Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and welcome to Next Question.
Speaker 1: Today we're diving into the massive, frenetic, and very lucrative
Speaker 1: world of e sports. Last fall, I have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to go to a live sports event. It was my
Speaker 1: first and let me tell you, it was nuts crazy.
Speaker 1: There's a little worldwide brest League kind of feel about
Speaker 1: the whole thing too. It was the Grand Finals of
Speaker 1: the two thousand nineteen Overwatch League, Overwatch being a popular
Speaker 1: first person shooter game that can be played by lots
Speaker 1: of people at the same time incoming high school. It
Speaker 1: was held at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, which
Speaker 1: is remarkable because that's usually where the city's major traditional
Speaker 1: sports teams play the Flyers the seventies Sixers, but on
Speaker 1: this day presented pots instead of shootouts and buzzer beaters.
Speaker 1: The Pact Arena was riveted by two teams of six
Speaker 1: sitting in chairs staring at computer screens. Now the game
Speaker 1: they were playing was being projected on a big screen
Speaker 1: above them, and I guess it didn't hurt that at
Speaker 1: stake was a prize pool of one point seven million dollars.
Speaker 1: The rise of e sports is a really fascinating space
Speaker 1: right now because people are coming together in the same
Speaker 1: way that traditional sports brings people together. This is Anita Sarkasian,
Speaker 1: a feminist media and gaming critic. It's a camaraderie, it's
Speaker 1: an excitement, it's a it's you know, in real time,
Speaker 1: you are rooting for your teams and you're excited and
Speaker 1: you learn all the stats and everything. So I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of value there. We'll return to Nita
Speaker 1: a little bit later to take a critical look at
Speaker 1: the competitive gaming industry, but with e sports poised to
Speaker 1: break the billion dollar mark this year, that's billion with
Speaker 1: a B. My first question is how did it get
Speaker 1: so huge. To answer that, we have to go back
Speaker 1: to the arcade. In the seventies and eighties, video games
Speaker 1: were something you did by yourself. Remember, Yeah, at the arcade,
Speaker 1: or a little bit later in front of the family
Speaker 1: TV in the basement. Maybe you crowded around a really
Speaker 1: good player, or maybe you'd have some friends over to
Speaker 1: watch and see who could get to the highest level.
Speaker 1: But that's really as social as video games got. So
Speaker 1: the games, remember, they weren't multiplayer. This is Bobby Kotick,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Activision one of the industry's biggest video
Speaker 1: game companies. So the only multiplayer experience you have was
Speaker 1: I had a controller, You had a controller. The two
Speaker 1: of us played with one TV against each other, and
Speaker 1: so they weren't these social experiences where you could play
Speaker 1: with anyone from around the world. But that all changed
Speaker 1: in the nineties with the advent of the World Wide Web.
Speaker 1: With techno set you go and surfing on the Internet,
Speaker 1: the Internet made online competitive gaming possible, even though it
Speaker 1: was years before home connections were powerful enough to accommodate it.
Speaker 1: The Web also gave rise to the popularity of computer
Speaker 1: games and more sophisticated virtual three D worlds. The nineties
Speaker 1: also ushered in a new genre of video game, the
Speaker 1: first person shooter, and these games players essentially become a
Speaker 1: gun or some other sophisticated weapon, patrolling a suspenseful maze
Speaker 1: on the hunt for people or things to kill. In
Speaker 1: games like Doom, which came out, you could play as
Speaker 1: a team fighting a common enemy, or you could seek
Speaker 1: other player years out and kill them before they killed you.
Speaker 1: As Internet connections improved over the decade, it got easier
Speaker 1: and easier to find people to play with at any time.
