Episode 6: The Music with Cristobal Tapia de Veer

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Speaker 5 Hi everyone, I'm Evan Ross Katz and welcome back to the White Lotus official podcast from HBO.

Speaker 5 Now we've talked about the show's origin story, its fighting social satire, and its iconic cast. For this episode, I'd like to focus on another element that makes the show what it is.

Speaker 5 You're actually listening to it right now. It's Indelible Music, scored by composer Cristóbal Tapia de Vere, who goes by Christo.

Speaker 5 Christo was born in Chile, where he spent his childhood before moving to Canada at age 15. He went on to attend conservatory where he studied classical music.

Speaker 5 He composed his first TV series score for a BBC show in 2011, and soon after it became clear that this was his calling.

Speaker 5 Composing scores granted Cristo the freedom to experiment, bridging genres, manipulating vocals, and just grooving on that sometimes quirky, often haunting, and always memorable sound that he's now known for.

Speaker 5 Alongside Christo's interview, we're going to be playing the actual audio stems he used to make up the theme song. So get ready to break it down layer by layer.

Speaker 5 But before we dive in, I have an alternate theme song for you, one that nobody's ever heard before.

Speaker 6 You know, I always bring a guitar with me wherever I go work, and

Speaker 6 I wrote an idea on this guitar.

Speaker 5 John Grice, who you heard from a bunch last episode, doesn't just play Greg on the White Lotus. He's also an accomplished musician.
And when I interviewed him for this podcast, he told me a secret.

Speaker 6 And I wrote a theme for Fred Hetchinger. His character to me was very much Captain's Courageous or something.
You know, it kind of harkened from a childhood fantasy.

Speaker 6 And so I wrote like a Captain's Courageous type theme purely for my own edification. I was doing it as an exercise and I was never going to send it to anybody.

Speaker 6 But so I was really keen to hear what the music was going to be. And mine was so far, far in a different world that was like for the wrong, wrong movie.

Speaker 6 The music that I had made, I've never even played it for Mike. I've never played it for anyone.

Speaker 7 But it's.

Speaker 6 It deserves a home. Why not?

Speaker 6 And it was meant to be Fred's, you know, Fred Hetchinger, his Quinn's theme about, you know, extracting himself. It was, it's very,

Speaker 3 it's not as cool,

Speaker 3 nearly,

Speaker 6 but it's, it's interesting, it's not bad.

Speaker 5 Okay, so John's song isn't quite the same vibe that Christo came up with, but quite impressive nonetheless, wouldn't you say?

Speaker 5 It also goes to show what a crazy job it is to have the responsibility of crafting a theme song.

Speaker 5 This is the music that sets the tone for the entire show to come, that sets viewers' expectations for genre, mood, and atmosphere.

Speaker 5 And yet, when Christo began developing what would become the White Lotus's sonic signature, he had very little to go off of. There were no episodes ready, no visuals for Christo to reference.

Speaker 5 All he had was a script and a looming deadline.

Speaker 3 Here's Christo.

Speaker 7 So the first season, when they called me, it was rather late in the process. The mix was going to happen in about four weeks or something like that for the first episode.
Everything was shot.

Speaker 7 They were editing. Everything was pretty much there.
The reason why Mike called me is because they were using some music that I did for Black Mirror as a temp score.

Speaker 7 And that was the main music that was working for him. So he thought, let's call this guy, see if I could do the score for them and all that.

Speaker 8 Our editor, Heather Persons, in season one, used some of his score from another show as temp.

Speaker 5 David Bernad, the White Lotus producer, recalled this story from his end.

Speaker 8 Mike heard it and was like, wow, I really love how unique this sounds. And I really love the originality of his scores.

Speaker 3 He asked me to get in touch with him.

Speaker 8 And Christobal Chilean lives in Quebec. He lives in the mountains in Quebec.

Speaker 8 And I tracked down his agent, manager, just sent an email saying, you know, we're doing the show and we'd love to send it to you and see if Christobal responds.

Speaker 7 I pretty much started working like right away, kind of in a rush to get things happening fast. I was working on the script and the conversations we had.

Speaker 7 So most of the music I did before they sent me any images

Speaker 7 because Mike generally sends stuff really late for some reason. I suppose he doesn't want to show stuff that is not finished.
He was in Hawaii and I was here at minus 40 in Canada.

