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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 Nonfiction with High Distinction. It grapples with faith, history, evil, and, of course, music.

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 testimony from women–some who were girls–who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault or other sexual misconduct–in their own words. It will not be easy to hear, and while the story will certainly continue to evolve, even between the time I am recording this and you are hearing it, the words of these brave women endure to paint a damning picture.

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 to mitigate it, we’ve invited attorneys Eliza Orlins and Hassan Ahmad back on the show.

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 threatened violence against its citizens. The speaker of the house of representatives this week stated that the governor of California needs to be tarred and feathered. And on Saturday, the wannabe dictator of our country is holding a North Korea style military parade on his birthday, against the wishes of the government of the city where it happens. Citizens across the nation are rising up against the violent, vengeful tactics of the trump regime against citizens and noncitzens alike, and it feels like we are approaching a breaking point. We’ve aksed Barbara F. Walter, one of the words leading experts on civil wars, violent extremism, and authoritarianism, and the author of “How Civil Wars Start” back on the show to help us understand where we are and where we may be going.

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 Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and much more acclaim.

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.