Mental Health Trends: AI, Medication, Education, Workplace… and Animation

This is the Untamed Ethos podcast. Join us as investment pros, executives, and other experts talk business, personal All opinions All opinions expressed by Joshua and by podcast participants are solely their own. Welcome back to Untamed Ethos. With me today is Quint Boa. Quint Boa is not only a psychotherapist, he is founder of a multinational company, Symbia, that is, works with, I believe, sixteen Fortune five hundred companies now, award winning company with over twenty years in business. And not only is it interesting as a businessman, but quit, businessman plus psychotherapist is trying to tackle some of the world's biggest mental health problems using animation, which we'll get to, we'll get to eventually. But, Quint, first off, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Hi, Josh. It's lovely to be here. Thanks very much. I've it's it's been a I really wanted to be on your show for some time now, and thanks for having me. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Quentin, you know, you were telling me earlier just about some of the Gen X stats that you're seeing around, in western cultures and western civilization in general, different countries, US, UK, etcetera, that are really concerning you. Tell me about some of those statistics. Well, I mean, if we go at twenty percent of children and young people aged thirteen to seventeen in the United States have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. That's from active minds. In England, which I'm gonna refer quite a lot to England and the UK, twenty percent of children and young people who have a probable mental disorder in twenty twenty three. Suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst young people aged twenty to twenty four in the United States. Just think about that. The second leading cause of death amongst young people aged ten to twenty four in the United States. In the US, fifth eleven point five percent of youth experience as major depression. I mean, I could go on with these statistics, but a better place to get them are are from, books like, for example, Jonathan Haidt's book here, which really doubles down on those statistics. And it's it's really, Gen x is in trouble. Gen zed in trouble, I should say. In that there we have we have teenagers growing up who are not prepared, wild accounts, for life, as as as as we certainly experienced as we were growing up. Jonathan Haidt, for example, is, says that it happened twice over once. In the in the late eighties, nineties, there was this fear of a straight there was stranger danger. So so so parents weren't letting their kids out, won't let them play, won't let them socialize because they were worried about, the risk of them, getting into trouble. And then in two thousand and seven, we had the arrival of the smartphone, a a phone which could be connected to the Internet. That meant that that suddenly people's concentration was put on to the mobile phone, and, and that was the start of social media, which then grew and grew. And then two thousand eleven, we had front facing phones, which meant that selfies were possible, and that exponentially that re more than redoubled, the uptake of of, mobile phone usage and, social media. And Jonathan Haidt in particular, draws a line from those two incidences from from the people not allowing them or being reluctant to let their kids go outdoors and the rise of mobile phones to being a mental health crisis in in in in in in society. Now the other thing that happened, of course, was COVID. Now with COVID, what happened was there was there was lockdown, and that, stopped, with whatever socialization there was, really started to put the dampeners on that. And then and the other thing that happened there was that the kids, children, young adults, children, and young adults were locked in with their parents who may have been getting involved in challenges of their own around addiction, around depression, around trauma. And, and that maybe what we know led to, you know, for example, then witnessing things like domestic abuse that they couldn't get away from. And that is part of, what they call the long tail of COVID, which, I think is pretty underestimated, and is is leading as we speak in in in England to real problems in the classroom and a real drop off in academic performance. So what we've got is is is a a a generation who are displaying presenting problems of anxiety, of of of depression, of of, trauma, addiction, eating disorders, self harming, and, obviously, these are multimodal. The way that the UK is addressing that is is by putting them through what we have here as a national health service. And we have one particular facility, which is a children and adult mental health service called CAMS. And CAMS is is utterly overwhelmed. I mean, the waiting list now is between six and nine months. Can be longer than that. So, that's an entire school year, basically. Yeah. It's absolutely ridiculous. If you if you get into into if your child gets into trouble psychologically, you're gonna be looking at a six to nine month waiting list. And because of the cost of living crisis, kids can't afford, well, parents can't afford to send their kids to see a therapist, which over here is around, you know, eighty eighty pounds an hour. Nobody's got that kind of money. You look unless you're if you're doing cognitive behavioral therapy, you're in for probably sixteen sixteen sessions. If you're on to longer more long term psychodynamic therapy, then it's it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be thousands of pounds. People just don't have that money. And we'll come on to this later in the conversation, Josh, but I think there's an awful lot we can do prior to going into, professional, medical help. I think there's a lot we can do, within support groups, if only people knew that they were there. And I think there's a lot we can do using animation, and I am an evangelist. I'll you know, full disclosure here. I'm an evangelist for animation. We'll come on to that. That that how animation can help, address some of these problems at root and via via Instagram and via social media, which after all is is free to air practically. Yeah. You know, and I started off saying Gen x. I I should have said, should have said Gen z there. So let me correct myself and, and then go back to Gen z. And I wanna I I I wanna cover them as well, but I kinda wanna give our listeners some idea of of the range of the topics today as well. You know, you think a lot about how mental health is impacting our workforce as well as some of the factors that our, modern workers are dealing with right now. Talk for a minute about the problem with workforce. Let's skip forward to folks that are actually in the workforce now. Yeah. Okay. So well, basically, after I mean, obviously, I'm speaking with two hats on because I'm an employer. I employ fifty five people here in the United States and and in Europe. And I also talking about it from an organizational psychology point of view is because a lot of the work we do is my company does is in learning and development. And, obviously, I have a whole, of of, people that I know who are working from home. Essentially, what's happening is, as a result of COVID, people, were working from home during COVID. And now since, COVID is over, inverted commas, the, the workforce doesn't wanna go back. So in my company, the the, staff are asked to come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that's optional. And I can't force them to come in. And in some instances, in the in the interim, staff have actually, you know, rented or bought flats outside of London, so the commute would be horrendous. You know, you're looking at maybe a a six hour commute. Well, I can't, in all fairness, ask somebody to do a six hour commute just to come into work and oftentimes sit on a Zoom call or a Teams call, which they could do from their own place. Now this is writ large when you get to multinational organizations because you have employers with, say, a hundred thousand people scattered all around the world, and and there is no coherent, policy around working from home. And so you have disparate things happening, in different geographic areas. And it's very, very difficult, much more difficult than it was for for what we call HR, for human resources to to to manage and to and to coordinate the, the, a a coherent response to, company policy, for example. I mean, imagine if you wanted to change brand and you've gotta roll that information out to a hundred thousand people. It's it's very difficult. Another problem you have is because people are working from home, it it it a number of problems come up. The first, paradoxically, comes up is that is that people, virtue signal by working at home. And I've I've got experience of working with with people who who do this. So they they work too hard. So for example, in the UK, some of our producers will work with their US counterparts, and they will work, you know, eight, nine o'clock at night here with, their their counterparts in the US. They're not supposed to. We didn't ask them to, but they do it because they they want to do a good job. And that leads to significant problems because some of these, producers are are moms with kids, and, that that causes problem in terms of you know, that's unsustainable, you know, for for both for the parents and for and for the kids. Other problems that that arise is addiction. So you've got people working from home. Well, you know, what's to stop you having a bottle of wine behind the