Sara Chapman and Chelsey Thomas

[00:02] CHELSEY THOMAS: Hi, my name is Chelsey Thomas. Today is October 28, 2020. I am 24 years old, and I'm here in Chicago, Illinois, having a conversation with Sara Chapman, who is a fellow alliance member. I am the marketing coordinator of the.

[00:17] SARA CHAPMAN: Chicago Cultural alliance, and I am Sara Chapman. Today's date is October 28, 2020. I am 38 years old, and I am in Chicago, Illinois, and I'm here talking with Chelsey Thomas, a colleague at the Chicago Cultural alliance, and I am the executive director of the mediaburn Archive.

[00:42] CHELSEY THOMAS: Lovely. So I guess tell me about the work that you do at mediaburn.

[00:47] SARA CHAPMAN: So Media Burn produces, collects and distributes documentary videos and experimental videos produced by artists, activists, and community groups. So we have an archive of media produced over the last 50 years that we use to share the stories of ordinary people, people who aren't normally the focus of media and content produced by those communities in order to tell a fuller picture of Chicago history and American history.

[01:25] CHELSEY THOMAS: Lovely. So what kind of stories do you tell through those archives? So what's an example?

[01:30] SARA CHAPMAN: Well, one just picking randomly because there's so many things. One collection that I was talking about today with some students at the University of Chicago was a collection documenting the mayoral campaign as well as mayoral terms of the first African American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, who was a really meaningful person in our history and whose election is really interesting to think about now in light of, you know, the current mayor's journey to becoming mayor. They're very different people. But having intimate footage of Harold Washington outside of, let's say, news reports and public appearances, having sort of intimate footage with Harold Washington allows you to sort of learn about him as a person in a different way than maybe you could gain from more official archives like, let's say, news collections, or even, let's say, his own. I don't know if he has, like an archive at a university or something, but his own personal papers and. Yeah, I think. Yeah, just media. Media Archives, I think, are going, are one of the most effective ways to study the past and to really get to know a person who isn't alive anymore or to understand a place that you can no longer access, such as we have a really big 200 hours of footage shot at Cabrini Green, talking with residents there as the community was being shut down. And so we look at it as sort of a window into a place that you can't be anymore and to understand people who you can't. A community that isn't there anymore.

[03:15] CHELSEY THOMAS: And are these accessible to anyone in the public, or is it Universities only, or how do people access this?

[03:23] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, we have a website, mediaburn.org and there's about 4,000 hours of footage streaming there, and anyone can access it at any time. And so more than 20 million people have watched our videos online. And that includes ordinary people educating themselves about something that they're interested in as well as, of course, you know, researchers, scholars, students. Some of the filmmakers in our collection have generously made their outtakes of their programs available for students to use and to reuse to create new programs, which is we sort of look at. So when someone makes a 90 minute documentary, they may be shot 30 hours of footage in order to make it. And we sort of look at that footage that no one else has seen besides the filmmakers as just sort of like this gold mine for future people to use. They would have shot footage of events or interviews that didn't. They only needed 20 seconds of it to use in their piece. But the rest of that two hours is just a gold mine for other people to use for some totally other new purpose. So that's something that really is neat, I think, about our collection and who uses it. And of course, also another important use is artists using it to create new work. We recently worked with. So after the 2016 election, we were thinking a lot about the way that Russia had interfered with our election and fake news was really coming up a lot and thinking about media manipulation and spreading specifically about our relationship with Russia, which had been pretty hostile, you know, during the Cold War. And then I think Russia had ceased to seem like such a big enemy. And then starting around 2016, Russia had again sort of become this like, new villain in our lives. And this sort of like large, large presence, this unknown presence. And so what we usually do at Media Burn is we use our archival collection to point people to, like, truth and facts. Say this is happening today. Let's look back, for example, black people are being murdered by police. Let's look back at 1969, at the murder of Fred Hampton by Chicago police, and think about how our police department is still the same or has changed, how our society's response has changed. So that's sort of what we normally do. But we said, for this project, why don't we expose our collection to manipulation? So we commissioned these two Russian filmmakers to work with two American filmmakers to jointly create a found footage film that sort of exposes the mechanisms of media manipulation, sort of intentionally distorts footage in order to think through, together, Americans and Russians, just ideas about fake news, how we protect ourselves from media Manipulation, how we can understand the past. And they created this experimental film called Ghosts in the Machine, and we were able to screen it with them in Russia and St. Petersburg as well as in Chicago. And to me, getting to go to Russia was just really a really exciting experience because, again, I think that I didn't know any Russian people, and I had some caricatures about what Russia must be like and getting to go to St. Petersburg and hang out with these filmmakers and go to a bunch of screenings. The thing that was most interesting to me is after the screenings, a lot, the Russian audiences were really, really interested in continuing the conversation, especially about the US Russia relationship. But one thing that came across was that so often when we talk about fake news, what a lot of us say is like, oh, I have this uncle in Iowa, and he just watches Fox News all day long, and he has, like, a totally different set of, like, baseline facts than I do. And then my friends do, and, you know, that's a problem. And in Russia, people would raise their hand and they would say, yeah, I've got a cousin in Siberia, and he just watches state news all day long, and he has totally different information for me. And, like, what do we do about that? And so I came away from the trip to Russia with more of a feeling of connection and solidarity with sort of regular Russian people who really want the same things as us. They want a government that supports them and takes care of them, and they want access to information. They want to be able to have free speech. And so sort of just realizing that we should and can feel connected to people around the world, even if those countries have a leader who we are opposed to, realizing that ordinary citizens, likely, we all want the same thing, was really meaningful experience.

