to space,

Steve:

and that was, that was the 11th, uh trip, or manned trip that Bezos has sent into space. 11th. Really? The 11th. The 11th one of what he calls The Good Shepherd project, I guess.

Mike:

And I guess that's for tourism, right?

Steve:

Yeah. I think he's trying to monetize space for his own means. I'm sure. Well, what's going on here?

Mike:

That's what I got out of it too. So I did look up, what is it called? It's called, um, you said Good Shepherd, is that what it is? And it's named after s it's named after Shepherd. The Astronaut, I think.

Steve:

Allen Shepherd?

Mike:

Yeah. I believe so. Yes. Astronaut.

Steve:

Okay.

Mike:

New Shepherd. Is that what it is? New Shepherd at? Yeah, because uh, I think like the flight starts with an NS and then a dash and whatever flight was right?

Steve:

does, yes. New Shepherd. That's, that's right.

Mike:

So who else has gone up, do you know?

Steve:

Well, he went up in the first one along with his brother and, I think two others whose name's I don't recall. And there have been some other celebrities too, although I'm not sure who that was. This is the first all female crew.

Mike:

apparently that was the, I guess I'm doing air quotes. that was a big deal.

Steve:

Yeah, that was the hook. So they were, they were in space 11 minutes. There were some that might have thought, that should have been longer. Meaning that they didn't

Mike:

want'em to come back.

Steve:

Yeah. And aren't there any other celebrity women who are the top celebrity female, entertainers today? I guess Beyonce wasn't available

Mike:

I saw some. Other famous in the media celebrity, and I can't remember her name off the top of my head, spoke out against it, which I thought was interesting.

Steve:

There've been a few and they keep piling up every day. one of'em was half pint from Little House in the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert,

Mike:

melissa Gilbert spoke out against it.

Steve:

Yes, she did. No, she was not in favor of it. waste of money, waste of resources that could have been put to better use. And, people were very quick to, rush to her support. Olivia Munn, Olivia Wild, and a few others, all tended to agree with her.

Mike:

Well, you know, me, I'm not a huge, billionaire boys club fan.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

But I will say that, if nothing else, it is getting us more and more towards, making space more of an everyday thing.

Steve:

Yeah. It puts eyes on it. Most certainly. It draws more attention and with the competitive nature of it, now, that's even all the better between, Blue Origin and Musk with his SpaceX and nasa, hopefully it lights a fire under NASA and gets them going. I would like to see boots on Mars before I'm gone, and I hope that's gonna be in the thirties. And all of this I think helps that. But, I do have a problem with using celebrities to, to advance this in particular because. Just a couple weeks before this took place, you may remember this took place on April 14th and a few weeks before that two astronauts who had been basically incarcerated in space for nine months when they were only supposed to be there. Oh, yeah. A week they come, they finally get rescued and come home and you hear basically nothing about it. Sonny Williams and, Butch Wilmore, and they should have been the heroes people were talking about. But people can't stop talking about Ka Perry.

Mike:

That's a really good point actually. So, and I imagine there's a lot more to it, but I mean, so they had to plan this flight for Blue Origin and get these female, I'm, I'm not gonna use the word astronauts, get these females into space, and I wonder if there could have been more planning around, Hey, let's go get those guys off the space station from Blue Origin perspective, as opposed to SpaceX or whoever went up there to do it. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know, maybe could we have put, more effort into that in helping out NASA and the National Space Station and as astronauts that were stranded rather than putting all this planning in the fly. Katy Perry into suborbital space for 11 minutes.

Steve:

Sure. Why couldn't, I mean, we're even talking about basically the same timeline. So if Bezos had gotten involved earlier, couldn't one or both of them have gotten to those astronauts that much sooner?

Mike:

I'm sure there's a lot to it. You probably have to figure out how to dock with it and all that stuff. And that wasn't built in, I'm sure. Still it just,

Steve:

you don't think they're using standardized equipment off the shelf.

Mike:

Oh, I mean, maybe

Steve:

W Coyote would've ordered it from Acme. They can't do that. Yeah.

