545. The Art of Good Apologies with Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 545 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guests today are Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy. They are the authors of a very new, fascinating, and very dishy book: Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies. So we’re going to talk about apologies, celebrity mishaps, the psychology of what creates a good apology, and if you have been thinking of making amends in the new year or you’re really wanting to write a good grovel, this is an episode that will be perfect for you.

I do want to give you a HEADS UP that we do talk about different apologies in different industries, including breaking down apologies from individuals accused of domestic abuse, assault, deceit, and other forms of harm. We don’t get into the very specifics, but I wanted to let you know that that is part of the context we’re talking about.

Hello and thank you to our Patreon community. Hello! You are all fabulous! If you would like to join our Patreon and support the show, you will keep me going every week; you will make sure that every episode has a transcript – thank you, garlicknitter! – you’ll get bonus episodes; you’ll get a wonderfully welcoming Discord community. It would be lovely to have you!

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To Autumn: The plants near you are getting ready to bloom like they have never bloomed before in anticipation of the coming spring because they are so happy that you are in the world.

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I also want to say a special hello to Carole T., who is listening to episodes while packing for a very big move. I’m honored to keep you company. Please look after your knees and your back, and we hope your new home is welcoming and lovely.

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All right, are you ready to do this podcast? Let’s talk about apologies. This is so much fun; I had such a good time doing this interview. On with the podcast.

[music]

Marjorie Ingall: I am Marjorie Ingall, and I am a writer and co-creator with Susan, who you will meet in a moment, of the website sorrywatch.com, which has been, which is a sort of apology watchdog site that has been tracking apologies in the news, media, pop culture, literature, since 2012, and we have a book coming out in, on January 10th called Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies.

Susan McCarthy: Hi, I’m Susan McCarthy; I’m a writer and author. Mostly I write about wildlife and animal behavior, but some years back, Marjorie and I started doing apology analysis at sorrywatch.com, and we made ourselves into experts on the subject of good apologies, which of course means that we had to look at a lot of bad apologies.

Sarah: So I have to tell you, one of the things that I do when my brain is fried, when my, when I’m just mentally exhausted is, I will go on subreddits that have complete stories like Pro Revenge, Nuclear Revenge, which is often the case of someone who has deeply screwed up and then doubled down on their screw-up, prompting the writer to concoct nuclear revenge. Sometimes it’s malicious compliance, where you comply to the, to the letter of the rules just to screw somebody who’s being terrible to you? And the arc of seeing someone get some sort of consequences for their poor behavior, it is so satisfying, and I realized that I had such a similar feeling reading Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, because even though you both profile some absolutely d-read-ful apologies and they’re infuriating, you also explain the full arc of what acknowledgment and taking responsibility and the satisfaction of a, of a, of a good story arc inside the apology; I love that part of the book, how each narrative reaches a conclusion, even if it’s a terrible one. It’s very, very satisfying.

So beyond me being, yes, this is an amazing book, what will readers find inside Sorry, Sorry, Sorry?

Susan: Readers are going to find not only our six steps to a good apology and the analys- – or six and a half, because the sixth, sixth-and-a-half step is listening.

Sarah: I’m sorry; we don’t do that on the internet?

[Laughter]

Susan: We break it down and, to the steps, and this does two things: if you want to apologize, you know how, but also if you get an apology and you still are not happy, looking at the six steps can really tell you why you’re not happy. Like, who were they, when they said they regretted it, what does it mean that they said, I’m sorry if that was triggering for you?

[Somebody growls]

Marjorie: Yeah. Knowing what a good apology is is an antidote to gaslighting.

Sarah: Oh, that’s a very good point! Because a good apology is, is empathy.

Marjorie: Yes. Very well said.

Susan: And you can say, Thank you for saying you’re sorry for – but it’s not about how I feel; it’s about how you did. Are you sorry for what you did?

Marjorie: And we also look at apol-, in the book we also look at apologies throughout history. We look at governments’ apologies for wrongdoing. For me, sort of, one of the revelatory parts was researching medical apologies and how people after a medical mistake want an authentic apology from a doctor or a hospital, and when they don’t get one, when lawyers get involved and make doctors apologize in a certain way that takes no responsibility because they’re afraid of getting sued? That’s what gets them sued! [Laughs]

Sarah: Their malpractice insurance is like, Don’t say that. Don’t, don’t acknowledge –

Marjorie: Right.

Sarah: – that you did a thing. Even if that person –

Marjorie: Right. And you –

Sarah: – no longer has a spine, you –

Susan: Right! [Laughs]

Sarah: – you regret the absence of their spine –

Marjorie: Sure!

Sarah: – not the fact that you took it out.

Marjorie: But, like, life as a puddle could be a delight.

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Marjorie: Yeah. So looking at other countries that have actually codified the notion of sitting with a patient and explaining what went wrong, explaining how this won’t happen again?

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And, and in some cases offering some restitution, a small amount of restitution, forestalls lawsuits, and we somehow often ref- – there are, there are projects that are now working on that in America, but it’s amazing to me that we just keep doubling down on the bad.

Sarah: Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s because admitting culpability and accepting responsibility means internally that you haven’t done a bad thing; you are bad? Does that mean, is it internalizing the negative? Is it accepting some sort of financial liability? Which, you know, the root, the general, the general reputation of America outside of America is of course that we love to sue each other all the time. [Laughs]

Susan: Right, yeah!

Marjorie: And maybe if we, if we actually communicated, we wouldn’t be doing that all the time.

Sarah: Yeah. Why do you think Americans are not so big in, in genuine apologies that are effective and empathetic?

Susan: I think we’ve taken in this idea that’s pretty prevalent in popular media, in movies, and you see it play out in politics where, just don’t apologize; it shows weakness; move on.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: And indeed, apologizing shows imperfection, but you know, everybody says, I’m not perfect, but I didn’t do that bad thing.

Sarah: Yes.