[08:27] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I think that it's. We put so much emphasis on the media in our country, sends so many sort of biases throughout the country. And we put so much emphasis especially, you know, I work for the alliance, and we're trying to raise the voices of smaller cultural organizations of those trying to raise more accurate and true stories. But those stories have biases as well. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about how you hired filmmakers to purposefully sort of manipulate the story and to highlight these things, because people say there are two sides to every story, but there really is. You know, there's a million sides to every story, and none of those sides really are the truth. They're all sort of mirrored through our own personal lenses. So I think it's Important to visit these countries, to talk to these people, to talk to people of other perspectives, and to find the truth somewhere in the middle and sort of acknowledge that you never really will find it. Which is, I think, a great thing about the archive is that it just, like, is a huge sort of library of moments of true stories because it's just footage of those things happening in real life. But even those are filmed by someone who is capturing certain parts of those moments as well. So it lets you kind of see the lenses that we. That our media is shaped through.

[10:03] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah. And I think another really important thing about moving images and documentary and even narrative and experimental films is the way that they bring understanding between. Like, there are so many places around the world that I haven't visited but that I have seen a documentary about. And I feel like I understand those people, their concerns, their environment. To me, media, moving image, media brings other people and places alive in a way that nothing else does. Like, it just. It's a very different experience reading an article about another place versus just sort of like almost being there through media.

[10:45] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah. I mean, there are things, there are emotions, there are just feelings that you can capture on film that you can't even begin. Like, you can describe something in an article and use words. But the issue with words is that they are limited. Like, our language is extremely limited to just the short. The small amount of words that exist within our language. And so, you know, seeing these things on screen, you capture emotions. You capture extras and background images that, you know, set a scene so specifically and so authentically that, you know, any other medium can't really do that.

[11:30] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah. And as much as media is very much constructed by the producer, that person decided to turn the camera on and where to point and who to talk to and who to edit in and who to edit out. It is the least mediated of the other options. You know, like you said, when someone is experiencing something and then writing it up and describing it to you, it is much more filtered that if instead they just showed me, like, here's what happens, and let. And, you know, let me decide how to interpret it and how I feel about it.

[11:58] CHELSEY THOMAS: So is that, I suppose, is that what brought you to Media Burn? Is that the appeal is finding these stories in a way that is more authentic? Or did you come to the company in a different way?

[12:15] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah. So I was actually a student at the University of Chicago, and I had had this professor, Judy Hoffman, who was teaching a class in documentary film, and I learned about this movement that has been largely forgotten, but it was called guerrilla television. And starting in the late 1960s, early 1970s, equipment became available that began to make it possible, theoretically, for people outside of TV studios to produce tv. This is just portable video cameras, which had never been video was equivalent with television at the time. And so when portable cameras that were affordable to ordinary people came about, the people who picked them up started this movement called guerrilla television because they felt that what the cameras were going to lead to was that everyone was going to make their own media because television was just the most. It was the dominant media form in the country, the most important way that people learned about the news and what was going on in the world. But there were only three stations that gave everyone this information and this very limited group of people that were sort of mediating for everyone, like what stories are important, whose stories you hear about, whose stories you don't. And so the idea of all these people was, we're going to buy up all this equipment, we are going to teach everyone how to use it, we're going to give everyone access to it, and soon everyone's going to be making their own tv. We're all going to be communicating through media. And obviously that didn't happen. And that's sort of one of the ways reasons why the movement was sort of forgotten. But it didn't.