Speaker 7 I was in a barn, you know, in the woods. It was nothing but snow all around.
So it was like a horror movie setup for me.

Speaker 5 Christo's first order of business was creating a base layer of percussion.

Speaker 7 I think I started recording just random percussions in the sense that I had like, I think I had like a recording session in my computer and I did like 10 minutes at one tempo and then 10 minutes at another tempo.

Speaker 7 and like that for maybe one hour. And so I will start recording basic stuff like shakers.

Speaker 7 And once I have like an hour of that, all the variations and stuff that I can imagine, I would start jamming on top of that with some drums and so on.

Speaker 7 So basically I did like a full percussion band of only me jamming to whatever I was recording. So that became the basic rhythms for the whole show.

Speaker 5 You can just picture Christo, alone in the barn in the woods in Canada, banging on drums and shakers for hours at a time.

Speaker 5 As Christo continued to build out the score and theme song, he came to center the theme around one essential ingredient.

Speaker 7 This theme is very much about the voices.

Speaker 5 You know the ones.

Speaker 7 Everything is just following the voices. It's kind of an excuse to make those voices happen because it felt like they had had just the right energy for this and the right blend of

Speaker 7 it's kind of like a war cry and it's kind of tribal and it fits with all the the jungle chaos. It's a very powerful thing too and sometimes it feels like

Speaker 7 maybe it's nature screaming back or the animals.

Speaker 5 What you're hearing here is actually one woman making one sound that Christo is then manipulating into different registers.

Speaker 5 Christo has actually recorded with her on several occasions, but the sound specifically came from a single session years before the White Lotus.

Speaker 7 Her name is Stephanie Osorio. She's a Colombian singer that lives in Montreal.
I suppose I found her by accident because I was listening to, she had a band here in Montreal of Latin American music.

Speaker 7 Since that time, we've recorded lots of stuff, both as just a bank and also

Speaker 7 her singing the actual melodies for songs.

Speaker 7 We did that for another HBO show called The Third Day and for that it was a different process where I had songs and she needed to sing the melodies for the songs. Maybe 2016 something like that.

Speaker 7 I went to a studio. I rented like the biggest room and she was in the middle of the room with a few microphones.
So I have a couple of choices, one far microphone and one close microphone.

Speaker 7 And we spent like three hours making any sounds, whatever came to mind. And I asked her to do just this thing with the mouth and that

Speaker 7 something like that. And it's just one note.
So this is something that I had in bank. I've done stuff like that a few times.
So with time, I end up knowing the sessions.

Speaker 7 I remember that somebody did something like in a certain style or with a certain tone, and I can go there and just pick that up, and I can play with that.

Speaker 7 I had a little keyboard and my laptop, and that's it. That's pretty much it.
And so, the melody

Speaker 7 I put it in a sampler, and then I can play it with a keyboard. So, that's how it became something melodic rather than just one note.

Speaker 7 The notes, the choice of notes, is just basically what sounded the more

Speaker 7 natural for this voice. If you play on a keyboard, it's easy to go way out of the range of the voice or the material that you have, and so it becomes something else completely.

Speaker 7 Like if you go too low, it sounds like a monster.

Speaker 7 Or if you go too high, it sounds like a chipmunk.

Speaker 7 Those notes are very very close together and it just made sense. It sounded natural that way.
So it's kind of otherworldly in the sense that you can feel that somebody maybe didn't sing that.

Speaker 7 It's kind of impossible to sing, but at the same time, it sounds like a person. It doesn't sound like a robot or a vocoder or anything like that.

Speaker 5 Christo started pairing the vocals with other sounds, like birds and jungle animals.

Speaker 7 If I remember correctly, the stuff that sounds like monkeys that probably came from vinyls

Speaker 7 or

Speaker 7 elephants, stuff like that in general is some very dirty vinyls and you can hear there's some crusty sound to it. Like from the 70s probably,

Speaker 7 even 60s maybe. I just prefer the sound of those old vinyls than

Speaker 7 some modern sound bank. It doesn't sound very interesting, that stuff, for some reason, I don't know, but I rarely look for

Speaker 7 any natural sounds in modern recordings.

Speaker 7 I much prefer the vinyls, yeah.