Speaker 1: Of day from all over the world. You take point,
Speaker 1: knock at that Hart and Brooks go get the truck,
Speaker 1: meet us in the front of the chateau. When Activision
Speaker 1: released Call of Duty in the early two thousands, it
Speaker 1: up the anti of first person shooter games with real
Speaker 1: world war settings, incredibly realistic graphics, and a more interactive
Speaker 1: group experience. Again here's Bobby Codeck. You could talk to
Speaker 1: people with a headset, you could text them and chat
Speaker 1: with them, and the games became much more social, much
Speaker 1: more multiplayer. And that's really what created like games as
Speaker 1: a spectator experience. So when did this whole thing blow
Speaker 1: up in terms of having stadiums full of people to
Speaker 1: watch people these games on a giant screen. So twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, we released this game called StarCraft and it
Speaker 1: was a popular game. But something happened in South Korea
Speaker 1: that was not through our own um initiatives. But there
Speaker 1: were roughly five million people that signed up to play
Speaker 1: this game. Now there's a country where the population is
Speaker 1: sixty million people, five million of them were playing StarCraft.
Speaker 1: What happened is they started playing professionally. Sponsors started signing
Speaker 1: them up, arenas started hosting matches. Three cable channels popped
Speaker 1: up flenty four hour, seven day week cable channels tavizing
Speaker 1: StarCraft matches, and we were watching all of this and
Speaker 1: saying this is incredible, like you know what well, and
Speaker 1: what is the German nation of it? Why were people
Speaker 1: doing this? Well, one, they were invested players, but two
Speaker 1: people got a sense of belonging purpose, meaning the same
Speaker 1: things that used on traditional sport, the camaraderie of sport
Speaker 1: for people who weren't necessarily athletes. South Korea may have
Speaker 1: been ahead of the curve with dedicated gaming events and
Speaker 1: cable channels, but by the end of the nineties, American
Speaker 1: gamers wooed by the prospect of making big money off
Speaker 1: their pastime. We're stepping out of the basement and into
Speaker 1: live events to show off their skills in public. After
Speaker 1: the turn of the millennium, the level of participation, number
Speaker 1: of tournaments, and prize money exploded, and once streaming was
Speaker 1: introduced in the twenty tens, gamers found themselves with career
Speaker 1: options go on world tours or get paid to play
Speaker 1: online at your own house. According to Bobby Kodak, a
Speaker 1: really good professional gamer today can pull in some serious bank.
Speaker 1: How much can of professional gamer make in a year
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars because they can make money
Speaker 1: from being professionals, So they get the prizes and the
Speaker 1: salaries and the compensation comes from a team. But they're
Speaker 1: also streamers and so these are some of the most
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the Internet streamers who are
Speaker 1: the most successful. These people are making millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars a year, how through endorsements, combinations, endorsed prescriptions,
Speaker 1: their share of advertising dollars um, their sponsorship, their appearance fees.
Speaker 1: But endorsements, endorsements, they are no different than professional athletes.
Speaker 1: So is there, for example, the Lebron James of video games?
Speaker 1: Um not yet um not stars like like a Lebron
Speaker 1: where he like transcends popular culture. But I think like
Speaker 1: within the community. You know, Overwatch has players who are
Speaker 1: very well recognized within the community of Overwatch players. Somebody
Speaker 1: said to me the other day that until a famous
Speaker 1: Overwatch player is dating a Kardashian, we won't get to
Speaker 1: that level of popular cultural awareness. But that may not
Speaker 1: be too far away, right, it's happening. I think we're seeing, like,
Speaker 1: you know, these people are stars and they're becoming more
Speaker 1: impactful and popular culture. I think popular culture is embracing
Speaker 1: video games in a way that it never has before,
Speaker 1: so it will happen. The players I saw at the
Speaker 1: Overwatch tournament definitely seemed as revered as any pro athlete.
Speaker 1: They were serious about their game and people took them
Speaker 1: seriously too. But what really stood out to me about
Speaker 1: the players was that there were no women, which seemed
Speaker 1: odd considering that something like forty of us gamers are female.