Mike:

Well that's a good point. the National Space Station, probably the International Space Station probably is built to some sort of, International specs. And if Blue Origin isn't building to that, what the hell?

Steve:

Yeah. And that, of course is gonna be standardized too because of the various nations, the dock with the ISS. So a lot of that stuff is gonna be standard.

Mike:

So I did a quick lookup and, I haven't validated my sources, but I don't see any reason why this would not be correct. I looked at SpaceX versus Blue Origin and, financial viability. it does look to me that SpaceX from a financial viability standpoint is worth. 10 times, what Blue Origin is, but also Elon Musk, it's privately held, but Elon Musk, being, I don't know if he, is the single majority holder, but he's done so many rounds of funding to get a lot of external funding, so he does not own it all whereas Jeff Bezos, he just cashes out Amazon stock annually, like a billion dollars, and he owns every bit of Blue Origin.

Steve:

Right. And that's the other argument too. I mean, regardless whether you agree with it or not, it is his money. He can do with it, whatever he likes.

Mike:

Yeah. And I looked up to see if those, those passengers paid to go. I. And there's no, uh, there's only guesses what that flight costs and how much it costs per person, but it's believed that it was all pro bono.

Steve:

Yeah. I've seen in the past, well before this took place, that isn't the idea that people are gonna be paying a million dollars per ride to get to space.

Mike:

I saw 1.25 million when I looked it up. Okay. Yeah, so you're

Steve:

right

Mike:

on.

Steve:

So the upper 2% is gonna get to take the bus ride, but nobody else is going

Mike:

to. Yeah, but isn't that, isn't that funny that I said you're right on. You're only off by a quarter of a million dollars. I mean nothing to these people. That's a lot to me. Oh, change today. You're right on. You're only off by a quarter of a million. So, I don't know. I looked at the people that did go up and I tried to like look at all their profiles and what have you. I think everybody knows Katy Perry. So it, it did say and everything. I looked up, you said, you said be celebrity. I get Global Hop Superstar is what I get when I look around.

Steve:

Katie Perry.

Mike:

Yeah.

Steve:

Maybe 15 years ago.

Mike:

and then Gail King, I think everybody knows what she does.

Steve:

Professional coattail writer.

Mike:

Yeah.

Steve:

Professional. Coattail

Mike:

writer. Didn't that one didn't come

Steve:

up. That didn't come up.

Mike:

No.

Steve:

Well, you know, she was Oprah's childhood buddy, their best friend. Right. And

Mike:

I, and so it, that that's what she's, it says, what is she known for? Long time friendship with Oprah Winfrey.

Steve:

Yeah. She has a career because she knows Oprah is basically, so she is. Oh,

Mike:

wow.

Steve:

But given the fact how she, got to her, status in life. She's not really good either at what she does, but she's not terrible. There are worse.

Mike:

Now, I think you pronounced the o Asia Bo. Or Bowie. she's, she is actually a rocket scientist, aerospace engineer,

Steve:

Uhhuh,

Mike:

and she was probably one of the legitimate astronauts one there that, I think Gail referred to as actually doing some experiments when they were in suborbital space for 11 minutes.

Steve:

So she took her case with all her beakers and, Petri dishes with her.

Mike:

think she did, had some pet

Steve:

dishes

Mike:

it all out

Steve:

for 11 minutes.

Mike:

Apparently it's, Jeff Bezos thing Is not just tourism, but also minimal gravity experimentation. And so I imagine that's what they were doing.

Steve:

Well, you can do that right here on Earth, aren't you in one of the zero gravity? Uh Facilitators are one of those things. They have, like I know, I think NASA has one where they can, you can turn off the gravity.

Mike:

Well, isn't that just a plane that dives really fast or something? Well, there's a plane that does

Steve:

it too, but I, isn't there something on earth now that, you can just basically go inside, they turn off the gravity and you float up.

