Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor & Company. WMAL. It's 7 0 7 on this Good Friday in your nation's capital and all around the world. Thank you for joining us here on our morning conversation known as O'Connor & Company. It's Larry O'Connor with Alex Swayer of The Washington Times joining us this morning and a Good Friday to you, Alex Swayer. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's always a good morning, especially on Good Friday. Coming up in 30 minutes, we're going to hear from a priest, Father Paul Scalia, one of the more popular priests in the area, as one can imagine with that last name. He, of course, is with the St. James Catholic Church in Falls Church, Virginia, and we'll have him reflect on the meaning of today and, of course, the incredible miracle of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Then at 8.05, Al Corby, he's the president and founder of SAFE. They make doomsday bunkers. We want to get his perspective on what we're learning about the bunker under the White House, specifically under the new ballroom. And then at 8.35, we've got the curator of the Apollo Collection over at the Air and Space Museum talk about Artemis II and how it fits in history. So that's all coming up right now. There are stories everywhere. We talked about in the last hour about the resurgence in the Catholic Church this year. It's been a growing trend. And for a couple of years, I've been seeing Catholic podcasters that I listened to and other analysts. I don't just listen to Catholic podcasts. I listen to Christian podcasts, podcasts of faith across the board. They've all noticed this thing. But for a couple of years now, Dr. Ryan Hanning, I think a lot of observers thought this was just sort of a regularity, a blip, maybe a quick reaction from COVID. But now the numbers seem pretty firm. And it's not just a leveling off. We're actually seeing a growth now in people, either former Catholics who have been disaffected by the church coming back to the faith, or you're seeing Christians convert from other denominations into the Catholic Church. So from your perspective, at Catholics Come Home, what's at play here? Yeah, great question. We're still trying to figure this out. But from our perspective, what we've seen is... I mean, other than the Holy Spirit, of course. I want to make sure I get that on the record. All right, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Lord, yeah, obviously, as we look at this, we know this is the work of the Lord and the Holy Spirit, and we praise God for it. We know it's not just through our efforts, though we like to participate as much as we can. Our prayer is, Lord, work through us, and if you have to, work in spite of us, right? But what we've seen over the last really five years is this increase in faith, this sort of steady growth. And this year is really incredible. And what's unique about this year specifically is how many young adults are coming into the faith. A generation that just previously was said to be the lowest religious faith on record now is actually the generation that's attending church the most. And this is across the board. And so we've been watching this and then really trying to understand really two things. One, why they're coming back now, and what do we need to do to keep them? How do we keep them engaged in the faith? And the first and foremost thing is we want them to really have a deep relationship with Christ. And so one of the things that struck us over the last several months, we've interviewed people coming home, interviewed people who had no faith, no faith background coming to the church. What we find is really a deep commitment to studying the faith, which is also something unique. This is not just a cultural pressure. This seems to be across the board of social reality. People want meaning. They want answers. They want to be able to take a deeper look into things. They want to have more purpose in their life and they're finding it beautifully in the tradition of the church. And I had a question for you. You talked about over the past year, especially with young people, do you previously I was like, I wonder if, you know, the, the, all the coverage that Turning Point USA got people like, you know, Erica Kirk, Charlie Kirk, once he passed, if it's not sparking young people to go back to their church or back to find their faith. Have you seen any sort of correlation with numbers since I mean, like, I guess they got so much press coverage since September with his death. Yeah, great question. And now to say two things. One, we've seen some direct evidence of what we might call the Charlie Kirk effect, right, that young people were kind of shocked at the level of discord. And they want to turn back and sort of get back to basics and they want to look to be anchored in someplace that's stable and real and authentic and anchors them back to tradition in a beautiful way. But we've been kind of amazed that it's not just that group to it's really a wide variety. Concrete of this is that if you look at the percentage growth across the diocese in the US, it is large cities, small cities, large parishes, small parishes. It really seems to be that everything is rising together. So while there's definitely some some direct evidence we've seen of the youth who are more interested in faith as a result of all the media coverage. We also to see there's a natural resurgence and we think more or less this is a reaction against secularization, right, people. You