Speaker 7 There is stuff that maybe sounds like animals, but it could be flutes.

Speaker 7 Sometimes I was playing into the flutes and sometimes making sounds with my voice into the flutes, like screams and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 All of these elements helped cement for Christo the tone of the theme, which he described very aptly, I might add, as Hawaiian hitchcock.

Speaker 7 I think it's rather tense. It was clear from the start that this wasn't like a comedy kind of score or a vacation score.
It was very much about the drama.

Speaker 7 the tension and the subtext, what's happening in people's heads. It's really pushing the chaos chaos that the tourists create, and maybe the chaos in their minds.

Speaker 7 So, I suppose the jungle, the animals, the screaming, and all that stuff, it really has nothing to do with Hawaii. It's more about these characters' minds.

Speaker 5 Late in the theme, another type of voice emerges. It's more of a heavy breathing or a moan.

Speaker 7 That voice in particular is Stephanie's daughter actually, who was like, I don't know, 10 years old or something.

Speaker 7 And she came to the studio too. So yeah, I recorded some stuff with her too.
That voice is a slowed down version

Speaker 7 of something that she did. So it kind of sounds weird because the pitch it's way down.
Her voice is much higher normally. And yeah, and I'm playing that with a keyboard again.

Speaker 7 In the moment, that felt kind of funky, and I just liked the sound.

Speaker 5 Once Christo delivered the theme to the production team, and they all started pairing his tracks to the visuals, it took a little bit of time for everyone to get accustomed to the new sound.

Speaker 7 With the images, I had to adapt and see what works and what doesn't, and see how far I can push my luck with the weird sounds and all of that because it's generally with so little time it can be harder for people to digest new propositions or a bold direction or something like that because it can be shocking at first to hear things that are quite different from what was used.

Speaker 7 For example, the attempt they had for the theme was a very loungy, soft kind of pop

Speaker 7 that has absolutely nothing to do with what I sent. So there were quite a few conversations, and somehow I don't know how it happened that you know it finally worked out, but

Speaker 7 it wasn't an obvious thing from the start.

Speaker 7 I mean, now it seems like

Speaker 7 people really associate the sound of the music to this show.

Speaker 7 But when it wasn't there, when we were trying to kind of accept this sound and make it work and all that, it really wasn't an obvious choice. It was kind of a leap of faith.

Speaker 8 The theme song just kind of came out of nowhere.

Speaker 5 David Burnett again.

Speaker 8 He just sent, he's like, I worked on this theme. What do you think? Because at that point, you're like, we don't know what the opening titles are.
We don't know if we're going to use a cue.

Speaker 8 We don't know if it's going to be a song. We don't know what it is.
And I think the second we heard it, just like, wow. I mean, really, I remember I was in Vancouver.

Speaker 8 I remember exactly where I was when Mike sent it to me. And you kind of hear it and you're like,

Speaker 8 you always like, you know, you, it just, it's an amazing, it's an amazing theme song, and you kind of just know it works.

Speaker 5 After the first season came out, Christo's theme went viral. As Christo mentioned, it was impossible to separate song from show.
It felt like they'd been stitched together from the very beginning.

Speaker 5 Naturally, when season two rolled around, Mike White and David Bernad wanted Christo to do the music again. But Christo, he wasn't so sure.

Speaker 7 I thought I didn't have the time to do this show at all the second season. I never really done a second season for any shows besides maybe one show like 10 years ago.

Speaker 7 That was like a very special thing to me. But in general, I'm not really interested in franchises that much.
So I told them that it was impossible for me to do this season.

Speaker 7 And then they asked me to do at least the theme.

Speaker 5 Christo eventually came around and agreed to do the theme for the second season. And to have his partner and frequent collaborator, Kim Neundorf, contribute additional music for the score.

Speaker 7 The only thing that remains from the first season is those voices, which is kind of the main hook, the main interest of this track.

Speaker 7 I think we, you know, we discuss a little bit with Mike about some influences that could be interesting for Italy and like opera and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 For the second season, Christo started with something simple.

Speaker 7 I took like maybe one day to try to make some kind of sketch of something that could somehow sound Italian.

Speaker 7 So I did this mock-up of an opera singer with some orchestral sounds in the beginning that sounded like super cheesy.

