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Wait, why is it called the “Mayonnaise Clinic”?

It’s a fair question. If you’re not familiar, I wrote a seminal piece on mayonnaise back in 2018 for Insider, titled “You Like Mayonnaise.” The point of the piece is not so much that mayonnaise is good — though it is — but that your revealed preference is for mayonnaise, even if you protest otherwise. Mayonnaise is in and on everything. Sometimes it’s mixed with other foods and you call it “salad.” Sometimes it’s flavored and you call it “aïoli.” In any case, you eat it, and therefore you like it.

These are the levels of self-knowledge I hope to help us all reach in this weekly mailbag (mail-jar) column. We’re learning, together.

Our other podcast, Serious Trouble

I host a second podcast — an irreverent podcast about the law — with Ken White, a.k.a. Popehat. It’s called Serious Trouble. Paying subscribers to Very Serious get a discounted rate on Serious Trouble. If you’d like that discounted rate, email us at mayo@joshbarro.com.

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Very Serious is edited by Sara Fay.