Inside JMS

Kevin Stoker
Welcome to Inside JMS stories that feature the faculty and staff of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies. I'm Kevin Stoker. I'm here with my co host, dashing Dave Nourse.

Dave Nourse
I'm so happy to be here, my friend,

Kevin Stoker
and we're really excited today we have Dr Arthur Soto Vasquez, and art has been with us for a year now, and we feel like, hey, it's time. We got to talk to this guy.

Dave Nourse
We are behind the times over here. In fact, And we're so happy that you're here, Arthur,

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Thank you. I was gonna say, I think it's actually the perfect time. I feel like I've accumulated enough stories, and y'all have gotten to know me enough. So I'm perfectly happy to come in a year later.

Kevin Stoker
And you know, I will start this by saying I have been so impressed with Arthur, because he jumped right in from the get go. He's been involved. He's he's helped start

Kevin Stoker
a chapter of the National Hispanic Journalists Association here on campus. He's got engaged with a lot of different groups and everything else. He has truly immersed himself into the school, and we're really proud to have him here, but we know his heart and soul

Dave Nourse
Is not, not in Nevada

Kevin Stoker
Not in Nevada

Dave Nourse
Not in Nevada. No.

Kevin Stoker
You know, Arthur grew up in Texas, grew up on the border. Has spent, you know, did most of his schooling in Texas actually spent time on the border in Laredo, Texas, Arthur. Tell us how a Texan makes his home in Nevada. I will say, I will say Kevin that. So I'm originally from El Paso, Texas, which is also on the border. And one of the things I would often tell some of my family and friends when I got the job here at in in Las Vegas is that the climate, the environment, the sort of overall look and esthetic of Vegas is very similar to El Paso, right? You know, it's it's desert, like it's surrounded by mountains, and it's kind of just general look of Brown, right? So that's not too unfamiliar for me, but you're right. I, you know, I bounced around a lot in Texas, right? My undergraduate education, my graduate education at the University of Texas, I was in Austin for a long time, so I grew up around the Capitol. Spent a lot of time, you know, thinking and living around in like Texas politics and stuff like that,

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
after my PhD and in Washington, DC, a little brief stint out in the capital, just for really two years, I went back to El Paso for a year and taught at a community college, El Paso Community College as an adjunct wrapping up my PhD and and then I got an opportunity To start the tenure track at at a teaching institution called Texas a&m International University in Laredo, Texas, and I spent six years there, and so I was really happy to be back in Texas again, on the border. And so, yeah, you're right. I mean, I feel like so much of my story has kind of been there in Texas, and I do end up back and forth a lot. But, you know, I think in general, the I'm in the West, right? And so there's a lot of linkages between between out being out west and being in Texas. So I've come to also love being here in Vegas as well. That's great.

Kevin Stoker
And you know what your research kind of brings in a lot of different aspects of your background. Tell us about that. Yeah, yeah. So, so

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
one thing I was, you know, tell my students, and whenever I kind of introduce myself, is that my undergraduate education is not in communication, nor journalism or media studies, it's actually in political science. I thought I was going to be a lawyer when I was growing up. That's what my grandma used to think. She would call me abogado, which means, like, lawyer in or actually, attorney, technically in Spanish and and so, you know, I signed up to be political science undergrad, and I was prepping for the LSAT and I kind of didn't exactly love all aspects of it. When I, when I was taking the LSAT prep, I wasn't kind of feeling super excited by it. And one of the, I think, kind of core, maybe missing elements of my my political science education was, I feel like it didn't actually quite explain, like, why people believe certain things and what led them to political action, right? It explained really well, you know, how Congress worked, or which President passed this certain thing, and why they did it, and what they did to pass it, or whatever. And, you know, with a few exceptions, I really enjoyed political theory and political thinking stuff like that. But it wasn't until my senior year of college, I took a class in communication, and it's called Gender communication. And, you know, it was a mix of Communication and Media, right? So we looked at like media texts that show constructions of how men and women act, should act. We talked a lot through those things, and it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of how ideology, Culture, Media can really help construct and then enable political. Political action. So I worked on a political campaign after undergrad. Went to UT Austin and radio, television, film, and there I did move into media studies as my as my graduate training, but all with the eye of studying Latino politics, right? How are we getting to mobilize Latino voters, what message is, and that's really kind of the first phase of my research. I still continually go back to that kind of working on a book project that's been touching on there, here, back and then on that since then, I've done a lot more work on social media and influencers and YouTube culture and a lot of different kinds of elements, also related to media, but, but that, you know, core kind of orientation about politics and what it takes to get people to believe certain things and then lead them to action is really kind of at the base

