Melody Barnes and Matt Hantzmon (Part 1)

00:00 My name is Matt Hantzmon and I work in the renewable energy sector. I develop solar and battery storage energy facilities around the country, and I've been doing that for about 20 years.

00:15 And I'm Melody Barnes, and I am the executive director of the Karsch Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia. And I've been. Well, I've been in that role since June, but I've been working on issues pertaining to democracy here at UVA since September 2018, when I started co directing the Democracy initiative and the College of Arts and Sciences.

00:39 Wonderful. And I want to ask, what brought each of you into the studio today?

00:44 Why did you agree to do a.

00:45 One small step conversation? So I went to a reception at Cars Hill when the one small step was being kind of presented to the community. And I thought based on some of the conversations that were happening and what was going on, that was a fascinating initiative. But as I was sitting there thinking about that, I thought, as Melody was making some remarks on stage, I thought to myself, wow, I bet we. I don't really agree on a lot of things politically, and we probably are coming to this from very different approaches. And I thought, well, that's probably the classic pairing, if you could choose not knowing that, or I also signed up at that time to do a one small step and didn't know who, if anybody, they might pair me with, but then reached out to melody just to say, hey, let's get to know one another.

01:49 And, well, picking up on that, I received Matt's email, and you said, why don't we have coffee? I bet we don't agree on much. Why don't we have coffee? Which I thought was a wonderful thing to do, just the outreach. And even though it was in the context of one small step, not even in the formal context of having the interview. So I really appreciated that and respected that. And I knew that I wanted to do an interview. I mean, obviously, the democracy initiative is sponsoring this work, and I think it's important, and it comes from a place of real interest and intellectual curiosity for me, but also something that I think is important in our communities, in our society today, just to engage with people with whom you have differences. I'm curious about that and what we'll find out about one another. But given all of that, I thought, well, let's have this conversation. Why don't we do our one small step interview? And we were off and running from here.

02:59 So in front of you, you'll see.

03:00 You have kind of a bullet point list of things that you actually wrote.

03:04 To each other about yourselves. And one practice that we encourage with one small step is to put yourself in your conversation partner's shoes so that you can get to know them better and ask deeper questions. So I want to ask each of.

03:18 You to kind of read that list.

03:19 Of things about your partner, and then once you've each done that, feel free to ask any questions that come to mind. I'll kick it off. Melody, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, attended the University of North Carolina, and received a BA in history in 1986, she was a sorority member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. Melody's married african american female with no children. She says, disappointing parenthetically, but lots of godchildren that she can brag about without embarrassment. She's a cultural and political progressive. She is a Baptist with a strong pro choice commitment.

04:07 Matt wrote, born and raised in Charlottesville, attended UVA with a BA in history, 1987, and a fraternity, married white male, raised four boys here in Charlottesville. Cultural and political conservative, Roman Catholic with strong pro life commitment. And so from there, should we ask each other?

04:32 Yeah, if you have any follow up questions. I mean, I think just given the bios, we can see that there's definitely some similarities, both history majors, you know, both in Charlottesville, and obviously some differences politically and religiously. But I'm curious, you know, if you have questions or want to follow up.

04:48 You know, you can feel free to. Sure.

04:50 Absolutely. Go ahead.

04:51 Well, I'm curious. Born and raised in Charlottesville, and often people born in college towns have parents or some affiliation to the university. And I'm curious if that's the case with you or something completely different.

05:07 Yeah, it's not the case. And I would say in some ways, that makes us kind of a true townies from a Charlottesville perspective. My grandfather came to Charlottesville many, many years ago, I think back in the thirties or forties, and he was working with the gas company, and they were at that time trying to install gas for street lighting and other things. And I think he was a salesman of some sort, but was in charge of keeping all the accounts for the gas company in that endeavor, at some point, made a change, and he didn't have any real formal training, but started a public accounting firm called Hantzmon Weible And so he was one of the founding partners with Peggy Weible and then my father was a partner there all of his life. So growing up in Charlottesville, I was one of three brothers, and there was, you know, I thought, something particularly uninteresting about public accounting, so really didn't get into that myself.

