Why We Are Obsessed With Butts & The Best and Worst Way to Apologize - SYSK Choice

Ever notice when you are nervous or stressed, the pitch of your voice goes up? Yet a lower pitch would likely be more useful in most cases because we associate a lower pitch voice with dominance and calm. This episode begins with some insight on how to tame your voice in stressful situations and not be betrayed by your own voice. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communications-matter/202101/why-you-need-pitch-your-voice-lower There certainly seems to be a fascination with the human butt. It makes you wonder why there is so much interest in butts and why a lot of people seem dissatisfied with the one they have. What is it that makes a butt attractive or unattractive? Does the type of butt you have really meaning anything? Here to explore this is Heather Radke author of the book Butts: A Backstory (https://amzn.to/3IDCndo) It would be hard to get through life without having to apologize. We all must do it and many of us are not very good at it. And, a bad apology can actually make a situation worse than it was before. So, what is the anatomy of the perfect apology? And how do people usually screw it up? Here with some insight is Marjorie Ingall, co-author of the book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies (https://amzn.to/3vTllk9). When you leave a tip at a restaurant, you send a message. Given that, how much should you leave? How do you calculate it? Should you ever leave NO tip at all? Listen as I reveal some things to consider when deciding how to tip. Source: Steve Dublanica author of Keep The Change (https://amzn.to/3Wjelut) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why you might want to deliberately lower the pitch of your voice. Then, um, butts. Why does there seem to be such fascination with them?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  People often think like having a big butt or a small butt means something. So like, oh, women with big butts, they are more fertile. That's a really commonly held myth about butts. Yeah, lots of people say that to me. Have you ever heard that?

• 1:55Mike Carruthers?

  Also, should you calculate the tip on a restaurant bill before or after the tax? And how to apologize, because a good apology is golden.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  The steps for making a good apology are so easy, and yet actually doing them is so hard because our brains are not wired for this. Apologizing is a really brave act.

• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

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• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  Hey, welcome to Something You Should Know. So when you speak, depending on what your voice sounds like, when you speak, you may want to try to lower the pitch of your voice. Why? Well, according to some pretty solid research, people who speak with lowered voices are perceived as both more prestigious and more admirable. Another study found that men have a tendency to lower their voices in order to try to dominate in certain settings. In short, we signal our dominance with lower pitched voices. But interestingly, stress and adrenaline makes your voice go higher. In fact, it turns out that people speak in higher pitched voices

• 5:08Mike Carruthers?

  when they talk to people of higher status or when they're intimidated. Humans are incredibly good at hearing the stress in other people's voices. We pick up on it immediately. And one way to conceal that stress is to deliberately lower your pitch. And that is something you should know.

• 5:33Mike Carruthers?

  There is a body part that we don't talk about too much, but we certainly think about it often enough, even obsess about it at times. It is the human butt. People think theirs is too big or too small, or how does it look in these jeans or other clothes? Women's butts in particular are forever being assessed and criticized and objectified. So why do we have butts? Why are they such a topic of interest? And why have they been for so long? Well, here to answer these and other questions is Heather Radke. She's author of a book called Butts: A Backstory. Hi, Heather, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Hi, thanks so much for having me.

• 6:18Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. Without getting too personal here, why is this topic of such interest to you?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I got interested in this topic because I have a big butt. And when I was in high school, I'm a white woman who grew up in the suburbs of Lansing, Michigan. And when I was in high school, that felt like, yeah, it's not just something we didn't talk about, but you know, something to be a little bit ashamed of. It felt like kind of the wrong body to have. But then over the last 30 years, that felt like it really started to change. And more and more, the kind of body I had became, you know, an ideal of beauty. It's became considered more attractive and more part of the way that we, we think of what a beautiful woman's body might look like.

• 6:59Mike Carruthers?

  But to a lot of people, this, you know, I think this isn't really a topic for conversation or it isn't a serious topic for conversation.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  What we talk about in polite conversation was part of what interested me about it because I actually think these things like butts that feel like, oh, we don't talk about that, or that's a little bit too silly to take seriously in those topics. We actually can find quite a lot that's interesting, in part because we actually don't take it seriously and we don't think it's polite to talk about.

