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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm very good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good, and in part, because this episode, we get to go ahead and talk about a case that was decided. We are recording this in April. The case was decided in March.
N. Rodgers: One of our colleagues who often makes suggestions to us for things suggested that we do- I had said I wanted to do a silly episode because it's been a tough semester.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's been a lot of serious stuff.
N. Rodgers: It feels like, even though this semester has only been four months, it's been about 10 years. I was like, I want to do something silly and Julie suggested that we do Afroman, the Afroman defamation verdict.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know very much about it. I asked Aughie about it, and he started giggling. When he started giggling, I was like, this is clearly something that we should talk about.
J. Aughenbaugh: In listeners, there's going to be some laughter. There's going to be some absurdity, but at the same time, there is also some pretty serious stuff in this case. But what we're referring to is in March, an Ohio jury sided with rapper Afroman, whose birth name-
N. Rodgers: Who does have a very large and beautiful afro.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is, yes. I got to admit as somebody who's increasingly got less hair.
N. Rodgers: Me too. I was like, I'm having envy.
J. Aughenbaugh: I have some serious hair follicle envy going on right now. Afroman's birth name is Joseph Foreman. An Ohio jury sided with rapper Afroman, finding him not liable for defamation, invasion of privacy, or damaging the reputation of the various sheriff deputies who raided his home in 2022. Now, the lawsuit is your standard defamation lawsuit. The sheriff's deputies sued Afroman because he posted a YouTube video using security footage from his own cameras.
N. Rodgers: From his own cameras.
J. Aughenbaugh: At his home of the raid, which turned up no evidence of crime. He also used some of the security footage in his music, music videos, and my favorite, Merchandise.
N. Rodgers: His merch. That's right. What delights me about this is he did not have to go outside to get this footage. This footage was of the security cameras in his home. It's his footage. He owns the footage.
J. Aughenbaugh: He owns the footage. None of it was AI generated.
N. Rodgers: You might wish it was if you looked at some of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even the sheriff's deputies did not allege that any of the video footage was fake, so no deep fakes, etc.
N. Rodgers: But what they said was that it caused them emotional distress for him to make fun of them in his music, which is basically what he's done. His music is basically parody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's using a real life situation, but he's also going over the top with it when he describes it and stuff like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's get to the key details, and then we'll go ahead and look at, I would say, the larger implications.
N. Rodgers: Satire. The word is satire.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He was being satirical. The verdict outcome, the jury rejected all the claims of the deputies, including defamation and emotional distress and awarded them no damage. Now, the defense strategy, Afroman's strategy was, I only used footage that I recorded from cameras at my home, and the footage was protected speech because I was making, as you just pointed out, Nia, a satirical commentary on how traumatic the police raid of my home was to me and my family. Now, the lawsuit stemmed from a 2022 raid on Afroman's home where the officers had secured a search warrant looking for drugs and kidnapped individuals,
N. Rodgers: Which I'm not entirely certain what judge signed that search warrant. But there were failures at a number of levels here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Almost immediately, Afroman turned this raid experience into music. He produced a song called Lemon Pound Cake, which referred to a specific, if you will, deputy's reaction to food in his house, where a deputy goes to the kitchen as part of the search and sees lemon pound cake.
N. Rodgers: He's clearly looks like he's about to try a piece of it. He doesn't, but he is looking longingly at it. Afroman pounces on that as a, are you kidding me. After you're half destroying my home? It's not that they destroyed his home so much as they searched the pockets of his suits. They went way out of the range of what you would think a normal search for a kid. I'm pretty sure there's no kidnapped individual that will fit in the pocket of your suit.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even if they were looking for drugs. Here's the other thing, and Afroman even acknowledged this during the defamation trial, much of his commentary should have been directed at the judge who signed the search warrant. Because the sheriff's deputies had broad latitude within the search warrant far greater than I could only imagine.
N. Rodgers: The other thing is they come in with their weapons drawn.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They don't knock on the door and say, hi, Mr. Afroman sir, we've got the suspicion that you have kidnapped people here. Do you mind if we come in and take a look? They don't do any of that. They come in with their guns already drawn.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because, in part, they're alleging that what they're searching for is evidence of ongoing crimes.
N. Rodgers: Kidnapping, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. That's what they're looking for.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, in part, Afroman became famous because of a rather humorous rap song, which I have listened to a number of times entitled Because I Got High. But he then becomes even more famous when he released the security camera footage of the officers who broke down the door to his home and held him and his family at bay with drawn weapons, and they found nothing.