06:17 Actively rejected that.

06:18 Exactly.

06:19 Yeah.

06:20 As my brothers did as well, so. Yeah, but growing up in Charlottesville was fun. It was a college town. It was, you know, 45, 50 years ago. It was a much smaller town, much more provincial and rural, and it's grown quite a bit in the intervening years.

06:41 And so you chose to stay and go to Uva versus running as far as you could to strike out from your family. Are you close to your family? Was that one of the reasons why you chose to stay?

06:52 You know, my initial plan was to run as far as I could go. My older brother went to Davidson College down in North Carolina, and my father, I think when he started to do the math, so to speak, realized he couldn't send all three of us to private schools. So he gave us the option of going to any public school in Virginia that we wanted to go to. And at that point, kind of Uva was an easy choice. But I do, you know, looking back, I probably would have wanted to get away, but I even going to Uva, being a Charlottesville resident, you do kind of get into the community, and you really leave behind kind of your family and friends.

07:41 Yeah. Yeah. And knowing faculty that have kids who are first and second years, I can see that.

07:52 And with you growing up in Richmond, why UNC versus Virginia school?

07:57 Sure. That's a great question and something I thought a lot about at that time. I, quite frankly, I loved high school and did well in high school, and I actively remember at 18, thinking, I want to go someplace where I don't know people and people don't know me, to see if I can create success and friendships and relationships not based on what I've had, but just striking out new. And that led me to look at schools outside of, for the most part, outside of Virginia. I did apply to Uva, but I had so many friends that were coming here from Richmond, and it came down to Georgetown and Carolina. And in some ways, like your father, my parents said, look, we know you want to go to graduate school, and we don't want you laden with a lot of debt, so we want to pay for college, and we just can't afford to pay Georgetown prices and then pay for law school. So that was a factor. And I also really liked Carolina when I went there. In many ways, it has the feel that UVA has to it when working here. UVA feels very familiar in that way. I have a big public school, an excellent school, but that public university college town feel to it. And so that's how I got to got to Carolina.

09:39 So you mentioned law school. Did that ever come to pass?

09:42 Yes. Yes. In fact, I went directly and. Directly, directly. I graduated in mid May, and I was starting law school in early June. Michigan had a summer program, part of its class, a quarter of its class could start in the summer, and they gave me additional money if I wanted to start in the summer. So I made that decision and moved to Ann Arbor a few weeks after graduation and went to law school. And then after law school, practiced in New York. I was fascinated by corporate finance, and I really enjoyed those courses and went to a big law firm in New York. And promptly, kind of within two weeks, I realized that it just wasn't a life that I wanted, but I stayed for a few years.

10:32 It's interesting either our paths being very similar or in some ways having these oppositions, because I went to graduate school at Northwestern.

10:42 Yeah. My law school roommate went to northwestern undergrad.

10:45 So, yeah, it's funny that, you know, there's a lot of similarities, right?

10:53 The south to the Midwest.

10:54 Exactly.

10:54 What did you study at Northwestern?

10:56 I studied business.

10:57 Okay.

10:58 So after I graduated from UVA, I went to work for Price Waterhouse as a, basically as an it consultant. So I was doing a lot of computer programming and a lot of technical accounting things.

11:12 Accounting, your dad wins.

11:17 But after about three years of doing that, I knew I wanted to kind of get, step back and take a broader view of the business world and what I might do there. So I went back to business school to pursue that.

11:32 And so how did you, I mean, it's clear how your business, your study of business and business degree led to the work you're doing now or the role that you had. But substantively, how did you get into renewables?