Mike:

Hey, just turn off the gravity. They got that figured out. I didn't know about that. It's

Steve:

a, it's a vacuum, I guess. And then they can

Mike:

turn off the gravity. It's like that guy's stove and, uh, what is it? Uh, and my cousin Vinny, where all laws of physics cease to exist on top of your stove.

Steve:

Well, any grit Loving southerner's gonna know that.

Mike:

Darn right. Oh, that's hilarious. And then who else? There was?

Steve:

Um, well, Carrie Ann Flynn, who I believe is some kind of a director or producer,

Mike:

film producer, private equity advisor. She's known for quietly influential behind the scenes in media and finance. So definitely in the Hollywood industry of some sort.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

And then Amanda NuGen,

Steve:

do they pronounce it, NuGen or is it nen?

Mike:

That's a good question. And I wasn't looking at the spelling. it looked much like a gentleman I went to school with in, high school, but it might've been spelled a little differently.

Steve:

Uhhuh,

Mike:

she has something to do with, bio astronautics in researching, but also civil rights activist.

Steve:

Somebody was being oppressed up there that she had to go see.

Mike:

I, yeah, I don't know. Somebody, I'm trying to,

Steve:

just wanna make sure they had all their bases covered for these, 11 minutes they were up there.

Mike:

Well, I'm just looking at the list and I'm not sure which one of these was being oppressed, but we had it covered little,

Steve:

there were little mini, mini cross section of society that they took with'em.

Mike:

I gotta say they do think of everything they always say like, you, like nasa, you know, we don't take chances or anything. We got backups of everything, I guess, blue origin's taking a page from that. There you go.

Steve:

Well in the long run, I hope it's NASA that's actually going to benefit from these sort of things. And, and really get moving. You don't hear as much about NASA as I wish you did. I need to know more about what's going on there. I know they're reaching towards Mars. I know SpaceX is reaching towards Mars. I think Blue or Blue, origin is really just interested in making money. So

Mike:

I think, I think that's true. Isn't that what that guy did? who's the guy that owned the, uh, Virgin? Virgin Atlantic or whatever

Steve:

Ran.

Mike:

Yeah. Wasn't he also trying to do the same thing?

Steve:

Yes. You know, he was, but I haven't heard anything about that in a while. Is he still a player?

Mike:

I don't know where he is in the Billionaire Boys Club, but he's probably nowhere near a Bezos or a Musk. And they, they

Steve:

own their, they own their own islands, most of them. I know Branson does

Mike:

From a historic standpoint and from a quite frankly, I, I would say hoopla, but I don't know how much you saw about it. I didn't know this space flight was even happening until I turned on the news and it was literally like 10 seconds to lunchtime.

Steve:

Well, you knew about it before I did. I didn't know about it until after it already happened probably later that night or in the morning. So maybe it's, but after that it became cooler talk every day and every day there's something new about it. And of course, now the big thing is did it really happen?

Mike:

Oh, no way. Are people saying this? Yeah, people are already gonna,

Steve:

I don't know if it's that we never set foot on, on the moon people or if it's a whole new sect of society. I don't know. But they, yeah, it's a growing, growing, group of people that believe it didn't actually happen.

Mike:

That's, I think that's unrealistic. I mean, come on, if you are gonna do something that really didn't happen, do something better than that.

Steve:

Yeah, I agree with that. I feel much the same way about the people who don't believe we walked on the moon, but that's fodder for another day, I guess.

Mike:

Yeah. I think OJ Simpson showed us the truth in a movie, didn't he? Capricorn won Capricorn wine. That's right.

Steve:

I can't quite remember how many Oscars that got, but I know it was well thought of.

Mike:

Yeah, it was. Yeah. I think it's 1 million

Steve:

across the board.

Mike:

it won everything that year it came out. I'm sure. Done really, really well with a great cast.

Steve:

Well, James Brolin, he held it up.

Mike:

That's right. James Brolin, he's what's his son's name? Josh. Josh, yes. I always forget that those two are related. Yeah, I forgot all about that. That he was in that movie.

Steve:

That was, those were the pre Barbara Streisand days.