• 7:30Mike Carruthers?

  So what is a butt?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Such a good question. It seems like it should be easy to answer, doesn't it?

• 7:36Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I guess in a sense it is. Butts are basically joints. They are the joint where your hip connects to your leg. It's the, there's a muscle there, the gluteus maximus. And there's actually a couple others that make up the human butt. And only humans have those muscles and really only humans have butts. Some people will kind of dispute this, this fact. When I say it, a lot of people are like, no, like monkeys have butts, but actually monkeys just have joints. Only humans have the gluteus maximus.

• 8:08Mike Carruthers?

  And why is it that it sort of has, but doesn't quite have the reputation of being, you know, sexual? It's, it's somehow a little bit naughty, but it's not that naughty.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's such a good question. Okay, so the butt as an anatomical thing is basically muscles and fat. So women have, human females have more fat on their butts than males and it's really not a lot more than that. It's a relatively simple part of our body, but it has come to take on all these different cultural meanings. And those meanings are kind of, I think of it as like, it's almost like it's heaped on top of the anatomical truth. And that comes from, you know, centuries of equating butts with sexiness, butts with race. There's just

• 9:07Speaker 01

  a really long and complex history about all of the kind of cultural symbolism that we put onto the butt.

• 9:13Mike Carruthers?

  So as one of the few people, perhaps the only person who has really looked at the history of butts, I mean, what do you find? What's the story?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  I do think one of the things that I encountered over and over again, when I was researching just colloquially, like when I'd go to a party or whatever, is people often think like having a big butt or a small butt means something. So like, oh, women with big butts, they are more fertile. That's a really commonly held myth about butts. Yeah, lots of people say that to me. Have you ever heard that?

• 9:46Mike Carruthers?

  No.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that comes out of some evolutionary psychology research from the 90s, but it's really not true. And the science around it feels very flimsy to me, at least as a science reporter. So that's one kind of stereotype people have. I mean, some, some people think butts are real, big butts are really gross. And some people think small butts are really ugly. And all these kind, like, over and over again, the meanings we have about butts that you realize they don't come from the actual, you know, factor, the science of the butt. It actually comes from different cultural moments. So thin bodies and thin butts kind of come into fashion in the 1920s. And in the 1920s, super thin women's bodies start to become equated with a certain sort of

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Liberation and bohemianism and kind of chicness. And that's, that's essentially a stereotype and a, a way of thinking about bodies. That's really continued well into the 20th century and really has never gone away. So that's sort of a stereotype in a sense about small butts. And then, you know, I, I did a bunch of work also about what I would call like fit butts. So in the 1980s, as the aerobics revolution starts to happen, there, there's a, an aerobics program called buns of steel that comes into being. This man named Greg Smith, he invented it. It's like wildly popular and people start to try to actually not just have like big butts and small butts, but also like strong steely butts.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  And that's definitely, you know, it's part of a much bigger trend. That's about having fit bodies, but it really speaks to a way we think about our bodies as reflections of our own ability to control ourselves essentially. So to have a strong butt is to be kind of in control of your body, to be a, to like have a bun of steel is to have a butt that's like, you know, capable of doing hard work. And we even see that in the language we have about butts. Like, I'm gonna kick your butt.