11:49 Yeah, that's actually a strange twist of fate, one I would say is very lucky. But after I graduated from business school, I did a couple a decade or more of biotech startup work, medical devices and pharma. And that's what brought me back here to Charlottesville. There was a series of technologies that were coming out of the University of Virginia that I got involved in to pursue those. And then I was on a board of a software company and kind of an acquaintance from mine in high school, not a friend, but an acquaintance, was the CFO of that company. And he had a real kind of life epiphany back in 1999, 2000, where he wanted, he really wanted to make a difference in the environment, spent some time in eastern Europe and really saw kind of unchecked environmental abuse and wanted to come back here and do something about that and started a renewable energy company and kind of enticed me slowly to start working with him. And I really didn't have a great desire to get into the industry. It was pretty fringe back in 2000, and I started working there full time. You know, it's. The funny story is that my wife was always embarrassed to tell people what I did because I was working with a.

13:19 Because it was so fringe.

13:20 Yeah. Windmill company. So it was very fringe. And, you know, it was the beginning, though, of what has been kind of an unstoppable wave of activity, and, you know, it continues to grow and strengthen. So the last company I started currently work for, Hexagon Energy, I told the people that when I was gathering some people to try to do this with me, I said, hey, I want to do this. You know, I see this is going to be playing out over the next two or three decades, and I just want to slowly but surely keep working in that industry.

14:01 And there are so many questions I'm curious about, but also the coming back to Charlottesville. So when you got back here, were your parents still here? Any of your brothers? Are your parents still living?

14:20 Yeah. Yeah. So I was working in Rochester, Minnesota at the time. I was married. I had one child, and my wife Jenny was pregnant. And I was kind of frustrated at the time. I was working for IBM, and I felt that working in a big company environment really didn't. I don't know what it was exactly, whether it was creativity or rejection of authority generally in my personality, but I really did enjoy working for a big company. Coming back here was facilitated both because my parents and my wife's parents both lived here in Charlottesville. I'd met Jenny when I was in high school. Families are here. So it offered some kind of safety net if I was going to. At that time, I wanted to do a startup company, so I wanted. Had met some doctors up at UVA that had some technology, and they. I said, hey, I can help you, you know, create a company out of that, but recognizing that that can crash and burn. Being here in Charlottesville, you know, if I had to move into my parents basement, that would have worked out. So. But to your kind of last question, my parents now are both deceased. My father in law has also passed away, but my mother in law lives close to us in the city.

15:54 That's great. That's great. I imagine that's great. It's great for your kids. How old are your sons now?

16:00 Yeah, so my eldest son is 28, and then my next son is 26. My third son is 25, and my youngest son is 23. Wow. And they are mostly out of town. My eldest son works in New York. My second son works actually with me at Hexagon energy development, which is a ton of fun. My third son works in Chicago, and my youngest works out in Seattle.

16:31 Oh, wow. Okay. So they're spread all over.

16:34 Spread all over. Covid was great, if I can say that, because they came back and spent, like, huge chunks of time in Charlottesville, so. And then several of them brought their girlfriends in tow for some visits, so we actually got to spend a lot more time with them than we have in years. So that was a silver lining.

16:55 Yeah, yeah. I understand what you mean by that. I mean, with all the challenges that Covid brought, there's. In some ways, it slowed some things down, and there was kind of a hunkering down with family in particular and time that I think many of us, I'll speak for myself, wouldn't normally have had just because life is so busy and people are constantly going. So that really was a silver lining.

17:25 And if you don't mind rewinding on you after you decided corporate law wasn't, you know, the thing for you, long term, kind of. How did you get into academia? Or was that your next step?