Mike:

Oh, is that James Brolin's? Was that his wife

Steve:

is, I believe, I think they've been together a long time still. Oh, I feel bad

Mike:

for him. No.

Steve:

But he's just people who love people and I guess that's how they got together.

Mike:

People who love people.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

I thought that was from, that movie with, his brother Santa Claus with, Vince.

Steve:

Vince Vaughn,

Mike:

Vince Vaughn, what is it? something Ted Claus or something like that. Oh, yeah, the, the Santa Claus. I love, I love that movie. Really? And he, and he does a, a scheme in there where, he, he needs money. And so you have all the Santa Clauss on the corner, trying to get money, ringing the bell, what have you. And he's over there and he's doing people for the people. People for the people over here, you gotta, no, don't put your money in there. You come over here, you put it in here. It's people for the people. We're here to help people. He just made it up and he's all over. It was just hilarious.

Steve:

Did, uh, did Katy Perry have a cameo in that? Because I'm not sure I'm getting the connection.

Mike:

There is no connection. You came out, you said something about people, for people with James Brolin and what's her name?

Steve:

Yeah, I guess I'm the one that led US astray. Okay.

Mike:

All right. I was trying to find, so I heard that there was some pushback on calling these women astronauts after the flight. Did you see anything

Steve:

about that? I didn't see anything about people trying to define them, particularly as astronauts, but I did see something where if, if they broached, what is it called? The, the, the kmar or,

Mike:

Yes.

Steve:

Yeah. If it's 62 miles off, the surface of the ocean, and if you breach that barrier, you're actually in space. And by law, I guess you have to be called an astronaut.

Mike:

So. I don't know. it seems like somebody wanted to fight that and there's more than just that to, than just breaching that to be called an astronaut. But I think it's too late because these billionaires are already being called astronauts for the same reason.

Steve:

So if I were to get shot out of a cannon and I somehow breached that 62 mile barrier, I couldn't be an astronaut.

Mike:

Well, I don't know. I actually just watched, uh, Armageddon this, uh, past week and my favorite scene in there is when, they're all gonna go up there and pretty much die on asteroid Saving Earth. And Steve BMI's character knew the night before they launch, he goes to a loan shark and borrows a hundred thousand dollars. He's like, yeah, sure, I'll pay whatever man.'cause he thinks he's gonna die anyway. And if he doesn't die, everybody else is. So. He takes the a hundred thousand dollars and goes to a strip club and just blowing money right and left, blowing money, right and left. And these other guys come up to him, Hey, you're taking all the action. They get in a big fight and they get arrested by the cops and Steve Chemis off like, well, hey man, I'm an astronaut. And then the guy he's fighting with some thug. Yeah, man. We're all astronauts, man. Just cracks me up. Yeah man. We're all astronauts.

Steve:

You know, there could be something to that too. Could this be some kind of, In clandestine cover to be for these girls to be in training for taking that asteroid outfit's supposed to pass close by us here in about 11 years, 12 years.

Mike:

Oh, could be, could be. It'd be called, uh, the Katy peril.

Steve:

I'm feeling much, I'll sleep much better tonight. Knowing that, or at least believing that could be a possibility.

Mike:

Let's see here. So i'm looking at some public backlash. It faced criticism from Olivia Munn. I think that was a celebrity I was trying to think of,

Steve:

yeah, the two Olivia's, her and Olivia. Yeah, there were two of

Mike:

Olivia Munn and Olivia Wild. Yeah. And, and there was,

Steve:

there was another one, I think she's a current star, Emily something, but I can't pronounce that last name. it's got like seven syllables, but apparently she's big today.

Mike:

But, and also the US Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, is the one who was arguing that they shouldn't be labeled as astronauts, and he cited some FAA criteria, which I'm not sure exactly what that was.

Steve:

I can't, uh, I can't say that I wanna argue with that too much. I'm okay with it.

Mike:

Well, I just wonder what it actually is. To say that you are an astronaut?

Steve:

Well, I think you would have to have some kind of certificate hanging on your wall that you got when you completed your training at nasa.