Dave Nourse
of of what I do. Were you thinking when you were studying political science and you had the idea, I'm on the path to become a lawyer? Yeah, that you wanted to go into politics. You wanted to be politically adjacent, maybe as a lobbyist, something like that. What was, what was your initial career trajectory, and what do you think it was that just made you feel this, this isn't it for me.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah, I think that's you're exactly right. I kind of envisioned that that exact path, like go into sort of legal profession, and then use that as a way to jump into to politics, right? And I think sometimes, and I'll mention this often to our students, like we often think very linearly, right? That like this leads to this, leads to this, and this is the path I need to take to get there right now. I teach, teaching a course called video game streaming society, and I show this great slide at the beginning of the semester, and I encourage my students to really take it to heart, which is, a lot of us think that life is a linear video game, right? But remember, it's a open world game. You can just do things however you want, right? You can take on side quests, you can do all kinds of different things. And so I slowly started to recognize that, that I could do, take a different path, right? And I recognize, of course, I did somewhat of a different linear path, did a PhD and went into higher ed in academia, so somewhat of a more traditional path there. But, you know, I think the real shift was just recognizing, partly that, that I could do things I didn't have to follow path I wasn't super excited by and also just, honestly, a push from from a faculty member who said, Hey, I think you'd be good at this. And so recognizing, sometimes too, that, that the words that faculty members say to students is also very important, because it's like, oh, maybe, maybe I could, you know, and and set me off that that path.

Kevin Stoker
So once you got to Texas, to University of Texas, and you were in media studies, was there a moment when there was an epiphany that said, Yeah, I made the right call.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah, no, no, no, I I found a book I was working on my thesis, and I'll never forget the moment that it really started to click for me, because I was still kind of thinking, I think, in a political science way, right? How do we craft a message that gets people to turn out to vote more? That was kind of the original version of the thesis. And so I came across a book, and by by somebody, by a scholar named America Rodriguez, and the book is called Making Latino news. And so I read this book, and that's really where my scholarship started to shift. And I had really just opened my eyes to the idea that, like, Okay, wait, this concept, or this category of Latinos in the United States is really very much a constructed, social, political concept construct, right? It was the outcome of a lot of, you know, activism, lobbying, partly the federal government, partly media organizations like Univision, partly, you know, groups like National Council, La Raza and LULAC, you know, all coming together and trying to say, Okay, how best can we advance our goals together, that manifested later in the news, where they constructed like this, like unifying symbolic reality, where Latinos were hyper present in Spanish language news. That's kind of the core of her book. And that's when I was like, Okay, wait, this is actually exciting, because I can see how this happens now in like contemporary at the time Latino political rhetoric, which was like the height of the Obama era, you know, this like, promise that if Latino voters all came together, they could, you know, change the nation forever and and so that's really where, you know, it's kind of crazy. It was just reading a book and the kind of ultimate promise of being a scholar, right? Getting excited by work that's come before. I think it was in my tutoring session, not me being I was a tutor. I used to tutor for UT Athletics, and, yeah, and that was it, you know? And I felt like, okay, cool, I can, I can, I can work with this, right?

Dave Nourse
It's so interesting because, as you. Mentioned, you kind of had this pathway you were envisioning going on this journey, yeah, and because of, as you mentioned, a single faculty member saying, No, I think you can do this. You know, your your worldview broadened. Sure, were you always and so this is, this is the question, because you kind of found yourself on one particular path, but going into media studies, it opened up a wide variety of avenues for you to ultimately explore. Were you always interested in say, you know, say you're studying right now, influencers and algorithms and social media and video games? Did you always have that type of interest as well? Or is that something that developed along the way?

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Those, those things, I think came a bit later. So, so I'd always been interested those as a sort of a hobby or personal interest, right? And those, really, I started to turn my attention to those as objects of study, areas in which I thought could be kind of mined for more research on the first year of my tenure track job. And for a couple of reasons. And one, being very honest, I had published some work in sort of Latino Studies and Communication and Media. But I didn't want to just be, you know, very honestly, a Latino Studies and calm person. I wanted to be able to say I could speak to issues of social media, influencer culture, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, right? I wanted to have this kind of wider scholarly profile, right? And so I turned back my first plan of publication in this area was in the western Journal of Communication. Was a study of influencers at posting at Disney parks in the United States, yeah, and that was my rationale for putting it in Western and it was, you know, it's fascinating, like, how do they kind of adapt their femininity, how do they present food online? It was one of my first studies, you know, really kind of pushing out of the boundaries there exposed me to a whole different kind of community of scholars and literature. But yeah, for me it was, it was really just saying, like, Okay, I want to do something else. And sometimes I even find, like, That area has been just as interesting, if not more interesting, and also enriching back into my original area, which I will sometimes go back and forth onto, right because, as we know, like the media is highly intertwined with politics and and, you know, influencer culture touches on politics all the time, right? So, yeah, it was, it was more so just trying to do something different.

