Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
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Honestly, I do it every time. I just, I want to keep the book going while I'm driving.
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[00:01:46] Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to the Politics of Justice. It's me, Amy Austin.
This will be episode nine, I believe. And today we're starting Ransomed.
So today I'm going to try to cover the first 10 chapters of Ransom. There are 40. So in my head, they'll be four videos.
But I say all that. But there's like a little, like, introductory material I'd like to get out of the way regarding this book.
I took notes. I'm getting much better.
So let me say this. Where do I want to start?
Okay, first, okay, so the book takes place in, oh my gosh, 2003. So I want to put that in some context because at that point, that is 23 years ago.
So not yesterday. But that's the. So that's the world in which Casey Cord's living right now.
The book cover is behind me. Good enough. Today I actually switched it out.
And that's supposed to be Claire Henshaw on the COVID She's one of the three point of view characters in this book.
So let me say this. And also it's available in audiobook. Actually. I usually take a walk after dinner. It's supposed to aid in digestion. And at my age now I'm trying to aid in digestion. But I took a walk after dinner and I listened to actually a couple of chapters and the audiobook. I haven't listened to them in a really long time, so that was interesting.
Okay, let's start with this. Okay, First, I'm going to let me tell you one thing about the book, especially if you listen to it on audiobook.
I, many years ago, I rewrote the first chapter of this book.
So during COVID maybe a little bit before COVID and I've talked about this on the, the other podcast when I've interviewed people, all of us writers, not all of us, but many of all. Okay, like, 95 of the writers I know hired a book coach, writing coach in, like, 2019, 2020. I don't even know how it started, you know, like. But it took off like wildfire.
And we. I don't know what everybody else was looking for, but our name is Becca Syme. And the class that I think we all started with is a book called Write Better Faster, which is sort of a little bit of a misnomer in the sense that we all want to write better and faster because the better faster earns you more money. Let me apologize. I have the windows open because it's warm in Los Angeles and I'm trying to cool down without turning on the air conditioning.
It's been in the 80s, I'll just say that in February and March. Okay, so all that to say. So Becker Sim had this, right, Better, Faster. And you took the. When you took the class, it came with some coaching. I don't know if it was, like, two or three, like, individual coaching sessions. I have no idea if this is still the case.
And at the time, okay, I don't know what other people's issues were because everybody, like, went in with their individual, like, thoughts.
But mine was, well, I wanted to write better and faster. And I determined that that was probably not going to happen.
But the thing that, like, I was really stuck on is when I wrote Qualified Immunity and tried to sell. And I've told that story in a previous podcast.
This was like the 90s. And at that time, books, serious books, were Written in the third person.
And I'd grown up in an era in school where writing in the first person was considered, oh my God, indulgent, juvenile, whatever. Everything was third person past tense.
It just was. And every book I read was like that. I mean, there were the occasional deviations like epistolary or something, but for the most part it was 100% third person past tense.
So as I talked about in the last video, I started writing this book, I don't know before I got pregnant and I wrote the second half after, and my son was born.
And for reasons unknown to me, this book was in first person. I think I had written three books in third person and the trend had started to change. And I really actually, I like first person past tense as a writing because I feel like it gives you a little bit of a closer sense of the main character. And I know there can be close third person. I'm just. Just my sense.
So I wrote this book in first person. I don't know. I don't know when I noticed it. I think I noticed it when the book was done. And I think it's because I had written a romance, my first. Not my first romance, the first first person romance that way.
So then I was stuck with a dilemma. I had book one, that was third person and book two, etc. That was third person.
And when I was on this call with Becca, I was like incensed that I had made this grievous error in my series building. And she of course had a solution. She was like, so just fix the book. And I was like, I'm so sorry, what did you say? She was like, the book is indie published. Just fix it. And I was like, oh my God. So originally, Casey court qualified immunity, or as it's called now judge, was written in third person. And I believe the audiobook is still in third person. I do not re record the audiobook.
I'm saying this to say that if you listen to the audiobook for ransomed, you will notice that the beginning of the first chapter is different in audio. So after that little revelatory talk with Becca, I realized that I was not wedded to what I had written previously with indie books.
So the beginning of this book was not the strongest.
And I was having like a lot of read through issues. People would read book one and then they would stumble and not read finished book two.