Mike:

Okay. What? Okay,

Steve:

I'm messing. I don't know.

Mike:

I, it would make a lot of sense. I would get that. But let me ask you this, so. If you did go through all that training at nasa, but you never actually went into space'cause you didn't get selected for the next flight or whatever. Are you an astronaut?

Steve:

Well, aren't there astronauts who have never been to space that have worked for NASA over the years, test pilots that never got scrubbed or never actually got to get to space that are considered astronauts?

Mike:

I don't, I'm not sure they are. I bet you, I bet you they're not called astronauts. Maybe what Chuck Yeager

Steve:

was, he considered an astronaut.

Mike:

not considered an astronaut. But he's been shot up, shot at and shot down.

Steve:

What about that guy that a few years back, uh, actually, uh, jumped with a parachute from the outer orbit. Is he an astronaut?

Mike:

DB Cooper?

Steve:

No, not the, not the guy that robbed the bank. They actually found this guy. I don't think they ever found

Mike:

db. They never found db. No. And he's not an astronaut.

Steve:

No. Now this guy, you remember a while back, he actually jumped from. The outer space somewhere beyond, beyond, uh, earth's orbit or beyond earth's, atmosphere. And he plunged out. I don't know. It's ridiculous. I can't believe anybody has the guts to do it, but he survived. I mean, he lived and he, he landed safely,

Mike:

but he was above that barrier.

Steve:

I don't know. Maybe not, but I know it was where he jumped from was dark and it wasn't nighttime when he did it. So I remember the, I remember the footage of seeing that.

Mike:

So I think if we looked at astronaut criteria, so there is an astronaut requirement page from nasa, You have to be a US citizen. Apparently the debt, everybody passed that muster.

Steve:

so Elon himself cannot be, or is he a US citizen? I guess he is a US citizen.

Mike:

he can be whatever he wants to. He's

Steve:

not a naturalized citizen. Yeah. Oh, is he?

Mike:

You have to possess a master's degree in a STEM field. So, Katie's out,

Steve:

I'm sure that, I'm sure that except for maybe that Aisha bow, they're all out.

Mike:

Yeah. There was one in there that had a, a, a, she was there. She something in her bio said something about stem. You have to have two years of related professional experience. What that mean? Well, I walked across the desert.

Steve:

Well, I'll tell you what, the woman who was rescued from the International Space Station, she was an astronaut. Sonny Williams. Sonny, yeah. Williams. Okay.

Mike:

It says, if you don't have the two years of related experience, you have to have a thousand hours pilot and command in a jet aircraft. And you have to be able to pass the NASA long duration flight. Astronaut physical.

Steve:

Okay. Well I was with you until then. I'll never be an

Mike:

astronaut. Yeah. Well, I don't have a thousand hours probably. I get past, I could probably get by with a degree in STEM field. That's I have. Okay. Well that counts all of'em out. Except, you know, maybe the actual astronaut that was there. Yeah.

Steve:

A Chabot, or let me ask, are, are the cosmonaut criteria is tough?

Mike:

Is what?

Steve:

Maybe they're cos maybe they're cosmonauts. Is that, is the cosmonaut criteria not, uh, as bad? Well, so that's not an astronaut

Mike:

as a cosmonaut.

Steve:

Okay.

Mike:

We'll have to look that up.

Steve:

Yeah.

Mike:

I'm guessing you have to be a Russian citizen. That might be the first one. Like we had US citizen.

Steve:

Could be, could be. But what if you were one of the countries that's no longer part of the former Soviet Union? Is that still, does that still count?

Mike:

You're just a knot then, I think. Alright, so what, what else? Anything else we need to talk about with respect to this one? The thing I looked up to find out, like public backlash and those type of things. There's a couple of things. So first off, historical achievement. This mission was the first all female. Of course we know that, but did you know that there was an all female in 1963?

Steve:

Because there was only one.

Mike:

It was one, but it was all female.

Steve:

Yeah, it was all female. That was the Russian girl?