laptop? Now companies will deny that this is going on, but we know for a fact that it is. And, they how do you actually keep charge of that? How do you look after that? How do you how do you make sure that the mental well-being of people at home is is is catered for? And and what's because and and who's responsible for that as well? I mean, there's an interesting, court case in in Germany, a couple of weeks ago where somebody broke their leg while they were working from home, and he sued the company. Right? So whose responsibility is it if you're working from home? Is it the company's response? So say some I mean, just for to exaggerate the point, but say some I have some sort of a psychological incident working from home because I'm working from home, because I'm working in a on my own. And as a result of isolation, I have a some sort of, challenging mental, disorder. Who's responsible for that? Because that's what's happening, Josh. Because the people, for example I mean, I'm I work in I think the average age of of of my employees is something like twenty six years old. Well, if they're at twenty six years old, the chances are their working life now has been working from home. They're not they're not used to commuting at all. And the problem we have is is is and I I'm sure a lot of other companies have is that they don't have that that that esprit de corps within the firm. They don't come in and see their colleagues. They don't learn from their colleague. They're they're not mentors or mentorees. How do they learn? How do they, develop with with with their colleagues? It's it's it's hard to do. Now there's a counterargument to this, but but I think that I mean, certainly the in the financial sector in the UK, it's becoming more and more, the case that that firms want their staff to come in and resume this five day week. You know, when we hear these, but, obviously, the work from home is a big topic, and I've I've delved into this a couple of times with a with a couple different, experts. And more and more folks are bringing are bringing, their employees back for a variety of different reasons. Sometimes they have big buildings with leases, and they got people there, and that's just kinda part of it. And others are realization that they're not getting time together. And, you know, it's hard for your team to kinda gel when you're don't spend any time together, and you're only you know, you don't build the friendships. I mean, I I saw some stats, and, I can't think of, I think can't think of exactly what it said, but the the the bottom line of it was the biggest determinant of your happiness at work, was the friendships that you was having a a close friend at work. Yeah. And so, you know, obviously, those are those are much easier to bond when you're sitting next to someone or the office across, and you have these little conversations that go on that, that don't have anything to do with with work. Whereas if I'm sure Yeah. If I'm just using Microsoft Teams, then if I've already got a relationship relationship with you, then I might send you some things over there and that sort that that that that are not work related or work adjacent maybe. But that's not happening from the beginning. You don't you don't develop the relationships online. At least most of us don't. Now I think that I think that I could push back and say that there is a generation, you know, the the gaming generation, if you will, that's maybe learning, develop relationships that that way. But it's for some reason, it doesn't seem to come out in the in the data just yet as far as people's ability to do that to do that. But maybe because it's maybe because the vocation is different, that it's all about fun and not all not about getting work done. I don't know. But, you know, one of the things that you you mentioned, anxiety and depression. Mhmm. Why does it seem like those two things are always lumped together? You always hear anxiety and depression. You know, one of them is, to me, I think of it as an overstimulation. Anxiety is you're you're in a constant state of up, and you're you can be exhausted because of the you're you're constantly on. Right? You're in your your stimulation, right, and overstimulation constantly. And I understand how that is linked to smartphones and things like that, and you can obviously go go into that. But before we go into that, why do we always seem to see those two lumped together when it seems like that they're very, very different issues? Well, I mean, there's there's I mean, anxiety and depression, I mean, they're obviously the two most common, presenting problems. I mean, statistically, eleven point five percent of youth experience severe meant, depression in the United States. It's it's tricky and I there is a there's not a cookie cutter answer to that because I think I think in some cases, anxiety is the handmaiden of depression and vice versa. What, we could say is that anxiety is I mean, if we just take anxiety, for a start. I mean, anxiety is you could say one cause of anxiety is hypervigilance as a child. So say, for example, you grow up in a child in in in your childhood is affected by the behavior of an adult. For example, let's just take alcohol. Say there there's an addiction to alcohol, and you are constantly in a state of vigilance where you are, looking to see the state of that person because being aware of how they are could be the difference between getting a hit or being, or getting a hug. And that state of hypervigilance around, and and the and the dynamics of within the within the family means that, you are constantly on edge. And as you grow up, obviously, these these have been skills that you've learned in order to navigate your childhood, and you, of course, default to them as you get older. And then, in in your adult life, you're using you continue to be using this hypervigilance in order to to get through life. Well, that's exhausting. It's exhausting, you know, psychologically. You're constantly, you know, hitting cortisol all the time, and and you will burn out. Now one one way you burn out is you go into depression. You sort of hibernate. You know, you go into deep rest, and that's that's one way of looking at depression. And you you just sit back and you reconstitute yourself before you go back out into the world because you just cannot handle it. And I think that's that's one way in which anxiety and depression sort of hang together. They're they're they're they're different as you said, but they they rhyme. You know? They're in the same React so so it could be reactive, in in almost one way or the other. And when you mentioned hypervigilance, that reminds me of smartphones because Yeah. Never in, never in the history of the world were so many people required to be on call. And and when you say when I say required, I mean, you know, no one's literally requiring you, but you feel that way. And if you're a child, everything is important. And Absolutely. You know, even the things that I say are not important. I look at my phone, and I'm I'm bored for two seconds, and I see a a pop up or I just get curious about what's going on somewhere, my action says it's important. My words may say it's not important, but my actions, if you judge me by my actions, you would think that some of the things that we look at on our phone are very important. And so I think this you know, I heard someone say in the in, you know, in the seventies, eighties, you know, even nineties, If you saw someone with a phone in their car, they had a super, super stressful job, and it was being you know, you you saw that on TV, and that person was a super, super important, super stressful job. And it was the emphasis of how stressful that job is that they had to be on call all the time. And, you know, if you're in the car, the world's just waiting on you. You know? You Yeah. You have no contact with with anybody else, and, and that was so with most everything. Now it's multiple ways to get ahold of you all the time, and there's an expectation of being on call all the time. And that that may not be true at work. I think that, you know, that as you were mentioning, employers can set expectations on, hey, when you're expected to be on call. But at the same time, you know, we know the Pareto the Pareto principle of work. Twenty percent of your workforce tends to get eighty percent of the work done. And those people, you can you can hardly unless you shut everything down, you can hardly keep them from working because that is gonna do it. And then, you know, we we we hear so much about the people that are wasting time. It's just as big a problem to to burn out the people that are that are your biggest contributors. You know? So that hypervigilance is something that is built into technology because it's available, and there's a social expectation of I haven't seen this. And I even see this in, in in my life and in my relationship is, did you see what I sent you? Well, no. I haven't. Yeah. And it's like, okay. Now I gotta go check right now. Is it really that important? No. It's not really that important. But have you seen it? Have you seen it? Have you seen it? And, you know, it's a we're using multiple mediums to communicate these things. But which what did you send it to me on? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. I totally agree. I mean, well, I mean, let's just go through them. We've got WhatsApp, obviously. We've got Instagram. We've got we've got Teams. We've got email. We I mean, young generation Snapchat. And, I mean, that's that's just five right off the top of my head. And and as you said, you know, when that ping comes in in whichever one of those platforms you're you're on, you're expected to reply, like, instantly. I my son, who's who's currently back packing in Thailand, sent me a picture of a a butterfly, and I didn't get back to him in forty five minutes. And he said, why'd you take so long? It's like, Son, I, you know, I have a life. You know, I don't I I said, how long do you how long would you like how long before it became uncomfortable? He he said about about five minutes. So so I wonder, it'd be a good intro an interesting study to to to look at maybe our generation and say, well, how long before it becomes uncomfortable? For me, for you, maybe, I don't know, an hour or two for for a for for a a sixteen year old, what, minutes? I mean, obviously, depending on the context. And, I mean, if you're waiting for our lover's, you know, return WhatsApp, I guess it's probably seconds. But, you know, if you're waiting for for the IRS, it could you know, you'd be very comfortable with it. It took a bit longer. You know, one of the this this discussion of expectations is is interesting. You know, one of the things I've I've said about phone calls is that unless they are, scheduled, that calling on the phone is intrinsically a selfish move. Because Yeah. I call quit because I'm ready to talk right now. And if you're not ready to talk, well, you know, you're you're submitting your your wants and your needs and and what's best for you to what's best for me. So, you know, the the person calling is is kinda being selfish. And I thought, well, you know, email is different, and then text message is different. If I text you, then you get back to me when you want. And I see and I I think that that is what it was originally. I remember when text I was in college, really, when text became a thing, and, you know, you're getting you had to buy a hundred of them a month or two hundred a month or something like that. And so Yeah. Text was you know, you had the t nine and, you know, every button was was three letters or something. So it was do do do do do do. Yeah. So texting was, you know, a couple of words. You know, I'm I'm running fifteen late. That was what texting was. It wasn't conversations. You know? And so there's the changing dynamic of expectations of texting being almost like a phone call that you should be seeing that all the time. That that is texting is becoming just as selfish as calling on the phone is. Mhmm. And it's and it's resulted, of course, in some reluctance to be on the phone and to to to, automatically do things via text that actually could be handled much faster, if they were done via the phone or Zoom or whatever. Yeah. I said something about the it's asynchronous, isn't it? It's you call somebody up and it's, you know, you're you're you're there. You're dealing with there and then. When was the last time you received a handwritten letter? I couldn't tell you. I I really I really don't remember. Yeah. I mean, the fact that my son is going around Thailand, and he can WhatsApp he's never left in a sense. He's never left because he's always there. But when my wife went round backpacking around Australia when she was twenty one, She, she, she, was post restante, emails and, sorry, post restraint letters. And there was never that that that, that, cadence of communication that that we experience now. Yeah. But, yeah, the last last letter I've received, I don't know. I'd love to receive would you like to receive a letter? Absolutely. Who wouldn't love a letter? Yeah. We should get back into that. Yeah. Well, now you can get that done online. You could have Steve Oh, don't. You could pay someone per letter, to to to do handwriting letters for you. You'll put it into chat GBT, you know, write it out. Exactly. No. No. No. No. No. The whole thing is gone. So, you know, these these things that we're talking about, you know, the depression, anxiety, that sort of thing, you know, we we now we get into things that's, beyond that of, you know, ADHD. ADHD is something that just seems to be, you know, a cold in your typical high school and especially in college. You know? It's Yeah. It's like, like, I don't know if it can get any more popular. I know there has been some pushback of some people trying to come off it and seeing the seeing the results, but it is seen as an advantage now. It's not seen in many cases as being something that is a medication, but more like a supplementation. Is if I can get a if I can get this medication, then this becomes you know, comes down to the the the problem of diagnosis. It's not really a, it's not you know, there there could there's no test. There's no scan. There's no blood test. There's no it's just questions. Questions that can be easily gained if I can go online and search how to answer the questions. And that's only if I'm an idiot because anyone who knows has any idea what ADHD is can figure out with, with with not very much intelligence how to answer the questions in order to make it sound like you have, have have this impairment. And so it's becoming more of an more of an advantage or a supplementation that people want to get because it will help them in school rather than something that is, truly being treating a disorder. Well, I think there there's so much that we yeah. I mean, this is interesting. There's so much misinformation, disinformation around it. We and and we really have to be careful of the terminology. We we did a we did a video for University College London, and, the the video was the animation, was to look at the diagnosis of ADHD, but the voice over on the video said as part of an intellectual disability. Now that's still an intellectual disability. It's got all sorts of pejorative associations with it, because ADHD is in the family of of dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette's, and and and, autism according to the DSM. Right? The the the bible of of of psycho of psychology. Well, I mean, that so what what we've got is is I think that the stats are there's the global diagnosis of ADHD has risen from six to ten percent. And in the United States, approximately, nine point well, ten percent of children age two to seventeen years in the United States been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives. Well, that's an interesting thing right there at some point in their lives. Either you have it or you or or you don't. But you're right. I mean, certainly, in our in my business with video and animation, on on we have a number of people who are dyslexic, and they they they now call it a superpower. In fact, I'm I'm actually an advocate of it, actually, because the people who the the our head of creative is a is is dyslexic. Our head of video is is dyslexic, and we have two production assistants who are who are both dyslexic as well because and they and they they they think in ways which I can't think, and they come to creative solutions in ways that I can't, that I that I I wouldn't have thought of, at least in that in within the speed that they do it. That is shockingly low to me to hear, only, you know, slightly under ten percent being medicated for for ADHD. That does that doesn't sound right. Well, I mean, that she I mean, Shreya Shreya comes out with some other statistics which are which are much bigger, but this is going to vary, you know, state by state probably and depending on look. I mean, one of the one of the challenges we got with dyslexia, for example, is dyslexia isn't just like well, we did a video for for for a dyslexic charity in the UK. And, I I was interviewing, two members of our staff, and then the cameraman said, oh, I'm dyslexic too. Now the cameraman was was my age, in his late fifties. And, I said, would you like to to go on camera and and do a personal story about about how you experience dyslexia? And he said, no. And while we were derigging, I said to him, I said, Paul, why would you why did you not wanna do a piece to camera on it? He said, because in my time, it wasn't recognized. So we're talking about the late eighties. It wasn't recognized, and he was made to feel dreadful at school. In fact, he walked out of a school because he was, I mean, I suppose in in today's parlance, we'd say he was abused at school by the teachers because they thought he was, quote, unquote, thick, and you couldn't teach him anything. Whereas now, obviously, there's there's the tools there, but it's not dyslexia itself in France, for example, is not recognized in the way that it is recognized here. And and I'm not qualified to say how it's recognized in the United States, but there must be these enormous sort of discrepancies between between, the the, the statistical recognition of of some of these issues. But but, yeah, I mean, I think what what statistics have you got? I don't I've I've I've didn't look up any statistics. It's just my I understand that it's you know, could be availability bias of you know, when you when you hear about them, you assume they're bigger. But, I mean, from teachers that I talk to that are aware of how many children in their class is medicated and having taught at the college level and hearing about, you know, those sorts of things and, having been in college myself, which was Yeah. A little while ago now. It's not twenty years yet, but it's going on it's going on twenty years. And, yeah, twenty years ago, I know how widespread it was and and it what an advantage it was and how many people were getting, Adderall and Ritalin and other things like that, from other students and wanting it. And I've I'm not that far removed from being on the social scene and seeing the amount of people that took it for fun. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I I'd I'd less familiar with that, but I definitely am familiar with how many people when those conversations came up were on it. And, you know, and I've also mentored some, some college students in the last few years and hearing about how much everybody is on these things, and, it's just shocking to hear ten percent. I'd be curious if there's stats for colleges, because I think that a lot of folks are getting or, you know, or or being introduced to it in in college as a way of of getting through, you know, of kind of having an advantage for focusing. And, you know, it it's it's it's it's like a remedy for, just our social expectations. We were talking about the hyper village diligence is and I I I hear the kids say, you know, I'll I'll do it because I need like, I've let everything go so long in my house, and so I'll take an Adderall, and then I'll clean and get it all done. I don't need to get it all done. And then I'll spend the rest of the day, playing video games and just super hyper focused on video games. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is this is the thing, isn't it? That that it's the medicalization of the kids, that that that certainly, you know, Abigail is talking about in her book, which we don't have here, to the to to that extent. And as you said, you know, you you can gain the system by by getting these drugs, in order to enhance your performance at at at key points. But, but this this speaks to another subject, which is which is you you you have this society, which which is medicating all too easily kids when when they could be looking at actually addressing this, they they presenting problems in in ways which aren't, which don't involve, Abigail says, zombifying the kids, through through various through multiple. It's not just one drug, is it, Josh? I mean, it's it's multiple drugs to to in order to to keep the kids on on on on the straight and narrow. So, what what I'm what I'm trying to do is and and this and the the the challenge here also is that that when you when you give somebody an SSRI, you know, the the the amount of time that they're supposed to be on it is, you know, months. And and we have a society where where so many people are on drugs for for for years. Years. And there's a statistic I I I heard the other day that, it was a from on a Netflix, movie actually, that that forty percent of psychiatrists work in New York City is getting people titrated off the antidepressants that they've been prescribed for years and years, which is a terrible position to be in. There's a there's a, a a doctor, McFillin, who has a a a podcast. Yeah. I'm just sorry. On that on that subject as well. Thirty to fifty percent of individuals who are prescribed ADHD medication do not take them as prescribed. I mean, that's another statistic that that I've got here. In the United States, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, it's thirteen percent of individuals over twelve twelve or older are reporting antidepressant use. So they're taking Adderall one minute and then taking, you know, Prozac the next. Yeah. So, I mean, they're really playing with with these drugs which are gonna affect the neurochemicals in your brain. And as as you said, you know, there is no longitudinal epidemiological study on this. We don't know where it's taking us. We're just playing with fire here. We're just I've gotta get on I've gotta I think the other thing too is, you know, I I wanna get into kind of behavioral versus, medication, you know, therapy and also the chemical causes we'll say chemical versus behavioral causes and, of course, the versus behavioral treatments is, you know, we we have to change the way we're thinking in terms of what is considered chemical, because behavior drives chemicals, and chemicals drive behavior. It can go in either direction. And, you know, I get up in the morning and I, see get out in sunlight. And that drives a chemical reaction in my body. Right? And then I put caffeine in my body, and that has a chemical, reaction to that. And then I put Adderall in my body. And then, later that night, I'm anxious, so I put the, I forget the the the drug you mentioned, before. Like, Daniels. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then maybe add some alcohol on top of wash it down a little alcohol, and then it's time to go to sleep. And then it's it's another sleeping drug. And, these things then tend tend to kinda cluster. And by the way, I also, you know, had fast food. Yeah. Seed oils and empty sugars and processed nonfoods that have calories but very little nutrition involved. And Yep. I this is just a cocktail of of stem of of uppers and downers that my body is dealing with all day. And, you know, I I would love to hear you tease out the chemical versus behavioral because, you know, as you as you alluded to with the smartphone is, yeah, I scroll, I click, I get a dopamine hit. That's a behavior that's that's driving a feedback loop of another hit, another dose. I mean, it's a feedback loop. Right? So I would love to hear you tease out this whole and I know I threw a lot at you, Quint, so take a deep breath. But but tease out this kind of chemical versus behavioral element of of these diagnoses. Okay. Well, so let's take let's take alcohol, alcohol addiction. And alcohol addiction is broadly broadly understood as being a an addiction to a chemical, ethanol, which, which, you people, I don't wanna go I'm I'm gonna keep it nice and top level, but but you you start taking the drug, and some people can continue taking the drug, and that's fine. Other people, eventually, their tail starts wagging the dog, and then you you get into a a chemical addiction where you need more of the drug in order to, to to have the same effect. And that means that you're gonna get into problems with your relationships, with your employers, with with with the law. And that broadly speaking is is is defined as a chemical addiction. And you got behavioral addictions, like, for example, gambling, where where it's people say, oh, well, it's a behavioral addiction. It's nothing to do with a chemical. But I think that the the there are these two schools of thought that that need to be reconciled in exactly the way that you're saying because, of course, it's all about pros. It's all about dopamine, for example. It's all about getting the buzz of the anticipation of the event. You know? So so you're gonna have an alcoholic, is going to be excited about their first drink. Somebody going to a casino, getting up, getting dressed to go to a is going to be excited about going in there. It's it's it's all dopamine. It's all neurochemicals in the brain. So it's a it's a chicken it's a chicken or egg argument then. I mean, it is, you know, oh, does it really matter? Choose one. Is it is it chicken or egg? If if you choose chicken, then the egg is gonna produce another chicken, and and it's a feedback loop. Right? Yeah. Exact exactly that. And and it's it's a it's a moot point, as to I mean, obviously, we can point to to alcohol. We can point to fentanyl as being a chemical addiction. It's much easier to do that. If you're talking about, addiction to gambling, I'll stick with gambling. You know, there there isn't you it seems like, oh, it's it's much more behavioral, but it isn't behavioral. The moment we know about it and and this this book is Anna Lempke, of course, wrote the I'm big fan of this book. You know, she just says it's dopamine. It's just neurochemicals. You're going to be driven and emotionally driven. Let's just do away with the fact that we're rational people. We're driven by our emotions, and then after the fact, we rationalize what we've done. And if there's some dopamine to be had, you will go for that. And and, you whether or not it's it's it's it's a it's a like you say, it's chicken and egg. Is that behavioral or is it or is it is it a chemical addiction? It's hard to tease that apart. And I and I and I think it's very, very hybridized. It's very much a subjective personal case by case basis. You can't you can't really arrive at some general expression about it. Although what we do know is that that that, you know, for example, in the UK, alcohol costs society twenty four billion pounds a year. The VAT, the the tax on alcohol is fourteen billion dollars a year, So pounds a year. And so, you know, it's in the waft and weave of our society as it is in the waft of weave of of yours. We don't we don't have the opioid addiction crisis here that you have there. We're no nowhere near. But that's not to say it's not coming. I have an office in Amsterdam, and it's it's already starting to happen there in Rotterdam, apparently, which is the big port Yeah. And, of course, to Europe. So it's it's it's coming. And then you've got things like well, I'm an addiction to mobile phones. I mean, yeah, we're always gonna get a little dopamine hit every time I get a WhatsApp, every time I get a a ping from someone, it's, oh, hello. Mhmm. You know, what what's that? And, and what's that doing to us? You know, it's that And I hear yeah. I I think that, you know, we we heard this from, from from my seat. Yeah. It's kind of this this, you know, get off my lawn type old guy type, like like, character that it is envisioned in your I I think about Clint Eastwood in that movie. Trentarino. Trentarino. Yeah. Great movie. Yeah. You know, the kinda get off my lawn kinda guy. It's it's those damn phones, but I think that's, I think that it's pretty accepted now that it it is those damn phones Yeah. In in a lot of ways and and not just the phone itself, but how it functions and the role it plays, in in in a social life and the expectations that come with it, that the longer we can shelter children from it, I think that's the general wisdom is is probably better. At the same time, you know, one of the things I think that's that I'd like to unpack that kind of will get closer to what you're doing to treat the problem is, you know, hey. It's one thing to say, get your kids off the phone. Don't let them have it. You know, keep them, you know, keep it out of the bedroom. I mean, we we we we can give some of the standard advice that I'm sure you'll agree with. Don't have it in the bedroom. Limit the time amount it. Don't have it to a certain age. You know, there's all these little things you could do. Monitor what they're doing on it. You could give all this advice at the end of the day. Even if you keep all that advice, it's like, well, all their friends are on it, and, they do need it to a certain extent. Everything from school is get on the phone, get on the Internet, and, you know, a lot of places a lot of families don't even have computers at home anymore. They just have smartphones. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of demographic it it's more common, I think, to have a smartphone than it is a a home computer at this point, especially in different, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, their home lives. And so, you know, also, it's you I hear from parents as well. You know, if you had a kid this age, you'd get it, and you need you need them to be distracted. You need them to whatever, and then it ends up becoming a crutch. And, and people aren't really aware of how much time they they spend on it. So, you know, do your best to take the advice, but given the fact that, hey. This is the situation that we're in. Prevention is, the the conversation has to go beyond prevention in saying, okay. How can we meet people where they're at? And we gotta meet people where they're at, but we've also gotta do it in a cost effective way. It's gotta be cost effective for anyone investing in that, whether it be a government or a business or whatever. It's gotta be able to reach everyone. It's gotta be able to meet people where they're at, and it's, it's gotta be able to actually meet the need and impact the need. So talk to me about how like, what what is it before we get into how you're meeting the need, what is the need that needs to be met? Help us to understand what trends are impacting the need that has to be met. Well, I think, that I'm gonna use a word here, psychoeducation, because I think we've we've society has got to a point where where we're all very conversant with psychological themes now. I mean, the word ego, for example, is in common parts everywhere. If you talk about Trump, some people will say that he's a narcissist. We have inferiority complex, superiority complexes. We've got all sorts of, you know, attachment issues or or things, ideas borrowed from Carl Rogers or from transactional analysis. And so we're I think everybody's becoming in society a lot more familiar with psychological definitions and and and psychological theories. And, one of the thing that that we can that I'm suggesting we can do now is say, okay. Well, you understand obviously a little bit about psychology. Right? Because, you know, we I mean, you'd you'd be hard put to watch a sort of a a Netflix show without understanding a little bit about psychology, and we're all natural psychologists. So let's let's go with that. And then we can we can pick apart something like addiction or or anxiety or trauma and say, okay. Here are some here are some theories around it. Okay? And, and and we can, we can rather than have this power dynamic of the therapist telling the client exactly what's wrong with them and how to cure it, the therapist can say to the client, look, I'll I'll explain to you the theory behind this in the first instance, and then you ask me questions about it. Because you seem to have enough of a of an ability to understand this that you can understand the principles, and then we can have a discussion based upon that, which which which is a some people find a lot more, accessible Mhmm. And and a and a much less of a a threat in terms of the the power dynamic. Now you can't do that with young kids, obviously, but you can certainly do it, for example, in relationship counseling, where if you have a couple sitting opposite to you, they have a narrative in in their relationship. They have a way of talking about things, and they've they've been around for for years, and and they understand that that some of the principles behind, how people talk to one another. And, they can come to a therapist, and they can talk about the dynamics of of relationship counseling. They can talk about, for example, attachment theory and about Bowlby and and and and frame the conversation in a way that that that makes sense to them, and make sense to the therapist. So then you've got a working narrative, and and and you can go forward on that basis. And psychoeducation something that that that's really, on the rise where people aren't just being spoon fed by their therapist or some sort of, what do you call in American SEL person? They they, they want to know more about the theory behind the presenting problem and then make an informed choice about which way they want to go. So I think psychoeducation is one of the one of the emerging trends that's going on. I think if if if the cohort that we're trying to treat are all online, then I think we ought to be addressing that online. We should and we should be using a creative or relatable medium, that enables to get the maximum amount of information over in a very short space of time and cost effectively. And and that has to be mobile phones. Right. We've if we can't get them to put their mobile phones down, then we have to go to their Mohammed's gotta go to the mountain. Right? We have to take the content and put it on the mobile phone so that they can see it, and they can they can they can be helped by those resources. And and that really segues me into into animation as being the the medium of choice because it's it's which I I don't wanna you know, you you lead the discussion, Josh. No. No. No. This this is fine. You know? What I hear you saying is that, you know, people are on their phones. We're not gonna keep them off it. And, that is if you're gonna be on it, let's let's get the education in front of you on there. I mean, obviously, there's, you know, there's a lot of experts on it talking about, psychoeducation. And, you know, obviously, I listen to some some things on YouTube, and I'll explore and see what people are saying about stuff. And, man, some of the stuff you see on YouTube is terrible. Yeah. And I think it's looking it it's also creating, these expectations in social life that are completely unrealistic. I mean, if you if you look at YouTube, you would think that every other person you meet, is a narcissist. You look at these dating experts and things like that, and everybody's all of everyone's exes is narcissists. Like, you'd think that everyone walking around there could first off, if all of your ex boyfriends or girlfriends are narcissists, you really have a problem because they're Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dominator. It's it's it's not me. It's absolutely not me. Well, you know. Why are all these people attracted to me? Like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why do I do that to myself? How how do you first off, how do you find the what like, one percent of the population is narcissist? How do you able how are you able to find that one percent all the time? It's a real skill. So, you know, narcissist has become, someone I don't like. You know? And Yeah. Now I can dismiss them, and people know what a narcissist is a little bit. And Yeah. They have they don't understand the causes. The typical narcissist in the mind of the pop I'll say pop expert, popular expert, is someone who's arrogant. If someone is arrogant, then they're a narcissist. If someone look like, looks out for themselves, they're a narcissist. And it's like, well, everyone looks out for themselves to a certain extent, and this is not a binary between looking out for yourself and not. It is the extent to which you're looking out for yourself and then using other people and exploiting other people and not caring about the cons. It's a it's a lot more than just choosing yourself or looking out or setting a boundary. The fact that even boundary setting could be seen as as as as narcissism. You know? Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, it's it's it it becomes this binary thing instead of you know, this is one of my pet peeves is I think that one of the biggest things that's under taught, in school is basic statistics. I feel like anytime we're ever talking about people, we need to throw up the the normal distribution and remember what a normal distribution is. And anytime you're talking about a personality trait, that we say, well, you're a narcissist. Well, hold on. Narcissism is one of the big five traits that we that that that, we look at as far as personality, and everyone is a little bit narcissist. Wait. That's that's a scary thing to hear. Well, when you think about narcissism as a scale of zero to one hundred, you don't wanna be one hundred because that's really bad. But you don't wanna be zero either because zero means you don't care about yourself at all, and I can go into that. So you wanna be somewhere in the middle, and maybe it's a little high, maybe it's a little low. There's a whole range that's normal. And so most people, whether they're higher than normal or lower than normal on trait narcissism are normal. That's in the normal range. It's only those outliers extremely low in narcissism, extremely high. Those people, tend to have pro problems. It's not this big binary that that that pop, experts tend to kind of think of it as or or give the illusion that it is. There there is a but then then you get into a book like that, snakes in suits. Well, we're statistically you know, you're talking about bell curves and things. I mean, yeah. He's a narcissist. Oh, he's running a multibillion dollar multinational company. You know, because because unless you are I mean, let's be a little bit jokey about it. Unless you are psychotically, obsessed with your own success, you're never gonna have the drive and ambition in order to get your company into the Fortune five hundred. Yeah. I do. So George Peterson. And and and you're applauded for being a success, and you're given an OBE or a knighthood or a, you know, a a key set country club. I don't know. Yes. For for essentially abnormal psychology. Exactly. Jordan Peterson talks about this, and he challenges us to to flip the narrative and ask the question from the other side is, you know, I think he's I think he's talking about c ultra successful CEOs. These are the ultra successful attorneys. These are the people that are plowing through hundred hour weeks just for years and years. Yeah. And then it's you know, you look at someone who's forty years old and has just accomplished a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous amount. That person worked a lot. And Yeah. It's people are asking, you know, well, why aren't there more men or or more women that are doing x? It's like, well, there's more men with these abnormal psychological traits that lead them and drive sorry. Not lead, drive them to this to the to to be willing to do the things that are required to get to that outcome. And so Peterson challenges us to think of it as, like, why are any men willing to do this? Not not just why aren't more women, but, well, why are the men willing to do this? You'd have to either pull the men down by keeping them from working hard and doing these things, or you'd have to, push the women to the point where they don't wanna be. Why? You're the the the the question becomes, you know, well, as as if it's not something that that that that is controlled, that I'm sorry. That is that is that they're driven to do. Right? But that but you haven't got a yeah. At the end of the day, you haven't got a well rounded person, have have you? You've you've got somebody who is absolutely, for want of a better word, excels in one particular area of their lives. You look at their personal life. You look at how good they are as a parent. You look at them. You haven't got a holistic person there. You've got one person who's very, very good. I I mean, let's I mean, by comparison, let's take an elite athlete. I mean, I've I've interviewed several elite athletes in in in my life, and, there is they are very, very good at hitting a tennis ball, for example. But, I mean, are they somebody you really wanna go for a drink with? Not really. No. They're quite you know, if you wanna talk about tennis, yeah, great. But, you know and they're not they're they're very, you know, sector specific. Yeah. And, and and, I mean, that's the same as that's the same as anybody who excels in one area. You almost have to well, I'll phrase it as a question. Don't you almost have to sacrifice some other areas of your life in order to excel in one area? I mean Yeah. In fact, I think I'd I'd read something recently that, this reminds me of, I think there's a current or I think she's a former CEO of of Xerox, Ursula, Ursula Burns. And she was the I think the I think the first black woman to hold a CEO position at a Fortune five hundred company, and this was, like, you know, fifteen years ago or something. Something like that. Yeah. And and they had had talked to her about this, about having children, and she said, well, I I outsourced my children. Like, she she used the term outsource. She I I outsourced raising my children, and, you know, that kinda rubbed people the the wrong way, in both directions. It's like it there are people on both sides that didn't like to hear, well, you shouldn't be at versus, oh, don't say it that way. Like, yeah. Well, listen. I I can't do what I'm doing. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I would try I I I didn't go to all their things. A lot of things I didn't go to. And there was a lot of times that I went to their things, and I was on my phone, doing work or, doing a crossword puzzle to relax my mind. And, you know, but that yeah. Yeah. That that term, outsizing, definitely didn't didn't rub a lot of people right on on on on either side. But it it speaks to, you know, the what is necessary to to get to those, to get to those levels. One of the, looking at it from the other end of the telescope, the existential telescope, I just I just have a I just googled here the top, five regrets of the dying, which was a book written by a palliative care nurse. Shall I start from five and go up to number one? I'll start from five. Number five, I wish I'd let myself be happier. Number four, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. Number three, I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. Number two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Straight in at number one, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life of others expected of me. Yeah. And so so as as somebody said to me the other day, it was a he was a c suite professional, and he said, I've spent my whole life climbing a ladder rung after rung after rung after rung after rung. There are a few exploiters in there. And I get to this stage in my life, and all of a sudden, I realize the ladder's leaning against the wrong wall. Yeah. I've I've I've I've heard that. And it's and it's amazing, but, you know, we're this is this is not just, you know, the the world of, of of business. You know, we see this with, you know, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan. If you're into sports and you're hearing about how just I mean, Kobe and Michael, both mentally ill to the to the Yeah. The the the obsessiveness, that they were with competition. And the and we and we glorify that. And, frankly, if if that is your measure, which is success on the basketball court, then it should be glorified. But it's but it but it forgets what else is what else is out there. And I think that sometimes it's very difficult for us to focus on this balance of how much is enough for me in a in a culture that is competitive. And the fact is is it's going to be competitive, and it should be competitive because it's foolishness to think that without competition that people are gonna be motivated. I mean Exactly. People have different levels of motivation. Some are gonna work harder. Some you're gonna you're gonna tell them to ease off, and they're not. Others, you're gonna have trouble to give them the move. Yeah. So, you know, I wanna get back to, to to how you're doing this. So we talked about video, social media, AI, and, you know, e even into this. And so I don't know. Go with AI. Obviously is going through the phones. But animation, what why does animation fit these these bills? Right. So I'll tell you a bit about animation. Animation started roughly in, nineteen thirty three, right, with with Mickey Mouse. It was still one of the world's largest brands. Walt Disney did a Mickey Mouse in nineteen thirty. He then did a a range of films, Snow White, Dumbo, Jungle Book, all of those, which takes us up to the the early nineteen sixties. Then animation was cheap enough to produce that you could produce it on television. So you had, the wonderful Looney Tunes, for example, with, Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny and and all of those wonderful characters. And I and, that's when I started watching, animations and Topcat and so forth, Wacky Races. And then and then, and then in the nineteen, well, I suppose in nineteen seventies, the animation has started to we had visual effects like green screen with Star Wars. And then and then in the nineteen nineties, it really hit hit its stride with Toy Story, which was the first computer generated animation. And Jurassic Park as well where we where we started to blend animation of the with the dinosaurs with, with live action. So when when Sam, Neil, and, can't remember her name, looked at the top of that jeep and saw the diplodocus or diplodocus, That was the point. That was the pivot point where suddenly CGI came into its own. Now with the rest of animation, there was a program called After Effects, and Adobe brought that out. And by around about twenty twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, that became that became, companies were able to use that, in order to generate animation for themselves, professional companies like like mine. So we could we could we could do motion graphics. We could do hand drawn animation. We could do, stop motion animation and character based animation. And and from its from its small beginnings in twenty thirteen, it it's accelerated so fast where we can now do very, very high quality well, Walt Disney standard of animation for a fraction of the cost that it costs well. Because, because, of the the computer power, the render times, the the the processing speed, and the software. Now my point is that if you're going to shoot, for example, a case study of a of a of a young, child who