Apologies Accepted

Harry Styles found himself in a bit of hot water with Billy Porter.  Harry had posed on the cover of Vogue, in a dress, and Billy was pretty angry over all the praise Harry was receiving.  Billy said some things that he later apologized for, explaining that all he’d ever received was scorn for wearing women’s fashion, but here comes a handsome straight white guy in a dress and the whole world swoo...

MOVE was a quasi-political organization that began in the 1970s.  Ex-members say it is a cult, current members say it is a peaceful back-to-nature movement meant to reunited mankind with the natural world.  In 1978 the City of Philadelphia said it was a terrorist organization that needed to be dealt with, and the city did just that with 400 cops, tanks, bulldozers, hand grenades, and guns.  An off...

It’s our Halloween special!  One summer in 1692 some village girls began behaving strangely.  Witches were the only explanation and so began one of the darkest periods in early American history – The Salem Witch Trials.  200 people were sent to jail and 20 were killed by public execution.  The Witch Trials lasted about a year, and seemingly stopped just as suddenly as they had started.  The big qu...

Our first season draws to a close and our big take away – there are a lot of apologies out there!  So we are going above and beyond as we highlight the most notable and give awards to some really deserving apologies.  Not every apology earns an award, but each one was already a winner for having been a show episode.   Although it’s the end of season 1, have no fear - we’re marching straight into s...

Totally planned and absolutely *not* by accident, our Spooky October Month-Long-Spectacular continues with an episode about Skinwalker Ranch, a ranch in Utah owned by a billionaire who wants to study the paranormal.  Before that, the ranch was owned by a different billionaire who was studying flying saucers.  Before that, it was owned by a nice ranching family who did not care for UFOs or the para...

We take our second deep dive into the topic of UFOs and government cover-ups!  On March 13, 1997 a huge flying object was reported by thousands of people across Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Sonora, Mexico.  The air force scrambled fighter jets to investigate.  Local and national news stations covered the event, which became known as “The Phoenix Lights.”  It was arguably the most important UF...

Kevin Day was a radar operator for the Navy and working with the latest and greatest radar and tracking technology onboard the USS Princeton on November 10, 2004.  He was highly trained, highly qualified, and highly respected for his skills – so people took notice when he spotted something on the radar that wasn’t supposed to be there.  He reported it up the food chain because that was his job.  N...

Kansas State Representative Mark Samsel was just having one of those days – he was working as a substitute teacher ($88 a day!), but the kids weren’t listening, and he was stressed, and gay parents were a thing in the world, and God had been talking to him all morning non-stop…so he did what many teachers have dreamed about, he kicked a kid in the groin and called it a day.  Enough already!  Take...

We've all heard about Cancel Culture - but is it a real thing or just a political tool?  Who gets canceled and why?  Can the canceled be uncanceled?  That's three questions in a row and that's the legal limit so buckle up and get ready for the origins of cancel culture, what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and why we should just ignore the fake drama and try and stay on fleek!

Ellipses is a French publisher specializing in textbooks.  Their 2019 textbook, "The History of the 20th Century in Cards" claimed that the CIA was responsible for 9/11.  It wasn't until a French girl studying for her college exams reported the statement to her father, a high-school history teacher, that anyone seemed to care that a French publisher was accusing the CIA of orchestrating 9/11.  Jus...

A police officer celebrating his 25th year in the force was surprised by his friend with a beautiful cake.  The cake was meant to celebrate the officer’s long career in a pretty tough, sometimes thankless job.  Instead the cake insulted the entire Philly police department.  The cake was decorated with a Philly PD badge, but the PPD slogan “Honor, Integrity, Service” had been replaced with the word...

Michael Chabon recently learned that people in Hollywood don't play nice, and if you are going to be in the game, you're gonna get hurt.  Michael spent 20 years working with Scott Rudin, a huge Hollywood producer responsible for a ton of your favorite TV programs, movies, and Broadway shows.  Scott was also responsible for throwing things at staff, calling people names, forcing people out of cars,...

In 1997 President Bill Clinton apologized to a group of 8 black men from Alabama who were the last surviving members of the Tuskegee Experiment.  In the early years of the 20th century it was believed by the medical community that black people and white people experienced syphilis differently.  In 1932 two doctors set about studying how untreated syphilis affected black men in Tuskegee Alabama and...