Mike:

Yeah, it was a Valentina terra cova?

Steve:

Yes.

Mike:

Wow. I'm surprised you did that.

Steve:

That's cool. I did read about that. Yeah.

Mike:

Let's see here. In the cruise defense, and this is what I was talking about, the experiments. So she took all the woman that took all her beakers and petri dishes and all that stuff. Gail King defended the mission, emphasizing the scientific contributions of fellow passengers. Aisha B and is that, how did you say her name? It's either

Steve:

Aisha or Aisha. I think it's Aisha.

Mike:

Aisha. And it might be Bowie, I'm not sure. And uh, Amanda, I'm gonna say NuGen, who conducted experiments during the flight. We have no idea what experiments, but apparently some sort of minimal gravitational experiments.

Steve:

Yes, minimal. I'll say so, because again, the flight was 11 minutes,

Mike:

I don't think that's what they meant. My memo, but, but yeah, I get where you're coming from.

Steve:

11 minutes.

Mike:

I think they met. I think they met, it wasn't zero gravity, there was some gravity is what they meant by me.

Steve:

Okay. You know, I wanna push back too on the, on the whole thing being called a mission. A mission is something arduous and difficult and you're putting your life on the line and, it's of a serious nature and it's going to present some incredible fact, life-changing kind of facts. I don't think that just, bouncing off the planet into space and back again is really what you'd call a mission.

Mike:

Well, I think one thing it could have done and stick with Mihir is it put Ka Perry in some pretty nice outfits for her tour

Steve:

and it got people talking about her career again too. Yeah. I guess there is a, there is a mission there because didn't she have a. Very shortly after that, she did a show, I forget where it was, where, she had quite a turnout, I believe, and, uh, before she started getting pushback. She's been defending this thing almost ever since. Oh, yeah. But, it did put her in the limelight again

Mike:

and she was bringing people up on stage that were dressed in like futuristic costumes and what have you. It's like her thing now.

Steve:

Yeah. Yeah. She's, she's totally embraced the whole space thing. I don't know that this was very beneficial to Gail King. I don't know if it pulled any viewers over from Good Morning America and today over to her CBS Morning Show or not, but, I guess it's possible.

Mike:

Well, it can't hurt, I imagine.

Steve:

But if you're going up against Al Roker, I don't really see you pulling a lot of viewers away from the Today Show.

Mike:

I would've just assumed sent Al Roker into space. That's a good point.

Steve:

Well, that would've totally eclipsed everything that Gail King did. So I don't see, so there is,

Mike:

there is one thing I haven't heard anybody say.'cause I mean, I didn't look for it. I'm sure somebody had to notice this.'cause I noticed it and I noticed it when I said, I think I tuned in five seconds before it launched and I cracked up. And the reason I cracked up is because all female on this, I'm doing air quotes against spaceship. I'm sorry, the spaceship looks like a huge penis.

Steve:

Yeah. Did you not notice this? There is. There is. There is a phallic symbolism there. Yes, there is.

Mike:

It is. And the reason I had to bring that back up'cause as I'm scrolling through my notes here, there is a picture of the launch and it's just, it's absolutely phallic. I just can't believe that, that I've tried

Steve:

to, I've tried to ignore that aspect, but, you weren't gonna allow that to happen.

Mike:

How can you skip over that? I'm not sure It'd be funnier to have all male on there or all female on there, but regardless, it definitely found,

Steve:

I'm looking here now. Yeah. I wasn't prepared. I, I didn't bring any of my penis jokes, so, so there's nothing I can do with this. those are hard. Yeah. I, I, I'm, I'm at a loss.

Mike:

Alright, anything else we can say about Katy Perry and crew? And that's what I'm gonna call'em.

Steve:

Katie Perry and crew, it works for me because she's, she would be the marquee, the marquee player here. no, that's, I don't think there's anything left to be said, but you know what? Every time I believe it's kind of a, it's kind of a dead story. Something gets put on, Twitter, which is X now, or TikTok or something. Something comes out in social media to, revamp it again and reboot it. So we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.