Krystal Kyle & Friends

Even among fellow Conservatives, former PM Liz Truss’s agenda registered a shock. She pushed policies of deregulation that directly attacked working people, while cutting taxes for the wealthy. And, as of Thursday, she’s out of office. Now the party will be tasked with putting up another Prime Minister to carry out a political program that lacks public consent.

We dive into the past, present, and future of this process with this week’s guest, Owen Jones, and we hope you’ll appreciate his insight into the tumult currently sweeping British politics; we certainly did. You can listen to this conversation as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.

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After years of a pandemic, layoffs, the beginning of a recession, and so many other hardships for working people, why should we be reassured by centrism? What makes this political vision attractive at all, and why do we still have to contend with it? We’ve seen how Biden has scaled down or outright abandoned the central campaign promises that made his candidacy bare-minimum palatable to many leftists. We’re turning to the work of Jacobin writer Luke Savage (especially in his new book, The Dead Center) to understand the legacy of centrism, hoping to get a sense of where it’s headed — and how much longer it’ll be around.

Luke’s book focuses on twenty-first century liberalism, touching on everything from media (The West Wing) to the politics of the Obama years, explaining how we’re left with an undead center in mainstream politics — a politics that’s deeply disconnected from the struggles that everyday people experience, yet continues to go on shaping our day-to-day lives through its entrenchment in our political establishment. We highly recommend listening to this conversation — and checking out Luke’s book — if you find yourself wondering how the lethargic politics that brought Biden back into power and have carried Democrats through various recent elections just keep hanging on by a thread.

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Welcome back to KK&F — this week we’re joined by Katie Halper to discuss how she was dismissed from her appearances on The Hill’s Rising in retaliation for her coverage of Israeli apartheid. As ironic and counterintuitive as it sounds, conservatives literally make a career out of crying “cancel culture.” And when right-wingers do face consequences (books pulled from shelves, Twitter accounts permanently banned) for spreading dangerous misinformation, you’ll notice that we keep hearing from them — now on the topic of endangered free speech. But when independent left-wing reporters like Katie tackle significant issues dealing with human rights abuses — issues that reveal the U.S.’s own hegemonic interests in the Middle East — they’re kicked off platforms that tout themselves as open-minded and intellectually diverse.

This hypocrisy reminds us how important — and difficult — it is for the American left to fight back against corrupt media institutions. For her part, Katie has done an incredible job bringing attention to the topics those institutions have deemed “taboo,” and she’s also spoken on other platforms about the significance of her firing from The Hill (you can check out this interview on the Intercept). We hope you enjoy this critical conversation with a truly important voice in international left politics, and we’re grateful to you for joining us for another week of KK&F.

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Comedian RM Brown joins us this week for a conversation about bringing comedy to left politics, right-wing attacks on basic freedoms — from trying to shut down gay marriage to book-banning frenzies — and where our movement’s priorities should be right now. As you’ll see in this exclusive interview, he views our current moment as an opportunity for a “collective project” for public well-being (think housing, healthcare, student debt) that will help us build power and deliver on everything Republicans are trying to take away from us right now (with all but outright consent from the Democrats).

We at KK&F believe that, given leftists’ serious and dedicated focus on the truly tough straits working people find themselves in today, it’s essential to have a good laugh — and to appreciate the potential of comedy to carry across a powerful political message at the same time that it provides entertainment. So, on to our interview with one of our favorite comedians, RM Brown. RM’s got a channel full of hilarious commentary on our political moment and its most notable figures, and his work provokes us to think about how important it is to turn to comedy for memorable, sharp political commentary with the power to draw people in.

Thanks for tuning in — and thanks to our paying subscribers, whose support helps keep us ad-free. You can listen to this conversation right now as a podcast 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

Welcome back to KK&F, where we’re confronting capitalism with sociologist and leftist thinker Vivek Chibber. We’ve brought him on the show to discuss everything from what it means to be a socialist, why we can’t take our eye (and our organizing) off of electoral politics, what role incrementalism should play in our politics, and much more.

The share of our organizing that should focus on electoral politics is hotly contested on the Left. According to Dr. Chibber, it’s essential to acknowledge how the change we agitate for at the grassroots level can be stymied or stalled by hostile bureaucracy and establishment feet-dragging. If we intend to take on our opponents through the democratic channels of our government, we’ll need comrades in the halls of power — those who will bring a working-class agenda to the floor for votes, and those who won’t pursue a directly antagonistic agenda to stop our voices from being heard. In other words, electoral organizing isn’t at all isolated from other forms of protest and political work: it can provide support to those other avenues that go beyond ballots and elections, and a powerful Left will be able to balance these efforts together.