N. Rodgers: But they impounded money. They disconnected his cameras once they realized there were cameras there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They did stuff that is outside- anyway, I thought was shifty or shady.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's shady.
N. Rodgers: Why are you unplugging his cameras?
J. Aughenbaugh: The camera part really bothered me as did the holding them at bay at gunpoint. Because once you determined that they were not a threat to you or any other officer, there's no reason to go ahead and continue to hold them at bay at gunpoint. Now, the impounding of money, you and I have talked about that in a different episode. That is standard police practice across jurisdictions. Many of us find it constitutionally problematic, but nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: But one of the things that Afroman was arguing about why he was releasing the music was to pay for the damages that they did because when they impound your money, they can hold onto your money for a very long period of time. If somebody kicks your door in, that means that your house is instantly not secure. Until you get your door fixed, your house continues to not be secure. It's not like you can say, honey, we'll just go off to work and leave the door hanging off the hinges because I'm sure nobody will wander into our house and take stuff. You wouldn't do that. If your door was kicked off the hinge, you wouldn't leave your house until you could get it fixed. That's part of it too, is he was trying to recoup money to fix some of the damages.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But in the process, he actually engaged in a form of speech that has been long characteristic of American politics and American constitutional law, which is he did a parody.
N. Rodgers: Sarcasm.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The power of sarcasm.
J. Aughenbaugh: The power of sarcasm. He mocked the officers, particularly the one that stopped amidst the raid to look at the fresh pound cake on his counter. Here's a quote that he told the NPR, and I love this quote, I asked myself as a powerless Black man in America, what can I do to the cops that kicked my door in, tried to kill me in front of my kids, stole my money, and disconnected my cameras. The only thing I could come up with was make a funny rap song about them and use the money to pay for the damages they did, and move on.
N. Rodgers: He was willing to move on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Move on. But the cops weren't.
N. Rodgers: I do think the highlighted, you said something about the absurdly broad warrant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness.
N. Rodgers: The warrant says, quotes, narcotics and kidnapping.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's like air and dirt. Kidnapping what? Kidnapping who? Narcotics of what kind? What are we talking about here?
J. Aughenbaugh: If this was an SAT question, it would be thrown out for going ahead and being just impossibly broad.
N. Rodgers: He understands the narcotics, by the way, because he admits that he's gotten high in the past. He admits that marijuana is his friend. He's not suggesting that, but he's like, where the heck did the kidnapping come from? Who is it you think I'm holding here against their will?
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, the videos in the music, but particularly the videos, became extremely popular. One of the Instagram posts, he wore a shirt with surveillance images and thanked one of the officers for helping him get 5.4 million views on TikTok.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot. He went viral, basically.
J. Aughenbaugh: At this point, the six officers and the one detective who participated in the raid got irate because of the public abuse and ridicule.
N. Rodgers: Because side note, when something gets 5.4 million views on TikTok, some of those people are going to go social media of the officers. They're going to go to the police department social media and they're going to put in nasty comments. They're going to say, yes, you're a big hairy jerk and all kinds of other things. They're going to talk about you being fat and looking at cake and whatever. They're going to say all kinds of ugly things. Some people, because the Internet is insane, are going to say, I'm going to kill your wife and kids. I'm going to just burn down your house. I'm going to destroy your life because you were horrible to Afroman because the Internet is full of crazy people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It is also full of good people. It is not Afroman's fault that some people on the Internet cannot control their inner beast and they go and they say nasty things to people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, Afroman did not stop with his satire, and shall we say, mockery of the cops with just his videos. During his trial, he appeared.
N. Rodgers: He wore the best suit made of American flags. It was bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: He appeared in a flag suit. Again, his strategy was to go ahead and attract maximum attention. This is not unusual in the history of American constitutional law. Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, for those of you who don't know, Hustler magazine was a hardcore pornography magazine of the 1970s and '80s.
N. Rodgers: And Aughie's not kidding hardcore.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Some really graphic stuff. When Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt was taken to court, he appeared, he wore a flag diaper to court. Then the funny thing was, he was charged with desecrating the flag, which was a charge that was later dropped, but nevertheless. Abbie Hoffman, infamous political activist of the 1960s, wore a shirt resembling the American flag to a house on American Activities Committee hearing protesting the Vietnam War. He said-
N. Rodgers: I love this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Quote, I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country, unquote.
