Something You Should Know - How Heredity Works in Your Family & How to Create and Deliver the Perfect Apology

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

Years ago coffee was called “The Think Drink” in a marketing campaign. Those were the golden days of coffee. Later coffee was demonized as something that caused all kinds of health problems. Later it turned out, coffee had health benefits and was just fine to drink – but not too much. So we begin this episode with a look at the research to discover whether coffee is good or evil. (http://www.rd.com/slideshows/coffee-myths/#slideshow=slide6) Ever think about what traits or behaviors or illnesses may have been passed down to you by your parents and ancestors? What will you pass down to your children and their children? Can you really inherit your mother’s laugh or your father’s depression? Heredity is a fascinating and often misunderstood topic. To help sort it all out is Carl Zinmmer. Carl is a writer for The New York Times and author of the book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity (https://amzn.to/2IG8KKR).   Couples fight about money more than most other subjects. That’s because they don’t talk about it until it escalates into a fight. So how can couples talk about money in a calm and reasonable manner so there are no fights? I’ll explain that in this episode (The Couple’s Guide to Financial Compatability by Jeff Motske - https://amzn.to/2KNiek2) When you do or say something that hurts someone else, you are supposed to apologize. But as simple as that sounds, sometimes an apology can make matters worse not better. In fact that is a lot about apologies and forgiveness people don’t understand. One person who understands this very well is Dr. Harriet Lerner, a psychotherapist and author of the book Why Won't You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts (https://amzn.to/2s7Nanl). Harriet joins me to dissect what does and doesn’t make the perfect apology and how to diver it so it really does some good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, is coffee good for you or bad for you or what? We'll look at what the science has to say. Then we're learning more and more about heredity, what your parents do and don't pass down to you. Heredity means a lot to us. And it's really interesting, especially because now we can look at individual genes. So for height, I can give you a list of genes and say, I know that each of these genes plays a role in how tall you are. Plus, I'll explain how couples can stop fighting about money,

which is one of the biggest reasons they fight in the first place. And a fascinating look at how apologies and forgiveness really work. By the way, you know, you can continue a relationship without forgiving the other person. And one of the myths about forgiveness is that you forgive or you don't forgive a hundred percent. And that's not true. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily.

Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines

so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. One of the things I've learned doing this podcast is that the titles of each episode really matter. And the more clever and witty and suck you in kind of titles I can come up with, the more people listen in the first few days of the episode being published. So I spent a lot of time trying to come up with clever,

witty, suck you in kind of titles. But in the last episode, episode 175, I really struggled with coming up with a clever title for the interview I did with Henry Timms, author of New Power. And the best I could come up with was how to harness the power of online communities, which I thought was really terrible, but I couldn't come up with a clever, witty way, and did pay the price. It wasn't listened to by as many people as other episodes in the first few days, and I think that's largely due to the lousy title that I came up with. And yet, I got more

comments on that interview than probably any other one single interview, because it really was interesting about how people, anyone, you, me, anyone can create more power for ourselves within our own world using the internet and the communities available on the internet. So if my title put you off, How to Harness the Power of Online Communities, didn't excite you much and you didn't listen, I'll lobby here to go back and give it a listen, because it really was a fascinating interview. First up today, we're going to talk about coffee, because one day coffee's good for you, and the next day it's not so good for you. What are you supposed to believe?

So here's what we know from science about coffee. You've probably heard that coffee stunts your growth. Well, it does not. Your mother may have told you that when you were a kid, but there is no truth to it. There's some evidence that coffee leaches some calcium from your bones. However, the calcium leaching effect of one cup of coffee is so small, it can be balanced out with two tablespoons of milk. So it's probably not going to make you shorter.