is in several different scenarios. If you're gonna shoot that, you're gonna have to cast the child. You're gonna have to pay for the location fees. You're gonna have to pay for the extras. You're gonna have to, do the props, do the costume. You you're gonna be spending north of at least fifty thousand dollars probably more. Whereas if you're doing it via animation, you're talking probably twenty twenty thousand dollars tops. Right? So the cost of producing animation is a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to produce video. Secondly, you can update an animation in the blink of an eye. So if you wanna update it with the latest statistics, it'll probably take half a day, not even. If you wanna put it into different languages, because all these voice overs are gonna be, in in English. If you wanna put it in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hindi, Cantonese, Mandarin, it takes you seconds. Just get a voice over. In fact, nowadays, I hate to say it, but you could probably use an AI to do the translation and put the voice over in. Other advantages to animation, you can splice and dice it for social media. So you can make a series of animations very, very reasonably. You can once you produce the main animation, you can put an end slate on the back of it, which will highlight, resources in your local area. So for example, with Alcoholics Anonymous, you can have local support groups for AA. You could have, telephone numbers, and, and local local hospice facilities. So animation is is a cost effective result. Oh, and the best bit, once you produced your animation, you can put it out onto social media. There is no, airtime. You don't have to go to to Don Draper and Mad Men to to buy a load of media space. You just put it out there. You can geotarget adverts for for very little money. You can go specifically by age, by by sex, by by area, etcetera, etcetera. And so what you have is a really, really powerful resource. Now in my company, cinema, we produce animations for finance and and for tech companies, and we work with some really, you know, the real nine hundred pound gorillas, the big banks, and and the big, IT companies and tech companies. But we we try to work in health care, and we try to suggest animation as a way to to, to create, animation in order to describe, you know, physical problems, never mind psychological problems. And we're stonewalled all the time. And it drives me crackers because it's such an everyone is is looking after their pennies right now or their their cents. And and here is a resource, which is just sitting here ready to be used whether you want a national campaign, whether you want an international campaign. You know, if you wanna if you wanna just a micro campaign, if you'd be wanna be responsive to to an uptick in, you know, if you so so that's that's why so we work at the moment. We work with some some big nonprofits in the United States. We work with lots of charities in the UK. I personally have put up, half a dozen, animations more, I think, eight animations on various subjects, which are free to download, from from my Instagram and from, from the website. We work with UNICEF, producing content for them, pro bono. Yeah. So sorry. I'm on my soapbox now. Please, Joey. Love it. Love it. Animation is just the way forward. You know? Walt Disney was the first person to put emotion into animation. Emotion into motion with with with animation. The way he was doing was with digital cells. So he'd have a piece of celluloid, and he'd he'd get one of his, animators to do a drawing and then turn it over, do another drawing. So when so when Snow White was eating that apple, there'd be five or six layers. There's just the apple that was moving the other. But now with computers, we can we can an animator can can can create an entire scene, use the hand drawn style, which is what we use for anger, understanding your anger, which won an award, and and produced it for for a fact, I think it was ten thousand ten thousand dollars to produce that. And and there you have a resource which you can take into a school and you can a teacher can sit down with a kid who's who's acting out their emotions, and say, look. It's not about the fact that you came to school hungry. It's not about it's about something else. Okay. What's it about? You know? We can take stills out of the animation. And because because when you produce an animation, it's vector based, you can blow that still image up into a poster and put it on the side of a billboard. Or you can it's high enough quality. You can put it into print. So it's part of marketing collateral in another way. Animation, you know, character based animation can you can anthropomorphize anything, you know, teacup. When we used it for Federation Dental International, to to get kids to brush their teeth in World Oral Health Day because kids invest in it. You know, you can have it's a it's a semi it's a semi dreamlike state that you are in when you watch an animation. Neurologically, you don't you you because you you take out the the prefrontal cortex, it just because it suspends itself. Anything can happen in animation. Right? So you can just you just sit back and relax, and the information just flows over you with the music. And and then after the animation's finished, all that information's gone in, and then you can have a discussion about it. With a video, you're constantly prejudiced. You're constantly looking at at what's going on and and try because we're because that's the human condition. Right? We're continually trying to predict and control our environment. When you're seeing a video, you it's such a literal medium that you're constantly trying to guess what's happening. With animation, you just you you just let it flow and you just let it go. And that's why it's such a fantastic, you know, mass media format. Things like Frozen, you know, for example, you know, a huge, I mean, it's it really it's it's a it's a very, very effective meaning, but it's not being used in in in the way that it could be. Mhmm. Sorry. I just I just went a million miles away. I think that, you know, you when I think about animation, you know, I think about, obviously, cartoons. And Mhmm. But, you know, we've also had a lot of proof that adults will watch cartoons. You know? Or or Yeah. Animations, you know, South Park, King of the Hill can go on and on about successful adult cartoons, if you will. And I'd also you know, there I've seen more, explainer videos where they'll use the simple animations for that businesses are using simple animations to explain concepts. Yeah. And and and they kind of can use some data presentation techniques, very basic Yeah. In there. There's also a I'm suddenly blanking on his name. He does the what is his name? The behave I think it's the behavioral gap, in in in Myspace. What is his name? Carl Richards. Carl Richards, and and this is in my in the financial industry. He does Yes. These very simple napkin drawings to Yeah. To to give very basic concepts. And it's just it's so brilliant because it's so simple. And he's not drawing characters and things like that generally, but boxes and squiggles and a couple of words on a page. But it's so powerful because it's because it's memorable. And I think that, you know, that well, that makes sense to me is like, okay. I'm I'm kind of eliminating the clutter. And Yeah. Because I I think that's kind of what you say is, you know, you you look at even right now, I'm sitting in a room and you're sitting in a room, and I could be distracted by looking at the books on your shelf, and you can look at the books on my shelf and the paintings on the wall and these things like this and all this processing. So I've never thought about that is the I'm gonna call it simplifying, the the processing of it, which could have I'm I'm I wonder if that would have a calming effect on the mind. You you said you can relax and, the calming effect on the mind where there's just less the process and in a state where you've been ultra diligent, diligent. Exactly. Yeah. So it's kind of almost it's providing a relaxing medium to take this that's not that I don't have to be hyper diligent. I don't have to be hyper focused because it's taking up less of my bandwidth in order to let me to help me to in order for me to listen to this, it just takes less energy. Exactly. And and that's a really good point because you're already your cognitive bandwidth is at ninety seven percent. You can't take any more. If you give somebody a pamphlet when they're at ninety seven percent, they'll just throw it in your face Because I can't well, for a start, one in five people is functionally illiterate. Yeah. So how are they gonna understand? Just reading it takes processing power. Reading the the complexity of of of is is gonna be tough. You can't do it. But if you give it to them, it let's just take a child who who's who's who's, suffering from something. If you give them a if you give them I mean, what you could give them, right, is is a book. Right? And and just go through it like that, but they're still gonna read it or that someone's gotta read it to them. If you could take I could take that book and animate it if I had the illustrator files. I could animate that, put it into an animation, and do a voice over and give them that. And then they can just sit there and listen to it. And if someone's with them, a health care professional, and say, okay. What speaks to you about this animation? And then you enter a dialogue there, and there's a and you're talking not and you're not talking about the child. You're talking about, for example, the