Susan: But wait, you’re not perfect, so maybe you did. Maybe you did do the bad thing.

Marjorie: People seem to have a hard time acknowledging any, while they say, I’m not perfect, or No one’s perfect, they seem to have a hard time acknowledging any specific incidents of imperfection in their own life.

Sarah: Yeah. I will frequently say to myself, Look, you, you screwed up. And I am, I am really good at self-recrimination? Like, I am top shelf good at self-recrimination. I am extremely –

Marjorie: Brava.

Sarah: – good at it. Thank you. It’s not pleasant.

Susan: I can do that.

Sarah: It’s not good to be in my brain sometimes, and I will say to myself, Look, you are, you cannot be a perfect human. You have screwed up; screw-ups will happen. What are you going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? When I worked in overnight camping, and this was, this was something that my husband and I –

Marjorie: Wait, wait; I’m so sorry; I need to interrupt. You said, When I worked in overnight camping –

Sarah: Yes.

Marjorie: – ‘cause I did not know that you had worked in camps –

Sarah: I did!

Marjorie: – but your novella about Jewish summer camp and romance with former Jewish summer camp people was so freaking good.

Sarah: Thank you!

Marjorie: I loved it so much, and I felt extremely seen in a way that was very touching for me.

Sarah: Thank you! All my insides are gooey now. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: But when I worked in camping, you have a very compressed time to make the summer happen, and if something, something goes wrong, you have to fix it as fast as possible, get everything back into what was supposed to be happening, and then figure out how not to, how that doesn’t happen again. And my husband and I call it camp sense, this, this sense that there’s no such thing as Not My Job, and we are all responsible for this collective experience for the campers that are there. And when it comes to admitting you screw up – [laughs] – there are so many people that, that cannot do that! So I want to ask you both, what led to a book about apologies, ‘cause I know it grew out from the website and I know all about website-to-book; it is a very fine path. What led to this book, and tell me about some of the research you did.

Susan: I think what led to the book was a piece that I wrote for Salon back in the day, which was a humor piece about Sorry If apologies..

Sarah: Ooh!

Susan: Yeah.

Sarah: Ugh.

Susan: And they’re just such ugly things, and this was hung on, you know, news events. You know, Sorry if we accidentally bombed your embassy and your nation went into a rational mourning. So it wasn’t a piece that I expected to stick around, but people kept communicating with me and saying, I printed that out, and I made my mom read it. I sent it to my boyfriend to explain why I was still upset after he said he was sorry if I took something the wrong way.

Marjorie: [Sputters, then laughs]

Susan: And so I realized this was something a lot of people care about.

Sarah: Yes.

Susan: And, and I knew that Marjorie had done a lot of writing about apology, including really funny stuff, especially in, in the context of atonement in, in Judaism, and so I, I roped her in to, to help me write about this, and we both are suckers for doing research.

Sarah: [Laughs] Comes with the journalism –

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: – right?

Marjorie: Right. It’s the journalist’s procrastination tool. You know, in college we used to exfoliate and clean the room, and now we do research…

Sarah: Yeah, research is combing yak hair; I get it.

Susan: Looked at lots of apologies in the news, and we go, What is – Is this good? Is this bad? And we just, you know, oh! He’s apologizing to the team but not to the, you know, the woman he raped!

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: Right. Apologizing to the manager; apologizing to the fans; you know, apologize to the woman you beat up in the elevator, you know?

But, so we started the site in 2012, not knowing that in 2016 there would be a massive national interest in the notion that, you know, If I ever do something wrong I’ll apologize, and, you know, we elected a president who made it very clear that he was, that apologies were weak.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And apologies are, in fact, an ev-, evidence of strength, because our brains are not wired to make us apologize well. I mean, we are designed to see ourselves as the hero of our own story –

Sarah: Yes.

Marjorie: – that’s how we function in the world –

Sarah: Yes.

Marjorie: – and, you know, apologizing means you’re the villain in someone else’s story and you have to acknowledge that, and if we always, you know, as we all know, when you get trapped in your own guilt and self-recrimination, that’s not healthy either, so a nice thing about apologizing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – is it moves everybody out of that cycle, and it means, you know, getting out of our, you know, very human, Uh, I hate myself, and Uh, I don’t want to take the step of being vulnerable to somebody else.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: This is, this is a tough and brave and very human act!

Sarah: And vulnerable, yeah.

Marjorie: Yeah! And it deserves applause, not this notion that it’s weak.

Sarah: I was really intrigued by the section in your book where you talked about doing research into the psychology of apologies and the, the physical and mental discomfort of existing in a state of dissonance when you recognize, The person I see myself as and the person I want to be does not match the thing that I did. And that’s uncomfortable, and apologizing helps you reconcile those two things, and one thing I say all of the time is that, I don’t understand how so many people run around in that state of dissonance. Like, their actions and who they say they are are so far apart; I’m like, don’t you have a headache from all of that dissonance?

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, does your skull vibrate? Do your, is there, like, music coming out of your mouth ‘cause your fillings are vibrating at a pitch and, like, birds can – like, don’t you hurt from that? ‘Cause I can’t stand that feeling. That dissonance –

Marjorie: No.

Sarah: – is so painful!

Marjorie: And that kind of dissonance is the origin of the horrible phrase that belongs in absolutely no apologies: That’s not who I am?

Sarah: Ohhh.

Marjorie: You know, like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – okay, it’s, we don’t – you know, again, going back to, you know, camping stuff, you know, Jewish tradition is about what you do, not what you think –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – you know, let’s not worry about, you know, this is not who you are. This is a thing that you did. Work on the thing that you did –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and make amends for the thing that you did –

Sarah: Yeah!

Marjorie: – and don’t say, This is not who I am. Don’t even, don’t, don’t, don’t get wound up in who you are.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: We are all flawed people.

Sarah: Yeah, and –

Susan: My friends know I’m perfect!

