How to Read the Signs of Collapse: Economic Stagnation, Resource Scarcity, and Europe's Industrial Decline with Balázs Matics

The official definition of collapse is that all the culture, all the tools, all the technology, all the language and everything is lost over a long period of time. It's a long, long process of losing previous capabilities, either because of cultural reasons or wars or resource depletion or you name it. So there are many, many reasons why civilizations collapse. But in our case, this means that we are basically losing our technology over a long period of time. Hopefully it's going to take centuries and not a decade or two, because at the moment it's way too fast. You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Hagens. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification. Today, I'm pleased to be joined by Balazs Motic, who is the author of the Substack blog, The Honest Sorcerer, for his first non-anonymous podcast interview. Located in Eastern Europe, Balazs is an industrial product engineer by training with two decades of experience in manufacturing, supply chain, and project management at various multinational corporations. Having been involved in a number of international projects and after completing postgraduate leadership programs in supply chain and logistics, he has developed a unique understanding of the interconnected nature of our world and our technologies. Balas has chosen to stay anonymous when he first started writing because, as you'll soon learn through this conversation, his thoughts and ideas go against the conventional thinking of our Western societies. However, this podcast episode marks his first public appearance discussing the themes that he writes about as the honest sorcerer, including his on-the-ground insights on the increasing fragility and complexity of global supply chains and the growing pressure of energy and material resource constraints on Europe's industrial capabilities. These topics are also at the core of the Great Simplification Synthesis, and Balazs' analysis demonstrates how this situation is unfolding before our eyes. Before we begin, if you're enjoying this podcast, I invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletter, where my team and I increasingly are sharing written content related to the Great Simplification. You can find the link to subscribe in the show description. With that, please welcome Balazs Motich, the Honest Sorcerer. Balazs, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting me. Well, I've long wanted to have the Honest Sorcerer on the show, and here is your coming-out-of-the-closet moment, as it were. You have the very erudite and systems-aware substack, the honest sorcerer. And to my knowledge, this is your first interview as a non-pseudonymous person. I'm quite excited for this because I've followed your substack and your writing for quite some time. and uh it's difficult for me to have people who are experts on climate or experts on geopolitics or experts on energy or finance but they don't take the aerial view to see how everything fits together but you do um so i'm i'm really looking forward to this uh this conversation so let's start here um what are the main systemic reasons you believe and you write that civilization is on an irreversible path towards collapse or some version of a simplification? Let's start by stating, but this is not just this civilization. Basically, all civilizations before ours collapsed. So that was basically the normal way of operating in a simplest sphere. So back then when we were hunter-gatherers, there was no question that we would sustain our culture for tens of thousands of years. Just ask the indigenous peoples around the world, they are here for many, many thousands of years. But as soon as we settled down and started grain agriculture and harvesting trees for building material and for tools, we started to live up the natural inheritance, what we have inherited as a species. And we started to crowd out other species. And then we ended up in basically overshoot, what Ketton has defined as overshoot many, many decades ago. And this is no different this time in our situation. What makes it worse is that in our case, we have replaced many, many natural resources like wood and fish, which we have caught in the ocean with artificial implements. So artificial energy like oil, like coal, natural gas, and recently renewable energy, which is also artificial because it's made entirely of man-made materials. and this causes a big problem because we do not notice in the meantime that we are living up not only the one-time inheritance of natural resources which could replenish over time if we would let it do so but we also leave up the geologic inheritance of minerals carbon-rich fuels and all the rest which makes all this civilization possible and this is what makes us really really really on a trajectory towards collapse because no one can expect that this civilization can go on much more longer on a finite set of resources. So a couple clarifications there. You said coal, oil, and gas are artificial energy. I think what you mean is those are depletable resources, and from them we add artificial inputs into our economy that are non-repeatable, like Haber-Bosch. It's a real thing, but it's artificial from the natural flow standpoint. Yeah, thank you for the clarification. So it's artificial in a sense that we are not naturally oil-eating creatures or coal-eating creatures. We don't go to a hillside and eat the coal. We do artificial stuff with it, so we feed them into our machines, and then these machines do the work for us. So here's another clarifying question, and one I think about a lot. I named this podcast platform The Great Simplification partially as a shout-out. to Joseph Tainter, the collapse of complex societies, because as we expand, we expand nodes and the nodes require energy and we complexify. And the inverse of that, when we don't have enough at the same scale and affordability and distribution of energy as we did before, then a simplification ensues. So how do you, one of the words that I don't, I don't use the word collapse a lot because to me, when I hear it, it's too binary. It's either yes, collapse, or no, it didn't collapse. So can you unpack what you mean by collapse? And is there a, is there a spectrum or is it a binary sort of thing? The official definition of collapse, if there is such a thing, is that all the culture, all the tools, all the technology, all the language, and everything is lost over a long period of time. So collapse is never a quick event which destroys a civilization in one day or two days. It's a long-run process of losing previous capabilities, either because of cultural reasons or wars or resource depletion, or you name it. So there are many, many reasons why civilizations collapse. But in our case, this means that we are basically losing our technology over a long period of time. Hopefully, it's going to take centuries and not just a decade or two. So this is what I believe both of us are working for, to a little bit slow down this process as it is, because at the moment, it's way too fast. Well, slow down or steer it somehow, because in some ways, slowing it down might also not be a good thing. So I think it's adapting to it in some ways better than the default. Would you agree? Yeah, I would agree. So I often call this situation we are in on my blog as a predicament, which means that it only has an outcome but no solutions because we are still dealing with a finite set of materials. And before anyone starts to think that we will replace those materials, I have to remind them that the crux of the issue is not only that we have a finite set of accessible materials, but also that none of them are really replaceable. They are building upon each other. So once you start to pull out these blocks from this Jenga tower we have built, and we call it technology, then we are going to have serious issues. So once we lose access to coal, for example, which is then used to build solar panels, for example, that could cause a huge issue. Or if we lose copper and things like that. Why would we lose access to coal? It's basically not a question of quantity, but quality. So when people think resource depletion, they think that every last molecule or atom of coal has been used up on the earth and there is nothing to be found. But the situation is much different. So there is a lot of coal underneath huge mountains or underneath the seabed even, but it is not accessible to us humans or not accessible at an energy return on energy invested ratio, which is favorable. to our civilization or to our situation. And