 Okay, so according to this, there have been, quote, unquote, documented unicorn sightings in southern Germany, Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Chad, and even all the way in the forests of Maine up along the border with Canada. Wow. They really get around. Good evening and welcome to For Your Reference, brought to you by your friendly neighborhood librarians at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I'm Robin Beatonbo. I'm Paris Layland. And I'm Sarah Johnson. And we're here to tell you all about unicorns. Okay, well not a lot about unicorns, really. We've got a lot of other things we'll get to. Unicorns, though, are one of many mythical creatures that are documented in a pseudoscience called cryptozoology. So they're not real? I am sorry to say they are not. As belief systems go, I guess the Church of Unicorn is fairly harmless? Well, as you know, the central focus of our time here is in helping people navigate an increasingly complex media and information environment. And traditional critical thinking approaches tend to emphasize the strength of arguments and generally speaking, focus on the soundness of reasoning and reliability of evidence. Critical analysis, on the other hand, emphasizes the appeal of an argument. What makes it persuasive to an audience? So from that perspective, the key to understanding why people believe irrational things and in neutralizing harmful discourses and understanding the appeal of a particular discourse. And that is what our guests will be discussing tonight. This is reviewer two. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to our first guest tonight, who is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at Mississippi State University, as well as a doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information at the University of Alabama. Welcome to you, Jeremy Rodgerson. Thank you, Robin. So tell us a little bit about you and your work. Well, I study rhetoric and more specifically, I study rhetoric of violence, especially as it relates to war. And I'm working on my dissertation currently where I'm looking at the rhetoric around torture and how that kind of came to be normalized during the war on terror, especially after 9-11. And I'm looking at it from a few different aspects. I look at presidential rhetoric, how members of the administration talked about it, argumentation strategies that they use. I've got a chapter about media where I look at shows like 24 and movies like Zero, Dark 30, to see how narratives are crafted around torture and what these media are saying, what arguments they're making about the use of torture. And then the final chapter, I'm going to look at public memory, but also how the Chicago Police Torture case in the 70s through the early 90s. That was kind of a big secret, but unkept secret in Chicago has direct links to torture in the war on terror. And then how we memorialize that, think about it after the fact. Great, sounds really interesting. I look forward to reading. If you like reading about torture, it's interesting. It can be a bit overwhelming. Yeah, I think you have to read some really fluffy children's books or something on the side, right? Absolutely. All right. In the role of reviewer to tonight, we have Dr. Lucas Logan. He's an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Houston downtown. Welcome, Lucas. Howdy, Robin. Howdy. So tell us a little bit about you and what you do down there in Houston. OK, well, yeah, I'm an associate professor of communication. Mostly teach media, run our little radio station. It's kind of up and coming right now on campus. Teach mostly law. Traditionally, all my research, my dissertation, those kind of things are on copyright law, piracy, stealing stuff online, that kind of thing. Lately, I've made more of a pivot toward the broader topic of intermediary liability law and the way that just the state versus private interests govern the way that people are allowed to communicate online. So that covers everything from section 230 of the Communication Decency Act and copyright strikes on YouTube, Donald Trump getting kicked off Twitter, all of these kind of things, kind of the intersection there. And that's mostly what I've been focusing on lately. That's kind of been my writing for the last couple of years. So speaking of unicorns, in a previous episode, we debuted a unicorn mask of mine. I think both of you are familiar with it and have participated in some similar silliness in the past, because here we have Jeremy. They call him Squirrely for a reason, Ryderson. And Lucas, our horse's head, Logan. And if you know Lucas well, you know that could have gone a different way. Anyway, tonight we're going to let you guys get on with it. The question you animals will be talking about this evening is, did inflammatory political rhetoric incite an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th? And we'll remind everybody in the audience, if you have questions, you can drop them in the comment section on YouTube or Facebook and we'll bring them up during the Q&A. When my face reappears on the screen, that's the Q for you guys to wrap things up and the Q&A will be getting ready to start. Take it away. OK, well, I'll go first. And I can't say for certain that one thing caused another. I