https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_(2025_film)Happy new year, everyone, and welcome to a new semester of the show! In today's episode, which was orignally slated to be our end-of-year holiday special but has turned out to be a new years special in which we discuss our favorite media from 2025. Our selections are divided into four categories: books, television shows, movies, and YouTube channels. Come along as we re-experience the greatest moments of our 2025 media consumption experience!

In our next episode, which will come out sometime next month, we will resume our regularly-scheduled show format of going in-depth on a particular political topic with the aim of building consensus over compromise. We're excited for everything that 2026 has in store for us!

If you have any comments or questions, or media you would like to send our way, please email us! [email protected]

Special thanks, as always, to Benjamin Stickney for the amazing intro music!

Bellow is a collection of links to the media and adjacent things we talked about in this episode. Where possible, I have linked directly to the thing we discuss, or else a Wikipedia article about it. Hopefully I didn't forget anything important!

Books:

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

YouTube:

F.D Signifier

"Charlie Kirk and the Conservative Death Cult"

Hank Green

Television:

The Good Place

Andor

Movies:

Sinners

Superman

One Battle After Another

Eric Ross: No One Understands One Battle After Another

The Phonecian Scheme

Thank you very much for listening!

Alex and Fox

Hello again, everyone! Welcome back to Half Step to the Left. In today's episode, we follow up on our conversation last month about the current state of Democratic Socialism in the United States with a discussion about Bernie Sanders' most recent book, Fight Oligarchy, which came out this October. The book primarily focuses on defining oligarchy and how it came to be so prevelant in the United States, and then how we can build a progressive political movement to counter it by advocating for the rights of the working class and future generations. Bernie Sanders has been a figure in leftist politics for decades: is his message finally catching on to the mainstream?

This will be our final episode of the semester, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will release some kind of special (emphasis on the special) holiday/new years episode before resuming our regularly-scheduled programing next semester. Happy holidays everyone!

As usual, please direct any questions, comments, and feedback to [email protected] and we will be sure to address it in an upcoming episode.

You can also reach Alex direcctly via the contact page on his website, algcprojects.com.

Special shoutout again to Benjamin Stickney for writing the awesome intro music!

Alex and Fox

Hello again! Welcome back to Half Step to the Left. In today's hastily-prepared-for episode, Alex and Fox eagerly discuss the recent election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to the mayoral office of New York City. But our discussion is more than just fan-girling (it's a lot of that), we discuss the difficulties that lie ahead for Mayor Mamdani in accomplishing his stated policy goals and how best he can use the leverage he has built up for his political purposes. We then turn our attention to a few other notable progressives running for office, specifically Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois' 9th congressional district, and Grahm Platner, who is running for US Senate in Maine. Does the election of Zorhan Mamdani to what Fran Lebowitz famously called "America's second-hardest job" signal a tide change in favor of democratic socialism nationally?

As with our climate episode(s), the format dictates that from here we read a book to help point us in the right direction! The book we've selected for this topic is Bernie Sanders' most recent release, Fight Oligarchy, which details his most recent and therefore most relevant plan for building a progressive movement to help working people and defeat authoritarianism in the United States. Sanders is basically the god-father of the movement that Zohran Mamdani now finds himself in the spotlight of, and so we thought it would be a relavent read for us! This book, unlike our last book club read, is very short, almost short enough to be considered a manifesto (dangerous territory, Bernie!) so if you're interested in following along with us definitely pick it up! Our next episode will be a discussion about the book.

As usual, please direct any questions, comments and/or feedback to [email protected] and we will be sure to address it in the next episode along with our own reflections!

Sources Used:

Wall Street Journal: The economics of Zohran's policies

Axios: Kat Abughazaleh launches bid for congress

New York Post: Kat Abughazaleh's indictment (lol)

CBS Chicago: Kat Abughazaleh's indictment

Graham Platner for US Senate

Kat Abughazaleh for House

Special shoutout to Benjamin Stickney for our wonderful new intro music!!

Thanks everyone for listening! We hope you enjoyed, and are feeling at least slightly more hopeful this week.

Alex & Fox

As promised last time, in this second episode of our podcast Fox and Alex discuss Kim Stanely Robinson's 2020 scifi novel, The Ministry for the Future, which offers a grimly hopeful outlook on how humanity may, perhaps, solve climate change and build a better and more equitable world. Alex read this book last year, and he thought it was very on-theme for our previous episode about climage change.

This is how our episodes will go from here on out: at the beginnning (roughly) of each month we will have an episode dedicated to some political topic or another, for which we will do research in advance of our discussion. Then we will decide on a book related to the topic to read, and discuss said book in the following episode, which will generally be released sometime mid-month.

Please direct any questions, comments and/or feedback to [email protected] and we will be sure to address it in the next episode along with our own reflections!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the very first episode of our podcast! It can only go up from here, so please keep listening. Bellow you will find a comprehensive (hopefully) list of links to sources, other things we mentioned in the episode, etc.

For our next episode, which will hopefully come out in a few weeks time, we will be discussing our thoughts on the book club book for this episode's topic: Kim Stanely Robinson's The Ministry For the Future. If you're interested in reading the book yourself in preparation for that episode, you should still have plenty of time!

Please direct any questions, comments and/or feedback to [email protected] and we will be sure to address it in the next episode along with our own reflections!

New York Times: 50 States 50 Fixes Climate Article Collection

TED: Al Gore talk

Simon Clark: How much progress have we made on climate change? (A Lot)

Climate Action Campaign: Tracking Trump's Actions on Climate Change so far

USA Today: Before you buy an electric vehicle

USA Today: Here's why EVs are so heavy

Oxford: Synthetic Fuels

Forbes: Synthetic Fuels Critique

Green Car Future: Electric Car Batteries

NPR: Congo Cobalt Mining

Reuters: July 2025 Energy Transition Check-up

Thanks so much for listening! We hope to see (hear?) you next time!

Alex & Fox