Speaker 1: How is it possible that none are making it to
Speaker 1: the big leagues. When we come back, we'll get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of my next question. And a sport that
Speaker 1: has absolutely nothing to do with physical prowess, why can't
Speaker 1: more women get in on the action. To find out
Speaker 1: where all the female gamers are, I called one up. Hello, Kristen, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you? Hi? Kristen, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. Is Kristin Valnichek, a twenty eight year old
Speaker 1: professional gamer living in l A. She plays under the
Speaker 1: moniker Kitty plays Hello, My Beautiful Friends, and welcome to
Speaker 1: Kristen has actually competed at live tournaments like the one
Speaker 1: I went to in Philly, so some women do make
Speaker 1: it to the big leagues. In fact, at a tournament
Speaker 1: in Korean two thousand eighteen, Kristen one, but she's since
Speaker 1: retired from the tournament circuit. I have done really successfully
Speaker 1: in tournaments, UM, but my main focus has always been around, uh,
Speaker 1: daily content creation. Daily content creation means she plays video
Speaker 1: games on a streaming service called Twitch, and people all
Speaker 1: over the world log in and watch. So Twitch is
Speaker 1: a live streaming platform. UM. People come in and they
Speaker 1: watch you play your game essentially, and you've got a
Speaker 1: webcam that's like a picture and picture on the TV,
Speaker 1: so it's showing all of your reactions to the game
Speaker 1: you're playing. And while you play, you may commentary, you
Speaker 1: interact with a live chat, UM, and just build a
Speaker 1: community through that connection that you have with this live community.
Speaker 1: And what a community. Kristen has more than one million
Speaker 1: followers on Twitch, which makes sort of the third most
Speaker 1: followed female streamer. In a world where Kristen's skills and
Speaker 1: stats come with a big gender asterisk, she's a big success.
Speaker 1: I've been a gamer pretty much my entire life. I mean,
Speaker 1: my oldest memory, they say, is around three, and I
Speaker 1: remember sitting in my dad's lap, and you know, pressing
Speaker 1: keys and playing with the mouse when he would be
Speaker 1: playing Doom and Quake, which were definitely not appropriate games
Speaker 1: for a three year old to be playing. But I
Speaker 1: mean it led to this, so it's all okay, Um,
Speaker 1: But no, he was a huge influence in my life
Speaker 1: with gaming, and so is my brother. So just my
Speaker 1: entire life anytime friends had like little game consoles around. Um,
Speaker 1: and then eventually I got my own, and then computer
Speaker 1: gaming really rose in popularity. Uh so I there was
Speaker 1: never a time in my life when gaming was separate.
Speaker 1: By the time she was nine, she was so good
Speaker 1: she was beating her dad. But stepping out into the
Speaker 1: gaming world as a teen, she realized there wasn't really
Speaker 1: anyone else out there like her. When I think back to,
Speaker 1: you know, my gaming prime years when I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, Um,
Speaker 1: I did not have a single role model of a
Speaker 1: woman in gaming professionally. Um, there wasn't a single one,
Speaker 1: not even one, And there wasn't twitch to see that
Speaker 1: there was um other female gamers like me. Christian soon
Speaker 1: realized that her gender also made her a target for
Speaker 1: some unwanted attention. I've been in online communities ever since
Speaker 1: I was thirteen playing Halo two and called for Modern
Speaker 1: Warfare two and these online console lobbys which as soon
Speaker 1: as you talked as a girl, you were either getting
Speaker 1: hit on or hated on. Um. For those early early
Speaker 1: days and being a thirteen year old being full of hormones,
Speaker 1: it was like a lot to learn how to deal with.
Speaker 1: Would they throw obscenities your way? I mean, how did
Speaker 1: it get times? I mean that it can definitely get rough, um,
Speaker 1: And back then I thought that for me that was
Speaker 1: a really important time and growth in my life because
Speaker 1: I so quickly got to learn about, you know, why
Speaker 1: people are unkind um and kind of the psychology behind
Speaker 1: it and how a lot of it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me. But when I pressed Kristen for details
Speaker 1: about the kind of harassment she faced then and faces
Speaker 1: now as a professional, she pushed back, talking about, uh,
Speaker 1: the ways that people can harass people on the internet
Speaker 1: really ends up harming the people that are on the
Speaker 1: internet even more when people see how they're able to
Speaker 1: target and like I can live, I've been targeted by
Speaker 1: every type of harassment on the internet, but I've never
Speaker 1: spoken about it unless it's privately to you know, people
Speaker 1: in my community to mentor them through it, or to
Speaker 1: learn how to block the holes that's creating that attack. Um.