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, okay. Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: [Laughs more]

Sarah: One of the things I respect most about Judaism is – one of the major influences in my deciding to convert, actually – is the idea that on Yom Kippur, if you have sinned against another person, you can’t go to God and be like, Listen, I so screwed up with that person, but can you and me just, can you absolve me? Is that good? No, you have to go and make amends to that person. God cannot absolve you of sins that you’ve committed against other people, and I was like, ohhh!

Marjorie: Right.

Sarah: Well!

Marjorie: Right.

Sarah: Hello, my moral compass! We seem to be aligned.

Marjorie: [Laughs] That’s why we, we have bad apology Bingo cards in the book, and one of the phrases on a Bingo card –

Sarah: Yes! I love them so much!

Marjorie: – one of the phrases is, you know, God knows my heart –

Sarah: Bah!

Marjorie: – which is a, a phrase that we have heard in several apologies? No, don’t care. I don’t, God doesn’t need to know your heart; the person you wronged needs to know your heart.

Sarah: Yep.

Susan: No Sorry If…; no Sorry, But…; and no Sorry You…

Sarah: Oooh, yes! That’s the trifecta of good!

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, yeah. One of my favorite terms that I’ve read was, Linda Holmes from NPR coined the term –

Marjorie: Love.

Sarah: – onomatopology? Makes all the noises of an apology but is not an actual apology? And I feel like this is Onomatopology: The Book.

Marjorie: Yes. Our term is Apology-Shaped Object.

Sarah: Yes, exactly! You’re saying all these words, and it’s a nice word salad, but you haven’t actually addressed the, the thing.

What parts of your research surprised you? Were there things that you learned that made you go, oh, that’s cool; I didn’t know that?

Susan: Oh, one of my favorite things is the Zeigarnik effect, which is, first of all, is such a great name, and, but it’s based on actual research which came out of observing what orders waiters remembered in a Berlin café and how they forgot them after the, the customers had paid the bill, and the essence of it is that a completed action, you don’t remember it as well as an uncompleted action.

Sarah: Ohhh –

Susan: So the waiters –

Sarah: – yes.

Susan: – remembered everything you ordered until you paid the bill, and then it wasn’t important anymore and they forgot. And if you have something that you did, something stupid you said, something selfish you did and you wake up at night thinking about it, oh, oh, bah! But then if you apologize for it, that makes it a completed action, and I found this a couple times in writing the site, as I wanted to write about something that I had, where I had messed up and apologized, and I couldn’t even remember what I had done! Because it was a completed action after I apologized, and so I didn’t wake up at 3 a.m. and go, Oh, man, that was such a stupid thing to say. And sometimes I was able to retrieve what it was that I did, and sometimes I never have figured it out, and the idea that you can get rid of those vicious self-blaming things by actually doing the right thing and apologizing is amazing and has a scientific basis.

Sarah: I love that part. I love that so much!

Marjorie, what about you? What surprised you?

Marjorie: My favorite thing was seeing a parallel between the work we do on apology and the work that, there was a study that got a lot of traction earlier this year on how powerful people found receiving a thank-you note, and people who sent the thank-you notes tended not to – you know, you worry, Ugh, am I, is this, you know, do I sound okay? Am I groveling? Well, we’ve got to talk about, you know, good groveling versus bad groveling. You know –

Sarah: Oh yes, it’s on my list.

Marjorie: – do I, you know…my way of expressing myself, am I, does it look like I’m sucking up? And the people who received the thank-you notes thought they were the greatest thing in the world.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And we tend to underestimate how happy people will get when they get this, you know, when they get a note –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and especially an apology note. And I think that that’s true about apologies is, you know, everybody loves to talk about cancelation; everybody loves to talk about how, Oh, you can never be forgiven – yeah, exactly… 

Sarah: [Laughs]

Marjorie: – and I think, you know, we have to separate social media performativeness –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – versus, you know, that’s not the same thing as interpersonal, the human beings in our actual lives –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and most of the time when someone apologizes to you and apologizes well –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – it is such a huge weight off of you both.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And people, I think this whole notion of Nobody’s willing to accept apologies anymore; you know, you can never, you can never, you can never win –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – I don’t believe, I don’t believe that.

Sarah: That might be ‘cause that person’s apologies kind of suck.

Marjorie: Correct.

Susan: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: Correct.

Sarah: I, I read recently –

Susan: I –

Sarah: – some people on Twitter talking about how sometimes a, you know, you’ll have a really, really long friendship, and there’ll be some minor conflict and you address it, and sometimes that’s the end of that friendship, because it cannot withstand any conflict, but apologizing and interacting over the, the course of creating that healing of whatever went wrong, that can actually make your relationships a lot stronger too, which is something you talk a lot about.

Marjorie: Yes. I mean, I’m always a little taken aback when people say, We never fight, about a relationship, because if you don’t fight, then how do you make up, and how do you understand what the other one is feeling? Su-, Susan, do you agree?

Susan: I partly agree. I, I think I have quite a few friends that I’ve never had a fight with, but the friends I do fight with, I, I always think that they’re more like a family member; they’re like a sister –

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: – or a brother –

Marjorie: Yeah.

Susan: – who you can actually have a fight and not fear that that destroys everything.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

All right, so let’s talk: worst apologies that you have witnessed. What are your top most terrible apologies?

Marjorie: I saw –

Sarah: I’m, I’m sorry, I’m sorry if you are dead now?

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m sorry that my acts of negligence resulted in your – I regret that my acts of negligence – no that’s still taking responsibility. I regret that you’re dead. I’m sorry if you are no longer alive. That’s –

Marjorie: [Laughs more]

Sarah: God knows my heart, people!

Marjorie: [Laughs] Exactly!

Susan: Thank you!

Sarah: Oh yeah, I’m taking that out.