Coffee is a diuretic so you've probably heard people say well you shouldn't drink it because it'll dehydrate you. Wrong again. Yes, caffeine will make you head to the bathroom more often but the amount of fluid you lose is less than previously thought. So yes, you can count coffee

as part of your daily fluid intake. Cancer patients often report that they give up coffee because they believe it's unhealthy. However, coffee is on the list of cancer-fighting foods published by the American Institute for Cancer Research because it is so high in antioxidants. Perhaps you've heard that caffeine raises your blood pressure. For most healthy people, caffeine can cause a short, temporary increase in blood pressure, but it isn't harmful in the long run.

People with high blood pressure, however, should talk to a doctor to see whether caffeine should be limited. And forever, people have said that coffee is good for a hangover. Well, it really isn't. Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system and it can help you focus better. But there's nothing in coffee that will help any other symptom of a hangover, nor will it sober you up when you're drunk. It'll just give you a more wide-awake drunk.

And that is something you should know. When you hear the word hereditary, you probably think about things like eye color or hair color or height, things like that. Things you inherit from your parents or that are passed down through generations of families. But it turns out there's a lot of misunderstanding about what is and isn't hereditary and how much of who you are is determined by heredity versus your environment versus your personal choice. And science is learning so much about this with so much more to discover in the future. It's a fascinating subject and no one has tackled it better than Carl Zimmer. Carl writes for the New York Times, he teaches science writing at Yale University, and he's author of a really interesting and

really big book called She Has Her Mother's Laugh, The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. Hi Carl, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. So what is heredity? How do you define it? Most of us know what we mean by, you know, passing down from your parents your eye color or your hair color. But dive in a little deeper here. Well, heredity is a word that's been around for a long time. I mean, the ancient Romans would talk about heredity, and their word was hereditas, and it referred to the rules by which people inherited stuff from each other. And, you know,

we still talk about inheriting money or houses or what have you. But by the 1800s, people were thinking about other things that people inherited. You know, why was it that diseases seemed to run in families, for example? So people started to look for explanations for why each generation resembled the previous generation in different ways. And that's what led to the discovery of genetics. But that doesn't necessarily mean that just saying like, oh, it's just genes is really the full answer to heredity. Actually, that's just really kind of the starting point for understanding what heredity is and why it means so much to us. Well, those are good questions. What is it and why does it mean so much to us? You know, I think we have developed an idea

that if we want to understand our own identity and who we are, we have to look to the past, that somehow we can zero in on some ancestor to figure out how our lives ended up the way they are. And, you know, so this is what drives the huge genealogy business today and the direct-to-consumer genetics testing. I mean, we want to find out, are we 27% Irish? And can we identify our great-great-great-great-great grandmother? And maybe there's something like us in that person. But, you know, I would just broadly say that heredity is what the past gave the present and what the present is going to leave for the future. How do you know, or can you know, or is it even important to know, that if some relative or ancestor had some trait or some quirk or some behavior that you have, whether that's inherited or there are just so many traits and quirks and things that people have

that you compare yourself to enough people, you're going to have some things in common? inherited, or there are just so many traits and quirks and things that people have that you compare yourself to enough people, you're going to have some things in common? I think a lot of things that we single out are just coincidences. They're things that lots of people have, and it just so happens that one of your many, many relatives has it in common with you. It's a bit like astrology that way. Yeah, you can find some coincidences that seem compelling, but I think we need to sort of look deeper.

And it is possible that you are similar to your parents, not necessarily because you share genes with them, but also because they raised you, and you were paying very close attention to them, like it or not, and you are getting to be like them. That's not to say that genetics don't play a role. I mean, you know, tall people tend to have tall children and short people tend to have short children. I mean, that's a fact, but it's not simple, you know, and it's perfectly normal to have people who are very short have kids who are very tall and vice versa. That happens.

So to really understand who you are and how you tie to the past is no simple job at all. But since it's the title of your book, is it true that people have their mothers laugh? Or is it just that they lived in the house with their mother who laughed, and so they laughed like her because they heard it so much? I don't think science can really, you know, deliver a definitive answer for those sorts of questions. But you hear people say that. I mean, you know, I've said that about my daughter. And, you know, I'll hear other people talking about some trait. And we're very convinced that that's where it came from.

