THE SHORT OF IT
A weekly vodcast discussing and supporting independent filmmakers of short films and content creators.
THE SHORT OF IT
S2-1 | KYLE MOODY
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Kyle Moody, a professor of Communications Media in the School of Arts & Sciences at Fitchburg State University, discusses the changing landscape of ALL media, using social media to be a filmmaker, and the do's and don'ts of selling your film!
CREDITS:
Music from #Uppbeat
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The shorter fit is brought to you in part by My name is Ashley Collins. I am the owner and founder of the Gem Beauty Lounge here in downtown Boston. I am right in Center Plaza at Sulla Salons. I am a master colorist and I specialize in most things hair. Natural hair care, haircuts, whatever you need. I am here. That's the short of it.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Kyle Moody, and I've been kidnapped by the short of it today with Tony and Rochelle. So won't you join us as I'm held not as a hostage?
SPEAKER_04Exactly. That is exactly what I did. Are we rolling?
SPEAKER_02We are rolling. Yay. What are you gonna say? Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the show to it. Uh no.
SPEAKER_02No, I thought you meant me because I'm late. Oh, welcome to you.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to the show, Tony. Well, you're late because you put uh some kind of weird jean jacket on. No.
SPEAKER_02Lipstick? I did that like 10 minutes ago. Um no, I'm late because, you know, I didn't get materials for this podcast until like 20 minutes ago.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I thought our whole shtick was like to be like, oh, Sam's so good we can't criticize her.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but when she messes up, we really have to say it out loud.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, she was on a like, I don't know, 80 hour fo film shoot, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So this is what we're gonna do. You two are gonna gang up on me? Like you guys are.
SPEAKER_04Maybe. Because you you said you're you're gonna take the whole first two minutes of the show. Oh my goodness! And so yeah. James!
SPEAKER_02I left two pieces of paper on the printer. Oh dear. Poor James. No, you all have to wait for this. This is James, one of our directors. Hi, James. Thank you. Okay. So, so, so, I'm on a tear. Okay? I'm on a tear, and this is why. All right, so forgive me because it's it had takes a little bit of a setting. I hope it's not political. Um, no. Okay, because we're not allowed to be political. I I understand, but this needs to be said. Okay, last month, Stephen A. Smith was accused by the National Association of Black Journalists of establishing a quote, recurring public pattern of disparaging commentary directed at prominent black women across politics, sports, and media. Who is Stephen Smith? He is an a uh ESPN commentator. Yes, he has his own show and he talks about whatever he wants to. He is a former journalist, but he's a commentator. What's a commentator? You ever comment on something? I was just gonna say that. What is a commentator? You ever comment on something?
SPEAKER_04We would have set this up in advance. I could have like I could have fed you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You could, yeah. Yeah, but anyway, Stephen A. Smith.
SPEAKER_04Anyway.
SPEAKER_02Um net worth is about 45 million dollars. Wow. Okay. His annual earnings approach about 40 million a year from his stuff, and then about a hundred million from ESPN, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So my thing is um, this is what happened in Atlanta at the NABJ conference. President Aaron Haynes. Wait, wait, what's the NABJ? National Association of Black Journalists. Oh, okay. National Association of Black Journalists. Yes. Yes, okay. Which of which I was a member at one point in my life. Let me just throw that out there.
SPEAKER_00Do you all validate parking by chance? I just want to make sure. Just want to make sure.
SPEAKER_02Um NABJ President Aaron Haynes gave Stephen A. Smith the thumbs down award because of said criticism. Now I'm I I'm trying to understand where that outrage was for Bill Cosby or R. Kelly or I don't know. Wait, what did Bill Cosby do? Puffy. No! I'm just JK. So you're like pull your pants up. NABJ, who cares, right? What do they do? Well, their mission is to provide quality programs and services, advocate on behalf of black journalists, and media professionals worldwide, fostering a diverse and supportive global community for media workers. What the NABJ is not licensed to do is to tell all black people what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and have their opinion somehow funneled and approved by the National Association of Black Journalists.
SPEAKER_04Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you saying that all black people aren't the same?
