This year started in an attempted coup and an attack on our capitol. It’s ending with criminal indictments for some of those who took part in the planning and execution of that attack—but so much more happened this year. We’ve now lost more than 800,000 to COVID, but the arrival of safe and effective vaccines offers hope. A new president and new government has made progress on important issues, but obstructionists are getting in the way of desperately needed reforms. And all along the way, so many impressive activists are fighting tirelessly to make the world better and more just for all of us. This week, we revisit some of our favorite moments from the show this year.

Our guest this week is Michael Tubbs. Michael served as the mayor of Stockton, CA. He was the city’s first Black mayor and the youngest ever mayor of a major American city. He is the founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and Ending Poverty in California, a Special Advisor to California Governor Newsom on Economic Mobility, and a commentator for MSNBC. His new book “The Deeper the Roots” is now available.

If the Democrats want to retain control of the Senate in 2022, the path goes through Pennsylvania. With a retiring republican incumbent and a state that voted for President Biden, it’s seen as one of the most likely pickups. Our guest this week is Congressman Conor Lamb. He’s a Marine Corps veteran, currently the Representative from Pennsylvania’s 17th District, and a candidate for the United States Senate.

The wealth gap in America creates any number of problems—but perhaps the most pressing is its expansion of poverty. When this poverty intersects with a broken criminal justice system, it becomes criminalized. The cycles of poverty and incarceration can span generations, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has spent years covering the stories of the people affected. In his new book Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice, he exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors’ prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished.

"Messenger is one of the few columnists―maybe the only one―in America whose beat is the poor who are preyed upon by public officials"

It seems like we live in a world where every issue divides us on the extremes, and Climate Change is no exception. It’s killing people and economies, and yet it seems like all we can do is yell at each other about it. Our guest this week is trying to change that, one conversation at a time. Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy and author of the new book Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday with, at best, a complicated history. Rooted in colonization and stolen land, it is also a time when families often come together and many of us reflect on the things for which we are grateful. It is this gratitude that we’ll focus on today—not Thanksgiving the holiday, but gratitude the emotion. We asked you, our listeners to submit stories of gratitude, and you came through. In this episode, we’ll hear from a variety writers and poets and every day people with the things for which they are grateful.

There is no doubt that our democracy remains threatened. Donald Trump and those who supported his election lies and other corruption continue to exert influence over our political system, and the rise of authoritarianism in America risks everything we hold dear. In his new book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, Adam Schiff examines this threat and shares his behind-the-scenes story of confronting it.

Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from Midnight in Washington by Adam Schiff, read by the author.

In October of 2021, Alyssa Milano joined other advocates and activists in the first hearing about the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress in decades. This episode is the unedited (safe to remove some dead air during a technical difficulty at the hearing) and uninterrupted.  It will sound a little different than our usual episodes as a result.

We've included the opening statements of all witnesses and Committee leadership, even those which disagree with Alyssa's to provide a comprehensive view of this issue.

In the view of this podcast, the National Rifle Association is one of the most evil organizations in America. Through its financial influence, it’s allowed the wholesale slaughter of 40,000 Americans a year so that its funders can keep making money. But things are not all rosy at the NRA, and we’ve asked Tim Mak, NPR’s Washington Investigative Correspondent and author of the new book “Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA” to join us to discuss.

“From the reporter who broke the story of the NRA-Russia connection, Misfire is a searching expose of the corruption and crookedness that pushed the NRA itself into ruin. The nonstop revelations are told with gripping detail and intimate insider knowledge.”—David Frum, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and New York Times bestselling author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

For a special episode of Sorry Not Sorry, Alyssa Milano leaves the host's microphone and takes the guest chair to discuss her new book "Sorry Not Sorry," which releases October 26th.  She discusses the process of writing, her life as an activist, her family, and her recent trip to Washington DC to advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment.

Praise for Sorry Not Sorry