mean, correlation does not equal causation. But I think we can make the case that rhetoric certainly played a significant role. And traditionally, we look at rhetoric, like you mentioned Robin earlier, as persuasion and argument. What about the argument do you find persuasive? But there's another strain of thought about rhetoric that rhetoric is constitutive. And constitutive rhetoric draws on symbolic interactionism. And it argues that language and symbols can constitute or essentially shape or create a collective identity for an audience. So when the president, for example, after the election appeals to all Americans, they're trying to unite the populace after a very divisive election. Or they refer to the audience as patriots. They will kind of come to embody that idea, that collective identity about themselves. And over the campaign in this four years in office, Trump characterized his supporters as people who were losing something. So he appealed to the threat of loss of their way of life or their America, for example, but also the threat of others, the ones that are taking this away. In addition to that, he appealed to this idea of victimhood. So they are not only losing something, but they're victims in the process. And so the supporters came to embody that identity over time. And if we view January 6th as a culmination of all of Trump's previous rhetoric, it makes sense that his supporters saw these previous threats as somehow very real now. And they're losing their president, which in turn for them means that they're gonna lose everything else that they've come to believe. So essentially they were kind of primed for that moment. So I think while we can't say that absolutely what he said on that day led to an insurrection, I think there's a plausible case that over time the way he characterized his audience gave them a sense of, well, it's now or never because everything is going to be lost otherwise. All right, I'll step back a bit. And I'll say that like over time, I've come to like the ghosts of my professor's past of our looking down harshly. I mean, to de-emphasize a lot of the role of rhetoric in these kinds of circumstances. And first of all, I even contend with the idea that it was even really an insurrection. And I'm not gonna get conspiratorial and say that it was the FBI or the Capitol Police trying to get another billion dollars in funding and overthrow, defund the police. But I'll also say like, if you look at who was behind the things who's responsible, like the oath keepers guys, the ones that are getting arrested for sedition, there's one, if you've seen him, he's got an eye patch and he's bald. I heard him described as a snake potato skin as a reference to snake bliskin. But if you look like there was a few people really coordinating that. I think the other people, and this year was where I completely agree with you, I don't think that they were really incited to go in and overthrow the Capitol and all of this because of Donald Trump. But I think they were kind of, and while there were some of the violent ones and there were the white extremist groups that were infiltrating, trying to coordinate this thing and honestly completely failing at coordinating this thing. I think that a lot of the people were there as just kind of like race and class privilege into thinking that they could just walk into the Capitol and do whatever they wanted. And I mean, it was a lot of it, they were just like at a festival. And if you look at the backgrounds of these people, they are people that feel that they're experiencing loss and that they're losing America, as you said. But for instance, I think the guy who had his, I'm kind of going through the cast of characters that we all saw on January 6th. The dude that had his feet up on Pelosi's desk, I'm pretty sure it was like a jet ski dealer in Arkansas, which is exactly the kind of people that were real estate agents. There were people that were shocked that they were getting put in handcuffs because that doesn't happen to people like them. But then at the same time, I won't say that they're completely believing something irrational. I do believe that people are getting lost in their own realities now because you go on, just Facebook, Twitter, whatever. You get in a hole, this reality is just so subjective when you are on social media, when you are getting wrapped up in QAnon or anything like that. But I think that is something that's gone kind of far back. Like they used to call them teacots on Twitter, the Twitter conservatives during the Obama era. And so this has been culminating in their minds for a while. And the thing is though, like, maybe we're all dealing with this, we are living during the collapse of empire, we are in a U.S. that is just collectively everything is getting worse and worse. And even though those people are still, you know, like affluent or what have you, they are, you know, they are looking around and seeing like a declining nation and that around them. And so I think that that more than anything, I think like the rhetoric of Trump, you know, helps them move along with that. I think a more vivid example now would be the, and more relevant would be the truckers in Canada. And so I think that the rhetorical devices there do empower them. It does incite people, as