this is what we see on the price index of coal production. I just recently checked on the FRED database in the St. Louis FEDS database. Better check fast because it won't be here for long. Yes, and this is a very valuable database. And it was rising in lockstep with the price of oil and the price of diesel especially because then I dig deeper in the topic and I realized that diesel is a key ingredient in coal mining, not only in the case of mining coal itself, but also delivering them to the coal-fired power plants and also to the refineries, maybe refineries at all. Couldn't that be replaced with alternative technologies over time to not use diesel to access coal? And that's the beauty of technology, that we can figure out solutions to each and every problem we face. The question is not can it be done, but can it be done at a scale relevant to our problem? And a price relevant. And a price relevant and an energy return relevant to our problem. So in theory, I can build some trucks with power by hydrogen, for example, and then they could deliver coal, and that would be a crazy thing, by the way, to do. But in theory, this could be done, but in practice, it simply does not scale. I want to get back to your initial statement about collapse. And I forget which of your articles it was, but you've written about collapse beginning on the periphery and moving towards the core, towards the center. So which regions of the world do you expect to undergo destabilization first and why? This might surprise some of your listeners, but I think that Europe is on the periphery, actually, on this Western civilization, what we call Western civilization. I don't think it will surprise viewers, but please explain. This is really sad and frightening for me to see that how this whole project is falling apart. And although from the outside, it might look like it's a unified place and a nice place to live, but it's rapidly descending into some kind of a really strange democratic system, so to say. So it's not even democratic anymore, which is causing a lot of issues. But also, since we don't have the energy and natural resources required to maintain this level of consumption and this lifestyle, We will be always dependent on someone else to deliver these materials for us. So let me ask you this, because you live there and I only read about where you live in the news. Are people really naive, biophysically naive about our situation? or is it a situation of the mother of all cognitive dissonances that for them to acknowledge what you just stated would be too big of a blow to their identity and their investments and where they live and their plans for their families? So they kind of choose the more optimistic stories? I mean, like, how are people reacting to what's been going on in slow motion since the Ukraine war started? It's different country by country. So, for example, in France, as I hear, or in my location where I live in Hungary, there are more people aware of this situation, that we are seriously dependent on natural gas, for example, not only for heating our homes, but also for generating electricity. And by switching to liquefied natural gas, LNG, the price has simply just increased double or even triple in some cases. And this makes our industries totally uncompetitive. and this is getting to be a more common knowledge especially in the industry so about energy intensive industries talk to each other and and i'm working in the industry so i know what's what's going on in this situation they realize that this is a huge problem but it's more like a taboo so they are not talking about it because this is a politically sensitive topic and this cannot be addressed in public so they rather hush-hush about it and then say oh demand has disappeared and oh we have some other type of problems, but it's all across the industry. So it's not to a specific company, but basically everybody is rather, um, hiding behind the fact that demand has started to disappear. And demand has disappeared because affordability. Exactly. And this is what never gets mentioned. Yeah. So how does, uh, I mean, Europe, Germany, uh, have been at the forefront of the climate story. And yet, energy security is now looming much larger politically than dealing with longer-term ecological overshoot impacts. So how is that conversation unfolding in Europe? I imagine not quite well, but I don't know. Not quite well. The Ukraine crisis has simply sucked out all of the air from the room. So basically nothing else is mentioned in the media now. There is just a war and how it will continue or how it could be stopped. And nobody really cares about the climate anymore, at least what I'm reading or what I'm seeing in the media at the moment. How are we going to avoid a major war, whether between the U.S., Europe, Russia, or eventually with China? And given a historical look at our species, when we get to the end of the way a stable system was, you know, violence and war are often what comes next. What are your thoughts on that living within Europe? That's what I'm also afraid of. And actually, we have found the answer once in the 1980s, when we started to sign treaties about reducing the number of nuclear warheads, and it really worked. So it really started to reduce the number of nuclear warheads. Also, intermediate-range missiles has been reduced. So it's possible and it's proven that it is possible to write treaties which incorporate the interest of both parties, be it Russia, Europe, or even North America or US. So it is possible to figure out such a treaty. The problem is that there is no political will to do such things because we must in Europe, at least this is the saying, we must conquer or we must beat Russia on the battlefield because then it will teach them a lesson and then they will go back to their place. And that's a very sad situation because it's not treating the enemy on the same level as we are, but we are treating Russia as an inferior party which deserves to be talked to and even treated as an equal. What do you think about the uniting the prior two topics? If Europe is going to need energy to some level, maybe something less than we have today, but at some level, they're next to Russia, who has a lot of energy. they're across an ocean from the United States. Do you see any possible shift in those alliances? And how does the slow end of globalization affect these relationships between major countries and other blocs? Yeah, naturally it would make sense. And there was an initiative, again, maybe it was the 90s or early 2000s by the Germans. And this was called the Ostpolitik or East politics, which means that they were opening up new pipelines towards Russia, and there was a natural process of growing our tentacles towards cheaper energy resources. But then the whole story was literally blown up. We don't know officially by whom, but neither answer is good for us. So it's still a very touchy topic, which is not, again, discussed, who blown up North Stream. But that's a clear signal that this cannot go on any longer. And then this must stop this type of opening towards Russia. So this was more likely a geopolitical chess play at hand, that we must be separated from Russia because together with Russia, Europe could be a very strong geopolitical party. But without Russia, Europe is just a, how to say, sidekick to North America. How many people understand that? like in the common people in Hungary and Europe that you know, common people that pay attention to world events? Not too much, I would say, especially not in the professional manager across where I belong. So if I'm talking to other professionals, engineers and managers, they still believe that this was a good choice and this has to be done. And then Russia is the enemy and we have to destroy the enemy. So that viewpoint, I think you and I would label that as energy blind. Probably, yes. That viewpoint makes sense if you believe that technology and innovation and human ingenuity are the coinage of society and not energy materials and ecosystem functions. Unfortunately, still, you know, politics and talk among people are still dominated by cultural narratives. So we are not talking about in energy terms or in technological terms or whether it is technology blind or energy blind and we are just talking about party politics and politics about you know who should be you know who should be alive with ourselves or who should be the enemy So nobody is really touching these topics from an energy perspective. Well, in their defense, politicians aren't about truth. They're about power and being elected. So the things we're discussing on this program and the things you write about on The