SPEAKER_02That's what I'm saying, Michelle. Thank you for asking.
SPEAKER_04Whoa.
SPEAKER_02We have to stop. We have to stop as a race. We have to stop deciding who is good and who is bad, who can say things against the culture and who can't. We are individuals, we have our own minds, we have our own platforms. I don't like Stephen A. Smith, but I will, as I just have, take two minutes to defend his right to have an opinion about anyone, anytime, anywhere.
SPEAKER_04Right, well, now that we got that out of the way. Um Tony.
SPEAKER_02Oh. Sorry. Yeah. That's okay.
SPEAKER_04That was that was incredible.
SPEAKER_02You're welcome.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, thank you. Welcome to the show. I mean, well, oh, thank you. I well uh wow, I thought I was part of the show.
SPEAKER_02No, you uh well, you know, I was telling our audience welcome to the show. Oh, right, welcome to the show. And I'm and I'm Tony.
SPEAKER_04Uh-huh. And I'm Rochelle. Yeah. Her loyal sidekick. And you know, white best friend.
SPEAKER_02There's that. We get to have white best friends. That's the other thing.
SPEAKER_04Well, no, but like, that's not very cool though. Like, because why would you have a white best friend when you could have a black best friend?
SPEAKER_02Do you know what else they accuse Stephen A. Smith of?
SPEAKER_04No what?
SPEAKER_02Anyways. I could go all day with this, but I'm not. But I am gonna talk to our guests about this because wait, we didn't introduce our our super duper producer, who's McCambo. Who's here? I yeah, but it was a little mess up. Yeah, it's it wasn't a big one. You didn't Stephen Smith the show. Whoa. That's a new thing. Stephen Smith. Yeah, it's it's a verb now. Yeah, but I I actually um so wait, let's can we introduce one or two? He's your collie. Why don't you introduce him? Oh, he's your collie. Oh, I bet he was your professor. I never had Kyle Moody's.
SPEAKER_04You never took a Kyle Moody class? No. I would have been in Kyle Moody's room my entire career if I were an undergraduate.
SPEAKER_02I actually didn't meet Kyle until like my last year. Oh yeah. It was in the it was in your calm office place down there on the first floor.
SPEAKER_04Oh, the the main office.
SPEAKER_02The main office. Well, that's what that's when you technically decide. But I have attended two of Kyle Moody's graduate program uh intro thingies.
SPEAKER_00So our webinars, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Webinars, yeah. Webinar.
SPEAKER_04Yes. That's what it's called. It's called a webinar. All right, so today, on the short of it, look at how much I get to talk. Uh my colleague and my hero, Kyle Moody.
SPEAKER_03The man, the myth, the legend. That is correct. And somewhere else, there's me.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so thank you all very much for having me on the podcast. Wow, I've never had an introduction like that. Never. I don't think I'll ever get one like that again. So I'm soaking this in. I just want to let you know that.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. Do it, do it. Um, before I ask you about the things that drive me crazy with social media and marketing and all that good stuff. Oh boy. Yeah. Um, you two um share some time together this week. We had so much. Yeah, where did you go? Cleveland! Podcast camp.
SPEAKER_04Podcamp. Yeah, podcamp, yeah, Cleveland. Podcamp, Cleveland Podcamp. Cleveland, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can see some of the video or the photos that are uh swinging over here, but uh we did the higher ed podcon, uh, the second iteration of it in Cleveland this year. Uh, thanks to our president at Fitchburg State. Thank you, Donna. Yeah, thank you very much for shuttling us to Cleveland. And uh we learned about podcasting, we learned about storytelling, we learned about the fundamentals of taking stories and committing them to the audio medium so that it can benefit people from administrators to professors to students. How are we doing so far? We're doing. No, I mean us. Like, oh no, this is this is phenomenal. Y'all are human, you all have a great rapport. Everything's going um according to plan, if there is a plan.
SPEAKER_02Because I I need you to stop us when we're not adhering to podcast.
SPEAKER_00Oh, don't make me go to work right now. That's not for two more weeks, okay? Seriously.
