Episodes

Our guest this week is Gaby Dunn. Gaby is a New York Times bestselling author, comedian, and LGBTQ advocate living in Los Angeles. They are the host and creator of the podcast Bad with Money with Gaby Dunn. Their new piece Stimulus Wreck: Rebuilding After a Financial Disaster is now available on exclusively on Scribd.

We have a mass incarceration problem in America, with entire industries created to lock people up, keep them locked up, and make it difficult or impossible for many of the people they catch in their cycle to break free. Our guest this week learned this firsthand. Keri Blakinger is a Texas-based journalist and the author of the new book Corrections in Ink, a memoir tracing her path from figure skating to heroin addiction to prison and, finally, to life as an investigative reporter covering mass i...

The Supreme Court has gone rogue. It's radically reduced the right to privacy, the right to bodily autonomy, the right to hold rogue police accountable, the ability of the government to protect the environment, and significantly weakened the wall between church and state--all very much against the wishes of the American people. Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia has a plan to make the court more representative of the people. He joined us to discuss.

The extremist extreme court just stripped away the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom from millions of Americans when it overturned Roe v. Wade. One in four women in the U.S. will have an abortion by the age of 45. But since the beginning of 2019, more than 250 bills restricting access to abortion care have been introduced in forty one states. Throughout this episode, you will hear from women who share why they decided to have an abortion - women who sent in their own stories, wom...

It’s been nearly thirty years since the Congress passed meaningful gun violence prevention legislation despite overwhelming support for these measures from the American people. In those decades, more than a million people in America have died from gunshot wounds, and more than two million have been injured. After the latest high profile mass shootings in Buffalo New York and Uvalde, Texas, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a leading figure in efforts to reduce gun violence, led a bipartisan g...

This week, we’re welcoming Bill McKibben back to the show. Bill is the author of more than a dozen books, including the best sellers Falter, Deep Economy, and The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. His new book “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened” is now available. Guest hosted by Ben Jackson. Editorial Reviews Review “If we survive the in...

There aren’t a lot of people who have a life which resembles Alyssa Milano's. As an actor from childhood who is still working on the cusp of fifty, our guest Wil Wheaton is one of the few. He joins us today to discuss his reappearance in Star Trek, his time on The Big Bang Theory, his time as a young actor and as a less-young actor, and his bestselling new book Still Just a Geek, which is now available.

Over the past several years, corporations and entire industries have quickly made statements and some policy changes in response to social and racial justice movements. Those statement and initiatives, however, often exist as feel-good marketing initiatives or sincere efforts with unintended consequences. In her new book “Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service,” Tajja Isen explores these efforts and the realities they mask and reveal. “[A] stellar debut collection...Some of My Best Frie...

We’re already into the midterm election season. California will host its primary elections on June 7th, and my guest this week is hoping to advance into the general. Kermit Jones is running for Congress in California’s 3rd Congressional District. He’s a doctor, a former White House Fellow, a former Navy Flight Surgeon, and a public policy expert.

Mothering is work. It’s creative, it’s exhausting, it can be financially crushing, and it is immeasurably rewarding. But always, it is work. Our guest this week is Angela Garbes, bestselling author of Like a Mother. Her new book, Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change is now available. About Essential Labor From the acclaimed author of Like a Mother comes a reflection on the state of caregiving in America, and an exploration of mothering as a means of social change. The Covid-19 pandemic ...

It’s almost impossible to quantify the problems with the way we approach healthcare in this country. For something which should be a human right, high-quality healthcare is often provided in unlimited amounts to the rich at the expense of the poor—especially people of color. In his new book “The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER,” our guest Dr. Thomas Fisher examines the injustices of our system through the eyes of a physician trying to do his best for his patients in a...

The Supreme Court appears poised to rip bodily autonomy from millions of American women. The draft opinion written by Justice Alito relies heavily on historical rights. In this short film, Alyssa takes you through a primer of the history of abortion and the fight of pregnant people to control their own bodies and access essential reproductive healthcare despite a constant onslaught from an extreme religious right which does not represent the majority of Americans.