Honest sorcerer, I can't even imagine a politician saying those things because then what? Then we need to prepare a bend, not break scenario for our countries and our citizens to have less material throughput in coming decades. And the moment that that is voiced, chaos ensues. Yeah, not really. This is a very good thought process, but not really. Actually, it was floated by Macron, I believe, the French president, that we must... Sobriete. Yeah, not sobriete, but he actually stated one time that the good days are over and we have to be more careful with energy and everything. I believe it was 2022 and people had to accept it. But otherwise, only the far right and far left parties are allowed, not even allowed, but even talking about these topics. But then they are shut out because then they are too far to the left or to the right and they must not be allowed near power. or so the centrists, you know, just remain in this energy blind state. So what happened to that? I do remember that Macron kind of floated that. Is he still talking that way or have things changed? Changed for the worse, I believe. Because now we are not talking about sobriety or energy security even, but we are talking about physical security and arming ourselves up to the teeth so that we can fend off a Russian invasion, which I don't believe is coming, but that's the common narrative today that Russia is going to invade the Baltics or whatever, and then we have to fight to the death or when North America steps in and that helps us. So that's the narrative today, unfortunately. So do you have any predictions on regional blocs forming or how 10, 20 years from now the geopolitical situation has has changed how nations interact? Well, zooming out from Europe, we already see the BRICS alliance rising. So it's Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. So that's the core of the alliance. And now they incorporate more and more states, including Indonesia, for example, with 400 million people. So basically, based on simply the numbers, on the number of people, the number of barrels of oil delivered or energy delivered, They are clearly the major leading block of the world. And this is simply not talked about in the West. So we are still not paying attention to what's happening around us. We still believe that we are the cool kids on the block. Well, because we have dollars and planes. Yes, but that's rapidly changing. So China has started this digital yuan initiative where they start payments between each other. I mean, with Southeast Asian countries, which is almost as big as a trade as between China and everyone else on the world. So that's a huge thing. Russia has already been kicked out from the SWIFT system. So they have to apply something else and they have to develop some kind of a payment method. So we are rapidly seeing the world falling apart in terms of geopolitics and also in terms of economics. We are falling apart in the two distant camps. So do you agree with the historical observation that empires often turn inward or become authoritarian as their energy surplus declines? Yeah, fully. Unfortunately, I have to say fully. So we just have to see what's happening in Great Britain, for example. What used to be Great Britain is now, you know, rapidly approaching a civil war status. And it's not me saying it's a Canadian sociologist, I believe. I can't remember the guy's name. I will look it up. But he's a really interesting guy, and I think he really looked up the historical parallels, what happens before a civil war breaks out, and what are the stages leading to a civil war. And according to his observations, Great Britain is really approaching a pre-civil war status where some factions are completely at odds with each other, and that could lead only to a worsening situation. and the reaction of the government, not only in Great Britain, but also increasingly in Europe as well, is to clamp down on free speech, clamp down on everything which is related to a more moderated discussion about the topic. Those people are actually silenced or banned from talking to mainstream media or talking to anyone even. So some of the great military advisors for the Swiss Army has been just banned to entering the European Union. He was sanctioned just recently, and he did really nothing wrong, just talked about the situation as we do here. So it's really a crazy situation what we have right now. Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately. Let's get back to energy, because I think you had a recent essay in this. Can you give me your assessment, your current assessment of the global oil and diesel situation and how does that extrapolate towards economic growth, industrial activity, stability, and all that? Yeah, that's a really interesting topic. So actually, before we start, so that diesel is the lifeblood of this civilization. This is still a diesel-powered civilization. So diesel is more important than gasoline or all the other products from oil? More than anything else on this planet. So diesel is the key ingredient to actually build a civilization. It powers all the agricultural machinery. So without diesel, you cannot grow food. But the result is simply just too heavy. Why is diesel so important for agricultural machinery? Because of its huge energy density. It is the most energy-dense fuel, which we actually know and we can utilize in large quantities. Liquid hydrogen is the only more energy-dense fuel, but that's not possible to produce at, yes, liquid hydrogen at minus, I don't know, 240 degrees Celsius. When it's liquid, then it's more energy dense than diesel, but that's the only thing. Well, uranium is too, but there's problems with that. But then you have to carry a huge reactor on your back, so you can probably power a ship with it or a submarine, but you cannot power a tractor or combined harvester or anything like that with it. Just to clarify this, because it's been a while since I looked at this, a series of farm equipment for agriculture powered on gasoline versus the same on diesel, the diesels will perform better and produce more stuff for humans. Yes, because it has a much higher torque, and that's the critical factor in diesel engines that they can produce. Torque? Yes. The raw power which they can pull heavy stuff. So tractors have to pull very, very heavy equipment. Also, the trucks have to pull very, very heavy equipment at a low RPM. So that's the power of diesel, actually, that it burns very slowly, but very forcefully. So when it explodes in the combustion chamber, it creates a huge pressure wave, but also at a relatively low heat and at a low RPM. So it means when you start up these huge diesel engines, it can instantly create a huge torque and pull very, very heavy equipment. whereas in a gasoline-powered engine you need a huge displacement and a huge engine just to move a car for example and you cannot place this engine inside a truck or something like that because you have to first scale it up a lot and also it would overheat like crazy because it burns at a much higher rpm at a much higher temperature and it would simply just kill itself under this huge load which these type of engines have to carry and this is why diesel is very important because it's capable of carrying very, very heavy loads in construction, mining, agriculture, you name it. So around the world, roughly, what percent of each barrel of oil ends up being diesel? I believe it was 30 or 33 percent, but that's close to the theoretical maximum because, you know, oil is just not a magic substance. You cannot wish away parts of it. It has a certain composition, and much of it, unfortunately, and increasingly towards this day, is gasoline, actually. So gasoline is a byproduct of diesel production. This is what refineries say because they make the big buck and big money on selling middle distillates, which is basically diesel and jet fuel. And gasoline is really just a byproduct of this activity. So I've talked about this a few times over the years. If for some reason we replaced all passenger vehicles, internal combustion engines with electric vehicles, we would still need roughly the same amount of barrels of oil extracted from the ground because we need the diesel and the asphalt to make the roads and the plastics for the cars and all the other parts that come from the modern Buffalo, which is a barrel of oil. But you're saying that diesel is the real magic that comes from a barrel of crude oil. That makes all of our technology work and possible, even solar panels or electric cars. What's the situation now with oil and diesel? Yeah, so in one of my blog posts, I already analyzed the situation and I showed there that