Marjorie: I was trying to think of good, you know, they all the – you know, it’s interesting; on the website, when we excoriate bad celebrity apologies, those get the most traffic?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: But those, I ultimate-, we’ve, over the years, you know, it’s been a decade now, and we are less likely to do those, even though they’re the most trafficked ones –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – ‘cause I don’t know how helpful they are to anybody. I mean, it’s sort of fun to bond about how terrible a celebrity apology is, but, you know, famous – part of what we went into in more detail in the book is that we’re not going to really learn anything from what people with incredible privilege and people who don’t tend to experience a lot of consequences?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: We’re not going to learn much from their apologies. That said, I would like to share an apology that made me see this year –

Sarah: Oh.

Marjorie: – this past year –

Sarah: Oh.

Marjorie: – which was Jimmy Kimmel apologizing to Quinta Brunson when he completely ate her beautiful Emmy moment and just…whole thing?

Sarah: Oh, honey.

Marjorie: And her whole appearance? And then, I want to read it out loud, ‘cause it was so bad. He said, “Congratulations on your Emmy; I missed it. How did it go?”

Sarah: Oh!

Marjorie: “That was a dumb comedy bit we thought would be funny. I lost, and then I drank too much, and then I got dragged out on stage, and –“

Sarah: What?! You were the host!

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: You weren’t dragged anywhere! You were paid –

Marjorie: Nobody dragged you!

Sarah: You were paid a lot of –

Marjorie: “People got upset and –“

Sarah: – dollars.

Marjorie: “People got upset and said I stole your moment,” Kimmel told Brunson. “Maybe I did, and I’m very sorry if I did do that.” And then he seemed to realize how that sounded, and he said, “I’m sorry. I did do that, actually. And also, the last thing I would ever want to do is upset you, because I think so much of you. I hope you know that.”

Sarah: And of course she has to sit there and take that grace, graciously and not be like, What was that trash?

Marjorie: Exactly. And one of the things that we feel like is not discussed enough in apology research is how gender and race affect both apologies and forgiveness, because you can’t look at this white man basically tromping on the moment and then apologizing badly –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – to, you know, a younger Black woman for, to, and not go Uhhh!

Sarah: He didn’t acknowledge or see –

Marjorie: None of it.

Sarah: – any of that.

Marjorie: None of it. None of the power dynamics. Garg.

Susan: I, I’ve been looking lately a lot at exonerations, where people have been in prison for years, and then typically what happens is the DNA evidence exonerates them?

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: And usually the DA who is in power at the time the person’s released is not the DA who was there when the person was thrown in prison, and typically there was evidence that was ignored, there were jailhouse informants that shouldn’t have been trusted –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: – there were alibis that were ignored –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: – and most of the time the DAs either say nothing, or they say, basically, God, sucks to be you.

Sarah: Yep.

Susan: That’s not what we do.

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: Sometimes – this is the absolute worst – they say, No, no, no, you’re, you, you’re probably still guilty.

Sarah: Ugh!

Susan: There was a case in Georgia where the DA said, Well, the DA evide-, the DNA evidence, we can’t admit that because that would be going into the victim’s sexual history, and for absolutely no good –

Marjorie: The one time they don’t care about the victim’s sexual history, right? [Laughs]

Susan: Exactly.

Sarah: Oh my God!

Susan: I did find another case where the DA was actually the DA who prosecated this person who was in – prosecuted this person – who was in jail for thirty years and said, I am so sorry; I was young and I was full of myself, and I was trying to make a name for myself and, and I just, you know, rode roughshod over you, and he really owned how selfishly he had behaved in pursuing this prosecution. And it’s just, it’s just shocking to me how few good apologies there are to people who have been exonerated.

Sarah: Yeah.

I am fascinated by one element of celebrity apologies, looking specifically at Ned from the Try Guys? I think that, especially online, there is a great deal of interest in the hypocrisy that’s located in that dissonance between who you perform as and who you are, and so the farther those two things grow apart – like the, the image that you are promoting and who you say you are, and then your behavior gets farther and farther away from that? There’s a lot of interest in the hypocrisy in that middle area, in that dissonance, and when someone gets caught being one hundred and eighty degrees away from what they’ve told people that they are and they’ve made their brand being somehow subversive or deviant from the norm, especially, especially norms of expression of masculinity, I am fascinated by the complete collapse when you point out, okay, actually you’re not this, you’re that, and enough people see it? Like, the whole Try Guys thing was absolutely fascinating to me, not only because the apology was so poor, but also because men held another man, who was their business partner, accountable, and I think one of the things that’s so often missing in so many apologies is the degree to which people are protected from having to be accountable. And I think that was a really interesting element of how do you create an apology when creating the apology might alienate you from all the people who have been, you know, protecting your horrible self for years and years and years?

Marjorie: It’s so funny ‘cause as you were talking about, you know, the disconnect between who you play and who it turns out you actually are, that, I think, is a big part of the downfall of Ellen DeGeneres?

Sarah: Ellen DeGeneres, Bill Cosby.

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: Yep. All of them. Not that those two crimes are the same, by the way.

Marjorie: No. No.

Sarah: Those are two totally separate problems! [Laughs]

Marjorie: But if you don’t, if you have people around you who – which is also why we don’t tend to learn a lot from celebrity apologies –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – a lot of them are crafted by PR people and crisis management teams –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – but, you know, Ellen talking about how hard it is to be known as the nice lady?

Sarah: When you’re not a nice lady, is that what you’re trying to say there, Ellen? [Laughs]

Marjorie: That’s – you know, and, and yeah, like, oh, I’m just – you know, again, the I’m only human thing – but never quite acknowledging, you know, talking about an atmosphere of bad in her show, but never acknowledging the things people said about her own personal badness –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – besides the whole sort of the buck stops here. You know, I didn’t know about it –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – but I’m the person whose name is on the show, you know. No, people said bad things about you specifically –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and she never, as far as I could tell, addressed those.

Sarah: Nope.