Kevin Stoker
Well, I know that. I kind of know what the answer this question is going to be, but I know because you had that interest in politics, but here you are immersing yourself into Latino issues, Latino politics and everything else, and then you go off to Washington, DC, exactly. So tell us. Tell us about that decision and and how that came about and, and, you know, I know you have told me before that you had you wanted to live in Washington, DC, but there had to be more to it than Sure.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah, well, I kind of drilling a bit more down into my act, my actual interest in sort of Latino politics. What I started to really clarify was I became much more interested in what I would call, like elite Latino politics, right? So, so less so looking at kind of the actual on the ground practices of, you know, like the average voter, or, you know, the kind of local level campaigns. You know, I follow that stuff. I find it somewhat interesting. But what I was really interested started to find much more interesting. And what I eventually did my dissertation on and first book are kind of like the national level, organizations that are behind Latino politics. And so starting to look at like how the professional class, however small it may be, also help shape, you know, like the DIS the larger kind of like discourses and ways in which Latino identity is shaped at the national level, because they interact highly with the media, right? They generate voter outreach campaigns. They sign up people for voter registration. And so, kind of wanting to be in this sort of, quote, unquote center of it all was a big part of why I was so interested in going to DC, to be there. I also wanted to be out of Texas just for a little bit, you know, yeah, just and experience a different side of life. And I thought, might as well get onto the East Coast. So there's, there's a kind of unique energy to being out there as well. So it was something I've always wanted to do.

Dave Nourse
Did you go to DC with the idea that it was going to be a short stint, or were you kind of open to the possibility of the right opportunity came around? This could be a new

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
home base. Yes, totally, yeah, totally. I didn't, I don't think I fully committed to going on to, like the academic track until maybe my second year, so I was still kind of exploring, like academic adjacent, and I figured DC would be a good place for that, more so than probably anywhere else. And that's kind of what the program at. American University, you know, premise itself on and offered. But then I at some point, I was like, You know what I think, sort of more traditional academic track is what I'm most interested in. So I went more full in on there, and was like, Okay, let me make sure I'm adding stuff to the CVA every couple months, and blah, blah, blah, all that, all that good stuff that y'all are aware of. So but yeah, I was, I was always kind of had that in my mind when I was out there, but I didn't like the cold winters, yes. So that was, you know, January and February, we're tougher on somebody who's from a sunny part of the country. And so I learned that. I learned that about myself. And so I was like, I think wherever we wherever I go next, is going to have to be a lot more sun throughout the year.

Dave Nourse
So tell us a little bit about your journey as a teacher, as a professor. You obviously spent time prior to UNLV at a teaching institution, so I'm confident over the years, from community college as an adjunct teaching institution to UNLV, your philosophy may have shifted over the years, but let us know, if I were sitting in your class for the first time, what would my experience be? Yeah, yeah.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
So I would say, I think I have a couple core principles that I that I follow as a as a teacher, and a lot of them are, I would say, somewhat similar from when I started. Of course, you know, the different assignments and some of that have shifted over the years, but a lot of them even just started in my experience being a tutor for UT Athletics, which is, you know, very much like scaffolding, that's a huge thing for me, right? So building up students over the course of a semester. I'm a big believer in the idea that we should not punish students for not knowing something, that it's our it is our job to teach them, right. We should not assume that they have prior knowledge when they come into our classroom for whatever course it may be. It's our job to explain and walk them through something, whatever the assignment may be, and that we can empower them and can sort of give them the skills and tools to do what we were asking them to do, whether it's creating a short YouTube video that explains a concept, or getting up and giving, you know, a speech on a topic, for example, I can Be a little, I would say, traditional in some respects. I do think that that some of the kind of core elements of academic training are very important, like being able to read and process, you know, information on the written page, or however you, you know, read your information, but but reading, understanding, unpacking an argument, I'm kind of humanistic in that, in that sense. And then, you know, kind of like the oral element, oral element to it right, getting up and explaining yourself. I think that's that's hugely important. We've talked, we've spoken a little bit about this in other contexts, about the rise of AI, and it's really kind of challenged the essay as kind of a core way in which we do education. And I used to do a lot of essay scaffolding. Kind of changed that up more recently and moved towards a lot more things like speeches and presentations, because of AI theory being like, Okay, if AI is going to change the way people write, it might emphasize other skills, and one of those may be being able to, like orally present information, right, in a clear, concise, compelling manner, right? So I think we as journalism and media faculty can, can really help prepare students to do that in whatever context or medium that may be. The other joke I often say with my students, so if you want were to walk in, Dave, I tend to be a little bit tougher at the beginning of semester, and then I ease up. So I hold hold high try to hold high standards at the beginning. But if you look at the actual grading structure and ways, it's incredibly difficult to actually fail the class unless you don't do the work. But I always tell the students, somebody will try. So I believe in I believe in second chances. I don't always believe in third chances. So that's kind of my general, general approach.

