Apologies Accepted

Carlee Russell: Gone Girl Fail

Carlee Russell called 911 to report a toddler walking along the side of the highway at 9:30 at night (21:30 for the rest of the world!).  Her car was found with the car door open and engine running on the side of the road.  Her belongings, her purse and cell phone remained behind, untouched.  The takeout dinner sat in the back seat, unopened and still warm.  She was missing for two days before appearing at her parents' home, frightened and distraught.  In the two days of her disappearance, her story had caught national attention and her return was a miracle.

But her story did not add up and the police quickly realized something was wrong.  Her car was tracked during the 911 call and she traveled a distance of 600 yards in 2 minutes claiming she was following a 3 year old child.  The kid basically ran 6 football fields in 2 minutes - catch that kid and sign him up for the big leagues!  She couldn't describe her kidnappers and had little memory of what had happened - but she knew what had not happened or maybe she didn't not know she knew she forgot...?  It all became terribly confusing and eventually her attorney came out to speak behind a microphone and offer an apology.  People had feelings about the woman who faked her kidnapping to punish a boyfriend or hide the fact she wasn't going to graduate, the details are still unclear.  But what is clear is this segue from her apology to our show :)

Graffiti Tourist: When in Rome

A tourist from the UK carved his name into the Roman Colosseum in 2023 ~ approximately 2,000 years after it opened to visitors.  He claims he didn't know how old the Colosseum was but he sure is sorry that all of Italy and most of Europe wants to see his blood splashed against the Colosseum floor in exchange for carving "Ivan & Haley 4Evah" onto the walls.

It turns out that graffiti is nothing new and people largely had the same d*ck jokes 2,000 years ago as they do today.  So should this UK tourist be thrown to the lions or is his apology good enough to stop Italian justice from taking its vengeance out upon him?

**Encore** UFOs: The Truth is Still Out There

Summer Vacation for Apologies Accepted!  We'll be back next week, but for now enjoy this encore episode because UFOs/UAPs are now back in the news!

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 UFO story of the 1990s.

Former Governor Fife Simington (yes that’s a real name) wants everyone to know that he also saw the Phoenix lights that night.  He just didn’t say anything at the time because he did not want to cause a panic.  To help diffuse tensions, he held a news conference where he brought out a guy dressed as an alien (typical gray and not a reptilian because don’t be ridiculous) and everyone laughed. 

Now, 20 years later, Fife is telling anyone who will listen that he is positive it was a UFO and for sure otherworldly.  He’s semi-sorta-kind-of sorry that some people had hurt feelings over the press conference and thought he was making fun of UFOs – but hey you guys it was funny and really I’m like one of the cool kids and I had to protect the city of Phoenix because that was my job and I’m talking about it now so where’s my hero-award?

**Encore** UFOs: The Truth is Out There

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.  November 10 was an important day, four military pilots were conducting training exercises and the new radar equipment was tracking their flight.  It could just be malfunctioning equipment, but if something was up there that wasn’t supposed to be there, the pilots' lives were potentially at risk.  Kevin had no choice but to report the anomaly and the pilots were directed to try and get a look.  They got more than a look.  All four saw the object with their own eyes, and one of them filmed the object.  They all agreed, whatever it was, it was an unknown object flying and defying the laws of physics (damn you and your laws, physics!).

After reporting the incident, and after the US Government landed a black-hawk helicopter onto the air carrier and flew off with the film, Kevin’s career took a hit.  People made fun of him.  His military commander asked him WTF had he been smoking that day.  The incident followed him and kept him from getting promotions – he was “that UFO guy” and labeled a kook.

Then in 2017, 13 years later, the video was leaked online.  It took the US Government another 3 years to say out-loud that the video was authentic, but they finally did in April of 2020 – in the middle of a global pandemic when the entire world was on fire and everyone was praying that American democracy wasn’t going to collapse under the weight of a giant orange crybaby toddler – so no surprise that people were kind of paying attention to other things.

But Kevin noticed, and he’s here to say he deserves an apology for a decade of abuse and scorn for simply doing his job one day in November 2004…

Note: there are 3 unrelated military observations of UFOs and the link to all 3 videos is here: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2165713/statement-by-the-department-of-defense-on-the-release-of-historical-navy-videos/

**Encore** Radiation: Y 5 a X2b or The Glow from Within

It's an encore episode in honor of lady scientists everywhere!

No surprise that the US Government conducted secret radiation tests on civilians in the 1940s and up through the 1970s.  It's almost not even worth mentioning that the radiation was injected secretly, without warning or consent, into innocent people to see what happens.

What happened was a formula that allowed scientist to backtrace from your internal bodily radiation levels to the point of exposure, the Langham Power-Function Model or Y 5 a X2b. Oh, and a bunch of people died, but not from radiation sickness! They were terminally ill to begin with.

Bill Clinton apologized for these secret radiation experiments in 1995, but we have to go all the way back to 1860 to understand what radiation is, what did its discovery mean to science, and how does all of this get from Madam Marie Curie to the passage of laws around informed consent?

Women in Science: It Take a Man

Two postdocs wrote an article on gender differences in hiring rates in the sciences and discovered that men had a much easier time than women in getting articles published and getting hired.  The article went out for peer review prior to publication and the critical feedback they received was that the article would have been better had a man helped them write it.

