Alyssa Milano: Sorry Not Sorry

Our guest this week is Marc Elias. Marc is an election law attorney who has been at the forefront of protecting voting rights and stopping political interference in elections. Marc is also the founder of Democracy Docket, a website and newsletter that highlights voter suppression efforts and his actions to stop them from taking effect.

In the week before this episode airs, the sickness and violence in our country again came into harsh focus. An insurrection, spurred by the delusional, hateful, and outgoing President of the United States resulted in five deaths and the desecration of the seat of our government. 

This episode has healing. This episode has magic. This episode has Kwame Alexander.

On January 3rd, 2020, the Washington Post broke news of a truly shocking phone call between Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Since then, multiple media outlets have obtained the full recording of that call. We're providing it here, unedited and in its entirety, and reminding you that on January 5th Georgia has a special election.  Republicans in the Senate are trying to overturn the will of Georgia voters, and the will of the American voters. 

Keep that in mind as you vote, Georgia.

Our guest this week is D.W. Gibson. D.W. is an awarding-winning writer who shared a National Magazine Award for his work on “This is the Story of One Block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” for New York magazine. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Nation.  He joins us to discuss his new book 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall.

2020 was one hell of a year. On January 1st, none of us could have imagined that a pandemic would completely change the way we interacted with one another and that our government would be so very bad at managing it. We experienced a popular uprising for justice, an economic collapse, and, of course, a presidential election. Along the way we had so many important conversations about so many critical issues. This week, we’re taking a look back at just a few of my favorite moments from Sorry Not Sorry in 2020. We hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

Mark Shanahan is a writer and reporter for the Boston Globe. He’s also a prostate cancer survivor who developed the podcast Mr. 80 percent for the globe detailing his experience with prostate cancer.  After his diagnosis and during treatment, Mark had to re-examine and rebuild relationships and consider what it means to be a man if your sexual function is at risk. Be forewarned, this episode has very frank discussions about sex and anatomy, so if you haven’t had the birds and bees chat with your kids, make sure they’re out of earshot.

Sex is the elephant in the room that most people can’t stop thinking about but also which most of us have no good language to discuss. We hide it, or we flaunt it, and far too many learn from porn, which is so rarely a good teacher about good sex.

We owe it to ourselves to be better. We deserve the ability to talk about sex without hiding from it, to have clear and honest discussions of what we want—assuming those conversations are with partners who also want to have these discussions and not just women you happen to see on the internet—and find shameless ways to realize those desires.

Our guest this week is Jill Twiss. Jill is a former writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where she won Emmy and Peabody awards and wrote “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.” She’s the author of the new children’s book about voting called “Everyone Gets a Say.”

Pudding the snail and his friends can’t seem to agree on anything. Whatever Jitterbug the chipmunk wants, Geezer the goose does not. Whatever Toast the butterfly wants, Duffles and Nudge the otters are absolutely against. And if somehow Toast and Duffles and Jitterbug and Nudge all agree on something, then Geezer is not having it.

So when Toast suggests they need a leader, the friends try to figure out the best way to pick someone to be in charge. Should that someone be the fastest? The fluffiest? The squishiest? Or can Pudding show his friends that there just might be a way where everyone gets a say?

In this follow-up to The Someone New, Jill Twiss and EG Keller cleverly underscore the importance of speaking up and using your voice.

As the Trump presidency winds to its chaotic end, we examine Trump's approach to the world stage with our guest Jim Sciutto. Jim is an Emmy-award wining journalist, Senior National Security Correspondent for CNN, a former diplomatic Chief of Staff during the Obama Administration, and the author of the new book The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World.

It’s Thanksgiving week, and we have an episode for you that will change the way you see the holiday. Our guest today is Denise Kiernan. Denise is an author, journalist and producer. Her books, The Last Castle, and The Girls of Atomic City were national bestsellers. She joins us to discuss her new book We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, A President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace.