Hella Pick

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is Hella Pick. As a journalist, she covered the stories that shaped the 20th century. She was there for Martin Luther King's March from Selma, the Paris protests of 1968, the Watergate scandal in America and the Gdansk shipyard strikes in Poland. One of the very first female foreign correspondents, she spent 35 years at The Guardian and says it's no accident that foreign policy was her specialism. She arrived in the UK alone on a kinder transport train as a 10-year-old refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria.

Presenter1:17

Celebrating her 90th birthday next year, she's far from retiring. She's published a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and is currently working with the think tank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and with Sussex University to establish the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies. I have a deep sense of belonging to Britain, she writes, but I still wonder whether anyone not born in this country is ever wholly accepted or integrated. This kinder transport person needs to know that there are also wider horizons that remain to embrace her and to embrace.

Presenter1:53

Hellipic, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Hella Pick1:56

Thank you.

Presenter1:56

And Hella, you were one of the first women to occupy the role of foreign correspondent. How conscious were you that you didn't fit the mold at the time?

Hella Pick2:04

Very conscious because my very first job was mostly in West Africa. We're going back now to 1958-59. And I was virtually the only European woman journalist covering that whole field. So obviously I was young, I was quite good looking, everybody was running after me, but in the nicest possible way. I got to know all the leaders of West Africa and I had a very good time. And the handful of European male journalists took me in and treated me as a comrade.

Presenter2:41

Now I've yet to mention your formidable reputation that you earned for yourself. There is, I think, a possibly apocryphal story about a cluster of dignitaries hiding from you in the gents. What really happened,

Hella Pick2:55

Well, this was when I was the Guardian's United Nations correspondent. And in those days, around lunchtime, the diplomats would gather in the delegates' lounge for drinks. And the journalists had access to that. And, you know, we would all go and try and talk to them. And I was trying to write some story. And I was desperately looking for one of the members of the British UN delegation. I couldn't see any of them. Finally, I asked a French diplomat, have you seen any of the British? What's happened to them? They said, well, they're all in the men's cloakroom hiding from you.

Presenter3:33

I hope you got them in the end.

Hella Pick3:36

Come out. They wanted their lunch.

Presenter3:39

Now, what about the music that you've chosen for us today? What place does music have in your life?

Hella Pick3:45

has a great place. I couldn't live without music. I spend a lot of time going to concerts and opera is really one of my very favorite occupations. And I find increasingly when I'm working now I like to have some background music. And that's bad because it's just sort of somewhere in the background and you're not really listening. But it's a good companion nevertheless.

Presenter4:09

Well, let's hear the first track that you're going to take with you to the island. What's it going to be, Helipic?

Hella Pick4:14

Well, it's going to be Schubert's Trout quintet. This has a sort of special meaning for me because as a schoolchild I went to school in the Lake District. There was a small group of adult refugees who were musicians and my mother used to take me to these concerts and one of the things that I remember they played there was the Schubert Quintet.

Presenter5:40

That was the fifth movement of Schubert's Trout Quintet performed by Jacqueline Dupre, Daniel Barenboim, Itzak Perlman, Pinkers Zickman and Zubin Mehta. So your work covering many of the major events of the twentieth century also of course led you to interview the major players from every part of the political spectrum. When you look back at those encounters, which have stayed with you most vividly.

Hella Pick6:07

I would actually say two completely contrasting ones, both relating to Poland. I was due to interview General Jarozzelski, who was then the ruler of Poland. And it had obviously been difficult to get that interview. And then on the day that I was supposed to interview him, Brezhnev died. So I thought, well, that's the end of my interview, because Jarozzelski will be rushing off to Moscow to the funeral. Instead, I was told he would see me that evening, and I was taken through dark corridors to his room. And he presented me with a large bunch of roses and then gave me written answers to the questions I had written for him, and then allowed me to interview him properly for about half an hour. Next morning, I opened the party newspaper, and there is my interview on the front page of the paper, over and above the story about Brezhnev's death. And I thought that was really a significant moment in terms of Poland's relations with the then Soviet Union. Then the other Polish interview was really not quite an interview. I was in the church in Gdańsk with Valencia on the day that he received his Nobel Prize. He was not allowed to leave the country. He was not allowed to go and receive the prize. And there must have been about six or eight of us in the church and then in a little side room. And they had one bottle of champagne. And with that bottle of champagne, we all obviously drank of his health and talked to him. So that was a sort of mini-interview, but a very special occasion.

