I just listened to the episode of This American Life where they issue an apology and mea culpa for having presented what actor Mike Daisy said about his experiences in China with workers at Apple factories.

I just said, in three tweets, that I couldn't make it through the whole podcast.

A bunch of people asked me to explain, so I'll try, but it's not a huge deal, so don't put a huge amount of time into it.

1. I am a regular listener of T-A-L. I expect to continue to listen.

2. Everyone fucks up. I get it, you fucked up. I forgive you.

3. I also would like to know what really happened. Thanks for telling me.

Having heard an apology, and having heard what happened, through the interview with Daisy's interpreter, I now have all the information I need. I am not a regular listener of Mike Daisy's podcast. If he does a podcast in the future, I doubt if I'll listen to it. Therefore I have almost zer0 interest in hearing him squirm, being confronted with alternate versions of his story.

What is especially crude is listening to Ira Glass interview him. Don't you see how self-serving that is for Glass? Feels to me like he's trying to qualify the apology and mea culpa. Whooooaa there. That's too much for me to handle. I'm just a fan. I'm not into hearing the precise truth. Because it is so awkward and embarassing. And I'm an adult and I know that truth on subjects like this doesn't get that precise. It all happened two years ago. Memories are embellished, details forgotten. Happens to everyone.

It was worse than one of the most horrible interviews with Sarah Palin. We had to watch Palin, because of the job she was running for. Mike Daisy? He's not running for anything. I don't care about his lies.

Ira Glass, do I have to care in order to continue to listen to your podcast? Because you put it on your show you seem to be saying that I do.

So a simple apology and mea culpa would have sufficed. Unless it can't suffice. Unless there is some reason I should care about Mike Daisy. Will I still listen? Yeah. Not only did they fuck up but they fucked up the part where they said they fucked up. Oh well. Life goes on.

Now, if that's too subtle for you -- have a nice day. It's not that important.

 3/19/2012; 6:50:08 PM.

The seventh World Outline podcast I've done recently with Adam Curry.

If you were listening to Rebooting the News, you might want to pick up this thread. And if you loved outliners and the early days of presentation tools, you definitely want to listen this episode. I talk about a product we were working on at Living Videotext around the idea of recalculating graphics. We still need this, it's crazy that we don't have it yet.

The MP3 is here, and the feed is here.

We're going to keep doing these for a while, it's really help build the development community. And there's no reason other people can't lurk!

 3/19/2012; 4:22:53 PM.