character. And this this is not neurologically, this is what happens. I mean, there was a famous experiment a while ago where where you you put you put just some blocks. You put, for example, a red triangle and some blue circles, and you move them all on a screen. And then you ask the kid afterwards what was happening. And and the kids will say, well, the red triangle wanted to play, but the blue circles didn't wanna invite them into their gang or, you know, the the blue circles were all ganging up on the triangle. You you it it allows the mind to free associate. I'm gonna use that word, free associate around the subject without it getting too literal, And that that creates these gaps and chinks that somebody, a therapist, for example, could start to explore that and unpack it and maybe, you know, gain some insights. But there's also practical information as well because, you know, if if what what is a hangover? You know, I feel like death. Right? So I'm gonna I'm gonna ask what a hangover is. Well, there's a hangover. Right? And this is a peer this, for example, is peer reviewed. It's not, you know, rubbish. It's peer reviewed information, and and you're gonna be able to access that information while you're curled up in a fetal position underneath your duvet, and you know exactly what it is, what's going on, and and how to rid of it and, you know, and understand the the the dynamics of it. And that that so that information is happening at a time as you say, it's it's simple, relatable, creative information, which, which we can produce for for real relative and and distribute relatively inexpensively across all the formats, all the channels, all the platforms, and in any language you want. And it's not being used. It's not being done, which I think is a it is it will be. I think that the the penny will drop eventually, but at the moment, it isn't. Well, it's a it sounds like it's a time to be at the at the, you know, the there's there's early adaptation. I think there's enough because, yeah, no one wants to be at the very the very first one because you gotta get people on board with even seeing it. But there's enough early adaptation to say that, hey. This is a meaningful medium, that this is this is not some crazy idea, that animation's never been used for adults or the adults or the or the kids don't like cartoons. You know? Yeah. We're using it for explainer videos. We're using it for entertainment, adult entertainment, child entertainment. You'll you're you see little bits and pieces on the Internet, but nothing at a mass scale that's truly said this is our goal is to use animation to do these specific things. So I like that because, you know, if if you're familiar with the tipping point, Malcolm Gladwell's book, I think he does a great job illustrating is, hey. You know, there's the people that are the early adapters, but once you kinda hit that seventeen, eighteen percent penetration, now you guys you can really hit that mass market. And that's kinda where it seems to me to be is, you know, I see animation. I believe in animation, but now I you've helped me understand just how functional it is, for other for other uses and why from from from really a neurological level and a behavioral level, a cognitive load level, you've explained why that, why that makes a lot of sense. So that's that's exciting. That's music to my ears. And and, obviously, the other the other thing is the retention is is up as well. I mean, if you read something, your retention is, twenty percent. It's ninety five percent with animation. Yeah. It's even higher than video. Somehow, it the information goes in and I mean, let's let's look at and what's your favorite Walt Disney animation? Oh my goodness. I'd I'd I'm not a Disney person, but Did did you, did you watch any Disney movies at all? I did. I did. It's just, I probably I I don't remember what my favorite was. I I, you know, I like the, I like Goofy and, Mickey I'm like the I like the Mickey Mouse shows. Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck. You know? I've had yeah. But the most people VHS. You know? I was a country kid. We didn't have you know, we had one TV in the house. So it was old old old old Mickey Mouse just cartoons. Yeah. But but that's character animation, and and those characters are are acting out Yeah. Dynamics, which any kid can look at it and they'll understand it. Only they're they're taken to the nth degree. Sure. Actually, probably to a degree of violence would be unacceptable now. I don't know. But it would be it would be classed as adult. But but it's it's there, and it's accessible, and it's fun. Right? And it's these are all ideas that are being explored about, you know, human human relationships that can be that can be that animation can can do. And, again, you know, if you had to cast these things, if you had to film it, it cost you an absolute fortune. I mean, it's it's gonna be I mean, I'd four times as much to film something and put it on video as it does to do animation. I think maybe people are a little early at they're they're afraid to commission animation because it's not in their wheelhouse. And and it's not something that that they with a I mean, everyone's taking video on a on a smartphone, but not many people have done animation. Interestingly, with stop motion animation, it's taught in schools. I'm at their site, it's taught in America as well where where because the software now is called Dragonframe, it's free of charge. You just put that into a regular camera DSLR, and you can move a you can move a cup across a across a table, click, click, click, click, click, look at it back, and then you get a sugar cube and a and a tablespoon and a, you know, and you can make a little story up. And then what you gotta do is a voice over, which you can do on your phone. Yeah. And suddenly you gotta and now so so so it's all the tools are there. We just have to bring it together. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I I think the the the point about the literacy rate is, you know, I think it's about twenty population is reading below a fifth grade level, which is Uh-huh. And and when you say functionally illiterate, you know, it's it's a lot of the world is is above a fifth grade level. So in that way, it's functionally illiterate. If you're actually gonna be given something from a doctor, or from a school or something like that, it's you're gonna be below that. And, you know, it's it's fifty five. If if you if you go to eighth grade level, it's fifty five percent of Americans at least are reading at a eighth grade level or below. So and you gotta you gotta keep it below eighth grade to capture fifty percent of the population. And here's here's another thing for you, is my mother, has just had a a diagnosis. Unfortunately, it's an it's an oncology diagnosis. But the notes that the doctor gave her were absolutely unintelligible. It was written in in it it it may as well have been written in Latin for all the sense it made. I mean, you it just did not make any sense. Right? And I ran it through chat JPT, and I managed to to to get some sense of it, which was pretty ghastly, but there we are. I got there in the end. But but it's I mean, do these organizations not have a duty of care to the purse people they're eating to give Yeah. Information in a way that is accessible? Because at the moment, they're not doing it. And and who's suffering there? You got people who are really you know, they're already having a hard enough time, and now they can't understand the doctor? Jesus. Yeah. That that's tough. We get but yet it's, you know, there there's gotta be I I think we gotta make make inroads with, legal, you know, with with the law because, you know, if you're writing from an attorney's perspective, you've got to get everything in that contract that can possibly go right or go wrong. It's gotta it's gotta get through legal. You know? It's Yeah. But yet if you were to write something in a fifth grade level, could it get through legal? I don't know. You know? So how do you how do you attach it? That's a whole another that whole another, whole another conversation there, Quint, but it has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot today, especially about animation and and how it functions in the brain and and a lot of other things. So it's been a been a super pleasure to have you. Tell me, tell us how we can learn more about you and what you're doing, where we can find you on social media, and etcetera. Well well, my company is cinema as s y n I m a, cinema dot com. So that's my company. And then me personally, I'm at w w w dot quintboa dot com. My Instagram is quintboa. And so there's all sorts of resources there. I there's I suppose if I wanted to promote anything, it would be the the the link to all the free animations, which I've got on on anxiety and addiction and depression and and trauma, which I I don't know. Can I send a link to you? For you. We'll put those in the show show that so I'll get those. Brilliant. I mean, those are all free to download. They've been downloaded a quarter million times, and, you know, we've had a lot of feedback saying they're helpful. And and if anybody wants to suggest any way we can adapt those animations to make them better, then please let's hear it, and and we'll do it. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Absolutely. Fantastic. Quinn, it's been great to have you. You are the essence of Untamed Ethos, a man that's taking psychoeducation and bringing it to the world via, if any, animation. I love it. And, again, thank you for being a guest. Thanks, Josh. Bye. Bye.