[13:49] CHELSEY THOMAS: But I'm sorry to cut you off, but it didn't happen in the way that they pictured it. But I would almost argue that it did happen in so many other ways. It might have took a lot longer than they thought. But one thing about the history of television that's so interesting to me is that it really did start off with this small group of a few people who could figure out how moving pictures worked. And then we got to the big three, and then we got to an average of around 35 cable television channels. And then it expanded to just so many different levels of where TV has gone. And now with things like YouTube and Vimeo, and like, I watch more media on YouTube than I do on actual television. And when I do watch television, I'm sort of choosing which lens I want to go through. If I want something a little bit darker and a little bit more adult, I go to hbo. If I want something a little bit lighter and a little bit funnier, I go to Netflix. It's like in a way that guerrilla television movements, they had the right idea and it happened. It just happened in a very different way than they thought it would.

[14:57] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, I mean, so I was writing this BA thesis and Studying this stuff and wanting to write this history that hadn't been told. And I happened to meet this guy, Tom Weinberg, who'd been working for 50 years in independent television and documentary. And he had tried to create spaces for independent voices on television, whether that was like, public television or other places. And he'd collected about 4,000 hours of videotapes of the work of him and his colleagues over those decades. And I wanted to watch it, to write my thesis. And I ended up just kind of, like, sticking around and continuing to work with this collection because it was so important to me, because what this work had been marginalized because of the medium in which it was produced on videotape. So it only been seen, you know, on a very limited basis at the time. But I knew that it was just as important as stuff, you know, theatrical films, for example. It just wasn't in the public consciousness. And so one of the things that's been most rewarding about my work is being able to collect materials by these really brilliant producers who had been totally forgotten. Like, for example, this woman on de Korst in the 1970s. She was really experimenting with ways to use video for journalism and documentary and really just going beyond the boundaries of what had been done before. But she died in 1991, and she left behind hundreds of tapes that few people had ever seen. And so it was one of the first new collections we brought on at Media Burn, outside of what Tom originally had. And we digitized it and made it available. And now, 10, 12 years later, she's routinely taught in classes about video art at university. And to me, it's really exciting that sort of just through the work that I did and our interns and other people, through the work that we did to digitize, catalog her collection, make it available to everyone around the world for free. We've, like, sort of put someone in the canon of media art history who had been forgotten. And I think that's one of the things that I really want to do, is to just work, to collect this work by these important people who don't have. Who aren't as well known as they should be, and sort of tell the world about them.

[17:20] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, like us as media makers in hundreds of years, I feel like we're going to be seen as historians. The way that people who, you know, recorded things back when they were, you know, recorded the world wars, wrote textbooks, wrote texts, like what we at this point, because there was no technology that compares to ours back then, and we Were searching for any inch of history that we can find. But in a lot of ways, we have the power at this point to go back and find those archives and sort of control what gets to be recorded as history and what doesn't. And I feel like in a lot of ways, personally, as a media maker, that that's sort of a responsibility of mine. Like, I have a very. Like, I'm very aware of my perspective. I only have one perspective on this world, and it's. It's me. I'm black, I'm queer, I'm Hispanic. And so it is almost up to me as being all of those things and more and being a media maker to make sure that that perspective is recorded in history. So it's. I kind of relate to what you're saying in a different way, but definitely relate to what you're saying about. Like, it's sort of cool to just feel like, okay, I played a role in making sure that this perspective was heard. It feels significant and very much important.

