Apologies Accepted

On International Women's Day in March of 2022, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, issued a formal apology for the thousands of people Scotland burned at the stake from the 1500s to the 1700s.  Most of those people were women, and it seemed fitting to the First minister, as the first woman to ever hold the title, to apologize during international women's Month (it's every March, guys), on...

Kenny Shiels is the coach of the Northern Ireland's women's national team, and he has something he wants you to know about women.  Their emotions get in the way of their ability to play sports.  See, women are toooooooooooo emotional to play sports, and that is the hardest part about coaching women. His team lost 5-0 defeat to England, a loss which ended their chances at the Women's World Cup in 2...

He's back, this time with an actual apology.  When the hidden grave sites of 215 children were discovered in 2021 at a Residential school in Canada, the Pope expressed sorrow without expressing an apology.  Now it's 2022 and 1,700 children's graves later, the Pope apologized in person to victims and families of the Catholic Residential School system.  Residential schools were active until 1998 and...

If you haven't heard, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock across the face during the March 2022 Academy Awards.  If he had done cartwheels across the stage, naked and on fire, we couldn't have been more surprised.  Chris had made a joke about Will's wife's shaved head, and Will wasn't having it.  First he laughed, and then seconds later he strode across the stage and slapped Chris Rock, a comedian, acro...

Jane Campion stuck her foot in her mouth at the Critics Choice Awards this year.  She was talking about how she had tried to play tennis and found it really hard.  She was funny and charming and self-depricating.  She was off to a good start.  Venus and Serena Williams were sitting right in front of her and she was paying them a compliment for their skills as professional athletes.  But, Jane said...

In honor of Billie Eilish's nomination for Best Original Song this year at the Oscars, we are rereleasing our Billie Eilish episode.  Also it's Theo's birthday weekend and this is what he wanted and also Juliette had to drive really far and also Brent had his birthday last week and is still unwrapping gifts so...here we are with our first ever rerelease!   Audio Note: Issues still exist but it's s...

Disney has entered the culture wars, but only after first trying to avoid being drafted.  Florida has passed a law making it illegal to mention gay people in school.  The law is pretty broad and general, allowing any parent to sue a school district if information about gays is mentioned in class.  In Florida, Sally can have two mommies, but she better shut up about it in class. Like all corporatio...

It's an open secret that children work for next to nothing and don't complain a lot.  That's why they make great workers, only it's kind of illegal in a lot of countries to employ children.  But don't worry because corporations have found the wonder of willful ignorance and plausible deniability, two factors that mean they can hire companies that in turn hire other companies that hire subcontracto...

Someone had a pretty-rotten-no-good-awful moment with a cop.  That someone was a guy named Martin Hyde.  If you don't know Martin Hyde, you are dumb.  Martin Hyde is a really important super big shot deal and everyone who doesn't know that is just stupid. He's friends with all the super powerful and important people in Sarasota, Florida (so yes, this is a "Florida Man" story) and everyone knows to...

Russell Simmons learned the hard way that some historical heroes are not to be mocked.  His YouTube channel had released a short 3-minute video skit of the Harriet Tubman Sex Diaries.  The comedic take was that she used her feminine charms to seduce her enslaver and captured the encounter on video, only to use it as blackmail and get his help building the underground railroad (which in the skit re...

Awkwafina is living the American dream.  She jumped from YouTube to rap albums to Hollywood in a few short years and got there by showing her appreciation for hip hop culture.  Some people think she got there by cultural appropriation, and have been pretty vocal about it.  Awkwafina has heard them and issued an apology.  She's an allie, she's got your back, but she's having a hard time saying that...

The Hallmark Channel is famous for its loving take on life.  It's the feel good channel with all the feel goods.  But that changed in December of 2019 when One Million Moms took offense to some commercials that were airing on Hallmark, commercials that featuring a lesbian couple getting married.  The one-woman force behind One Million Moms started a petition to criminalize and destroy the Hallmark...

Elmo and Zoe are friends.  Rocco and Zoe are friends.  Rocco and Elmo are not friends because Elmo cannot be friends with a rock.  At least according to Elmo.  Elmo had it one day in 2004 and lost his cool on Sesame Street over Zoe saving the last cookie for Rocco to eat (because rocks don't have mouths and why are we explaining this, you get it, rocks are rocks).  Elmo refused to apologize and th...

