It's been a weird week here at death, sex, and money. Over the weekend, John Hawkenberry, the former host of another show here at WNYC called The Takeaway, was accused of a pattern of sexual misconduct and bullying of his co-workers. He allegedly forcibly kissed two women producers at his show. This was brought to light by a writer named

Suki Kim at New York Magazine. Suki also reported how over John's nine years of the takeaway,

three of his co-hosts, all women of color, left due to his hostile behavior. There's a link to

Suki's story, which includes a statement from John at deathsexmoney.org.

He did not deny the allegations and said, I have no excuses.

John left the takeaway in August, but most of this was not public until now.

I worked at the takeaway for two years.

It was my first job in New York City back in 2009. After I read this story,

I reached out to a friend and former coworker on the show, Noelle King.

Hi there. Hi, Noel. Noel's now a correspondent for NPR's Planet Money, but in this

conversation, she's not talking on behalf of NPR.

When we worked together, she and I both knew about John's bullying behavior.

A lot of people now are asking why we never said anything, why we never reported it to our

supervisors, and why it was allowed to go on for so long. And I've been asking myself the same question.

I've been asking myself the same question for two weeks now. I was there for three and a half years.

Why didn't I say anything? Yeah. I mean, I have been feeling so sad that I thought this was normal.

Well, we were we were told that it was normal.

I mean, that was the advice I was given from the day I started.

And I remember it being understood, if not explicitly said.

John is a genius.

And as a genius, his moods can be, he can be very temperamental. His moods can be pretty wild. And it's

your job to make him happy. I was 29 when I started on the show. Noel was 26 when she started.

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