17:39 Yeah. No, academia was not. So I was in New York, and I was working for a big law firm called Sherman and Sterling, and I. Things were going well professionally, but a few things. One, I realized it wasn't my passion, the thing that I wanted to get up and do every day, and particularly since every day doing it was so long. I still have some of my diaries from that period, and they invited me back to speak a few years ago, and I took my diary. It's like, this is the day that I managed to work or build 27.5 hours. You might wonder how that's done in a 24 hours day. So if I was going to devote that kind of time, I really wanted to do something I care deeply about. And I had always been fascinated by politics and public policy in particular. And Washington was just a fascinating place to me, both history majors and studying history and studying politics and political figures was fascinating to me. And I went back to Michigan for black alumni reunion, and I met a door an adjunct professor, and was talking to him about my interest, and he said, oh, you should call a friend of mine who works for the House Judiciary Committee. And I did, and she said, oh, we haven't had an opening in ten years, but we have an opening now, and it was on the judiciary committee, on the subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, which is exactly what I was interested in. And so I ran home from the office. I fedexed my resume because, you know, pre email, and that was in, I guess, early October. And by the end of November, I was moving to DC to take the position as an assistant counsel. And so that's how I got to Washington. And I was there. The subcommittee chair decided to retire. And I was naive enough. I was naive, but in a way that ultimately protected me because I thought in the normal world, when someone leaves, the staff goes. And so I started looking for a new job and got a new job as director of legislative affairs for an independent agency, the equal Employment Opportunity commission. And actually, what would have happened is the chairman retires, but the staff doesn't have to leave. The staff works for the committee. But then there was the election of 94, and so Democrats lost the House. And at that point, I would have likely lost my job, particularly because I was the most junior person, but I would already switch jobs. And so I spent a year in my position at the EEOC and then got a call one day from Ted Kennedy's office, and they asked if I would interview for a job as their general counsel, which I did. And I got that job and worked for him for eight years. I was his general counsel and then became his chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. And then I left there after eight years, did some work in the think tank world, a little bit of consulting work, and helped launch a new thing, think tank and bill that out was there for several years. And then friends that I had from the Senate reached out to me because they were working for a new senator who was thinking of running for President Barack Obama. And I met with him, decided not to go on the campaign. I was trying to have a balanced life. I wanted to get married. My life had been crazy, so I helped, but I didn't go to Chicago. And during that period, my husband and I started dating. And then they called me back when it was clear he was going to be the nominee and asked if I would consider coming on board, which I did and did that, became his domestic policy advisor for the first three years, got married six months into that, and then left government. And my husband and I had a consulting firm until I got here. So academia comes really late in the professional story.

22:03 Political aspirations?

22:04 Oh, God, no. I know what it looks like up close and personal. No, I don't have interest in running for office. I've enjoyed the roles that I played in government, and it was a journey that I wouldn't have expected, and I loved it. But I don't want to hold elected office for lots of reasons, and I enjoy being on the outside. I love the work I do here. I sit on a couple of corporate boards. I chair the Monticello board and another foundation board. So I get lots of the mix of lots of different things in my life, and I enjoy that right now.

22:51 And I think you still live in Richmond.

22:54 I do.

22:56 You commute to Charlottesville, I assume?

22:59 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I started, I was a senior fellow here at the Miller center, and my husband and I had moved to Richmond. And when they asked me to come on board with the democracy initiative, I said, I'm fascinated by that, but we're not going to be moving. My husband loves Richmond. He's not from Richmond, but he loves it and I love it. And my dad is still alive, and it's really great to be that close to him.

23:26 I want to ask both of you, you've kind of started shifting towards this, and obviously, melody, with your career, it kind of comes up naturally. But I'm wondering if you could kind of talk about each of your political values. So not saying, like, if you're running for office, what would you campaign on? But, you know, how would you describe your own belief system and what drives your political perspectives?

23:51 Well, Matt, why don't you take, do.

23:52 You want to take a shot at that?

23:53 Sure. Sure.

23:54 You've scratched on yours and I'll let you get back to it. But I see on the question says, like, what was my first memory of politics? So I had a neighbor, and you might know him, George Gillum.

24:09 No, although that name is familiar.