someone who's actually been in handcuffs over inciting a riot, you know, I do know a little bit about, you know, inciting people to do violence or whatever. It was just a food fight. It wasn't actual violence. But I just, I would downplay like the role of Trump's rhetoric in it, even as far as, you know, empowering anybody. I think that it was his desperate attempts to do that and to sort of rally these people. These are people that were already rallied. And if you look at how a lot of them have just already turned on Donald Trump, the instant he told them to get a vaccine. I really, I question how much actual influence like his rhetoric in particular had on that. Although I would say that, you know, through the media, through the way that, you know, these people experience social media and the way that these people talk to each other. And, you know, just all the conspiratorial nonsense that they share. I do think that that is something, you know, that obviously leads to that. But I think that's something that's bigger than the basic sort of rhetorical analysis or bigger than just Donald Trump doing that. I think it's something, you know, that, you know, be zero affected if they'd say kick Trump off Twitter a year earlier or anything like that. And yeah, I'll kind of let you respond there. Well, I think you bring up a good point about social media and the media at large because what we're seeing is the stratification of media going in all different directions. We all have our own echo chambers that we essentially can create. And I think that's where at least Trump's rhetoric or if you want to call it Roger Stone's, whoever was making the arguments for Trump and knowing exactly what to appeal to, to stir up this very specific base. It got to where, like you mentioned QAnon and other conspiracy theories, small Facebook groups. I mean, it got into these small echo chambers where it could fester. And I think you really got to look at the role of the media and at first, I mean, Trump's campaign was even considered a joke, but the media saw the ratings bonanza that they got from covering him, which legitimized him as a candidate before the primaries ever even began. So I think you've got to look at it more as, and Megan Eatman, she is a professor at Clemson. She wrote a book about the rhetorical ecologies of violence. She says that, you know, not just what someone says or a direct action of violence contributes. You've got to look at the entire system, the ecology around it, whether it's the media, whether it's a direct act of violence, whether it's the imposition of threat. As a result, like you would see in lynching or in torture or something like that, for example. So we can't just look at single out Trump's speech and say, yeah, well, you know, he made them do this. But I think you have to take all of it in tandem, but I still think that, you know, he could push these folks over the edge. They were already there. They were looking for some sort of outlet. They didn't understand what was going on. And, you know, I think that can kind of be seen when they broke in, like you mentioned, like stealing a podium. Like these folks didn't, they weren't organized to go in and actually, I guess, complete an objective, so to speak, they got in and then didn't know what was going on. But they were at a fever pitch where they could be pushed over, I think. But all of it, I think, contributes. Yeah, I'd agree with that. And I think the role of, and this was, I guess what I was saying earlier about intermediary liability, just the inability of, you know, like Facebook or Twitter or what have you to really stop any of this, you know, just kind of conspiratorial mindset and the way that people get wrapped up in these, you know, in these narratives and thinking that, you know, they're trying to save America or those kinds of things. And a lot of it is, I would say, you know, like the Trump campaign really jumped on that and they really knew exactly what to do. And Donald Trump actually was just really good at what he did. And that's why it's really hard to imagine anyone really replicating the way that he was able to, not just talk to those people, but to humiliate his enemies. I think like not enough attention is paid to, and liberals hate hearing this, and I say this, it's like a total socialist economy, whatever, looking at liberals kind of in the middle, but that Trump, like a lot of his appeal toward them was his humor. Like the guy is actually funny. I know people hate hearing that, but in the way that he tore down his enemies, I mean, the way he tore down Ted Cruz as someone here in Texas was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my entire life. And so I think that he was able to channel into that, especially those kinds of people that I said were at the Capitol. That's kind of like upper middle class, jet ski salesman types that can still connect with someone like Trump as being someone that they could be like, and then to hear him doing that. And I think that if you look at maybe more vividly, something like Kyle Rittenhouse or going into that and the violence that was really starting to pop up in places like Portland, right before the election, where I think a lot of right-wing supporters and really just like white militia people who