[18:45] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think that that's an area also where our archives and museums and cultural institutions are really important in making sure that diverse voices are collected and saved for the long term. Like, YouTube isn't an archive. Facebook isn't an archive. And the decisions that we all make about what to keep for the long term are gonna determine whose voices are heard in the future and who has looked at to understand our contemporary era. I mean, right now, going through this unprecedented time this year, I've been thinking about that a lot. I think that this year, prior to this, the sort of biggest thing that had happened in My lifetime was 9, 11. And having lived through it, I remember that the primary thing that we felt at the time was sort of confusion. Like, the primary experience was, like, we don't know what's going on. You know, like, even on the day, like, is the whole country being attacked? Like, what is happening? What's gonna happen next? And later history sort of crystallizes a narrative out of it that we didn't have at the time. And right now, what's going on is we have been going through a period of just total confusion. We've all been wondering, like, what is happening? What is going to be the end result of this? How is the future going to look different? And in a few years, I think we're going to have, like, a solid narrative about the COVID period. But it's really going to be important to preserve the individual stories like that, document the process as it happened, and the way we felt at the time and the way as many different types of people's voices can be. Can be collected in that and sort of not just lumped into sort of one narrative, whatever future narrative there is about COVID 19.

[20:38] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah. And I've been thinking about that as I make work for the alliance, but also as I make work on my own, how to, like, whether or not I should acknowledge the time. First of all, I'm outside of the alliance in the process of filming a short film, which is about sort of mental health and about isolation, about just trying to do what everyone said that they wanted to do during quarantine, which is like, work on yourself. But it's not necessarily that easy to just, you know, glow up, I guess, during this time. So it's interesting as I, you know, I was feeling myself walking outside, and I want to figure out, I really had to think about whether I want to acknowledge the time and wear a mask or if I wanted to just film myself. And that's just been an interesting part of this entire process. It's, you know, it's interesting because, yes, 911 was a huge time. And I remember I was in New York at that time, So I remember 9 11. My grandmother was two blocks away at that time. So I very much remember where everyone was and what everyone was doing. But I also think it's interesting to. To think back and think about my cell phone than what it looked like 10 years ago and the technological revolution, the fact that if COVID 19 happened five, 10 years ago, how different we would be right now. We're so connected right now because it happened at this exact time. And that's so important. And that's something that I feel like in my own work, I want to acknowledge, not just acknowledge the smaller voices, but, like, really just tell the truth about, like, this happened in this moment in time and to acknowledge time. Because if I make a film right now that's set 10 years ago, it's going to look very different than if I make a film that's set right now. And I feel like that is something that's really important to acknowledge as well.

[22:34] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the upsides about of COVID is the fact that, yeah, we do have technology right now that has enabled us to stay connected. And I feel like it's actually sort of like, broadened the communities that I feel part of. I've been not only attending screenings and events in Chicago, I've been attending them from groups all over the country and the world. And making connections with people I never could have met before. And I really think and hope that in the future this is going to continue. That we are going to continue these global online networks and not just go back to the way life was before, where you just have a screening and whoever lives nearby can come.

[23:21] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, sorry, I was just, I was talking about this so recently, so I just. It's exciting. I'm hoping that. And the person I was talking to, they used the phrase silver lining, which I know is such a hard thing to even say at a time where there's so much like devastation in the world. But you know, organizations, small arts organizations, people even like me. I remember at the beginning of COVID my work was very limited to one what I had time for because I had a full time job that I had to go to. But also because of that, I never felt like I had enough money or enough time to really work on my craft. But just in the past nine months, I've learned so much more and I've gathered so much more equipment and I've learned how to use so much more equipment. And I feel like there are so many organizations that have that similar story to where they're. We have given organizations and people and artists time to really gather their resources and figure out how to, how to do things online. And I'm hoping that, you know, when we do get a vaccine and Covid's, you know, sort of behind us, that we acknowledge that live shows can also be live streamed and that we can give the world access to things that they didn't have access before. You know, I was, before this, I was a theater professional and I did a lot of work in theater and in circus specifically. And I thought it was so interesting how people would come into the circus and have no idea what they're in for. And there was just no way of really telling people that. We just had to show them if they, if they showed up. And now I feel like there's so many opportunities to still to put on these live shows and to have these cultural festivals, but to actually show people like, hey, this is what we're doing. Maybe next year you can come join us or maybe next time you can join us and people understand that that opportunity exists now.

[25:26] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, and I mean, we're making things accessible to people who didn't have access before. People who have physical limitations, preventing them from going into a space, people who just even have life responsibilities, preventing them from having being able to take the time to go out to the circus or the theater. And I think that sort of new inclusivity is just really, really exciting and important to maintain going forward.