SPEAKER_02Um so tell our audience what you teach, what your background is. Of course, I know it, but you know, get introduce yourself.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Um my name is Kyle Moody. I'm a professor. You have a camera over there. I have a camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's me. Oh, that's me. Yeah. Okay. And that's you behind you. Look at you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, whoa! Kyle's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00This is my nightmare. So my name is Kyle Moody. I'm a professor of communications media at Fitchburg State University. I get to teach social media, I get to teach the history of television courses, I get to teach new media and design courses, and I'm also the chair of our newly named Masters of Digital Media program. So I oversee a lot of things at the university. But one of the things that I am most driven by is taking my history of working in media. So I have a background in radio, uh, non-com. Um I worked in public radio for NPR for a bit before I transitioned to teaching about social media.
SPEAKER_02Um I'm not going to shame you for dropping NPR on our podcast. Um I'm kidding. NPR is pretty freaking cool. Yeah, I know. You know why? Because it's like I so I worked at WGBH for 25 years. Like yeah. And every staff meeting began like this. So I was listening to NPR last night and I heard um a commentary about blah blah blah blah. Whoa, which is what I would do when people would mention that. So, but anyways, I mean we we we can start with public media because um unless your head has been you know underwater for the last year, there's been an assault and um a victory of killing public media in our country. And um why, you know, why is this does it does that scare you? The does the attack on public media, which has been very successful by this administration, and the future of what we are free media, uh unbiased media, because whether you like it or not, public media is still the most neutrally balanced media that is out there. What how how do you kind of like tell young students how to be excited about something that may not be here very long?
SPEAKER_00How many young students are actually excited about NPR though? I don't know that many that are excited about it. But the groundswell of it is when you're looking for something real and something true. And at any point, we're all bombarded by advertising. We're surrounded by it on a regular basis. If advertisers could reach into our cerebellum at night and insert advertisements while we're dreaming into our subconsciousness, they would, but they can't. And so thankfully, whenever I'm tired of scrolling through social media, whenever I'm done with Instagram, I put on NPR, I put on public media. Um, one of my other hats that I wear is I'm a member of the board of directors at FA TV, Fitchburg Access Television. And so we work constantly to make sure that there's community news and community programming that's there for the people of North Central Massachusetts. So for me, yes, I'm to answer your question, yes, it's frightening, but also there's going to be a swing in the other direction. When I teach history of TV, we say that there's always a push by advertising to try to crowd up public media. Public always swings back. We're gonna see a big pushback from people that are listening to public media, that are consuming it. We need this much more than whenever we need Stephen A. Smith on ESPN on first take, offering something that's gonna push Jalen Brown to Philly. Sorry, still upset.
SPEAKER_03I still watch basketball and I'm upset about it.
SPEAKER_00No, it's really bad. I had to explain to my kids why daddy was crying at the dinner table whenever the news broke, okay? It's bad. And I blame you, Stephen A. Cite your sources. Still, we're we're here now and we we see this advocacy for public media, we see an advocacy for outgrowth of actual real storytelling. So much of what else we've seen over the time has become modified. It's fake. It's something that doesn't excite people so much. But what form that public media is gonna take is of real interest to me because I don't know what it's gonna look like.
SPEAKER_02You know, the I mean, obviously, the short of it we talk to filmmakers, content creators, um but social media and marketing is uh as important to the filmmaking process as is making the film. Because if no one watches you, what are you doing? You know, you might as well just hand your phone. Speaking of phone, I heard my phone ringing in the other room. Sorry. Um but um so talk about that a bit. Why why do filmmakers need to know and understand the importance of social media marketing their products?
