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- [00:00]
A
Us today. I'm here with Benoit Lancelot and I know, I know you're thanks to your book. Now I know you're, you're very illustrious middle name Denizet Lewis Benoit. Why don't you. Let's start with an introduction. Why don't you introduce yourself to the people?
- [00:19]
B
Okay. Well, first of all, I am sick right now, so I'm going to do my best, but I'm here and I teach at Emerson College in Boston. Well, I'm half French. I grew up in San Francisco, went to school at Northwestern. Pretty quickly worked at a magazine for young gay men.
- [00:40]
A
Do you remember? I don't, but I do want to talk about it. We're gonna get into it. We're gonna get into the Michael story.
- [00:44]
B
Yeah, so. So I, I worked there when I was like 23, 24 and then quickly sort of realized I wanted to do long form magazine writing and have been doing that for various places and then the New York Times magazine since about 2002. Because I'm 50 now. So. Yeah, so that's. And then, and then I teach at Emerson and I live in Boston and my husband lives in Prague. So I'm sort of back and forth between those two places. And this is my fourth book, one I don't really count because it was like this collection from my 20s. That's terrible of like journalism when I was like 26 and thought I could have a collection out. And then I wrote a book about addiction where I followed eight different addicts. Then I wrote a book about dogs which was the most fun to do. Probably where I drove around the country with my lab who I was worried didn't like me very much and. But mostly like it was a book about sort of dogs and contemporary American life. And now I've written this book about how and why we change and then how and how we judge the change claims of others.
- [01:51]
A
Yeah. So that's mostly what we're going to be talking about today. Excuse me. We have a lot in common. Dogs, addiction, gay. We're both gay. I don't know if people could pick that up on your. By the fact that you have a husband or maybe just from your face.
- [02:06]
B
Oh, wow.
- [02:07]
A
Do you believe in gay face? Surely you believe in gay face. I don't think that you really have it. But I do believe in gay.
- [02:14]
B
Do I believe in gay face? Ish. There are many exceptions.
- [02:20]
A
Oh, absolutely. But I think the. I think my hit rate is pretty high. Like it is rare that I see that I'm like that person is Gay and they're not. I mean I miss a lot, right. Like I miss the straight looking gay people, but I think if someone looked like, like I can tell from the way a man claps or walks or if he is gay. I can't necessarily tell if he's straight, but I can tell if he's gay.
- [02:47]
B
Interesting.
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A
Women too, although women, it's, it's tougher because I think this is, this is controversial. To our friend Phoebe Malt Bobby, who's writing a book about her book is coming out next month about straight women. I think that all women are a little bit gay. Less so men.
- [03:01]
B
Well, I mean the science, you know, later in the book, I, I find it sort of interesting that the ex gay movement has sort of pivoted to gender and also pivoted to this like, fluidity. And they have a good amount. I mean the ex gay movement is absurd in, in many ways, in most ways. But they, they, they've, they're not, they've sort of wedded themselves to this idea that there is sexual fluidity. And they're sort of saying. All we're saying is that there's sexual fluidity. That's all we're saying. They've also pivoted to gender. We can talk about that.
- [03:35]
A
Yeah, but it is, I want it. Let's hold that. I want to get into that a bit. But first I want you to introduce the book. So it's a book about change. Give us the elevator pitch for the book.
- [03:48]
B
Benjamin. I just saw his comment. Thank you, Benjamin. So the elevator pitch. Okay, so it's about. I'm interested in two things. It's at the experience, what it feels like. New or changed person. So I'm interested in like intern. We rarely talk about doubt, but doubt is all over the place. The, the, the flame, often the, the, the fear, the excitement into the idea of like, what does it feel like to think of. And then equally I'm interested in ways, knee jerk political ways, the transformations of other people and whose do we disbelieve? And mostly I. Two, two reasons I wrote the book. One is, and I've sort of been around this question of change and identity my whole career. Been in the question when I was writing about addiction of like, who gets better, who doesn't what? Like what is the reason that someone gets better? You know, what are the factors, all that stuff. So I wrote, I was interested in that. It's also interested for me, like, would I get better? How would I get better? And then with Michael Glatz, who Went from. We can talk about him who went from very gay to straight and conservative and sort of flipped all of that. I watched that happen. He was a friend of mine and I. I really quickly got interested in both his experience of what he thought was happening and then all the ways that the rest of us reacted to his transformation and sort of cheered it on or poo pooed it or called him crazy and all that. And then his, his thing sort of predicted these last 10 years of tremendous identity shifting of politics, gender, faith, sexual orientation, less so sexual orientation actually. But all of these ways that we re. That we announce that we are changed, which is the most. The most of that since the 1970s, which was the last period of sort of, you know, take on a new identity, move to California, change your name, all of that. So really. And I've watched For the last 10 years all of this happen and I'm interested in sort of both in the human experience and then in sort of the political experience of that.
