Thought Leaders 004 | Tom Freeman

Shauna Costello (00:00:02):

You're listening to operant innovations, a podcast by ABA technologies this month on the thought leaders podcast. We are back to talk with Tom Freeman to learn more about his history and where he sees the field of behavior analysis going.

Tom Freeman (00:00:20):

Introduced me to Jose. And I talked to him for about 10 minutes. So you must see me when you come back down here, you must tell me when you arrive. Right. So, okay. Well, what I was really interested in, was at the FABA conference they were talking a lot about antecedent interventions and almost everything that we had been doing in Massachusetts was all consequential interventions. And for me it was like, it was like an epiphany. It's like, wow, we should really be focusing on antecedents. Um, cause we just weren't doing that. You know? And we, I had never heard the term establishing operation when I was in Massachusetts. We weren't, we were talking about discriminative stimuli, but we were not there. It seemed like there was, it was really advanced down here, which is weird. Cause Skinner was right down the street from us at Fernald.

Tom Freeman (00:01:01):

I mean, literally he was at Harvard and here I am at, in Waltham, which is, you know, 10 miles outside of Harvard and Skinner's right there. And yet we're, it seemed more advanced down here. So I was sort of excited to come down to Florida. So this looks really good. Came down here at first, had trouble finding work and then decided that I would, because it didn't seem like there were a lot of out for behavior analysts, for whatever reason, I couldn't find them, but I started working. I decided, okay, I'm going to work for the state. And I went to this training for, uh, I had experiences that QMRP. So I went into a training for being a case manager, um, support coordinator, as they called them in those days, they may still call them that. So there was a seven day training for support coordinators, right?

Tom Freeman (00:01:49):

Two, I think one week in Tallahassee and then a week in the district and I was going to work in the Orlando district. So I'm in Orlando my second week and people are coming in and providing us trainings. This is probably in the summer of 1996 and we're going to get our, our training our one hour training on behavioral services. And uh, in walks Jose and the minute he sees me, he goes, oh, where have you been? I've been waiting for you. You should have gotten in touch with me when you got out long, have you been here? What's going on? And I couldn't believe this guy remembered me. I talked to him for like five, 10 minutes at the conference. He was waiting for me. Right. So he suggested I come and apply for a job at threshold, which was the place where he was working at the time, which Ed Blakely had worked at, um, before.

Tom Freeman (00:02:39):

And it was a place where kind of the, the type of consumer who I had worked with people with significant behavior problems who were adults, there was a children's facility there, but you know, as adults. And so I figured, okay, I'll go apply for a job here. I went and applied, talked to people, Pat McGreevey was part of my interview team. And so they hired me. And I think the reason they hired me was because they, they asked me a question at one point and I said, um, I started talking about how the behavior operates on the environment. And I think none of the other people that they had interviewed had talked about like behavior operating on the environment. And so they liked that. And so they hired me. I was not an academic. I didn't have a masters in behavior analysis. I hadn't had met any courses in it.

Tom Freeman (00:03:24):

I hadn't taken any, any graduate courses. I barely read any books or articles. Uh, Marie Sidman had, had been an influence on me and on us because the Kelly Hall, that place that I went to that was supposed to be the worst building and ended up being like the best place I could possibly work as amazing working group of people. We, that that was on the third floor of that building, that they were working off an article Marie Sidman talking about the higher order of, um, of compassion, basically like not intervening with somebody, for example, who's banging their head. If they're banging their head for attention that, you know, you may need to block it, but you're not going to give them attention and try to convince them that they shouldn't do this, that that's, that's playing into the behavior. The whole idea of a function of behavior was, um, part of that approach.

Tom Freeman (00:04:11):

And so they were very influenced by, by Marie Sidman. And, um, that group, basically the work that we were doing on the third floor with it was all adult women. I had three apartments of adult women up there and we were getting really good results in that began that sort of spread through, down to the second floor, which is where the men's stuff was working in. Uh, it just, it, we are the effect of what we were doing was spreading, right. And it was really good. It was fascinating to watch and really wonderful to be a part of that working group of people in any case. Um, other than that, I hadn't really read much, you know, I'd read beyond freedom and dignity, right. I had never read science and human behavior at that point.

Shauna Costello (00:04:57):

Oh, beyon d reedom and dignity is still one of my favorite books that I've read.

Tom Freeman (00:05:00):

Is it? I should go back and read it now, as I have some perspective, I really should. I mean, since then I've read a lot of Skinner and stuff, but the point is that, you know, Jose, they hired me and apparently I just said the right things, but I wasn't really very well educated behavior analysis. So then I worked, uh, at threshold, I like the job, um, Jose left at one point to go do something else. And then my son was born in October of 1997 and I really wanted to help raise him. And so I was trying to decide, what am I going to do here? And so early in 98, um, my wife and I kind of looked at our situation. We were both basically making the same amount of money. Her healthcare was way better than mine. And so we decided, okay, for the time being, I'm going to stay home with Dave and she's going to continue to work.

Tom Freeman (00:05:56):

So I did stuff at threshold, gave them sort of my notice told them that I was leaving. And, um, you know, I still continued to do some trainings there and stuff, but then basically I stopped working the threshold and stayed home with Dave when he was from four months old to like 11 months old. And it's probably the best year of my life. I, I just, I mean, I've had many really good years, I must say, but being home with Dave as a baby was, um, really, really, really cool. It was great. I really liked it a lot. Mmm. Although at one point I must say I was, I was in my bathrobe, vacuuming the floor and suddenly stopped and looked at myself and thought I've turned into Lucille ball here. This is, I thought Dave's first words are going to be Monica Lewinsky because on the TV, it was like constant about Clinton.

Tom Freeman (00:06:45):

Although his first word was actually piggy, which was pickle. So who knows anyway. Um, so, um, it was, it was really good, but Cathy got to the point where she couldn't stand not being home. And so, and Jose in the meantime had called me and was trying to get me to go to grad school at FIT. Cause he was opening up the program at FIT and see, he kind of dragged me into grad school. So I came in essentially three weeks late. I came in as a provisional student. Cause my grades from my first two years of college were so bad that my grade point average was terrible. What my, but my GREs were like through the roof. Right. So they decided to take a shot. So I came in as a provisional grad student at the first group to go through the FIT ABA program that Jose had created right from scratch basically.