Speaker 7 and then we go slowly into the actual theme with with those voices that you recognize from from the first season

Speaker 7 and then it goes into this club thing with the new instrumentation with the pianos and yeah a bunch of stuff some choirs and things like that

Speaker 5 As Christo developed the theme, he was inspired by the work of Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director behind movies like The Great Beauty and series like The Young Pope.

Speaker 7 Throughout the second season, Paolo Sorrentino's movies were kind of present in my mind

Speaker 7 because of the way he uses music and

Speaker 7 the scenery in Italy and all of that. I suppose from the start, it was kind of obvious that there was going to be a beat dropping somewhere because that was the concept on the first one too.

Speaker 7 And for this one, one of the tracks that I really liked that I was listening to is Rafaela Carra

Speaker 7 Italian singer she has a couple of tracks that have been remixed by like French DJs and

Speaker 7 so in general I really like the way Sorrentino uses electronic music in his shows and his movies because it's kind of unexpected the way he switches from classical music and all of a sudden there's a beat happening and you're in the Vatican or you're somewhere that is kind of unexpected for that sound.

Speaker 7 Most of this stuff it's samples and orchestral stuff and whatnot.

Speaker 7 This voice is an actual opera singer who made a soundbank so that people could play with her voice and she has this really really amazing voice.

Speaker 7 So that melody I played I played that with a keyboard and then at some point I was thinking that maybe to actually call her to do it for real but at that point we didn't have that much time and I was like

Speaker 7 I'm not sure if it is gonna get better really for the effect that that we need for this because the intro is not meant to be really serious or anything like that. It's like an electronic musician

Speaker 7 mock-up or version of what classical music or Renaissance music could sound like. So

Speaker 7 in the end, I really liked the way this sounded and I just skated like that.

Speaker 5 After the opera singing comes to an end, the voices from the season one theme return with a new twist.

Speaker 7 It's interesting because there's some weird stuff that happens with the voices. By the end of each phrase, it goes into this really high notes.

Speaker 7 Some kind of, you know, really high chaotic thing by the end of the phrase.

Speaker 5 What Christo's referring to here is the screechy sound at the end of the track. Something between a shriek and a bird call.

Speaker 7 This is like accidents, which happened because by the end of the phrase of these melodies that I'm playing on the keyboard, what I'm playing is a voice that she's doing this sound while she has air.

Speaker 7 And by the end, you can hear her voice fading out and then she starts laughing.

Speaker 7 And so I kept the whole recording.

Speaker 7 And when I'm playing and I get to the end of the phrase those are the sounds that you could think it's like for example birds or something like that and it's just her voice that I'm playing really really high register on the keyboard and it's just her that she starts laughing the most interesting stuff for me about making all this music is those accidents because it's completely unexpected and then making the choice of doing something out of those accidents is the most fun

Speaker 7 part for me.

Speaker 5 When Cristo finished the demo for the season two theme, he sat on it for a little while before sending it in for review. Nothing was holding him back per se, well, except anxiety.

Speaker 7 I wasn't really sure about it. It was a really fast demo, and I didn't really like it that much.

Speaker 5 The White Lotus producer David Bernad remembers the day he finally received it.

Speaker 8 We were in production and we were shooting at the vineyards. I think the scene where the two couples go on their couples trip to do the wine tasting and Aubrey gets drunk.

Speaker 5 You guys want to hit up another winery or what?

Speaker 8 And he just sent it to us. And it's just like, wow, it's like, yeah, it's like a banger.
Just that was all him. And the second I heard it, I was like, oh, wow.

Speaker 8 And then I remember like driving, you know, it was like 45 minutes from our hotel. I remember driving back.
I just kind of listened to it on repeat for 45 minutes.

Speaker 8 And we're kind of like, this song is brilliant.

Speaker 7 So I was kind of surprised that the theme worked out. I never really went past the demo state of this thing.
So you never know.

Speaker 7 I mean, as a musician, you're always thinking how you could do things better and re-record things and if you had some loops that you use maybe you want to re-record that to to make things better and maybe less cheesy or whatever you know you criticize a lot when you work it but

Speaker 7 this time I was kind of happy I just left it as is because people were really tripping on the theme. It worked out really well.
Maybe I would have sabotaged it if I've done it better.