And, you know, to me, this underlying science is so fascinating and complex. You know, there's genes, there are other kinds of molecules, there's culture, there are all sorts of things that go into making this connection between the past and the present. But, you know, if you want to really prove that, you know, you have your mother's laugh, you know, science isn't quite ready to help you out just yet. How does culture enter into this discussion? Well, culture is really kind of like a separate channel of heredity that we humans have. I mean, we humans are really extraordinary that we really have a completely different channel of heredity that other species don't have.

So, you know, we can give information, knowledge, customs to our children, to future generations through language and through learning and so on. I mean, we're the only species where there's really good evidence of teaching. That's really remarkable because what that means is that it's not like every generation has to just relearn how to crack open a nut with a rock. You can teach children how to do it, and then when they grow up, they could get better at it, and they can teach their kids that as well. And so you have this heredity of culture that's traveling down. It's been traveling down our species probably for hundreds of thousands of years, and it's a real secret to our success as a species. So if you can't really say that you have your mother's laugh because you inherited it in the sense that it was a direct connection and it passed down, well then what good is this discussion? If sometimes it's true and

maybe it's not and maybe science can help and maybe it can't, well, if it were in such the early stages, how come your book is so thick? Well, one reason the book is so thick is because heredity has this long, deep, powerful history. Heredity means a lot to us. And so part of what I'm doing in the book is trying to explore why it means so much to us, and also like what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into by searching for that value. You know, there's some very dangerous aspects to our obsession with heredity. You can look to the early 1900s in the United States when genetics emerged. There were a number of very powerful voices who said, aha, we understand heredity completely. We understand why some people

are, you know, score higher on intelligence tests than others. Not only that, but we think that people who score low on these tests should be sterilized. There were thousands upon thousands of people who were sterilized in the United States based on a very wrong notion about heredity. And Nazi Germany borrowed a lot of these ideas from the United States and took them to even more horrific extremes. So whether we really understand heredity yet or not, it still matters enormously to us. And so we have to really understand what do we really know about heredity so far, and how much of this is just almost like illusions that we're giving ourselves about it?

My guest is Carl Zimmer. He writes for the New York Times, and he's author of a new book called She Has Her Mother's Laugh, The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity. For me, I know how I sleep and what I sleep on really matters, so it makes sense to ask yourself, why sleep on a mattress built for everyone, when you can sleep on a mattress built just for you? Working with the world's leading sleep experts, Helix Sleep developed a mattress that's customized to your specific height, weight, and sleep preferences, so you can have the best sleep of your life at an unbeatable price. Here's how it works.

Go to HelixSleep.com, fill out their 2-minute sleep quiz, and they'll design your custom mattress. They can even customize each side for you and your partner. Now, in 2018, Helix Sleep has taken customized sleep to the next level with the Helix pillow. The all-new pillows are fully adjustable, so you can achieve perfect comfort regardless of sleep position or body type. Helix Sleep has thousands of five-star reviews, plus you get 100 nights to try them out. Go to helixsleep.com slash something right now, and you'll get up to $125 towards your mattress order.

That's helixsleep.com slash something for up to $125 off your mattress order. helixsleep.com slash something. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman

who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker.

Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts hi this is rob benedict and i am richard spate we were both on a little show you might know called supernatural it had a pretty good run 15 seasons 327 episodes and though we have seen of course every episode many times we figured hey now we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors,

and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. So, Carl, as you said earlier, tall people sometimes have tall children, but sometimes they don't.

And some people with blue eyes have kids with blue eyes, but sometimes they don't. So what are you supposed to take from that? Well, it's not random. And you can actually like put a number on that sometimes. Scientists will call it heritability. And so you can say, well, for height, how much of the variation in a population is due to the variation in their genes? And the answer to that is about maybe 80%. So really like genes play a huge role in whether people are tall or short. And, you know, so you get a lot from your parents in that regard. There are other traits that are, you know, much less heritable, but there's still some heritability in them. You know, like, you know, how your personality, like, are you kind of a neurotic person, for example?

You get some of that genetically from your parents, but there's a lot of it is just environmental variation. And so it's not that heredity is meaningless. It's just that it's really complicated. And it's really interesting, too, especially because now we can look at individual genes. So for height, I can give you a list of genes and say, I know that each of these genes plays a role in how tall you are. Now, each one might only make you maybe an eighth of an inch taller on average, so they're all tiny, but together they are influencing your height in really profound ways.

And we're going to find other lists of genes for all sorts of things, for risks of diseases and so on and so forth. So we're just at the beginning of really drilling into this side of heredity. So it's an exciting time to be writing about this. But let's say that you grow up in a house with parents who are anxious and depressed, and so when you get older, you have anxiety and depression. And is it worth discussing whether or not it's heredity or environment, or it doesn't really matter? It's a moot point. It doesn't really get to the problem. It's just an

interesting discussion. I think for individual cases at this point, it probably usually doesn't matter, but it may be that in the future there may be ways of learning how to better deal with those disorders by understanding those genes that put us at risk. But very casually, people will say, well, you know, Fred's mother drank a lot, so that's why he drinks a lot, or Fred's mother was sickly and was sick all the time, and that's why he's sick all the time. Can you claim that or not? No, I don't. In a sort of casual, individual basis, no, I don't think that anybody can really know that. There are definitely some clear-cut cases, like, let's say, Huntington's disease.

Okay? Like, we know that's caused by one mutation at one gene. And if your mother or father had Huntington's disease, you have a 50% chance of inheriting that one mutation. If you did, you're going to get Huntington's disease. And so, if you go on and develop Huntington's disease, people can say, like, well, it's a shame that he got it from his mother. And we know that. That's clear cut. But those diseases are rare. So to just say like, oh, he drinks because his father drank. Yeah, I think that's too glib.

So what do you think of all these genetic tests that people can have, you know, spit in a tube and learn all about your past and what you may or may not be liable to get. What's your thought on that? I am, as you can tell by writing a book about this sort of stuff, I am intensely fascinated by how our genes influence us. But when people get these results from these companies, I think they're looking for quick and simple answers. Tell me what my DNA says about me. That's a complicated thing to tell for the most part.

It's pretty easy to say, hey, you have this mutation that if you're a man means you're colorblind. That's pretty clear. But, you know, when you start to get into issues about, say, risks of diseases, then, you know, you really need to read that fine print. 23andMe is now starting to provide, you know, results for your risks of diseases like breast cancer and other diseases. And in some cases, you know, they're only looking at certain mutations in these genes, like the BRCA gene. And if you don't happen to have those mutations, they'll say, okay, you don't have a risk of breast cancer from these mutations.

But we know that people have other mutations on these genes, and they could have risks as well. So you can't take these things at some sort of like, you know, you can't take a test result that says you don't have these mutations as meaning you will never get cancer. It's more complicated than that. Is there any science behind the idea, let's say you look more like your mother than your father, that you're more likely to have other things from your mother than your father? No, there's no connection between that and the genes that, you know, that influence development of your liver or your brain or so on. It's not like, you know, just because you look like one of your parents, you are more like them in some sort of

deep way. You inherit 50% of your genes from one parent, 50% from the other. So genetically speaking, you know, you're just a perfect, you know, 50-50 split between your parents. Well, it is, I mean, it is so interesting, and it is so unpredictable. I mean, for example, my, I have three brothers, and they've all, they all lost their hair, most of their hair, pretty early. I did not. I don't have as much as I used to, but I still have my hair. And my father had his hair until he died, but his father was bald.

So you wonder, well, where's the pattern there? There's no... So if there is no pattern, maybe there is no pattern and there's nothing to discuss. It's possible that a couple generations back, you know, your father inherited some genes that raise your risk of baldness, but then also inherited other genes that lowered the risk and maybe sort of dominated over the other genes. And then it was just sort of a, you know, which copies of those genes that he then passed down to you and your siblings, just roll the dice. And so for these complicated traits, you may have genes that are sort of tugging that in different directions. I've had my genome sequenced, and I can see that I have certain genes that raise my risk of cancer, certain genes that lower my risk of the same cancers, you know,

and do they even out? Well, that's kind of a hard thing to know right now because we still don't know that much about these genes. So to end up with this pattern in your family, most of your siblings, you know, being bald and you're not, like, that's what you expect from heredity. What about dominant handedness, whether you're left or right handed? Is that heredity or is that something else? That does seem to be quite heritable. The sort of genetic basis of that is

really still quite mysterious. And it's an odd thing because it's only, I guess, around 15% or so of people are left-handed. I'm left-handed. I am too. And there's nobody else in my family that's left-handed for generations. Well, I mean, how many generations back have you interrogated people, though? That would be an interesting thing to find out. And also, in earlier generations, the left-handed people were forced to become right-handed, so you may never know. Absolutely right. Is there a potential breakthrough around the corner that's going to put all this stuff in focus, or is this going to be a little incremental, things will get a little bit better and you can hardly notice,

but over time things will get better? Well, I think we are in the middle of a real revolution in bringing an understanding of heredity to our health because, you know, it is possible now for each of us to get all of our DNA sequenced, our whole genome, for a thousand dollars, maybe even a few hundred dollars. I mean, you have to remember the first human genome project cost about $3 billion. And so it's a kind of revolution like what we see in computers and phones, you know, in terms of DNA sequencing and also DNA analysis. And we have so much data now and use computers to develop really complex models that can take on all this complexity. So I really do think that like in 10 or 20 years, medicine is going to be remarkably different.

It won't be any one single eureka moment. It's going to be the collective work of many, many scientists who are doing that work right now. It's a really exciting time. It really is remarkable when you put it that way, when the first human genome cost billions of dollars, and now for a couple hundred dollars you can, you know, spit in a tube and send it away and get back a lot of information that you could never get before. It's a fascinating topic. Carl Zimmer's been my guest. His book is called She Has Her Mother's Laugh, The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity.

And there is a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Carl. Appreciate you being here. No, my pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology.

That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me,

we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Being the imperfect creatures that we are, we all do things that upset and hurt other people,

which in turn does damage to the relationship. So the thing we're supposed to do when that happens is apologize. But how you say you're sorry really determines whether or not the apology really helps fix the situation or potentially makes it worse. Relationship expert and psychotherapist Harriet Lerner has spent many years studying this, and her latest book is all about it. It's called Why Won't You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts. Hi, Harriet. Welcome. So why do you think this is so important, this whole topic of apologies? Well, we all unwittingly hurt others just as we're hurt by them. So the need to give and receive apologies is with us until our very last breath. And when done right, apologies can be deeply healing.

And when the apology is absent or it's done wrong, that really compromises a relationship or it could even end it. So I've been interested in apologies for actually for much of my career, what actually got me to sit down and write the book is that I was on the receiving end of a really awful, gaslighting, blame-reversing apology. And that's what got me to sit down at the computer and start writing. So I wonder why then, if a really well-delivered, heartfelt apology really helps fix things, why is it so hard to do, and why is it so hard to get it right? It's not that we're motivated to give a bad apology. It's not that we say to ourselves, gee, you know, how can I muck up this apology so the other person ends up feeling worse. It's just that humans are wired for defensiveness.

We are wired for it. So it's very hard for humans to take clear and direct responsibility for specifically what we have said and done. And to apologize without a hint of evasion, blaming, obfuscation, minimization, it's quite a challenge. And there are certain ways we automatically muck it up without realizing it. For example? Well, there's that little word, but. For example, I'm so sorry that I forgot to call you, but I was just swamped. I was overloaded with work. Everything fell through the cracks. It doesn't matter if what you say after the but is true. The but makes the apology false. And it's interesting because this little word but

almost always signifies a rationalization, a criticism, an excuse. So, you know, the first rule is get your butt out of your apology. And then another very common way that we muck up the apology that's a little more subtle is that we focus on the other person's feelings or reactions. like I'm so sorry that you were hurt, I'm sorry I made you angry, rather than apologizing for what we said or did or failed to say or do. And this is really an important one. For example, if you say, I'm really sorry that people were offended by the joke I told at the meeting. It's not an apology. There's no accountability. The apology would be, the joke I told at the meeting was insensitive.