Marjorie: And people were angrier because when you pretend to be, you know, yeah, Mr. Jell-O Pudding, you know, America’s dad thing –

Sarah: Ugh!

Marjorie: – and then you do the horrible things, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

So what are some of the best apologies that you found in your research? What are some of the ones where you were like, okay, why can’t everyone just do this?

Marjorie: One of the best is an old one. It is from when the space shuttle Columbia exploded –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and Wayne Hale, who was the launch integration manager. (a) He took responsibility at the time, even though he had been, at the time, trying to stop the giant machinery –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – of NASA, saying this isn’t, we, we have not tested this well enough. Later, so they felt that what had gone wrong was something about seals –

Sarah: Insulation. Yeah, sealed insulation –

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: – around the fuel tank. Yeah

Marjorie: Correct. And when it turned out that indeed it had not, it was not the insulation that failed, it was the fact that they hadn’t tested the gas tanks full and partially empty –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and, you know, there were different – whatever; it expanded differently when it, when the tanks were full and partially empty.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: He went to the factory that had made the insulation and said, and apologized to the, on the factory floor –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – to those guys personally –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – for them being in the heat of all of this media stuff –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and he apologized publicly and he apologized privately. He took responsibility. He explained what happened. You know, this was, the, the factory was in Louisiana; it was after Katrina –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and, like, it was a, it was an important, meaningful apology and a meaningful gesture.

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And B. T. Dubs, not only did he not get fired, which is what everybody’s fear is when they apologize and admit a mistake –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – he ended up getting promoted.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: So this notion that apology is career death is just not inherently correct.

Sarah: No. I mean, it may be in the place in which you work, but if apology means death in the place in which you work, that’s, that’s another problem you might want to –

Marjorie: Right.

Sarah: – examine and –

Marjorie: Right, right.

Sarah: – and figure out how to deal with, ‘cause I’ve worked in those places –

Marjorie: Right.

Sarah: – and it suuucks!

Marjorie: Yeah! And it was super heartening with the Try Guys, seeing those two men call another man to account.

Sarah: Yeah. There was one video of the three of them, and they’re sitting on a couch, and one of them is just vibrating with anger. You had angry guy, you had sad guy, and you had utterly exhausted, baffled, what-the-hell-is-happening guy, and I’m like, wow, this is actual human reactions. And that’s, that’s what a good apology is, right? It is acknowledging the humanity of the person you’ve hurt.

Marjorie: Yes. Yes!

Sarah: It’s, it’s, it’s acknowledging, yeah, I, I fucked up. One of the things that I remember very, very early was realizing that there are a lot of parents who never apologize to their kids when they screw up. Like, parents are supposed to be –

Marjorie: Yeah –

Sarah: – infallible, and I’m like, okay, I’m sorry, my dudes; I fuck up all the time. I’m sorry; that was not cool of me. I apologize. I hope you’re okay.

Marjorie: No! Let’s – so my last book was called Mamaleh Knows Best, and it was a look at sort of Jewish parenting practices through history, and it was also sort of a funny, research-y one. But there’s all this research on authoritarian parents versus authoritative parents –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and the, the, you know, authoritarian parents are the ones who can never apologize –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – who, you know, that’s my authority; I, you know – versus authoritarian, which is, you know, you know you’re the parent; you know you have responsibility –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – but you also, this is a relationship!

Sarah: Yeah!

Marjorie: You know, and it’s, you’re modeling good behavior when you apologize –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – you know?

Sarah: Yeah. And oftentimes I will apolo- – I’ve, I’ve, I, I love the idea that when someone apologizes to you for doing something that you weren’t bothered by, they’re actually giving you an insight into what bothers them. That, that you did some- – so I, like, I did something that I thought really annoyed my older son, and I went to him later; I’m like, Hey, I feel really bad that I did this. I’m really sorry. It, I, I apologize; that was not cool. And he’s like, What are you talking about? And I said, Well, I hate when people do that to me. And he’s like, Okay, I won’t do that to you, but that didn’t bother me at all. Okay, good! Insight, good talk. Have a, you know, go back to your videogames.

Marjorie: Yeah, and everybody learned something!

Sarah: Right! When you, when someone apologizes to you for something that they’re feeling bad about that didn’t bother you, you’re getting insight into their boundaries. And isn’t an apology just an acknowledgment, Yeah, your boundaries were, were pushed here and I, I screwed up?

Marjorie: Right, and your boundaries are legitimate.

Sarah: And your boundaries are important to me, enough that when I break them I want to acknowledge, Yeah, I, I screwed up.

Susan, what about you? What do you think is one of the most, greatest, effective, fabulous apologies?

Susan: Well, this one is a celebrity social media apology. I just loved it; it was when Questlove was touring in Japan and the Far East –

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: – and he was, you know, putting out a, a steady flow of social media posts and little video clips and stuff like that, and he was talking in the, switching the Rs for Ls stereotype Japanese speaker thing –

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: – and he was making jokes about that. He took a little video of a guy who was sleeping on a bus with him, but very noisily, and he was just totally othering –

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: – people in Asia, and people eventually – like, his co-hosts that he was talking to were sort of going, Yeah, that’s okay, you can make that joke, ha-ha; now I will make that joke.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: And then he just realized, Oh, oh, that’s totally messed up, and I’m like, you know, as a Black American who is often the target of jokes, I should be the last person to make those jokes. That was dumb.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: That was – you know, he really just laid it all out there on social media, what he had done, and –

Marjorie: And it wasn’t this crafted, it wasn’t like this crafted, you know, obviously a publicist wrote this. It was him.

Sarah: [Laughs] It wasn’t a designer apology?

Marjorie: Yeah. [Laughs]

Susan: That’s right. He didn’t, he didn’t download it from our site and insert his name.

Sarah: Oooh! Guess that’s true.

Susan: [Laughs]

Sarah: But it, what, but also, that apology shows the sort of mental process behind him realizing, Oh yeah, that really wasn’t cool, and I know why now, and I feel bad. Yeah. Absolutely.