SPEAKER_00I mean, we've seen that a little bit in 2026 from specific commercial filmmakers. The success of A24's Backrooms and uh Obsession featuring Kane Parsons and Curry Barker, respectively, really illustrates the influence of YouTube as a medium for experimentation and growth. Um consequently, Instagram is a place where if you are a young actor or performing artist, you need to have a body of people who are more likely going to show up for your film and for your work because it's a way of sourcing and collecting data about what is popular within uh specific demographics. But what you're also going to see is a level of experimentation that you can't always get in the $100 million plus blockbusters that had plagued the industry, and I'm gonna use plagued in a strong way here, over the past 25 plus years in here. And to me, that level of experimentation is where things get really exciting. And social media gives you a place to find a niche audience. You want to create a story about a liminal space in which things aparate and suddenly appear, you can go and do that. And then a studio will see that there's a population of people hungry for your style of storytelling, and they will give you, in some ways, a check to go out and do this. Curry Barker, post-obsession becoming the highest grossing box office for a horror movie ever. Now has a $20 million blank check to go out and make whatever he wants. And that's exciting. He looks like it. He also made the latest uh Weezer music video, which we and I can talk about the. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Look up, yeah, look up CEO sometime. Or don't song. All right. I'm not here to be an old man yelling about Weezer. That's a later podcast right there, but will also be produced by Sam. But one of the things that I think is really exciting about social media is a way that you can find things that are based on your niche interests. The downside of it, what you're probably gonna yell at me about, is how that focus on advertising and micro-advertising and micro-targeting sometimes makes it feel like a less in organic space. And that's the space that you have to navigate. And that's one of the things that I try to teach in my intro to social media class. Uh, specifically my Calm 2825 social media public relations and advertising class, where we're trying to talk about actually sounding like a human being. It's really hard on social media whenever you're trying to fit within the algo. And so, how do you do that too? I'm a middle-aged man that just said algo. Please stop the pod.
SPEAKER_06Stop the pod.
SPEAKER_04Hashtag algo.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna talk about that every week.
SPEAKER_06Algo. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02How are we doing with the algo, Sam? Um so can social media and marketing of a film make or break a film?
SPEAKER_00I think it has, and I think it will continue to do it, particularly for independent filmmakers that are looking for a way to break through. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Raise your hand. Oh, yeah, me.
SPEAKER_00Documentary filmmakers.
SPEAKER_04It's too late for me.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no. I think that there's a place for anybody. If you have an exciting voice and you can credibly put together a package on social, you can break through in an interesting way. We've mentioned Kane Parsons, uh, the creator of Backrooms. He's not the first person to do it, but he's the most successful one to do it by far. Same thing with Curry Barker. Uh, to a lesser extent, the same is true of Jordan Peel, who uh was able to take his audience fervor for Key and Peel and then turn it himself into the most exciting horror filmmaker in years. I'm still waiting on his fourth feature. Yes, yes. I think we were just talking about it in Cleveland. Like, what's it gonna be? We don't know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. You should have been in Cleveland. It was amazing.
SPEAKER_02It was a fantastic time. It was, it was. Um, I so for me, it's always tricky what to put out of your film, and this, and I'm asking this for you because this is what you're gonna have to be dealing with very, very soon. Um what to put out there, when to put it out. Like these are I know that these are the questions that content creators and filmmakers really want to know. Like, what is too much, what is too little, what time of day? Because all of this, I I know some of these answers, but um, you know, is is there a formula that is successful when it comes to marketing independent content?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question, and I would like you all to take my classes at Finchford State University. But for this right here, what I would say is it has to be a human touch. I think one of the things that I'm more interested in is a term that uh Gary Vaynerchuk, we're gonna call him Gary V, talks about is this idea of sawdust. And sawdust is when you're making something, you have typically in a workshop sawdust, things that are left over. Well, in the filmmaking process, you typically have things like bloopers, things like that, things that you've tacked on to the end of a film or you put together as special features. Sometimes those special features become so popular, they become a selling point of the film itself. That gets passed around in social media for these different films, and that becomes a major selling point. So any filmmaker should not just be filming the movie, they should also be filming the process of making a movie. And we learned this 20 years ago. Whenever we were making the movie, which I will not name, we also had the foresight to go and create a special feature for it, which was a little bonus making up. It was a little 48-hour movie festival thing.
SPEAKER_03Wait, you didn't show me that.
SPEAKER_00Of course I'm not going to. Oh my god! It's hilarious. It's on a DVD.
SPEAKER_04We need that for the podcast. Yeah, we need to show the clip.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. But now the mystery is also gonna drive it. So that's gonna drive traffic, too. I'm sure people are gonna be like, what is this thing? Let's look it up, find it.