Perhaps, the reasoning went, the two postdocs allowed their own lady-biases to color their interpretation of the data. Because it just so happens that the two postdocs were lady-scientists. There was some more stuff about how male scientists can run faster than lady-scientists and eventually the publisher, PLOS One (Public Library of Science) issued an apology.  PLOS was sorry, after news broke on Twitter (remember how great Twitter was before the Nazis took over?), that their reviewer had been so heavy handed and that the ladies had some hurt feelings - but also PLOS was going to take some action.  And they did - but was it enough and most important were any men's feelings hurt in the issuance of the apology?

L.A. Dodgers: Foul Balls

Peanuts, Popcorn, Crackerjacks and Queers!  It's Pride Night at the Ballpark but all was not gay.  The Los Angeles Dodgers (Brooklyn still hates ya!) celebrates diversity all year round.  There is Black Heritage Night, Korean Heritage Night, Asian Pacific Islander Night - everyone gets a night, even the Alphabet Mafia!

Pride night wasn't a homerun for the Dodgers.  They'd invited The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity-street-performance-advocacy group that dresses in drag as nuns.  The Sisters have been performing charitable acts for marginalized communities for 27 years and the Dodgers wanted to give them an award for their community service.  But an organization that calls itself "Catholics for Catholics" (you know anything fun is only going to start going downhill from here) was upset because the Sisters dress up like Catholic nuns and have been labeled an "Anti-Catholic Hate Group" by the Catholic League (who are the only ones who are allowed to hate!). 

There were a ton of Catholics protesting about Catholic concerns and the Dodgers finally gave up and said "OK Catholics, we'll listen to your Catholic concerns and dis-invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence so can you now all go back to your rosaries and confessionals?"

But a number of other LGBTQIA+ groups said "oh hey wait a minute that's not cool" and decided not to attend the Pride Night event.

So the Dodgers re-invited the dis-invited Sisters of Perpetual Mercy to Pride Night and issued a public apology.  The Sisters graciously accepted the second invitation, issued a statement of forgiveness where everyone gets hot dogs and beer, and the festivities were back on schedule!

And in a lesson that all American corporations are learning the hard way (winky face), if you are going to embrace diversity you are going to upset some other groups aside from Catholics for Catholics - the Nazis for Nazis and the Klan for the Klan are going to take their business elsewhere!

 

The Cupcake Thief: Taking a Bite Out of Crime

Who among us hasn't wanted to kick in the front door of a bakery and run out with a half dozen free cupcakes?  We are all pastry thieves at heart.  One lucky Canadian hero got to live his best life when he kicked his leg through the glass front door of "Sweet Something" bakery of Vancouver (that's in Canada and is the Los Angeles of the North).

He was a polite burglar, he cleaned up after himself and then ran off into the night with cupcakes.  Again, who among us would be strong enough to resist the temptation of attacking an unguarded bakery at night?  After a few days and a viral hit video, the thief called the store to apologize.

In a crime that is too Canadian to be believed, everyone hugs it out and a news story is born!  But is everything as sweet as it seems, or could it be even sweeter?  There's only one way to find out, kick in that podcast door and treat yourself to a cultural shift away from Nazis and towards a feel good lesson in the history of cupcakes.

*Encore* Hallmark Lesbians: Don’t Let Them Eat Cake

Encore presentation! 

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 Channel forever, unless they did what she demanded.  Hallmark pulled the commercials, but then after hearing from One Million Lesbian Moms decided that they had overreacted and put the commercials back on the air.  Then they decided to show that they were inclusive and signed two gay themed Hallmark Movies - mostly about some gay baker who accidentally delivers a cake to the wrong address and when the guy who opens the door says "how did you know it was my birthday and my mom always made me a honey-lavender cake every year until she died in my arms yesterday" and somehow his birthday is Christmas Eve, well the baker falls in love but then his evil...step sister?  Sure.  His evil step sister comes in to take over the bakery and almost succeeds, but happily the birthday guy is a business lawyer with two degrees from Yale and drives over her with his car but makes it look like an accident - oh wait, that's Lifetime channel but anyway everyone falls in love are you still reading this?

The warm and loving messages of the Hallmark Channel are open to all.  But are they really?  Are there some spaces that should only belong to some groups of people?  Is it right, fair, do you care - when is it ok to have a club that is "only for us" and when is it not.  Does throwing a sassy black friend into the mix somehow equal inclusion?

We don't solve any of these questions, but we have fun trying.  Bakers unite!  Everyone eats love.  (Everyone also buys cards so Hallmark, we are on to you, but also one of us is still watching you because damn you and your messages of love and hope!).

Matty Healy: Ice Spice is Nice

Matty Healy (Government Name: Matt Healy) is the lead singer for The 1975, a British pop band that was formed in 2002 by a bunch of guys who met in High School and formed a band and then got famous and are still at it - kind of like the Beatles but way less famous.

Matty is a bit wild card, a bad boy, a provocateur - or that's how his publicist present him to the press.  Who is he?  We all need to know because he is dating Taylor Swift and this has spun pop culture into crisis mode.  Can she save him or will dating him ruin her?  That's sort of the theme of every Taylor Swift album and fans think she's just dating him to collect material for her next album - upon whose release another member of the Royal British Family will then coincidentally die because it has happened 3 times already (3 times moves it from urban legend to the world of facts).

Did Matty Healy apologize for dating Taylor Swift?  No.  He apologized for taking part in some racist humor on a podcast.  He apologized for it and for a number of other things he's said or done over the years.  Fame is hard and he's finding his way and should a quasi-famous 34 year old multi-millionaire be held accountable for the things that he says and does?