Krystal Kyle & Friends

This week, our friend June Lapine (you know her as Shoe0nHead) tells us about her political journey and radicalization among the online left, her personal journey as an online content creator, and why she’s glad she went for Bernie in 2016 — among many other things. In this episode, June speaks candidly about her relief at the political opportunity that Bernie’s first campaign offered. Juxtaposed with Clinton, Trump was treated as the anti-establishment candidate, an alternative to the elitist Beltway order. (A previous guest on KK&F, Thomas Frank, explains why Trump’s populism is a sham, if you’re looking to revisit these ideas with an expert.) In Bernie, June and so many others found a genuine populist response to the letdowns of neoliberal rule. If Clinton and Trump chose their stances on trade from the perspective of corporate interests, Sanders proposed a policy driven by the interest of the working class. Present in his 2016 campaign, and even more so in his 2020 campaign, was the identification of full-blown class warfare in the U.S., and the message that any victory must belong to the workers. And, of course, this message demands that we pass over the distractions of the culture wars: they’re filled with manufactured outrage and scandal, but they offer zero analysis of how the working class will prevail in its war against the capitalist class. While the right wants you to lose your mind about Satan shoes, leftists get organized to take power for the many, not the few. We’re grateful to June for taking the time to talk about her political journey and work — it’s a story that resonates with so many of us, and we hope you enjoy it. Subscribe to access video of our conversation, and listen to the audio on streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more!

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We’re so glad that Andrew Yang was able to join us this week after his recovery from COVID-19. At last, we got to sit down with him and dig into the million-dollar questions about his advocacy for a UBI and how that fight has changed in the last year, his stance on Medicare for All, his thoughts on the NYC political landscape, and more. Yang is currently running for the NYC mayoralty, meaning that he’s spending his time thinking about how to address economic struggle, post-pandemic renewal, and issues of social justice from a position of political power. This conversation gave us a window into his unique approach to these issues, and we’re happy to share it with you now. Remember that for $5 a month you can check out the full video version of each KK&F discussion — just hit the button below and get our videos in your inbox.

People across the country know Yang as the person who popularized the demand for a universal basic income (UBI), and the stimulus checks distributed during the coronavirus crisis have shown the power of this cash support to provide essential financial stability. Yang has updated this plan for his mayoral run. As you’ll hear, we dive into some UBI logistics — what does a right- or left-wing UBI look like? — because when you get the chance to talk to Andrew Yang about UBI, you take it.

You’ll also hear us mention some issues important to us and to Yang, including healthcare and his stance on the BDS movement. We disagree with the idea that the BDS movement is rooted in antisemitism, and we take different views on Palestinians’ tactics of struggle for justice against occupation. On the topic of Medicare for All, we go over Yang’s support for single-payer alongside his lack of support for the existing Medicare for All bill, talking about why single-payer is the “common sense” program. We wanted to get a sense of Yang’s reasoning for his positions on these critical issues, and we were grateful to get his responses. We hope you’ll enjoy this episode of Krystal Kyle & Friends — and remember that you can check out our audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, and more.

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This week on Krystal Kyle & Friends, we chat with Matt Taibbi about being deported from Uzbekistan for criticizing its president, staying at a monastery, and playing professional baseball in Uzbekistan and professional basketball in Mongolia — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

You’re probably familiar with Taibbi’s work with Rolling Stone, where he’s covered presidential campaigns from an outsider perspective, revealed the corporate evil at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, and more. As Kyle mentions during our conversation, Taibbi’s fantastic writing captured the full picture of how Goldman Sachs dragged working people into financial peril — a picture that too few are willing to describe now, and even fewer were willing to describe then. We’re grateful to have someone who sees through the mainstream platitudes in order to deliver a clear vision of the monsters that the 99% is up against, and that’s why we’re so grateful to hear from Matt Taibbi.We hope you enjoy this episode of KK&F, and we’re so grateful to you for subscribing. To become a paid subscriber, click below — otherwise, stream our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, and more.