up until 2015, the ratio between new barrels of oil added and the ratio of increasing the amount of diesel produced was basically one to one. So if you added one barrel of oil, then you produce one third of a barrel of diesel, and it was a 99% correlation between the two substances. But then, as traditional conventional oil, which contained a lot of diesel components, because diesel is not a single molecule, it's basically a set of components. so when that conventional easy to get easy to refine material started to plateau and peak in 2004 then this correlation started to break down somewhat but then we added some unconventional sources like deep sea oil which was still you know relatively rich in diesel components but as we needed more and more oil as the economy grew worldwide we started to add some more lighter components, more lighter stuff, like natural gas liquids in much greater quantities. We started to add shale oil, which is basically more like gasoline than diesel or more like gasoline than anything else. It's a very light liquid. So the correlation started to break down and diesel simply flatlined. So from 2015, diesel badly grew, the diesel production. And while one could say that, okay, maybe the demand has disappeared, in reality, we started to experience some kind of economic slowdown worldwide since 2015. Not only in Europe, but also in China and everywhere else where construction started to break down because costs started to have rising. And then came COVID and the lockdowns, and then everything crashed. But then as we started to wake up from that lockdown and started to restart the economy, then the crisis really hit because then we realized, hey, we don't have enough traditional oil to make diesel from. and then the diesel crack basically the crack spread which means the price difference between a barrel of oil and a barrel of diesel because it is sold at a premium naturally because it's a premium product so that price premium has simply skyrocketed after the covid lockdowns and then came the russia ukraine war which then gave it another boost since russia was a huge source of traditional oil, which then has to be replaced by all other kinds of oil, which had less diesel content and which was less optimized for European refineries or Indian refineries for that matter. So that really threw a spanner into the gears of the world economy. And then it really then could not wake up or return to its prior state. What you're really saying is we shouldn't be treating oil as a singular thing, uh, and that what it provides is, uh, under the, under the surface, diesel's the really important thing and diesel needs a certain type of oil, uh, optimally. Does this have anything to do with the United States interest in Venezuela? Because that's much heavier oil and light shale oil, which is, you know, approaching 50% of all of our oil is very light. Like you said, it's light fractions and it's good for gasoline, but the real, you know, refinery output that is valued by the economic system is diesel. So what are your thoughts on that and the different areas in the world that have light versus heavier oil and the correct fractions needed. Since you have mentioned the ultra-heavy oil from Venezuela, it actually cannot be lifted and delivered as such. It is so thick and so heavy that it needs some kind of, not lubricants, but how to say, some kind of a dilutant which dilutes it and then makes it portable and workable. So it's basically an ingredient. So if you are looking at a refinery as a huge cooking pot where you put in ingredients and you get the right kind of soup then this is only one ingredient so even though venezuela has i don't know how many trillion barrels of reserves it's still some heavy ingredient which you have to dilute first and this is a match made in heaven with uh with the u.s shale oil because then it's so light if you mix the two together or at least components i'm simplifying the situation rather but if you mix the components of shale oil and the venezolan heavy oil in the right amount then you get a really good stuff where you can make diesel from and this is what already been you know the warning signs are already there that if you are losing venezolan oil due to an oil blockade for example which is then geniusly solved by seizing the ships so to say geniously and this is how they ensure that this type of material keeps flowing but in a bigger picture in a bigger sense It's more, you know, I like to view it in a geopolitical sense from a global perspective, because then Venezuela is a major supplier of China. And then having a stranglehold on Venezuelan oil also helps to reduce Chinese uptake of oil, which can slow down their economic growth. Personally, I think that's more of what's going on, but I hadn't thought recently about the light versus heavy oil and the importance of needing the whole buffalo, to use that analogy again. Because, yeah, I mean, oil does not necessarily produce the same every barrel of the products around the world. It depends what kind of oil it is. Yeah. So some people listening to this, watching this would argue that policy as opposed to geology is the main upcoming bottleneck to oil supply and that there are no foreseeable limits on how much oil and in turn diesel we can extract. What's your analysis of someone saying that? I don't have the right numbers or the exact numbers, how much oil lies beneath, I don't know, federal land, which is under protection or some protected areas or how much oil drilling is slowed down by bureaucracy or red tape or things like that. But I'm sure that even if all those limitations will be lifted or would be lifted, then we would still, you know, see a bottleneck sometime in the near future, regardless, because we are not only dealing with a quantity issue, but a quality issue here. Again, just like with coal, that the energy required to obtain that oil, to drill for that oil, and to work with that oil is increasing steadily. And there is a study which shows that actually while it was, I don't know, 1% around the 1970s, which had to be reinvested in oil extraction, now it's around 15%. And as we go for the heavier and heavier stuff and deeper and deeper stuff, by 2050 it could reach 50%. this is theoretical number, so it's not actually possible at the moment, because if it would reach 50% energy return on investment, that would be basically crazy. So we would have to reinvest half of the oil, which we have extracted into extracting more, which will end up as a mortar economy, as you would like to call it. But then beforehand, it would actually break the economy. It would be impossible to maintain. No, it would break the economy long, long before then. So what about the amount, though? I mean, I think what you're arguing for is that quality is underrepresented as an important aspect of this. What about quantity, though? Is quantity of global oil going to continue to increase? It's going to increase, and it's a really strange situation we are in right now. And this was actually forecast by those modelers who modeled that 50% of the energy will have to be reinvested by 2050. The model that as we reach towards these more unconventional sources, quantity might increase still. But in net energy terms, we are already at a high plateau. Maybe we have even passed the peak of net energy. And that's a bigger issue than actually quantity in and of itself. Well, two big issues there. One is the gross burning affects GDP. So more burning, even if it's a smaller net, is still good for GDP. And also the second thing is bad for the sinks, the oceans and the biosphere as we continue to burn more. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, so then this would basically lead to a situation where we are digging holes just to fill them up later on. So this is a no-gain economy where we just, you know, dig holes for the sake of it just to get more oil. Are you popular at parties, Balazs? I'm only popular at parties because I don't talk about these topics. Only when I'm specifically asked. I used to bring this up, but then the party was instantly killed. So then, okay, I realized maybe this is not the topic which other people would like to discuss. So you know we just discuss kids what happening in school and things like that SEGUEing into the implications of this how do you characterize the current state of I think you written and used the term late capitalism and what are the implications of what you just said about energy and declining net energy and diesel and different international geopolitical blocks because of energy security? What are the implications for economic stability and social equity? I would say that the major implication is on economic growth, because if energy gets more expensive, even just by a little, as we have seen in Europe, it basically destroys the economy because simply the high energy sectors will flee the continent or flee any other continent where energy is getting more expensive and search for other locations. People start to lose their jobs, and then they can buy less and less products. Even the household energy can get more expensive and then also that destroys purchasing power. And on the other hand, we also have another dynamic which is basically, I would say, independent of energy and energy and economics, is the growing inequality and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Or basically the rich 10% or even 1% and the 90% of the society, which is basically slowly sliding down and down due to wage suppression, due to a wealth pump basically operated on top of them. So services are just outrageously outpriced, not only in the US, but also in Europe. And that basically acts as a drain on the economy. It just kills demand and kills everybody in the process by enriching the very few on the top. So I'm aware of how that's unfolding in real time in the United States. You start to see it at the grocery store. What about Europe? What about Hungary? And how are things happening just like right now versus a year or three years ago? What's your on the ground report? Hungary is a lucky place, so to say, in this regard, because there are no super rich people here that I'm, of course, rich people here with Lamborghinis and those kind of stuff. But the average people is more equal than in other societies. We have inherited this from the previous system, especially in Eastern Europe. It's not a big deal at the moment. It's a bigger deal in poorer societies, for example, in Southeast Europe. It's starting to be a big deal. And I'm not sure about Western Europe. I'm not visiting that much as of today or these times. So we would have to ask those guys over there what they feel on the ground. But for now, it's not that obvious at the moment in Eastern Europe. So you are an engineer, but a wide boundary one. And so can you describe how the instability of money and prices and some of the things that you've been discussing undermine engineering and manufacturing and economic planning? Yeah, that's a good one. Because when prices are stable, especially raw material prices and energy prices are stable, let's say in the early 2000s, then companies could plan ahead and say that, okay, I know what the cost of raw materials or energy will be next year, so I can give a good price to my customer. and you have to know that you know the supply chains are really you know multi-story buildings with a number of layers stacked up on each other in each and every step and then stack energy and raw materials come in and then get built into more complex and more complex products and if this whole chain can plan their costs accordingly and demand is also stable or growing because we have a population who is capable of buying our products then we can be sure that what we plan today can be made and sold tomorrow or next year at a good enough profit margin and everybody is happy. But as soon as prices start to fluctuate really crazily, then suppliers tend to build in this fluctuation into their price and hedge themselves to make sure that they have their profit margin. But if customers, let's say car manufacturers in the middle of the pack say that, hey, I'm not accepting this and I will push down the price no matter what, then they risk bankrupting their suppliers, which then can cause supply issues. So it basically unstabilizes the whole system. How much do you worry about complexity and even small changes in product availability from China or South Korea or anywhere can disrupt an engineering process? And I remember I was working on this issue when the Fukushima earthquake happened. Two weeks later, Ford in Detroit, Michigan had to shut down their truck production line because there was a tiny little pigment for the color of the paint of the trucks that was made in Fukushima Daiichi Prefecture. And that's just a tiny example. And to me, there's hundreds, if not tens of thousands of these examples in this globalized economy. And do you ever think about that? And what can you share? So the next period was seized by the, I believe it was the Dutch government, then it really turned out to be a huge emergency case for the whole automotive industry, because this only chip manufacturer delivered basically all of the basic calculation chips for all components for electric windows and those type of components were just in a short supply. And automotive companies almost had to stop and stop producing just because one tiny little chip was missing from their huge assembly of products. So that's a real possibility, but that's more like a political situation than an actual crisis and shortage. That will come later and that will be much different than this one. Well, I'm just wondering, as an engineer, you have meetings around the world, and if people are looking at technology and growth as some inevitable human rights, but if you take a wider perspective and consider some of the things you talked about, diesel and geopolitics, engineers make plans, and we have to solve problems. so the role of an engineer in coming decades is going to possibly shift because we might not be able to depend on this six-continent global supply chain and maybe some of the inputs to our processes and products that provide energy services to humans might have to come regionally or more locally. Do you have any thoughts on that? This is where I believe the tinkerer types will come into the picture when actually I don't believe that large companies, large multinational companies will be here for too long. They are just simply too slow to change or too slow to adapt to these type of changes. And many of them will go bankrupt or will have to fire a lot of people. And then these engineers who will be fired from these companies will have to, you know, find a way how to produce stuff for their own markets, maybe start their own companies and, you know, start recycling the produce of the industrial world. Well, I'm sure there's some of those engineers watching this show right now. So do you have any advice to them that can visualize the scenario that you just described? How should they be thinking about their future skills and contribution to society and their own families? Perhaps the most easy to grasp example is a repair shop where you can repair televisions or repair iPhones or whatever type of electronic devices by using simple components or components reclaimed from other devices that's a huge market and that's going to be a growing market because people will not have the money to buy a new tv set for example so that's that's going to be a start and then later on maybe decades from now when you know things really start to break down then you know repairing or even rebuilding old agricultural machinery like old diesel tractors without the electronics and trying to figure out a way how to avoid using electronics because that's going to be the first casualty of this huge supply chain breakdown, then that's going to be a huge engineering challenge. It's amazing to me how, like if you're where I live in the Midwest, the United States, I don't think there are any tractors that you can buy that don't have all the complicated algorithms and tech. And we don't have just simple diesel tractors anymore. Same with bikes. You can't buy, I mean, you can maybe buy just a very simple bicycle, but most of them have the wireless derailers and all those things. It's like a Chinese finger trap that we keep going in but can't extract ourselves too easily. So I don't know. I think about that all the time. So in what ways might degrowth or post-growth sort of existence manifest in capitalist economies in the West? And more broadly, can capitalism itself adapt to shrinking resource availability slash higher costs for energy and resources? I believe it already does and it already did its best to adopt. this type of situation by deindustrializing itself and then sending all the energy intensive industries over to China or over to places where energy is cheaper. So that was an already a degrowth attempt, a huge attempt at trying to remove the energy burden from these economies. We didn't really degrowth. We de-grew our industry and then we made movies and massage therapists and lattes and such. Yes, but it was still in the area of dollar dominance. But when that era ends then this is going to be not you know a smooth big rose but i don't know maybe a