• 11:47Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting that you use the phrase that, you know, butts, certain types of butts come in and out of fashion, much like clothes come in and out of fashion. But my sense is that if it is one of the most difficult parts of the body to change, even if you wanted to, like how you would like get into fashion by change, it's very difficult to change your butt.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness, you're absolutely right. It's, I mean, I think it's like actually just pretty difficult to change your body. One of the things when I started working on this book really early on was this was a question I have is like, how can a body part come in and out of fashion? I mean, it happens all the time, but what it's really asking of people and of women in particular is to Radically alter something that's all but unalterable. You know, lots of these days, the main, the most extreme way and a way that's very popular alter your butt is to have plastic surgery. But really, it's one of the only ways you can meaningfully change what your butt looks like. Like, you know, you can do what like what Jane Fonda calls like rover kicks, you know, like donkey kicks or whatever all day long.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  And you'll have like a slightly bigger butt, but you can't really make an enormous butt out of a small butt. It's just not really possible. So it's one of the reasons why it's actually just so bizarre that fashion asks us this of us is that it's asking something that's kind of not actually humanly possible is to change what your butt looks like. But that's probably also true about breast size or other parts of our body where the demands of fashion to be something actually fundamentally different than what you are. It's just actually, it's part of why it's so emotionally difficult to contend with. And also why so many women end up being really frustrated by the fashion industry is that it's actually asking something that's like not easy to do and really in many cases not

• 13:37Speaker 01

  possible to do.

• 13:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it seems that butts, like other body parts, often people have the one that they wish they didn't have, that people with big butts wish theirs were smaller, people with small butts wish theirs were bigger. And, you know, there is that attraction thing. Some people like big butts, some people like small butts. I mean, it's also very subjective, but it's very easy to be dissatisfied with the one you have.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I really like to think about it like the way I, one of the scientists I interviewed told he, his name is Chris Hoff, and he said to me that any butt that's not killing you is, is a good enough butt, basically. And I think that's a nice way to think about it. Like probably your butt is attracted to somebody and that's like a great thing. Human variation is a, it's a wonderful part of what it is to be human. It's part of how we're able to continue to live as a species. And probably there's somebody out there who thinks your butt is great. And, and to me, that feels like a really exciting part of the research that I found is like, there isn't actually a butt that is fundamentally correct.

• 14:51Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about.

• 14:54Mike Carruthers?

  Butts, which seems like a very odd thing for me to say in this podcast, but that is what we are talking about. And my guest is Heather Radke. She is author of a book called Butts: A Backstory.

• 15:08Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:03Mike Carruthers?

  So, go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk. So Heather, my sense is that there are universally attractive faces. There are just some faces that pretty much everyone can look at and say, "Yeah, that's an attractive face." But you're saying that there really isn't a universally attractive butt?

• 18:32Speaker 01

  There's no science that I know of that suggests that there's a universally attractive butt. And even that science that suggests there's a universally attractive face, I think, is something to kind of look a little bit closer at. I think that there's faces that a lot of us find attractive and there's butts that a lot of us find attractive, but part of that is because there's a kind of cultural mechanism that's helping us to find them that way, if that makes any sense. And it's really hard to separate out what is biologically attractive versus what is culturally attractive, because you can never really separate people out from the culture that they live in, in order to ask that question. And I think with butts in particular, though, there's so much variation.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  And also, like, we see what is attractive as far as a butt culturally come in and out so much and change so dramatically over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40 years, that we really start to see that... Anything that sort of smacks of universals, you have to really start to question like, how, how could it be that there's a butt? That's fundamentally attractive if like, what we think is attractive in 1995 is really different than in 2015.

• 19:40Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I know most of your research is about women's butts. Is that because that's kind of where the interest is? And that there isn't all that much about men's butts? Or, or what?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  When I very first started this project, I had to really put some limits on it. Because if I were going to write about all butts, this would have been like, you know, 10 volumes long. But so I didn't do a ton of research on men's butts. But part of the reason I didn't is there's actually quite a lot already written about it. And there's been some great research, especially about like butts in the classical time. Like you can think of like classical statuary, where the, an ideal of men's beauty was, you know, there was a very clearly a kind of butt that was like a very good kind of men's butt. And a lot of men, as far as I know, wanted to have that kind of butt. And I think that there's still a lot of men who seek out, you know, workout and try to like have different kinds of clothes

• 20:38Speaker 01

  that make their butt look good. Now, I will totally agree with you that I think it's much more common for women to, to try to buy and wear clothes that make their butt look a certain kind of way. And some women want their butts to be bigger and some women want their butts to be smaller. So yeah, I think it's totally different for men and women, or maybe not totally different, but I think it can be quite different. But I think people across the board do think about their butts.

