podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Monday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of American politics. It’s not about the horserace, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the American electorate. Audie draws on the deep well of CNN reporters, editors, and contributors to examine topics like the nuances of building electoral coalitions, and the role the media plays in modern elections. Every Thursday, Audie pulls listeners out of their digital echo chambers to hear from the people whose lives intersect with the news cycle, as well as deep conversations with people driving the headlines. From astrology’s modern renaissance to the free speech wars on campus, no topic is off the table.
What It Means to Be Patriotic
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Jul 4, 2024
This Independence Day, as we gather around the grill and watch fireworks with our friends and families, we wanted to revisit a conversation Audie had with Baratunde Thurston, writer at Puck News and host of the PBS show America Outdoors.
What does it mean to love this country despite its divisions? How can we come together and hold space for the complexity of the American story? And what would those conversations sound like if we did?
Baratunde Thurston is a writer, host and executive producer of the PBS television series America Outdoors, creator and host of How To Citizen, and a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. His comedic memoir, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller.
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
Hey. It's Audie. And this Independence Day, as we gather around the grill – maybe watch fireworks with our friends and families – we wanted to bring you a conversation I had with Baratunde Thurston, writer at Puck News and host of the PBS show America Outdoors. So we talked last year around Thanksgiving, but Baratunde's insights actually feel more relevant today. I mean, we explore the questions what does it mean to love this country despite its divisions? How can we come together and hold space for the complexity of the American story? And what would those conversations sound like if we did? So here it is. Thanks for listening and have a Happy Fourth. Baratunde Thurston is what some might call an unlikely patriot.
Baratunde Thurston
00:00:47
When you write a book that's called How to Be Black, you get some interesting responses, especially if you've used a very subtle, motivating language to get people to acquire the property.
Audie Cornish
00:01:00
'He's a political commentator, a standup comedian-turned-activist, and a bestselling author. His podcast, How to Citizen, is all about how to wield our power as citizens. In fact, he uses it as a verb.
Baratunde Thurston
00:01:13
What does it look like for your community to thrive? Make a list of the things you've done to help other people. Not just yourself, not just your immediate family. Other people in the community. You're citizening when you do all those things.
Audie Cornish
00:01:25
Okay, but here's the thing. A 2023 Gallup poll said the percentage of U.S. adults of all ages who said they're extremely proud to be an American is at a record low. That same year, The Wall Street Journal found that just 38% of Americans said patriotism was very important to them. That was down from 70% back in 1998. But Baratunde has not given up on this idea. In fact, he made a project of trying to understand our country through its land and its people. It's a PBS show called America Outdoors. We started our conversation with when he first understood what it meant to be an American.
Baratunde Thurston
00:02:04
'I remember, my mother Arnita Lorraine Thurston, born and raised in D.C., just like me and her parents before her. Three generations of Washingtonians born into the nation's capital. And, you know, the participation that my mother invited me into was community meetings, was peace vigils in the neighborhood against gun violence and drug deals, was cultural marches and events at Malcolm X Park. So I think my mom was. introducing me to America in a pretty well-rounded way. She also just introduced me to some skepticism about the simplistic narrative of America as merely good or exclusively good.
Audie Cornish
00:02:51
His ideas of America have been evolving ever since.
Baratunde Thurston
00:02:55
There is a lot going on to not be proud of. There is an implicit promise in America that the next generation does better than the ones that begat them.
Audie Cornish
00:03:11
Right.
Baratunde Thurston
00:03:12
That promise has been broken.
Audie Cornish
00:03:14
We often hear this talked about in the economic sense, but I hear you talking it even more broadly?
Baratunde Thurston
00:03:19
It is literally true in the economic sense, but it is also literally becoming true in the life expectancy sense. We are collectively dying younger. That's not what the brochure said. You know, most of us didn't choose to be born here, but we buy into an idea implicitly, with our continued participation and with the momentum of being a part of a collective identity.
Audie Cornish
00:03:45
So is there value in maintaining and rebuilding it? Right? So you and I aren't going to just talk here about patriotism, like, here's all the ways that it's not that real or it's not that good, but like, I want – you're someone who I feel like you've set about in your career in this moment of your career rebuilding your faith in America in some really interesting ways, right? And so, yeah, that's why I'm kind of asking you, you know what I mean? It's, like, so does it matter? Everyone is way down here. We just said the numbers. What would it take to rebuild? And is it worth it? Right? Like, given what you said about patriotism. Do we need the story? A story. Any story.