N. Rodgers: Which his conviction was later overturned.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But Foreman, again, he is a singer. He makes parody videos. He did go after one of the deputy sheriffs, one Lisa Phillips in a music clip that was posted on Instagram after she gave tearful testimony in court. His question was, where was these tears when she was standing in my yard with a loaded AR 15 ready to swiss cheese me? His argument throughout was, if they are getting any public abuse, if the idiots on the Internet are directing their ire towards them and their families, it's all their fault. They wrongly raided my house. There should not have been a lawsuit. If you're forcing me to go through this experience again, I'm going to have some fun at your expense.
N. Rodgers: If you had not started it in the first place, you would not have to be answering for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you're going to do it, then you have to be ready to answer for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, let's go ahead and shift into serious mode for just a few moments here, Nia. First of all, courts have ruled that citizens may film officers in public, even though police officers frequently don't want to be filmed while they are performing their duties. Courts have been pretty consistent, if police officers are engaged in their official duties, the public has every right to film them.
N. Rodgers: When they put up their hand and try to push your camera away, that's a no-go. Unless they're undercover and you're blowing their cover, which you should not do, if you run into a police officer that's doing that, please don't do that, you're endangering lives. But if they're in their uniform and they are acting like a butthead in public. Those people who pulled out and filmed the George Foreman [sic] murder had perfect right to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He was in public. They were both in public when that was happening.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, you pointed to one of the most important distinctions. There's a difference between public official work and undercover.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, you shouldn't be blowing people's cover because that could really get somebody hurt.
J. Aughenbaugh: Moreover, police officers, like any other person, do have a right to privacy, which means you can't film them at their home.
N. Rodgers: You can't follow them home.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or at the gym, etc.
N. Rodgers: Through their windows, that's weird and you need to stop because that's illegal. They're just people at that point. They're not being police officers. When they're just people going about their lives.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But there is a couple hundred years of case law, Nia, that support what Afroman did. It's rooted in the First Amendment.
N. Rodgers: If musicians were not allowed to make fun of public officials, how much satire would we lose out of people making fun of various presidents? Artists are allowed, we have allowed that. We have allowed satirical.
N. Rodgers: When Chevy Chase used to fall down as Gerry Ford on Saturday Night Live, he would pretend to fall down. Gerald Ford fell down twice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Twice, in a long public career, by the way.
N. Rodgers: Right. Twice. But Chevy Chase fell down every week for several years when he was being Gerald Ford and you're like, well, that's part of being a public figure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, Afroman was expressing criticism of the police in the raid on his house. Did he attract more attention because he is a celebrity? Yes. But the downside, and this is where usually most judges and juries fall is if we start reining in parody and satire, it will have a chilling effect on political speech, so if you don't want to be the subject of such parodies, then perhaps you should do what as a government official.
N. Rodgers: Not act like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Do better. Again, I am sympathetic to the Sheriff Deputies and the detectives families.
N. Rodgers: Because they are not involved in this and when the Internet goes after families, that's wrong. Just like when opponents go after candidates children. When people used to make fun of how Chelsea Clinton looked because she was 13. She's not a pretty 13-year-old unlike other children, you still don't make fun of her. It's just wrong. It's wrong to go after a person who is not even tangentially involved in this. Don't go It's fine to go after the deputies. You can make fun of the guy for looking at pound cake all you want to. That's fine. But his wife and kids are off limits. That's not, so I do have sympathy for that, but I also don't think it's defamation.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it's not defamation.
N. Rodgers: Stalking on the Internet is a real thing, and probably what they should have done was gone after the people who were directly harming them and gone after them for stalking instead of going after Afroman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Afroman.
N. Rodgers: But they went after him because he was a celebrity and he had more money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Of course.
N. Rodgers: Than Joe Schmuck on the Internet.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're going to file defamation lawsuit listeners, make sure you include as one of the defendants somebody with deep pockets.
N. Rodgers: It's just Aughie was recently at a conference where he was discussing a case Winnebago v DeShaney. In that case and it's a long involved case, and we will not discuss it here. But one of the people, one of the students had suggested that they could have sued the social worker and he's like, no, you sue the social work agency because the agency actually has money. Social workers do not have any money. Social workers work for very little money, so you suing a social worker isn't going to help you. You suing the agency is the government, and the government has deeper pockets.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, that's right.
N. Rodgers: Going after the person with money, I understand why they did that, but they were wrong about defamation in this instance because it doesn't rise, it doesn't meet the definition of defamation, does it?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it doesn't. Because, again, the idea with defamation is you'll ruin the person's reputation. But the reason why your reputation is the subject of a satire is because of your behavior. It's not that they didn't do anything. Again, we understand having government jobs, in particular, certain government jobs is difficult. But if you're going to do those jobs, you have to do them well. Why? Because you have been given power and authority legitimately, legally that nobody else possesses.
