Secondhand Embarrassment: The Moth Podcast

The Moth

This episode of The Moth Podcast, hosted by Emily Couch, explores the universal experience of secondhand embarrassment through two deeply personal stories. Sarah Finnegan recounts accidentally posting a naked selfie to

Key takeaways

• Sarah Finnegan accidentally sent a naked selfie to her husband while playing with filters on her phone, which then appeared publicly on her Facebook profile for over 20 hours.
• As a public high school teacher in Brooklyn, Finnegan initially feared professional ruin and calls from the school superintendent after the photo was seen by former students.

Main topics

• Secondhand embarrassment / cringe moments
• Social media mishaps and digital footprints

Notable quotes

"I am literally just going to drop dead."

Conclusion

The episode highlights how embracing vulnerability and laughing at life's awkward moments can

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) Welcome to The Moth. I'm Emily Couch. There's a word in German called, and I'm going to do my best here, fremdschamen. It's literally translated as foreign shame. Essentially that feeling you get when you cringe on someone else's behalf. Secondhand embarrassment, basically. We've all felt it, whether you've watched a friend get up on the dance floor and absolutely fail in their quest to boogie. You know, when they've cha-cha'd real rough. Or whether you've heard a wedding speech from the maid of honor that gave away just a few too many details about their bachelorette trip. There's a humor in it, yes, but also the realization that to be human is to be embarrassing. And pretty soon, you'll be the one out there with your metaphorical fly, metaphorically unzipped. So on this episode, we're embracing the cringe with two stories that'll make you feel from shaman. First up is Sarah Finnegan, who told this at a New York City Story Slam. where the theme was comebacks. Here's Sarah live at the Moth. Speaker 4 (1:05) I'm going to tell you about a time that something, that I did something so embarrassing that I should really never be able to show my face in public again. And for a little bit of context, it's important to know that I am Irish, which means I hate myself. Irish people, we like to have a sort of healthy dose of self-loathing. We're taught it at an early age, and especially about our bodies, and especially as girls. We're told that our bodies are vessels with the potential for lust and sin. And so you should be really careful about not falling into that temptation and becoming a whore. Speaker 4 (1:51) So... I've really tried to practice this separation between my body, my head and neck, and the rest of everything down below. Even in childbirth, I was politely looking away. None of my business. Speaker 4 (2:09) So you can imagine my embarrassment when I accidentally posted a naked photo of myself on Facebook. Speaker 4 (2:27) It was a Saturday morning. Speaker 4 (2:30) Like any other Saturday. And my daughter was playing on my bed with my phone and I came out of my shower. I had my towel and I sat next to her and she was taking pictures of herself, taking selfies with filters. And we would start doing it together. I'm a cat, I'm a dog. How cute. And then my towel sort of slipped off, and I got this eyeful of my naked body through the camera lens, and it was absolutely horrific. And I thought, how hilarious to take the world's worst naked picture and send it to my husband, who was sitting there. And so, of course, I don't change my pose. And I am in the worst position. Like my shoulders are kind of hunched over. My breasts are like dropping away. I have like that full melted candle body happening. My unpruned shrubbery is in full focus. Speaker 4 (3:38) My crowning glory of the two white thighs laid out in a kind of V like a cadaver about to get an internal exam. And I take the picture, and I slap a pair of kitty paws on, as my daughter had just taught me, pointing at my hoo-ha, and I sexted to my husband saying, don't you want some of this? And... I watch Speaker 4 (4:10) as he gets a notification and he opens it up and he's like, oh, what am I looking at here? And he's kind of quizzical. And then he realizes and he screams and he throws his phone in the air like he's been scalded. And I laugh and I laugh. Speaker 4 (4:26) 20 hours later. Speaker 4 (4:31) It's a Sunday morning and I wake early and I reach my phone out for, I reach my hand out for my phone and on there is a message on Facebook from a guy I went to college with 30 years ago. And it says, hey Sarah, I'm wondering if you're feeling okay. So I feel a little nervous. there's