It was out of line. I'm sorry. I want to assure you that it won't happen again. So a real apology begins with the specific words or behaviors that we're sorry for, and not with that we're sorry that the other person reacted the way they did. So those would be the top two. All right, well, I want to go back to your but one, because if you forgot to call me,

and you apologized that you forgot to call me, I might want to know why. I want to know the but. It might help me understand better that you got stuck on the train, and the train was in the tunnel, and that's why you didn't call. That might make me feel a lot better. If, in fact, for example, if I were stuck on the train, I might say, I'm so sorry that I'm late, but the train got stuck and I couldn't reach you. That's not an apology. It's an explanation. You know, we do that all the time. We say, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you got this diagnosis. I'm sorry that you're going through this tough time.

And there's nothing wrong with that kind of empathy, but don't confuse it with an apology. An apology, meaning that you're accountable for hurting another person or being insensitive. A real apology will not have the word but. An explanation, I'm sorry I'm 15 minutes late, but I was stuck in traffic, that's different. Sometimes, though, when you want to apologize, you want to apologize because you want to, somebody has to take responsibility, and we really need to put this behind us. But it isn't that I did something to you or you did something to me. Things kind of went bad and maybe we both had a role in this and there's responsibility and accountability on both sides,

but I'm apologizing so we can get past this. Still in that situation, and even if you're convinced that you're only 47% to blame or you're only 28% to blame, it's helpful to be able to take responsibility for that part, to be able to say, I apologize for my part in this, and this is how I think I contributed, and to be able to do that first. For example, if you say, I'm really sorry that I went out and made this major purchase without consulting you. Please remember that you did that last week.

You went out and you bought that thing and you didn't consult me. You're really undoing your apology. And the high integrity and better thing to do would be to be able to apologize for your part and then leave some silence there. And, you know, another way that we muck up an apology that's very important is that we don't really want to listen to the hurt party's anger and pain because it's not the words, I'm sorry, that heal the injury. The hurt party wants us to really get it. They want us to validate and care about their feelings and to carry some of the pain we've caused them to feel. So no apology will have meaning if we're talking about something, you know, important. No apology will have meaning

if we haven't listened carefully to the hurt party's anger and pain. And I think that's the hardest part when it's a really big betrayal or a big hurt. We just want to say, I'm hearts, put our defensiveness on a shelf, and really get it. Well, and how many times have you been on, I've been on the other end of that apology, and heard something like, well, see, I apologized, as if just saying the words, I'm sorry, should just wash this away, when you don't, you heard the words, I'm sorry, but you don't think the person actually gets it. Exactly. Or there needs to be more than one or two conversations. For

example, in my consulting room as a therapist, and let's say there's been an affair, what I'll frequently hear, you know, the husband may say to his wife, I've told you five times that I'm sorry. Why do you keep bringing it up? And of course, the more that he tries to muzzle her and he communicates that he doesn't want to listen to it, the more tightly she will hold on to her pain. So in a case, again, a case of a serious betrayal, that husband may need to listen for as long as it takes and to really let her know that he's carrying some of the pain. I think everybody's been in that situation where someone has said or heard, why are you still upset? I already apologized. And I suspect that's probably not a particularly productive thing to say.

It's not a very helpful thing to say, but I've already apologized, meaning so, you know, why are you bringing it up again? It would be more helpful to say, is there more that you haven't told me? Is there something that I'm not getting here? Because a good apology helps the hurt person to feel safe and soothed in the relationship again. What's the anatomy of a really good apology? Take me through what one sounds like. A really good apology involves caring about the relationship. It means accepting responsibility for our part of the problem, even when the other person can't see their own contribution to the problem.