Speaker 1: But it when people recognize that they can gain attention
Speaker 1: and can actually affect your life through the computer screen
Speaker 1: and are shown how to do it, um, it just
Speaker 1: makes it worse for everybody. So I really try not
Speaker 1: to have that discuss just to protect not only myself
Speaker 1: but my peers. To understand Christian's position here, I decided
Speaker 1: to get outside of the industry, which is where Anita
Speaker 1: Sarkisian comes in. Anita is the founder of Feminist Frequency,
Speaker 1: an educational nonprofit that critiques the media. So what do
Speaker 1: you think about the philosophy that talking about harassment only
Speaker 1: encourages more people to harass? It absolutely does, um. If
Speaker 1: you it's this vicious circle where if you talk about
Speaker 1: the harassment you're receiving to try to get support or
Speaker 1: awareness of of the harassment, you will get harassed worse.
Speaker 1: And it just it happens every single time. And so
Speaker 1: I will never judge someone for not speaking up about
Speaker 1: being harassed or being afraid to speak up about the
Speaker 1: harm and abuse that they're facing. But I also know
Speaker 1: that that having people speak up allows other folks to
Speaker 1: see that they're not in it alone and that they're
Speaker 1: not the only ones. So it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: catch twenty two, isn't it. Yeah, you know, it can
Speaker 1: be really hard for folks who are trying to maintain
Speaker 1: a career to speak up about harassment, or to speak
Speaker 1: up about abuse in the industry or or things that
Speaker 1: they're facing because they're afraid they're going to lose their
Speaker 1: audience or or worse, that they're going to get her
Speaker 1: asked for having these kinds of opinions. Anita can really
Speaker 1: speak to this because she experienced it firsthand. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, she was a central figure in the large
Speaker 1: scale harassment campaign against women known as gamer Gate, but
Speaker 1: her relationship to gaming goes way back. I think gaming
Speaker 1: since I was a kid. I started on the n S.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually have a system at home. I would
Speaker 1: go to my neighbor's house to be able to play games.
Speaker 1: It took a really long time for me to convince
Speaker 1: my immigrant parents that gaming would not rop my brain.
Speaker 1: So I've been getting Yeah, I've been gaming for quite
Speaker 1: a while, kind of on and off. Right. I think
Speaker 1: the games and games communities, you know, tend to be
Speaker 1: a little alienating to young women and girls, and especially
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, and so, you know, popping
Speaker 1: in and out of it over the years. But then
Speaker 1: when I started doing my work with feminist frequency around
Speaker 1: pop culture and feminist analysis of pop culture, gaming was
Speaker 1: such a natural fit for that. And two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: Anita announced a Kickstarter project to fund a series of
Speaker 1: videos looking at how women are portrayed in video games,
Speaker 1: and that announcement alone made her the target of an
Speaker 1: overwhelming level of online hate and abuse. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about the UM hundreds of thousands of death threats and
Speaker 1: rape threats flooding all of my social media, UM, flooding
Speaker 1: all of my emails anyway that they could communicate with me.
Speaker 1: They were sending me these threats. UM. They would be written,
Speaker 1: or they would be visual. So pornography is often used
Speaker 1: as a weapon to uh, to victimize and to um
Speaker 1: humiliate women. So my face would be superimposed on pornographic images,
Speaker 1: or there would be very lifelike drawings of me being
Speaker 1: raped by video game characters. And this goes on and on.
Speaker 1: It got very extreme. UM. There's also efforts to docks me,
Speaker 1: which is to collect and publicly distribute my personal information
Speaker 1: and those of my family and the people that I
Speaker 1: work with. You know, it can get very serious, very quickly,
Speaker 1: and it can be very terrifying. Despite that, Anita completed
Speaker 1: the project Welcome to our Multipart video series exploring the
Speaker 1: roles and representations of women in video games. It ended
Speaker 1: up being sixteen videos made over the course of five years.
Speaker 1: Hosted by Anita, they examined the many, many sexiest ways
Speaker 1: women are often presented in video games, such as The
Speaker 1: Damsel in Distress. How many times are women in games
Speaker 1: the object for the male protagonist to rescue, or the
Speaker 1: the object in which a woman is is stolen so
Speaker 1: that the male protagonist has some um reason for you know,
Speaker 1: killing five hundred aliens or whatever. The game is um
Speaker 1: down to extremely violent expressions of violence against women, either
Speaker 1: in the game world or that the player is required
Speaker 1: to or is given the opportunity to do in the games.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, those are just a couple examples.