In 2013 Guido Barilla, immediate member of the Barilla family and part owner of the world’s largest pasta company, casually mentioned on a radio interview that his company would never cater to gay families.  He graciously offered that there was lots of pasta in the world (and there is!) and if gay people and their families did not like his words they could just eat some of the other pasta.  There...

Josh Wardle invented a fun word game to play online for his girlfriend and she loved it.  So did her friends and family.  Josh opened the game up to the world and it caught on quickly - so fast that someone decided to try and make money off of it.  Zach Shakken took Wardle's Wordle and sold it as an app and got excited about how much money he was making.  But the internet got mad at Zach for steal...

Blake McCoy was a TV news reporter who wayback about one year ago Tweeted (and because it's Twitter, you know there is gonna be an issue) that obese people shouldn't be prioritized for vaccines.  He felt that the priority should go to all essential workers like health care workers and newscasters.  He got some heat and apologized 3 hours later, deleting the tweet and then eventually his social med...

In the 1960s, during the time of peace love and groovy, the City of Santa Monica forced an entire community of People of Color to move so that a freeway could be built to allow more (whiter) people direct access to the beach.  Santa Monica had been home to a thriving community of black business owners, homeowners, and renters.  The first freed black man to register to vote in California (looking a...

Teachers are America's heroes.  They work hard and are largely undervalued for the important role they play.  An ice hockey (is all hockey played on ice?) team decided to honor some teachers by inviting them to apply for a half-time "Dash for Cash."  The idea was simple: put a bunch of teachers together around a big pile of dollar bills and let the fun begin!  Teachers got to keep the cash and use...

It's our annual bonus episode!  Apologies Accepted is the guest podcast this week on MetaPod.  Catch Juliette and Theo in their first recorded interview as they talk about the show and all things apology.  MetaPod introduces listeners to new and different podcasts from across the world (which is round and contains more countries than just Los Angeles and San Francisco as Theo has recently learned!...

It's our Christmas episode.  Christmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmas.  We love it - the lights, the music, the cookies, the racist caricatures!  Ah, Christmas - the yuletide celebration that brings the world closer together.  A lovely time of year when we ask ourselves the eternal questions like: what is the meaning behind a black man dressed for a renaissance fair who has...

Business rule #1 is donut mess with the cops (it’s a pun! And episode 43!).  Business rule #2 is don’t lay-off 900 people as if you were sad about having to take out the garbage and then go on an anonymous chat board to say people deserved it.  Vishal Garg (not a Smurf) didn’t know about rule #2, or chose not to follow it because the rules don’t apply to him.  Either way, he laid off 900 people on...

Alice Sebold misidentified a man as a rapist and that man spent 16 years wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.  She wrote a memoir about the rape and the trial of the man she believed assaulted her. The memoir was a huge bestseller and she went on to literary fame, writing several novels to both critical and commercial success.  Recently her memoir was in production to become a film...

Russ and Phylis have been victims of Christmas pranksters since 2016.  One year the baby Jesus was stolen out of their nativity scene, later returned thanks to the miracle of faith and a very passive aggressive 3-foot-tall sign that Phylis posted on the front lawn.  Another year baby Jesus was stolen and never returned.  In 2019 the merry pranksters struck again, stealing the entire nativity scene...

Snoopy is cooking Thanksgiving dinner and everyone is invited!  Jellybeans and toast for all - including Franklin, the only black kid in the world of Charlie Brown and Peanuts!  Franklin gets a seat at the table all by himself as the other kids crowd around the opposite side of the table.  Some people see this moment in the show as emblematic of the black experience in America: included but exclud...

In the early 2000s, Paris Hilton was seen as a joke.  She was a dumb spoiled rich girl, and it seemed as if the media was forcing her upon the world for. No. Good. Reason.  When a private video tape was released, the public largely said she deserved what she got – and maybe she was even using the video to get more famous.  Either way it was somehow all her fault.  Few people felt sorry for Paris. ...