Episodes

In the second of our "Story Not Sorry" episodes, writer Kate Tell shares something so many of us dread and must still experience: the hole in our lives left by the death of a pet. With compassion and wit and blazing honesty, Kate touches our hearts. Kate Tell is a writer and poet based in Hoboken, New Jersey. She's currently working on a chapbook of poems centered on grief, as well as her first novel.

Friends, we took a little break, as you may have noticed. We used the downtime to put together something special: we asked writers to submit their very best writing on the theme "finding meaning in a time of strife." The submissions were overwhelming, and for the next twelve weeks or so, you'll get to hear some of the best of them. To introduce the series, Alyssa and Ben share one of Ben's own essays: "My Soul Doth Magnify The Lord." This essay won the Emerson College Graduate Writing Award in...

Alyssa and Ben have some rare disagreements as we discuss Texas' redistricting nonsense and California Governor Gavin Newsom's response to it.

Recently, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman warned that Trump's deportation policies could crush the economy, bringing more pain than his thoughtless tariffs. Last year, we spoke with Alice Driver, an investigative reporter whose book "Life and Death of the American Worker" chronicles the labor conditions and importance of those immigrants-and what could happen to our food system if they are no longer here doing this work.

It’s been a minute–Alyssa was away on vacation with her family and doing some cool political and creative work. But she didn’t miss anything, right? The world was calm and nothing ridiculous happened, right? Well, let’s find out as we spend this episode digging into the news of the summer and the general state of all of this.

Is Trump a fascist? Is MAGA a fascist movement? Give a listen to the first half of this two-parter and decide for yourself. In the 1990s, Umberto Eco published the essay "Ur-Fascism," which explored fourteen common points of fascist movements and governments. In this episode, we present the first seven of those characteristics and then present Trump's own words, along with excerpts from the 2024 Republican Platform and words of prominent Trump supporters and administration members.

It’s been a minute since Alyssa’s been here–she’s been on a vacation and doing some really cool stuff in the entertainment world, but I’m sure you all miss her. After all, you don’t tune in to Ben Jackson Sorry Not Sorry! Well, a few times over the years, Alyssa has actually been the guest on this show instead of the host, and I thought it would be fun to give you what you want–some of Alyssa’s best moments here on Sorry Not Sorry.

In recent weeks, Jeffrey Epstein has burst from the grave and back into the news. Trump made much of his campaign identity about releasing the Epstein files and promised to release them–a promise on which he has since reneged. Trump had a longstanding friendship with Epstein, and recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal claims that Trump wrote Epstein a letter for his 50th birthday depicting a naked woman and wishing for more “Magical Secrets.” In this episode, we will her interviews and t...

A couple of weeks ago, Alyssa and Ben had a conversation about the challenges of creativity in times like we’re living in. Since t’s the last week of our summer vacation, we thought we’d take a little break from the full-on politics and social issues of the show and take a look back at some of the great creatives we’ve had join us over the years. Guests include Misha Collins, Amitav Ghosh, Heather Matarazzo, and Kim Raver.

It’s Bastille Day - the "Fête Nationale" in France. Its a day of liberation, of revolution, of oppressive systems coming down and liberation rising. With that in mind, we’re looking back at some powerful guests from the past year who have revolutionary ways of thinking–ways that can help us grow, and see the world in new ways.

Well, it’s been a month. June has seen so much happening–the protests across the country, Trump deploying the national guard, big supreme court cases, a mayoral primary in New York, the political assassination of Democrats in Minnesota–oh, and we bombed a sovereign nation. As we do every month or so, we to use this episode to look back and connect some dots.

The rule of law is the foundation of our society, and yet the Trump regime is shamelessly trying to undermine that rule at every turn. We've seen a united states senator thrown to the ground and handcuffed for asking a question, a New York Mayoral candidate arrested for confronting ICE over an arrest, targeting of citizens and visitors in Democratic-led areas, and a plethora of authoritarian maneuvers which threaten our democracy. To help us understand both that threat and our rights as we seek ...