want to have, like I said, more purpose and when we interview people coming back to the church what we found at Catholics come home is that very often the reasons that they left or the reasons they haven't been involved is really just detachment. We live in a very secular society. The number one reason a Catholic leaves their faith is they moved for work. That was the number one response we've gotten over thousands and thousands of conversations and surveys. That one and sports on Sunday, right, my son started playing soccer on Sunday. We fell out of habit. We couldn't find a mass time that worked for us and the over the years it just kind of fell away, which is surprising in some ways to us because we thought that when we reach out to former Catholics, fallen away Catholics, what they need was a theologian and what they need was, you know, an apologetic for the faith and really they just need an invite. They just need an opportunity to get reconnected. Well, let's talk about that for a moment. Again, the organization is called Catholics come home, catholicscomehome.org and, you know, all of the statistics that we're looking at have to do with people who are entering the church, getting baptized, you know, they've gone through a CIA and all of the process to become a member of the church. But someone like me, I was I was born into a Catholic family. I was baptized. I have my first communion. And then starting at eight years old, I, my family did not take me to church anymore. And I went 20 years until I came back to the church. Now, I'm not going to show up in any of those statistics. And I'll tell you, the problem I have getting a parking spot right now on Sunday morning is way bigger than just the percentage increase that we're seeing in converts. So I think there's a lot of people like me who have been away and are now coming back. What's that like? And what is the barrier there? You just said they just needed an invitation. Well, let's make that invitation now. This is the perfect time to come home this weekend. What is drawing Catholics back now suddenly if who have been away for a while? Yeah, and again, give full credit to the Holy Spirit, but we're also seeing this across the board. You know, every, every October, most parishes throughout the US 15,000 parishes do their October mass count. And we have that data over the last 25 years and you can you can really track this trend layers really, really incredible to see the growth. Like you said, even in our little small parish, fighting for a parking space, you know, praise God, we're happy it's full at the same time. And I wish I had a better space, right? Yeah. So what we're seeing in the conversations we're having and our data really comes from these conversations we have with Catholics who are coming home because we want to make sure that there really is a personal invitation and reception and the parishes we work with, the diocese we work with to help them make that invitation. What we're seeing and hearing is that a lot of people who have been disconnected are recognizing the role that religion ought to play in their life. They're recognizing the role that religion provides in terms of anchoring them, giving them meaning and purpose, and really going back, you know, sounds not to over spiritualize, but really, it really is an act of the Holy Spirit. I can't tell you how many people we've encountered over the years to say, I just woke up in morning, and I knew I needed to fall back in love with Jesus. I woke up that morning and I smelled the incense. I remembered the child and I wanted that again. Oh, that was me. That was me. Oh, right ahead of you. That was my story. When I came back, I said, you know what, I need God back in my life. I'm not sure where I'm going to end up, but I'll start where I began, which was a Catholic church. And I went into Mass in the first whiff of that incense. There was something that happened in my body, some warmth that I felt that I realized this is where I belong. This is home. This is where I can use that. I want to talk more about this, especially about conversions as well. If you don't mind, can you hang with us for a second? Absolutely. And in this holy week, this Good Friday leading into this amazing Easter Sunday, we're speaking with Dr. Ryan Hanning, Executive Vice President of Catholics, come home. And I know we're getting all Catholicy on everyone, and I appreciate the tolerance of our Protestant Christian friends who are listening to We Are Brothers in Christ. But listen, you know what? We Catholics, we have to live in a pretty Protestant dominant society here. So when we're in the news and there's a big story about us, give us a minute, show us some grace, give us some tolerance. Come to Mass with us. And by the way, I'm married to a Southern Baptist, so you know, I dot the I's and cross the T's across the board here. Dr. Hanning, I was speaking to a recent convert to Catholicism who was raised as a Reformed Baptist. And what brought him to convert to the Catholic Church and come home was it was an intellectual exercise. He was already a Christian. He was already moved by the Holy Spirit. He already accepted Jesus Christ. But then when he started reading and studying and he started reading Thomas Aquinas and he started reading the Fathers, he was blown away by the intellectual heft and weight of the church. And it just convinced me. He said, all of these incredible, brilliant theologians of centuries gone by, they were all