24:10 He's had a position at the miller center in some capacity for a number of years. But back in the, it was probably the seventies, he was running for Congress as a Democrat. And so there was a lot of activity around that and kind of buzz and excitement that, you know, kind of a local guy and then certainly a neighbor that we knew was running for this position, don't think he won in that district. Then I became active in the kind of the young Democrats in high school and found most of that from a political perspective was more social than political. So I wasn't giving deep thought to issues and what the Democrats were trying to accomplish versus what the Republicans who trying to accomplish. But I think that probably, you know, when I was in college and I started to think more about politics and policy, I would say in some ways I have kind of a libertarian bent, I feel, and there's some concepts from kind of catholic theology that underpin this. But I, I kind of feel like small government and local government is more effective than big government and top down solutions to problems. So although as a libertarian, I have a few kind of more, I'd say classic family values. As I said, I was catholic and very much a pro life advocate, libertarianism doesn't meet all of my, and I guess in some ways, it's probably some of the problems with our political systems in general is I don't think you, I don't think it's rational to be, like, toe the line on all, on a political party and all their beliefs unless they truly align with your beliefs. But I think most people are probably more complicated than that. So in some ways, I don't like our two party system. I don't think it works well. I don't think it's effective in bringing out good ideas, and it's now becoming more than ineffective through polarization of getting anything kind of collaborative done. I can't say now like, where I stand on a political party because I think it's kind of broken. I don't know how to fix it. But it'd be interesting. I'd love to see two or three more parties. And I don't like necessarily the parliamentary system. I like our republican system, but I think it'd be nice to break up the column bases.

27:21 Yeah, I just picking up there, I agree with you. I've often said I feel like we are stuffing, you know, cats and dogs and squirrels and birds into a bag and saying, you're all alike, and people and issues are more complex than that. And our two party system really tries to drive everyone into a similar way of thinking or approaching problems and doesn't allow for the kind of nuance and the kind of debate that I think ultimately leads to robust ideas. But also people really feeling as though they've been heard and feeling as though they have a shot or some connection to the outcomes that government produces. So I absolutely hear you there, and you've touched on a little bit. It sounds like your faith plays a very strong role in your life and affects your politics, but at the same time, not everything lines. You can't draw a, a straight line from every single point from politics to faith. Is that.

28:48 Yeah. Well, that in Christianity, at least, kind of the way I have come to know, it really does force, it doesn't allow you to be in kind of one political party. You know, there's a tremendously strong emphasis on taking care of the poor and the disadvantaged. There's a tremendous emphasis on loving one's neighbors, and that is pretty explicitly drawn as a large neighbor. Like, it's not your next door neighbor, it's humankind. So politics, I think, on both parties has trouble reconciling some of those kind of basic instincts with policy. And it also feels like there's politics has a tendency in this direction, but it maybe feels like more that it's protecting power bases and vested interests and lobby lobbied interests as opposed to, you know, the ideal, like of a citizen government that was, you know, our constitution is genius in so many ways, and it's been flexible to move into the modern age, but it always contemplated not a lifelong professional political class, which we're getting now. And a lot of politicians are drawn to that for the power and aren't particularly effective because it's all about retaining power.

30:38 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was thinking about this for something that I've been writing, but also we were with some friends over the weekend, and we were talking about this. It's winning office to win office, to stay in office to win the office again without one being willing to put some things on the line. And even if you lose, at least to advance a cause that you truly believe in. And I think because of interests that are hardened, I think for a number of reasons, I think the way political lines are drawn, everything that kind of leads to the polarization that we're seeing, the decrease in the catalyst for people to talk and engage and debate and argue productively across difference. And people stake out a position because they know it's a winning position. Lines have been drawn to make it a winning position, and everyone can just kind of hunker down, which I find extremely frustrating and not the political leaders that I worked with. I mean, I think people find it surprise, particularly with Kennedy, because he was such a vocal person and had a national presence, but he worked so well with people across lines with the belief that our system, when it works, is pretty spectacular. And this is the way things get done, and they don't get done necessarily quickly, but you have to build consensus to be able to move forward. And the lack of that today is.

32:27 Really, what would you think about term limits for Congress?