Tom Freeman (00:07:40):

So, uh, that was really good for me. I learned a lot. I read a tremendous amount of material. Um, took some great classes. I took class with Frank Webby about the biological foundations of behavior, which was like the hardest course I ever took in my life, but maybe the best, one of the best courses I ever took. Um, I had boxes of flashcard SAFMEDS I mean, literally boxes. Um, but I learned a lot in that great forensics course. Um, really some really, really good stuff. So I got out in 2000 and um, the person, while I was going to grad school, I was always, I was also working full time at a place in Orlando called LCRI was I was commuting from Orlando to FIT, to go to school and then working full time in Orlando, um, at a facility that had three group homes and a workshop.

Tom Freeman (00:08:28):

And I was the behavior analyst for that group right there. My supervisor was a woman named Maria Ruiz, who is one of the smartest people I've ever known. One of the greatest human beings I've ever known has mentored tremendous number of people in the field. Maria just died like a year and a half ago, which was a huge loss for the field. And everybody who knew her was just devastated by her loss. But in the meantime, she was my, I got to have her as my supervisor for like two years, outside Vince Carbone is my supervisor, by the way, when I first moved to Florida, he's the one that, that I took my certification in coursework for when it was the old Florida certification. So Vince was, did the course for my certification. And then he was my supervisor when I worked for intervention services under Sharon Older, who was also a great supervisor. I have been so blessed by the people that I've been lucky enough to be supervised by. It's like, it's an amazing array from Mike Lowery to Greg Dairman Jian to having Charlie Hammond involved, uh, to, you know, um, I mean really, uh, Jose and Pat McGreevey and Sharon older and Vince Carbone. And I mean, this is, these are really amazing people that I've been able to work under. So that's really, basically the only reason I know what I know.

Shauna Costello (00:09:48):

And are you still one of, I think like the 50 people that still have the old Florida certification,

Tom Freeman (00:09:56):

I, they, well, you know, we transferred, we transferred our certification over, so I'm a Florida. I have my Florida CBA certificate some right there, I think, but I don't maintain that sort of certificate because we transferred over to the BCBA that was transferred, right? Yeah.

Shauna Costello (00:10:16):

I just saw a thing at FABA, uh, James Carr put up a table there's about like 50, that still have the CBA.

Tom Freeman (00:10:24):

And so they never, they never switched. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm not one of those. No, I got the BCBA as soon as I could. Um, so anyway, um, let's see, where was I? I was still, I was in Orlando. I worked at threshold. I stayed home with my son. I got pulled into grad school. I got out of grad school and Maria, who I had worked with. Um, again, she was wonderful. Anyway, she recommended me to a district for a district behavior analyst job, which typically is PhD level. But sometimes they will like, you know, make an exception to have a master's level person come in and they were, they really wanted, they needed somebody. They'd never really had a district behavior analyst in district 12, which was Volusia Flagler County. I mean, they've had people filling in the role, but they'd never had like a designated person.

Tom Freeman (00:11:19):

Right. And so I went and applied for that job and I got that job. I got the job. So I was working for Jose for ABA technologies, helping teach the certification courses, um, which we were doing. It was, uh, 12 Saturdays in a row for eight hours a day to do what was then the certification course sequence. Right. Um, it's obviously changed since then, but that's what we used to have to do. And then, uh, I was working full time then at more part time, but seemed like full time at district as the district behavior analyst. And also they really hired me to be the LRC chair, local review committee chair, cause they needed a chair person for the local review committee who was not, who had didn't have a conflict of interest up until then. Their LRC chair had been somebody from the district and that's problematic because when you're providing services in your own district, it's kind of hard to be an LRC chair.

Tom Freeman (00:12:15):

So they kind of imported me from, you know, district seven, which is where I lived in Bravard County. And I used to go to the district seven LRC. Um, but I wanted to run the LRC and district district 12, a little different because they were, they had never really, it was more like a class, you know, like we would, people would come and present programs and we'd talk about things like, well, what is timeout? Cause people didn't have a really good sense of like what timeout was. Right. And so for the first couple of years it was like, it was like a class. Anyway. I loved that group of people. It was a great working group of people in that district office at DeBartolo Laban was the head of the office. And then Leslie Richards was there. Um, there was a whole group of just really good people.

Tom Freeman (00:13:01):

Um, Linda Cleary was the nurse and originally Lee barks has been the nurse. And so I got to see all kinds of things in Florida. And as a district behavior analyst, I had some suddenly sort of morphed into an administrator. I had been a clinician on call for essentially like 18 years. And then, you know, for, in some of that time, I was like a program manager at Fernald or I was, you know, the head of a building for a few stints there or whatever. But you know, I'd basically been clinical residential clinical person for a long time. And then all of a sudden here I am in an administrative position and it was, uh, I really liked it. It was a great job. And um, I probably could have stayed there for a long time, but after I'd been there about 10 years, it was 2010.

Tom Freeman (00:13:54):

And Jose was in the process of expanding what he was doing at FIT. I had been one of his original instructors. I did instruct for him in 2008 in when he was doing live classes, he would broadcast live from Florida tech and then there'd be facilitators in four different settings. There was one, I think in Tennessee, maybe in, there were a couple in Florida. Anyway, I went over to Fort Myers. I was one of the facilitators. So he would talk for like 40 minutes and then we'd do question and answers live with the crowd. And it would be all day Saturday, right? Well, because some people miss the class we started making, we would tape the online, the stuff that Jose was broadcasting. And we would present that online. And what we found is people stopped coming to class and started accessing the online version of it.

Tom Freeman (00:14:44):

And so the market basically drove us into providing the class online and Jose linked up with Cindy Schmitt and they, we basically created the online program based on what the market was telling us to do. And meantime, I'm still working at the district and Jose is building this company and I was a co-instructor for the first group of people through the first third edition coursework. But at the second to last course, my wife got cancer. So I finished off the course sequence, but I stopped teaching and doing, I still remained district behavior analyst, but I stopped teaching for about a year because I had to stay home with my wife and my kids and deal with that. She's better now, but it was a long year. So after we got through all of that, I came back and started teaching for Jose again, um, online.

Tom Freeman (00:15:36):

And by this time a lot of the people who are here now had come and started working for the company. You know, Kristen was here and Corey had come on board. And I, Corey had been in one of my classes in Orlando and long before Jim Montgomery, who I knew from the district cause she'd been in the family services program. Um, so there were a lot of people who were working for Jose who were very experienced behavior analysts that some of whom I knew. And so I started teaching for him again. And then he started telling me, you have to come work for me. You have to come work for me. You have to come work at FIT. And it just happened to coincide. When at, in my job at the district, I was beginning to feel like I had been there a little too long.

