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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, my name is Tonya Pinkins, and I'm the host of the podcast You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:07] Tonya Pinkins: This fall, I have a special treat for you.

[0:11] Tonya Pinkins: In honor of my debut feature film RED PILL, Marissa Lynn Daniels Studios has been hosting weekly conversations with my fellow Broadway colleagues and co-host Sierra Renee about the red pilling of America.

[0:26] Tonya Pinkins: These conversations create a safe space for us to talk about the things that are on our mind with an election and a global pandemic.

[0:37] Tonya Pinkins: So join us for The Red Pilling of America, a spotlight series every Saturday at 5 p.m.

[0:45] Tonya Pinkins: Or on the Broadway Podcast Network, You Can't SAY THAT, BPN.fm forward slash YCST.

[0:54] Tonya Pinkins: Join the conversation.

[0:57] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta speak live.

[1:01] Tonya Pinkins: We gotta say what's true for you.

[1:15] Tonya Pinkins: You is kind.

[1:17] Tonya Pinkins: You is smart.

[1:18] Tonya Pinkins: You is important.

[1:20] Tonya Pinkins: You is dead.

[1:22] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins' horror film RED PILL brings African American perspective to the progressive movement.

[1:30] Tonya Pinkins: We are a majority in this country.

[1:33] Tonya Pinkins: And we're gonna win the election.

[1:39] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is?

[1:41] Tonya Pinkins: A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[1:50] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky.

[1:51] Tonya Pinkins: Some people like to live dangerously.

[1:54] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight?

[1:57] Tonya Pinkins: You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow.

[2:00] Tonya Pinkins: Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here?

[2:04] Tonya Pinkins: I don't see the case.

[2:06] Tonya Pinkins: This place creeps me out.

[2:11] Tonya Pinkins: I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[2:28] Tonya Pinkins: The only people missing or dead are brown people.

[2:34] Tonya Pinkins: They're after all of us.

[2:38] Tonya Pinkins: What do we do, Amelia?

[2:40] Tonya Pinkins: We die.

[2:42] Tonya Pinkins: But we take some of them with us.

[2:47] Tonya Pinkins: Why do you care about this stuff?

[2:50] Tonya Pinkins: I can't help it.

[2:50] Tonya Pinkins: It's fucking annoying.

[2:54] Tonya Pinkins: Why do you care?

[2:55] Tonya Pinkins: Were your parents activists?

[2:56] Tonya Pinkins: Were your parents involved in this?

[2:57] Tonya Pinkins: Like, why do you care?

[3:00] Amir Talai: You know.

[3:02] Amir Talai: My parents are not activists.

[3:04] Amir Talai: They're um, you know, they're Iranians from Iran.

[3:09] Amir Talai: Uh, and I think very much ascribe to what I talked about before that just like put your head down, don't make too much noise, you know.

[3:18] Amir Talai: Um do good by doing well.

[3:22] Amir Talai: You know what I mean? Kind of thing of like, look, uh I yeah, of course the Amazon is terrible. Just get really rich and donate some money to the Amazonians, you know what I mean?

[3:33] Tonya Pinkins: But why? How did you become this way?

[3:39] Amir Talai: I don't, I'm not really sure.

[3:41] Amir Talai: I think, you know, it may have to do with um with feeling isolated as a kid, being the only Persian kid in my school, skipping a grade and being a year younger than anyone.

[3:55] Amir Talai: I don't I don't know if I was I don't know if I'd use the term bullied, but um, but I certainly felt marginalized, right?

[4:04] Amir Talai: Um and um and I think as someone who has been marginalized, I have I have radar for that, right?

[4:14] Amir Talai: Um as someone who struggled with my identity, uh, I have radar for identity politics, right?

[4:24] Amir Talai: Um, you know, I grew up in a Persian household in a multicultural city, um by white people, right?

[4:39] Amir Talai: Um I um I uh I'm a little small, uh not terribly butch, and you know, every now and then people thought I might be gay, and um uh and so I've I've I've always been fascinated by identity, right?

[4:58] Amir Talai: And so when I see people being uh marginalized, that pings for me.

[5:07] Amir Talai: When I see people being marginalized because of their identity, that's a double ping for me, right?

