This podcast may contain explicit language and feel free to use explicit language

when you review the gist on iTunes.

It helps other people find the show.

It is Tuesday, August 27th from Slate.

This is the gist.

I'm Katie Herzog sitting in for Mike Peska,

who I can only hope is relaxing on a beach somewhere with a drink in one hand

and his cell phone in the other.

If you've never heard of me and let's be real,

you probably haven't.

I'm a staff writer at The Stranger.

Seattle's Best and Only Alt Weekly,

where I cover news, politics, culture, and whatever happens to be annoying me at the moment.

And what happens to be annoying me at this moment and those moments is public shaming.

Public shaming was once written into the legal code.

In the early American colonies, people were quite literally put in stocks in the town square.

Even executions were held in public.

As if being hanged weren't bad enough, you had to do it in front of an audience.

Since then, public shaming has largely gone out of favor in the US criminal justice system.

This isn't because it doesn't work,

but because it's now considered just too cruel.

Still, it pops up from time to time.

...