Catholic. And it's impossible to read them and understand their incredible, you know, vision of an interpretation of Scripture and not recognize, oh, they're Catholic. That's where this is. That's where we came from. Is that a part of this too? Because I know that there's a huge apologetic podcast movement now in new media with Pines with Aquinas. Matt Fradd now being picked up and amplified on the Daily Wire Podcast. Catholic Answers and their work with their podcast and Joe Heschmeyer and Trent Horne. These are big names on YouTube. Is that participant in what we're seeing here in the numbers? You know, absolutely. So, you know, John Paul II called us to a new evangelization, right? Same methods, same unchanging truth, but new methodology to share that faith. And we've seen really an explosion of resources and we really come out of that, right? We've been around for 30 years. Catholic from home has been using new media to reach out. But the current environment, like you mentioned, Pines with Aquinas and Matt Fradd, Catholic Answers, the Council of Trent with Trent Horne. I mean, you name the list of these really incredible intellects who have a very, very beautiful way of sharing the faith and being intellectual without being boring. Right? They've made the faith rich in all its depth, all its proclamation of the good news, but at the same time, you really made it consumable for your average person. So, absolutely. I think there's been sort of an intellectual renewal and we see really kind of two tracks for many people back into the faith, whether they're returning, whether they're converting, or whether they're coming to a relationship with Christ for the first time. One is very much inspired by the heart, right? They feel loneliness, they feel an emptiness, they feel a heaviness. And by God's grace, they encounter somebody who introduces them to Christ, introduces them to this church. So that's one track. And we love that. We see that. And it's so incredible when they show up. And just a few nights, or tomorrow night of Easter vigil, literally hundreds of thousands of people will be baptized. And it'll be just incredible to watch that transformation, right, become a new creation in Christ. But there's another track, too, which is this very much intellectual track. And this is my story, right? I kind of studied myself back into the faith. And with all the resources and to encounter really, you know, the beautiful history and to encounter the church fathers. And we do see this. I'm shocked at how many times we'll be meeting with somebody who came back to the faith, who wants to reach out and share their story, and they'll describe just what you said. You know, I was faithful my whole life, and they're not critical of their Christian. They love what was provided in the Reformed Baptist tradition or another tradition. We are very much in union with our pros and brothers and sisters. We want to save the world for Christ, right? We're all in this together in a lot of ways. But, you know, they yearned for a complete picture. And by studying the church fathers, by studying the tradition, they studied their way back to the church. And then also, the fact that church is really unchanged. And we've seen, if I live in Nashville, so I'm in the Bible Belt as well. And we've seen in the last just 10 years, a rapid amount of change in a lot of your pros and brothers, sisters, denominations, and that unsettles a lot of people. So we have a lot of converts coming in because they just want that stability tradition and that continuity that goes back all the way 2000 years. That's true. I was going to say too, I don't know if you said you were in Nashville, but I didn't know if you journeyed up to Washington, DC for the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, I guess, like, in mid March. But one of the things I noticed is we're talking about the growing trends. Well, it's expanded. It's huge. It's been like maybe two years since I had gone before and I was going like almost every year. They had to change locations because of how many people I think I don't know if it was that was the cause, but like the ballroom size, like quadrupled. And it just seems like there's just so much more attendance and focus. And one of the things Larry and I were talking about earlier is are people turning back to the church, especially young, the younger folks because of you, I think you alluded to technology earlier. But is that also helping because I think the hollow app was something I had brought up earlier and that was like a focus at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. They talked a lot about it and even had some of the founders speak and they're pretty young. I think they look like they're what are they in their 30s. They kind of look then that seems like a good a good guys to folk. Oh, and then Larry says that guys want to meet girlfriends. There's that. No, no, but I know, but I was going to say, let's not forget Father Mike and the Bible in a year podcast for three years running was the number one downloaded podcast in the world where people were through the guidance of a Catholic priest. People heard the scripture throughout the year and completed the Bible in one year. All of these things just adding to the list there, Alex. It's like the technology is piggybacking what you guys were saying about the educational aspect. Absolutely. And we've seen this, you know, if we are to cite kind of the four trends that we see right now that's unique about