So she's like, what's the solution? I was like, I think it needs a stronger beginning. She was like, so rewrite the beginning. And I was like, what did you say?
So I rewrote the beginning and actually the read through improved vast greatly.
So all that to say if you listen to audiobook. I think the first half of chapter one is a little bit different. I did not rewrite much more than that. It was just that first.
I don't know what I was thinking with the way it was written, but I rewrote it. It's better.
Okay, moving on. So this book opens with.
Every book opens with an epigraph. I love an epigraph. I do. I think it's the best thing to sort of set the tone for a book.
So the epigraph in this is.
The fact that obscene conduct by males in the workplace and sexual harassment in our society generally has become the object of a special opprobrium and public scorn does not turn the defendant's outrageous conduct into a federal crime.
So this refers to, I believe, the en bancum ruling that I talked about in the previous video where the judges, in this case, the judge's conviction had been overturned because they had turned the sexual harassment and, like, pretty horrible behavior into a federal crime. Because, as I mentioned with.
When you're connected with everybody in the state, getting a state prosecution was going to be pretty.
Pretty impossible. And it was written. So this was written by Judge Gilbert Merritt, who. I wonder if he's still alive. I haven't seen him since the 90s. Moving on.
And the date is August 14, 1997. So that's when that came out. Moving on.
Chapter one.
So chapter one is a Casey Court chapter. And as usual, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a summary. Spoilers. There's a spoilers. The spoilers for this book. The spoilers for two other books in this video.
The spoilers for Judged, which came before this. And spoilers for the Casey Court.
Oh, my God, The Casey Court novella. The name of which just left my head. Gotta love aging.
Anyway, it's over there on the shelf, but I'm not moving because I'm, like, hooked to the computer and all the wires and whatnot. Okay, so in chapter one, we. It's August 30th of 2003, and we meet Casey in her apartment.
She is getting dressed for a date or no. Well, an event. I don't know if it's a date. I can't. I wrote this and I don't know if it's a date. She doesn't know if it's a date. She knows it's an event.
So she's with her neighbors. Greg and Jason, who come up in many other books, they have their own novella, yada yada yada, and they are helping her, like, pick out what to wear and basically quizzing her on the event because. And she's really nervous. So basically, Tom, her ex boyfriend from many, many books ago, has invited her out for, I don't know, a party after an investiture, which is when a judge is, like, appointed or, well, elected, sometimes appointed, but takes the bench.
And she's not sure why she's invited. But all that said, she's got to get up and get dressed and do it. And given the way that her practice runs and the fact that she needs money and notoriety in this world, she's. She took the invitation.
So she's getting dressed and her stomach's growling because after the call from her ex boyfriend, she can't eat.
And the first posted highlight is, I had to admire his ability to walk the fine line by saying I was curvy and that I needed to eat. Sorry. It's her neighborhood's doctor discussing the fact that she should eat, but not too much.
And maybe not so diplomatic. Or maybe he's really good diplomatic. Anyway, the note is, almost every woman I know has that person who still gets to them, and Tom is that person for Casey. So almost everybody I know, maybe not as I get older, I have to really think about it. But when you talk to women, everybody has that one guy who could push the buttons and got to people. Actually, I think I may have, too.
But, yeah, I do. Okay, moving on. So.
So she's like, they're trying to. She's explaining to them that even though she doesn't know why Tom called her, she's going to this party because, you know, networking in the legal community is gold. I mean, it's gold. Like it. I don't know if it still is. Well, maybe not in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a huge community with, like a bazillion judges and everything.
Cleveland was a lot smaller.
So I. I don't think I met every judge in the Commonplace because there's probably like 20 of them. But I met every judge in juvenile and every judge in family law, and there were five. And I met every judge in appellate, so it was just the main judges in civil and criminal that I did not meet all of them.
But I knew. You knew all about them. You knew all the. You knew everything.
Anyway, so they're asking her, like, she's gonna go and is she gonna get in Tom's arms? And she's like, I don't know.
And she's just trying to decide what to wear. And actually, this line made me laugh. I was listening to it when I was walking.
They were saying, a little black dress can never do you wrong.
Diane von Furstenberg created something truly for women. Can't say that of a lot of designers. And Casey says, I have no idea who Diane was, and I didn't have time to ask, but she's wearing a wrap dress. I'm sorry. I think the DVF wrap dress can save all occasions because I was thinking about it and now, like, I might wear it myself in the coming days. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try it on tonight.