And it usually is short. The good apology initially usually is short because when we go on and on, we're going to end up making explanations that are actually excuses. So the good apology starts out very simply. You know, what I said at the party was really out of line when I kept correcting your stories. You told me that you don't like that, and I was correcting your stories anyway, and I was wrong. I apologize for that, and I want to assure you that it's not going to happen again. There's this belief, I think, that many people have that if someone sincerely apologizes, that you should forgive them.

But should you? I mean, what if it's unforgivable? You know, many people believe that forgiveness, like gratitude, is a universally healing emotion. So I hear people, for example, in my consulting room say things to, for example, a mother says to her daughter, what your father did happened a long time ago. He did the best he could. You need to forgive him. You need to move on. You need to not live in the past.

That is not helpful. And in fact, the words, you know, can't you forgive him already, are the last words that a hurt person needs to hear. And ditto for cliches like, your mom did the best she could, it is what it is, this happened 40 years ago. You need to move on for your own sake. When we ask someone to forgive, we ask another person to forgive, someone who's never apologized to them, we can leave that person feeling alone and abandoned and disoriented all over again. So it's not our place to tell another person that they need to forgive someone

who's never cared about their feelings, who's never apologized, who's never tried to get it, a person who won't orient toward reality. It's simply not our job to say that, and it can hurt them all over again. It would seem that time plays a part in this. I may not be able to forgive you now, but give me a little time and, you know, I'll come around. But right now it's just too fresh, it's too painful, and let's just give it some time. Yeah, that might be a very wise thing to say, if that's what you're feeling.

And by the way, you know, you can continue a relationship without forgiving the other person. You can say, you know, this particular thing that you've done, I don't forgive, but we have a long history. I love a lot about you, and let's just move on. And one of the myths about forgiveness is that you forgive or you don't forgive 100%, and that's not true. You can forgive 10% or you can forgive 90% or whatever you don't please.

Like, for example, a woman, going back to the subject of affairs, a woman said to her husband, after a lot of good work that he did earning back her trust, she said to him, I forgive you for the affair, but I will never forgive you for sleeping with her in our bed when I was away seeing my dying mother. So I will never forgive you for that. And she told him that she forgave him 90%,

but that was the 10% that for her was not forgivable. And they moved on, and they had quite a good marriage. Well, it is interesting how people are often defined by the worst thing they do, especially if it goes public and especially if it's really horrendous. I mean, you commit murder, that's kind of what you're known as, as a murderer. But people aren't just the bad things they do, just as they aren't just the good things they do. People are much larger and more complex than the worst things that they've

ever done, Mike. So that it's very useful and a sign of maturity that we can hold people accountable for the very bad things that they've done, but we can also see them as bigger, larger, more complex, and ever-changing people. Who sometimes need to apologize for what they've done. Harriet Lerner has been my guest. Her book is called Why Won't You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts. There's a link to her book in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Harriet. Thanks for being here.

Thank you. Couples fight about money. A lot. It's one of the main reasons for conflict and one of the big reasons couples split. Why? Well, certified financial planner Jeff Motzke has a theory. Couples fight about money because they never talk about it until it becomes a fight. And that's never going to go very well. So he recommends couples make a money date night, go out to dinner and talk about money in a nice, calm, unemotional way. Specifically, what are the financial goals for the family?

Are we saving enough for the future? And if not, can we agree on how to do that? And talk about the what-ifs. What if my mother has to move in with us? What if you lose your job? What if, what if, what if? Discussing those issues in an emotionally charged argument is what leads to trouble.

So the trick is to discuss financial issues before that happens and before the what-ifs become here and now. And that is something you should know. If you want or need to get a hold of me, Mike at SomethingYouShouldKnow.net is my email address. I try to respond to every email I get, and I appreciate you listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide

when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.