Comedian Kathy Griffin had a bit of a quiet period in 2017.  She decided to hire a famous photographer to take some “fun snaps” to send out for glorious self-promotion and maybe drum up some business.  That day led to the infamous “Donald Trump as Medusa” photo that set the right-wing media afire and burned Kathy Griffin’s career to ashes.  She apologized, but that didn’t seem to matter to the pol...

In July 2021 DaBaby performed on stage live and wanted to get the audience hyped up.  He made some comments that quickly went viral and angered not only the LGBTQ+ community, but also other performers he had previously worked with on some pretty big projects.  His comments also made some brands angry.  Oh, and some concert venues which were quick to cancel his upcoming shows.  So DaBaby did what a...

Most women experience sexual harassment in the workplace.  It's a given that if you have breasts someone is going to comment on them.  And sometimes not saying anything and just going along feels like the easier option - and also the best way to not get labeled a killjoy sourpuss who hates fun.  So when your adorable and sweet coworker takes his willy out to wag it about and chase you with it...we...

Hats!  They aren't just for sane people, as one hat-maker in Nashville set out to prove when she created a yellow Star of David badge (only $5!) that had the word "unvaccinated" written inside.  Trucker caps were soon to follow, except people were kind of outraged at her appropriation of this symbol of the holocaust.  The hat-maker quickly dropped her truck cap plans and issued an insta-apology on...

New album, new look, and old videos of Billie Eilish using an anti-Asian racial slur fueled the excitement in the Billie-sphere this month.  Arguably the most famous 19-year-old on the planet, Billie Eilish is a singer-songwriter-phenomenon who perfectly encapsulates Gen-Z angst.  She’s edgy and caring and nihilistic and full of hope, all at once.  She seemingly came out of nowhere and now has mul...

Being number one is great, but being number two is pretty nice, too.  Just ask Allison Mack.  She was second in command of the NXIVM cult and the leader of a devoted group of women who called her "master" and did her bidding.  Sounds great!  Except it involved a cult and blackmail and sex-trafficking and branding and enslaving others.  That all sounds pretty bad, but the bad parts were kept secret...

He's the Pope and he's pretty important.  His word is law so when he says something there is no argument.  Also when he doesn't say something it's pretty important, so when the Pope didn't apologize for 215 unmarked graves found at a Catholic school in Canada...words kind of fail us here but they didn't fail the Pope!  He expressed sorrow and sadness and is filled with sympathy.  And there's some...

Some words just don’t get to be spoken by some people.  That’s just how it goes.  But sometimes people use words they shouldn’t anyway, in places they shouldn’t, and at times they shouldn’t.  Jeffery Singer found out the hard way that the N-word is one of those words: it shouldn’t be used by some people, in any place at any time under any circumstances.  His use of the N-word while auditioning com...

Twitter came for Ellie Kemper in May of 2021.  They called her the “Queen of the KKK” and accused her of being a white supremacist.  The story picked up traction in newspapers and real media (sorry, newspapers!) and Ellie Kemper (aka Kimmy Schmidt) found herself issuing an apology for being named the “Queen of Love and Beauty” nearly 20 years ago by the Veiled Prophet Organization of St. Louis.  T...

The hosts of MFM have legions of adoring fans. Karen and Georgia are down to earth, funny, relatable, and share their innermost thoughts and fears freely on the air.  They also share the thoughts and feelings of others.  Some of these stories are firsthand accounts, and some are secondhand.  It was one of these secondhand stories that prompted the hosts to issue an apology and promise to be more c...

Ah Amor!  What is life without love?  What is life without the romantic chase, n'est-ce pas?  What is life without a little bit of unwanted kisses and stalking?  Pepe LePew is about to find out.  Once the suave and sophisticated star of 1940s cartoons, famous for pursuing love at all costs, Pepe was removed from Space Jam 2 (did we really need a second one?) due to his past inappropriate behavior....

Basecamp designs software that helps other companies manage productivity.  It’s so good they use it themselves!  A component of Basecamp is the group chat feature called “Campfire.” It’s designed to allow employees to have informal conversations about anything and everything.  Turns out that feature was a problem within Basecamp’s offices.  Their employees were using Campfire to discuss racial ine...