SPEAKER_03We're gonna have our whole audience looking for this movie and we're eventually going to find it. You won't be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02Whoever finds Kyle Moody's 48-hour movie and sends it to us, we will fly you to the studio. Fly you to the studio?
SPEAKER_00What? At like the Fitchburg Municipal Airport?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Sure, why not?
SPEAKER_00You might die on the way here, okay? Find Worcester then. You might die on the way over here. But but in all seriousness, like just the thought of putting it together made it a special feature that was something that we could then, if if we were to do it today, we would obviously polish it up based on much more than what you saw, but we would put it as something that people would want to see to create more and more importantly, the social behind social media. That's the thing that's most important. Are you a person with an idea? Are you a person that's going to get back behind a microphone, share your idea, talk about the process, give some insight into it? That's also important for creators of all different types. Um Mention being middle-aged. I'm looking more at health and wellness influencers right now. Part of what I did when I was looking at health and wellness influencers was on Those Who Conspire, which was a podcast that I ran with Zach Hightower. Samantha, listen to every episode.
SPEAKER_03It was during my Stardew Valley hyperfixation, and I low-key listened to it for like 12 hours. It was a little ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00You high-key listened to it three times because that's what you told me. Okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right. Moving on. No cap on there. So yeah, I'm making you die inside whenever I say that. But when we put these uh pieces of sawdust together, we went behind the process and we started to put this uh into specific language. We were really focused on making it a human experience. That's one of the reasons I love coming on the short of it is this is a fun, human-centered, thoughtful experience that is gonna get passed around the algo and it's gonna get like cut up in other ways, but it's gonna show that Tony, you and Rochelle, and to a lesser extent Samantha have a way of talking with people here. And the lesser extent is just because you're learning as you're doing this.
SPEAKER_03And I'm standardly very quiet on the podcast.
SPEAKER_04Indeed. Indeed. Well, so what if you hate social media? Yeah, you gotta get over that. But you're a filmmaker and you make films, and but and and and then you're like, it does it really matter because it's a short film, no one cares except maybe the people who are gonna promote me. Um, and it's gonna go to film festivals. Why put it on social media?
SPEAKER_00I'm not saying put the film on social media.
SPEAKER_04No, but like why even promote it on social media?
SPEAKER_00Why Where else are you going to do it? What other avenues do you have? Festivals, that's it. But that's the thing. The opportunities that we had in traditional media markets is shrinking. Tony's question about what's happening in public media is also reflective of what's happening in media in general. We were becoming decentralized, we're becoming spread out, we're becoming fragmented. Social media as a place for us to connect is vitally important. And we can do micro-targeting based on your uh subject. So let's say that you have a film that is focused on the end of the world because everybody's addicted to social media, which was actually the no lie, that's the plot of the movie that we're talking about from 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_03He's not lying, and that's the crazy part.
SPEAKER_00It was great. Oh, we were visionaries, okay? We were amazing when we made this, okay? When we did that, if we thought about it, we could have done micro-targeting. We could have gone over past people on MySpace, because that was when we made it, and that was a big thing. Yeah, we would have been in everybody's top eight of their own.
SPEAKER_02Someone is out there Googling MySpace right now and doing this. Um, there's Friendster kids. Oh, Friendster, yes.
SPEAKER_00And GeoCities.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. He is indeed middle-aged. Who would have guessed? There's a lot, I you you mentioned kind of like, you know, the million-dollar studios, with and they are just crumbling at their feet right now because everybody is learning how to work around them. But we're also seeing that in terms of broadcast media with the conglomerates like Fox and Paramount and Disney and which I think owns both of those. And um Disney owns everything. But how it's also affecting, you know, how news and information is being disseminated because it's all entertainment now.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, and people have to now produce and do what they can to not have their license. Like I think ABC News is suing the FCC right now about um tons of licensings, but you know, you have you get to influence a lot of young creatives and and some of those people are gonna be journalists. I I hope so, because we still need real journalism out there. What do you say to them? Like what you know, how how does one become um excited about becoming, you know, getting into the journalistic field when we see everything that's happening in spite of some really, really good, smart people out there?
