Hi, everyone.

204 has been one heck of a year, hasn't it?

Many of us will be glad to see it go, and we're with you.

As has become our tradition, we're closing out the year looking back at some of our favorite episodes from the past 12 months.

And we'll start with Kate Mann.

Kate is a best-selling author whose book, Unshrinking,

How to Face Fat Phobia, confronts the last socially acceptable bias in the world.

You start unshrinking with an anecdote about your first book and the offer of a book tour.

And I think that might be a good place for us to start. Can you share that story with us?

Yeah, totally. I actually, you know, I owe you so much, Alyssa, because it so happened that my first book was released late in 2017

when The Me Too Movement took off. So huge thanks to you for your vital role in making Tarana Berg's movement, what it is today.

It's incredible. And so this was an academic book. It was a crossover book,

but it had fairly academic tone to it. And I never expected it to sell more than, you know,

a couple of dozen copies. But as it happened, there was huge interest in the topic that I'm

very passionate about raising awareness about, which is misogyny, sexual harassment, sexual assault,

rape culture generally, and there was sudden interest in these topics because of the timing.

So I found myself talking to journalists and podcasters almost daily, but I also found myself

as then a very fat woman shrinking from the limelight.

I found myself really reticent about appearing on camera.

I would only ever appear on camera if I could control the angles by doing it via Skype

call.

And I really found myself squandering certain opportunities to call attention to an issue

...