32:32 What do I think about term limits? You know, I have very, I have very mixed views about term limits because I have seen across party what happens when you have people who really believe in the art and craft of legislating and develop an expertise across a few subject matter areas and that comes with them and with the staff that they build. And there's a real benefit to that. And at the same time, I recognize that there are people who just kind of, you know, sit in a chair, and as you were saying, the attraction to power leaves people sitting there. They can't imagine not being wearing the congressional pin. And so those two things clash. Clash for me. So I'm not at this point a proponent of term limits, but I recognize the value in that, and it's something that I'm thinking about. And that, to me, is part of a larger piece of lots of things that we should think about in our system and what's bringing us value, what actually will help us meet the aspirations of our democratic principles and what are the things that we've done, because we've always done them, and to which even founders, if they're getting it, if we see we're getting it wrong, next generation should fix it. But often I feel like we cop to, well, it's always been done that way, or the founders said it should be done that way without people really realizing how revolutionary the founders were and wanted us to be as well.

34:32 Yeah, I wanted to jump in. So we are sort of coming to the tail end, but we still have.

34:37 A few more things I'm sure we could discuss.

34:40 And, matt, you've lived here for a long time, and you grew up here, and I want to ask for both of you. You know, living in Charlottesville or working.

34:49 In Charlottesville and having seen Virginia change.

34:52 Over the past several decades, do you feel often that you are misunderstood by people who disagree with you, or there's something about your belief that is misrepresented.

35:04 By people who don't agree with you.

35:07 You know, and this is both cowardice and convenience, but I generally know who's going to disagree with me and why. And so I tend to not have those frank discussions. There's a handful of people that I. We'll go back to periodically that I know vehemently disagree with most everything, but we're good enough friends that I can have those conversations. And it's not a matter of being misunderstood, but I feel like our political environment and kind of social media is stifling outreach and communication in a way. And the cowardice comment is one that I just don't want to wake up and be in a social media fight with anybody on any particular topic. I don't, you know, I'm not a public person, and I don't want to be drawn in. So I am somewhat reluctant to have a lot of conversations it's what really attracted me to this program is that I knew I could talk and it was kind of a guarded, safe space and, but we don't have that many opportunities to have conversations like that.

36:30 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and as a person who has been more of a public light person over the course of my career, I'm also with you on that. I don't, I don't, I am not interested in getting in a Twitter fight with anyone, in part because I don't think it's productive and it lacks nuance or the ability to engage or to wrestle with anything in, I think, a thoughtful way. But I am genuinely curious to engage with people, and I think you're right to do it in this kind of space makes it even easier. But to engage with people and ask questions that you may not always ask someone that you don't know well but you're curious about. So here's an example. I am curious, and some of what you said may help answer this for me, but I don't know. So, you know, someone who identifies as being politically and politically and culturally conservative, who's also in the renewable energy space, which is not two things I think most people would connect with one another. And I think that could be, as a general matter, a misperception. But I, but I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you find yourself as one of many, you know, conservatives who are advancing a renewable agenda or if you see it as more of a, this is a good business to be in and through that lens, it makes sense. Or like I said, if people just, you know, there's, you know, scores, bus loads, truckloads and boatloads of conservatives who are hardcore into renewables. And there's just a misperception by progressives about the support for a renewable platform.

38:47 Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there and a lot of interesting things there. At one level, I am generally, it's assumed if somebody meets me that they assume that I'm progressive just because I'm in this business. And I don't necessarily go out of my way to disabuse them of that idea. And then, you know, and this is where kind of, you can kind of fight a little bit and push back with people, you know, but there are a number of colleagues that I have in the industry that want, you know, me personally or hexagon my company to get involved in political activity. And, you know, at one level I've just said, you know, I don't necessarily think that our company needs to be a kind of an arm of political lobbying. But, you know, on another side, I just can't support many, if any Democrat candidates because ultimately, you know, I'm not a one issue voter, but abortion is such a strong part of the voting lens that I take that I can't, you know, actively support them. I don't necessarily actively support their, you know, the opposition, but I can't support that. And then I get a lot of pretty fierce pushback from colleagues in the industry saying, well, that's the environment is all that's important here. And you're making a choice, but you're ignoring the environment, which can be a little difficult to navigate. But strangely, and this is, I think, another issue, is that Republicans, conservatives for a long time kind of pushed back on renewable energy as potentially or not potentially, but a threat to kind of the entrenched fossil fuel industry. And the fossil fuel industry had a lot to lose, still has a lot to lose, and have lobbied vigorously and with a lot of misinformation have convinced, you know, conservatives that, you know, renewable energy is bad for all sorts of reasons and that fossil fuels are viable and that climate change is not an issue. What I find interesting is that conservatives have historically had a lot of strong environmental views and being good stewards of the, the land is a, you know, critically important part of a conservative, you know, philosophy. So it's a weird, again, strange the way, you know, special interests can warp a party's view on something as, you know, it shouldn't be hard to be a conservative and to be in the renewable energy space.

