Ep 10: The Case for Optimism: What Schools, Parents, and Students Need Now

In a world filled with uncertainty, how do we cultivate genuine optimism when the future feels unclear? From political division and distrust of social media to groundbreaking research and a $4 million global initiative, we explore what hope actually looks like in schools, classrooms, and homes today.

Join us for a conversation that highlights:

• Why optimism is not just a mindset but a skill worth building in young people
• How educators and parents can actively build optimism into daily practice
• What is being done globally to reimagine a hopeful future -- and what we can learn from it

Share your questions, thoughts, or ideas with us at educationevolvedpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Education Evolved Podcast, hosted by Hakaday Head of School, Dr. Laura Leathers and Laura Day, Director of Innovation and Collaboration at Hakaday. Together, they explore the future of education and how we make it happen.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome to the Education Evolved Podcast, where we talk about all things of interest to us as educators in today's world. And I'm really excited for today's episode. Today we're going to talk about optimism and what that means, how we remain optimistic. Should we be optimistic? What should we be optimistic about as the world around us continues to change and is filled with uncertainty? And how do we create an optimistic mindset in our students? So welcome, Laura.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Hello, that's awesome. I want to ask you a question to get started, and all of you can answer this your at home with us. But um, on a scale of one to ten, how optimistic are you overall as a human?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

I'll go five. Okay. I think I would like to be more optimistic than I am, but I think the way that my brain works is I'm always looking for what could happen and what could go wrong. And part of that is either my the way my brain works and then I gravitated towards this job, or this job has made me focus more on the things that could go wrong and trying to prevent them from happening. Interesting. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I'm a nine to a nine and a half. I'm um wildly optimistic to a fault in a sense that I can't let like when people are negative about anything, I'm like, uh really? I feel like I see that this can happen. So um I'm a little extreme, but um, that's good that I'm in this episode because I'm from the extreme side of optimism.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Aaron Powell And I think whenever we do an episode and we talk about topics, we usually um fall on slightly different ends of whatever spectrum we're talking about, and I think that's one of the reasons why we work so well together and balance each other out. Hooray! Hope and optimism. So starting um from a place of optimism in today's world, how would you describe the current situation in our world? What's going on, what's happening, how are people seeing things? Um, why does that make optimism so important?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Here's what I think is going on. I think what you hear people say on a day-to-day basis is like, it's never been this divided, the country's never been so hard, the world has never been so daunting. And it's interesting, there's um a professional development person at an organization that always says, it's so funny people say that, it's like they can't remember history. We actually had a civil war as a country and completely broke in half. Um, so I think getting a little more perspective is important, but also I think there is some mistrust. There's a bunch of data that's out there about how each um like Republicans see Democrats or Democrats see Republicans, or how young people see government and how they what they believe in with elected officials. And it's pretty dim. Um, most young people don't have a lot of faith in the government. Um, but I also think that that's coupling with how in which they're getting their news. And the news is coming from influencers and algorithms in social media are geared to support you, to put you in an echo chamber, or to completely shock you because you're not gonna hit the like button and you're not gonna retweet unless you're shocked or it agrees with you. And so there's no reason to show anything moderate or not extreme. And so you have distrust in the government, you have the way in which different political parties are seeing each other in kind of pretty intense ways, you have social media that's like targeting kids to like shock them and make them think things are horrible, or totally agree with them. So you have all of these forces playing on our young people that are watching things that are, you know, pretty extreme. And they're the rapidness of what they learn about what's happening in the world, like in a second, you learn about what's happening in a foreign country, you know everything. And I think dump all of that on to young people, and that is tough. Like, again, back to Encyclopedia Britannica, this is where we got a lot of our information, and now that's not the case. And so I think that contributes to a lot of young people being wary of the future and weary of the situation. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 4:36