Speaker 1: They're not all that extreme. You know, there are examples
Speaker 1: such as women, um who are a reward right, so
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily important in the game. But maybe if
Speaker 1: you do really well you'll see a picture of a
Speaker 1: woman scantily dressed, or you'll get a kiss at the end,
Speaker 1: or you know, different types of things like that. The
Speaker 1: video has made the claim that the effect of these
Speaker 1: persistent stereotypes extended far beyond the reach of the virtual
Speaker 1: world of gaming, reinforcing harmful attitudes about women and our
Speaker 1: culture at large. Nobody really wants to acknowledge that media
Speaker 1: does have an impact on us, and it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a one to one correlation. It's not like you know
Speaker 1: you're going to see violence against women in the media,
Speaker 1: and therefore you will then commit violence against women. But
Speaker 1: there is the There is research that shows that long
Speaker 1: term exposure to hyper sexualized images tend to make people
Speaker 1: of all genders more tolerant to sexual harassment, more believe
Speaker 1: easily accepting rape myths, for example, and that has a
Speaker 1: huge impact in what is already a patriarchal, misogynist world.
Speaker 1: Uh the way it has a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: way that people perceive women around them, their partners, their mothers,
Speaker 1: that you know, their coworkers and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So is it is unsurprising to me that when women
Speaker 1: started making themselves visible in the game space that there
Speaker 1: was some pushback. It's a daily experience. They hear are
Speaker 1: women's voice and you will be mocked. This is Chase Prairie,
Speaker 1: a game where we met at the Overwatch tournament, who
Speaker 1: didn't want to give her real name for fear of
Speaker 1: retaliation online. She says, when it comes to competitive team play,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to advance within the game because of
Speaker 1: the harassment she faces. You play a game, there are
Speaker 1: six people on your team, and everyone is expected to
Speaker 1: be on voice chat and to treat each other as
Speaker 1: respectable peers and you know, don't get angry at each
Speaker 1: other and be patient, and so those emotional responses if
Speaker 1: men perceive a woman on their team is like not
Speaker 1: holding her own because oh, she a girl. But the
Speaker 1: games don't become about playing the game level. The game
Speaker 1: becomes the argument you're having in voice chat instead of
Speaker 1: the game. And this happens really, really frequently all the time.
Speaker 1: And so you can choose to the act of hitting
Speaker 1: the higher tiers of the game requires like you win
Speaker 1: this game because you work well with your team, and
Speaker 1: if your team won't take you seriously, you can't win.
Speaker 1: And so that's part of what's driven um both my
Speaker 1: friends and just like general groups of women and l
Speaker 1: g B t Q people to create their own communities,
Speaker 1: so we only ever group up with people we trust
Speaker 1: and people we know, and you know it it. There
Speaker 1: are people who say that means you're not a real
Speaker 1: Overwatch player because you don't engage with the wider community,
Speaker 1: and like women don't make it up to the higher
Speaker 1: tiers for this reason, but it's like we have a
Speaker 1: valuable experience of the game despite that, because we fought
Speaker 1: for our own space. Coming up, How can e sports
Speaker 1: and the gaming industry do better for its female players
Speaker 1: given the fact that harassment is still a regular occurrence
Speaker 1: in gaming, is some level of gender segregation one solution.
Speaker 1: Kristin Bounichik thinks it may be a good start. I
Speaker 1: think there's still a huge barrier of entry for women
Speaker 1: getting into the pro scene and getting into the lobbies
Speaker 1: to be able to practice against the other pros. So
Speaker 1: finding a space for them to compete against each other
Speaker 1: to get their feet wet, to gain confidence before entering
Speaker 1: into the male leagues was great, But that was done
Speaker 1: in a very casual sense with all women involved. So
Speaker 1: I think if the league's did go and switch to
Speaker 1: a female separated male base. Um, that could potentially hurt
Speaker 1: women in the long run. So your goal is to
Speaker 1: make it more of a co ed proposition. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: because I believe that women can compete at the same
Speaker 1: level as men in gaming. So my concern is really, like,
Speaker 1: what are the opportunities, Anita sarkees and things. Separating the
Speaker 1: genders is a cop out. There's lots of discussion around,
Speaker 1: like should leagues be gender separated? Can women join teams?
