Apologies Accepted

Hamilton the Musical is a broadway phenomenon that took the world by storm.  The show features people of color in leading roles portraying America's founding fathers.  This juxtaposition of the Founding Fathers as black and brown highlights the fact that many Americans are still engaged in a battle for freedom.  It's a show about the importance of inclusion and diversity.  And awesome songs.

The Door McAllen, a non-denominational Christian church in Texas, thought this would be the perfect vehicle to spread the message about Jesus and preach against gays and alcoholics and debtors, because you know how much Broadway Musicals hate the gays.

The church streamed their production and it was more than a little good.  The actors were solid and the costuming was excellent - if you didn't know any better and saw a clip, you might think you were watching a dress rehearsal of the actual Hamilton.  Of course the church switched the message and made it all about Jesus, but still - pretty amazing production values.

The only problem with the show was that the church did not obtain the rights to perform Hamilton, so when the actual Hamilton production company found out the following day that someone had stolen all of their work and put it on the internet - they were surprised and not flattered.

What followed was a cease and desist letter from Hamilton's attorneys and an apology from the church that hits all the right notes but somehow fails to answer the question: are you really sorry?

Wekfest is an annual convention held in New Jersey for custom car enthusiasts.  At the end of the convention, fans stand around the exit of the convention center to watch the cars leave.  Sometimes drivers put on a show for the fans, they rev their engines or do donuts or whatever else kind of stuff you can do with a car.  The fans love it, but Wekfest is clear that this is not a sanctioned part of the convention.  Good thing too because at the end of the show this year there was a majorly bad accident, a direct result of someone trying to impress some fans.

Darius Gomez wanted to thrill the fans, so when he was leaving the parking lot of the convention center he gunned the engine and accidentally ran over two fans and April O'neil, a pet turtle.  April was innocently eating some grass on the side of the road when both she and her owner were struck by Darius's Green BMW Wagon.

Darius drove off, but eventually took to social media to apologize for the accident and announced that he would turn himself in.  Before he turned himself in he deleted his apology - but have no fear because we have a copy of it and updates on everyone involved in the accident.

Warning: do not listen to the episode if you really love turtles.

Hi Everyone!  Vacation ran a week over so we are re-releasing a fan favorite with assurances that we will be back next week (we said that last week, but that turned out to be incorrect because someone - out of kindness we're on purpose not mentioning Theo by name - can't read a calendar).

2020 was not a great year, not for most of the world, and certainly not for Ellen DeGeneres.  The opening monologue of Season 18 of The Ellen Show began with some jokes, included an apology, and finished with some more jokes.  But joking aside, behind the scenes stories told of a toxic work environment, rife with racism and sexual harassment.  Was Ellen simply a victim of her own PR, set-up for failure with the nickname of “The Be Kind Lady,” or is she just playing nice for the camera?  How does one apologize for being human?

It's still us and we are still on vacation!  But have no fear, we have a classic fan favorite and will be back next week with a new episode and a whole lot of sorry for having been gone for two weeks!

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 – so on the surface it still sounded pretty great!  That is until NXIVM found itself in court and had to admit the secret parts out loud. 

The truth comes spilling out this episode as NXIVM comes tumbling down – and we are here to make sense of all the nonsense as we examine the eternal question: “why would anyone ever do something this stupid ever?”

Future Juliette Update: Allison Mack received 3 years in prison and a $20,000 fine for her part in the NXIVM cult.  Keith Raniere, the cult leader, is currently serving 120 years in prison but don’t worry, he’s writing a book about how he is innocent and completely misunderstood.

Hi Everyone!  We're on vacation over the next two weeks because our producer told us we were working too hard on the show (no he didn't) and so we've reached into the vault to re-launch a fan favorite!  And don't worry, the world has not run out of apologies and we will be back in two weeks with a brand new episode!

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 when one of the executive producers noticed some things in the trial that didn’t quite add up.  He hired a retired police detective who, in only 48 hours (that’s 2 days) discovered evidence that fully exonerated the man mistakenly accused of rape.

Released from jail in 1998, Mr. Broadwater spent years listed as a sex-offender, unable to secure solid employment, a social outcast with few friends. His life after prison is simply a series of contrasts between what might have been and what is, robbed of opportunities by a chance unlucky encounter with a woman on the street and the US judicial system.

Alice herself also had a chance unlucky encounter with the US judicial system.  The prosecutors lied to her, gave her false information that she believed.  Now that we know that Mr. Broadwater was innocent, wrongfully identified and convicted, we have an apology from Alice for mistakenly accusing him.  How do you apologize for being a part of a system that wrongfully punished an innocent person?  How much responsibility does she bear for her role?

Never fear, we are here with the answers (and chicken and d*ck jokes, too)!