Tom Freeman (00:16:18):

I had lost my edge. I was not seeing things that needed to be done. I was complacent with what was already happening. Um, possibly starting to let people get away with stuff that I shouldn't have been letting them get away with. And I thought, I'm not, I'm not doing this job the way it needs to be done. And nobody was telling me that everybody thought that I was doing fine and I was getting all this positive feedback, but I could see that it needed new blood. It needed somebody to come in and basically shake things up a little bit. So I decided this is probably a good time for me to go. And, um, I recommended somebody to replace me who is now working for us here, Bill. But, um, he got the job. I recommended Bill and he followed me in and then he followed me eventually came to ABA tech.

Tom Freeman (00:17:07):

Right. But I knew bill and I knew he was around and I knew he was really good and had been trained by Ed and stuff. And so he knew, um, he knew a lot. It was really like rearing to go. He was very, had a lot of energy. So I thought he'd be a good person. And they interviewed him and they liked him. And so he, he got the job and then I came here and I regretted leaving for about a year. I really missed my work there cause I really liked it, but I like being here and I like teaching too. So ever since then, I've been working for Jose and just creating content. And then yeah, at one point, Jose was asked to write the chapter for cooper heron heward and he knew I had writing skills. So he asked me to participate in writing the chapter, which is like, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It's not that I'm a great ethicist or no, all kinds of stuff. But Jose had had many conversations with me and sort of liked my approach and thought that I had writing skills so said, will you help me do this? And so I did. So that's how I got involved in that. It's not because I had any great background in it or you know, you know, you look at like John Bailey has been working in the ethics field for years and years and has put in tremendous amount of effort to do what he does. And so, you know, I didn't have that kind of background.

Shauna Costello (00:18:23):

I also think you sell yourself short

Tom Freeman (00:18:25):

And I have good writing skills. I'm a good writer. I used to want to be a writer. I'm like Skinner in that way. I wanted to be a writer. Like when I got out of college, I would write poetry and I wrote short stories. I actually went, here, this is a good one you'll like.

Shauna Costello (00:18:36):

Yes.

Tom Freeman (00:18:37):

I found out that, um, Saul Bellow who won the Nobel prize in literature, I found out he was teaching at Brandeis when I was living in Boston. This is in like 19, this must be 1981. Right. So I found out Saul Bellow was teaching a graduate course at Brandeis. So me and a friend of mine went to his office at Brandeis and said, can we sit in on your course? He was teaching a course in Joseph Conrad. He said, well, you're not students here. We said, we know what we really want to hear what you have to say. So he said, okay, you can sit in as long as you don't say anything. So we sat in on this graduate seminar. There were only like, like eight other students in the class.

Shauna Costello (00:19:15):

Did you actually stay quiet?

Tom Freeman (00:19:16):

Yes. We didn't say anything. We read all the books, you read all the Joseph Conrad books. And we sat there and we listened to the conversation. And then rather than write a final paper, I wrote him a short story at the end. And he gave me feedback on my short story. So because I really wanted to be a writer. Right. But I really sucked.

Shauna Costello (00:19:32):

I'm still, I'm still kind of, I'm still a little surprised you actually were able to not,

Tom Freeman (00:19:38):

Oh that was the rule man. That was, I, I'm not gonna like it. It's like I wasn't paying, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna blow that kind of opportunity. And my God, I'm sitting in a, in a graduate seminar with 10 people with a, with a Nobel prize winner. I'm not going to blow that opportunity. So no, we just listened. And what I found really interesting is how the graduate students, many of them were, you know, they're trying to make their bones, right. So they're like, like he's saying all this profound stuff and they're sort of arguing with him because they're rather than like listening to what he has to say. And I understand that's the way it works. I mean, that's the way it's supposed to work in graduate school. But, um, I couldn't, I, you know, I don't think that would happen now.

Tom Freeman (00:20:18):

I don't think there's any way that we could basically swing that kind of thing. Now I've had those kinds of weird experiences throughout my life. I sat and got drunk one time with Sam Peckinpah and he taught me how to play dollar poker. You know, the game dollar poker. It was, yeah, it was in college. He was, and he was a, he was a character man. He, he came into the school like drunk. And then we went out afterwards after it's talk and sat at his hotel and just like, um, drank with him and played dollar poker.

Shauna Costello (00:20:48):

I think it's different too when you approach people in person.

Tom Freeman (00:20:51):

Oh, it is. Which is one of the reasons to go to conferences. Cause like these people who you see as these icons, right. Who've seen their name in print, like, like this is just another human being. Right. I could just talk to. Yeah. Right. So yeah. Yeah. My brush with greatness basically.

Shauna Costello (00:21:11):

I think you've had more than a few brushes with greatness. I still think you're selling yourself short.

Tom Freeman (00:21:17):

Eh, I, I don't, I don't really think so, but uh, I've been well, I've been lucky. You know?

Shauna Costello (00:21:24):

One word to describe Tom.

Tom Freeman (00:21:27):

I've been lucky. I basically, I mean, it's like not buying a car. I wasn't in a, in a committed relationship for a long time and that, you know, I didn't have kids till I was in my forties. Right. Right. So, cause my parents were so dysfunctional that I didn't want to get into a relationship like that. So I was willing to wait. I figured you're more alone when you're in a bad relationship than you are when you're alone, outside of a relationship. So I was very hesitant to get involved because I grew up in a situation that was like, when people are always yelling at each other, it's like, I don't want that. Right. So, um, it took me a long time to basically find the right person

Shauna Costello (00:22:10):

Well and the right place and ABA tech. Did you ever think that back in 1997, ish, that ABA tech would be what it is today?

Tom Freeman (00:22:24):

I, one of the reasons that I really have worked with Jose for as long as I have, because he's a crazy man and everybody knows, he is crazy.

Shauna Costello (00:22:36):

I was waiting for it, I get to hear Tom on the phone with Jose often because I shared an office with him. So those are some of the most entertaining phone calls I've ever heard.