• 21:04Mike Carruthers?

  But it does seem that there is more attention paid because of clothing and whatever. There's more attention paid to women's butts than men's butts.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I do think so. Butts are like breasts. They are a place where human females, women, they store fat in that part of their body. And one of the questions I had was, You know, why, basically, why, why do women store fat in their butts? And I talked to a few different people about that. And one of the answers might just be because it's physiologically convenient. Like, one scientist told me that, like, you know, it wouldn't be very convenient to store a bunch of fat in like your elbows or your knees. You topple over and, but it's definitely true that women have more fat on their bodies than men, and generally, they store that fat in their butts, which is not generally the case for men.

• 22:00Mike Carruthers?

  When you say that different types of butts come in and out of fashion, I always kind of figured it was more, some people like big ones, some people like small ones. They always have, they always will. Not that one is like real in right now and one is out.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think your understanding is probably more true about how we actually live our lives, but the fashion industry dictates what's, you know, what butts are fashionable, just like they dictate what, you know, breast size is fashionable, or, you know, whether we should wear shoulder pads, or any number of other kind of ways that we ought to look. So, one of the times we see this most potently, actually, is in the last 30 years. In the early 90s, if you look at, you know, if you look at every issue of every Vogue in the early 90s, the kind of models you see on the front are going to be people like Kate Moss. You know, that's a very thin body.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  It's a woman who's, you know, she was, she spoke to a trend at the time called heroin chic, you know, it's like, super, super thin, super bony, not a lot of fat. But by 2015, 2014, you know, a lot of magazines were calling 2014 the year of the butt. All of a sudden, well, it's not really all of a sudden, but by that time, the ideal butt, the ideal body was much more curvy, the ideal butt was much bigger. And so, although surely it was true that there, there were lots of people in 2014, just as there were in 1992, who liked big butts, and lots of people who liked small butts, what had become part of the mainstream idea of fashion had actually changed.

• 23:37Mike Carruthers?

  How much of this do you think is, at least now, is celebrity driven? That if, if, if the Kardashians or J Lo had little butts, would little butts be more in fashion? Or, it seems like whoever is the, the celebrity du jour.

• 23:54Mike Carruthers?

  Sets the trend almost.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's interesting way to put it. I think maybe, but I also think we choose, like it's it's sort of a snaking its own tail kind of situation because we also choose the celebrities that fit the moment. You know, people become celebrities at specific times because of other things that are happening in the culture. You know, in 1997, when Jennifer Lopez was in this movie Out of Sight, all of the press and after that movie came out, I mean, every every piece of press I found, the interviewers asked her about her butt. And five years earlier, they would not have done that. They didn't, you know, they weren't talking to like, first of all, there weren't big butted celebrities that were in movies, but also mainstream fashion magazines didn't even really use

• 24:42Speaker 01

  the word butt. They used words like backside and derriere. So something had happened that made butts more culturally interesting between the early 90s and the late 90s. And what a lot of scholars point to is the changing demographics of America. So America was becoming less white and also hip hop was becoming the dominant form of music and more and more people were white, non white, were consuming hip hop and were becoming interested in its ideals of beauty, which were very butt based in the 90s. And you see that in songs like Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back, but also in a number of other hip hop hits in the 90s.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  You see the way that butts were a part of the hip hop beauty ideal.

• 25:28Mike Carruthers?

  There are butt scholars?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's definitely, there's people who study all kinds of stuff. I mean, there's the scientists, but then there's also people who are really interested in these questions of changing body and beauty ideals and in questions like, why, you know, what was happening in 1997 and how and why did people talk about Jennifer Lopez's body in the way that they did? There's people who study, you know, the history of dance, that's that is very butt centric. All kinds of people study the butt.

• 26:01Mike Carruthers?

  What's next for the butt? What's on the horizon or anything? Or who knows or what?