Presenter7:46

Time for some more music, Halipik. Tell me about your second disc.

Hella Pick7:50

Well, this is something that reminds me and serves as a reminder to me that I am Jewish.

Hella Pick7:58

I'm proud of being Jewish, but I'm not at all religious. But I've chosen Kaddish, which is the song and the prayer which is said at funerals, but which is really a praise of God and the eternal lasting existence of God. And I've chosen Rabel's Kaddish, which is particularly beautiful. I first heard it at a memorial service for very close friends, and it moved me deeply when I heard it. And so I think on the desert island, I should be reminded that I'm Jewish, amongst many other things.

Hella Pick8:53

Yeah.

Presenter8:54

Claire.

Hella Pick9:05

Rewar War Le Hora Hi Re Ha

Presenter9:39

An incredible piece of music and I think even if you didn't understand the language it you would know that was a prayer. Recorded in 1928 that was Ravel's Melody Abraik Kadisch sung by Neo Koschutz. Hellepik. Your parents, Ernst and Johanna, divorced when you were small and it was just you and your mother. What was life like for her before you left Austria?

Hella Pick10:03

She came from a middle class background. She didn't go to university, but she went to finishing school. I still have a handwritten, now rather tatty, cookery book that she wrote while she was at this finishing establishment. Very good recipes in it, except she always just puts the quantities into it, never said, you know, what comes next or first and so on. You just I had to learn, and I did learn. I mean, she was a very good cook, and I did learn from her later in life.

Presenter10:35

Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Tell me what happened to your family then.

Hella Pick10:42

Well, my father emigrated to America.

Hella Pick10:46

And I never saw him again because he died in 57, 58, and he had in fact taken no interest in my existence at all. And my mother's mother, she was widowed already in 1938. She was too old to get a visa to come to England. She got as far as Prague, and in Prague she was arrested and was sent to Theresienstadt, which was obviously one of the concentration camps. And she died there. I mean, we were notified during the war by the Red Cross that she had died. And my mother, she was picked up by the staple one evening, but fortunately returned.

Presenter11:30

Time for some more music, Hellipic. Tell me about your next track.

Hella Pick11:34

I spend quite a lot of time in Vienna. I always enjoy going back.

Hella Pick11:38

And I've chosen one of those typical Viennese songs, and it's sung.

Hella Pick11:46

by the man who drives the Fiacke, which is the horse carriage which you still see in Vienna today for tourists. And it's just a reminder of the sort of atmospherics of the core and the root of Vienna.

Presenter12:12

I fir swahar the rocken, but the men will be able to do it.

Presenter12:36

Gallo?

Hella Pick12:37

Uh

Presenter12:37

Together with Trop, Trop, Trump, Und vanisi, Sociessen, Lokespir is in meeting.

Hella Pick12:45

Does he break the bronze love? Does he shine fiercer wind?

Hella Pick12:51

Yeah.

Speaker 112:51

A coacher, ha! This kind of yeada villain.

Speaker 112:55

A bapar tos canons no rinever.

Presenter13:00

Paul Hoerbiger and Fiakalit. Hella Pick, when you were ten, your mother made the incredibly difficult decision to put you on a kinder transport train alone to get you out of Vienna and to the UK and you arrived at Victoria Station in March 1939. What do you remember of that day?

Hella Pick13:20

Well, I knew no English, but the one word I apparently knew, because I was always reminded of that, was to say goodbye. So the way this worked with the kinder transport children was that arrangements were made here for these children to be taken in by individual families mostly. And we came to Liverpool Street by train, and our future guardians were there waiting for us. And when I was introduced to mine, I said goodbye. However, they immediately put me to school. And three months later, I got a school report where I seemed to be speaking English and coping with the work. So I must have learned very fast.

Presenter14:05

You and your mother settled in the Lake District, happily you were reunited after you came to the UK.