Kevin Stoker
Well, you're teaching some interesting classes this semester, the video games class. Is this the first time you've taught her second time, second time. And then also you're teaching a graduate class Special Topics in AI, well, it's social media technology. Media Technology, yeah. So tell us about that. You're in this world of technology and everything else. Tell us how that's going and what have been, what have been the kind of the things you've learned? Sure, this semester.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah. No, that, that new media. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to teach the class and really construct the syllabus, the syllabus. So the new media technology class AI is a very significant component of it. And we're actually in the AI section now, and it's kind of called AI and extensions of man, right? So that's the the General section. So we're looking at AI cyborgs, so like body modification. Applications, other ways in which, like technology has been understood as ways in which we can modify our body and our ways in which we navigate the world, and then virtual worlds, so things like, I think there's a reading on Google Maps as like a virtual world that people navigate, some of that, a lot of fun stuff. But we started the semester with some kind of core theories from what what's often understood as like science and technology studies, so things like domestication theory, social construction of technology kind of as ways in which we can write like we can talk through lenses to understand technological development over time, right? And then we moved on to development of the internet and social media, looking at that. And then we just recently wrapped up the section on like new media and streaming. But I would say one of the kind of running themes of the course is that new media is almost kind of a misnomer in a bit, because a core kind of theme in a lot of the articles that we're reading and talking with the students is like a lot of these things are actually much older than you expect, right? So one of the students a couple of weeks ago read a piece from Lev Manovich about what is actually new media, and one of his kind of core arguments is that there are many things in new media that are actually old and we're actually innovated in cinema. So this idea that, like new media is discrete, and he goes, No, like cinema is discrete, it has discrete frames, right? And so we have to be much more careful what we say is unique to New Media, or digital media rather. And so the students have had a lot of fun. I make them do the reading presentations. They have assignments like revising AI output. They had to do an old technology or, quote, unquote, older analog technology show and tell. So they brought a piece of technology like camcorders, VCRs and I learned a lot about just how these pieces of media actually work. Sometimes they're much more fascinating and complicated than digital tech. This really beautiful example of a student bringing in a a voice recorder how journalists used to do do it right before phones were really predominant, and she had a recording from about 10 years ago of her parents, one of her last recordings of her parents, and played it for us in class, and you can hear the richness in the voice. And so I think there's something so kind of nice to invite students to bring in like these, like technologies that have these, like embedded memories into them and and meaning to them. So it's been a really great experience. I've loved teaching the class, and it's been a good opportunity.

Dave Nourse
That's cool. That is really cool. So one of the things that Kevin and I have fun doing in the inside JMS podcast is we have learned a little bit about your research interests and a little bit about your interests and philosophy on the teaching side of things. But we also want to spend a little bit of time just getting to know you, Arthur. And I think some of the things that we have found out about you, obviously, being so close to Texas in so many ways, right? You know, there is that that that kind of comprises a large element of yourself. And not necessarily saying you are large like Texas by any means, but it's just, you know, that is, that is where you came from. And so you certainly have some of those characteristics. But I think going a little deeper, I'm curious. Texas is known for many things, one of which is barbecue. And I would like to start off this getting to know you piece with if you could go anywhere in Texas and eat barbecue, what would you get? And maybe there's not a place where you would go, but maybe it'll just be what's the plate you would get,

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
yeah, yeah. My go to is almost always brisket. Okay, brisket. And then sides. I I love mac and cheese. I think mac and cheese is a perfect side for brisket. I know not everybody agrees. And then, yeah, of course, you got to get all the fixings, right. So you got to get, you know, so you got to get, you know, pickles, the, you know, the onions, the and then bread, very important. And then I do, like a sausage also as well. And then I do, I put sauce on it. Not everybody's the fan. I like the more mild ones. And yeah, that's, that's kind of my, my go to, yeah.