Baratunde Thurston
00:04:30
I think we need a story. I think we need a new story. We need to revise. You know some of the stories we've inherited. And make them fit more of us and make them big enough. Literally larger stories that can contain who and what America is right now. And we can appreciate that first draft, but also that it was a draft and that it is our obligation and opportunity to rewrite this together. Possibility is the most kind of persistent trait about America that I can connect with. And so, yeah, it's worth it. I think it's absolutely worth it. I think we have to understand that it's not instant. And what would it mean? What would it look like? I think we people, we humans, need a collective story to help us exist together. Because existing alone is a far worse option.
Audie Cornish
00:05:26
And it does feel like some stories, some newer stories are being rejected. So, I think you've pointed out the multiracial, multicultural democracy, is certainly seeing a backlash.
Baratunde Thurston
00:05:40
Yes. Yes, a lot of people grew up with a particular promise within the set of promises that defined the American story. And one of these particular promises was that you as a white person get more. You just get more. You're just valued more. We wrote the story in laws. We wrote them in economic rules. We wrote them in housing policies and in medical practices.
Audie Cornish
00:06:07
And even the way you're saying that, I can hear someone challenging that story, right? Someone saying that those are things that I have earned. That those are things my family has earned. And you, Baratunde, what you're doing right now is even in this one question
Baratunde Thurston
00:06:24
Mmhmm.
Audie Cornish
00:06:25
Kicking at the foundation of that story.
Baratunde Thurston
00:06:27
And I wouldn't use such a violent metaphor as kicking to describe what I'm doing. But I am adding. I believe in our ability and need to embrace paradoxes and multiple truths, and so I'll personalize it. I got where I am because I worked really hard. I got where I am because my ancestors worked really hard. I got where I am because I was born into this male body. I didn't work hard at all for that? Not at all. But I was lucky. So I am here by virtue of effort. And genetic lottery and social randomness. All of those are true. And so I am not rejecting anyone's hard work. I mean, I embrace my own. I am asking us to accept layers and multiplicity. Because simplicity just isn't it? We are not simply the result of our individual efforts. And we know that to be true.
Audie Cornish
00:07:36
I also think that at the kernel of every unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner conversation is the inability to deal with that paradox.
Baratunde Thurston
00:07:48
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:07:49
Who I am, what I've earned, what it means.
Baratunde Thurston
00:07:53
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:07:53
You know what I mean? There's there's always a bunch of news stories that like charticles or whatever around this time of year that where, we're like, what to do with those political conversations? But so many of those conversations, like the nugget of it is the offense comes when people feel like you are taking a wrecking ball to me with your political argument. My identity here. You're trashing it and people fight with each other. I mean, am I making that up? It's like every conversation can be boiled down, I feel like
Baratunde Thurston
00:08:26
No it it's it becomes personal. And that's part of the polarization that has spread throughout society. And it's not limited to the halls of Congress. It's showing up in business transactions and who you buy a chicken sandwich from. And, you know, you got to pick a side in everything. That's risky. But we know in our realest relationships we are not in relationship with a totally good person or a totally bad person. We know that the children we love and the spouses we marry, and the parents who brought us into this world are very imperfect. And we embrace multiplicity, duality, a full spectrum with all those people. We make excuses for ourselves and for the people we love, and we embrace more of them when we're doing our best.
Audie Cornish
00:09:31
I want to ask you a little bit about your show and what you've been doing recently. It's called America Outdoors. It's on PBS.
Baratunde Thurston
00:09:39
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:09:39
And at first the premise sounds kind of deceptively simple and very PBS. Like, look at this nice young man walking in the woods. He loves America. That's what I thought when I first saw it. I was like. You've got boots on. Ready!
Baratunde Thurston
00:09:56
Ready to go.
Audie Cornish
00:09:58
And then it got hard. The hard things come up on this show. I remember in this Arkansas episode, you visit this town, Elaine, Arkansas. In its history, is a massacre. What was it about this place? Why you wanted to go to it?