N. Rodgers: What kills me is that, I don't think that Afroman was going to sue them over the raid until they brought this defamation suit.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Under qualified immunity, they had a chance to just walk away from all of it and have none of it reflect on them.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's not sued them. He did not sue.
N. Rodgers: If they had just walked away and not done anything about it, it could have all been over and instead.
J. Aughenbaugh: He responded in many ways like any good capitalist would, which is, I'm going to turn around a tragedy in my life and I'm going to make money out of it.
N. Rodgers: Good for you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good for you.
N. Rodgers: I don't know that anybody would have gone any further with it if they hadn't done a lawsuit. But I do think you wrote something in here, it's very interesting and I would like to point it out as a very serious thing about the case. I love his suits and I love his hair and I love his attitude in the courtroom. But you wrote in your notes that, he's over the top in every respect. But if you take away the flag suit and the over the top lyrics, he has a point. If you add the suit and the rap, he has an audience. Like all they did was empower their enemy to be even more loud and popular?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: By opening a forum for him where he could appear in an over the top way, and it was on everybody's feed.
J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness. I saw it before the defamation lawsuit. It appeared on my TikTok feed, and I'm like, whoa. Hey, why's that Deputy staring at that piece of pound cake? Then I'm like, wait a minute, that was part of a raid? What's a deputy doing like staring at pound cake in a raid for drug paraphernalia?
N. Rodgers: You think it's hidden in the cake? What is going on here. You're right. He did the capitalist thing by taking advantage. You're going to make me show up in court, then I'm going to make the biggest splashiest show in court. I'm not going to show up in a pinstripe suit and a quiet ma ma ma.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: He was like, heck, no, man, I'm going to wear a suit made out of American flags, and I'm going to be standing here as loud visually as I can possibly be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yep, 'cause the more I thought about it, it was just like, he had a point. But then he also had something else, he had an audience and this is a person who's an artist, and many artists know how to use the audience.
N. Rodgers: Or work an audience.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That's the thing that when these cops went ahead and served that search warrant, First of all, when they went and got it and then when they got it from the judge and then served it the way they did, they made a huge mistake.
N. Rodgers: Yep, and if they had just walked away, they might have gotten away with it, but then they decided to sue him and he was like, no, you didn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Game is on.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Game is on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, and I know listeners have heard me say this before, but there's an old adage. Never wrestle with a pig. Why? Because the pig loves it and both of you all get dirty. You don't go to war with a rap artist who knows how to use modern.
N. Rodgers: Who's clearly going to make music about whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Use modern media platforms to their advantage. This is what they do. This is their livelihood.
N. Rodgers: You're out of your league, walk away. If Tiger Wood says, hey, man, want to hit around the balls, you're like, no.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Only if it costs me absolutely nothing, and I just get to watch you play. Otherwise, if there's any money on this, no. If there's reputation on this, no.
J. Aughenbaugh: If somebody's going to record this, absolutely not.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: If Shohei Ohtani says, hey, Aughie, you want to do a round of batting practice. I'll be like, only if it's only you and me, there's no video recording, and neither one of us speaks of this again.
N. Rodgers: Because I want to enjoy the experience, but I don't want to live with the film afterwards.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I'm certainly not going to go ahead and talk about how you struck me out for 15 minutes while you threw. Then when I threw you batting practice, you went ahead and hit balls out of the stadium. No, I'm not going to do that.
N. Rodgers: My goodness. Can we also just say, we get so much, little guy doesn't win news but sometimes it's very satisfying when we get. When the rest of us can go, wow, that raid seems over the top and someone is actually held accountable in a negative way for it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, I agree with that.
N. Rodgers: I know it doesn't balance. It doesn't balance the wheel or whatever, but it's a little bit on the side of the little guy for, how come it never goes my way? How come it always goes towards the government or towards the deeper pocketed or the bigger, whatever it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: As Afroman said, in his interview with the NPR. I'm [inaudible 00:30:54] Black man and I had to go ahead and watch.
N. Rodgers: My kids be terrified.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, a bunch of cops go ahead and basically terrify me and my family, and there was not a darn thing I could do about it. Then I went ahead and said, well, maybe I could go ahead and flip the tables.
N. Rodgers: It's empowering in some way that's psychologically makes me a little happy I have to.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't know if I would have reacted any differently than Afroman if I was one, a rapper.
N. Rodgers: Talented rapper.
J. Aughenbaugh: Talented rapper.
N. Rodgers: He's a talented rapper, if you go listen to him. I can rap, but I'm not talented, so I can rap well.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nobody is ever going to want to hear me rap.