are, that is like a different factor of Trump people. Those are white militia people that have been looking for any excuse to be empowered since like Bill Clinton or beyond. That's just a part of America. And Trump definitely gave them that. So I would say like the presence of Trump, the presence of people like Stephen Miller, just seeing things ramping up on the border, border control agents, getting that much more power. There was like a sense of empowerment there that I think was like very holistic and was in a lot of ways built around the cult of personality that Trump was able to build through just being, to what these people saw as a very charismatic figure where other people were, rightfully just revolted completely by the guy. And yeah, I would say though, like his kind of like calling for people to actually overthrow in the Capitol, getting back to just the pure rhetorical thing, like in that moment, I don't think that had a lot of effect on people. I think more of those people expected Trump to come out and be a savior, especially the QAnon people, they expected JFK Jr. or whatever to pop out and then they were gonna cut off Hillary Clinton's head and town square or whatever. And so I think that those people were more relying on Trump to come out as a savior, as opposed to actually taking much action to do anything. And again, there were a handful of right wing militia people in there, but I think the majority of those people were buffoons. You know, the Q Shining guy, that guy made his name in Arizona as he was a failed actor and he would just put on all that gear, all that Beastmaster gear, stand outside of prisons when QAnon people, because they get pretty wild in Arizona, when they would get out of jail, he would stand outside the courthouse or the prison and just be like, ah, waving a spear, screaming, like to congratulate them for getting out of jail. And that's just a guy who probably, you know, he felt as an actor, he realized that he's probably a lot hotter than most of those people. And so he could just get away with that and kind of it was just, this whole thing is it's everyone's just, it's just people kind of like doing their thing. And I think if anything that they expected Trump, and I think with the whole Q Anon area it would be more of a savior. And it's something totally divorced from anything he ever said, or like any rhetorical cues there. I think it's a response to, you know, them just really being in echo chambers, really hating their enemies and really feeling just disconnected from just a collapsing empire. Well, I'm glad you brought up the Portland riots because one of the things that I've seen a lot in war rhetoric, especially is if you're gonna whip a population up for war, you've got to really dehumanize the enemy, make a very clear distinction between us and them. And I think Trump used that opportunity with Antifa blaming everything on Antifa, blaming any sort of Black Lives Matter protest as these are thugs, which carry a lot of implications, but then you can tie to Ferguson, Rittenhouse, you mentioned him, you see this massive divide where it's us or it's them, similar to the rhetoric you find when we're fighting people in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, Al Qaeda, for example, the way that you talk about the others, you constitute the enemy is somehow more, I guess dangerous because, you know, they're willing to do all these things, they're burning down Portland, they're doing all these heinous things and they're very scary that appeal to the threat, you know, they're losing something. And I think it's very troubling because people act on this, you know, you constitute themselves as a very specific way and then they constitute anyone that's different and then, you know, we share the same country. So when we're fighting each other, I think it's a very dangerous game to play when it comes to losing an election. Yeah, and I'd say like, you know, rhetorically, I would probably say that Trump did have more impact on the us versus them. And when you put people, you know, in that setting of, you know, a protest, of a protest, you know, often gets violent and, you know, that brings up things in people that I don't think we're able to really be tapped into on January 6th because they're not really seeing the other there, you know, the Capitol Police aren't really doing much, you know, to bother them. They've got, you know, like, there's the threat of, you know, AOC somewhere in here and we're gonna get her and kill her, you know, or do whatever their deranged fantasies are. And so, but I don't think that that was really there whereas if you do look at how violent the protests were starting to get, and you looked at, you know, Trump, like his actions as well, like literally sending federal agents out to just straight up murder a guy in Washington who shot, he shot like a proud boy or something like that. Like they just, and seeing like that, like actual action, those things actually happen, you know, like, oh, we're just killing these people now. It's okay, you know, the president's fine with it. And, you know, and he's, the president is like on national television saying, hey, I just ordered an assassination of an American citizen on America's soil. Those things, I think it's the action