[5:13] Amir Talai: Um, and so I just I can't help it.

[5:16] Amir Talai: I can't, I don't know.

[5:17] Amir Talai: I I it just I pay attention to it and I I think I think, unlike a lot of people, I see the problems in our world as actually very simple to solve.

[5:28] Amir Talai: I think they're very straightforward.

[5:31] Amir Talai: And I think that's what gets my goat so much, right?

[5:37] Tonya Pinkins: Here's here's what some people see as a problem. I have a different take on it, but I want to know your take on it. You know, we got 75 million people who you know are kind of QAnani conspiracy theorists, and we got 80 million people who are, you know, say they believe in democracy, and we got a hundred million in the middle who just their life is too much, they can't get involved. How do we solve that? Or is there's a problem? I mean, do you think that's a problem?

[6:02] Amir Talai: I think that's not a problem.

[6:05] Amir Talai: Does that have to be solved?

[6:07] Amir Talai: Yeah, that's a problem.

[6:08] Amir Talai: It's definitely a problem.

[6:10] Amir Talai: So I think we can agree on that.

[6:12] Amir Talai: You know, I think that one of the biggest problems, uh, uh, and I agree with um oh crap, I'm blanking on his name, but he created the um the equal justice initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

[6:27] Amir Talai: Um Stevenson.

[6:29] Amir Talai: Brian Stevenson, Stevenson, yes, yes.

[6:31] Amir Talai: I was thinking Steven Stephen.

[6:33] Amir Talai: Uh no, Brian Stevenson.

[6:35] Amir Talai: Um that we don't in this country understand our history.

[6:43] Amir Talai: And we haven't been taught our history, so we can't understand what we haven't been taught.

[6:48] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly.

[6:49] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly.

[6:50] Amir Talai: And I think and and more to the point, I don't think we understand racism.

[6:54] Amir Talai: Um I I think that I think that uh uh Gene Denby, who um co-hosts uh NPR's Code Switch podcast, uh, he has a phrase, housing segregation in everything.

[7:12] Amir Talai: And what's interesting is there's there's two ways to read that phrase, right?

[7:17] Amir Talai: There is housing segregation in everything.

[7:21] Amir Talai: And also we are housing segregation in everything, right?

[7:29] Amir Talai: Um, so I think that too many Americans don't have a concept of uh how racism has operated in our country for so long, right?

[7:43] Amir Talai: There's there's a ton of Americans who are like, man, I can't wait for racism to be over on January 20th.

[7:51] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[7:53] Tonya Pinkins: Oh well, there's it's gonna be a rough day for them.

[7:59] Amir Talai: Right.

[8:00] Amir Talai: And and and and I I would say that you know, of the 75 million people who voted for Trump, I never say his name.

[8:09] Tonya Pinkins: Fair enough.

[8:11] Amir Talai: Five.

[8:11] Amir Talai: Uh fair enough.

[8:12] Amir Talai: I'm with that.

[8:13] Amir Talai: No, no, no adding energy to that.

[8:16] Tonya Pinkins: All right.

[8:17] Amir Talai: Okay.

[8:18] Amir Talai: I would say five million of them think they're racist.

[8:26] Amir Talai: Five million of them go, you know what? Yeah, I'm racist, I don't give a fuck.

[8:30] Amir Talai: And I would think 70 million of them would go, how dare you? Right?

[8:35] Amir Talai: And and the reason is that they don't understand what racism is.

[8:39] Amir Talai: So I think that I think that, you know, now look, that's a complex solution, but the reason is very straightforward that that we don't understand, we have never been taught what racism is, right?

[8:54] Amir Talai: And I think as Brian Stevenson would say, if we had a real sort of truth and reconciliation in this country, that would change things.

[9:08] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I just came back from Seoul Korea, a country that has uh COVID under a country where the community comes first.

[9:22] Tonya Pinkins: You introduce yourself by your plays a big part in there.

[9:25] Tonya Pinkins: And so within two days, within four days of two people dying of COVID who had come in from Wuhan, they had a national policy in place, and less than 500 people of 50 million have died.

[9:36] Tonya Pinkins: Um, it's pretty empty, people are staying home.

