[laughs]

And I, I don't [laughs] I, I feel like why I giggle is, like, have you ever, um...

I'm gonna mispronounce this first name.

Yuval Noah Harari, um, wrote, um, Sapiens: A, A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

It's-- I call it, like, an airport book because, like, it's, it's a very easy read, and it's a very interesting kind of academic look at how Homo sapiens became the dominant player on the planet.

And what I thought was very special about his perspective was that he boils it all down to storytelling.

It is the, the one superpower that Homo sapiens have that no other creature on the planet has, this ability to weave stories, to weave fiction, to be able to assemble around myths.

Yeah

What was the experience then and how has it improved? And I don't know if there's data that shows the improvement, but are you seeing an improvement due to, of course, a lot of the programming advocacy that you guys have? But talk me through the experience back then and how it's improved now and what are still the big gaps that you guys are trying to close?

Sure.

There are organizations out there that are very focused on crisis intervention.

And I just want to be clear, It Gets Better was never about crisis intervention.

There was a moment going back to the early days of the organization where there was a slate of highly public organizations.

deaths from suicide, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, and the founders of It Gets Better, they were like, if we had five minutes alone with any of these kids, maybe we could have imparted the wisdom just to get them through to the next day.

And so there really wasn't there really wasn't a way in like how are we going to get in front of young people to deliver this message to show that they are not alone to show that there is a huge community out here with many people that have had shared experiences but found a path to to a better time and so they took to social media and they took to YouTube, which at the time, I jokingly say this, but it was a time when YouTube was known for cat videos, right? And it was the first time that social media in many ways had been leveraged to create some sort of social impact.

But yes, I'd love to hear about how you define controlling your experience.

But let's talk about those viral moments that led to the creation of- of your non-profit.

Sure.

Well, you know, for ...

It's been 15 years.

We actually hit our 15-year mark in September, which is also sort of when this crisis moment was happening, um, that was impacting, uh, young queer people, uh, across the country.

And so, you know, back in 2010 there was a highly public suicide contagion that claimed the lives of- of kids like Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, and there was, um ...

Not all of them were queer.

... talk a little bit about how far that can go for your organization.