Hella Pick14:12

I mean, I came in April 1939, and she managed to get to Britain about six weeks before the war broke out.

Hella Pick14:21

And as a woman on her own, the only thing she was allowed to do, because she'd lost everything, you know, she came just with herself. And you could only do domestic work. And she became the cook of a family called Chaude, later became Lord Chordy. And he loved Austrian food. And so that's why she got the job. And they had a house in the Lake District as well as in London. I, in the meantime, had been with foster parents. They asked me to join my mother and come to the Lake District. And they later they became my family, the Chaudies.

Presenter15:00

I mean, people talk, don't they, about the the refugee experience. How much of the shape that your life took do you think is shaped by the experience of being uprooted at a young age? It did set in train a particular sequence of events.

Hella Pick15:18

I think

Hella Pick15:20

One never loses a certain sense of insecurity. It stays with one one's whole life and I think it's shaped a lot of my life, often to my disadvantage, to my loss, because I've grasped for things just simply to be secure in my personal life and in my personal relationships and as distinct from my journalism, I think a lot of the mistakes that I made, and I made a lot of mistakes, were very largely due to this sort of basic sense of insecurity that I always needed to be reassured to a degree which was unreasonable.

Presenter16:01

Halipik, tell me about your fourth disc today.

Hella Pick16:04

After I left LAC for a time, I did some research work for one of the professors, and then I started looking for jobs and answered an advertisement for a commercial editor of a weekly paper called West Africa, of which I had never heard.

Hella Pick16:20

To my amazement, I was offered the job. So my very first job had the title of commercial editor, which, needless to say, impressed me very much. And quite early on in London, I had to write a review about a West African dance troupe called Les Ballet du Keiterfodebe, the ballets of Kaiterfodebe. And this is one of the songs that he used to play.

Hella Pick16:52

Oh, it's a beer.

Hella Pick16:56

I think

Hella Pick16:58

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 116:58

Ah

Hella Pick16:59

Break it down.

Speaker 117:00

Family.

Presenter17:00

Yes, it got us.

Presenter17:16

We're literally dancing in the Desert Island Disc studio to Caita Fodeba, an African ensemble with Carolinas. So after writing for West Africa, which was a weekly paper, you started working for The Guardian and that was a major national. How different was that experience?

Hella Pick17:33

It was different and at the same time it had a lot of common characteristics. But I was on a sharp learning curve and I was very lucky. I owe so much in my working life to luck. When I left West Africa, I went to the Guardian and said the first non-aligned conference was about to meet in Belgrade. I asked if I could help to cover this summit because a lot of the African leaders that I'd got to know would be there. And the Guardian said yes, I could work with the then chief diplomatic correspondent, Richard Scott. And somehow Richard failed to arrive for the opening meeting of this conference, so I had to cover it by myself. And the next day, I was the splash, the lead star in The Guardian.

Hella Pick18:19

You can imagine that that was rather pleasing. Then Richard did arrive, and he normally went to the UN General Assembly, but he really never liked New York, and he went back to London and said it would be quite a good idea if they sent me instead.

Presenter18:35

Let me ask you about the States. One of the first people that you met as The Guardian's UN correspondent in nineteen sixty seven was the journalist and broadcaster Alastair Cook, and he was a very influential figure.

Hella Pick18:48

Yes, Alastair Cook was the chief correspondent of the Guardian in those days and he became a really, really close friend. And my first meeting with him I've never forgotten because he came to meet me at the United Nations and he bought me a daikiri and I had never drunk a daikiri before. I liked it. So I had a second one and a third one.

Hella Pick19:12

But I did walk out of the building, as far as I can remember.

Presenter19:15

Yeah.

Hella Pick19:15

What did he tell you about writing?

Presenter19:16

Right.

Hella Pick19:17

I think apart from anything else, he always said, if you don't say in your first paragraph what your story is about, then forget it, because people won't stay with you. And he had this incredible ability to start at one point and end up somewhere else. And the whole thing fitted together. It was a complete story. And it always made sense. He was an artist with words, and I don't think anyone can replicate it.