- [06:19]
A
Yeah, now is a. I was just thinking today about looks maxing. Have you followed this, this trend? I want to start a new trend which is looks minning, looks minimizing. I don't know if that will catch on as well. But looks maxing, that is a. That is a. It's a very physical transformation. But I think it's a sort of the end. The. The natural end of. Of sort of the self help optimization movement with things like Ozempic. There are these very. At this point, I don't know if
- [06:48]
B
I would loop it in self help with that. I mean, that feels slightly different than looks maxing. I mean, Explain. Well, I mean, I can't think of. I can't think of many people who would consider themselves self help who would look at looksmaxing as. As not sort of crazy and not really part of self help. But maybe. I don't know. I just. The folks who I know who sort of identify in that realm. I don't know if even the looks matchers would like use that phrase to.
- [07:16]
A
I don't think they would. I don't think they would. But it's. They would call it ascension. Ascension is the goal, which I think is. Is truly a form of sort of the greatest form of self help. Okay, so I want to start with a question from Ben Ryan. So Ben Ryan, he's the listener, he's a reporter himself. He's in the chat now and when I posted this on Substack, he had a question that I think really gets to the heart of the matter the heart of your book, which is, do you believe in the notion that we are born with stable personalities with certain facets that remain unchanging throughout life? Or do we have the capacity, through conscious effort or just passive evolution to become someone else over time?
- [07:53]
B
So this is fascinating because there's been. There have been a number of books in the last few years that have sort of been making the claim and some researchers in personality who've been making the claim that we can change our personalities. So that's sort of the headline, right, that. That we. That you read about. If you look closely and even the folks, once you talk to them will admit the changes. Even if you really try to change your personality, the changes are small. They are. They're not huge. Even if you're, like, working for three months or a year or longer to sort of change your personality. So I. I think what I found. We see it with Michael Glatz, who went from left to right. We see it with a lot of sort of people who shift their identities. Even people who have sort of mystical experiences or profound moments of. Of transformation that are hard to explain. Even with psychedelics, they might have a new perspective on what matters to them. So in that way, if we're calling that personality, then yes, but core personality traits tend to stay the same even through sort of big identity shifts.
- [09:10]
A
And you mean like big five personality traits? Like, what are they? Neuroticism, extraversion, extroversion. Yeah, I don't know the others
- [09:20]
B
because I'm sick. I can't think of them right now. Neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience. And I'm forgetting the last two, but yes. So those experiences really don't shift all that much, like, a little bit. And I. But I found this really interesting because if I looked at myself, one of the ways that I wanted to change, and I say this in the book, is that I wanted to be, like, much more connected to the people in my life. Like, I wanted to be a better friend. I wanted to be, like, more open, more vulnerable, less selfish. I wanted. That was like a real goal of mine that I've had over the last 10 years. And if you talk to most of my friends, they will say, actually, you have changed. You're less selfish. You're more willing to. So is that personality? I don't know, but that's a big shift for me. Yeah, yeah. But core personality, things that I am, you know, I don't. I don't know. So I think, to answer Ben's question, we. We can. We can shift with effort. But I'll tell you, most personality change is unintentional. It's aging. It's some medication that we act, react to in a weird way. It's. We go through life cycles. So personality does actually evolve in different ways, but it's usually not really out of our control. It's usually out of our control and we're not usually really good at like realizing that it's happening.