Susan: Yep.

Sarah: And –

Susan: One thing about apologies with children?

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: Is, as adults we’re very, if we’re not careful we’re going to apologize to children and then give them a lecture.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: And that – you know, Harriet Lerner has written about this – that just destroys the value of the apology if you say, I’m sorry I yelled at you, honey, but you were making that noise that was so annoying. No! You were sorry you yelled at them.

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: Later, if you want to, you can talk about their habit of making annoying noises, but that’s separate. But as adults, it’s really hard for us not to follow up with a lecture.

Sarah: So one of the major parts of romance – one of my favorite parts? – is the grovel. Like, there have been whole romances that are basically one long grovel. Why do you think a good grovel is so satisfying to read?

Marjorie: I have not tended to read a lot of great romance novel grovels, and I realized it’s because I’m so afraid – not afraid of – I hate the alpha ma-, alpha heroes so much –

Sarah: Not a fan either.

Marjorie: – that even in the beginning, even when I know the arc is going to be redemption, I can’t read them?

Sarah: Yep.

Marjorie: But I did love the Courtney Milan novella Unlocked where it’s, when they’re, when – do you know what I’m talking about?

Sarah: It is my primary example of outstanding grovel, yes.

Marjorie: Such quality groveling! And maybe because the bad behavior happened so many years before, I could, I could handle it. Yeah, I’m a, I’m a beta hero reader, so –

Sarah: Oh yeah. For, for me, so much of alpha male writing comes across to me as deep insecurity and adherence to a very limiting view of masculinity that I’m just like, I’m not interested in watching you learn emotional intelligence? I would like you to arrive with emotional intelligence into the story.

Marjorie: [Laughs] Exactly! And just, you know, given, you know, absolutely no shame in anyone’s reading game –

Sarah: Yeah, read whatever you like! I don’t mind.

Marjorie: – if that’s your, if that’s your –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – trope, God love ya, but, and I think that we do love the grovel because we, we love the idea that we live in, we, I mean, we, we, we hate the idea – [laughs] – we know that we live in this soup of toxic masculinity –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and this notion that in our escapism, you know, somebody who does something really bad will just endlessly beg for forgiveness and really do the work is super appealing.

Sarah: I mean, one of the quintessential titles in romance world is Pride and Prejudice, where there’s two apologies, one bad –

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: – one good.

Marjorie: It’s so funny: I always want to, when I read a great apology in a book, I always want to share it on our social media, but then I never do because it’s always a spoiler? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re going to the end.

Susan: [Laughs]

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: And the thing I love about Courtney Milan’s Unlocked in particular is that it’s based on the idea that when he was immature he teased the girl that he liked, and then he went away and he came back and found that all of his teasing had completely destroyed her socially, and she was very lonely, and it was his fault. And –

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: – he really did like her, and he did not have the maturity to actually express that in a way that wasn’t damaging to her.

Marjorie: Yes.

Sarah: Oh, I think in my review I called that the grovel-vella? ‘Cause it was a novella full of grovels.

Marjorie: Oh, such a good grovel-vella!

Sarah: Oh…

Marjorie: And also, the thing, you know, maybe it felt personal to me because the thing that he mocked was her laugh?

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And as somebody who has a total guffaw –

Sarah: Yeah. Don’t –

Marjorie: – I felt, yeah. I understood.

Sarah: Don’t make fun of someone’s laugh. That’s an involuntary noise! Don’t do that!

Marjorie: And it’s, it’s, you know…

Susan: I have to tell you, my husband and I have known each other since fifth grade.

Sarah: Okay!

Susan: And nothing like that, but he did, he did say a couple things in the course of fifth and sixth grade in particular that I remembered.

Sarah: I have met fifth and sixth grade boys before, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Susan: Yeah. Well, a lot of that was out of the culture at our school –

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: – in fifth and sixth grade.

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: And, in fact, he was much nicer than the other boys about girls being acceptable beings.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Susan: You know, which it’s –

Marjorie: I did not know you’d known Daniel since fifth grade!

Susan: Yep. Well, we weren’t an item! We had a lot of, both of us had a lot of immaturity to get past, but when you grovel, you expose vulnerability, and it brings you so much closer; it enables you to go on –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: – so much more closely and understandingly. I think that’s one reason a good grovel is so satisfying to read about.

Sarah: Yes. It, because a good grovel and a good apology are you being as, you being authentically yourself, as, as authentically as you possibly can and exposing how vulnerable and bad you feel, because screwing up feels bad!

Marjorie: Before we go, can we tell you what we think the six and a half steps to a good apology are?

Sarah: I would love to know the six and a half good steps to a good apology. I didn’t want to ask you to outline them in case you want people to go and, you know, read the book and find out.

Marjorie: Aw! You are so good!

Sarah: Please tell me!

Marjorie: Thank you!

Sarah: Please tell me the six and a half steps to a good apology, should anyone who is listening be writing a grovel or need to apologize.

Marjorie: Yes. We figure there’s enough value add in the rest of the book –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – that we can share these things, ‘cause this is the most important thing! This is better, this is bigger than us!

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Marjorie: Susan, you want to do it?

Susan: No, you do it, Marjorie! You’re on a roll!

Marjorie: No, you do it!

Susan: No!

Marjorie: Okay.

Susan: No. Okay –

Marjorie: You know, we can trade off on the steps. How’s that?

Susan: All right.

Marjorie: Number one: Use the word “sorry” or “apologize!”

Sarah: Oh!

Marjorie: Regret is not apology!

Sarah: The bar is so low!

Marjorie: Regret is about how you feel! Apologies are about what the other person feels!

Susan: Number two: For, say what it’s for. Say what you’re apologizing for. Don’t say, I’m sorry how it all went down Tuesday. Don’t say –

Marjorie: …for that regrettable incident.

Susan: Yeah, sorry about that.