Tom Freeman (00:22:53):

I can talk to Jose like a family member because I can, I can give him feedback because he knows me for so long. I mean, we were working together for over 20 years. And so the thing is his, his dedication to the field, Jose, people see Jose's behavior and they think of him as being kind of this goofy guy. And he's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met. And his, his knowledge of behavior analysis is encyclopedic. He can remember in particular books where stuff is, um, his knowledge, it's like his knowledge of music or it's not, you know, he has certain, certain things he's really interested in his knowledge. He'll remember, for example, what somebody ordered at a meal that he ate with 15 years ago is so his thing about restaurants and food behavior analysis, he knows inside and out, right? So, and then his, his dedication to the instructional materials that he's created is really astonishing. Every time I would teach with Jose, he would always change stuff up. So I'd have all the materials ready to go, to teach the certification class for Florida, right. Florida certifications this is after I got out of grad school and then he'd give me the next instructional manual.

Tom Freeman (00:24:10):

It would all be changed up. Everything would be in a different order. And I says, hey, I've got all this stuff prepared for me before. I've got all my notes. He'd go oh no I was working on it overnight and I changed this and I changed this cause. So he's refined and refined and refined. It's like somebody who who's working on a piece of art that they just keep working on it, making it better and better and better, which is one of the reasons that our instructional materials are so successful for the, for the, um, especially for the, you know, the concepts and principles course, the methods course, um, the, uh, acquisition he used to do all the acquisition, all the deceleration stuff and the ethics, but the, the, those courses, he in particular, the concepts and principles course, and the methods course, he has put so much time and effort into that and refined it, which is why our students seem to like it and benefit from that type of instruction.

Tom Freeman (00:25:03):

And one of the things I really like about working here is that everybody's dedicated to not sort of sitting on our laurels, but making it even better and continuing to improve how we teach this stuff. So, you know, they say in behavior analysis, well, I will, the student is always right. Basically if the student's not getting it, there's a problem with the instruction. And I think that that approach is very useful. And you hear people all the time, blame their students. It's like blaming the parents for not taking good data. No, no. As a behavior analyst, that's your job. You're supposed to have the skills to change their behavior so that they get you the information that you need to be able to talk to them and work with them and make good decisions. That's, that's your job. Right. So, um, that's one of the reasons I really like working here is that that's the general general approach of the entire group is like, we have to make this better so that our students do better. Cause it's our responsibility. Um, and Jose has always modeled that he's always taken that approach and people, you know, they say stuff sometimes they'll say things that are different, but really the it's the behavior that you look at. And that's really what we try to do every day.

Shauna Costello (00:26:17):

And I mean, Jose remembers everything.

Tom Freeman (00:26:21):

It's amazing.

Shauna Costello (00:26:22):

It's absolutely amazing that the amount of just things that are in his brain. But I mean, even for my interview for ABA tech, I mean, I didn't know what to expect. I was in Michigan at the time, but my first I actually ended up having to have two interviews because it was basically me and Jose talking for the entire first one. And I did not realize what I was getting. I didn't realize. I was like, it's like, okay, well I should have probably prepped for this interview because the types of questions Jose was asking me, I'm very happy that I was able to answer them, you know, on the spot. Cause I didn't know they were coming. Right. But I mean, that speaks to my training and my mentors as well. But, but just the, it just speaks to Jose and this type of company that he's tried to build because, and I know that this is kind of my next question for you cause I was brought on, on, so you work primarily on the curriculum team, right? At ABA tech. I mean you dabble in everything. But primarily the curriculum team working on right now, the fifth edition, but Jose brought me on with Alison and Kelly to make sure that this professional development side starts to boom. Right. And so that kind of brings me to the next question. Whereas where do you see our field going and or where do you want to see it go?

Tom Freeman (00:27:55):

Well, I'm in the Pat Friman school on that, which is that, um, behavior analysis has been, um, marginalized and pigeonholed for as long as I've been involved with it. By the time when I came into it, it was all developmental disabilities. That was where behavior analysis went. Um, and that was because those are the people who are not receiving services from everybody because a lot of people thought that was kind of, Oh, who wants to work with those people? You know? I mean, literally I've had people like say that type of thing to me and I'll say, you know, you don't know what you're missing, man, but it doesn't the point is, I mean, some of the greatest people I've ever known in my life have been people that have been developmentally disabled, some of the, really the most amazing human beings I've ever known.

Tom Freeman (00:28:40):

But, um, yeah, we got pigeonholed into that. And then once the verbal behavior stuff started to expand and it became clear that, um, Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior was incredibly effective and in particular could be applied to work with children, with autism who were diagnosed with autism. Um, then it began to explode into that area. But you know, Pat Friman talks about how we have to stop working at the far end of the normal distribution and how we have to get behavior analysis into the mainstream. You know, you look at bill Hewards, stuff that he presents about education and the, the videos that he shows of people doing, uh, direct instruction type activities in class where the kids are all like really into it. And they're having a great time. It's not some kind of cold academic approach. It's this thing where people are really into it.

Tom Freeman (00:29:35):

And you've got kids that are supposedly in learning disabled classes that are like surpassing their other students. I remember when I first went to see, um, a presentation from Morningside Academy that where they showed their data on the kids that were quote learning disabled, who would come into their facility and they rocketed past their other peers in school. And they had this thing called head sprout that they developed with Janet Twyman and you know, Kent Johnson and TV Lang. Right. So I got head sprout for Dave, my son, by the time Dave, he, I hadn't looked at it, I didn't force him to do it. I just opened up the computer. I said, you know, here's this, you can do this. And you know, whatever, by the time Dave was in sixth grade, he was reading a 12th grade level, right? I mean, his language just exploded.

Tom Freeman (00:30:25):

I thought Dave was going to be into language. He's now a mathematician, right? He's a he's math. He want to do math and physics when he went into college. But you know, he started to learn to play. I put instruments around the house and didn't force him to play. And he like picked up a bass and started playing bass. Then all of a sudden he's he wants to be a mathematician, but his language, you know, he had head sprout and he just, his language just took off. In fact, when he was in kindergarten, the teacher wants told us, I have to be really careful what I say around Dave, because I'll say these jokes, that to amuse myself, you know, I'll say stuff. And none of the kids understand what I'm saying. Except Dave he'll have this look of recognition in his eyes that he understood what I just said.