of it and actually doing the things and showcasing like what you're capable of. And I think that a lot of the problem with January 6th is Trump was never really able to have any action there. He was completely, he was powerless in that moment. And so I think that that was kind of the problem with me with the narrative of it being an insurrection or that Trump had a significant amount to do with inciting a resurrection. I just, I don't think that flies there. And yeah, it was just awfully convenient how they threw him off social media, you know, as soon as, you know, as soon as his time was up, as soon as they didn't really care anymore. And that really showed to me who has the actual power there in that circumstance. You know, it is our social media, our tech overlords that at the end of the day decided, okay, that's enough. And from what I understand, I don't know if this is the case. I know originally his Facebook band was supposed to end mid January, mid 2022, just in time for the midterms. So yeah, we'll see even how that goes. And to me, that's more of that is like the media and that's, you know, corporations controlling these narratives and deciding, you know, rhetorically, you know, how things get out there, you know, deciding what's significant, deciding what, you know, Trump should be allowed to, you know, inside or do or anything like that. And I do think like, yeah, you're saying the broader narrative of Trump's us versus them thing, which is probably the most powerful and just the fact of someone like him being in power, really it just empowered people, made them very confident to do these things. But overall, with January 6th, I don't think rhetorically, like it had much to do with it other than like, hey, let's go have Coachella at the White House. Coachella at the White House, I think maybe that's a good place to stop you guys. Unless Jeremy, did you have anything you wanted to respond to Lucas's latest there? Oh, no, I mean, I think we've covered a lot of it, but if I remember correctly, I think there was going to be a Black Lives Matter protest in DC and there were barricades put up around the White House, but then after the election, no such barricades existed around Congress or anything like that. And I think that just speaks to that divide, that difference, that us versus them that was created because, oh wow, the people that support this are angry and will burn things down where my supporters are just fine when in fact they did storm the Capitol. So I'll start with a question for me. Look, you brought up Lucas, the role of intermediaries. So like your Twitter, your Facebooks, I'd love to hear from either of you on this. What do you think the role of those intermediaries is? Because Lucas, as you were saying, our techno rewards, I mean, I think people don't think enough about how much power these really, really large corporations have over everything. Yeah, and I'd say on the one hand, I do believe in strong protections for social media outlets or just any kind of information outlet or anything like that. I don't think Facebook should be liable for someone posting just some hateful remarks or incitement. If they take reasonable measures to take it down, kind of like it is now, that should be fine. But they should not be able to decide what is incitement, what is hate speech, those kinds of things. I think that there should be some kind of a federal regulation there. If it was up to me, they would be just nationalized. I mean, they're public utilities at this point. But I mean, I would say like, yeah, ultimately, I think that's their role. It's just as a public utility, but that's probably not something that's gonna happen here in the United States. So I don't know, I think their role is, I think their role should be to listen to the FCC or the FTC a little bit more. Like I think that the state should have more control over these and that they shouldn't have just such carte blanche ability to be like, oh, hey, we're gonna stop fake news now. Just let us get our little fact checkers in. And yeah, they have absolutely too much power now to do this, but they should have, I think some measure of ability to escape like frivolous lawsuits, those kinds of things like that really answers much. Because again, my answer is nationalization and it's kind of like at this point, like I really don't know what you do at this point with all of this, like maybe China had it right. And I don't know. Do you have any, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I haven't studied that to the degree that Lucas has, but I just, I think it's it's kind of terrifying the way that they can, these tech companies can sort of set the agenda and, excuse me, decide what we are seeing and therefore what we talk about on these platforms. Because if you think about like the way Cambridge Analytica was used to really ramp up advertising for far right candidates, I think Ted Cruz used it successfully and then Trump used it successfully. And it can really reach a lot of people and it could be very, very powerful. And I'm sure media scholars are looking at agenda-setting theory and how it works with social media. I mean, I'm not privy to that literature. I kind of stay in the rhetorical world, but I think that can be very, very powerful since it's a