Baratunde Thurston
00:10:17
Elaine, Arkansas, in the Mississippi River Delta. Cotton country. Been that way for a long time. Very poor, very tiny, very Black, but not exclusively. And Elaine was the site of a race massacre in 1919, which means in the context of that time and a lot of American history, a mob of white people descending on the Black community and killing as many people as possible. Destroying their homes, destroying their lives, taking their property and whatever meager resources they have been able to collect. The excuse for this was that the Black people are planning an insurrection, which was used across many territories at the time in what's known as the Red Summer of 1919.
Audie Cornish
00:11:03
Yes. I, like I'm always talking about this. I feel like not enough people know about it.
Baratunde Thurston
00:11:07
No because it's a part of the story that we don't include when we talk about America's history.
Audie Cornish
00:11:12
It's often described as racial riots, but also actual white supremacist terrorism, specifically in that period where
Baratunde Thurston
00:11:21
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:11:21
You know, our law enforcement departments begin to exist to even tackle, like, the intensity of it. So Elaine was the scene of one of these.
Baratunde Thurston
00:11:33
'It's a tragic history. It is a sadly, non rare part of our history. In this case, it is more devastating than most. Many people have heard of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Black Wall Street and the devastation there and the lives, that were taken. But this is an order of magnitude more. It's, you know, hundreds of Black people of every age killed. So I went there, not just for that history. We went there because there's a bike trail that exists, the Delta Heritage Trail. It's a rails to trails transformation. And there is a group in Arkansas Bike POC. Bike POC. As this trail comes into this town on the rail lines that brought in a lot of federal troops who contributed to that massacre, there's something else possible on the trail now. People are coming in, they're bringing curiosity. They're bringing a need for coffee and money, economic activity. And the mayor, Lisa Hicks-Gilbert, wants to make sure that that flow of dollars that comes across that trail lands in the hands of some of these Black people who've been denied that opportunity. What was also powerful about doing this story for us is that so much of our history with land and with nature is not positive in this country. That's not just for Black people, but it's especially true for a lot of Black folk who were forced to work in these fields, who were lynched by these, you know, with these trees and who were slaughtered on this land. And so to be able to, regenerate a relationship with the land based on a multiracial coalition of folks on bikes, based on a healing experience, that's that's really important.
Audie Cornish
00:13:21
This is where I see your work feels different from other things that I've seen, like in that – that's a good example of literal rebuilding.
Baratunde Thurston
00:13:30
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:13:30
And, acknowledging a thing that happened without just leaving it there. Like a plaque that just says this is a bad thing that happened. The end. Like it just felt like you were trying to say that there's another story that could be told that would include more people and still could be good and almost patriotic.
Baratunde Thurston
00:13:54
You know, to love this country doesn't mean you celebrate the tragedies. That's that's perverse. I'm not arguing for that. It means you acknowledge their part in the story, and you work to add to the stories such that we don't repeat them, that we make something else in place of it. To to just stop at the acknowledgment is not enough. It's a but it's an essential step. You know, there's everybody wants to talk about healing, healing and reconciliation. Right. We got to heal. We got reconcile.
Audie Cornish
00:14:28
Yeah.
Baratunde Thurston
00:14:28
Healing requires an acknowledgment of the harm. Gotta understand the the damage done. You got to understand the injury. Doctors don't just start applying medicine randomly.
Audie Cornish
00:14:38
Right?
Baratunde Thurston
00:14:38
You gotta take a look and see what's going on.
Audie Cornish
00:14:38
'Yeah. But acknowledgment alone is not enough. And maybe it's my post-awokening cynicism, the 2020, that there was a sense that simply acknowledging something.
Baratunde Thurston
00:14:51
Yeah,.
Audie Cornish
00:14:53
Something really basic, like whether or not a Black person's life matters equally.
Baratunde Thurston
00:14:59
Matters.
Audie Cornish
00:14:59
To other people.
Baratunde Thurston
00:15:00
Yeah, yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:15:01
That once you had done the work of that acknowledgment. Well then. It's like "this is great."
Baratunde Thurston
00:15:08
We good! Yeah yeah. Yeah, no, sadly that's not enough.