The midterm elections are quickly approaching, and the stakes are so high. Our guest this week is Charles Booker, candidate for the United States Senate in Kentucky. His new book From the Hood to the Holler: A story of Separate World, Shared Dreams and the Fight for America's Future is now available.

The internet is a cesspool of horrible people saying and doing horrible things. So much of the worst behavior is directed at women, in an effort to shame and silence us - and if you don't believe us, look at the the comments on every post our host Alyssa Milano makes or the trolling fake reviews of this podcast. So many men are abusive, hateful, and terrified of women who have the temerity to exist online. Our friend Nina Jankowicz’ new book “How to Be A Woman Online” is an essential toolkit for...

Sex trafficking affects millions of women around the globe, generating billions of dollars for the criminals who traffick women. For the few women who escape, it can be extremely difficult to find safety and stability in society. Filmmakers Sadhvi Siddhali Shree and Sadhvi Anubhuti are Jain monks who created the new documentary Surviving Sex Trafficking, which Alyssa Milano executive produced. They joined us to discuss their film which is now in theaters and which will be available to stream on ...

It’s been more than a century since the Equal Rights Amendment was first drafted. And it’s been fifty years since the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the states. In 2020, Virginia became the last state needed to ratify the ERA, and yet it is still not in the Constitution. It’s infuriating, and it’s bad for our country and dangerous for women. We’ve devoted extensive time over the years to covering the Equal Rights Amendment, and this week we’re revisiting some of those ...

Shame is everywhere. From advertising to the dinner table, and on every last inch of social media. To examine the origin and effect of this reality, we’ve invited Cathy O’Neil to join us this week. Cathy is the author of the bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction, which won the Euler Book Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She received her PhD in mathematics from Harvard and has worked in finance, tech, and academia. Her new book The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age ...

The pandemic has been devastating for everyone in America, but especially for women. We’ve seen our economic power set back years—maybe decades—by the changes to the labor market since the start of COVID. To discuss, we've invited Reshma Saujani on the show. Reshma is an attorney and activist who founded Girls who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms. She’s also the author of the soon to be released book “Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work and Why It’s Different Than You Think.”

The Supreme Court is supposed to be above partisan politics, but that has not been the case in the past several years. Recent in-depth reporting by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico and The New Yorker confirmed our worst fears about Justice Thomas and his ideologue activist wife Ginni Thomas – that in the wake of the Big Lie the bright red lines that are supposed to protect the impartiality and integrity of the court by placing boundaries between extreme advocacy and cases before...

In January of 2020, we witnessed an attack on our capitol by American citizens. At the time, many of us said that we didn’t think it could happen here. But it did happen, and it was just one event on a timeline of events that has our guest—and should have each of us--concerned about the future of our country. This week, I’m joined by Barbara F. Walter. Barbara is a professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, a life ...

This week, we're joined by Anna Gifty Opoku-Ayeman. Anna is a is a researcher, writer, science communicator and activist. She is the co-founder of The Sadie Collective, the only nonprofit organization addressing the lack of Black women in economics and related fields, and the editor of The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System, a new book of essays on policy solutions to social problems written by black activists. Editorial Reviews Review "An expansive set of essays highlighting th...

We’re at a last-gasp inflection point for the climate. Humans have so polluted the world that our entire climate is changing. We talk a lot about the human cost of this change, but what about the changes for other species? In his new book The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth, Ben Rawlence explores the northward migration of trees, and what it means for all of us. He joins us this week to discuss. About The Treeline: In the tradition of Elizabeth Kolbert and Barry Lopez...

This week, we're joined by Bryan Osorio. Bryan is a Berkeley graduate, the 26 year old mayor of Delano, California, and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for congress in California’s 21stCongressional District. We’ve got an election coming up this year, and there are truly impressive younger candidates like Bryan Osorio running. We challenge each of you to find emerging young candidates in your states, and help them change the world.

Rhode Island is a small state, but one which is so reflective of so much of the country. It has a governor’s race this year, and Dr. Luis Daniel Munoz is running for the office. He's a medical doctor with a progressive vision for the future. He joins us today to discuss his campaign.