Marjorie: Say it!

[Laughter]

Marjorie: Number Three: Show you understand why it was bad. You know, if you say, you know, Sorry I borrowed your car without asking, and it was like, No, sorry, you know, you left it for three days and there was a rat in the – ask me how I know this – that there was a rat in the engine and you turned it and it was all disgusting and gutsy, full of guts, and I had to have it – you know, no! Say you’re – apologize for that!

Susan: What number are we on?

Marjorie: Four!

Susan: What’s that?

Marjorie: Explain only as much as is necessary.

Susan: Yeah. So, well, you explain if you need to explain, but really watch out for giving excuses.

Sarah: Yes. I have encountered a few conversations, just even in my household, where someone’ll be talking and be like, look, those are, those are reasons; that’s backstory; that’s not an excuse. I still screwed up.

Marjorie: Right.

Marjorie and Sarah: Yep.

Marjorie: Yep.

Susan: I think maybe one of the canonical examples is saying, I had a really bad day.

Sarah: Okay?

Susan: Okay, you had a really bad day. Why did you, how does that mean you have to yell at me? That’s a –

Sarah: Why are you taking it out on me? I didn’t do anything.

Susan: Yeah.

Marjorie and Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: But if you say, I didn’t even see you in the, that you were in the room. That’s an explanation. If you say, I was in a bad mood when I came into the room, no.

Sarah: I’m sorry; we expect you to manage your emotions like a functional adult human, sooo –

Marjorie: Yeah!

Sarah: – yeah, let’s try that.

Marjorie: Okay, number five: Say why it won’t happen again. What steps are you taking?

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: And corp-, for a corporation, that’s also a really important step, ‘cause they’re really good at just issuing apologies that mean nothing.

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: Are you going to make sure that all the DNA in all the cases gets examined?

Marjorie: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: That would be nice, now, wouldn’t it?

Marjorie: Yeah.

Susan: Wouldn’t it indeed?

Sarah: Wouldn’t it be lovely?

Susan: And then step six is reparations. Can you make up for it? You know, if you bumped into somebody and you say, Oh, I’m sorry; I didn’t see you there. Are you okay? That’s fine; you don’t have to make reparations for that. But if you in fact broke their dish, can you buy them a new one?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: Can you get them a new one? Can you pay for the dry cleaning?

Sarah: Yeah.

Susan: Can you tell their mom that it wasn’t true what you said about them?

Sarah: The best apology is changed behavior?

Marjorie: Yes.

Sarah: The best apology is demonstrating, yeah, that that, that’s not what I’m doing; I’m not doing that again.

Marjorie: Right, right. Like, one of the great historical corporate apologies is the Tylenol poisoning case in the ‘80s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – when somebody poisoned several bottles of Tylenol, and –

Sarah: And we still don’t know who! That’s a very old mystery.

Marjorie: They’ve never found out who, but it’s –

Sarah: No one knows who it was!

Marjorie: And, like, the words, like, I actually looked, and I couldn’t find the words “I’m sorry” anywhere, but, oh my God, the behavior was perfect! Which is why they still teach this in business schools –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – is, you know, pulling all of the bottles off the shelves everywhere, not just in the place where the incident happened, regularly updating people about how this investigation was going, changing the packaging to the childproof packaging we still have today! I mean, that’s a behavioral apology –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – and that was huge!

Sarah: And expensive! I mean –

Marjorie: And expensive!

Sarah: And expensive.

Marjorie: And that actually, they did do the sixth, the, the half step of our six and a half steps thing over there at Tylenol, which was listen?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: Which was daily press conferences –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – and actually answering questions.

Sarah: Yeah. So –

Marjorie: Thank you.

Sarah: – I always ask this question: what books are you reading that you want to tell people about, with the understanding that this episode will come out in January, but as of right now HarperCollins has not gone to the negotiating table with the union, so I won’t mention or promote –

Marjorie: I, I love that you are not, that you guys are saying on all of your book, all of your book-related pages now –

Sarah: Marjorie –

Marjorie: – that we’re not talking about HarperCollins until they acknowledge their union.

But what I’m reading right now, I literally just finished a Smart Bitches recommendation, which was Reluctant Immortals?

Sarah: Oooh-ho-ho!

Marjorie: Which I liked –

Sarah: Yeah?

Marjorie: I liked it. I thought the premise of, you know, Lucy Westenra and Jane Eyre and Bertha from, who’s the madwoman in the attic –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – all getting together –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – to take down Dracula and Rochester was delightful, but it was more –

Sarah: In the ‘60s, yeah.

Marjorie: Yeah, in the ’60s in the Haight. But it was more vibes?

Sarah: Yeah. There’s a lot of vibes books now –

Marjorie: Than –

Sarah: – have you noticed?

Marjorie: Vibes are very in right now.

Sarah: No plot; just vibes.

Marjorie: Just vibes. And I just read Shelf Discovery, the Lizzie Skurnik book, which was a delight. And what am I reading right this second? Well, I finally, my library hold on I’m Glad My Mom Died –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh, it’s so good.

Marjorie: I can’t wait. And I, I’m going to have to, like – you know, we can’t buy all the books that we want to buy because we just can’t afford to do that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – but I believe I’m actually going to buy Rob Delaney’s new book about his son’s death, which I am blanking on the title of, but –

Sarah: A Heart That Works?

Marjorie: A Heart That Works! Exactly. It was so much better than it had to be. It was so much better, and it deals with his alcoholism. And hilarious; like, laugh out loud, pee-pee funny. So I’m actually going to buy that book.

Sarah: Fabulous! Susan, what about you? What books would you like people to know about?

Susan: I really liked both The Boys by Katie Hafner and City of Orange by David Yoon. Those both had actual surprises that I didn’t see coming, which is pretty unusual, I think.

A book that’s not recent, that I had to order from a website was this amazing book, Pursuing Giraffe.

Marjorie: Ahhh!