Tom Freeman (00:31:03):

And so I have to be really careful while I say so, yes, mainstream, mainstream education, why every teacher in the country is not required to take courses in behavior analysis, considering it's the science of learning. Right. I don't understand why this is not happening. Most of them haven't even heard of project follow-through and haven't heard a project follow through. And when they hear about behavior analysis, it's like, what? So here was talking about yesterday, it's like Skinner box, um, you know, carrot and stick and electric shock and punishment, right? Robots, you know, the most important article I probably ever read other than like the, uh, the Friman stuff on this is the Richard Fox article on translating the covenant. If those of you who are listening to this cast have never read, translating the covenant by a Fox. You need to go read this article because it's about the language behavior analysts use that block us from being effective in the world and the terms that we use that people don't understand like extinction, you say extinction to people think about dead dinosaurs.

Tom Freeman (00:32:04):

So it's a really important article to read. And I think one of the problems with behavior analysis is that there's a precision of language, piece of it, where the experts in the field and the people who were really high level behavior analysts want to maintain this precision of language. But it also, at times prevents us from being able to spread what we know about this into the world in general, which is why like the PBS people, the positive behavioral support people have been successful because they recognize that you need to be able to communicate to the people who you're trying to talk to. Right. So, and I don't agree with PBS on everything, but I think that they've taken a lot of behavior analysis and they've applied it in a way that is acceptable. So it worries me that this, that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot to some degree we're preventing ourselves from moving forward in the area of anxiety and depression.

Tom Freeman (00:33:01):

And we should be, we should be really working. I mean, there's tons of people in the world who suffer from anxiety and depression. And when we tell people, Oh, that's an explanatory fiction, right. That you do this because you're depressed or you do this because your anxiety, you say, Oh, that's an explanatory fiction. People hear that as saying, that's a fiction. You're if you're a hypochondriac, you don't really have depression. You didn't really have anxiety. No. What we're saying is that the behavior that you're engaging is not because of these things, the behavior that you're engaging in is these things, right. Right. We're not using the label for the cause. We want to look at what are the causes here. Um, and I think we also need to work much more closely with, um, medical practitioners with, we should be working with pediatricians much more. We should be with cause of prob problems that are brought into pediatric environments. This is one of the things Pat Fryman talks about is the, you know, the bedwetting, the kid not going to sleep at night. These are, these are things that behavior analysts could come and help people with and get infused into the mainstream of society where people look to us to solve these more common problems. And then in the educational system, we're not so much solving problems as we're informing, what's the best way to educate people in just regular education.

Shauna Costello (00:34:20):

Right. And I know that when I was doing some independent consulting, some of my families would be like, Oh, like super nanny. Right. And it's kind of that same thing because do I agree with everything that Supernanny does? No, but she uses a lot of behavioral techniques. And so that was, that is a way for that. That was a way for them to make that connection. And exactly. Yeah. And I know that something else too, you know, outside of education and anxiety, depression, and you know, like the sleeping, what like toilet toileting and all of that stuff. I know there's I saw it. You saw something on one of our colleagues calendars about the sustainability conference planning. So even expanding out even further.

Tom Freeman (00:35:12):

I remember Charlie Hammond, who was the head of the psych department at Fernald, when he had been a graduate student for Beth Seltzer Azeroth, she had been his advisor. I didn't know who she was when I was there. I had no idea. I mean, I didn't know anything when I was working there about the literature or anything, but she had been his advisor. Right. He created a, um, a garbage can that when, when you would deposit stuff in the garbage cans, it was when the whole, you know, anti-litter thing was going on. Right. Every litter bit hurts. That whole thing. And that, that campaign actually worked. Yeah. That's what they said in New York. That was the, was the campaign. And they had the, like the commercial with the native American, with the tear coming down when he was looking at all the pollution in New York and they had a whole thing and litter in New York really went down. People stopped littering. Well, he created this garbage can that when you would put stuff into it, you would deposit. So it would say, thank you. Somebody asked him, what do you call that thing? And he said, Arthur. So he named his garbage can Arthur. And the reason he named it, Arthur was because that was exactly what had happened in the movie. A hard day's night when somebody asked George Harrison, what do you call that haircut? And he said, Arthur, Charlie named his garbage can after George Harrison's haircut.

Shauna Costello (00:36:23):

I mean, they still have those all over the place.

Tom Freeman (00:36:27):

That's a sustainability thing. It's like looking at what drives people to do with it. I mean, some people will pick up stuff just to hear it say, thank you. Right, right. And put it in the garbage cans. So there are ways that we can use behavior analysis. And I tell you, Dave, my son, Dave, he went in and he went into math and physics. Right? He got bored with physics. Didn't think it was that interesting. He really liked like abstract math, which freaks me out because that's like so far above what I can do, but so it's two years into school, two and a half years in the school, he's doing abstract math. And then he starts reading some reports and he goes, he decides, you know, global climate change is such a pressing problem. I have to get more into the applied side of things.

Tom Freeman (00:37:14):

So I have to figure out a way to take this abstract math stuff and apply it to like global climate change models so that I can have an impact on climate change. This is one of the things that people, I think still to this, to this day, for some reason are not many people are not recognizing like this is an immediate crisis. We could. I mean, the cities on the coast of the United States could be underwater in 50 years, New York could be underwater. Florida could be underwater. Boston could be underwater or at least what you know, do close enough. Not exactly underwater. It's not going to look like a movie, but people are not responding to the things that need to be done now to make these changes. They're acting like nothing bad. Like everything's fine.

Shauna Costello (00:38:02):

Well, and I think it's funny too, that, you know, we come from a field of data. Like we are data analysts, we are obsessed with data and we could very easily be working with these mathematicians and these other individuals to then help change human behavior. Right. Very easily. I mean, my own personal example is so when I, before I moved, my apartment complex did not have anywhere to recycle. So I didn't recycle because the response effort to recycle was so high. They moved down here. Everybody has a recycling can. That goes out once a week, I started recycling right away. And when I moved in with my current roommate, he did not recycle. He had nothing to do with it and actually just last, so like, since I moved in, our recycling has actually increased to be, we have more recycling now than we have trash and let just last night he comes out and he's about, and he has a can in his hand and he goes to put it in the trash can. He lists, he like pushes the button with his foot and it lifts up. He looks at it and then he puts it into the recycling bin instead. And I was like, hey, he's like, yeah, you saw that. I was like, look at you. But I mean, it's almost as simple as that. It can not always, but you know what I mean? I, I just, I had, I don't even say anything to him about it. I just literally put a recycling bin there.