Speaker 5 These days, both theme songs have reached a stratospheric level of iconic. Their earwormy, haunting melodies are so catchy that DJs have taken to remixing them.

Speaker 5 Perhaps the most famous case being Tiesto. David remembers hearing that remix in an unexpected place.

Speaker 8 I was at the White House Correspondence Center and Tiesto was performing at a party and they started playing the song and I thought it was a

Speaker 8 not for me, but it was like a joke or something. And then I was like, wow, that was like, and then I went and met Tiesto and I thanked him for all the love.

Speaker 8 And I connected him with Christo, and it was like, you know, it's like a genuine, it's amazing.

Speaker 8 I mean, again, it's a credit to Christo and how talented he is that world-class DJs are playing his music everywhere.

Speaker 5 The white lotus music is so popular that live versions of it have been performed by all sorts of artists. A jam band, a symphony orchestra at London's Barbican, and an EDM artist at Coachella.

Speaker 5 That's range.

Speaker 7 We've been doing some live versions of this. Like, for example, we did an orchestral version in LA.

Speaker 7 And then I actually called Nicole Deschenne, who is the singer. She's American.
And she came to LA to sing this.

Speaker 7 So it was the first time I heard this played for real and with her singing this thing live. And then from then on, I called her again for other projects because I like her voice so much.

Speaker 5 While the theme might be the most iconic music from the series, many of Christo's other tracks are crucial to defining its mood. From the frenetic

Speaker 5 to the soothing.

Speaker 5 You can listen to any of these tracks on the White Lotus soundtrack on Spotify if you want to go on a little mental vacation.

Speaker 5 And then, of course, there's the music that's actually performed in the show, specifically in season two by a certain Italian musician.

Speaker 2 Mike White was looking for an Italian girl who could sing and play the piano, so I was like, tick, tick.

Speaker 5 This is Beatrice Grano, who plays Mia.

Speaker 2 Squizzy.

Speaker 2 I got the job singing here.

Speaker 3 Oh, congratulations.

Speaker 3 Grazie.

Speaker 2 Grazie, gracious,

Speaker 2 single.

Speaker 5 Mia is an aspiring singer and close friend of Lucia, the local escort. When Bia Trice first read the role, she felt like it was made for her.

Speaker 2 I started shaking. I remember I was like shaking because I was thinking that I was really in the right pole.
And sometimes when you do this job, it's not really about being the best.

Speaker 2 It's about finding the role that really belongs to you.

Speaker 2 So yeah, and then that's when I watched again season one and it was painful to watch because it was so good and i'm like i'm hurting myself if i don't get this job i'm gonna be so upset

Speaker 2 what i really like about her is that yes she's innocent and but i think she's just really strong-willed like she is very determined and she would do everything in her power to get where she wants

Speaker 2 and i like that about her that she never doubts herself. She always says, I'm a great musician, I'm amazing, you'll see it, I'm wonderful, I'm great at the piano.

Speaker 2 She's never, not even once, doubting herself, which is something I found very inspiring.

Speaker 2 And of course, I think that both Mia and Lucia, I see them as like two little like fairies, or they are there to kind of break everything apart in order to then fix it.

Speaker 2 Because what they do is they join this, you know, this hotel

Speaker 2 and they

Speaker 2 break every couple,

Speaker 2 they break the manager,

Speaker 2 and then Lucia's character breaks the son of Michael Imperioli, you know, Adam, and like, but then in the end, by doing so, they eventually fix every situation, which it's very Shakespearean, I think.

Speaker 2 They're like puck, you know, I feel like they join it and turn everything apart to then fix it

Speaker 5 as mia beatrice had a handful of standout musical scenes where she sings and plays piano at the resort

Speaker 2 I remember I told Mike, I want to be perfect in this role. I want to be exceptional.
And he said, you are exceptional. And I'm like, yeah, but I want to be

Speaker 2 better.

Speaker 2 I was singing and playing, which was a dream to me. And we were doing all of that live

Speaker 2 because he wanted to be real. So I was very nervous because I'm like,

Speaker 2 okay, I know he wants it to be real, but at the same time, I hope this is going to sound okay because it's live and I'm acting and playing the piano and singing.