[9:40] Tonya Pinkins: Um, but everyone wears a mask all the time.

[9:43] Tonya Pinkins: The surveillance that is available everywhere in the world, they use it to track people and to let you know in every neighborhood on your phone and when you go in restaurants, and that's really wonderful.

[9:54] Tonya Pinkins: But they have a high suicide rate, and I also got to experience what it's like to not get to have individual freedoms there, and the pain and suffering that people have because the expectation is to serve the community, and coming back to America after that, I started having this um thought that possibly the strength of America is in the polarity, that that's what's keeping the scales balanced.

[10:28] Tonya Pinkins: That we've got these people over here, and we got these people over here, and somehow that is it's the only nation in the world with this kind of polarity that's still holding.

[10:42] Amir Talai: So, two things.

[10:45] Amir Talai: Doesn't feel balanced, does it?

[10:50] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I believe in the reconciliation of opposites.

[10:53] Amir Talai: Uh-huh.

[10:54] Tonya Pinkins: So in that sense, I feel like you know, there's light, there's shadow.

[11:00] Tonya Pinkins: And from you know, the 45 voters side, the Biden voters are the shadow, and vice versa.

[11:08] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, and that's kind of what my movie is.

[11:10] Tonya Pinkins: It's like I'm showing you two groups of people who see each other in very different ways.

[11:15] Tonya Pinkins: What's the truth?

[11:16] Tonya Pinkins: Is there even such a thing as truth?

[11:18] Amir Talai: I mean, phenomenology says that there is no reality other than the one you experience.

[11:26] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, right, but I think it goes without saying that.

[11:36] Amir Talai: Well, not it goes without saying, I think it bears saying that uh our maternal mortality rate is going up, particularly among black, brown slash poor women, and things are getting worse for black and brown people and poor people in general.

[12:07] Amir Talai: Right? I'm gonna take the devil's advocate with you, and we're gonna talk about factfulness, and it's a really wonderful book written by the Swedish minister of health.

[12:26] Amir Talai: The fact is that on the planet, everything has gotten better for everybody on the planet. And if you were to take a test about what is the state of the world for everybody, it's better for everybody. There's still some really, really shitty stuff. But on a whole, everything is evolving towards the better. And it is not mutually exclusive that there could be a lot of shitty stuff and that everything could still be better for everybody. It's better for everybody, but it's getting better more quickly for a smaller and smaller few than for the great many, right? Income inequality, particularly in this country, is getting worse much, much more quickly, right? The climate disaster that is coming will affect that wealth.

Wealth is moving from the West. We used to live in a two-hump world, the poor and the rich. And now we're moving into more of a one-hump world where the wealth is not totally concentrated. It's getting out. I mean, you know, what he said, people for whom one dollar a day more would change the quality of their life. And there are people for whom 46 dollars a day, which are the wealthiest people in the world, would not change the quality of their life. So I think our ideas about wealth are still very antiquated. You know, there are people in America who could have what Mitch McConnell has. He could pay the salaries of everybody in Kentucky and raise the standard of living of that whole state. He's got that kind of wealth.

So for me, that's more of like, is it good? Is it bad? We created it. We somehow, in our consent, we created this. We have an opportunity to create something else. But I will tell you that I feel much more secure with someone, you know, who would say, I don't like niggers, than I do with someone who would be like, oh, I don't see color, or oh, I, you know, I come on over. You know, there's an authenticity to someone who is clear that I don't like you and I don't want you in my house, than to people who you know are being politically correct, and you can tell that there's incongruity, and that's what I feel about New York City and the arts community. They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk.

[15:19] Amir Talai: And you know, it's like it's like the emperor has no clothes on and nobody tells him. I mean, I tell them all the time, and you know, I pay the price for it because I can't live in the gaslighting craziness of like you trying to make me think you're and it's like no. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I get that. I struggle with that. I struggle with that, right? There's times where I go, you hate me, just tell me you hate me, right? And then there's other times where I go, I know that you hate me, but I just can you lie to me for one fucking day? I don't want you to lie to me for no day. Just tell me you hate me, and we can just stay away from each other. Sure. I can see that you hate me anyway, whether you say it or not, I can feel it.