Tom Freeman (00:39:33):

I think it's a discriminative issue. I think it's an issue of discriminative stimuli. When people start to see their environment, um, in a particular way, they start seeing things. And yes, the recycling may not have a massive impact on global climate change. It will have an impact. It may not have a massive impact, but when people start to be looking at those things and seeing the discriminative stimuli in their environment, for these things, for these opportunities to engage in certain actions and those actions are reinforced, they're going to, there'll be a generalization to the other things. They need to do buying a hybrid park car, buying an electric car. Then you're looking at, you know, voting for people who are conscious of this problem and taking steps to try to resolve these issues, doing the types of things that need to be done in order for us to essentially have global mobilization to, if we want to save our current civilization, you know, that'd be human beings here.

Tom Freeman (00:40:39):

Right, right. But the type of civilization, all of these advances that people see us making in medical technology and artificial intelligence and all this stuff that people see coming that they're excited about or fearful about or whatever, um, that stuff could all go away. If we have, if we have a billion refugees from the coasts moving inward and putting pressure on the entire society worldwide, they're there, you know, we have to take steps now. So yeah, I think behavior analysts could hopefully be part of the solution here because I think everybody's gotta be part of the solution.

Shauna Costello (00:41:17):

I wish I could say it stops us this sustainability, but it doesn't. We could go on, we could, we could go on about all these different topics about how disseminate, how we can disseminate behavior analysis. But yeah, it is. It is. And that's why I was excited to take this job. But I think another thing on top of that is not only recognizing where behavior analysts can be, but also making sure we, as behavior analysts are educating ourselves on these areas and doing our part in moving forward. Like you said, our we're pigeon holders, we've pigeonholed ourselves into this developmental disability clinical setting. We need more, we need more of these people who are pushing these boundaries.

Tom Freeman (00:42:04):

I agree. I totally agree. People going into new areas. I mean, that's really what OBM is about. Right. It's getting behavior analysis into the world of business and industry.

Shauna Costello (00:42:14):

I mean, I know at FABA being at FABA this year. Yeah. And this is most of the conferences that I go to. This is just cause FABA was last weekend that the talks that were the most heavily populated were the clinical autism behavior analysis talks, right. It's like, I love to, I love to see people learning what's going on in their field, where they're working right now. But at the same time we need to be it's called professional development for a reason.

Tom Freeman (00:42:47):

Good point. You should, when you go to conferences, it's good to go to talks that are outside of your comfort zone. You should definitely do that.

Shauna Costello (00:42:54):

Yes. We need to, in CEs, we need to be spending not a hundred percent of our CE time on where we're studying, where we're working right now. We need to spend at least 50% of that time expanding our knowledge. Because I mean, there's people doing some great translational research and it might look like it's EAB stuff, but that stuff can be, and is being translated into the clinical work,.

Tom Freeman (00:43:22):

Which would be yes, exactly. I totally agree with that. EAB people are super important. I don't know, nearly as much about EIB as I need to, and I need to learn a lot more about it. Right. But you know, when I talk about like my life, right. I had no idea that I am a skilled whale tracker. Right. I had this skill that I didn't even know. I had an, until I got out, if I had just stayed working at the institution. Yeah. I'd have, I'd have a good retirement plan. Now I could probably retire at this point. But I never would have found out, never really gone and worked at Hawaiian light, just jumped out of my comfort zone and did something completely different and found out I'm actually really good at this. And this is something that I get a great deal of reinforcement from doing outside of my normal stuff.

Tom Freeman (00:44:13):

Right. And it's kind of the same with behavior analysis. When I would go with new caseload, you know, working with people who were in wheelchairs, I worked with one woman that was in a wheelchair who I believe she was normal intelligence. And she, she had a, she could communicate with this board that was on her, her attached to her wheelchair where she would move her eyes and she could like spell out sentences and stuff. Right. Right. Here's this woman who's living with people who are all developmentally disabled. Right. But I could see in her eyes, I had met her long before when at a camp experience, when I was working with the guys, when I first was a direct care staff and I met Carolyn and it's like, you could just see in her eyes, this, this woman knows what's going on. She's very aware.

Tom Freeman (00:44:56):

So I eventually got to work with her on a caseload and she would spell out these sentences. And she had one that she, that she would click on every once in a while that just said it would be the, you know, the voice wouldn't be activated and would just say Fernald is hell, Oh my God, it's awful. But she was, you know, so I got to work with all these different people of all these different skill levels and stuff. It's not just, and then when I worked with Sharon, I got to work with people in their family homes. I got to work with kids who were having problems in school. I got to work. And so behavior analysts I've met somebody when I was out of the board who was a closed brain injury person who was doing really good work with people with closed brain injuries in gerontology, gerontology that so behavior analysts need to, I know that see the thing is, people will follow the money, right? You follow reinforcement flows, downhill, man, you behavior basically flows where the channels of reinforcement are.

Shauna Costello (00:45:54):

What did, who was it? It was Aubrey Daniels behavior goes where reinforcement flows.

Tom Freeman (00:46:02):

And it's funny cause that's the first time I ever heard that. And I always thought of reinforcement and behavior as being like on the hillside and that reinforcement will follow whatever the path of least resistance and that's. And he's like, I had the same view. So when Aubrey Daniels said that, I said, yeah, exactly, exactly. That's that's this is how it works. You go where the reinforcement is. So that's what's happening with autism right now because the insurance companies are paying for services for people with autism.

Shauna Costello (00:46:32):

Well, and I think too, like, like you said, you're not, you didn't come up through academia, but a lot of our field is following the same path that you followed. They didn't come up. A lot of them aren't coming up through academia. They might've worked in the field, heard about behavior analysis and then decided to go do something about it. Right. So they might not even really know or understand the, the extent that behavior analysis can stretch. That's true because you know, unfortunately not all verified core sequences are created equal, right. And so that's where these professional development and continuing education comes into play. And so I think that,

Tom Freeman (00:47:18):

But I think that's very true. And a lot of people who are like, I came from a direct care background, I've always considered myself, basically just a direct care person who has made, who has advanced. Um, you know, that's my background, I'm a direct care staff person essentially. And there are a lot of people that I've met in the field who come from that background. And, you know, I don't want to see, uh, uh, any kind of like sometimes when you go to ABA, there's almost like, it seems like there's sometimes like an animosity between the academics and the real research people. And then the practitioners I've even heard people say things at these conferences that are like, and man, we gotta, we, we are, we inform each other's work. We need to re it's like working with a doctor, you know, you, and you work together. You inform each other's work to be more effective for the benefit of the people that you're working with them. And I've always thought that you should, it's good to expand your skill base, to work with, to work in new areas of work, to do like new things, rather than get settled into just doing one thing over and over and over again, you know, constantly doing discrete trial training.