I I agree with that a hundred percent. I think you you named something that I find very interesting, which is just the rapid pace at which we get information. Um, if there's if something happens, our kids, our world knows about it instantly because of social media, because of um our smartphones and the information we're given all day long. Things that we never would have heard of or might have heard of um by reading the Sunday newspaper now are on your desktop within five seconds of them happening, which is just really interesting to think about. And then the other thing I wonder about with the world in the future is the whole uncertainty bucket related to AI and technology and what we're hearing about jobs, and how is that also affecting our um young kids today or our high school students and the next generation? How do they maintain optimism at a time where they're hearing all the entry-level jobs are going to be taken by AI, um, you're gonna have a harder time getting work, there's gonna be no need for this profession or that profession. And how do you stay positive and keep moving forward when everything seems doom and gloom and that there's no path forward?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

That's such a good point. It's I think as humans as a species, we operate well when things are black and white and when things have an answer and when you can check a box. I think it's why scantrons are so popular. It's like I checked A and A is right. The world, because of every factor, all the factors we just shared, is becoming more and more gray. Why do you think people need to function in a black and white situation? But really, how do you get people to get more into the gray and be kind of comfortable with ambiguity?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Right? I think that's you nailed it with that last part, is how do you get comfortable being uncomfortable? Here at school, as we think about one about our girls and our students, um, school is really designed in a lot of ways to get the right answer and not to sit in the gray or deal with the gray. Like I did my worksheet, or my answer is right. I did this project, is my answer right? Um so I think that we've trained our students, we've trained ourselves, the world has trained us to be comfortable with that. It's like a yes or no, it's like a binary situation, your answer is right or your answer is wrong. And I think that as complex, as problems become more complex and as we have additional information, it's going to be harder and harder to have something that's completely right or completely wrong. Um interestingly, I've thought about this a lot over the past few years. I think teachers as a profession enjoy the cyclical nature of the school year and that predictability and that certainty that comes with working at a school. You know, like the the second week in September, I always do chapter two in our social studies textbook. Right. Oh, the week before our spring break, we walk we finish reading this book and then we watch the movie the last day before break. There's something about a predictable cadence that comforts teachers and comforts students. And I think that getting comfortable, being uncomfortable is definitely a skill we haven't necessarily exercised recently. I think COVID taught us a lot about being uncomfortable and functioning in uncertain times. But as soon as things went back to quote unquote normal, everyone wanted to throw everything we learned and all of that out of the window. And it was just like, okay, good, now we can go back to the way we were doing things for the 20 years before 2020.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, that's true. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

What do you think? Um has optimistic has optimism always been important? Is it increasing in importance as the world continues to evolve? What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Well, as a 9.5 on the scale, please take that into consideration as I'm talking. I think that optimism has always been a key piece to being a successful person. And I think I say that in that if you believe that things are gonna be okay, or you believe if you try something and it doesn't work, like if you can keep like glass half full, I think you tend to have a higher success rate. And I'm not speaking about that because I'm a 9.5. I just watch a lot of people who there are there are two ways you can react to something. There are two ways a student can react to a problem. Like, okay, today we're gonna talk about um melting ice caps in this class. You have one kid who's like, oh, there's nothing we can do about it. And you have one kid that's like, oh, I saw something and like has hope. I think igniting that is so critical that there is at least hope inside our young people. And I think it really matters now because AI is growing, and we say this all the time, and it's like it feels like a like a beating a dead horse in a sense, but it's I think AI is growing so rapidly that we have to continue to examine what does it mean to be human and what are the human qualities that we need and we need to be pouring into. And I think if you can go into an uncertain future as it's being portrayed with AI as a massive tool, being optimistic and having hope is gonna be critical. And I believe now it's massively important.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