We hope you enjoy this episode of KK&F. Remember that you can listen to this conversation as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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

Welcome back to Episode 90 of KK&F. Our guest this week, Ryan Grim, has given us a great line to help us think about how the Biden admin has positioned itself on major issues like labor and climate, offering some improvements (e.g. through climate funding) while continuing to uphold an establishment status quo that is hostile to the working class. “If you’re used to getting punched in the face with both hands, this is progress.”

We look at how this sentiment applies to the Democrats’ overarching approach to governing and policymaking as we near the midterms, where big losses could very well loom for Dems in the absence of significant efforts like the child tax credit, fighting for some version of the promised public option, and more. Tune in to get our read on what comes next for the Democrats, whether they’ve got the will to do what it will take to keep power, and what they plan to do with that power.

Thanks for tuning in! We’re especially grateful to our paying subscribers, who pay $5 a month to keep us ad-free. You can get KK&F convos a whole day early, in video format, by subscribing today. Remember that this conversation is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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

Welcome back to KK&F, where we’re joined this week by political commentator, comedian, and Chapo Trap House co-host Matt Christman. Following the news of more legal struggles for Trump’s allies, we’re taking a look at how the former president and the members of his political team have survived various attempts at prosecution and alienation from their base of supporters — and why (if at all) that might be about to change.

Neither Trump nor his closest associates have faced true legal consequences for crimes committed during Trump’s administration; rather, the potential of political consequences has become a major, rotating fixture in the American news cycle, where incidents like Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riot (or the recent raid by the Feds on Mar-a-Lago) place the former president under threat of legal action but fail to fully bring him to justice. Is there a long game in play here? These efforts may well serve to foreclose the possibility of future Trump candidacies. As Kyle posits, it could create a political situation where Trump is able to perform well in primaries, but in general elections, his total lack of trust and respect outside a group of die-hard supporters leads to losses.

With Matt, we talk through what’s ahead on Trump’s political horizon and how it’s going to affect the rest of us. We hope you enjoy the conversation. This episode is also available on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, 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

Welcome back to Krystal Kyle & Friends — minus the Friends this week, as we’re giving you a special episode of in-depth conversation between our two hosts. This week, we’re focusing on COVID policy, from vaccines and masks to lockdowns, in terms of what health and safety precautions have shaped American life in the past two years. We’re taking this opportunity to examine how the imposition of these health measures has changed public thinking about our collective duty to one another, the way we protect and advocate for kids growing up during and post-COVID, and more ethical questions we’ve faced since the onset of the pandemic.

As you’ll see in our conversation, we think carefully about how to balance issues of personal freedom, mental health, and a return to normal social life with basic measures for health and safety. It’s not clear whether there are COVID surges ahead, and if more illness is in our shared future, we continue to see the value in preventative steps like masking and vaccinating. At the same time, we focus on the essential question of why Americans feel dubious when it comes to taking health guidance from our government. From the profit motive behind pharmaceutical companies to histories of racial and economic injustice playing out in health care, we delve into the problems of trust, transparency, and, of course, greed that undermine public faith in our government’s ability to care and provide for us — faith that is undermined far beyond the issue of COVID.

Thanks for tuning in. Remember that you can listen to this conversation as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, 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

COVID didn’t start the struggles that American teachers face today. It did, however, force our country’s educators to face new political and economic threats. Now, as teachers stand up and fight back on picket lines across the country, we’re also asking questions about what our educational system could and should look like. What new roles could public education play in students’ lives, and why is it so important that we fight for them? This is just the beginning of our conversation with historian, author, and educator Eric Blanc, and we hope you enjoy.

Thanks for tuning in. You can listen to this podcast tomorrow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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

From an assessment of the motives behind Trump’s retention of classified info to explainers on the Espionage Act, Special Access Programs, and everything else that’s further complicating the debacle at Mar-a-Lago, our guest Ken Klippenstein joins us to demystify the raid on Trump’s property and give us some insight into what comes next.

This discussion of how Trump went rogue with top-secret government intel fits into a longer timeline of Trump’s cavalier approach to classified info — like his Twitter calls to declassify Russiagate info, which his administration later nullified. With Ken leading the way, we put it all in context, adding our own ideas about Trump’s future plans for presidential races, strengthening Saudi ties, and more. We hope you’ll enjoy the conversation, and as always, we’re grateful to you for listening. This episode is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 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