But. But I. I don't know when I bought the just playing 9 billion years old, but I do, too have a DVF wrap dress in black. I don't do the color thing that Diane von Furstenberg is known for.
So she gets in. She gets in her car, and she's, like, driving across town. Her car barely starts, because that's the way it goes.
And then she talks about the first one of the second highlight or whatever is.
She talks about how or why she believes she and Tom broke up. They didn't really sort of have that final conversation, so spends a lot of time speculating on that. But she says that a reported plagiarism in a law review article by a kid named Ted Strohmeier to the law school dean as outlined in the school's policy, not like being a rule follower and kicking you in the butt. And that. That. That kicked Casey in the butt hard.
And she says. She says, now I could see my naivete. Stromeyer was very rich, Bill Gates rich and a former student.
And so the Strohemeir family, yes, you'll be a high flyer when you drink. Strohemeyer. Strohemeier. It's a beer jingle that in my head has a tune, but I will spare you from singing it.
The ones who own the brewery employed every 10th person in Cuyahoga county until half the operation moved to Mexico.
There's always so much commentary in books.
And, yes, the Stromeyers, who also own a professional football team in a football town.
So she was fully aware of her folly, and she lost her job. So there's like, this ongoing thing.
Casey's this underdog. This is what happened. She still mulls on it, but it has had a profound effect on her life. Her. Her life, theoretically, with Tom, her practice and how she is viewed in the Cleveland legal community. It is what it is.
And there's a note here. Oh, so this is what took Casey down. The Stromires, tormented her for years. Being a whistleblower has consequences.
Yeah, Yeah. I will say this.
The world I live in now, I don't know if I'd follow rules like that. I don't know if it does any thing for anybody.
So she talks about, you know, what, things were better. And actually I. So I like this highlight. I was, like, reviewing this today, but she said things made a turn for the better when I lost my most famous case. And this is the case. This is like all spoilers in the last book.
Yes, losing turned me into a winner. I'm not the first loser turned winner. Look at F. Lee Bailey and David Boies. I bet you can't name a case that they've won. F. Lee famously lost the Boston Strangler case and the Patty Hearst matter, but he's still featured in every Court TV every other time I flip by. David Voies represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore and Napster. He was on the losing side of two of the most famous cases in history. But I'll bet you he still bids. So I will say this. I did look this up. F. Lee Bailey is dead. He died maybe 20, 21. And David Boies, oh, my God. So David Boyes is now 84. So in this book, he would have been in his late 50s come. Death comes for us all.
So, but I do something about that makes me laugh because people, there was an era, like, probably in 2003 or so when everybody was talking about David Boyes. David Boyce, David Boyes.
And like, he lost Bush v. Gore, and then, like, he lost the Napster streaming rights thing and then the Napster declared bankruptcy.
So, yeah, about that.
But until the note says, I wrote, I found this a fascinating factoid when I was writing the book. Some of the most famous lawyers in the country have lost some of the biggest cases. Oh, I could go on, but I won't.
And also, the lawyers that I perceive as famous, I think are mostly dead. And I don't know who's famous now because I don't watch Court tv. I assume Court TV is still on.
So she talks about how here representing Sheila Harrison Grant had, like, really bolstered her career because she represented somebody well known in, like, a case that had a lot of notoriety.
She says, now I understood why certain trashy celebrities believed all publicity was good publicity. Judge Grant was good for me with my name in the papers, my phone Started ringing off the hook. A few mentions in the plane dealer were worth more than two bus benches and a year's worth of advertising in the back of the phone book.
We're not going to get into that. There was. I don't know, I still see bus pension billboard ads for lawyers, but I do.
There was a certain hierarchy to being in the yellow Pages. I can't believe I say this. So there used to be lawyers in the back of the yellow pages and having a half page or full page ad was a huge deal. And where you have placement in the yellow Pages, but that is no more. I'm dating myself.
Moving on.
So she drives over to Tom's place and then the highlight is the valet nodded obsequiously as he took my keys and undoubtedly hid my car somewhere its hoopty cooties couldn't infect the German and Japanese luxury cars ostentatiously displayed in the motor court.
And then there's just. Basically the line has always made me laugh hard. Even years later.
