Krystal Kyle & Friends

This week, we’re joined by the TV host and author Touré to discuss his book The Ivy League Counterfeiter, a gripping and thought-provoking story about elite crime and punishment. Specifically, what kind of elite crime merits punishment? In Touré’s book we found an incredible opportunity to think about the legalized forms of financial corruption and predation that take place every day in ivory-tower enclaves. Cliff, the Ivy League Counterfeiter, simply moves from the “officially sanctioned” public theft that Ivy League students perpetuate on Wall Street to another form of scamming that has instead been criminalized. While the scams of big banks, stock exchanges, and consulting firms go unpunished (if anything, they’re incentivized), informal, unsanctioned versions of these scams — like counterfeiting — land you in big trouble. Our conversation with Touré about his incredible book reveals the true criminal behavior of our most “official” and “professional” financial institutions, and calls into question why they, too, haven’t been met with prosecution — yet.

We hope you enjoy this episode of KK&F. You can listen to this conversation through Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more!

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It seems like every few days a new free-speech scandal, UI nightmare, or flame war goes down with Musk at the reins of Twitter. (Maybe you like knowing how many views your Tweets are getting, but it feels like the latest unwanted design nightmare under the leadership of the guy who proposed single-lane car tunnels under Los Angeles.) Matt, along with other journalists from outlets like CNN and the New York Times, found his Twitter account shut down over commentary on the site’s new policy surrounding the sharing of people’s real-time location info.

Why did Musk focus on banning the promotion of other, “competitive” social media platforms like Mastodon on his site, a policy so inflammatory that it’s since been rolled back? And why were some social media platforms the focus of his ban, while others, like TikTok, remained untouched? Our purpose in the conversation with Matt is to get a sense of the political and economic agenda behind these decisions — it may not be as easily spelled out as “free speech” for all.

Thanks for tuning into Krystal Kyle & Friends and merry Christmas! You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Substack, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.

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Want to get rich quick? In a country with massive wealth disparity and intense precarity caused by expensive housing, healthcare, and education, scams and schemes profiting off of everyday people are literally all around us. This week’s guest Coffeezilla has made it his focus to analyze modern-day scams, to understand how their messaging plays into social and financial concerns and gets the buy-in of people who might otherwise be skeptical. He makes the excellent point that today’s hucksters are able to “sell the dream tailored to the specific person,” understanding what kinds of struggles and goals different people have — and convincing them that you have the product to make their problems go away.

How does this fit into the current fiasco in the crypto world, the fall of FTX? Coffeezilla leads us through the charges against SBF, the government’s response to violation of campaign finance laws, and where this story could go from here. Thanks for joining us, and remember that you can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pandora.

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“Real OG” radio host Thom Hartmann joins us for an interview that’s been a long time in the making; Thom is a major influence for Kyle, someone whose coverage of leftist issues inspired him to work in left independent media. He joins us to talk about money in politics, the legal precedent for the treatment of corporations as people (bet you didn’t know that this precedent goes all the way back to 1886), and much more. In our discussion, Thom describes how the constitutional amendments so central to American liberty (freedom of speech, equal protection under the law) became the target of nineteenth-century railroad corporations seeking human rights for their capitalist enterprises.

We connect this history to our present moment to understand how corporations have been building power through appeals to constitutional rights for more than a century — and how we can fight back. Thanks for joining us for this important conversation. You can also listen to this episode through Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.

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One common theme in our conversations at KK&F — which has been around just a few weeks longer than the Biden presidency, letting us follow and comment on Biden’s methods of governance from the very beginning — has been the way that this White House denies its access to certain forms of presidential power when it could benefit working people most. We’ve compared Democrats’ and Republicans’ willingness to avail themselves of measures and roles like executive orders, parliamentarians, and so on in order to get things done.

Well, it’s arguably a pretty powerful move on the government’s behalf to shut down a potential strike on behalf of capital, knowing that the workers involved are being denied paid sick leave. Where, from the party that claims it represents the interests of labor, is the opposite, equally powerful move to get the votes, push through a different plan, seek out other options like nationalizing rail corporations? What can we expect from the remaining period of Biden’s leadership? We’re asking the big questions with our return guest, labor reporter Jonah Furman, on the latest episode of KK&F. As always, we’re grateful to you for joining us and tuning in. Remember that you can listen to this episode as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, and more.

