Surround the thing you're appending in brackets: I think you're doing .append(x for x...), but it should be .append([x for x...]). The first is generator expression, and the second one is a list.

I declared new_names in the first line I believe and you were right append returns None so that's where that came from. But let's say I did not assign new_names = new_names.append(...) and instead i just did new_names.append(...) I still get an error in the second to last line saying I can't concatonate generator objects... what is that? There is something I am not getting on why the two methods don't do the the same thing

Well, I don't see where you declared new_names, so it's not surprising. But ok, let's say you did. Then, new_names = new_names.append(...) - I really don't know how this should work, and it probably doesn't. My guess is that .append() returns None, so you re-assigned new_names to None.

Yeah I was just printing it for debugging purposes. You can see the rest of my solution,but when I go on to iterate through new_names after using the second method it doesn't work because it is a NoneType

You need to return the result, not print it.