Actor, comedian, and writer Jenny Slate joins Monica this week on Reclaiming for a truly adorable conversation about creativity, motherhood, and embracing every tender, strange part of yourself. Jenny reflects on finding raw, unexpected humor in birth and parenting, the creation of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and on the public rejection that transformed her relationship with performing. Together, they explore artistic courage, womanhood, and how to trust that we can not only survive life’s hardest moments, but emerge from them more fully ourselves. It feels like a conversation between old friends —though they are not!

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Award-winning journalist and women’s rights advocate Gretchen Carlson joins Monica for a deeply personal conversation about transforming enforced silence into systemic change. Gretchen reflects on her landmark 2016 sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News chairman Roger Ailes—and the complicated reality of helping catalyze a cultural reckoning while remaining unable to tell her full story. Together, they explore the cost of speaking out, the importance of bipartisan advocacy, and Gretchen’s work with her non-profit Lift Our Voices to challenge forced arbitration and restrictive NDAs. Honest and inspiring, this conversation is about reclaiming your voice—and using it to help others reclaim theirs.

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Oscar-winning performer Ariana DeBose joins Monica for a deeply personal conversation about her rise to fame, navigating public scrutiny, and moving through grief. Ariana reflects on launching her Broadway career as a member of the original cast of Hamilton, becoming the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar for her performance in West Side Story, and the complicated experience of being truly seen. She also opens up about losing her mother and grandmother—and how she carries their love, strength, and lineage with her as she enters a new chapter.Together, Ariana and Monica explore representation, the transformative power of creative mentors, and the importance of protecting your choices—even when the noise gets loud. Honest, funny, and deeply moving, their conversation is about honoring where you come from, defining success on your own terms, and reclaiming the freedom to become who you are.

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Writers and couple Priya Parker and Anand Giridharadas join Monica this week on Reclaiming for an energized conversation about intentional gathering, healthy conflict, and building a shared intellectual life within their marriage. Priya explains how her new book, The Art of Fighting, explores the ways disagreement can deepen—rather than destroy—our sense of belonging. Anand discusses Man in the Mirror, his book that examines the fatal subway encounter between Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny, and what it reveals about safety, care, and institutional failure in a divided country. Together, they reflect on how their ideas challenge and sharpen each other, how they sustain two ambitious careers while raising a family, and how to distinguish a fight that creates change from one that merely causes harm. Moving through humor and honesty they consider what we owe the people—and the communities—to which we still hope to belong.

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This week, we’re revisiting a conversation with Reclaiming’s very first guest, actor Alan Cumming. The Traitors, which Alan hosts, continues to soar in popularity, earning six Emmy nominations this year. Grounded in their longtime friendship, Alan opens up to Monica about how creativity helped him survive an abusive childhood. He reflects on the healing power of speaking openly about his trauma, how sharing his story has helped him move forward, and why he still wrestles with the fear of becoming a father himself. It’s a raw and honest conversation about confronting the past, breaking cycles, and finding a way forward.

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This week Monica sits down with award-winning filmmaker, Women Rising founder, and author Sara Hirsh Bordo for a deeply personal conversation about chronic illness, self-silencing, and the hidden cost of being the “good girl.” Sara shares how her autoimmune diagnoses transformed her from documentarian into subject—and led her to write Autoimmunity and the Good Girls: How Permission to Put Ourselves First Has the Power to Keep Us Well. Drawing on her personal experience, original research now downloaded in more than 26 countries, and more than 50 hours of interviews, Sara explores how conditioning women to be agreeable, useful, and endlessly giving can shape their relationships with stress, identity, and their own bodies. Together, Monica and Sara unpack the difference between kindness and self-abandonment, why setting a boundary can feel like betrayal, and what it means to treat the body as a witness rather than an enemy.

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Celebrated novelist Chang-rae Lee joins Monica this week on Reclaiming for an insightful conversation about immigration, identity, and the stories we construct to make sense of our lives. Chang-rae opens up about coming to the United States from Seoul at age three and how the loss of his mother at the beginning of his writing career shook his sense of self. He and Monica examine his belief that all immigrant novels are dystopian novels and their shared fascination with the stories that live in the aftermath of life altering events. Together, they move between displacement and belonging, fear and creative freedom, the gravity of history and the reclamation of play—and consider whether taking back your story might also mean refusing to be confined by a single one. Plus, Chang-rae reveals how his new novel, A Tender Age may be his most autobiographical yet.

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The incomparable Allison Janney is nominated for an Emmy this fall for her role in The Diplomat, so we’re revisiting one of our favorite conversations with her. Allison opens up about the silver-screen legends who shaped her early career—Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman—and how their mentorship changed everything. She reflects on how her breakout role in The West Wing introduced her to Bradley Whitford, who now plays her on-screen husband in The Diplomat, and reveals why political roles are actually a total stretch for her. Allison also shares her journey of self-exploration through ketamine, MDMA, mushrooms, and even astrology—and how those experiences have helped her see herself and the world more clearly. Finally, she reflects on her deep friendship with Matthew Perry and the shared understanding that comes from loving people who carry pain and brilliance in equal measure.

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Writer, poet, and thinker Siri Hustvedt joins Monica this week on Reclaiming for a profound conversation about the physical reality of grief, the shared self created by long love, and finding language for what remains after someone dies. Siri opens up about losing her husband and creative partner, writer Paul Auster, after 43 years together and how writing her memoir Ghost Stories became an act of survival. She and Monica explore the trope of female hysteria, the misogyny Siri faced as a woman intellectual,  and what it took to stop feeling guilty for being outspoken. Together, they move between the body and the mind, science and mystery, devastating loss and sustaining humor—and consider the ways life asks us to reclaim ourselves over and over again. 

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Comedian, writer, and The Daily Show correspondent Josh Johnson joins Monica this week on Reclaiming for a thoughtful conversation about finding connection through humor, embracing what makes us different, and learning to live with the knowledge that nothing is guaranteed. Josh gets real about losing his father at 26 and how it rewired the way he shows up for people, why retiring his mom became his North Star goal, and how the exact traits that once got him labeled the weird kid are now his sharpest weapon on stage. He and Monica dip into grief, politics, comedy, and the wild idea that just saying the uncomfortable thing out loud might be the most powerful move you've got.

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