[25:52] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, definitely. I also think it's because of the sort of rawness of this time. We've sort of accepted each other and humanized each other a little bit. Even if there is. There's so much negativity happening in the world, but through movements like BLM and through the election and through COVID 19 and all of it, there's sort of this acceptance amongst everyone that, like, we all deal with mental health. We all deal with, you know, fear of isolation. We all deal with this, like, lingering anxiety. I feel like every person is. That I've met, that I've talked to is more open about being like, yeah, I'm anxious or I'm lonely or I'm this. And I feel like that's so important. And before COVID this was definitely still my goal. But even now, it feels like there's even a more of an opportunity to put more conversations about mental health out there, to put more conversations about, like, what really makes us human. Personally, my work is very structured around those things that people don't really talk about. I have mental health first aid certifications, and I'm working to get certification as a sexuality educator. And I'm looking to gather a wealth of knowledge in bystander intervention and in different cultures and try to figure out how I can increase my knowledge of what makes us people in order to create media that highlights those things. And in a lot of ways, you know, the Media Burn Archive does something similar in that it just is like, this is all of this footage that hasn't been altered. That's just existing. It's just people being people. So how can we use this to tell a more accurate version of history?

[27:42] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I mean, I. I think that our experience right now of everyone in the whole entire world going through the same, like, trauma at the same time is. Is very. It's. It's enabled us to be open about, like, our emotions and our struggles with grief and anxiety in ways that we normally cannot. Like, at every other point in time, you know, your personal tragedy is something that's just yours. And, like, I know that in the past when I've been grieving, you know, like, my dad died a few years ago, and I. What I. It feels very isolating to be grieving while everyone else is living their lives and acting normal. I think that was one of the things that is. Has. That I've struggled with when I've been grieving is just the it's just this feeling isolated that I feel different from everyone else because I. My world has totally been upended, but their world is normal. And the fact that everyone's life has been upended at the same time, I think just. It's enabled us to be open in ways that we just haven't been able to before, because we know we are all experiencing all these different emotions. And. I don't know, just something about the fact that we're all sharing this has been, in some ways comforting to me.

[28:58] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, definitely. And it's interesting because it. We're talking about this general feeling of, like, comfort and grieving together, but there's also this, like, overwhelming general feeling of, like, frustration as well, which I think is important to sort of acknowledge that negative. Like, I was actually talking to my brother about this very, very early in COVID 19. I think it was, like, the day I got laid off. I called him, which was March 17th. I actually. It was exactly March 17th. I know. I know. What? Yeah, I very much remember that day. But I called him and he said, it's going to be fine. We'll close down. There'll be some riots. We'll move on. And he was half joking at that point in time because he had no way of predicting the Black Lives Matter movement. He had no way of predicting how much would happen. But I think we both sort of had an understanding that people who have the opportunity, if the whole world has an opportunity to really sit with itself, there's nothing to distract you from your mental health. There's nothing to distract you from frustrations. There's nothing to distract you from injustice. You are sitting there and you're just looking at the world because there's nothing else that you can do. And I think that that's a part of this time that also needs to be recorded, like, more than resilience. Just a time of just group frustration and a time of just change.

[30:26] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I mean, I think it's been really interesting. It's been an opportunity for all of us to, both organizationally and, like, as individuals, to just think about how your life is structured and what things, like, should be that way and what things are just that way out of habit and, like, what should change, you know? Like, I think we've all probably been figuring out, like, what our priorities are, what things we can live without and what things, like, we definitely need since we have been so limited. And that's just been a really valuable reflection to just sort of, like, have the time to figure that all out.

[31:02] CHELSEY THOMAS: And for me, I put a lot of weight, a lot of my self worth into my work, into my ambition. So in a lot of different ways, it was like, okay, I am a person outside of my job. Good to know. But then about a week later, it was like, okay, just because I don't have a job doesn't mean I need to stop working. I'm in a position where I can be an artist, where I can do things for me, where I can get educated, where I can try freelance, which is like a scary thing to do. Transition from working at the circus and doing freelance film work to arts administration and learning more about museums and learning more about history and being in a situation where I can work in advocacy. You know, those were good and necessary transitions and things. Like, I feel like at this point, we as a society have an opportunity to use this if we're privileged enough. I do want to acknowledge that my privilege, that I can do this because of the things that I'm privileged to have in this life. However, you know, it's still, if I do. If you do have the privilege to do so, you can use this as such an amazing opportunity to grow and to. To pack as much as you can in the next year. And that's essentially what I've been doing. Just packing as much education, as much experience as I can into this pandemic, hoping to come out of it equipped to tell some accurate stories and to actually, you know, make a difference in the media landscape.