Audie Cornish
00:15:10
Or even like, you know, not to be a hater, but land acknowledgements sometimes
Baratunde Thurston
00:15:13
It's necessary but not sufficient. Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:15:15
You know, for Native American and I'm like, we're still in a conference room. Like you're still doing the thing you were doing. Like, I just. I get it. But I also there's a part of me that feels like acknowledgment alone is not sufficient.
Baratunde Thurston
00:15:32
You are correct. Congratulations. You can advance to the next level of.
Audie Cornish
00:15:38
Of Cynicism?
00:15:39
Of citizening, of citizening.
Audie Cornish
00:15:41
Oh, that's better. That's way better.
Baratunde Thurston
00:15:43
Acknowledgement is necessary, but not sufficient. And so Elaine was, you know, a part of that, too. For me as a Black person, it was important to ride a bike along those train tracks, which were also murder delivery devices, and to laugh with joy with other people in that same space. It was also important, not just for my Black part, but for my American part, of my human part. And this bike group isn't just Black and Brown people. It's it was truly multiracial. There's white people. Part of the group. Every shade is represented because we got to do this together. It's not you know, it's not just like, "oh, we got to fix the white people, you know, there's something broken in them. They won't acknowledge the truth, and they're keeping all of us back." That's a little piece of the story.
Audie Cornish
00:16:34
Yeah, it sounds you have heard that, though, that that's a
Baratunde Thurston
00:16:35
We have our own – I have contributed to that.
Audie Cornish
00:16:39
Ooh, okay.
Baratunde Thurston
00:16:39
this is part of it's part of my evolution. It's not it's a natural. It is it has been the, the kind of default state of affairs when it comes to seeking justice. We change the systems, we change the laws. We get white people to be less bad. Right? Like that's the understating thing. That's the subtext of all of this. Let's fix them. And meanwhile we have our own healing to do as well. And that is not centered on their attitudes and experiences. It's centered on our history and our inherited trauma and our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with this physical space in the form of these outdoors and this land, which Elaine got a little piece of that. And there have been other moments in the series in America Outdoors, even more personal. And in our Oregon episode, I had my own, you know, unexpected moment that that I hope people check out.
Audie Cornish
00:17:32
After the break, what happened in Oregon and more.
Baratunde Thurston
00:17:36
It was extremely, extremely physically emotional. Lots of tears.
Audie Cornish
00:17:42
We'll be right back. Welcome back to The Assignment. I'm Audie Cornish. As part of Baratunde Thurston's trip to Oregon, he was all set to climb a tree with a local named Dustin.
Baratunde Thurston
00:18:13
Dustin is an arborist. And he is a beautiful, beautiful soul. Beautiful man. And we were going up this tree to experience that and have him talk about his life and his story and his relationship with nature. That's what the show does. It's an it's an outdoor show, but it's focused on people. And so we find people with a connection to nature for many reasons, including they work out there. So Dustin works in the outdoors, and he was taking me up this very big tree. And I reached a point where I couldn't go any further. And some of it was physical
Audie Cornish
00:18:46
Because you were scared? Tired?
Baratunde Thurston
00:18:49
Because I was overwhelmed with emotion.
Audie Cornish
00:18:55
Hmm.
Baratunde Thurston
00:18:55
Because I had reached a psychological limit, partially physical, partially exhaustion, maybe? But there was something else in the moment of pause that I. I couldn't fully name or explain. I just knew, no. Like, we're good, we're done. We're not going to finish this. And I'll be happy to talk to you back on Earth. We were maybe 40, 50 feet up, which is the highest I've ever climbed. At that size tree, you're not actually climbing trees. You're ascending rope that is adjacent to the tree and hanging from a very tall branch. So I'm up here dangling from rope, and that was not something I felt great about. And that was a moment that just triggered some memories, some pain, some historic drama. And I was like, I'm. I'm done.
Audie Cornish
00:19:54
One thing that happened to me during the George Floyd months is when you watch the video, you hear him cry out for his mother.
Baratunde Thurston
00:20:03
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:20:03
And at the time, my infant had been born March 2020. And in my nightmares, I imagined his cries that he was, like, calling for me. It was a very visceral, like me connecting to something in the news, but something, again, cultural and personal and, like, unexpected in a very visceral way. So when you say, I was feeling all these things hanging from a tree, my brain goes in too many directions.