• 26:08Speaker 01

  I mean, to some extent, who knows? Right now, we're in a funny moment where there's been like, just really in the last month or two months, there's been a number of articles that are predicting the end of the big butt trend, to the extent that it is a trend. You know, there's basically like, "thin is in" is a very common type of headline that you'll find right now. And I'm not surprised because that's just basically, in some sense, how fashion works, is that if a thing is big, if a body part becomes trendy for being big, it's almost inevitable that you'll need the opposite of that in order to continue sort of the machine of fashion churning.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  So that's one thing. But then there's also a thing which is like, to some extent, thin has never been out. Although big butts have been fashionable over the last 15 years, they've always really been on the bodies of very thin women, and they've been very kind of controlled butts, you know, butts that are, look a certain way on a certain kind of person. It's not like all big butts are something that people and fashion have been excited about over the last 15 years. So, you know, we will see, time will tell, if the big butt is, you know, going out of fashion, so to speak. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was the next, the next thing for the butt.

• 27:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, who, who knew there was so much research about the human butt? And it's interesting to hear about it because, frankly, we see butts everywhere, every day. And it's interesting to hear what science says about butts, what they are and why we find them so fascinating. I've been speaking with Heather Radke. She's author of a book called Butts: A Backstory. And you can find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Heather. Thanks for explaining all this about butts.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time.

• 27:58Mike Carruthers?

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• 31:38Mike Carruthers?

  And a bad apology can go a long way to making things a whole lot worse. Apologies are important. They can represent a pivotal point in a relationship from which things improve or worsen. So what makes a good apology and what makes a bad one? Here to discuss this is Marjorie Ingall. She's author of a book called Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies. Hey, Marjorie, welcome.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

• 32:08Mike Carruthers?

  So on the surface, you would think, what could be simpler? You do something wrong, you say you're sorry, life goes on. But as we have all experienced, it somehow isn't quite so easy.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  The steps for making a good apology are so easy, and yet actually doing them is so hard because our brains are not wired for this.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Apologizing is a really brave act that really builds bridges between people when they're done right. But when they're done wrong, which is everything our brain is telling us to do, we are absolutely shimmering and shivering with this desire to apologize badly or not at all, and to blame the other person and to throw up defensive walls. It's so hard because we want to see ourselves as the hero in our own story. And apologizing well means understanding that you were the bad guy in somebody else's story.

• 33:16Mike Carruthers?

  So what is the anatomy of a good apology?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  A good apology really is six easy steps, maybe six and a half. The first one is say, I'm sorry, or I apologize, which sounds so fundamental and yet somebody's always going to say, I regret, or not using that word at all. And regret is about how you feel. Apologies are making the other person feel heard. You have to say the thing that you did. Don't say the situation, or that incident, or what happened. Name the thing, which is, again, our brains are so wired to just steer us away from looking at what we did. Show that you understand the impact.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Show that you understand why the other person was hurt. If you need to explain, do so, but be really wary of excuses. I honestly think this is the hardest step. Number five is if you can explain the steps that you are taking to make sure that this never happens again, that you don't do it, that somebody else doesn't do it, whatever power you have to prevent it happening again, do it. Number six is if you can make reparations, make reparations. And the half step is sort of listening. People really want to be heard.

• 34:38Mike Carruthers?

  So you said a couple of times that our brains are not wired to do this. Explain what that, what do you mean? What is it wired to do and why is it wired that way?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  The way we function is by seeing ourselves as the protagonist in the novel that is our life. We see ourselves as a good person, doing good, putting out good into the world. We tend to remember the slights that other people have made against us, but not the ones that we make against other people. And that's so we don't wound wind up curled in a corner sobbing with guilt and self recrimination and self consciousness. You have to see yourself as good. We all see ourselves as good. And apologizing well means putting yourself in a one down position.

• 35:30Mike Carruthers?

  I guess people like to think that they're that they're right. And as you say, in their own story, they're the hero. But we all know, people make mistakes, people do things wrong, people say stupid things. Just not us. I don't.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly. One of the those phrases you never want to hear in an apology and hear far too often is, I'm not perfect. Well, nobody's perfect, but it seems particularly difficult to admit to an actual incidence of imperfection while you're apologizing.