collapse of the currency system i don't know so it's really all bets are off at this point because from this point on the only you know source of income or basically the most the biggest source of income for this economy is basically rent economic rent you know selling assets at a higher price than they have been bought or renting out these assets. But when this possibility shrinks and ends, then it's going to be game over. And that's a really frightening situation. So what role do you see for civic discourse and public debate about these topics that we've been spending this last hour on in preparing societies for a radical simplification in coming decade or so? Maybe the more honestly we talk about these topics, the better. And I think that there will be openness. So when the crisis lasts long enough and people start to realize that this economic crisis is not going to be over in one or two years, but maybe less for decades, then they will be more open to discuss these topics and start to talk about it more honestly and more clearly that, okay, if the economies cannot grow any longer or start to shrink, okay, then what do we prioritize as a society? And this should really happen on a community level, even in the neighborhood or in municipality level. So this is where people, I believe, really have agency to form these type of communities and groups and talk together. What can you do in your immediate neighborhood? So if there is no more investment money or there is no money to repair the roads, okay, can you come up with an idea how to repair the roads if need be? Or can you come up with an idea how to re-green the environment, how to plant trees, or how to clean up the riverbed and try to make your location more a livable place or more capable of supporting people without this amount of technology? So this is going to be a long discussion and a hard discussion with many people. So that's on the energy consumption side and infrastructure. structure. What about our brains and behavior? What psychological or emotional challenges do you think people are likely going to face as they come to terms with these realities? And how might those be better supported? It depends on the speed of this breakdown of the current system because it's breaking down as we speak, so it kind of lasts too long. If it breaks down as fast as the Soviet Union did, then their experience was that they believe that communism is going to solve every problem. And then, especially in the higher and middle classes, they thought that communism is the best way of organizing things, even though they know that it is not perfect and that's good. But when that block collapsed, then people started to lose their anchor. They lose their mean belief system. Okay, if communism is not working, then what? And then they start to believe in capitalism and then they quickly realized that this is not going to save them either. so there was a huge wave of depression and and hopelessness but if it happens beforehand and if we start this discussion before the break comes and we start to prepare people that hey capitalism was probably a limited uh how to say uh self-limiting approach because it ultimately ends up eating up the planet and itself together then we start maybe start discussions okay what comes after capitalism or what comes after a different mode of material exchange. And what does come after capitalism, Balazs? It's hard to tell. It's actually, I believe in evolution. And I believe that human system evolved just like any other organism on this planet. So the most fit to the given situation will be selected. So it will depend on any given situation. So if you look at what happened in Greece, for example, in 2008 after their currency crisis and their debt crisis, people started to come up with local currencies, for example, to solve this type of liquidity issue. But this is just one example. And there are many good examples which could be picked if somebody looks hard. Do you think social safety nets and community structures need to evolve ahead of the world of declining energy and resources, as we discussed? they should evolve or there is a need for them to evolve, but I'm not sure if they can evolve because we are so atomized as a society at the moment that the real communities are still missing and still not there supporting each other. I don't know about you or your neighborhood. We've got a good neighborhood with a supportive community. If there is an excess good or stuff, we give it away even free if someone else needs it. So there's a good community of changing type of goods or even clothes if it's not needed in our neighborhood. So it's a really good working model in case of social support and safety net, and no better sort of how it works. I think in 2020 and COVID, we came closer to that sort of possibility. But now, even though those of us that are, you know, paying attention to the deep plumbing of our situation are quite alarmed, the there's this consensus trance of distraction and blaming politics for our problem instead of uh energy materials ecology and and all that so i don't think those conversations are happening nearly as widely as you would think uh because the the underlying story still is growth is a natural right and we'll go through a little bit of bumpy patch and it's off to the races again and the future is going to be bigger and brighter and shinier 20-50 years from now. Maybe that's the situation in the US, but I'm deliberately watching people online who are not collapsed aware and who are not aware of this energy situation. And even they start to realize that growth is probably over. And they already started to think about, okay, what comes next? Of course, they come up with totally energy-blind ideas, but at least some discussion on the topic. And there is this fate in growth is starting to break down. Yeah, you might be right. Given everything that we've talked about so far, do you have an opinion on artificial intelligence and large language models and how that might be a black swan or a white swan or any type of swan with respect to these issues? I'm a little skeptical about the capabilities of AI at the moment. So based on large language models and what I have seen, it's a good tool. So it has some limitations and had some useful uses and applications, but it's a tool. So it's not a life-threatening entity at the moment, or at least I believe. Maybe if we develop something totally different based on a totally different principle, it might become this artificial general intelligence, which kills us all, but not this version, I believe. And by the time we get there, we will have so many critical issues in terms of cheap supply, for example, or raw material supply, energy supply, that we won't have the energy and raw materials to develop or to scale it up. Just as a question, which I have no idea the answer to, you're an engineer. Do engineers use AI in their jobs? Yes, more and more so. So especially on those type of jobs where people don't like to be so creative like PowerPoint engineering and creating documentation and things like that, that's a favorite topic. But also for managing knowledge in an organization, it's also very useful to ask a company-based AI, okay, what other people know about this topic, for example, which I'm researching at the moment. And well, I mean, we're on top of all the other things we've discussed. We're slowly becoming cyborgs as we use chatbots to some degree. And the whole medium just gets meshed in to the rest of our social discourse. And it's really strange. But I think it's inevitable at this point until there's an EMP pulse or, you know, some different future. I don't think it's going to be stopped. Yeah, and this is the danger of it because we are just, again, adding building blocks on top of the Jenga tower. So AI is just going to be one. AI is a Jenga tower. Or even the whole technology stack is a Jenga tower. We are pulling out a block, which was our innate ability to create content or create something genuine. And then we put it on top and call it AI. And then Torware gets higher and higher, of course, because, of course, productivity grows. But then we are losing capabilities at the bottom and we are increasing instability at the top which means that at some point this will topple over And this is my biggest concern that this will not topple over in a very gentle way but in a rather radical way when something really hits. So if you are a policymaker or a philanthropist who's watching this show and who kind of doesn't know the details that you just provided, but kind of gets a gut sense that what you're saying is correct. And these people have selfless