But look, I mean, I think that I think that that it's funny, I think that that applies to Hollywood in some really specific ways too, right? So there are white creators in Hollywood who are putting more black and brown people in their projects because they feel outside pressure, right? Not because they give a shit, right? There are many who give a shit. Don't get me wrong, right? But then there is a group that could not care less, but is only doing it because the network is telling them to. And they're that's what I call they're moving away from discomfort. And as soon as they're comfortable again, they'll stop doing what they were doing and they'll fall back. We, in my opinion, haven't come to a place where it's gotten so uncomfortable for everybody that we are visioning a new way, and that new way has not existed yet. So we can't solve this thing with old solutions, you know. We gotta come up with a new thinking to create something that has never existed before.

[17:30] Amir Talai: No, I mean, I agree, but I think in the short term, right? If some white creator who doesn't give a shit about diversity is forced to cast some black and brown people in the short term, that's money in the pocket of some brown and black people, and I can't hate on that, right? I think it's important to understand the context in which that's happening, right? And to say we have to fight for better than that. We definitely have to fight for better than that, because, you know, rich white people take really good care of their pets and they will happily make you one. That's what I talk about when I talk about my function, right? They will put you in a nice cage and a beautiful, and as Rashad Robinson says, do not confuse presence for power.

There are a lot of very wealthy, very successful, highly awarded celebrities who have no power. Yeah, yeah. And I but I think that that's why I think that that's why we have to take those roles that that person deigned to give us, right? And keep fighting for more. I think the most dangerous thing is to say to a white person, you've done the work, you're good, right? Because even if anyone ever says that, when would they ever say that? I mean that to a black person, I'm still doing the work, I'll be working for the rest of my life. There's a lot of white people saying that to each other in Hollywood right now.

[19:21] Amir Talai: I believe you. Right. And it, I think that that's one of the hardest things for me. Like, like, I feel like the work is forever. And the work is what makes being alive exciting. Like, if you don't have anything to get up for to work, what's the point? But I mean, I know that there are people who just, I don't know, they want to sit on a beach all day, like, slit my wrist. I think maybe maybe like six years ago, something like that, my wife got me a t-shirt that said, This is what a feminist looks like, right? This was a popular shirt a few years ago. And because here's the thing. After a few years with my wife, I definitely think of myself who is trying to do the work, right? But what's interesting is after a few years, my wife said, I don't think I want you to wear that shirt anymore.

And I said, say more. And she goes, I don't, I don't like the idea that men can label themselves as a good one. Because all men have misogyny in them, even if they've done all the work. There is, and so, and you know, and that is how we have, you know, fuck it, Harvey Weinstein donating millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton and then raping people, right? Because he was seen as someone like, oh, what a what an ally. He's done, he's doing the work, he's helping, he's making things better. At the same time, he's a predator. And on a much smaller scale, that's happening with people like me who are labeling themselves as feminists but also fucking inherently misogynistic and then white people who are saying look I've got I've got black people working for me I'm hiring black people I'm casting black people right but but then you ask them well how many how many people of color are making business decisions in your company right and then and that's when it goes oh well I guess I do have more work to do right and so, you know, I think, I don't know, I love it, it's weird I like doing it I like finding new places where I can be of service where I can be an ally to someone you know I like when when I go oh wow look I don't I don't like finding out that I was blind to something but I do like having my blinders taken off you know.

[22:46] Amir Talai: Yeah, that's been a big, I used to in my younger days not even that long ago I would really get mad at myself when I realized I believed something and then I find out I was wrong and now I'm like yeah that's just gonna keep happening for the rest of your life if you're lucky you'll keep finding out you were wrong and I kind of try to sell myself let's just die to every story you have even if it's a story you like. Be willing to die to that story. Be willing to to know that everything is a story. And you made me think about Anand Giridharadas, who wrote Winner Takes All, you know, about the way that you know philanthropy has become a way for companies to you know sell themselves as doing good while raping communities.