Shauna Costello (00:48:34):

And it also helps prevent burnout.

Tom Freeman (00:48:36):

It does help prevent burnout. It definitely does. Yes. And I have been burned out at times.

Shauna Costello (00:48:42):

Me too, I had the same experience that you had at the school district at my last clinical setting where I was like, yes, time to think, it's time to go. So I had the same feeling.

Tom Freeman (00:48:58):

Yeah. And that's yeah. As district behavior analyst I loved, I did love the job, but it was just, I wasn't as effective. And that's one of the things that our ethical code sort of tells us to do is that you have to be, you have to self monitor to some degree in terms of, you know, the way that I determined that is that, you know, if somebody comes to you with a problem and your first thought is, what do I need to do? How am I going to solve this problem? What's it? What are the steps I needed to take to start looking at this? Right. That's good. If your first thought is, I really want to go back into my office and close the door. Then you're probably in a situation that it would probably be good to move on from, or find a way to get yourself some new energy, take a vacation, do something right.

Tom Freeman (00:49:44):

But you're, you're in a situation and it happens to everybody. It's like, don't be don't personalize. Right? Don't personalize. Even when I was in direct care. And I, you know, I, I used to work with people that were very violent clients, like really violent, right? And it's hard to maintain your distance, your, your clinical distance when you're involved with breaking up a fight between people, for example, like, and you have to get in there because you have to protect people who are getting hurt. And I recognized in my own behavior that when I would find myself biting my tongue, I had lost objectivity. I was no longer in, I was a part of the situation as opposed to being there to separate people that I was now in it. Right. And that told me I have to back off. And I, and I would try to teach people over the years, you know, recognize the signs in your own behavior that tell you that you you're losing your objectivity and you need to take, take a step back.

Tom Freeman (00:50:48):

It's better if you're working on a ward or if you're working in a group home, or if you're working in whatever setting you're working in if your parent, who you're trying to teach a parent, you know, parenting skills. And that it's an, it's an household where you've had child abuse, right? You want to teach the parents to recognize their symptoms in their own behavior, the indicators in their own behavior, that they're, that they're losing it. And that that's the time that you need to step away and walk away from it and calm yourself down. Right. And get back into the, into being there as a, essentially in control of yourself, you're sort of outside of it, like you're a performer, right, right. As opposed to being in there. And so you need to recognize those things because we all have, we all are subject to these things, right? We're all subject to burnout. We're all subject to losing it a little bit, you know, losing it with your kids. Everybody is subject to this. If you can recognize the signs that it's happening, you know, that it's time to take a step back. Right. And that's really one of the things that they try to teach people in these family care programs is right. Take when to take a step.

Shauna Costello (00:51:53):

I mean, and even in a lot of parent training and I mean, that was one of the things. And when I went to work as an independent contractor, that it wasn't, you know, directly working with it, wasn't always directly working with the client anymore. It was working with the caregiver because you're only there for an hour or two a week. And they're there the other however many hours. And so it's working with them on yes. How to implement the interventions and the treatment plan, but also how to take care of themselves. Right. And if they're getting too overwhelmed, how to, because it's this ever escalating, if one goes higher, the other goes higher and explaining that to them. So, yeah, like you said, it's the same thing. We have to do the exact same thing with us that we're training others to do for themselves.

Tom Freeman (00:52:40):

Right. Which I really like about Skinner's approach the whole radical behavioral thing. You know, it's not radical doesn't mean like crazy wildly radical. It means thorough on everything, everything that you do. So the behavior of the, of the therapist is under the same contingencies that the behavior of the person who's receiving therapy are that everybody is part of this, this thing, this, this, um, interaction, and that you need to recognize that as well. You're, you're a part of it. Yeah. So, and there's no, there's no, the more we can depersonalize. It's like, if you write a program and it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not as effective as you want it to be, rather than like getting upset when people tell you it's not working or whatever, it's not about you. It's about, okay, what do, what's the problem? What did we do to fix this?

Tom Freeman (00:53:27):

What's the, you know, why am I not getting accurate data? It's not the it's nobody's fault. It's, there's something wrong. Maybe my data sheets too complicated. Maybe it needs to be, you know, something, something, right. So I don't know. That's, that's been the biggest thing in behavior analysis. I think that I've and what you just said to them, you know, the secret of behavior analysis is that behavior is a, you know, Pat Friman says the secret we bring to the world that we know that other people don't know is behavior is a function of the environment. Right, right. That this is like one of the biggest things that's been brought to humanity. One of the biggest booms that have been brought to humanity in terms of how we affect change. Um, I think he's, I think he's really right on that. The other thing that I would say is the big secret of behavior analysis is we don't, our job is not to change the behavior of the person who were tasked to change. The behavior of in general is to change the behavior of the caregivers. Yes. It's all about the caregivers.

Shauna Costello (00:54:27):

That is 99. Maybe not nine 95 percent of the job is the caregiver, rather than the client,

Tom Freeman (00:54:35):

Rather than blaming the caregiver when they don't do what you want them to do, the whole point is your job is to change their behavior and to figure out a way to change their behavior.

Shauna Costello (00:54:44):

Yep, because when their behavior changes,

Tom Freeman (00:54:46):

That's what changes client behavior, because you're not there enough to do that right now, when I saw that presentation at FABA where they were like, all these things that, you know, the people you work with say back to you, and I'm sometimes uncomfortable with things I see at conferences where like, people make fun of religion, people's religious beliefs, or they make fun of, I mean, we don't know, you don't, you don't know anything. Right. You're just, you're just a monkey boy. You're just monkey girl. We're just basically primates. You know, we're just barely out of the trees at this point. And it's, you know, you shouldn't, you just shouldn't make fun of people.