Sarah: A 1950s Adventure!

Susan: So imagine that Jane Goodall wanted to study giraffes and didn’t have Louis Leakey as a mentor and was from Canada, and she was just a very young woman who loved giraffes and went to Africa to study giraffes. She had no one she was working with; she had no one she was working for; she just did it.

Sarah: Wow!

Susan: And she wrote a monograph on giraffes, and since then, despite a lot of sexism in the, in academia, like you got your Ph.D. here, so we can’t employ you kind of stuff –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susan: – and you know what? We don’t actually hire women as full professors kind of stuff. For which, incidentally, she later got, much later got an apology. She went ahead and she became a, a writer and researcher, extremely prolific, despite the handicaps and the relative obscurity. I find it just a fascinating book.

Sarah: Wow!

Marjorie: And with such a good cover!

Sarah: Gorgeous!

Susan: It is a great cover!

Marjorie: Oh, I also wanted to just say that we wanted, we really like books that are research-y and science-y and smart –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: – but also really funny and easy to read? And sort of –

Sarah: Yes, that is definitely the case with your book.

Marjorie: Thank you. So I think some good models for that that I read recently was, I just read both The Menopause Manifesto and What Fresh Hell Is This? – guess why – and both of those I thought were great, and for me personally a sort of model for how you do funny, science-y writing –

Sarah: Yes.

Marjorie: – is Mary Roach.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Marjorie: For me in particular, Stiff was my favorite, and yeah, like, it’s funny, like, we have, our books have, this book has gotten very good advance reviews, but a couple noted that they were a little baffled by the tone? And thus –

Sarah: Why would they be daffled, baffled by the tone? The tone made perfect sense!

Marjorie: I know! ‘Cause why would you want to be funny? Why would you want people to read your book? But it’s also important to laugh when you acknowledge that, you know, a hard thing is hard –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – that we’re all, we’re all sharing this hard thing, experience of apologizing.

Sarah: There is a researcher who I really like named Dr. Devon Price? They are a sociologist. Their first book was Laziness Does Not Exist, which unpacks the colonialist, white supremacist, patriarchal idea of laziness, which is you are not providing profitable labor, labor, so you are to be, you know, castigated for that. There’s a whole chapter where Dr. Price talks about their chinchilla whose name is Dump Truck? And there’s a whole chapter examining the concept of laziness versus just being in the world, focused on Dump Truck, which is fantastic. Dr. Price is also –

Marjorie: On it.

Sarah: – trans and autistic and wrote a new book this year called Unmasking Autism? Which, it was their goal to write a book about autism from the perspective of an autistic researcher, and they spent a lot of time on the intersections of being trans and being autistic and having ADHD and having a bunch of different, invisible, neurodiverse, intersect-, intersected issues with the way that you move through the world? But also Dr. Price has zero fucks to give? Like, negative fucks. Negative.

Marjorie: Oh my God. I am all over this, both for me and for my kid, who is autistic –

Sarah: Oh –

Marjorie: – and genderqueer. And –

Sarah: Yeah, this is, Dr. Price’s book will blow their mind.

Marjorie: Oh my God!

Sarah: Dr. Price is fantas- – I’ve, I interviewed Dr. Price for Laziness Does Not Exist, so there’s an episode with them.

Marjorie: Okay, I’ll go back.

Sarah: But –

Marjorie: This is, you have, you have been just a font of awesome recs here. This has been –

Sarah: Makes me so happy! [Laughs] But that is one of, like, the books that I read this year that I still think about, and it, it, it just helps you think about how do you want to make your world welcoming for neurodiverse people? But also, look at all of this bullshit! You see all this bullshit? There’s just layers of bullshit.

Marjorie: [Laughs]

Sarah: And you can’t, you can’t get rid of it, and you can’t –

Marjorie: Bullshit all the way down.

Sarah: Bullshit all the way down.

So where can people find you both, if you wish to be found? You don’t have to wish to be found; it’s fine if you don’t want to be.

Marjorie: We love to be found. God only knows if Twitter will still exist when –

Sarah: God only knows!

Marjorie: Yep. But we are on Facebook as Sorrywatch.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Marjorie: We are at sorrywatch.com.

Sarah: Yep.

Marjorie: You can get our book wherever you get your books, including the library, which we are big fans of.

Sarah: Oh yes!

Marjorie: I thought of something: as we, we mentioned –

Sarah: Yeah.

Marjorie: – Harriet Lerner –

Sarah: Yeah!

Marjorie: – but we didn’t say the name of her book.

Sarah: Oh, what’s, what’s Harriet Lerner’s book?

Marjorie: It’s Why Won’t You Apologize?, right, Susan?

Susan: That’s right.

Marjorie: Yeah.

Susan: She has great case histories, ‘cause she’s a psychologist –

Marjorie: Yeah.

Sarah: Yes.

Susan: – so she can talk people through this stuff.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you so, so much for this interview –

Marjorie: Thank you!

Sarah: – this has been great, and your book is so great; I hope it does so well.

Marjorie: Thank you.

Susan: Thank you!

Marjorie: And I’m glad to have the opportunity to tell you what a super fan I am face to face.

Sarah: Thank you! That’s so nice to hear!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you again to Marjorie and Susan for hanging out with me. I will have links to all of the books we talked about, including Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, episode number 545!

I always end with a terrible joke; this week is no exception, and this joke is from Dani. Hi, Dani!

Now, I know you’ve heard of Murphy’s Law where, you know, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, but have you heard of Cole’s Law?

Have you heard of Cole’s Law?

Yeah, it’s thinly sliced cabbage.

[Laughs] Thank you, Dani! Coleslaw! I actually hate coleslaw, which is weird ‘cause I generally like mayonnaise, but coleslaw? Not my thing.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend; we will see you back here next week!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Guess what you can find! Outstanding podcasts at frolic.media/podcasts.

Coleslaw! [Laughs]

[end of groovy music]