Baratunde Thurston
00:20:34
'I felt a wave of anguish, grief and pain on behalf of my ancestors who've been through things like that, who have been lynched, who have a relationship with trees which is not at all positive. It's not about trimming them and healing them and appreciating them. It is about being victimized by people who abuse those trees and conscript them into very, very dastardly service. And, I felt a limit that I had reached. Where it got personal for me, you know, there was this, like, kind of general memory and ancestral kind of recollection, but then there was an individual sense of. I. I would push myself to kind of keep going. And I didn't want to. And I just made a decision to not continue. It was an important moment of self-determination, of assertion, of of holding a boundary, you know, around who I am and what I'm willing or unwilling to do. And that was a deeply honoring moment. For those ancestors who I was thinking of, right? But that's something really powerful. It's the most powerful thing that's happened to me, making any kind of show ever. And it was extremely, extremely physically emotional. Lots of tears. And Dustin, to his credit, felt me, you know, heard me open up and embraced me. Literally. Just held me. And he's like, I am so sorry. I have no concept. I'm paraphrasing, but I don't know what that's like. I can only imagine and I'm so sorry. And he just held me and we cried. And that was like him embracing my story. You know, it's just it was a beautiful healing moment and a wound opened up that I didn't even know was there. And so now he and I and as individual humans, we have some new chapter in our stories, you know, of ourselves. And of what's possible with these beautiful, majestic trees who do so much work on our behalf. And to this story of what this country is. It – that moment captures. So much of what I want for all of us in the collective sense of story of America and patriotism.
Audie Cornish
00:23:28
And who we think we are in a way is patriotism, right? It's the thing you aspire to be, and it is the best fulfilling the ideals of your country, right? The best version of that. What's your definition?
Baratunde Thurston
00:23:47
My definition of patriotism. I have two. I have the one I think people think it means. And I have the one that I think it means. I think people think patriotism means celebration. Adoration. And kind of lionization of their country. I think it means repping your country. Waving the flag and singing the songs and believing in, in a positive sense, the the positive attributes of your country and screaming those from the mountaintop. So there's there's a level of marketing associated with the patriotism that I have perceived that we're number one. We're number one.
Audie Cornish
00:24:31
Yeah, that's little bit of cynicism, though, right? I mean, it's a story. Who doesn't want to tell a good story about themselves?
Baratunde Thurston
00:24:37
Yes. But I think the where it comes up short is when that story gets challenged and you introduce some truthful element of the story that doesn't align with rah rah positivity. Many people have a hard time with that, and they also define patriotism as a rejection of that true story. And so there is a deeper patriotism that is possible when we embrace the complexity and say, yeah, we've we did some great things and we did some dirt and we're still here and we still have possibility to be even better than we were before. But it doesn't serve us to pretend that it was always all good.
Audie Cornish
00:25:23
This is probably the part that nationally, in terms of the culture wars we reckon with most right now, right?
Baratunde Thurston
00:25:31
Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:25:31
The like, what does that story look like? And what does it mean to critique it? And is there such thing as critiquing it too much all the time, to the point where you're destructive to the project itself, right?
Baratunde Thurston
00:25:45
Hello James Baldwin.
Audie Cornish
00:25:45
Yeah.
Baratunde Thurston
00:25:46
And many others.
Audie Cornish
00:25:47
But that feels like the kernel of the discussion right now, right? Like the breaking down of the story and what goes up in its place.
Baratunde Thurston
00:25:54
It is the kernel, but proportions matter in kind of painting a picture of that divide. And there is, I don't believe, any curriculum, formal curriculum taught in this country, which is in any sense majority critique. Right? We're not in a world of American history as taught in middle schools or high schools in this country, being 51% America's garbage, right? We're at some ratio of 90% positive, 80% positive, maybe 70% positive. I think the folks who project that fear and hold that fear are really attuned to kind of any critique. If there's an ounce of critique in in the quart, I don't know why I went to a liquid measurement metaphor, but here I am. That's too much. And it poisons the entire batch. And, I, I don't think that is healthy. But it's hard.
Audie Cornish
00:26:55
It is. And one of the reasons why I wonder that vulnerability exists is actually because of something you said. I'm like, drawing this connection now where you said America is a faith based institution, but not necessarily in the religious sense, in the marketing sense.