SPEAKER_00I think that that's a difficult conversation to have because if you're wanting to go into something with job security, if you want to go into a place where you won't be attacked by the most powerful man alive, journalism is not that place right now. But what is exciting is you get to craft your own lane and you get to make your own way. And to me, that's always been the case for journalism by the people and for the people. Would you rather have an algorithm dictated to you by Mark Zuckerberg telling you what you should focus on every day, or would you rather look at a local newspaper or listen to local commentariat that has an actual investment in your own community? To me, that investment in that human capital is more valuable than anything that's passed around, sorry, the algo every single time.
SPEAKER_02I'm keeping track of how many times you say after you're talking about. Oh no, no, no, yeah, no.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna hit my age soon, which I don't want to talk about that. All right. We're gonna get there. But but in all seriousness, if we don't also take a step and say, this is a vital art form, it's important. There are, there's gonna be a meeting tomorrow at FA TV that's gonna talk about how advocacy for local community journalism is important, especially in north central Massachusetts. Right now, we're in the middle of a news desert. I think the Fitchburg uh Sentinel Enterprise only has two full-time staff reporters.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the Lemonster one has like one.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and that's if you're lucky. Yeah, those are three people that are covering a massive region. You're looking at about a hundred thousand people that are being served by three.
SPEAKER_02Right, wow. Right. And, you know, I mean, shout out to apps like Newsbreak and um Mass Live, and I think that they do their best to try and you know hit all of these smaller um towns, but you know, for for a place like Fitchburg State, I I think that it is like one of those hidden gems in this area. And and people don't know about it. And yes, there's a huge like, oh, I want to be a filmmaker and I'm gonna make the best horror film ever because that's all I ever read from students' uh scripts when I was there. Nobody did anything else, but but not as much in documentary and journalism work, right? Um how how can you two start like, you know, advocating on behalf of that? Because once we lose this idea that the truth needs to be shared for the people, by the people, then it it's I mean, it's already somewhat of a free-for-all, but what are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_00Well, to me, this is one of the reasons I wanted to come on today was to talk about how skill sets that are gonna cross-pollinate for different industries. William Freakin got his start in journalism and then brought those skills over to make one of the best horror movies of all time, The Exorcist. Somebody needs to tell those students that they need to understand journalism and reportage and being able to take ideas and then take them from one medium to another, just like Hemingway did as a journalist, who then was able to take the teletype and then bring his ideas over to it. Sorry, the telegraph, he used to teletype later, whatever. Not important. And then was able to create things like For Whom the Bell Tolls, and then all of a sudden the sun also rises, things that are vital to Western literature. So having students go in and have a variety of experiences, just like I've had a variety of experiences, helps me understand new ways of storytelling within different media. To me, that would be what I would tell to any young student, but also any student of any stripe whatsoever. Don't just get bogged down in one thing. I also have a background in video games. I taught video game journalism at the University of Iowa, which was video game journalism.
SPEAKER_02Yep. That sounds like an oxymoron. Oh no, no, no. It's actually sure.
SPEAKER_00It's actually reporting on a multi-billion dollar industry that typically has treated its employees terribly. It also looks at previews of upcoming games, but also talks about the making of it too. And the conditions that are surrounding these games have come under such scrutiny in recent years that we've seen an elimination of what we're calling crunch time. We've seen a push to for these workers to unionize. We're putting um people to look at this industry that they typically say is, oh, this is just a place where magic and whimsy comes out of. And they're like, no, these are people that are working 80 hours a week, often not seeing their families when these games are shipping. These are people that are being attacked by people, which in the wake of Gamergate sets us up for understanding how social media commentary would then impact news and politics in here. I know we can't get political, but it's important to talk about how that's. So basically, the lessons behind all of this are actually video game journalism is often the canary in the coal mine for where the culture is going to go. And I found that to be really enlightening. And I brought that to Fitchburg State, and I found it to be really useful as I've gone through the ranks of education. So to me, it's about getting people to understand how these work.