I was actually talking to my son about this because I was walking by somewhere where like there was a valet near where I live and out front were all my. My son calls them the horse cars. So like a Lamborghini, which I think is a horse.
And then, oh, shoot, Lamborghini. I can't remember the other like little sports car thing, but those are always parked in the front. And then after that it's like Bentley's off in a Rolls Ro.
I see a lot of Rolls Royces. I don't even understand how there could be so many.
And then after that it's like the regular, like Mercedes, BMW, whatever. And then after that it's Tesla. And after that you don't see any other cars parked. And I've always. So the people who valet are generally like.
It is a bigger cross section of cars than you would see in the front. And I still to this day do understand why they put the most expensive cars in the front.
The only good thing about it is if you have an expensive car, you can get it fast.
But one day I'll look it up and figure it out. But it's one of those things I just sort of wonder.
Moving on. So basically she goes to this party. It's like in Lakewood. So the Brody family has this huge mansion property in Lakewood, Ohio. It's like a near west side city.
They have some houses that have like maybe half an acre or an acre.
So it's pretty even in a place where houses are less expensive than the rest of the country.
It is. It's a big deal to go to the one of. I don't know whose Brody's. Whose house it is. So the reason that this judge Brody is being appointed to the bench is that this judge named Conti resigned. And this is the exact reason for the resignation. Unclear. Who knows? There's probably some story about it in my head, but. Or if there was, but that's gone. So Tom, who she meets at the party is like Judge Eamon, who is his uncle is assuming the seat and he invited her.
I don't know. She. Part of it thinks because he feels guilty because she. He sort of dumped her and then like never spoke with her again.
But he invited her to this party and is like promising like connections. And I cannot tell you, like enough. This could really bolster her bottom line.
So she talks about even assuming the seat. And Tom's father is the presiding judge in the civil and criminal court. His uncle is the attorney general and this other uncle is the one being appointed to juvenile court. So the other two brothers in this thing have more prestigious jobs.
Just putting that out there. It may make difference in the book. Maybe not.
So she says, oh, this is it. There were more power brokers scattered across the Brody acre and a half. Acre and a half than a Massimo political fundraiser.
Massimo, this place holds like so much in my head. I don't even know if it still exists or they're still doing this. But this was like more than 25, almost 30 years ago in this.
So the note says when I practiced law in Cleveland, Massimo was a local Italian restaurant where many and I mean many political fundraisers were held. I wasn't as broke as Casey with massive student.
But with massive student loan debt. I wasn't able to donate to campaigns. My practice wasn't helped my. By my frugality.
So I will say that it was theorized that judges who made so judges held fundraisers because in Cuyahoga county and maybe in all Ohio, they were primarily elected. There was. There are appointments for random reasons, but they're primarily elected. There are other places like California where there's both elections and appointments and those. That's a whole system we're not going to get into.
However, the thing about Masimo is that every like you would get these invitations. I don't even know how I got on the list. Maybe they sent it to every lawyer. I'd have to think about it because I wasn't connected like that. But you get these invitations and it'd be like, judge so. And so is holding their re election fundraiser at massimo, you know, $35, $50. How much would you like to donate? And people would go, you could just donate, or you could go. And I assume I never went.
I assume you got like free drinks and like appetizers. I don't know, some kind of Italian food.
However, the judges who made the judges, the attorneys who made donations and went to the fundraisers often had greater success. Luck, better appointments.
You can get cases appointed to you or referred to you by judges then other people. And there was some speculation that that was a direct connection.
I am not saying there's a direct connection. I don't know if there's proof that there is a direct connection, but that was the theory. Among the private bar.
I could not donate and Casey could not donate.
I think maybe she didn't donate because I couldn't donate. So I couldn't even write about, like, what could have happened. I mean, obviously I could have speculated, but who knows?
Moving on.
So she meets Judge Brody.
He is a creepy creep.
I'm just straight up creepy creep. He's inappropriate. He's like, theoretically helping her with her pashmina and touches her boobs.
So let's see where the highlights go for that.
Oh, wait, there's no highlight. He's just a creepy creep.
Sorry.
Anyway.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Just a creepy creep. I.
I've been thinking a lot, obviously, with Epstein Files, about how men in power can continue to abuse women, or me too, or whatever it is.