Kevin Spacey is a hollywood legend (for his grabby hands).  He has won numerous awards (not for his grabby hands) and was once an icon.  But one day in 2017 a story came out that Kevin had sexually harassed a 14 year old and after the accusation came out, Kevin came out.  Kevin apologized for the assault and then told the world what he had long held secret, he was gay.  People said he was coming out only to distract from the real story, that he had sexually harassed a 14 year old.

Recently Kevin was sued by Netflix to the tune of over $30 million precious dollars.  And he's up for criminal charges in the UK for assaulting half of the actors and crew (the other half were girls) that he worked with in British theater.  He's got a story to tell, and you've got to hand it to Kevin (ha!) he's a good storyteller.

Parents in Singapore were alarmed to learn that clowns were standing outside of elementary schools talking to children.  Facebook reports of evil clowns luring children away spread across social media.  It turned out that a local language school had tried to promote itself by posting clowns outside of elementary schools and offering parents and children flyers - it was all just a harmless promotion and nothing to worry about.  But people were still mad and a certain language school had to find the words to explain itself and say sorry.

Clownaphobia (not the name but it really should be) is real but didn't have a name until the 1990s.  But clowns have always been with us and will always be with us - even when we are being fired from our job.

Kim Burrell is a pretty famous gospel singer.  She is also a pastor because why not.  Kim said some words while preaching to her congregation, saying some stuff about how people are ugly but hiding it well under their Sunday hats, and some people in the audience felt pretty insulted, others perhaps understood that she was trying to be funny.  Either way, Kim issued an apology and then issued a second apology, apologizing for the first apology and explaining that her attorney was to blame.

Kim has been through this before, back in 2016 when she said some words about gay people and then had to clarify that the words she said weren't what everyone was saying they were.  She didn't apologize, but she did do the artful dodge of "don't shoot the messenger if you don't like the message."

We didn't, Kim.  We didn't like the message and we are pretty sure you won't like ours as you are the featured story this week on Apologies Accepted! 

North Carolina is pretty much about freedom unless you have a vagina - but honestly that is not what this episode is about but then it sort of is.  Until recently you could basically have any kind of pet you wanted if you lived in North Carolina.  Gorillas, tigers, bears - name a dangerous wild animal and if you could catch it and keep it in a cage, it was yours.  Chris Gifford (yes, famous Tik Tok Chris Gifford) had over 75 snakes and some of them were deadly - but that was perfectly fine because North Carolina allowed him to legally have venomous cobras in his basement because freedom.

When one of the cobras escaped, Chris just knew it would die in the freezing cold of winter and since it was November and already cold, this was a problem that would solve itself.  The snake would freeze to death and he would just get another one.  Except the venomous snake was spotted the following summer, it had not frozen to death and it had grown.

The pet inspectors came calling because they knew Chris had a bunch of deadly snakes in his basement and Chris did what any of us have done in the same situation - he lied but then confessed and then apologized.  Oh Chris, if only you had not apologized!  Now you are fair game (pun) for Apologies Accepted, the Podcast. 

A funeral director by the name of Megan Hess ran a funeral home and a body-part distributing company. Both. Under. The. Same. Roof.  And no one blinked or thought that was strange at all.  After a few years of selling body parts to medical research and academics, the FBI came knocking at Megan's door and the agency was shocked to its core to discover that someone named Megan would stoop so low as to pulling out gold teeth from cadavers and then dismembering the bodies and selling the pieces…and sending the pieces to buyers. Through. The. Mail. 

Megan offered huge discounts and even free cremation if you were willing to donate a body part to medical science.  She made it seem like a small piece would be donated and you’d get the rest of the body back (as ashes).  But that is not what happened.  People got boxes of cement mix, or the remains of dogs, or other people, but for sure not the person you had brought to her to be cremated.

She was raking in up to $40,000 a month – she was swimming in money, bathing in money, living laughing and loving in money, until the FBI came and shut her down.

Megan got away with it because the industry was not regulated.  Organ donation is heavily regulated, but not heads, limbs, torsos, or knees!  It’s still kind of the wild west and there is money to be made if you can get your hands on a dead body that you didn’t kill.  That’s the hard part because killing is a crime but selling body parts is not.  Not even a tiny bit.

Funeral directors play an important role in people’s lives (and death - sorry).  People have always died, but it wasn’t until the Civil war that the funeral industry was born.  Death moved from the home, where it was a family matter, to the battlefield and hospitals, where it stopped being a matter of the home and became a matter for the medical profession.  Our current funeral system was born out of a perfect storm of war, advances in medicine, germ theory, and a millionaire’s trip to Egypt in 1930.

Sound crazy?  Not as crazy as giving people a box full of cement mix and watching them cry as they spread it lovingly in a forest.  Megan knows crazy and she will tell you that the funeral industry is just chock full of sane people trying to make an honest “living” (sorry).