How To Survive a Public Shaming With Katie Hill
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back in 2018, newly elected U.S. Representative Katie Hill was a rising star in the Democratic Party. Then unauthorized nude photos of her were leaked to a right-wing blog by her estranged husband, triggering a House Ethics investigation. Katie denied the worst allegations but admitted to a relationship with a female subordinate on her campaign, and, amid immense pressure, resigned her seat. Since then she has written a new memoir She Will Rise, and continues to fight for her reputation. In this episode of How To!, we bring on Jon Ronson, the author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed, to help Katie understand what she went through and put it behind her. They discuss other examples of public shaming and how gender factors into the equation. Who determines the appropriate level of accountability and how do you know when you've apologized enough? No matter what happened, Jon says, we should all think twice before piling on to a public shaming.
If you liked this episode, check out "How To Say the Right Thing at the Worst Time."
Do you have a relationship you'd like to mend? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius. |
| 0:22.6 | Talk about generational talent. |
| 0:23.7 | Coming to headphones near you |
| 0:24.8 | on April 17th with a first guess you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:30.4 | Do you remember when that kind of hit you where all of a sudden you just felt shame? |
| 0:36.4 | Oh, the moment is completely unforgettable. |
| 0:39.8 | It's when my staff walked into my office with just completely ashen faces and turned |
| 0:47.0 | her phone towards me, and it was one of the naked photos. |
| 0:53.9 | Welcome to how to. I'm Charles Duhigg. |
| 0:58.0 | Each week on the show, we try to solve listeners' problems. |
| 1:01.5 | And usually those struggles are pretty relatable. |
| 1:03.7 | They're family conflicts or work troubles or how to lose weight. |
| 1:07.9 | But this week's listener is going through an experience that very few people can relate to. |
| 1:12.6 | My name is Katie Hill, former Congresswoman from California, and currently the author of She Will Rise. |
| 1:20.6 | If you know the name Katie Hill, it's probably not just because she was elected to Congress in 2018. |
| 1:25.6 | At the age of 31, Katie was one of the youngest women ever elected to the House of Representatives, |
| 1:31.3 | and she did so by flipping a historically red district in California to blue. |
| 1:36.1 | She was brought into Nancy Pelosi's circle, and she seemed destined for a bright future in the Democratic Party. |
| 1:41.8 | But then, just a year after she was elected, everything began to fall |
| 1:46.3 | apart. My estranged ex-husband, he decided to release naked images of me. And so those were |
| 1:56.2 | published on Red State, which is a right-wing blog and in the Daily Mail. And it revealed that I |
| 2:03.0 | had had a relationship with a woman who had worked on my campaign. And ultimately, it just |
... |
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