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Welcome to our hundredth episode with commentator Farron Cousins, our guide to Florida politics and how it’s shaping the nation. The big question is whether the rise of DeSantis means the collapse of Trump. We discuss how the two major right-wing figures are pitted against one another for future presidential campaigns. Perhaps the greatest plus for Trump would be the major three-ring circus in the mainstream media if he were to announce his candidacy: what we learned from 2016 is that outlets like CNN, despite their professed opposition to Trump’s politics, were willing to give him billions of dollars’ worth of free media by covering his every move during the presidential campaign season. The idea that liberal media might do more for Trump than anyone else by feeding into his plays for national attention isn’t even galling anymore — we’ve seen this before.

From smaller questions (will Trump return to Twitter?) to other speculations for the 2024 presidential elections (and who will lead the Warmongers’ Caucus), we’ve got a packed show for you tonight, and we hope you enjoy. Remember that you can listen to this episode as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow on Spotify, Substack, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.

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This week’s episode with writer Matt Stoller takes us to that million-dollar question (probably more than a million-dollar question, actually): Is crypto just a scam? After all, can’t we apply all of the negatives of crypto to fiat currency? Isn’t it all made-up on some level? Matt argues that the governmental institutions that support fiat currency, as well as its societal usage, draw an important distinction between, say, the dollar and the bitcoin. He also responds to the contention that crypto’s strengths lie in its decentralization and frictionless transfer by making the case for a stronger U.S. banking system in general. There’s nothing necessary or unavoidable about the woes of our financial system, which he traces to corruption.

Crypto, he contends, is really at core just a “shitty spreadsheet” with fake money that allows for money laundering and results in massive crashes and upheavals, like what we saw this week with FTX’s downfall (discussed at length in this week’s episode). So the problem then becomes: What do we do about the corruption in our financial system? And what will come from our taking it on?

We hope you enjoy this latest episode of KK&F. Remember that you can listen to it as a podcast now on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.

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This week, Marianne Williamson joins us to share her own analysis of the big midterm elections earlier this week, saying we have new proof that the Democratic Party shouldn’t be afraid to put its foot on the accelerator and go for the bold legislation and robust social programs that Americans clearly have an appetite for. Instead of sizing up Tuesday’s electoral offerings as the very limit of what voters will break for — assuming that this is as far left as they will go — she argues, “Think what will happen if we go all the way in the direction of progressive policies that we know American people will support.”

Look at the field: people had plenty of opportunities to get behind watered-down, moderate versions of the progressive candidates and policies they cast their votes for. Instead, they validated the idea that the options American voters have in this country aren’t left enough. Maybe we can’t say exactly how far people are willing to go. But we know for sure that what’s on the table right now isn’t enough. In this episode, we talk about what the midterms mean for Democrats’ future as a party, and just why a progressive future is the only way forward.

You can listen to this episode as a podcast on Spotify, Substack, Pandora, and more. Thanks for tuning in.

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According to this week’s guest, economic analyst Rana Foroohar, the Democratic Party is facing an existential crisis. Those who were active in government during the start of neoliberal policymaking — and who perhaps even worked to implement it — are in the same party as new legislators who have seen the catastrophic effects of those policies on the working-class people they represent.

Understanding the Democrats’ political conundrum means understanding the history of neoliberalism in American politics, focusing on the Thatcher-Reagan era and its hard swing toward globalization, deregulation, and outright attacks on organized labor. Rana’s assessment of where we’re at now is that it’s a pendulum swing in the opposite direction of the Reagan-Thatcher period. The Democrats, especially with Biden in office, have what Rana sees as an opportunity to lead us out of that moment and to escape the harm done by decades of neoliberal policy. Whether or not they’re up to that task is up for discussion on Episode 97 of KK&F, and we hope you enjoy the debate.

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We’re grateful to Alexandra Hunt for delving into the tough issues of the “manosphere,” toxic masculinity, and how the left should view and respond to sexual frustration among young men. She considers young men’s increasing radicalization by far-right figures around issues of sexuality to be an issue the left should take on, and one that has major implications for our political system.

Alexandra and Kyle lay out how manosphere commentators are able to identify and speak to struggles that we would think of as systemic, but present these struggles as individualistic, offering misogynistic diatribes, self-help advice, and, of course, often a mixture of both. But Alexandra argues that it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s possible for the left to take on this topic and ensure that people who struggle in this way aren’t radicalized to the far right.

Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, and more.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/subscribe