• 36:02Mike Carruthers?

  What do we know about what a good apology does on the other side of the table?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  I think there's a reason why we crave good apology stories in the media, in the news. You know, good apologies are so often a feature of, you know, good things that happened today, happy stories in magazines and newspapers. They make us feel that the world is a warm place where humans look out for each other, that the world is a small town. And we all like to think that we could be a character in this story. The most recent thing that I saw that went viral was a drunk guy stole a Santa from a small town in North

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Carolina. And he returned it the next day with flowers for the owner. And he said, I just saw it and thought it looked cool. And I took it. And I feel really bad about it. And I'm sorry. And is there anything I can do to help you out around your restaurant? And it was just so sweet that, you know, it's such a small story, but it went viral.

• 37:17Mike Carruthers?

  Well, but it's interesting that we all appreciate a good apology. When we see someone apologize, like your guy that stole the Santa there, we think, well, isn't that touching that he stole the Santa and brought it back and said all those nice things? If we see that working, it makes you wonder why we're so reluctant to do it ourselves, when clearly it's a pretty effective strategy to get people on your side.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Right. The rules are always different when it comes to us, right? We didn't do anything wrong. We are more sinned against than sinning. And, you know, it's always funny to me when somebody in the media in particular gives this horrible apology, like that Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson, who compared Meghan Markle to a serial killer in British history, and then to like some villain on Game of Thrones, and said she should be made to parade naked through the streets of every town in England while people threw lumps of excrement at her. And then his apology was like, oh, dear, I've put my foot in it.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I made a clumsy little joke about Game of Thrones, and it went down badly, and I'm horrified to have caused so much hurt. I'll be more careful in future. And I read it, you know, people send us these terrible apologies on our website, Sorry Watch, and it didn't occur to me until after I'd even tweeted about it, that it wasn't an apology at all, that it didn't say sorry or apologize. And it's what we call an apology-shaped object. It takes the form of an apology, but it is not one. And that just makes people angrier. But when it's us on the chopping block, no, it was, people didn't get my joke.

• 39:06Mike Carruthers?

  It seems to me that, well, that there are times when, you know, people demand apologies or expect apologies when maybe just get over it. I mean, we, people are very sensitive. In my view, people get very offended and want to be apologized to when there was, when there was no intent to hurt anybody. It's just a different view of the world. And maybe we don't need to be so sensitive and demand apologies for being offended.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  I'm gonna gently push back here that it depends on the offense, right? Okay, so the most recent thing that I did was misgender someone, use the wrong pronouns. And, you know, I was hitting someone where they live. And so I think it's appropriate for me to apologize for that. It's also appropriate for me to keep it short and sweet and not turn this into a whole all about me, oh, rending my garments, ripping out my hair. I feel terrible. Please, please forgive me that I, you know, called you he when you are she. But don't people deserve to be called what they want to be called?

• 40:21Mike Carruthers?

  To me, that's not something to apologize for. If somebody, if somebody's offended, but it was an honest mistake. If somebody looks like your impression of what a man looks like and you call someone a man and it turns out they're not, well, that's not your fault. I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's not, no intent was there to cause harm.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Right. But if, if you've been told and you still get it wrong, which is what I did. I think, I think if, if you still, if you keep screwing up, you owe someone an apology. But you also don't owe either you or them this theatrical, you know, oh, my God, I suck so bad.

• 41:03Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what about that idea of don't apologize if you're not sorry? You know, sometimes people apologize just to prevent the conflict. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I did that. Now let's move on. And they're not really sorry. They just don't want to get bogged down in that. And that seems to be okay.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Let's move on apology. Don't do it. Resist the call, but talk to someone you trust to say, uh, uh, am I reading this wrong? Because again, we are wired to be self-protective. And your friend may have a better take on the situation than you. And your friend may be able to show you, oh, you know, you really did offend and here's what you can say. One thing I always taught my kids was if there's a thing that you're sorry for, apologize for that. Don't apologize for what you're not sorry for.