OCI and unique about the growth in the church. Very much as the youth very much it's sort of the level of intellectual conversion, but it's also the fact that a lot of the youth, the very devices they've grown up on right that we call it, you know, they're digital natives. They they have never been in a time in their life where they haven't had a device either in front of them or nearby, and they're using those very devices to ask questions, not just about clothes or what to buy or who to date, but they're also asking those questions about where did I come from. Why am I here? What's the purpose of life? Can God love me? Can I be forgiven? And we track all that's really amazing for last 15 years on social media. We have almost a million followers on Facebook. We interact with people almost day in and day out and so many people, especially the youth have the Hallow app or their following father Mike Schmidt and Bible in a year and really absolutely there's no dial. These resources have made the church more available in a really beautiful way. And our hope then is that when somebody gets inspired to actually walk in the door that that they're welcomed and received and really brought along that journey so that they their relationship with Christ is not just an isolation, but it's really found within a community and Catholics come home. This is what we've been working so hard after the last 30 years. So cool. Catholics come home.org is the website. If if if you're hearing this and it's touching you and you're curious and you're thinking that maybe it's time, then go to Catholics come home.org. Listen, we've had the era of the mega church and all of the, you know, lights and rock concerts and all the things that go on and I understand the draw of that. But when you start looking into it, you're going to realize that there are mega churches and then there's the mega church and we're waiting for you. Catholics come home.org. What a great conversation, Dr. Hanning. Thank you so much for joining us and Happy Easter. Of course, first, a very solemn and reflective Good Friday today and enjoy your Sunday this weekend. Thanks for joining us. All right, likewise. God bless. It's 724. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMA L app O'Connor and Company. It's 736. Good morning O'Connor and Company here on this Good Friday from your nation's capital. Are you curious about what that bunker under the White House that's being expanded right beneath the ballroom is is all about. Yeah, we're curious to instead of guessing, we're going to get an informed opinion. Al Corby will join us at 8 to 5. He's the president founder of Safe Company who makes bunkers. They can make one for you and a ballroom probably if you want. Then at 835 we'll speak with the curator of the Apollo collection at the National Air and Space Museum. Get the perspective here on the Artemis mission that is now two days underway. Alex Sawyer, Washington Times is with us as well. And a good Friday to you, Alex Sawyer. Thank you. I appreciate it. No other morning I'd love to spend with you, Larry. Oh, thank you. It's not just a good Friday. It's the good Friday, Father Paul Scalia, the very Reverend Paul D. Scalia. Thank you very much. Is the Episcopal Vicar for clergy at the diocese of Arlington and pastor of St. James Catholic Church and Falls Church, Virginia. Buddy of mine, Tom Saar just moved from Orange County, California, moved into your parish and he said, where should I go to church? I said, you got to go see Father Scalia. So you got a new parish member there, Tom and Natalie. I hope you enjoy them. Yeah, I just saw Tom and Natalie yesterday. It was good to have them in the parish. They're wonderful. Oh, you did? They're already. The kind of pastor I'm talking about. See there? They're great. Good job, Larry. Father Paul, I hear a lot from non-Christians and non-Catholics who were confused by why we call good Friday, good Friday, considering the horror of the greatest crime of all of humanity, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So what's so good about it? Well, first, I just think culturally, we don't use the word good in the proper way all the time. We always just associate that with something that's comfortable or pleasing to us. But things that are good are often difficult, right? And so it is good because there's this great thing that has been done. It's not just a crime that has been committed by crucifying our Lord, but it's more importantly that he willingly gave his life on the cross. They would not have been able to crucify him had he not been obedient to his father. And that's the greatest good in the history of the world, that obedience of the Son to the Father, which atones for all of our disobedience, all of our rebellion against the Creator and our Father. This week doesn't happen often, Father, but this week our Holy Week coincides with Passover. And certainly on the original Good Friday, it coincided quite a bit. Can you tell, you mentioned atonement, can you talk a little bit about the correlation between the crucifixion of Jesus and what that meant? And actually really starting from last night's recognition of the Last Supper and that Passover meal leading to the crucifixion of Christ and then that resurrection. How does that correlate with our Jewish friends celebrating Passover and the connection to those covenants in the Old Testament? Yeah, well, my understanding is not an expert here, but their celebration of Atonement, I think is Yom