Two interesting takes on #MeToo (from men)

A couple of weekends ago, I tuned into two stories about the #MeToo movement that had me nodding yes. They were both stories about apologies, one real and one fictional, that get to the heart of what this moment could mean for men and women.

The first was part of a This American Life episode called Get a Spine! In it, there's a long clip of an apology, delivered on a podcast, which is detailed and awkward in parts. It's from a TV writer, who created the show Community, and addresses another TV writer, a younger woman who was his employee at the time. The episode includes an interview with the woman who accepted the apology but also takes a close look at exactly how it came about (with plenty of prompting), and the impact its had on her life.

Then later that night, when we needed a break from watching the election results come in, Tony put on an episode of Easy, a Netflix show that's loosely about sex, relationships and technology. It was an episode with Marc Maron, and Tony said it stood out as being one of the first times he'd seen #MeToo acknowledged and unpacked on screen. There were some serious parallels between the story from This American Life and it was equal parts cringeworthy and funny too. If you're curious, it's an episode from season three called Blank Pages.