• 41:51Mike Carruthers?

  Let's talk about bad apologies. To me, a bad apology often starts with, "I'm sorry, but," or "I'm sorry if."

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, "I'm sorry if you were hurt. I forgot that you really don't have a sense of humor. I wasn't aware that you were so fragile." Yeah, like, we joke that if the word "obviously" appears in the apology, you're already gonna be mad when you hear it. "Obviously, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Or, "I've already apologized, but, okay. It's unfortunate that..." Like, these are all words that make you go, "Huh." But when somebody actually makes eye contact with you and says, "I'm trying to understand how I screwed up here. I know you're mad. Can we talk about it? What can I do to make amends here?"

• 42:47Speaker 02

  I think when it's unfiltered that way, and you're actually looking into another human being's eyes, an apology can be such a bridge-building, societally-connecting, beautiful thing. And I think, given how hard it is to do well, we should be applauding these when we see them.

• 43:10Mike Carruthers?

  So what do you suggest people say when they get one of these crappy apologies? Someone comes to them and says, "I'm sorry, but," or "I'm sorry if," or what's the response?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Okay, so say they do a "sorry if." You can call them on it. Just say, "Wait, you just said 'sorry if.' Do you mean 'sorry if'? Don't say 'sorry if you hurt me. You're apologizing. You know you hurt me." And almost all of the time, if they are coming to you in good faith, they're like, "You're right. We have to come to each other in good faith."

• 43:42Mike Carruthers?

  Let's talk about accepting an apology because not everybody's particularly gracious at that. So let's talk about that.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  We like to say apologies are mandatory, forgiveness is not. If you're getting the crappy apology that is clearly not sincere and just intended to smooth the way, or, you know, fine, you know, come home for Christmas, I, I'm sorry, I did blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, clearly the office manager is making you apologize. You don't have to accept those. You know, you can, you can just say, thanks. And I appreciate you saying that and move on. But if someone says to you, I want us to really connect. That's what an apology is, right? It's connection.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  It behooves us to listen. And we can help guide the person. And sometimes people don't know what they did. Instead of being mad that the person doesn't know what they did, help them see what they did. What, what, what use does it serve for both of you if they don't understand why you're mad and you can't articulate or won't articulate why you're mad?

• 44:56Mike Carruthers?

  I bet everyone listening has one of those people in their lives that does that thing where they just say things because they want to be honest. Like, you know, those shoes look terrible. Or, you know, I really liked your hair the old way. Or, you know, and they, and they say it because they think it needs to be said. They say it because they think they're telling you the truth. And you wonder, is it worth demanding an apology because they hurt your feelings? Or do we all have to put up with those people? I mean, they say things that are hurtful.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  If it's, you know, you need to lose weight, the person is aware of their weight. If it's your sister gets As, why can't you get As? All of these things are true, maybe, but not helpful. You know, there, there used to be a sign in my kid's kindergarten that said, is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? And those are all, I mean, it's stupid, but it's true. If someone is really hurt. What's more important, being right or being happy? Being right or salvaging this relationship?

• 46:07Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that's a question some people have trouble answering because sometimes they really want to be right.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, I married one and I love him and unfortunately, he usually is right, which is very difficult for me personally. But yeah, sorry is hard when you are, when you are often the person who is right.

• 46:27Mike Carruthers?

  It is such an interesting topic because we're all at times on one side of the table or the other in this. We've either done something that we wish we hadn't and now need to apologize, or we're the ones who are waiting for the apology. And we've all been on both sides of the table, so we know what it's like for the other person and yet.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Yes. And there are some really well-designed and amusing studies that look at, let me think about times I've wronged other people versus times I've been wronged. And A, we're way better at coming up with more times that we have been wronged than when we have wronged others. And there are always extenuating circumstances for some reason when we are the people who did the bad thing and we were somehow always, you know, there was a reason we did what we did. The other person, A, they do it all the time and B, it's completely unmotivated. Why did they do that? Which is again, we are marvelously complex, intricate mechanisms as human beings, designed

• 47:29Speaker 02

  to not see our own culpability. And there's so many studies that back that up.