- [10:50]
A
Yeah, I thought a lot about this in the. So I know a lot of my social circle tends to be old people. I like to like, the best way to be my friend is to like get Social Security. I'm like very attracted to those people. Not sexually, but in terms of friendship. I really like old people. And because of that I'm meeting a lot of people in a stage of their life where they have frankly, low T. Right. So like my old neighbor who died. Horrible man, awful, racist, totally sexist. But he was still palatable to be around because his aggression had minimized because he was no longer this virile 20, 34 year old. I am sure I would have not been able to stand to be in the same room as that man. But in his mid-80s, the personality traits might be there, but they're muted, they're less aggressive. He's sitting in a chair all the time. And so, so my. Yeah, so my. The people I tend to surround myself tend to be people who through just like sheer force of age are. Have changed in some way.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah, and there's a real. I think we overplay. I just wrote a New York Times piece a couple weeks ago about this. We sort of overstate the ways that we're like driving the change bus. We tend to talk about change as this like really internal thing that like, we make a decision and then we go for it. And, and there's the expression like you can't change for other people. Well, like, news flash, we change for other people all the time. We change in community. We take on identities based on what's available on the identity menu. We take on identities because we need a new community. There are all kinds of reasons that we change. And oftentimes we're not aware of these things. Political identity changers are often like some of the least aware folks who will say, you know, and, and there's often truth to this. Right? Like my. They will say, well, I didn't change. Everyone around me went crazy. And obviously in the last 10 years
- [12:52]
A
there's been the left left me.
- [12:53]
B
Yes, Right. So that whole thing and and we can talk about more in this in depth, because I find it really fascinating. There is so. There's typically so much more underneath going on than just that. There's a need to belong. There's. I'm shamed by my group, and I need to find a new group. There's all kinds of, like, really emotional things that are going on underneath that that I think is really interesting. I'll say one more thing around that. You know, I. With all the ways that I try to change, like, I've just become my father, right? I've just become my father. Like, he wrote books about change. He. Like, we stand the same, you know, for people who.
- [13:39]
A
Who are less familiar with your story. Tell us a little bit about your dad.
- [13:43]
B
So my dad is Dennis Lewis, and he. So he married my mom. They lived in San Francisco. Uh, it's kind of both very progressive, sort of like San Francisco progressives. And they divorced when I was six. I spent two weeks at each place my dad went, was. Went through a lot of girlfriends.
- [14:09]
A
So in that way, you're not your dad exactly.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah, we joke about that. But so he. But, you know, in our compulsivity around sexual.
- [14:20]
A
Yeah, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that later.
- [14:23]
B
So that stuff is. Is pretty similar. So my dad was really. The year I was born, he. He was really interested in the Gurdjieff work. He was interested in a lot of different kinds of ways to sort of look at oneself and to observe oneself and to improve oneself. And so he worked with the philosopher Jacob Needleman. And mid-70s, he wrote these books or edited these books about this. Started teaching breathing and breath work, was really devoted to that. Taught it at Esalen, which is this retreat center out in California, which is so, so beautiful. And continued to. To do that, had students would teach workshops. And, you know, from a young age, he was like, trying to get me to sort of partake in this or to come and see him teach. And. And I never did because it's your dad and you, you know, you know, their blind spots and all that. And so. But he's really been interested in this question of, like, how do we change and is change changing, or is it, like, coming back to who we truly are and, like, discarding all of the false parts of ourselves? So he's been really interested in that. He's less interested in sort of the, like, political identity stuff that I'm really interested in. But we've had this similar thing. He married a Czech woman. I married a Czech man, this was. I mean, it's, you know, it's like, it's crazy. It's. It's just. It's like all of our similarities are very strange. And so, you know, for a while I was like, oh, my God, I'm becoming my dad. This is embarrassing. Right? Like, I don't. Like, I'm not driving the bus of my change here. I'm just like turning into my father. So. And then in recent years, I have sort of like, given into that and said, you know, it's not so bad. He's a. He's a pretty good guy. So.
- [16:21]
A
Does this seem. Does this feel inevitable to you?
- [16:24]
B
Yes.
- [16:26]
A
Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm also my father. Yeah. And interested in the same things and same like, same like, physical twitches, you know, all that stuff which I didn't notice until my wife started pointing it out that I have turned. I'm also. Yeah.
