Speaker 1: When we look at data, people immediately think numbers, right, but most of the data sets, particularly the ones that I deal with, have nothing to do with numbers. You know, this is a record of people, people's actions, you know, and so I try to incorporate that into a narrative and a story rather than just saying, you know, counting stuff, which is a little bit more towards the, like, statistical side. Sometimes they do, but I try to use as few numbers as possible because, again, you want to tell the story about what's happening with people or institutions and not so much focus on a specific number. Well, going from the easiest to the hardest, I think a spreadsheet is the easiest, particularly now you have, like, free spreadsheets, like Google Sheets. That's probably the easiest one to learn. I mean, you have to learn a few formulas, but that's fairly easy. Databases are a step up. They're a little bit harder, but once you have SQL down, it's not actually as hard as you think it is. You know, there's, like, basically seven key words that you need to know, and beyond that, that's pretty much it, right? The hardest, I would say, would be statistical software and programming languages. Those are the hardest ones, but I think every reporter should at least understand spreadsheets and the others, you know, as needed. No, they shouldn't. You know, a lot of the math that we use is basically what you use in the eighth grade, so, you know, we're not talking about the type of math that NASA scientists are using to send stuff to Mars, right? We're just talking basic eighth grade math. It could be for both, and I think it should be for both. It should be more widespread in the newsrooms than it is. I think that was the assumption back when I worked for IRE, that eventually everybody in the newsroom would know how to do this. It's still a goal. Start with a spreadsheet and just do basic things with it. You know, type in a few names, you know, to keep track of sources, right? Add up a few things like, you know, border crossings, or if there's your beat, or you do campaign finance. Download a slice and look at the amount, you know, who's giving out how much to whom. Lobbying data, you know, business data, all of those things are just easy enough that you can put into a spreadsheet and do a few calculations. Some of the best stories I've done have just been adding up stuff. That's it. I think it's about the same, because they tend to react the same for, I think, well, let me rephrase that. I think it's a little bit harder to get data, because most of the people that you interact with initially, at least, don't really understand that process, right? They understand a paper, right? You want a memo. You want an email. But when you want a copy of the entire database, that's a little harder for them, because they give you all these excuses as to why you can't have it, because it's just so difficult. The law is generally on your side. You know, applying the law, it's a whole different story. But yeah, I mean, the law basically says it's a government record. You're entitled to this, right? But they look at it as if it's theirs in a lot of ways, and you know, it's not. You know, taxpayers pay for this thing. And it's a collection of information about their interactions with American citizens, for the most part. And so that information, if it's, unless it's sensitive or classified, that information should be public.