Presenter19:46

Time for some music, Halapik. Tell me about your fifth

Hella Pick19:49

This is Pablo Casals' Song of the Birds. This is a Catalonian song, and Casals himself said what the birds say, they're singing peace, peace, peace. I heard him play this while I was working at the UN and I had gone to Puerto Rico on holiday together with someone that I was living with then. And we both sat there and it was intensely moving.

Presenter21:23

Pablo Casals The Song of the Birds with Pablo Casals on cello and Mieczys Wafoszovski on piano recorded live at the White House on november thirteenth, nineteen sixty one, with Kennedy in the audience, Halapik, who you met.

Hella Pick21:39

Well, meeting is a sort of slight exaggeration. I got to know quite well Pierre Salinger, who was Kennedy's spokesman, and he invited me to join them all in Hyannisport, their holiday home for a party. And Pierre took me up to Kennedy, and somehow I managed to stumble and fall straight into his arms.

Hella Pick22:02

But it is a very brief encounter.

Presenter22:06

While in the US you reported on the 1965 Selma march, led of course by Martin Luther King to Montgomery, Alabama. Tell me about that experience.

Hella Pick22:15

Well, in many ways, unforgettable. It was such an event that March. And, you know, in retrospect, I realised that I could very well have been murdered on that day, because I was lucky enough to be able to rent a car. And I had walked part of the way, but always went back to the car. And at the end of the first day's march, I was talking to one of my colleagues from the Washington Post, and he was black.

Hella Pick22:43

And I said, let me give you a ride back, which we did. And of course that was, you know, an invitation to be shot, because at that time, you know, people were shot because white woman, black man in the car sitting together was simply not done. But we got back. But when we got back to the hotel, when we went to the bar, they asked him to leave.

Hella Pick23:10

And I covered quite a lot of the other civil rights events during that period and, you know, it it was nasty. And I mean the whole March at the end, you know, you knew something had changed. You know, life was never going to be quite the same again.

Speaker 123:19

We wanna

Presenter23:25

Time for some music, Hellipik. Tell me about your sixth disc today.

Presenter23:30

Yeah.

Hella Pick23:30

It's Beethoven's piano sonata. I've asked for it to be played by the famous Russian pianist Richter. And this takes me back to Poland. And from time to time, Russian artists used to come to give concerts in Warsaw. And my Polish friends said to me, you know, quite apart from the pleasure of hearing these wonderful artists, you will also have the pleasure of being able to buy wonderful caviar, because the Russian artists, however eminent, always came supplied with caviar, which was then sold during the interval for hard currency.

Hella Pick24:10

So all the foreigners went and bought the caviar. And this record reminds me of those rather curious times, because Wichter was one of the artists who came to Warsaw, and on this recording he plays the Patiti.

Presenter25:31

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. eight in C minor, performed by Sviatoslav Richter. Halepik, you became the Guardian's Eastern Europe correspondent in nineteen seventy five. How quickly did you adjust to your new surroundings?

Hella Pick25:46

Well, I was based in London and at the time it was a great psychological help to me because I was going to marry Ralph Dahrendorf who was the director of the London School of Economics and that had all completely fallen apart and I was really quite distraught. I'd given up my job as Washington correspondent to come back to London to be with him and then it all unraveled and the Guardian gave me Eastern Europe instead. So instead of getting married I got caught up in the Cold War at very close quarters. And I spent a lot of time in Poland but I also spent quite a lot of time in East Germany, in Romania and in Bulgaria. East Germany was always very trying because you were followed, you were listened to, you had knocks on the door at night and it was tough going but the saving grace always was to go to Yugoslavia and in those days it was still Yugoslavia and I remember there was one period in Yugoslavia and Belgrade that I particularly enjoyed and I shouldn't say this but this was at the time when Tito was known to be dying and the world's journalists landed in Belgrade waiting for Tito to die to see what would happen after him. He was still a very very big figure in those days, a sort of symbol of independence within European communism. And again, I'm afraid this brings me back to caviar again. I'm quite ashamed of myself. But one of the Time magazine correspondents who was based in Moscow at the time had brought large supplies of caviar with him to Belgrade and a small group of us used to meet in his rooms at the end of the afternoon and ask the hotel to send us up toast and we would sit there drinking our vodka, consuming our toast with caviar.