Speaker 1: You know, all of those kinds of conversations that I
Speaker 1: find incredibly frustrating and remnants of, you know, the this
Speaker 1: idea of like who belongs in games and the gate
Speaker 1: keeping that happens in gaming, because it is it would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous to say that playing a video game is
Speaker 1: a gendered is gendered in any way, right, Like we
Speaker 1: can all pick up a controller and play it, and
Speaker 1: we can all train and get good, and some people
Speaker 1: will be better than others, but their gender doesn't matter here.
Speaker 1: But in terms of how or if the industry has
Speaker 1: learned anything from gamer Gate, Anita says, progress is slow.
Speaker 1: I think in the time since I started doing my work,
Speaker 1: what has shifted is a conversation around what we expect
Speaker 1: from games, that the public is much more educated around
Speaker 1: issues of racism and homophobia and um sexism. Like there's
Speaker 1: a bigger demand that gaming studios do better, and so
Speaker 1: we are seeing that in some ways, we are seeing
Speaker 1: games that are you know, less sexist, or there's female
Speaker 1: protagonists or their non binary characters coming out in more games,
Speaker 1: the more trans characters, and that's really exciting, but it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole industry. There's still all of the sexism,
Speaker 1: all of the male dominated, all of the sort of
Speaker 1: macho um you know mechanics and um storylines that we
Speaker 1: have been getting in the past. Are you feeling optimistic
Speaker 1: as this trend gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a little hard to be optimistic about
Speaker 1: anything today, and I don't say that. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I am, however, optimistic about the fact that whenever I
Speaker 1: go to events, I run into women who come up
Speaker 1: to me who are constantly saying, I entered the games
Speaker 1: industry because of you. I want to make the games
Speaker 1: industry better. Thank you so much for doing your work.
Speaker 1: It really inspired me. I learned all all of these
Speaker 1: new things that I didn't know about before, or I
Speaker 1: used to be trying to be a part of the
Speaker 1: boys club, and now I know that I can do
Speaker 1: better and and all of the and you know, then
Speaker 1: they tell me about all of the things they're doing
Speaker 1: in their workplace and the games that they're working on,
Speaker 1: and so it's I get a lot of inspiration and
Speaker 1: hope from the fact that, like there is a pretty
Speaker 1: strong group of people who are trying to move this
Speaker 1: industry forward in a meaningful way. I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of male developers come up to me over the years
Speaker 1: and say, you critiqued my game, and I'm really glad
Speaker 1: you did it. Thank you. I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: that again. And that's one of the best things I
Speaker 1: can hear, because I can't change the past, but we
Speaker 1: can make the future better. Well that's positive. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. You get dig deep, but you gave it
Speaker 1: to us, So there you habit. Listeners e Sports one
Speaker 1: oh one. I got quite an education, and I hope
Speaker 1: you did too. Now, even if you don't play video games,
Speaker 1: they will continue to play an increasingly important role in
Speaker 1: our culture. Even big names and professional sports like Alex
Speaker 1: Rodriguez and Bob Kraft are getting into the game. There's
Speaker 1: clearly gold in them their computer screens. Meanwhile, I could
Speaker 1: not believe the scope and scale of the e sports
Speaker 1: scene back in Philadelphia. And I love the fact that
Speaker 1: gamers like Anita and Kristen and Chase Prairie are fighting
Speaker 1: to make sure they get their seat at the console
Speaker 1: and making sure others do too. Let's help the gaming
Speaker 1: industry gets with the program. And that's it for this
Speaker 1: week's episode. Keep up with Next Question by subscribing on
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Speaker 1: guidance these days, and let's face it, who doesn't sign
Speaker 1: up for my morning newsletter wake Up Call by going
Speaker 1: to Katie correct dot com. Thank you all so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and until next time and my next question,
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Couric. Next Question with Katie Rick is the
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Katie Curreic Media. The
Speaker 1: executive producers are Katie Kurik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is
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Speaker 1: Editing by Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagin and Lowell Berlante, Mixing
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