outcomes. They really want to do something to help humanity at large or humanity in their country or their community avert the worst. And they want to do something about the broader climate, energy, economic crisis. What would you recommend? I would recommend them to support localization, to support you know local farmers for example to to switch for a more sustainable more biological farming than the current version so even you know create co-ops or things like that or even support local local engineers and local entrepreneurs who are trying to build something locally and you know even spread the knowledge and then invest in type these type of technologies which are more sustainable and builds on existing raw materials or existing stuff, which could be done, recycled or upcycled into a different type of product. And would they do that just on their own initiative because they understand the importance of doing that? Or do we need to have a broader educational slash cultural narrative about this for that to have a critical mass to actually happen? I believe we would need some kind of education. So I believe that's the point. But seeing the situation in education where we are still stuffing our kids' head with a bit of theoretical knowledge about long-dead people, then I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. And it's going to be just an indoctrination for the youth, you know, to believe the dogmas and mantras. So we will need some kind of a totally alternative educational system, not the present one. Do you have kids? Yes, two. How old are they? 10 and 14. and you talk to these, about these issues with them? Yes, especially the younger one is really interested in this topic and really interested, okay, what will the future bring and what will happen if population starts to shrink? And not in a frightened way, so he... In a curious way. In a curious way, he sees it as an opportunity. Okay, maybe this whole resource situation could be mitigated by a smaller population or by using, you know, less technology. And he's really open to this type of discussions. I mean, that gives me hope. I mean, 10-year-olds, this is, it's common sense if you just look at the building blocks of the Jenga Tower and explain it that way. 10-year-olds can kind of understand this. The problem is, is it's always often presented in a really scary sort of way, too. I mean, it is scary. As adults, I'm hella scared about it. But maybe when your son is my age, this is going to be looking in the rearview mirror and we have a more stable situation. Of course, then there's climate, which, you know, I don't have a crystal ball there, but I think there's a certain amount of heating built in. It's already in the pipeline and that's an issue. So no matter what we do, some kind of heating is already locked in and then that might, you know, tip over some tipping points, which can cause a lot of mayhem. But then basically this is the best advice we can give to our kids to be flexible and be creative and don't stuck with one kind of a future vision that I'm going to be a manager at a company because that's not going to work. So what other advice do you have other than to invest locally to policymakers and philanthropists? I believe we should, you know, start, you know, measuring up our actual resources, what we have locally. So not only investing, but, okay, measuring up how much we have, how much we can save for the future, like a good manager who is really taking care of its people. So let's see, okay, what we have even in human resources or material resources, energy and everything. And, you know, prepare some plans. Okay, what happens if this is halved in, I don't know, 10 years? So what happens if you have half this amount of gas or whatever? And how do we survive? What do we do differently? Bioregional scenario planning. Yes, yes, exactly. Or accounting. Find out what the balance sheet is and do scenario planning after that. Exactly. And then start making steps. So if it requires reinvigorating public transport, then we eat. So we have to find ways together. Thank you for all of your hard work on your blog and coming out of the closet, as it were, today. I do agree with you that we need more people not blaming or being afraid, but just getting some grounded agency and understanding the possibilities of what you're describing. So I know that you, at least in the past, have watched the podcast and know that I ask similar questions to all my guests. But as someone who follows the show, do you have personal advice to the listeners of The Great Simplification at this time of learning and understanding all the things that we've been discussing? I believe they are already at a good place. So they already started to open their minds to different possibilities or different futures than what is, you know, commonly thought will come. So that's a very good start. So I believe it's going to be an individual choice for everyone. So there is no universal advice which could be given because every life is different, every situation is different, every country, location is different. So they have to be open-minded. So that's basically the only advice I could give, to be open-minded, be creative, and then try to come up with solutions which fits to the local problems and local issues. So you mentioned your younger son, but more broadly, do you have recommendations for young humans in their teens or 20s who are suddenly becoming aware of the Jenga Tower? First of all, and this might be surprising, but try to build real-life connections. So that's the number one and biggest advice. just you know come off the screen and then go out together with friends and then do stupid things even you know just go out to the riverside and then do some you know crazy stuff build a bunker together or things like that which really brings people together and teaches them that they can rely on each other and they can have fun with each other and this build builds some strong bonds which can be lasting for many years or even a lifetime and this is going to be the greatest asset they will have. And other than that, learn something useful. So learn some useful skills, like repairing a radio or build your own radio and try to communicate with each other, or build a community around, I don't know, picking up trash from the riverbed or trying to clean up your environment. So there are so many things which could be done, which will not change the overall trajectory because it's defined by geology and physics, but it can make life so much better for those involved, that it's, you know, it's a huge difference. What do you care most about in the world, Balazs? I would say truth. So that's, and honesty, as the name of the blog implies. So telling the truth as I see it, even though truth is something unknowable, I believe. So truth is so big and so complex that it cannot be grasped by any single human. It is a so complex topic. Even just one subtopic is so complex that it cannot be grasped by a single human, but as much as it is possible. I totally agree with you. I think what you're describing is the asymptote towards truth is the gradient that people like you and I are on. Like I started this podcast four years ago and I thought I knew a lot about energy and credit and the economic system and the environment. I've learned so much and I continue to learn from people like you and, and others. And I know what's unlikely to happen and I know what things are not true, but what is actually true and what is actually going to happen is still unknown and an emergent thing. Um, and I'm kind of like your 10 year old son. I'm, I remain very curious about all these things and I, and I want to learn um so yeah um are you going to continue your your blogging at the honest sorcerer uh do you enjoy that and and what's your plans for that yeah very much so so that's that's my really uh my mission so to say to to continue spreading the words or spreading the truth as as i learned or as i know it so this is again a personal experience in one hand and on the other hand it's it's a shared experience with others, building a community based on honesty and based on knowledge, what we know and share it. So this is going to, I hope this is going to be like too much inside baseball for the viewers. Um, but like on the weekend, after you're done with your work and, um, your family's taken care of, do you have this like urge to excrete some document on some topic? Like it's, it's a compulsion almost that you have to write about something that you learned. because that's how I feel with my Franklys. I don't say like, oh crap, I need to do a Frankly this week. It's like something that I feel that