Presenter25:46

Uh

Hella Pick27:50

It was really rather pleasant. Rather nice days in Belgrade waiting for Tito's death. What an awful thing to say, but still at the time we enjoyed it. And at the time, even the American ambassador was briefing that Yugoslavia would survive beyond Tito. And of course we were all wrong.

Presenter28:12

Time for some more music, Helipik. Tell me about your seventh disc.

Hella Pick28:17

This really brings me now to London, to the Wigmore Hall, and to my love of good singers. And one of my favourite baritones is a wonderful person called Thomas Kvostov. He's a thalidomide victim and he's possessed of the most wonderful voice. And his recitals at the Wigmore Hall were always a great experience. And I very much wanted to include a recording in this broadcast. And in the end, I decided

Hella Pick28:52

For Schubert's Go to Nacht from the Winteriser.

Speaker 128:56

Freemt binish eyen kertzo fremt tea

Speaker 129:03

We feel a snap.

Presenter29:12

Lead

Speaker 129:12

Marnschen Luberstraus Das met Strauchon Die Mutor Darfon.

Speaker 129:27

Pas metien Shkrach von Liebe die Mutar Garfon I.

Speaker 329:33

Look at our funeral.

Presenter30:02

Schubert's Guttenacht from Winterreiser, sung by Thomas Kvastoff, with Charles Spencer on piano. Hellipig, as someone who knows the business better than most, what do you make of the health of journalism to day?

Hella Pick30:18

Well, I think it's in great difficulties. For the last almost 20 years, I've been working for a small think tank for George Meinfeld's Institute of Strategic Dialogue. I did a lot of work on a media exchange between European and Chinese journalists. But you know, the whole media scene has changed and is in many ways in a very perilous situation because the challenge is to preserve the professionalism in journalism at a time when social media allows anybody to become sort of citizen journalists and to remain professional, to be able to distinguish truth from fiction and to be able to distinguish reporting facts from comments is something that really is essential, but it's something that you have to understand and to learn and to know how to do. And the whole problem is how do the traditional media organizations find business models that work for them, that allow them to maintain the professionalism and indeed allow them to continue their existence. And it is a huge problem. And I think everybody is searching for the answer.

Presenter31:32

You are going to be cut off from news and current affairs on our island, of course, Helipik. How do you think you'll cope with that?

Hella Pick31:40

I will try to cope with it. I mean, I've lived alone now for quite a long time, so I'm used to being on my own. I do need company, but somehow I'm going to have the the company in my mind and in my memory.

Hella Pick31:54

And I hope I'm going to have lovely weather. I hope I can swim. I don't have to worry about rain or anything like that. And that the desert island is big enough for me to be able to walk.

Presenter32:05

I think I can confirm we can do lovely weather, swimming and walking, absolutely no problem. Let's have some more music. What's it going to be for your eighth disc?

Hella Pick32:14

Well, it's going to be the last scene from The Marriage of Figaro. Opera is one of my great loves, and Mozart operas are my even greater love. And The Marriage of Figaro is really one of my great favourites. And I will always use every opportunity I have to see a good opera production.

Presenter32:57

The small

Presenter33:00

As he stands, she remained my harvest No love.

Presenter33:07

But the

Presenter33:11

Fuck away.

Presenter33:41

Gente, gente, alla army from the finale of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with Bryn Turfel as Figaro, Rodney Guilfrey as The Count, and Hilevi Martin Pelto as the Countess, conducted by John Elliott Gardner. So we turn now, Helipic, to the books. I give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and you can choose one book of your own. What's it going to be? Well, my book.

Hella Pick34:09

is going to be Matthew Parris's book called Scorn. This is a book that contains witticisms, expressions of contempt, insults through the ages. Whatever page you open it on, you find something that will make you laugh. So it's really worth taking with me. And it's all yours. And a luxury item, too. I toyed between taking all the loose photographs that I have that I've never stuck into an album to remind me of my life and happy times, hopefully. But then in the end, I decided what I really want is one of those custom-made armchairs that put your legs up, your arms up. I don't want to sleep on the ground all the time. It's bound to be rough. So I want to be comfortable while I'm on the island. So that's what I'm going to have.

Presenter35:01

A really comfy recliner.