41:59 Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that's often struck me. I feel like it is, particularly as I often hear conservatives articulating strong values about patriotism. And the list goes on. And I think renewables are so american. I mean, it's about innovation. If you believe in a capitalist system, it's the opportunity to help create a market, to create jobs, all of these things that can come out of it and trust in the innovation of the United States to do it well and to do it better and to compete on a global stage in a way, you know, with others around the globe. And so the friction or the resistance to that, I just think this, to me, this is so american, right.

42:50 So I think it's going to win out because of the underlying, just underlying truth to it. I think that people are seeing that the innovation is happening. It can happen fast and it can happen and retain kind of a stable grid. It can keep prices down. The first kind of trope was that it's going to really increase the price of electricity, but it actually has just the opposite effect. It's consistently been pushing down the prices of electricity to the point where I know that people that trade and are in long term ownership of any type of electric generation says the curves long term are down and they've always been upward trending.

43:40 You're kind of getting in this theme.

43:41 Of where some of your beliefs or.

43:44 Thoughts might cross over, especially with environmental awareness and conservation. I'm curious because we know we are.

43:55 Coming to the end of your conversation if you were surprised by anything that you discussed today or about your views on issues or just approach to our political world.

44:09 Surprised. I don't know if there's anything yet that surprised me. Surprises me. I was curious, you know, consistent with what we were just talking about. I was curious to know more about that. I don't know if surprise is the right word, but your description, that of kind of the libertarian nature, the relationship between libertarianism, religion, culture, politics, how all those things weave together, I don't know that it was surprising, but it was new. It was interesting to hear you hear you talk about that, and I'd love to hear and to learn more.

45:01 Yeah. And I guess we haven't, as you mentioned at the beginning, the time does fly and there's just hours and hours conversation that we can have. But I, you know, don't think we've had a chance to really dig in. And that's kind of the next step would be to, oh, for sure, have melody push me or me push melody to say, well, explain why you think that. What I will say is, you know, I guess I can say this, you.

45:33 Know, since I am in charge of.

45:35 This project, is that I think a.

45:37 Second conversation would definitely be, you know.

45:40 Something we could arrange because, you know, there are so many more follow up questions to be asked, and I'm sure, like, we didn't even get into some of the early memories and influences and things.

45:52 So I think we could definitely add.

45:54 In a second conversation.

45:56 Yeah, I mean, I'll, I will put it out there. I would love to have another conversation here, if you're, if you're open to. I don't want you to feel any questions.

46:04 No, no, absolutely. And one thing, and I didn't want to go here, you know, just to go there, but I wanted to talk about race, too. Yeah, great. And I know with your background in Richmond that you've experienced things that I have no concept exist. And I think in some ways, Charlottesville's a pretty progressive, and when I was going through high school, Washington, or actually elementary, medical school was going through integration.

46:38 Right.

46:38 Yeah. And some of it worked and some of it didn't work, but, yeah, there's a lot of kind of open wounds there that, you know, I don't have that many african american friends, colleagues, acquaintances.

46:53 So, yeah, I love to have that conversation. I really would. I've enjoyed starting to get to know you, and I feel like those conversations become richer and more open when you do what we did, we've been doing, which is just starting to get to know a person and have a conversation.

47:22 Well, I guess we'll pause here and.

47:25 Say, wait for part two. But thank you both so much for.

47:31 The wonderful conversation, and it was a privilege to listen.

47:34 Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sending that note.

47:38 Yeah. Been a ton of fun so far, and hopefully more fun in the future.

47:43 Yeah, absolutely.