Kevin Stoker
So I'm interested. Okay, so when you go back to Laredo, yeah, because your wife still lives in Laredo, right? Yeah. So what is you? Your go to, there, where, where? When you get back, said, Honey, we got to get

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
to my but so for a long time, my favorite place is a place called Palenque grill. Anybody who's from South Texas will be familiar with a restaurant chain called taco Palenque, kind of Tex Mex regional food. My almost one of my comfort foods is enchiladas Vedas. So like green enchiladas, right? More recently, it's been. Planted by another restaurant that that's kind of local to there. It's just one restaurant. But basically, you know, Tex Mex and Mexican food is just comfort food. Now, I found more places here locally that. I mean, Vegas has a lot of that too. So it's like, it's not like, I, I can't get it here either. But you know, that's usually my, one of my go to requests, typically. So I'll, I'll get my, my enchiladas.

Kevin Stoker
Yeah, I, you know, one of the things that, really, I find fascinating Arthur, is you've kind of grown up in two worlds. Yeah, it's like, you're on the border in Del Paso and then Laredo and everything. It's like you have one foot in Latino culture, one foot in more, what you'd call American, just typical, well, maybe even be more specific West Texas culture, right, right, yeah. And this is so you had, you've kind of growing up. How did you learn to navigate this?

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah, yeah. I think, I think one of the beautiful things about the border is that it, it doesn't feel like you have to make that choice too much, right? It just feels very normal and natural that those that those two things are just the same, right, that the US culture and sort of the more hybridic kind of border culture that blends kind of the Mexican and the US culture is, is it's very similar, right? Or is the one in the same, right? Rather, and it wasn't really until I started going out, even up to Austin, where I started to feel okay, like there's a little bit of difference, right? I felt a kind of broader US culture. And by same token, until I also started traveling to Mexico. Also that, I was like, Okay, I'm also different from that culture too, right? I would go visit my friends in in Monterrey, when we would go down more into the interior, also, like, I was like, Okay, I'm not this either. And so, you know, I think a very common thing that you'll hear from many people who grew up similar to me, or probably common experience a lot of our students as well. Here is, here is idea of, like, code switching, right? So around the people that you're familiar with, you you act and speak a certain way, and then those who you're you know to you know, you just act sort of differently. The other thing, more recently, that I've kind of come to appreciate is that there are many more linkages, for example, that are much older than we appreciate. I'll give examples. So like, you know, the sausage, for example, if we're going back to our brisket example, right? That comes from, like, German culture into into Texas barbecue culture. But a lot of the musical stylings that are very prominent on the border, things like Tejano, like the accordion, that doesn't just appear out of nowhere either, right? That comes from German and Central European musical cultures also. And there's a history of why it was adopted. And so oftentimes there's a lot of also very just interesting historical and cultural linkages that maybe aren't always obvious there. And so I've kind of become a lot more interested in that, kind of those unique ties as well. So, yeah, I feel just more comfortable just being kind of a both. And that's cool with me, just how it is cool. Yeah, cool.

Dave Nourse
So I learned from you earlier today that your wife is an actor, not professionally. She engages in regional theater. You have gotten the opportunity, I'm sure, not just to watch her, but to go enjoy together, seeing shows or musicals. Is there a particular drama or musical that I don't know if you had the opportunity to see it? It's like, this is one that I've seen before, and I would love to see again,

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
one of our one of my favorites is Les Mis. Oh yeah, we saw them the West End a couple years ago. Amazing, beautiful. The Smith Center is going to have a touring production of Phantom of the Opera in the fall here, and I'm quite excited for that. So I kind of like the, you know, the the big, traditional, like musicals, that's, that's my, my, my thing, mostly the other one that I've seen clips of, and and my wife's quite fond of, and she is, I think they actually did a local production of, and then she, I think she's either wanted to or have seen it in person. I can't remember exactly. Is Shrek the Musical, which is hilarious, but it's very good. Yeah, the music sounds really good. So yeah, I, you know, I kind of like the big traditional, like big bombastic music. I also saw a Book of Mormon in New York City, and it's very good, too. So yeah, I like to approach them all. Don't love every single one of them, but yeah, I'm a theater convert. I'll put it that way. So, so how