I would agree with that. I would add one other thing. I think coupled with optimism and hope and the tools that we have, we really need to double down on purpose, which is something we talk about a lot. And how do you know what you're what you're trying to do in the world? And then how do you use the tools that are available and your positive mindset to go out there, brainstorm ideas, not give up and hope and work towards a better future?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, it's like um I'm pulling a funny kind of example, but WD-40, the stuff you spray on squeaky thinks. The reason it has that name is because it took 40 times to get to the product. And so they had 39 products prior to WD-40 being the actual solve. And that means there were 39 times that those designers had to be like optimistic and believe, you know what, on the 40th time, we're actually going to crack the code to make sure that your door doesn't squeak anymore. And I think that kind of you call it what you want, I call it optimism. But that kind of optimism in that design room got to WD 40, not to WD-11 and give up. And we have to have that.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Well, I think it's the same thing you were just saying about optimism as you approach a problem. How do you keep showing up with the willingness to brainstorm new solutions and create a path forward? I think that's very true. Um, we've had a few of our faculty members looking at this concept. Um, can you talk a little bit about that and what that looks what that has looked like here at Hakkadae?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, we have um two faculty members who are actually talking to a group of middle schoolers and a group of uh high schoolers. And when they talk to them, they ask them what they think about the future and how do they feel about the future. And I think as a like inadvertent finding, they realize that there's an actual huge difference. The middle schoolers have hope. Um, all of the ones so far that they've talked to are hopeful, um, have kind of a bit of an idealistic view. And then as you start to talk to juniors in high school, they have a real kind of pessimistic view of the future. Um, many of their view, the views of AI is the environmental concerns. That's where they go first. Nothing about the optimism of the tool, but straight to what they're worried about and what they're scared about. So maybe that's developmentally appropriate. I'm not sure. But it's interesting that a large amount of people, high schoolers they talk to, and this is a small sample set, but it's probably indicative of many more. Large amount of hot high school students are nervous and a little pessimistic. And the middle schoolers are more hopeful. It's kind of interesting. That is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

I wonder what that what that is, why that is.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I know. And and I don't know if the high schoolers are exposed more or they were exposed longer to social media and the forces that are working on them. Um but it is an interesting finding, and I know they're gonna continue to look at that, and maybe at some point we can talk more about that on one of our podcasts.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

It's also interesting thinking about what maybe as you get older you feel like there are more things out in the world that you can't control. And that I'm thinking about like our juniors, and um, as you start to apply to colleges and you start to put yourself out there a little more, does that um kind of in some ways dampen your optimism and your hope for the future when when you realize that more factors and more parts of your life are outside of your control?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I don't know. That's probably right. Yeah. Um, so let's bring it back to be helpful to our teachers and parents out there that listen. What do you think is a way you can build optimism either into parenting or into classroom? So say you're a five or a three on the optimism scale as an adult, and now you're challenged with bringing optimism intentionally into your classroom or into your parenting when it might not be your natural go-to. I'm like the most annoying parent on the planet optimistically. What does that look like? It looks like I don't normally allow lots of people or anyone in my house around me when anything's like, well, we have to I'm like, and we could be excited about the fact that it's like it it's probably tough to live with, but um, I stick to my guns. But what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 14:02

I think that for me, I always go to the worst case scenario first, and second and third, and fourth, and fifth, probably. But it's that willingness to go to, but what if something different happens? Like what if we could use AI for good to solve a lot of these big problems and not just focus on the negative environmental impact that um AI and data centers have on the area where they're built? What if we could not just stop at a pessimistic outcome and give up? But how do we keep going back to the problem and think about you know, I think this is the most exciting thing about it is our girls, our students, our children are the ones that get to build the world of the future. Right. And how do we continue to communicate the importance of that? And that you don't just have to sit there passively and just get whatever's left over 25 years from now. But if you make changes and you think about things differently now, you can really change the trajectory of things. And how do we continue to pour into that and continue to always highlight that and look for examples of that and force um either our students or our own kids to go past all the pessimistic outcomes, if if that's how they're wired, to the optimistic solutions, to the but what if something really great happened? But what if all those bad things didn't happen and it turned out okay?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

What about what about you?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

What's like training yourself to do that? I don't have to train myself, I'm a 9.5. But many people aren't.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