Speaker 2 and it's gonna be one take and everybody will see this which is uh which was scary and we were doing those music scenes at four in the morning but I

Speaker 2 loved it I think what I was feeling when I was doing that was something that I will never forget it was

Speaker 5 it was incredible The set for season two actually had an unexpected visitor in Esti Heim. She was there as a music supervisor and friend to the show.
And Esti even brought along her own guest, Casia.

Speaker 5 Beatrice recalled many rowdy nights with Esti.

Speaker 2 For me to meet her, like, who am I? I'm just this girl from the south of Rome. We were living in a bubble because we were staying in Tarmina in a moment in which, you know, it was not the season.

Speaker 2 So it was empty. And I love that feeling of emptiness.
I don't know, it was surreal because we're in the most beautiful place in the world and it was raining all the time time and it was just us.

Speaker 2 We were owning that place. It felt like that.

Speaker 2 Esteeheim, she basically talked to the managers of the hotel and she managed to put up like a sound system like she brought the speakers and she brought the mic and I'm like, where did you find all these things?

Speaker 2 And she said, you know, I've asked because in the hotel, of course, they do events sometimes. So she kind of put up all this situation and we were dancing and it was actually great.

Speaker 2 Also, because you know, you dance there and then you know you can just go back in your room and sleep. And all of us, we had incredible rooms.
So every room was like a party place.

Speaker 2 It was just like, imagine, imagine having, you know, are you from Los Angeles, you know, having the chateau just for yourself with all the rooms and everything. You know, it was

Speaker 2 crazy. And we were doing lots of karaoke.

Speaker 5 Do you recall what your karaoke song was?

Speaker 2 I think I sung

Speaker 2 Wannabe and Spice Girls? Wanna be Spice Girls. Yeah, yeah.
Oh my God.

Speaker 5 Beatrice performed her piano songs live on set, a decision that definitely made the scenes feel more authentic. But it was also nerve-wracking.

Speaker 5 As she prepped, Esti gave Beatrice some excellent advice.

Speaker 2 She actually told me many things, but there was one thing she said that stuck with me. And even today, before concerts, before I'm recording, I think about that.

Speaker 2 She gave me an image that was so powerful. She said, you have to think of your voice like a chewing gum.

Speaker 2 And when it comes out, you know, you got to think that it's kind of expanding in the room. Because I have a very, I have my way of singing, which is very like

Speaker 2 small and tiny, and it's my style. Esti was saying, Mia's character, like,

Speaker 2 okay, she's a lounge singer and everything, but she is not that sophisticated. She just wants to like be seen.
So you gotta shout it out. You gotta like

Speaker 2 really play your voice out. You gotta put yourself out there, even if you think it's wrong.
You gotta be annoying. You gotta do that.

Speaker 2 And I told her, I don't know if I have the voice you're talking about. I don't know if I'm that kind of singer who like sings that way.
I'm very like, I'm a shy singer, and I like that.

Speaker 2 And she said, no, no, no, no, you, you have the voice. And she said, think about your voice as this

Speaker 2 like big like this this chewing gam and even now i think about that chewing gam and it works as teach she was wonderful i'm very uh normally very

Speaker 2 uh i take time to let people in especially when they're teaching me something i'm like yeah i i'm taking what you're saying but also i'm like i want to do my own thing but her she manages to really break me in a good way and i will always be grateful she has a way of getting to people that it's very special.

Speaker 5 That's it for this time.

Speaker 5 Next time, on the final episode of the White Lotus Look Back Podcast, we'll be diving into Mike White's biography to see how all of his work and life experiences informed his making of the White Lotus.

Speaker 5 I kind of think I built out an imaginative world because I was understimulated in a sense.

Speaker 4 Everyone goes to Mike. I'm like, dang, he's like the king.

Speaker 3 Kingpin, Mike.

Speaker 6 I pointed to everyone and I said, he changed all our lives.

Speaker 5 The White Lotus podcast is a production of HBO and Campside Media. This episode was hosted by me, Evan Ross Katz, and produced by Natalia Winkleman.
Our associate producer is Aaliyah Papes.

Speaker 5 Fact-checking by Gray Lanta. At Campside Media, our executive producer is Josh Dean.
Editing and sound design by Ewan Laitramuen.

Speaker 5 Special thanks to Michael Gluckstadt, Allison Cohen-Sorokach, and Kenya Reyes from the HBO podcast team. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.