N. Rodgers: They want to hear you before they want to hear me. But yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: But also knows how to use modern media. That's the other thing.
N. Rodgers: Marketing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. In this day and age, you and I've talked about this off recording, in this day and age, one has to be careful as a government official. Again, you have the power and the authority of the state behind you. But in this day and age, where everybody's got a cellphone with a camera.
N. Rodgers: Well, we live in the surveillance state. You should assume you are on camera all the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Camera all the time.
N. Rodgers: You should assume walking from here to there that you're on camera.
J. Aughenbaugh: Camera.
N. Rodgers: Keep that in mind when you pick your nose or you spit on the sidewalk or you do whatever it is, you've been filmed doing that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, just to give you an example, a couple of weeks ago, Nia, I was going for a bike ride and at the end of the bike ride, I see one of my neighbors, and I'm talking, and they're like, so you're going for your weekly bike ride. I'm like, how do you know? They're like, 'cause we see you on our.
N. Rodgers: Ring camera.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ring camera. I'm like, thanks for sharing that with me.
N. Rodgers: Thanks. Now, I'm totally creeped out. I appreciate it. Ring is now setting itself up to do facial recognition, all stuff like that. You should assume. What is it in England? From the time you leave your home to the time you get your job, it's 112 photographs of you are taken, something like that. It may even be more now.
J. Aughenbaugh: CCTV.
N. Rodgers: You are not outside of camera range and that's not even all the people who will pull out their cell phone if you start doing something stupid publicly and take pictures of you, so public officials probably need to be more aware.
J. Aughenbaugh: I almost think that there needs to be explicit training. Particularly for law enforcement officers on how do you do your job in a high surveillance world?
N. Rodgers: How do you deescalate from that surveillance? If you want people to not film because you're worried. For instance, there is an instance where you would not want, as a police officer, people to film you doing your public thing, and that is if you are in some way engaging with a minor. Because it's okay if they film you, but you don't want them to film the minor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Minor.
N. Rodgers: Being able to say that to people, please don't get the minor's face in your camera work or please don't. Please protect the minor. Because it would be nice if we could let children choose when they want to be on the Internet versus forcing them to be on the Internet.
J. Aughenbaugh: I agree with you about that. But anyways, hat tip.
N. Rodgers: Afroman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and hat tip to Julie for going ahead and asking us to go ahead and do an episode on this because I got to admit watching some of the videos and listening to some of the songs, I'm like, Wow, the chutzpah. But also just the sheer chutzpah of the deputies.
N. Rodgers: To do it the way they did it and then they come back and say, you heard our [inaudible 00:35:21] , and we want to sue you. I'm like, ooh. Nobody cares about your [inaudible 00:35:26] , my friend.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Go ahead, Nia.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, thank you for a great season. When next people hear from us, we will be doing this summer of SCOTUS. Looking forward to that, although Aughie will be exhausted because there's only 8,000 cases that have come out.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'll read single one of these.
N. Rodgers: Some of which will be quite big and some of which will not be. But that's what we have to look forward to in a little while.
J. Aughenbaugh: Since we're giving out kudos. Nia and I want to go ahead and thank our [inaudible 00:36:06] listeners. I've lost track. Nia probably can share with us the number of seasons we have been recording.
N. Rodgers: Twenty one.
J. Aughenbaugh: Twenty one?
N. Rodgers: This is our 21st season, which for us, by the way, a season is not a year. Somebody said to me, you've been recording for 21 years? I was like, no. We do three seasons a year, so we've been recording for seven years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Seven years and over 320 plus episodes. We want to thank our [inaudible 00:36:38] listeners. We probably don't do that enough and we should.
N. Rodgers: Thanks for sticking with us. We really appreciate it. We appreciate all your requests and advice and your commentary. We know when you don't like things, and we're okay with that. We appreciate that, too. We like knowing when you like something and when you don't like something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah,. In particular, the suggestions you all make, we can't respond to all of them but many of your suggestions have led to particular series or particular episodes and we thank you for that. Because as Nia just mentioned, when we started out, we didn't know where this would go, and at times, it's taken on a life of its own. In some seasons, like the current one, it seems like really.
N. Rodgers: We're just responding to the raw flailing nerve, that is the Trump administration too and world events.
J. Aughenbaugh: The American international political environment. But it's given us a large table or plate for us to go ahead and explore civil discourse. We thank you for being there for us, so hat tip to you all. Thanks, Nia, for another excellent season. Much obliged.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
You've been listening to Civil Discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.