Shauna Costello (00:55:31):

I'll say. So one of my doc, student mentors in grad school was, uh, was Tom Ricos. And I know the name he's at Berry college in Rome, Georgia. And he probably taught me one of the, one of the biggest takeaways I think I could have had for like clinical or not even clinical, just working with other people in general work. There was some type of, I don't remember what the specific intervention was that the family wanted to try. The family wanted to try this intervention. They were like, Oh, we heard this worked. And I'm like, what? Like, what are they, what are they doing? This is, I'm this, you know, gung ho master student, like, no that's pseudo science, no that's blah, blah, blah. And this and that. And Tom goes, is that going hurt the client or their progress? I'm like, no. They're like, then why don't we try it? Let's take some data on it. Let's see how it actually works. What it's actually doing. He's like, if it's not going to actually hurt or get in the way of anything else, why not give it a shot?

Tom Freeman (00:56:46):

There's in the ethics chapter, I actually have referenced two articles that go over a decision trees of when you confront what's called an alternative treatment. How do you approach it? And the question you ask is, is it causing harm? In which case you kind of, the flow chart like takes you down to the bottom of the chart intervene. But if it's not causing harm, then there's a, you know, you go through the flow chart and some, and a lot of the times it's just like, leave it alone. Unless they're using like a lot of their resources to pay for it. And those resources aren't being used on something that actually is going to be effective.

Shauna Costello (00:57:25):

But I mean, but then at least at that point you would have some data that shows how much resources are going into one versus the other.

Tom Freeman (00:57:32):

Even facilitating communication. You know, facilitated communication came out at Blakely, did experiments with it at a threshold. Right. They looked at it. It may be, maybe this works out. I don't know. Let's take a look, let's see what's going on here. So they, they didn't just reject it out of him. Right. Which is, I mean, I think there's a lot of things.

Shauna Costello (00:57:53):

Yeah. And I mean, we're taught to be skeptics, but skeptics doesn't mean turning down. Absolutely. Everything that isn't, that comes at us, that we don't already know and agree with being skeptical means taking something in stride, testing out and seeing if there actually is merit to it. It's not just hearing a new idea and being like, Nope, I don't know anything about that. I don't believe it.

Tom Freeman (00:58:16):

Well, when I talked to my kids about like religion. Yeah. You know, I say, you know, belief in, no God is the same as belief in God. It's, you're just, you're you have a belief whether you recognize it or not.

Shauna Costello (00:58:32):

Yeah. And I think you and I have talked about this before, where I said science is technically a religion. If you kind of look at it because it's a belief system.

Tom Freeman (00:58:41):

It could be, it can be. Yes. Unless it's just, if you follow science the way you should, if you follow those, you know, the assumptions of science, which is parsimony and yeah. But philosophic doubt that, one of the things that differentiates science from religion, is the concept of philosophic doubt that new data changes your view of how things work. Whereas if something is a matter of faith, you know, we walk by faith, not by sight. What that's telling you is that it doesn't matter. What I see, what matters is what I believe. And that there's a place for faith. I'm not saying there's not a place for faith, but they're just different science and religion are very different.

Shauna Costello (00:59:25):

So in the new Yorker magazine, um, Nancy Pelosi was quoted by saying, I didn't change my mind. The facts changed the situation. And I just saw that today actually. And I was like, that brings up that same thing of philosophical doubt. Whereas

Tom Freeman (00:59:46):

In terms of her deciding it's time to pursue impeachment

Shauna Costello (00:59:50):

And that's for that. But that quote in general though, you know what I mean? It's not that scientists are like, Oh, they're so wishy washy. They're, you know, flipping what they think. All the, no it's, the facts are changing the situation because of what you said before, we can only understand our world at this point in time, as well as we can at this point in time, right? In five minutes, we might be able, something might happen and occur that we can now understand our world differently.

Tom Freeman (01:00:17):

Wait till the aliens land.

Shauna Costello (01:00:20):

Right, the area 51 raid didn't go so well.

Tom Freeman (01:00:23):

Well, I would not expect it. That was another thing I was really interested in from the time I was a little kid was UFOs. And I have always felt there was some kind of phenomenon going on there and people make fun of it. And they don't, but they're ignoring the phenomenon. And even the air force, I mean, you've got your military stuff. It's like, there's something going on here. We didn't know whether it is okay. It's okay. Not to know. As opposed to saying I don't know what it is, therefore it doesn't exist. Right. That's not, that's not very, they did that for a long time about meteors, you know, meteors, it's a steady state universe. And so there couldn't possibly be meteors, you know.

Shauna Costello (01:01:03):

Steady state my butt.

Tom Freeman (01:01:04):

Yeah, exactly.

Shauna Costello (01:01:06):

Well, I know that you said we were not going to take up all of our time that we scheduled, but we have officially taken up all of our time that we scheduled. Oh yeah. That is it.

Tom Freeman (01:01:20):

Edit this baby down.

Shauna Costello (01:01:22):

Well, it'll be, it'll be a couple of them. Don't you worry? But no. Is there anything else that you want to leave?

Tom Freeman (01:01:29):

No, I just am very, um, people often ask me, you know, why didn't, why aren't you still working with whales? That's so exciting. You're you're just like, that's so cool. And yes. And I miss it greatly. I would like to be out on the water every day. And I miss the people that I work with are constantly asking me to come back out there and work. And, um, but the reality is that I found that when I was working at the whale project, I kept talking about behavior analysis. I kept talking about stuff that I was doing back at Fernald or the clients that I was working with or the, just the stuff that I was learning. Because it, you know, when you find something that is like real in the world, that really works and seems to be something that, um, regardless of what people think about it, you know, it's like, well, you were just saying, you know, the facts change your mind.

Tom Freeman (01:02:26):

Um, I had this view of Skinner that was wrong. I don't, I'm not a member of the cult of Skinner. I don't think Skinner has all the answers to everything in the world, the way some people do, but it's an amazing science and it's amazingly effective and allows us to really help people who are in, um, in trouble. And by helping them, we're really helping ourselves. I've probably learned more from people with developmental disabilities than I've taught them. And so, or maybe it's equal. I don't know, whatever I've been a beneficiary of this. So I just feel fortunate to have come upon behavior analysis and then been able to meet all the people that I have in this field and been lucky enough to have the supervisors I've had.

Shauna Costello (01:03:09):

I think that's a good place to leave it. There you go. There you go. You did it. Thought leaders podcast brought to you by operant innovations. Every month, we will have a new thought leader coming to talk to us about their history, how they got into the field and where they think the field is going or where they would like to see the field go. Next month, we'll be talking to Dr. Henry Roane. And as always, if you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to email us at operantinnovations@abatechnologies.com.