Kippur, and that this Passover for them is a celebration of the deliverance of the Hebrew people from Egypt and then the formation to the Kingdom of Israel. And that coincides, ours is we are freed from sin by the crucifixion of Christ, and that is also, he is atoning for, as I said, our rebellion. And this is something that, of course, the theology which we inherit from the Jews is that there's an atonement that needs to be made. There's a sacrifice that needs to be offered in order for us to be reconciled with God. And for them, the Passover lamb was sacrificed. For us, the Paschal lamb is Jesus Christ. And so, and at the Last Supper, where the Passover meal, well, they would eat the roast lamb, and we instead eat the body of Christ in the Eucharist. And so he institutes that as the new Passover meal, and the new sacrifice. And so that's what the mass is. It is a sacrifice of Christ for our redemption, and is also the making present of the Paschal lamb for our spiritual nourishment. Father, I was going to ask you, we talked earlier about the growing Catholic Church and the increase in converts, one, and then also young people. I wanted to ask you what you've seen at St. James. Like, have you noticed increasing changes? Larry just talked about some people who had moved, switching parishes. But like, what about converts? What about young people? What do you think is driving that? Well, first of all, we've seen the same thing. We've seen an increase in the numbers of people coming into the church, and just the number of people coming to church. And it does skew younger. And I think a lot of that is that there's a great confusion in our culture and kind of a crisis of truth, a crisis of meaning. And I think people are discovering today, as people have discovered throughout the centuries, that the Catholic Church has the fullness of the truth. And they find there that what John Henry Newman himself, a convert called a safe harbor, and a place where you can kind of drop anchor and be secure from the confusion and the turmoil of the rest of the world. Not that life gets perfectly easy, but at least you are secure in the truth. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier the word good. I wonder too, like if people are looking for something good in this world, in our society, especially with just the various news out there as well. All but not so good. Yeah. All but not so good news. That's right. Right. Right. And I think I think also I think people also recognizing that we've, we've kind of have a lot of a lot of people, especially a lot of young people. And I think there is actually a draw to the people experience when it is, okay, I'm being challenged to do something like, you know, deny myself and take up the cross. That's not easy, but that is good. And it is beautiful as well. And it is true and people and in the human heart, there's always that longing for the good, the true and the beautiful. And our our our culture proposing just the opposite things that are ugly things that that are false and evil. And and we we we are proposing we're holding forth what is true good and beautiful. I don't I don't get it. Just as Antonin Scalia, you know, just a giant in our lives for so many decades had nine children. One of them, our guest Father Paul Scalia, you know, goes the way of the cloth. And then and then one of your brothers is, you know, just a PR hack that I got to deal with all the time. I mean, what's what's going on there? Well, you got to come on. He's got that great podcast, you've got to promote that. Oh, yeah. Oh, please, oh, everybody's got a great podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah. I want to hear your well, this is not only great, his is good. All right, Father, listen, I know it's your busy time. I appreciate you joining. You know what? Let me just have one more word from you. If anyone's on the fence, if anyone's wondering, you know, Oh, gosh, is it going to be where to go back this weekend? Everyone's going back. It's, you know, it's going to be busy. It's going to be this going to be that. Give him that extra little nudge. Is it time to come home? It's always time to come home. But this is this is the best time, right? Because this is the time when when these are the days on which his redemptive grace is made presence most powerfully. There you go. Father Scalia, thanks for joining us and have a great Easter. All right, God. All right, God bless you. Happy Easter. Thank you. It's 744. Hey there. I'm Paula Pan. I help people make the smartest money decisions possible. Do not ever worry about your salary. You need enough to make sure that you aren't in a bad financial position. Once you have that, your salary becomes moot. What matters from that point forward, upside gains, any type of ownership stake or ownership potential, that's the money. Remember, you can afford anything, just not everything. Afford anything. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Let's give you an update on Artemis 2. First of all, I don't know if you saw this video. My friend, Sarah, sent me the video of a kid being interviewed on CNN. I thought it was fake. I thought it was an AI thing, but it was absolutely real. There was like a nine year old kid there to watch the space launch. He was decked out in NASA gear. He had like a GoPro camera strapped to his forehead to capture everything. And when he was asked about why he was there, well, let's go right to it. It's cut 12, please. Cut 12. Why do you want to be here? Why do you love space? Why do you love being a part of history? We're going back to the moon. That's why. Tell CNN like it is, right? So not that I approve of a young child dropping an F bomb here and there on the air. And I'm going to, I do have some questions about what's going on in the home that doesn't get more American than that. He needs to go back to church, Larry. That's exactly. But I think he's got to be from Florida, right? And he's now instantly become a meme. Everybody is like making a hero out of this guy. Katie Pavlich interviewed, got found him. Her great producer Spencer Brown, the friend of this program we've had Spencer of before, is producing for Katie Pavlich. And he got this kid on the air last night. Here's Katie interviewing him. Because they're fascinating. Hold on. So a minute ago when I was talking about Apollo, I was also going to compare that trajectory to the Artemis trajectory that they're taking right now. So instead of the Apollo mission, which was eight days, including landing and return. But the Artemis mission is going to be 10 days. He just went on and on. I think he's going to be a future astronaut, Larry. I think that that's there's no doubt about that. He's going to do something with space. I have no doubt they're already signing him to a space based podcast somewhere for million dollars. This is how things go right now. By the way, the NASA administrator, Jacob Isaacson has announced on social media that he's sending a whole package of NASA swag to the kid. And getting into it. Now on a little more wholesome note, here's a kid interviewed on CBS News. Honestly, this is one of the fun things about this is all of the kids who were so hyped about space travel because of this. Listen to this interview. This is cut 11. What are you most excited, Jack, about this launch? My most excited thing is I will see for rocket launch into space because I'm so obsessed with space. So I'll see a lot of launch from ground to sky. So it'll be totally exciting. I love that you're obsessed with it. I love your space suit. What do you have for a t-shirt underneath that space? Can you show the folks here? Talk about a kid who's obsessed with space. We've got the entire solar system here on any. That's pins new. I didn't see that early this afternoon. It's actually a blind. There it is Artemis 2. And your favorite planet is again? Mars. Mars. Maybe you're going to go to Mars when you get older. What do you think about that? No, I'm not going to Mars. Too far away? Yeah. I would have to take a 100 pound rocket to get there. We're working on that. Listen, you got to rest up for the next flight, Commander Jack. I love it. I love the little voices. You know my daughter, she's four. I don't know what it is about kids. They're just very, my daughter's very, very into space. She knows the order of the planets from the sun. And I'm like four years old. And I'm like, I didn't even know. And then she always wants to talk about Pluto and how it's an hour dwarf planet. And I was like, well, back when mom was little, it was a planet. Well, there was a little while there where they didn't want to call it a planet at all. And I was back to dwarf planet. And so then I'm like, just be careful what they teach you because it'll all change. It's science. Today is day, is today flight day three or do they count this as flight day two? Okay. So flight, right. So flight day three, are they going to spend most of their time practicing all of the tests they have to perform during that lunar flyby? By the way, I saw a very cool graphic animation of the flyby because you know, the moon is in orbit around the planet. So it's not like you've got a steady rock that you're aiming towards. They're, you know, so if you look at animation of actually the rocket rendezvousing with the moon, they have to time it just right as the moon is in motion and sort of an orbited person. It's just a very cool thing to see. So during that flyby, they're going to have a limited amount of time. Just I think they have like 12 or 14 hours to perform a bunch of tasks. So for today, they're going to be practicing all of those. You would think they would need to rest up for that. But like I said earlier, they sleep four hours at a time. Sleep four hours at a time like morning show hosts. And they've got, I think it's three and a half days until they actually get to that round a view with the moon. April 7th, I believe is when they're going to be on the furthest far side. They have three hours, actually only three hours during the closest pass above the surface of the moon where they got to do their lunar survey. They've got a whole bunch of observations they got to do. This isn't just a test of the equipment. They actually have to, they're sort of doing a reconnaissance mission to take a look at the surface and sort of chart out some things for the next step, which is to land there and to build a base. Also today, they're scheduled to prepare Orion for a minor correction burn to keep the trajectory on course. And then they're going to do some safety demonstrations, including CPR procedures. So that's the day for our astronauts today. And the kids are hyped about it. And you know what? I start talking about space and I started sounding like those kids. Are you obsessed too? We should have worn our spaceshirts. We're going back to the freaking moon, man. It's 753. Full send podcast. Dude, let's get ready to rumble. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Let's do it.