• 47:37Mike Carruthers?

  I want to talk about time because I imagine everybody has done something in their past that in retrospect, they regret. They didn't necessarily apologize for it at the time, but with age and wisdom, you start to think, well, maybe that wasn't so cool. Is it worth going back and apologizing? Because. In retrospect, it seems like it would be.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Nothing wrong with in retrospect, you know, like retrospect can be really those, you know, rose colored backwards glasses can be super duper helpful. You know, in the moment, things get heated. In the moment, you know, all we're thinking about is being self protective. And retrospect can be a great way to look at things and reevaluate and change your story.

• 48:28Mike Carruthers?

  In the research that you did, was there any like one thing, one sparkling diamondy thing that if you have a big apology to make, would make it really special, would make it really succeed?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  There was a study that people liked talking about that showed the impact of a thank you note, that we don't, we completely underestimate how happy people are to get a thank you note, that we think, oh, you know, I'm not a good writer. Oh, they already know I'm grateful. Oh, they're going to think I'm sucking up. But when somebody opens that thank you note, they are thrilled. And I think that, although I haven't seen a study showing this, I think apologies are similar. I can recall some of the great apologies I have received. You know, I had an ex, maybe 10 years after we broke up, send me a note out of the blue

• 49:29Speaker 02

  saying that he was getting married and he just wanted me to know that even though sometimes he didn't seem like he was listening when we were together, he was. And he thinks that, you know, he thought that he was going to be a better husband because of the time that we had spent together and there was no return address. And I actually loved that because it showed that there was no ulterior motive. It was just the nicest thing and I'm going to carry that for the rest of my life.

• 49:58Mike Carruthers?

  So you're saying that an apology in writing may have even more force than verbal?

• 50:04Speaker 02

  An apology in writing, when you know that it's not calculating, you know that there's no ulterior motive to it, it was just a kind act. And it also, it made me reflect back on a bad breakup in a way that made me think more warmly about the whole relationship. Yeah, if you can apologize to someone and you suspect that it's something that they want to hear, that they would be happy to hear, you may underestimate how happy it will make them. And if you think that they might not want to hear from you if you do it, you know, you never want somebody to feel cornered by an apology. If somebody, if you're apologizing to someone face to face and they're backing away from you, sometimes people move forward because they really want you to understand. No. But if you write

• 50:49Speaker 02

  someone a letter, oh, especially on nice creamy stationery with a pen, people are so happy.

• 50:56Mike Carruthers?

  Well, for anyone who has struggled making an apology, or accepting an apology for that matter, I think this has been really interesting and important to hear. I've been speaking with Marjorie Ingall. She is co-author of the book, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Marjorie. Appreciate it.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Mike. This was wonderful.

• 51:25Mike Carruthers?

  I think most of us would agree that 20% is the standard amount you would leave as a tip at a restaurant. The question is, should you calculate that 20% before or after the tax? Well, Steve Dublanica, who's a former waiter and author of a book called Keep the Change, says after the tax is best because most servers total their sales at the end of the night and include the tax in that amount. The cash out amount is what determines how much they tip to busboys, runners, and other staff members.

• 52:01Mike Carruthers?

  If you're a stickler and prefer to tip pre-tax, that's okay. Servers understand that tax could be pretty significant on a big restaurant check. But you might want to at least round up a little. Steve also has some advice if you're tempted to leave a bad tip. Even if your server really, really screwed things up, keep in mind that the tip money is being distributed to multiple people. So it's not really fair to penalize the other employees who did their part. You should try telling the manager that you had poor service, because most restaurant managers want to know if you're unhappy. And that is something you should know. It would be great, it's not required, but it would certainly be appreciated if you would leave a review of this podcast.

• 52:45Mike Carruthers?

  Most podcast platforms allow you to leave ratings and reviews, and one from you would be most appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 52:58Speaker 03

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