I mean, you should see these new ads that Exxon Mobil has about saving the environment. It's like you're you're Exxon Mobil. Yep. Yep. You know, Chandra I was talking about how you know companies like Facebook and Uber and Airbnb are bringing in all these diversity consultants, right? And hiring more brown people, right? And it's like, well, great, but what is your company doing to brown communities? Right? It's like it, it's it's sort of like I think the metaphor I used was like it's like the devil is hiring more brown demons to torture people with. It's like great, I guess. Well, but here it is. The shift has to be from giving people jobs and thinking you're doing something for them to building wealth.

When are you going to build wealth in other communities? And one of the things that I personally experience a lot is that I have what are called foul weather friends. And when Obama was elected, I knew that that was kind of over. I was like, Obama's here, benevolence to brown people is gonna be over. But most of the time, white people who want to help me, they actually think they're helping me, don't ever perceive of me as their equal or as someone who might actually be able to help them.

[24:44] Amir Talai: And usually the relationship goes sour when they realize that I didn't need their help or that I excel them. Like what it meant for them was look what I'm doing. I'm helping this brown person. Yeah. Boy, that's deep. You know, what's interesting to me about that is that there's a light in there, there's a goodness in there, right? It's someone acknowledging their privilege to an extent and trying to make up for it to an extent, right? But still holding on to that table that's not even right, so they're invested in that status thing, they're invested in it because it's that thing they say that if someone has one dollar, someone has two dollars, and someone has three dollars, and they tell the person with two dollars we will give you two dollars to give, or we give you a dollar and you can give it to someone else.

And they say that statistically, people will give it to the person with three dollars. But they don't want to shift their status from being over the person with one dollar and bring them up to being equal.

[26:25] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I mean, I get, you know, I think that I don't think it's terribly surprising that people are invested in maintaining privilege, right? Um gosh. My next guest is a guy named Tyson Yunkaporta, and his book Sand Talk is extraordinary, and he's an Aboriginal First Nation person, and he says that in their culture, they believe the greatest sin that the devil, that Lucifer, is the belief that you are above anything, including a rock. You are not above anything; the belief that you are above anything is the sin. And I don't know why, but I've just always, I was fascinated by the story of stuff because I always feel like I don't have any material needs, and you know, I'm blessed, I have everything I need, so I spend money to keep it in circulation to make sure other people have what they need.

[27:29] Amir Talai: Look, I mean, I think that there's also a place for compassion towards those with privilege who want so desperately to hold on to it because I think a lot of that is driven by fear, right? I mean, I think that if you as a white person think that you're, if you as a person of privilege, put it that way, can lose your privilege, well you've seen what's happened to the people with less privilege than you and in some cases it's terrifying, right? I mean, I don't think it's any, I don't blame Persian people, Iranian people for wanting to be considered white as opposed to black because being black in this country has got to be terrifying, especially relative to white people, right? It's gotta be difficult to say I'm neither of those things.

I think the desire to be proximal to whiteness is powerful and I don't blame people for it, but we gotta find a way out of it if we're gonna get anywhere, you know what I mean? My theory is we gotta end the idea of whiteness period, like the way the Haitians did with the revolution; you couldn't be a citizen if you wanted to hold on to that concept. You gotta listen to the podcast Seeing White, that's another guy you're just giving me so much research, Seeing White, that's another Chenjerai Kumanyika, John, damn, loving the education. Seeing, Seeing White, yeah, just look up Seeing White. I think it goes by a different name, which I forget, but if you Google Seeing White podcast, you'll get there.

[29:52] Amir Talai: Um, yeah, it talks about whiteness as a technology, right? It talks about whiteness as property. There's a whole, someone did a whole dissertation on whiteness as property and how different cultures came here, and you know, when you got your whiteness card, because everybody didn't come here white. Italians were not white, Irish were not white. When suddenly you got a white card, you weren't giving that up. You know, you got to live in different areas, you got access to things that you didn't have before. And a lot of that giving people the white card was about, you know, the poor farmers joining up against the manufacturers and stuff, and the communists were supporting them. The communists were supporting the sharecroppers to rise up, and they were like, oh, we need to, but no, we need to break that up. Hey, you people come and join the white club.