And every couple years we go through this circle again and nothing changes. So as groundbreaking as I thought this book was, and writing about this one thing, it could be 50 years ago, it could be five minutes ago, but very little changes. Moving on to chapter two. And I can see that I'm already at 23 minutes, so I'm not gonna cover all 10 chapters. Moving on to chapter two. So in chapter two, it's like three weeks later, September 20th, 2020, 2003.
And Casey had like, really made an effort to like, not think about Judge Brody.
But he calls her and he's like, hey, I have a referral for you.
Which validates Casey's theory, and maybe mine, that going to these kinds of, like these kinds of events puts you in the forefront of a judge's mind, and therefore you may be able to get perks.
So he calls her and he says, I. There's an Ellingwood family. I believe they are rich. I think the wife is famous.
And he's like, they.
They believed they were married and they're not. Because common law marriage was abolished in Ohio. And they just throw that fact in there. Many people I came across, many people who thought that they were married and wanted to be married. Because, as I've said before, justice and domestic relations court was swifter and often better than justice in juvenile court. And in Ohio, married people were in one court and people who were never married and had kids were in another court.
I gotta look that up. I really want to think they changed it because at least in California, it's not that way. You're in the same place whether you're married or not, which seems fair.
Things of the past that just linger, linger.
No, it says the Ellingwoods were. It's Marissa Elling was the name.
Were second only to the Strohmeyers and came to celebrated families in Cuyahoga County's most elite circles. Circles that I did not travel in, but the Brodies did.
So Judge Eamon has called her on her phone. How he got her number, we don't know.
And said that, you know, it's great, and he would love to refer this case to her. And she's like, already?
And he's like, yeah, but I don't have the facts here, so you gotta come to my office to get this information.
Which is so.
So the way it is.
So the way it is. I. I will say this.
I feel like it's somewhere in the book, but maybe it's not here. Oh, maybe it'll come up later. Let me not. Let me not jump ahead.
So then the rest of the chapter. Tom has invited her out to a restaurant. I made her decisions at Charlie's Crab.
The Beechwood establishment was one of the most upscale restaurants on the east side. It is gone. I looked it up years ago. It's gone.
But it was like seafood in Ohio and like that.
Coming from the coast and living in a coast, I don't think I had realized that in the middle, there's not as much seafood.
And I did not consider Red Lobster to be a seafood restaurant.
Moving on. So she decides to go to, like, Charlie's Crab with.
With Tom.
So she gets there, and Tom is, like, very, like, nonchalant. Like, she should be happy that she's with him. I mean, that's my sense. I don't know.
And she says, I wasn't hungry. An entire flock of butterflies. Butterflies. A flock. Or is there some totally weird word for a group of them? Like Clutcher's school?
And the note is, oh, my God, this is the first book of St. Albans reference. It's something Casey and Justin have in common. So in later books, Casey and Justin trade jokes about the Book of Saint Albans, which amused me to no end. I have no idea if any readers are amused. Let me know. Send me an email. Let me know. But the Book of St. Albans is this book written in the.
I don't know. Book is spelled B O, K, E. So that's how old it is in English. I don't know, 15, 1600s. Maybe earlier, maybe later.
Not too much later because of the way it's spelled. And it is the book where some guy attempted to classify animals. And this is where you get, like, School of Fish or Murder of Crows.
And I think the person who wrote the Book of Saint Albans was clearly, like, a little bit clever. Because, like, a murder of crows is like, it never dies. Like, there are crows everywhere in my neighborhood. I have a lot of thoughts about that.
But as I'm driving home, there's always crows in the driveway, crows out on the street. And I looked the other day, and there's crows bigger than, like, one of my neighbor's dogs. And I thought it was my neighbor's dog, and it turned out to be a crow anyway.
And a murder of crows is appropriate. Moving on.
So she's out with him at this dinner.
She is really nervous because he's that guy.
And I think their relationship for her remains unresolved. He.
When she lost her sheen by, like, going up against this other rich family, he dumped her. And so they're having this dinner. He also hasn't. He had just broken up with his fiance, who everybody refers to as the beautiful Lizzie Co Francesco.
And she says that she's like, what did the beautiful Lizzie counterjesco order? Because she's a little salty in her head, you know, Tom broke up with somebody, and it's like, one of those cases. He's like, who else's phone number do I have? And he calls her, and she doesn't trust this new relationship, so she drinks too much. I'm gonna tell you that. And he basically talks about how he wants them to get back together.