- [16:47]
B
Well, it's interesting that, like, a lot of people don't realize it until other people point it out. I. Maybe I don't. I don't. I'm not saying I'm like a self aware person, but, like, I actually started, I would just look at him and I would see the way I was sitting and then, you know, with the interest in change. And then I went to start. I went to Esalen and loved it and, you know, really regretted not having seen him. And, you know, but now I'm able to. He. He teaches this thing on Sunday mornings on Zoom, which is like this breath work, meditation, discussion thing. And I've been able. I do that every Sunday with him. And it's been this. He's 86 now, and it's been so, so special to be able to share that with him because I really regretted never having seen him as a teacher. And he's. He's an incredible teacher. Yeah.
- [17:34]
A
So you meditate?
- [17:36]
B
Yeah, I mean, I try.
- [17:37]
A
Yeah, I. I'll try not to judge you for that. Um, I. I feel very resentful of meditation because it's one of these things that, like, I, like, I have, like. There's certain things in my life that are, you know, I. I have like, personality flaws. Right. Or, like. Like, for one, like, I'm. I'm highly anxious. I. You'll appreciate this. I experience a lot of. Of anticipatory grief when I think about moose dying.
- [18:05]
B
Yeah.
- [18:05]
A
And it's. And it's like, it really affects me. I could. I could like, cry thinking about it. And so Jana, my wife, has gotten into meditation and she Keeps trying to convince me that meditation will solve my problems. And I keep telling her, meditation is not going to solve my fucking problems. My problems is that dogs don't live long enough. Um, but it, to me it seems like this catch all where people say, like, you know, you have, you know, if you have back problems, you'll, your friends will say, well, have you tried yoga? If you have cancer, your friends will say, you know, have you tried yoga? So I feel resentful of meditation, that it has become this, this sort of catch all for that people seem to think really is helpful for them. But also is this sort of avenue towards personality change or problem solving that I don't want to fucking do. I don't want to do it.
- [18:47]
B
Yeah, well, you're allowed to not do it, you know, and, and to, and to have your feelings about it, I think. Have you tried walking meditation? You don't have to sit. You can.
- [18:56]
A
I do walk. I do walk. I usually have a ball in my hands. I'm throwing it for the dog. I'm listening to a podcast. I don't know, dude. Does listening to True crime while I walk?
- [19:06]
B
Well, I mean, if you maybe like for 10 or 20 seconds of your walk, just try to sort of feel your feet on the ground in a.
- [19:15]
A
I'm not doing it. Okay. All right, so in the book you travel around the country speaking to people who have changed in some remarkable ways or who are trying to change and failing. And there's some very interesting stories and I want to, I want to focus on a couple of them, particularly the story about the ex gay. So this is your former friend and co worker Michael Glatzy. Is that how you pronounce it?
- [19:40]
B
Glass Glatz.
- [19:41]
A
Okay, so let's start from the getting. Where did you and Michael meet?
- [19:45]
B
We met at XY magazine, which was this awesome, although controversial at the Time magazine for what was controversial about it. So when I joined everyone, I basically, I was hired to sort of ramp up the sort of editorial quality because basically it was like pictures.
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A
Yeah. Butts.
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B
Well, not butts, but like. Well, it was, it was abs. Abs.
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A
Dicks.
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B
No dicks. No.
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A
No dicks. Really? No. Okay, so it was not pornography.
- [20:15]
B
It was not pornography, no, but it was on the edge and it was, it was really like unapologetically gay and sexual in like 1990. I don't know when it started that I joined in 1998. Was there for about a year and a half, two years and I, you know, this was a period where you could really like, I have never worked for a place that meant more to its audience. Like we had gay kids, gay teens, early 20s, all over the country. Like going into Barnes and Noble, like sneaking it, putting inside of another magazine and reading it, writing us letters about how the magazine saved them. Like it was truly incredible because like the Internet was like just barely a thing and you could still not, you could still think you were the only gay kid in a particular state or town. So Michael, I was hired as like the news and features editor. Michael was hired as the managing editor six months after me, a few months after me comes in. Is the most politically gay person that I had ever met. He was so anti religion. He was thought of himself as a queer activist, but also quite, really smart, really inspiring. He had a way with the readers and young people. Like he, he. And he seemed unlike a lot of ex gays who people turn up xays. He did not seem like tortured. He did not seem like he was like partying all the time and then was going to blame his, that or whatever addiction came up on his sexual orientation. He, he had a partner that he loved. I mean they were pretty fluid and you know, non monogamous at the time. And, and, and so but we were, we were very different. Like I just wanted to like put out a good magazine that came out on time and he wanted to transform the world, change the world. You know, he would say like we, we, we should put the Christian fundamentalists should burn in hell in the magazine. And I'm like, we actually shouldn't do that because we actually have a lot of our readers, young readers who are in Christian fundamentalist families. And you know, so he was a real black and white thinker and I was not and am not so okay. So you know, fast forward he goes on, creates another magazine called YGA. I move on to start writing magazine pieces 2006. 7. It explodes on the Internet. Michael Glatz is ex gay. He wrote these pieces for Worldnet Daily that were. Which is this far right site. I think it still exists. Basically saying, you know, the worst things about gay people. Renouncing everything that he had worked for at xy. I cannot tell you how disorienting that was. I just completely, I mean the joke back at xy, we joked about it a couple times that if anyone was going to be X gay, it was going to be me. So. And it turns out to be because I liked sports. And you know, I don't know what the reason was that I.