Kevin Stoker
did you meet your wife? Tell us that story. We want to know the story.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
Yeah, we both happen to be in similar social circles in South Texas. It's a it's a much smaller community than Vegas, obviously. And so we ended up realizing that we like worked at the same place. We actually ended up realizing we lived in the same apartment. Complex, and then so we went on our first date right before covid hit, literally, like it was February 29, Leap Day 2020, so every four years, we celebrate our first, our first date anniversary. So it's kind of a fun thing every every four years. So we'll have our second one in two years, right? And, and, and because we lived so close to each other once covid hit, and it was also right around then, I had a pretty bad back injury, so I was recovering from that, we just ended up just spending a ton of time around each other because it was covid. There wasn't much else going on. And so it really just kind of started, started from there we were literally just right across the street from each other in the in the apartment complex. Yeah, cool. So, yeah, it was just a cool story.

Kevin Stoker
Well, well, generally, we have a question we ask at the end, sure, and it's kind of a question about a question. So it is, is there something we should have asked you that we didn't ask you? Yeah, that that really could help us, you know, and help our audience learn more about Arthur.

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
I thought y'all were gonna say I thought for a second when, when, when Dave was getting into more about personal life, like my approach to some of my hobbies, and one of I think that that I do, and I've kind of become more interested, is like dress, for instance, because we have different dress cultures, I think here in at UNLV, and how I dress, for instance, I so I thought that's maybe where you were going with that. But, but, but maybe not.

Kevin Stoker
Well, you know, I do see you dress up for classes and everything else. It's more a formal culture. And having worked at Texas in Texas and dressed up to teach and everything else, I can relate with that. Yeah. But is there something we should ask you about, maybe, about your hobbies and other things that that are important to you, that kind of like, you know, this is this, these two things have meaning to me, huh? Yeah, I'm trying to think,

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
yeah. I mean, I mean, I was thinking, I was thinking hobbies would have been kind of the most because I would say, my, you know, my, my most things i hobby wise, that I, I think about and do the most right, are dress. I do get very into thinking about men's fashion and what it means and how it's evolved over time, and what it says about society. And I actually kind of am interested in doing research on academic dress, specifically academic dress at conferences. So I think it's a really fascinating area, yes. So that's one area, and then two, one hobby, and then two, like, you know, fitness and like, gym and stuff like that. That's kind of been another area, a hobby that I've come to, like more went on a hike on Saturday here, here in Nevada, in Las Vegas, we've got great natural parks here, and so it's such a really cool resource that is around us that I that I is genuinely much appreciated compared to where I used to live in Texas, which we really did not have, oh, travel points, which I know you relate to. Yeah, I love, I love figuring out how to get the best point values and and redeem them and accumulate them and

Kevin Stoker
that kind of stuff. What's your favorite place you visited?

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
International or domestic? Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. International, international, I'd have to say probably Edinburgh, Scotland. Yeah, it's one of, one of, one of my favorites. It's just, it's just such a beautiful kind of magical place. The extensive history. Mountains are beautiful, the city, all those kinds of things, really, really, really, really nice place. Yeah, been there like three times right now too.

Kevin Stoker
What's your favorite place in Texas as much

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
as I love El Paso and Austin and Laredo, they are home very much. I do have a soft spot for Austin a lot, especially like being out on Lake Austin, Town Lake kayaking, and then going after to get like, some barbecue or another snack, like tacos, that's just, you know, or getting like a margarita on like a porch afterwards, I just think that's like peak, although it has changed a lot since my time there, as so many people have moved and kind of changed the city to like, like many places rights change. So that's but that's usually, generally my, my go to my go to answer.

Kevin Stoker
Well, thanks. Thanks for this.

Dave Nourse
Was a lot of fun. Good, good. Thank you.

Kevin Stoker
Thank you. Really. Fascinating. We're thankful that you're here and hey, and we appreciate you being here and taking over. And you know, you may not know, but Arthur took over media theory from me to give me a chance. Really, you should be thinking, I've been, I've been appreciative of it. And then, you know, he's been willing to do extra things, like taking over digital media literacy, yeah, teaching that. So that's, you know, he's just, what I love is that you're always finding something interesting in whatever right

Arthur Soto-Vasquez
you do here, make, make my little twist on it, right?

Dave Nourse
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, you're a good colleague, and he dresses well. Yes, he does. We are lucky to have you go. Thank you all. Thank you so much very much.