This episode was recorded on June 12, 2025. It has been 236 years, 3 months, and one week since the United States Constitution came into effect on March 4th, 1789. The President of the United States has federalized the state militia of California and deployed it, along with the United States Marines, against the citizens of our country in Los Angeles. The Governor of Texas has deployed the Texas national guard against the citizens in that state. The governor and attorney general of georgia have...

It’s been nearly three years since the Dobbs decision, which the Supreme Court used to strip women of the right to control our own bodies. In that decision—and frequently presented across the ideological spectrum as an alternative to abortion—adoption has been at the forefront of the discussion. But is adoption as benevolent and empowering as it is presented to be? Our guest today argues that it is not—and she’s got compelling evidence to back that up. Dr. Gretchen Sisson is a researcher at Adv...

Memorial Day is past us, and we’re barrelling into Summer. So much has been happening over the past month, and so much is going to happen in the near future. This week, Ben and I are going to round up some of the big stories in the news and think a bit about what they might mean for all of us.

Watching the news has been especially horrifying lately. We’re drowning in video of armed, masked ice agents charging into neighborhoods, refusing to identify themselves, snatching up our neighbors, and the next thing you know they’ve been deported to terrible prisons in other countries, deprived of due process, and at the mercy of a government that is refusing to follow orders of federal courts. Cristina Jimenez knows that fear, and also knows how to fight back. She is the co-founder of United ...

The archetype of “mother” is a weight many women carry-but it’s certainly not our whole story, or necessarily an accurate one. In fact, the stories we are told about women, the complexities of womanhood, are often shackles that serve to keep us bound to a society that claims to value us but holds us back in so many ways. Nicole Graev Lipson’s new memoir in essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters captures the complexities of motherhood, of relationships, of womanhood–and defies expectations...

The early part of this decade seemed like it might signify a realignment of the social and cultural power of Black Americans. But the realities of that power–and how it translates into meaningful justice and social change–are less clear, and perhaps less optimistic. Especially now in the second Trump era, where everything which does not perpetuate white power is treated as suspect and anti-American. To discuss the shifting dynamics and a path forward to meaningful change, we’ve asked Andre Perry...

The Trump regime built much of its identity–and certainly campaigned around–its hatred of LGBTQ Americans. Unfortunately, the success of that campaign again revealed just how much anti-queer bias there is in the American populace. And while there may be no populated nation in the world that is truly free of anti-queer bias, there are places that are better, are different, or that offer new perspectives. Alden Jones’ work explores queer travel. Alden is an assistant professor at Emerson College a...

It’s hard to overstate the danger the Trump regime is posing to Americans. This is especially true for Americans who rely on our healthcare system for chronic diseases or conditions. From cuts to research funding, building registries for people with autism, attacks on women’s access to healthcare, and so much more, it’s truly horrifying what is in store in this country. To help us unpack it, and maybe help find a way to act against it, we’ve asked Laura Packard, Founder of Voices of Health Care...

There is a rapist presiding over the United States. That rapist has directed his government to gut federal efforts to protect women from violence of all sorts. Health and Human Services fired nearly all of its staff at the Division of Violence Prevention. The office on violence against women has removed all funding opportunities from its website and reports are coming in that all of the grants it issues are being cancelled. Online, platforms owned by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg–billionaires wh...

Most weeks, we bring a guest onto speak in depth on a single issue. But every once in a while, there’s so much going on that Alyssa and Ben take an episode to check in on...all of this nonsense. That’s what we’re doing this week. And we even start with some good news: It’s baseball season.

The United States executes more people than nearly any other country. In fact, in 2023, the only countries with more reported executions were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Iraq. Inside the United States, courts are trying to navigate the legality of execution and methods of execution, and the various states have different rules and customs of this barbaric practice. Gianna Toboni has faced some of the world’s most dangerous people: ISIS fighters, cartel hitmen, and sex traffickers. In her new ...

In late March, thousands of writers, publishers, students, and writing educators gathered in Los Angeles for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference. Since our own Ben Jackson is a writer and professor of composition, we thought it would be a great opportunity to hear how writing is changing the world for the better in a time when we desperately need to change the world for the better.