lot more ubiquitous now than our three channels, ABC, NBC, CBS, traditionally. So I think there's really some interesting things to think about there. Yeah, a modern fairness doctrine. I like getting back to just the idea of unicorns and people having irrational beliefs and all. Another thing that's important with the way that this fact-checking works on Facebook and Twitter and what have you, is they get to define what the conspiracy is. They get to define what is your kooky belief? Like just, and this is totally anecdotal, I've had a few friends that have had articles taken down that say that corporations or corporate greed or something is responsible for inflation. And those articles are getting taken down and the Facebook fact-checkers are like, it says that we have checked this and corporations have nothing to do with the current inflation. And it's like, and so all of a sudden, you're the kook for saying something that may not be entirely true, but is probably not worth getting taken down by fact-checkers, it's kind of horrifying. And that gets to define who's the serious people in society, who are the kooks. Like if I went on there and I said, hey, I think January 6th was coordinated by the FBI, then yeah, that might get taken down. And then it really, it narrows the discourse. Cool. Well, it looks like we're right up here at 730. So I think I am going to have to say goodbye to you guys. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And now we're gonna send you over to Paris, Waylon would check this out. Fun and thanks for staying tuned after about electrifying discussion. Here we are in the check this out segment. And I hear you all want to explore and further engage with this topic. Plus after the welcome of information received by our scholars, you may be questioning your beliefs and asking yourself if you believe that political rhetoric can incite violence. And while our scholars did a wonderful job in their discussion, this is a great opportunity for y'all to work on your own information literacy skills and do some research of your own. So if you're new to this topic, know that UT library subscribes to a generous amount of informational resources that we make available to you. And while I love to go through absolutely every single one of them, let's briefly touch on what the process of searching for the connection between political rhetoric and violence if there is one may look like. So like every search, you kind of start off, you begin with basic search terms or strings that may have served as access points for your questions. So our general question here is going to be, does political rhetoric incite violence? So obvious terms for this include political rhetoric and violence, and for the specific topic you might use capital and breach, more specific searches may be a string such as Stormy the Capital or January 6th. Use whatever you think may work, don't let me stifle your creativity on that front. All right? So now that you have a few search terms, you can start by using primary sources to gain context, because context is very important, right? So if you're like me, perhaps you'd like to start off with visuals like images and videos to kind of start to understand an event. One of our resources that UT Libraries provides access to is called Associated Press Images Collections, which contains historical and contemporary photos, including national and international events as they happen, which is super awesome. AP images can be used to search for firsthand accounts of the Dignory Sits Instruction as well. So these images include detailed descriptions and other data such as the location and date of the image, providing further context, super important, like I said, and that's hopefully going to help combat an instant fermentation or improper use or incorrect description of an image that may be released on, say, an unreliable platform like social media. So while we're continuing to search for more in-depth primary sources, you may consider a mixed media source like newspapers. So some of the images accompanied by text. Well, guess what? UT Libraries also provides access to newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. There's also access to articles written in the Knoxville Sentinel about the instructions. So don't limit yourself to larger newspapers just because that's what your more familiar myth, okay? Also, when you're searching through your news sources, whether it be Fox or Chicago Tribune, feel free to use the media bias chart, which I'll provide a link to later to kind of help you understand where your news source may fall on the political spectrum. So maybe is it more right, is it in the middle, or is it left, you know? So now that we have some imagery in the news perspective, you can continue to use your key search terms to research a topic from different political views. Fortunately, we have an entire research guide dedicated to politics and rhetoric with speeches available, which I think will be provided for, but a great place to begin is a CQ Press Library, which is a resource on American government, current affairs, politics, public policy, basically everything that was kind of touched on today from the events to the policies that follow. Specifically, if you're looking for maybe a clear cut pros and