But really, unceremoniously, it's like, hey, we should get back together.
No explanation, no more than that.
And she's a little whatever.
Like, she knows that she should put up more of a fight.
And she talking about, like, the good angel, bad angel on her shoulders, which was like, a fixture in cartoons when I was a kid. And she says, the damned good angel. She reminded me that Tom had left me cold. No easy breakup, no soft landing. One Day he was there, and the next T wasn't, but. And I was left to deal with the aftermath of my law review lost job, career implosion. By my lonesome, that angel put her tiny hand in my ear and snapped me out of my idle fantasies.
And so the note I wrote here is. I once read an article in a psychology magazine in a dentist's office on the primacy effect. This is true. Remember the dentist office?
I drive it from it. Talked about how much first love lingers in the mind, body, and soul.
I love the primacy effect because that there's a word for this thing I was just talking about that I clearly didn't remember.
But I think about it every so often.
So the next highlighted part says. Balls. Cojones. A girl. A girl. Lawyers got to have big ones, right? With two white Russians warming my belly, I gathered up my courage and asked the big question, why did you dump me in law school?
The proverbial elephant had farted in the living room.
So there's a note here, and it says, I'd love to overuse an elephant and living room reference. This is probably my first of thousands. Whenever I encounter an awkward situation in a book, my first thought is, the elephant in the living room. My elephants stomp. They trumpet, they apparently fart. They walk around.
I know I overuse it, and I haven't been able to stop.
That's all I'm gonna say about that.
And so Tom says, because she's like her dessert's melting in front of her and turning into a pool, she said, the chocolate bomb melting into a pool atop the creme anglaise.
Tom's double take told me he wasn't expecting me to be so blunt, right?
So he's eating his dessert because he doesn't have any butterflies in his stomach, and he says, are you having any? And she says, do I look like I need to be at the dessert table? Which she shouldn't do. She shouldn't come into her own body, and I want to pop her in the nose.
Casey. He started giving me a long and what I vainly hoped was an appreciative glance. I still think you're very pretty. You'll always be that lost girl I met in the parking lot that first day of orientation.
If I had been vanilla bean ice cream, I would have melted. All the smart girl fight went out of me. If I ever had any cojones at all, they must shrunk to the size of peas.
Oh, the note says I should. The note says, long ago, probably when I Started this book. I still held it. A tiny hope that my first boyfriend, Love, would come swoop me and save me. Never happened.
Never happened. I actually submitted an essay to Modern Love about that. You'll see where that goes.
Moving on. So they leave, and she says, I try not to be jealous of his Acura, A very upscale version of the hoopty Honda I was driving 11 years after my parents bought it for graduation. You push the little H together at the top, and bam. It's a luxury car. Well, that and a whole lot of leather and chrome and wooden gadgets. Sorry. That joke made me laugh when I first moved to LA and I learned that, like, an Infiniti was a Nissan and a Lexus was a Toyota and an Acura was a Honda.
But I always used to make a joke that you have the H and you just push it together, and now it's an Acura.
They're not as popular as they used to be. I was thinking about it the other day when I was driving when I first moved here. Like, the Acuras were everywhere. There's an Acura, an Infiniti sedan that everybody drove, and the Lexus SUV that everybody drove. Now it's all freaking Teslas.
Moving on. So that's the end of chapter two and the end of this video, because I'm already 33 minutes in, so.
Well, I don't know how many videos there are gonna be in my head. There were gonna be four, and I was gonna rush through them, but I have a lot to say.
So with all that, Ransom is available everywhere in paperback. Oddly, people buy a lot of paperbacks. I still haven't figured this out.
Like, my sales for March so far is, like, 60 paperbacks. Go figure. It's available paperback and audiobook, and I believe it's on Amazon for, like, maybe $199. So if you want it, it's not free, like, judged, but $1.99 is way less than a cup of coffee. I bought a cup of coffee recently.
It was under $6, so that felt okay. Not okay, but I paid $6, like, a few years ago for coffee, but $1.99 for many, many hours of entertainment with Casey Court.
I know. I know you love it. I love Casey. I hope everybody loves Casey as much as I.
So with that, I conclude this video.
This is number nine of the Politics of Justice, where I discuss ransom. Talk to you soon.
Sam.
Sa.