I have to train you to be a little more realistic sometimes. Okay, calm down.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Exactly. And that's all right. Yeah. But like if you're not a 9.5 and you're a parent or you're a teacher, I think it's trying to train yourself or catch yourself. Like if somebody's like, oh, that's not possible, pause for a minute and then try to reframe it and try to see if you can't push that student or your child one step further. Like, you know, they give up because every time they open this drawer, it falls and breaks or something. Like, well, okay, what what else could we do? How could we, how could we make that better? How could, you know, like framing it differently in the moment as a teacher or as a parent may not come naturally to a five on the optimistic scale. But if you can remember how important it is that we're building optimistic young people, and that if we remember that they're all feeling pessimistic, that us being pessimistic right along with them is probably not the way feels valuable.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, no, I agree. I think about our lower school outcomes a little bit when we talk about wonder agency, collaboration, and resilience. And to me, this ties a lot to resilience, right? How do you keep working through things when they're hard or uncertain and not give up?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

And I'll like go back to sports again as someone who is a college athlete. Um I have such a different view watching sporting events with all those around me. Also, again, 9.5. But as an athlete, if especially at a high level, you always have to believe you can win. So, like if you are watching everybody's March Madness is coming up, and in your, or maybe now that we've released this, it has already happened. Um, but basketball is like a big one, right? You're down by 10 points and there's literally like a minute left. As an athlete, you actually can't believe you're gonna lose. You have to sit there and think, okay, we could hit three threes, we could press this whole time. Like, I think somehow athletics, and there are other places, but athletics trains you in the moment over and over again. And that one time you win from a 10-point deficit with 30 seconds left, you're like, okay, it can happen. Yeah. And you're less likely to be like, oh, it's over.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Well, that's what you just you said it in your answer or in your response is the training part. How do you keep training that muscle? Your muscle doesn't need training because you're always looking at the bright side. But for someone like me or for other people, how do you continue to think through solutions, think of what could happen through an optimistic lens and keep practicing that, not just stop and be like, well, it's never gonna work. I give up.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

Very good. Um, what are some cool things you've seen in this space around optimism? Is anyone working on this, trying to solve it? Does anyone else think this is a real thing and something we should be discussing?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yes. Throwback to X Prize. If you want to go see that episode, go check um the rest of our episodes where I talk about my visit to a place where they put millions and millions of dollars behind issues that need to be solved in our world. And they just got a$4 million prize approved for someone to make a 30-second movie trailer about an optimistic future. Because there's a lot of talk from people who are into the future and leaning into this like kind of tech revolution that the problem is that young people do not see the optimistic side of the future. We we remember robots taking over, we remember, you know, monkey or gorillas coming after you, or like, you know, it's there's barely a fun, exciting future movie. Everything that gets portrayed is really scary. And so if that's all you're getting, then of course you're scared. Of course, this is really frightening. So I think it's pretty cool that they just put this challenge out for somebody to make that, and then you're gonna have all these people making them. So you have like kind of created an ecosystem of all these people making these optimistic trailers, and then how do you use those or how do you leverage those to make sure they're books and movies and TV shows that are actually trending that direction? And that's a really big chunk out of this problem and getting people to head that way. Um, the other thing I thought about with optimism is a lot of people listen to sad music when they're sad. Um, and they which is like kind of bad because you like are just laying in the sadness that you're already in and nothing's getting better. And there's um research that shows that it's much better to listen to sad music when you're happy because it doesn't have any sort of negative effect on you. And so I just thought that was kind of an interesting thing to think about when we think about optimism and we think about the power of music as well. Um, if you're someone who gravitates to sad music all the time, right? And then you see this dystopian future movies, like you're there's not a lot of surrounding art and music around you that's pushing you in a positive way. And so I just think we have to be thoughtful about the things that we're consuming and that our kids are consuming because it can go down a bad road if it's all sad and all scary.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Which is interesting you say that because that makes me think more about what you started with were the social media algorithms and what we consume and just how isolating that can make us as you think about oh, I'm listening to sad music and I'm watching these kind of sad videos, and I'm kind of sad myself, and then I click on something that's also sad, and then the algorithm feeds me more sadness and doom and gloom, um doomsday scenarios, and then I'm engaging with them, and then it continues to feed that. So I think the the piece about optimism is a really good, it's a really good question. How do we break those cycles? How do we make sure that we're seeing um kind of everything that's out there and not just a single curated lane of doom and gloom?

