 Realizing that so many ideas from economics were not well explained, and that they needed to be explained sort of now with modern tools. I had a background in filmmaking, and I was interested in economics, and so kind of combined those two things, I said, you know what? Somebody needs to be communicating these things now. My name is Roman Hardgrave. I'm the Director of Learning Design at Margin Revolution University at Mercatus. So one of the defining moments for me in terms of wanting to come to Mercatus was actually discovering Milton Friedman. Before I discovered him, I really wasn't interested in economics, and I really didn't even think about the challenge of communicating economics to people. But Milton Friedman not only was he a brilliant guy, he was a brilliant communicator. You know, there's these videos from the 70s that I watched of him just explaining economic concepts to students that like kind of a public forum, or I remember he's on Donahue talking about economics. And I found those videos so inspiring because not only were the ideas really powerful, but his ability to communicate them, I still have never seen anybody who can do it like he can. You know, he could take a really hard question, and he would explain it in such a clear way that like sort of anybody could follow it. And I just thought that it was amazing he could do that on the fly. And so seeing him do that and realizing that so many ideas from economics were not well explained, and that they needed to be explained sort of now with modern tools, I had a background in filmmaking, and I was interested in economics, and so kind of combined those two things. I said, you know what, somebody needs to be communicating these things now in the same way that Milton Friedman did back in the 70s and the 80s. So that was really one of the reasons I came to Mercatus. My hope for Mercatus is that they continue to do what they've been doing, and one particular aspect of that is communicating the ideas of economics. So these ideas are so important. Some of the big problems people want to solve out there, economics have a lot to say about solutions to it, and if you don't understand economics, you often create solutions that make the problem worse. Communicating economics is always a challenge, and I think Mercatus has done such a great job so far at communicating the ideas of economics. Whether you think about, you know, MRU, the project that I work on, or you think about conversations with Tyler or Macro Musings, or podcasts, websites and blogs that we've done, we've really spent a lot of time and effort, not just the scholars, but all the staff who surround them to help them do it. Really communicating ideas in a way that are accessible, that people can understand, that makes them interesting to them. And so that's why I hope to see that Mercatus will really take that mantle. We're going to be the best communicators of economics ideas in the world, and really owning it.