Alyssa Milano: Sorry Not Sorry

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 avai...

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 e...

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 caregiv...

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...

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...

Our guest this week is Celeste Headlee. Celeste is award-winning journalist, professional speaker and best-selling author. In her 20-year career in public radio, Celeste has anchored programs including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She is the author of a new piece available on Scribd called “You’re Cute When You’re Mad.”

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 exis...

We know Frederick Douglass as a towering figure in America’s fight for the abolition of slavery in the United States. In the early days of his ascent, he was allied with and managed by publisher William Lloyd Garrison and “The Contessa,” Maria Weston Chapman. In her new book The Color Of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation , our guest Linda Hirshman reveals the detai...

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. The...

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...

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 ha...

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 release...

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 imp...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been devastating for the people of that country. It's also had ripple effects throughout the global economic and security systems, created an unfolding humanitarian and refugee crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II, and united most of the world against Vladimir Putin. On March 3rd, we were joined by Ukraine expert Andrea Chalupa, cohost of the...

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 Relat...

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 problem...

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...

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...

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.

The last five years highlighted the racism, xenophobia, and islamophobia which exists in American society—but it didn’t start then. In his new book Go Back to Where You Came From And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, my guest Wajahat Ali takes a clear-eyed and very funny look at this dark part of our American identity. "Wajahat Ali’s deeply personal and keenly perceptive mem...

If the Democrats want to increase their razor-thin majority in the Senate, allowing them the possibility of changing senate rules and passing voting rights legislation and other critical goals of the Biden Administration, the State of North Carolina is an essential pickup. Incumbent Republican Richard Burr is retiring, and the state has been trending more and more blue. Late last year, our produce...

The past several years shocked both our national and global economies. As the government undertakes massive spending programs to counteract the damage, the national debt, the deficit, and inflation have become issues of national debate. We’ve invited Stephanie Kelton, author of The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy to take us behind the rhetoric and make th...

The United States is entering its third COVID winter, with no end to the pandemic in sight. There is a loud minority of vaccine-averse Americans, and a dangerous number of anti-science politicians cynically manipulating that for power. At the same time, the mental health of Americans is entering its own crisis from the stresses of pandemic life. Our guest today is the Surgeon General of the United...