Baratunde Thurston
00:27:12
It just requires a deeper faith to maintain it. So you could see that some challenge to a simple American story of we great. City on a hill. Hurrah! Some challenge to that breaks down someone's faith because they're like, no, that's what my daddy did.
Audie Cornish
00:27:32
Devil's devil's advocate, okay?
Baratunde Thurston
00:27:36
My daddy would never do that to me.
Audie Cornish
00:27:37
Yes. So something like the Founding Fathers, right? Like, and the whole like, did the founding fathers have slaves? Did they do this? Did they do that? Why are you talking about that? Let's talk about the thing that they created, which was American democracy.
Baratunde Thurston
00:27:48
Nobody talk about my momma.
Audie Cornish
00:27:50
Yeah. So you can see how that how people might want to preserve that story in a certain position.
Baratunde Thurston
00:28:01
Yes.
Audie Cornish
00:28:02
To quote unquo – to keep the faith.
Baratunde Thurston
00:28:05
To keep the faith. But my critique of that sensitivity to critique is that it is a weaker faith. That cannot withstand challenge and get deeper in response.
Audie Cornish
00:28:19
Right.
Baratunde Thurston
00:28:20
Here's a here's a short personal story to illustrate this. During my childhood, I was maybe nine years old. Approximate. We had some serious financial difficulties. It was just me and my mom in the house. She had to declare bankruptcy, and she told me. And she showed me the numbers, and she showed me the books. She also told me, you know, I used to do a lot of marijuana, I did reefer. That's how she referred to it. Here's here's who I was. Right. Here's the some of the stuff I did. And I'm telling you this so that later in life, I don't want you to be surprised by any of these things. I don't want somebody not in this family to come to you and say, you know, your mama did this or that and you to be tore up about it. You know, you guys ran out of money here. I want you to know now. And she. It was appropriate, probably in the classic sense. It wasn't appropriate for nine year old. But she treated me like someone who could handle that as a way to protect me. By honoring my ability to handle that truth and to inoculate me against later sensitivity and denial of that truth. And so someone could chip away at my faith in my mother later in life. If they say, you know, your mom was so broke she declared bankruptcy, what are you talking about? My mama would. And they said, I could be like, I've been known that. What else you got? You know.
Audie Cornish
00:29:41
Thank you so much for sharing your work with us and talking about it in a different way. It's been a pleasure to watch you develop over the years. I can remember, like our first interview about your podcast, and it just feels like you're you're on to something, young man.
Baratunde Thurston
00:30:03
Well, thank you, young woman. I am – many of us are down on each other, right? That's that's down on America, down on the project. We don't feel great about it. And there is a sense of crisis. There is a sense of collapse. There's a sense of death, of something we've held dear or something we've tried. And maybe it just didn't work. And the other thing I'm trying to embrace is that there is something dying here. There is some story that no longer works. Some of that story was never built for who we are now, and it needs to die. Death isn't just a bad thing. It's a real thing. It's a true thing, and it's part of the cycle of life. And so when we know that death is a part of the picture. How do we treat it? How do we acknowledge it? How do we mourn well? How do we honor? And, where, most of my work is focused is how do we also see the new life that is emerging? For as much as we are failing in our democracy and frustrated with our elected officials and each other, we're also building some new muscles, and we're experimenting, and we're figuring out new ways to live together and work together.
Audie Cornish
00:31:25
As painful as it is to see things breaking down. It also means there's a chance to make something else.
Baratunde Thurston
00:31:32
Yeah. And that. And that letting go is hard. But when we let go of something, we make room for something new. And so let's also look to what new could we do here. What is the embrace that is possible after we acknowledge the wound?
Audie Cornish
00:31:55
That was Baratunde Thurston. He hosted the podcast How to Citizen and the TV show America Outdoors. That's on PBS. He's also a writer at Puck News. I highly recommend you check out his newsletter. And that's it for today's episode. If you liked it, please share it. If you loved it, go ahead and give us five stars and a review because, frankly, it does help people give the show a chance. The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Lori Galarreta, and Jennifer Lai in 2023. Matt Martinez is the senior producer of our show. Mixing and sound design for this episode was by Michael Hammond. Dan Dzula is our technical director and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. I'm Audie Cornish, and thank you for listening.