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A
You don't have to.
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B
Right. So Michael became this Kind of. Although, interestingly, he never did, like. He never went to, like, you know, therapy, conversion therapy. He. It happened slowly over the course of a couple years with his partner. He. For a while, he tried to sort of be like, I can be gay and be spiritual and religious. And he started talking about, like, reading Ann Coulter, you know, and his. Everyone who knew him, like, his partner was like, what's going on? You seem. This is strange. And then finally he's like, gay is death. I choose life or something was very. It was a very surreal thing. And. And I. Pretty quickly after. At first I thought it was a joke. At first I thought, really, he's. He's joking or he's going undercover and that it became obvious that he was not doing that. I went out to see him at his Bible school in Wyoming. We had this surreal experience where he's, you know, saying, you got to submit to God. I mean, just, you know, really weird. And so that was the beginning of, I guess, my interest in these sort of seemingly, well, no dramatic identity shifts that we can't really explain even to this day. You talk to different people. They will sort of give different reasons for it. We always want to have sort of a reason. What happened? It's complicated. He's disappeared. I tried to find him for the book. I called everyone. I called his sister, called his family members. No one would respond. So I don't know actually where he is or what the latest is on him. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:14]
A
It's so interesting to me that, okay, when someone goes from being perceived as straight to being perceived as gay, we consider that completely normal. That's called cutting. That's called coming out. All gay people go through that process. The default assumption, right, is that you. You were straight or you thought you were straight or everybody else thought you were straight. Maybe you were always gay. But it's from. It's this change, right? Public perception of change. And that's normal, but the opposite. Going from gay to straight is abnormal, particularly with men. There's a term for women who. Who date women and then end up with a man. Lesbian until graduation. Incredibly common. Or bisexual, but incredibly common. I know a lot of women who have dated who have dated women than men who are bisexual or have ind, you know, gone through a gay period and ultimately ended up with men. I know one man who has gone from being gay, perceived as gay, to. To being with a woman. And it's shocking. It's shocking that he.
- [26:19]
B
I know several.
- [26:20]
A
Yeah.
- [26:21]
B
I mean, and it's interesting because I had this moment that I write about, in the book where I was writing this story on this New York Times magazine, a piece about sort of the scientific quest to prove that bisexuality exists. It was this group out in LA that had all this money and was once and for all trying to convince the naysayers that bisexuality is real. And I had this experience of going and getting, you know, the way they test this, they attach something to your penis and they show you porn, or they, or they do a pupil dilation gauge or something. I forget what it's called. And so the researchers at Northwestern said I was very gay, and the researchers at Cornell said I was bi.
- [27:01]
A
And this is based on your physical
- [27:04]
B
response to, to, to pornography. And so that was hilarious to me because. But on one, on some level, I, you know, I, I, I had been, I have had sex with women before, but once I took on sort of my gay identity, like, that felt very true. I, I have a funny story about how it happened, but that felt like, just very, very true. After years of like, denial, that was like, okay, this is what I am.
- [27:33]
A
And I, but you weren't one of those kids. You didn't come out of the womb with ballet shoes on. Like, you.