Hella Pick35:03

but with a specially chosen fabric, of course.

Presenter35:05

Okay, I will. Well, I'm going to do some research and get that made up. That would be wonderful.

Hella Pick35:08

Yeah.

Presenter35:10

And if you could only keep one of your eight disks, which would you save?

Hella Pick35:14

Well, in the end I've decided it's got to be Mozart, so it'll be the marriage of Figura. Hellipik, thank you very much.

Presenter35:21

Very much for sharing your Desert Island discs. Thank you. It's been wonderful.

Hella Pick35:25

Yeah.

Presenter35:37

I really like the image I have of Hella with her feet up in a comfy chair listening to her music choices. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Other journalists and foreign correspondents featured in the Desert Island Disc's back catalogue include Christina Lam, Robert Fiske, John Pilger and Alex Crawford. A correspondent who also witnessed many significant world events is Dame Anne Leslie. Sue Lowley cast her away in 2000.

Speaker 336:02

Then full.

Presenter36:03

Yeah.

Speaker 336:03

Uh

Speaker 336:04

She is, she admits, not unlike PG Woodhouse's fierce Aunt Agatha, who ate broken bottles and wore barbed wire next to the skin. She is Anne Leslie. Not, Anne, that that's an image you would necessarily promote, as I understand it, when you were out in the field, because you like playing the kind of brainless bird, don't you?

Speaker 136:21

What?

Speaker 336:22

Uh

Speaker 136:22

Well, in the sort of countries I tend to work in, they're very contemptuous of women. And the way to get round this problem with them is is to be as bird-brained as you possibly can, because they don't see you as a threat. And I always remember Dame Freya Stark, who is the wonderful adventurer who used to go to mad, bad and dangerous countries. And she wrote that the great advantage of being a woman is that you can always pretend to be more stupid than you are, and everyone believes you. And what she meant was every man believes you. So I go round looking, frankly, like some bird-brained dimbo, and I have a huge handbag.

Speaker 137:01

which is full of rubbish, which I then empty on to Naparachek's desk, saying I have got the permissions, I just can't find them. And of course he can't stand this rubbish, and also I remind him of his mother.

Speaker 137:15

And he just wants me out of the room.

Speaker 337:18

But it's worked with people rather more dangerous than just sort of people at visa desks, hasn't it? It's worked with kind of gun-toting gorillas.

Speaker 137:25

It works very well at checkpoints. It particularly worked in the Balkans, which were always manned by people with gold or silver teeth. You knew they were killers, and you'd turn up one of these checkpoints, and what I used to do is fish out of my handbag pictures of my daughter.

Speaker 137:44

And they would take out of their stained, blood and vomit caked uniforms pictures of their daughters and their sons and everything, and they would just then after that, weeping sentimentally, let me through. Whereas if I came in looking like a war correspondent, they'd know what to do with me.

Speaker 338:00

But you've used your femininity, haven't you, in in less dangerous situations than that one, you know, perhaps it was more dangerous. I mean, didn't you do the Dolly Bird act in order to get a scoop out of Mohammed Ali back in the sixties?

Speaker 138:12

On the whole, I always try not to look like a journalist. And Mohammed Ali was coming into London for a big fight. I knew nothing about boxing. So I dressed up, lots of eyelashes and fur and makeup, and stood apart from all the journalists. And I knew that Mohammed Ali had a lot of people in his entourage who were extremely interested in dolly birds. And one of them clocked me and asked if I'd like to meet the champ. And I said, sure.

Speaker 138:40

And he showed me

Speaker 338:42

Waggling your hand back.

Speaker 138:43

He showed me into the back of Muhammad Ali's rolls. And as we drove off, with all the press noting that he had a new blonde by his side, I rolled down the window and shouted, I'm Anne Leslie, the Daily Express, actually, I've scooped you. And Muhammad Ali thought that was incredibly funny. And we got on like a house on fire after that.

Speaker 139:04

Uh

Presenter39:04

Dayman Leslie. You can hear that programme on BBC Sounds, where you'll find more than 2,000 editions of Desert Island Discs, which you can download and listen to whenever and wherever you like. My guest next time will be the artist Jeremy Della. I hope you'll join us.