SPEAKER_01 21:25

And if at home, like I have had this happen in my own home, like where your child says, Oh, I'm not using AI, it's ruining the world. I make a habit of every so often saying, Hey, you know what I read today? There was this unbelievable breakthrough around this disease using this AI platform, because they were able to crunch all this data and come up with like a solve for a disease that no one has ever found. But is are people saying that to kids? You know what I'm saying? Are you saying, are we intentionally telling I'm not saying there's not bad parts, believe me. No. There is bad stuff and there's bad things in the AI world. But also like the the chance of Of medical like revolutions are huge. And so I just think balance it. You know, make sure you're balancing that intentionally.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

And I think that's part of our job as educators, as parents, as people working with young people, is to continue to put positive um outcomes and solutions in front of young people today. To show them like, oh, look what was just solved using AI or using this new team of collaborators. Look at this solution for this X Prize, a problem we never thought would be solved. Look, they just they did it and now they're doing X, Y, and Z and it's out of this world. Um, how do we continue to elevate a lot of those good stories and a lot of the progress that's being made so that young people don't get sucked into that negativity? Because you know what it's like. If you're if you've had a rough day and you sit down and you're talking to someone who's also had a rough day, all of a sudden you're like, oh, now I feel five times worse. Oh, now I've kept talking, now I feel 10 times worse. And someone else joins the conversation and you get into a really heavy spot very quickly. Yeah. How do you break out of that sometimes and like flip the switch to have some optimism, to have some hope to get comfortable when things are uncertain and to chart a path forward?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah. Well, so we keep focusing focusing on optimism and hope, but do you think optimism should be an outcome? Like as schools continue or schools pop up, like should optimism be a named outcome?

SPEAKER_02 23:36

I would definitely put it on the short list.

unknown 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

I think that there are um, you know, we talk a lot about them. We talk about purpose, we talk about curiosity, we talk about wonder, we talk about lifelong learning. Um, I think optimism goes with them in that coupled with resilience, I think it's the path forward, especially as the world continues to evolve and change, and we're trying to get the next generation of problem solvers to solve really big, messy, complex problems and to be comfortable with solutions that aren't perfect. Optimism is definitely going to be a key player in that.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yeah, it's what do you think? It's like in the mix. I think so. Yeah, I don't know, like, would I go out on a limb and make it like my top one? I don't know, but like, is it built into kind of the like the sauce, if you will, of a successful kid? Yeah, I think if you can, if you can get hope or get optimism, like that's awesome. And a lot of people aren't wired that way. And I understand that. And so, and they don't ever have to be. You don't have to, you don't have to go, Dr. Laura Leathers, from a five to a nine. No. You can stay a five, but you can just be aware that you are a five. I am very much aware that I am a five. I'm very much aware I'm a nine and a half. It's it can be annoying.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

I think it's it doesn't necessarily have to change my the way I'm wired, but how do I make sure that I don't skew towards a four or a three and instead I'm striving to be a a six or a seven and make sure that I'm consuming information to paint the optimistic future as well to me and to those around me. I think that's important.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

I hear a lot of people all that like I am involved in lots of social impact efforts, and I hear a lot of people talk about things like, oh, the wildflower fires are just getting worse and it's just getting hotter, and it's all these things, and then it's I know I'm annoying, and so those of you that are in my life out there, I'm apologize. But like my first thing is like, oh, did you know that they're actually using satellites in space to uh know exactly when a fire is about to start and can put it out immediately, and that technology's coming in the next year? Like to me, it's annoying, but it also kind of frames it pretty quickly that like it's not like people can't sit around, people are gonna solve these things, and and we've gotta believe in it because that's who we are as people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Oh, it's who it's who we should strive to be as people. Great. Right? It's who we should aspire to be, or problem solvers, people who want to go out in the world, tackle these big messy problems, and come up with solutions. Yeah. I think that's that captivates it perfectly. Yeah. So um it's time for our fun question. Oh, it's fun time. What are you most optimistic about?