cons list about an event or policy, check out the CQ Press researcher. I use it, I think it's super awesome. Basically this contains reports about current and controversial issues in a digestible manner. It has like a awesome timeline that goes with it that I love to use. It also has additional resources and it's incredibly useful when you're trying to wrap your head around an event, how we got hit there and where we're going, all right? So congratulations everyone. You've now used UT Libraries resources to find primary sources on a specific event. You've identified opposing and agreeing information and you also have access to databases under the political science and communications research guides that provide you to access journals that hold scholarly publications like those written by our reviewers. So on that note, that about wraps up the Check This Out segment. I hope that you take the opportunity to check out the academic resources mentioned during our time together and in the words for Cell West, host of the READ podcast, words mean things. Hold on to that and remember that, all right? Thanks for joining me and next we have stories from the stack. So Sarah Johnson. Hey everyone. So we are going to end tonight on a little bit of a lighter note. However, our talks today or tonight have been fascinating to say the least. So as we mentioned at the beginning, unicorns. I'm not here to talk to you about unicorns however much I wish they were real, but we're going to talk about a different legend. Anyone familiar with how the University of Tennessee chose the colors orange and white? Maybe some of you do, but let's take a stroll down memory lane and it all starts with a daisy or does it? Here, let's check it out. Back in 1889, Charles Moore, the president of the University Athletics Association at the time, chose the colors orange and white for the first field day. He chose the colors based on the American daisy that grew all around the campus. These flowers had a yellowish orange center and white petals, which created the original UT orange and white. In the same year of 1889, the UT baseball team chose the colors red and black. But in 1891, the students made an effort to wear orange and white to the Sawani football game. Soon afterwards, Governor Bob Taylor had his cadets wear blue and white to a parade. Man, there's a lot going on here. A lot of back and forth. Can we keep up? I don't know, but let's keep going. Clearly, tons of confusion. So in 1891, the student body voted to adopt the colors orange and white for the university colors. Two years later, there was an effort to change the colors and students voted to drop the colors orange and white, but no other combination of colors words found satisfactory, which is kind of funny. So the students voted again to keep orange and white and here we are. So the second part of my story is the color itself orange. The original UT orange was similar to the color of the daisy and it's very far different from the big orange that we have today. Before they standardized orange was selected, the graphic services team here at UT was mixing three different shades of orange. So we had a deep red orange, a brown orange, yikes, and a bright orange. So printers who were mixing the colors found that they could not consistently get the same shade of orange. So a standard pre-mixed color was adopted. Incom's Pantone matching system color of 151, which is very formal, but it's our big orange color that we have now. So we've got the daisy yellowish orange and the official big orange that we see today two very different oranges. And apparently in an effort to explain the disparity between the color of big orange and that of the center of the American daisy, a myth circulated saying that Charles Moore, the guy I mentioned at the very beginning, was color blind and was told that the center of the daisy was orange. Well, there's actually no supporting evidence that he was color blind and the yellow orange that was the original UT orange just roughly emulated that of a daisy center. So following up later, we learned that Charles Moore, in fact, did pick the colors orange and white, but the association with the daisies came much later. And we also found out that the American daisy was not indigenous to East Tennessee in the late 1890s. So much like unicorns, there have been sightings of these daisies, but they remain ever elusive. Thank you to Alicia Schumar, our Dr. Fred Ostone University Archivist for imparting your knowledge with us. And make sure to check out Volopedia, our very own encyclopedia about all things UT. That's it. See you later. All right, well, that is it for another show. We have two more coming up this semester. So don't forget to come back and see us on March 17th and on April 21st, same time, same channel. We also invite you to the annual Wilma Dijkman Stokely Memorial Lectured, virtual again this year. And it is on March 3rd at 7 p.m. That event will feature a conversation with writer, moral philosopher and environmental thought leader, Kathleen D. Moore and WUOT's own Chrissy Kiper. The lecture is hosted by friends of the Knox County Public Library and the John C. Hodges Society of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Thanks for another great show, guys. See you next time. Bye.