I have to get out. What are your thoughts on that? Quite often, quite often and quite often at the worst possible time. Yeah. An idea comes and then I quickly have to jot it down because I will forget it 10 minutes later. And then when I have the time, then I can return to it and then work on it. And then this is really a calling. So it's not a job, as you would say. I hate to admit this on camera, but I have a little recording, handheld recording device. And I've tried in the past that in a hypnagogic state, the moment between sleep and fully awake, I get tons of insights there. It's like the disciplines that we discuss, the things between the disciplines, like wake up and talk to each other when I'm asleep. So in the middle of the night, I'll record myself a little 30 second because I know I'll never remember it in the morning. So I have a ton of little voice recordings to myself. I digress. So if you could wave a magic wand, Balazs, and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing you would do to improve the human and planetary futures? I believe that's the trickiest questions of all, because we both know that this is a complex system and, you know, intentions rarely turn out as they were intended to be. And the side effects are sometimes more serious than the original problem was. So, but I would say if there is one thing, then I would simply add some more, uh, uh, compassion to other people. So just even in the, in the, in the, in those dark triad types, just to feel a little bit more compassion for each other and try to be good with each other. So that's, that's my only wish. It's an odd question that I maybe won't ask in the future. Um, but it, it gets at the heart of like, what, like, what are some things that, uh, we can uncover that are really at the core. And I agree with you that more compassion is one of them. What are you most concerned and what are you most hopeful about in the next five to 10 years? I'm most concerned about war. So that's really building up in our region. And although I fully admit nobody really wants this to happen. So nobody really, except for the crazy war mongers. But for most of the people and most of the politicians, they don't want actually to go to war. But I'm afraid that this is going to be like those World War I moments when nobody really wanted war, but everybody had the plans and everybody made the preparations. And then a spark came and then everything blew up. And this is what I'm most afraid of, that spark will come. Me too. And that's going to kick off some really crazy stuff. And what I'm most hopeful about is that we will find a common world and we'll start discussing with each other. And hopefully we can overcome this type of tribalism and hatred. and then we'll start, you know, community building. And we will start building a common sense among each other and then find a way together between nations and not only between people, but also between nations as well. It starts with people. You're in Hungary, I'm in Minnesota, USA, and we're having this conversation. And I think most people in the world are the same. And I think you probably watched my, frankly, I think humans are better than humanity is in aggregate and humanity runs into this metabolic maximum power pursuing structure. And we are alive at a moment when we know that or at least have the ability to know that. And does that make a difference? And I still believe that it potentially does, which is why I have conversations with smart, pro-social, future-oriented people like yourself, Bala. Thank you. So if you were to come back on the program in a year, is there any topic that we didn't cover today that you have specific expertise in or are really nerdy and passionate about that is relevant to human futures that you would be interested in unpacking? I would be interested in unpacking more the resource type of issues and problems and all the technical problems related to that. We haven't talked about peak copper, for example, or peak steel, which is basically upon us. And it just went unnoticed. And this is going to have huge implications for our future, which is already here. Well, I have you on camera now. So what's the deal with peak steel? I haven't read that article of yours, if there is one. Give us a few minute overview of that. Yeah, so actually steel production peaked around the early 2020s, and then it started to flatline and then decline. And it's, you know, steel is more like an indicator of the whole economic situation. So when there is no more steel used and no more cars are built, but also no more ships, no more pipelines and things like that, and infrastructure like bridges and roads and tunnels. So it indicates that we are, you know, have reached an apex of our civilization as a builder civilization. and we started to live up the past by recycling steel. And also by, you know, not building so much, we are letting things rot and letting things, you know, break down over time. And this is an interesting topic which is not discussed often. And does that rhyme with, you mentioned peak copper? It is rhyming, but in a different way, because peak copper will look like more like a geological limitation. And it's a combination of geological limitation and economic possibilities. But for now, it looks like a geologically constrained situation where we have some issues with producing enough copper. And then we will have a major gap between what is needed to build out this green tech utopia and what is actually can be recovered from the earth. And that's going to be a huge mismatch in the 2030s. And mines or mining companies have no idea how to bridge that gap because, you know, starting and building a mine, it's already too late. It won't be finished in 10 years. So it's basically all the debate in that we will have a huge issue. Okay. Well, maybe a roundtable. I'll have you back sooner than a year to discuss that, because I do think that's a very important issue. Any closing comments for people watching and listening who understand and agree with your thesis that you've laid out here today, or maybe who read your blog? Try to preserve your sanity and try to preserve your mental health. That's a very important thing in these times. and try to view things even though if they are upsetting sometimes as a little bit as an outsider so don't you know live too much in in your fantasies like you know what will happen if the supply chain collapses or what will happen if we don't have this or that but try to be you know a little bit more grounded take a walk in the forest or take a walk in your neighborhood and see that okay collapse is still not here or not in at a scale that which is you know really frightening really scary. So try to grind yourself in reality and then start to think about, okay, this is going to be a long process. It's not going to happen overnight. Okay, then how do I prepare myself? How do I prepare my family? What precautions I need to take or what do I do to prevent the worst things to happen from me or from my family? Thank you. Thank you for that. I actually agree with that advice. So I think you're seven hours ahead of me. I have not yet had breakfast here in Minnesota, but I'm just wondering, living in Hungary, it's approaching dinner time. What might you have for dinner tonight, Balazs? Something simple. So peanut butter and bread, that's my favorite combination. And not over complete. Well, I wanted you to share something in Hungary that is like a common meal. I have never been there. I know nothing about the culture. Usually, Hungarian meals are pretty heavy and pretty dense, a lot of fat and a lot of meat. and that's not, you know, conducive for a good night's sleep. So I usually for dinner, I just eat some cheese or some nuts and then things like that. So nothing really heavy. Good for you. You have the psychological ability to defer the second marshmallow. So how would I say either thank you or goodbye, see you again in Hungarian? So thank you is gósanom. Gósanom? Gósanom, yes, exactly. And then see you is see you. Okay. Gussanam. See you. Okay. Thank you so much, Balazs. To be continued, my friend. Thank you very much. Goodbye. If you'd like to learn more about this episode, please visit thegreatsimplification.com for references and show notes. From there, you can also join our Hilo community and subscribe to our Substack newsletter. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagans, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett and Lizzie Sirianni. Our production team also includes Leslie Batlutz, Brady Heian, Julia Maxwell, Gabriela Sleiman, and Grace Brunfeld. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.