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Oh, well, everything.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Okay. What aren't you optimistic about?

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Yeah, maybe that should be the question. Not much. Um, what I will say, like in this conversation, what is being brought the most up for me in my head that I feel so excited about. I'm excited about two things. Well, well one, I'll start with the medical revolutions that are coming. I think that the fact that we have these large language models that can process the amount of data sets that would take a human being 10 years and now they're just getting unleashed. Now the protection of data is hard, so I think there's some barriers. I think in the next five years, we're gonna see some revolutionary breakthroughs in the medical field. Um, and as someone who probably will need a knee replacement, I'm looking for that to be on the top of the list because we've got to have a better solution. And like a colonoscopy, there's a lot of medical things that have got to change. That could improve. Um and so I am very optimistic. And I always say I gotta stay in really good shape for the next five years, and then like there's gonna be a lot of really cool things that I'm gonna have access to, and I am so hopeful for that. What about you?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

I'm going to I like your science answer, so thank you for that. I think I'm optimistic about the way that AI and technology is going to be able to change the work we can do outside of the medical field, other areas. Um I think there are a lot of big, messy problems out there that leveraging technology and working alongside of technology is going to level up what we're able to do. Um I am also optimistic about some of the pieces of our daily life that take a lot of time that AI and technology might help us um make a little easier and give us a little bit of um time back.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Aaron Ross Powell What percentage of you is excited and optimistic about flying cars?

SPEAKER_02 28:04

I very low. Very low. We we don't see eye to eye on the flying cars piece. It's possible. What's the other thing you're optimistic about? You said there were two things.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Is there something else? There is something else. Um I am optimistic about longevity. There's a lot of conversation about the hu humans with technology and everything that's going on. We will have the ability to live longer. Now there are plenty, I'm a 9.5 here. Okay. So I want to live forever. And I want to see it all, and I want to be in the mix, and I want to contribute, and I just want to be in it. And there's a lot of talk about um longevity and people living longer and healthier. Right. Like the thought of in my 80s and 90s being able to still hike in Colorado or things like that excites me because I love life and possibility. And um, I just think there's some really cool science that people are really working on and gonna crack. And I am in for the ride. Yeah, and you're flying car. I will be flying. I will be an early adopter.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

The um other thing I'll add as we talk about optimism for the future and what gives me hope is um some of the kids we get to work with every day. When you think about them and um their minds and their care and their excitement and the way that they think um is is really pretty exciting and powerful. And I think if we take the next generation of kids and um put them on the right path, we're we're gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

I could not agree more. I'm so glad you said that. I was sitting here thinking, that's like my day. I think maybe why I'm so optimistic is I deal with the students in the space of like, here's a problem, and then they come tell me how they're solving it. Like every day I have a new high school or middle schooler come find me and be like, hey, did you know I'm doing this thing? And I'm like, oh my goodness. Like we have a group in one of our classes that is trying to solve the problem of daycare for low-income families when they go to Parkland or Parkland Clinics because like if you're a single mom, which a lot of people under the poverty line are, what do you do with your kid if you're sick or you need preventative care? And there's not a lot of options. And what do you do with your kid if you have a two-year-old? Do you carry them into the procedure? Like, so there's a lot of barriers. And our students are charging into this problem in a way that is so cool. They're like, they're not, there's no no. Like, right, you know, people are trying to solve this and there's industry in it, and they like literally are contacting everyone they can get their hands on and talking to people and coming to find me like every day. And that is hopeful. That's that's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Like, that's it. Right. And how do you how do we educate the next generation of those kids? That's what we want to do. I think that's pretty exciting. Yes, it is. Well, thank you for talking today. Thank you all for listening. As always, you can send us your ideas, your thoughts, your feedback on this episode, ideas for future episodes at education evolved podcast at gmail.com.