[30:50] Amir Talai: Yeah, for I mean, that's actually a big reason that Middle Eastern people and Iranians in particular have been considered white for the last hundred years, is because there were property disputes in the early 20th century, and somehow or another, they convinced some judge that no, we're from the Tigris and Euphrates, that's where white people came from. So we're white, basically. And they went, okay, and we've been white on the census ever since. When I applied to UC Berkeley, I had to check off white, and I was like, this is crazy. And what's hilarious is sometimes on Twitter when I talk about white privilege, I'll have bros in my comments going, hey, I got news for you, buddy. You're white because you're Middle Eastern, and Middle Eastern is white.

And I'm like, great, can I get some of that white privilege? Can I get, can I be cast as a lead in a romantic comedy in America? Is that gonna happen? Can I go visit my grandmother in her home country with no problems whatsoever? Is that a white country?

[32:04] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly. Exactly.

[32:12] Amir Talai: But yeah, we got called white a hundred years ago, and I don't blame someone for being like, what you know what being white is where it's at in this country. So I'm gonna hold on to that.

[32:24] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I don't blame them either. I don't blame them either. I mean, think of all the black people who got to pass. That was one of the reasons that there was such bigotry against the Appalachian people was because there was so much intermarriage between Native Americans and blacks and whites that the people from Appalachia could look anyway, and so there was this, they used to say they can trick you.

[32:54] Amir Talai: Wow, yeah.

[32:56] Tonya Pinkins: But you know, well, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. You're so smart, and you've given me my work to do. My last question to you is tell me something that happened to you that felt like the worst possible thing, but then it turned into the best possible thing.

[33:20] Amir Talai: I mean, I don't know. I guess I'm so happy with everything that's happened. I think the only one that comes to mind is I ended up not getting a Broadway show that I wanted really badly.

[33:36] Tonya Pinkins: And um, and instead what show?

[33:40] Amir Talai: Monsoon Dreams?

[33:43] Tonya Pinkins: Monsoon Wedding?

[33:45] Amir Talai: No. It was some Indian, something Indian, which again, I shouldn't have been considered for that. But you know, white producers are like, yeah, it doesn't matter. I didn't get that. And then because I didn't get that, I was available for We Will Rock You, which was a musical based on the music of Queen. And we put that up in Las Vegas, and I lived in Las Vegas for about nine months and made lifelong friends in that show. I was never like really a party guy in college or in Los Angeles before I moved to Vegas. And then once I went to Vegas, I mean it was insane. It's just insane. So it was great. That was like my coming of age. Yeah, now I go to Vegas like three times a year for free, thanks to my points. Miles expert wife. And yeah, I mean, I don't know that that job ended up having sort of lifelong meaning, but I am incredibly grateful for the lifelong friends that I made in it. A lot of people in that show I still am close with to this day.

[35:02] Tonya Pinkins: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I actually worked in Vegas once myself in Anita Man, the blast from the past. We did 85 songs in 45 minutes.

[35:11] Amir Talai: Good lord.

[35:14] Tonya Pinkins: How fast that's your so I know how beautiful Vegas is. Vegas is beautiful when you can get out in those red rocks.

[35:25] Tonya Pinkins: It has been my pleasure speaking with you, Amir. Just keep doing the work. I have no doubt that you will keep pushing against expectations and requiring people to step up and be better than themselves. And thank you for taking this time to spend an hour with me.

[35:47] Amir Talai: Well, thank you. And Marissa and we'll thank you. Thank you both so much. This is great. I love talking to you, and I can't wait to see the movie. I'll probably watch it like this.

[36:01] Amir Talai: In fact, I want you and Nina to watch it because I might need Nina to be one of my spokespeople.

[36:08] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. All right. So does she like scary movies?

[36:11] Amir Talai: She doesn't at all. Does she like scary movies?

[36:13] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, she doesn't know what an editing workout. It's scary.

[36:16] Amir Talai: No, it's not scary.

[36:21] Tonya Pinkins: No, okay. All right. Well, you all enjoy yourselves and stay safe.

[36:29] Amir Talai: All right, you too. We'll see you on the other side. Bye.

[36:34] Amir Talai: Yeah, my pleasure. Bye.

[36:41] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, I'm Tonya Pinkins, and I would love to hear from you. You can text me at 917-724-8998. Tell me what you're up to, and I'll let you know what I'm up to. Text me 917-724-8998. Let's keep in touch.