- [27:40]
B
How did I not do that? Neither of my parents had any idea, and I had no idea. I mean, I write about this in the book. People have a hard time believing this, but I did not. Even as I was like, lusting after guys and like, doing sort of gay stuff, watching some gay porn, I did not. There was no part of me. I was not like the typical kid that's like, oh, maybe I'm gay. What do I do with this information? Like, you know, I never let myself even contemplate. I was so compartmentalized and so shut down, it never registered to me until I was walking down the street in San Francisco and in a flash, a voice, inner, outer, whatever, you're gay. And I'm like, holy. Yeah, like, what, what are you doing? And so it was like, like that, like in a second.
- [28:26]
A
And that night you went in, had your first same sex experience? Yes.
- [28:30]
B
Yeah.
- [28:30]
A
You move fast.
- [28:33]
B
Well, I'll tell you, like, yes. After so many years of, like, moving very slowly, I was like, I'm not gonna wait. So I went, found out someone to sex. And then very quickly I told people there was like, no. And I find that sort of interesting. There was no, like, period where I'm like, well, I can't. I was like, this is my truth. I've sort of realized it after all these years. And I'M just like. I don't know. There was no.
- [28:55]
A
Yeah.
- [28:55]
B
Not much hesitation to tell my parents, although I did. I did wait a little bit. And I was surprised, both of them, even though they're very San Francisco liberals and even though they're the best today. Like, I mean, my dad adores my husband, like, so, so much. But, like, at the time, they both reacted not ideally, which was really surprising. Surprising to me.
- [29:18]
A
Yeah. Okay, so when you found out from this study that you're actually bisexual, did that. Did that. Did that cause an identity crisis for, like, an afternoon?
- [29:29]
B
Yeah, I. I was like, well, did I. Did I. Did I choose. Did I take on this guy. Gay identity that has sort of blocked a part of me from being expressed. And maybe. I mean, I think I'm like 90%, 95, whatever. The Kinsey thing, you know, I. I think I'm very mostly gay. But, you know, I found this group fascinating. I mean, I'm sure you would, too. Like, the. When I was doing the bisexuality research, there were, like, these three researchers that were researching all they could on, like, the mostly straight category. You know, like, who are these people? What do they want? How do we understand them? And there was this real focus on, like, these mostly straight guys. The thing that they didn't have, which, like, other straight guys who were not mostly straight had, which is they just didn't have, like, disgust at the idea. And so this. This. There were these researchers that were, like. I don't know if they're still doing it, like, doing, like, research on, like, disgust as, like, the. The. This important part of sort of how we express our. Our sexuality. So.
- [30:35]
A
Yeah, that is interesting.
- [30:37]
B
I'm mostly gay.
- [30:38]
A
You know, I think that I've said this before, but I do find the Kinsey scale very useful because I have changed my thinking on. On sexuality. I do think sexuality is much more fluid. And I think. And that's particularly because we live in an era where people are. Lots more people come out. Lots more women in particular come out.
- [30:58]
B
Right.
- [30:59]
A
Even my own wife, you know, she's from Alaska. She had stayed in her hometown in Alaska. I think she would be married to a man and have kids. Her sexuality was heavily influenced by moving to Seattle. Right. That's just like. It was. It's not. It was not just the gay gene. It was also where she was. Where she was. And I think, you know, timing as well. Like, if I were born in the 1950s, I probably would also. I'd probably be a, you know, would have married a man, maybe had Kids would be a grandparent by now, and I might not think like, oh, I have. I'm. I'm a closet case. It would have just been like, oh, this is what my life is.
- [31:39]
B
Probably still a dog. You'd probably still have a dog, though, right?
- [31:42]
A
I might be a cat person. I mean, in this. In this alternate universe, anything could happen. It's a nightmare, isn't it? Okay, so. So. So Michael, he didn't just become ex gay. He became a homophobe. And so.
- [32:00]
B
And I'm curious, then he. Then he changed a little bit. So this was interesting. Right? So he came out. Yeah. So he was a homophobe. That would be the right word, actually, for it. I'd never thought of that word with him, but, yes, that's what he was. And then, interestingly, he sort of decided at some point. So we made a. We made a. I. I didn't make the movie, but it was based on an article I wrote. It was a film that was made called I Am Michael about him. James Franco plays him. And he. We. It premiered at Sundance, and we were all there, and, like, Michael had not seen the film. And we invited Michael and his wife to come and see. And I might be getting the dates wrong, but to come and see the screening. And I wasn't in there with him when they showed it to him, but, like, everyone was like, well, what's he gonna think? And. And he really surprised people. He gave me.