[32:33] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I feel like the times when I have grown the most as a person, as a professional or whatever, all of those have come when I've gotten to the point where the thing that I most feared was the thing that, like, was actually, like, actually had to happen. And I had to do that thing and eventually realized that that thing wasn't actually that scary and I could do it. And then it just no longer. It was like, poof, that thing's gone. I don't worry about it anymore. That's a. That's another thing I can do. And I, Yeah, I feel fortunate that this has sort of pushed me in those ways too. And I think hopefully that most of us who survive will come out of this stronger.

[33:14] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, definitely. And I feel like, I mean, that's why that word resilience has been so important, has been so used, because people, we see that and we're like, yeah, how inspirational. I get it, we're all struggling. But like, if you really dive into that word and really think about it, it's like, no, you need to look at this and really take it all in and acknowledge what's happening, acknowledge the strengths that you're building, acknowledge that this was the scariest thing that could possibly have happened there. I mean, there are horror movies about pandemics. So this is what we as a society feared. And we're still moving. We're still going through it. And, you know, adding experiences like this to archives like yours, and putting that next to World War II, which we thought was the end of the world, and putting that behind World War I, which was also the end of the world, and putting that behind so many things that we've also made it through when it seemed like we never were going to. It's really important to acknowledge and understand that we are living in those times that we read about and to put those things right next to each other and to keep going.

[34:26] SARA CHAPMAN: Yeah, I think that we now are moving into a new phase with COVID I think that in the first few months, there was this big push where everyone was being really positive. You know, people were singing on their balconies. They were, like, applauding nurses. They were saying all these really positive things like, we're going to get through this. And we've clearly moved beyond that. Right. We are no longer, like, applauding nurses as they walk down the street. And we've moved into a much less superficial phase of, like, how we're going to be resilient and deal with this and grow. And I think that we're going to be all doing some very important work over the next. Because I assume over the next six months, whatever, we're going to be sort of still living this, and it's going to be getting very old. But I think this is going to be the time for real growth. Now that we're out of that just really initial intense reaction.

[35:22] CHELSEY THOMAS: Yeah, definitely. I think it's really easy to be like, we're living in history when it's only supposed to last for three weeks and you can power through it. But, you know, if. And I also think that, like, people read history books and they see war has lasted 10, 15 years, and they think of it like a blink in the eye, like, it happened so long ago and it happened for two seconds. And to say we're living through history means that we truly are being as resilient as those people, you know, those people that we put on panels to discuss living through the Holocaust. Like, they are telling their story more because they went. Not just because they went through trauma, but because they. They fought through It. They really took the time to see the world change. And so I think that people just need to go easy on themselves a little bit, but also just go easy on the world as we're trying to take the time to see the world change again.

[36:23] SARA CHAPMAN: Wow, that was really. I feel like that was almost a really good way to end this.

[36:29] CHELSEY THOMAS: Thank you.

[36:30] SARA CHAPMAN: I think it's a powerful summary of what we've been saying.

[36:36] CHELSEY THOMAS: Thank you. I see the world very cinematically, so I think that's. Which sometimes is important. I think sometimes you kind of just need to. Especially at times like this, you just need to, like, watch the movie of your life and know that the movie will end, there will be a sequel, you'll be fine. The next chapter is coming. You know.

[36:58] SARA CHAPMAN: I've got some cat interference. Well, it was really wonderful getting to talk about this with you. I think, again, that one of the benefits of this period is I think that I at least have realized the importance of really taking opportunities for human connection when you get it. Not just sort of, like, plowing through conversations, you know, about work and just getting the work done. Like, anytime I'm talking to someone, like, really spending time getting to know them, because I don't get to. I don't just meet people all day long. You know, just going to places and talking and just sort of having that human interaction taken away has really made me understand the importance of it.

[37:43] CHELSEY THOMAS: That I definitely agree. It's definitely put things into perspective. And I've realized that I'm lucky in general to have been able to start a new job and to have these opportunities to meet new people, even virtually. And so, you know, I try to use that opportunity to actually connect as much as possible.