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This week’s episode of Krystal Kyle & Friends, which brought us into conversation with the journalist and author John Nichols, turns to the history of American progressivism in order to understand how the left can analyze its opportunities in a Biden presidency and strategize to build institutional power. Nichols, whose book The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party we strongly recommend, brings up the lessons of the FDR era to show how the American government (no matter what Biden tells you) is capable of making big moves for public welfare. But he also dwells in the present moment to find the takeaways of Biden’s first months in office, to consider the survival of the Reagan era in today’s political landscape, and to offer some essential advice to leftists in power, which we hope they’ll run with.

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How is the argument for a strengthened, involved government and the practicality of leftist demands playing out in the early days of Biden’s term? Nichols spells it out for us. Thanks to grassroots organizers across the country, Biden is evidently feeling the pressure to go beyond performative gestures and provide the nation with material support. Executive orders to protect DACA and to rejoin the Paris climate accords are essential steps. But, we believe, there’s a long way to go. With record numbers of children in ICE custody, a monthlong water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, and more evictions looming as the federal moratorium is set to expire in weeks, anything less than bold progressive action won’t cut it. Join us and John for a conversation about what comes next.

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This week’s conversation with Dr. Carl Hart gave us the chance to dig into the topics of the U.S.’s racist and dysfunctional criminal justice system, the importance of personal freedoms, and the struggle to legalize drug usage. In books like Drug Use for Grown-Ups, Hart has written about the double standard applied by wealthy Americans who advocate for the normalization of psychedelic usage and the incarceration of heroin users. He’s brought up the way that the prison-industrial complex destroys lives through drug charges, as well as the way that personal liberty becomes a relevant topic in our discussion of which drugs Americans are and aren’t permitted to do, and why.Join us and our friend of the week in the KK&F studio! It’s gorgeous, we promise. Become a paying subscriber to Krystal Kyle & Friends now, and get the video release of our conversations. Remember also that you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pandora, Stitcher, and more.

As you’ll see, our talk with Dr. Hart was truly an interesting and eye-opening conversation. The argument for total drug legalization is controversial, and given the damage that the opioid crisis has done to millions of people’s lives, it’s essential to question whether this is indeed the move that would improve our society’s relationship to drug usage. But it’s clear that this relationship currently places criminalization and incarceration above the healing and wellness of drug users, and imagining how it might be changed is an incredibly important task. Thanks as always for joining us for this week’s episode of KK&F!

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We knew that our conversation with Dylan Ratigan would give us the opportunity to pick the brain of a prominent populist, someone who has used his platform on mainstream media to call out the corruption of a bought Congress and corporations with more political power than working-class people. Episode 9 of Krystal Kyle & Friends focuses on Dylan’s critiques of money in politics, but in order to understand how Dylan became a populist who “flew under the radar” at institutions like MSNBC, we were also eager to hear about his upbringing and political journey. He absolutely didn’t disappoint. For full access to video of our conversation with Dylan, become a paid subscriber to our Substack today! Our videos are released on Friday, so you can shave twenty-four hours off of your wait time for the next episode of KK&F.

At one point in our conversation, Dylan paints the picture of how the relationship between funding and political campaigns should be reformed, carving out a central role for citizen participation in deciding how our candidates access the resources to build their bids for office. Imagine the drastically different political landscape that these reforms would create. Instead of corporate ties leading to full coffers for political campaigns with no connection to the concerns of working-class people (think Hillary 2016), we could build a political system that offers resources to candidates who make meaningful appeals to their fellow citizens’ needs. We’re lucky to have Dylan Ratigan to remind us of this, and we hope you’ll enjoy the episode.

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For our eighth episode, we spoke with Glenn Greenwald to discuss his political work and his philosophical roots. Co-founder of The Intercept and current author of the Glenn Greenwald Substack, Glenn is someone whose opinions we want to know when it comes to important topics, as Kyle points out in the episode. That’s why we were thrilled to sit down with him for the following discussion. If you want to access video of our conversations with Krystal Kyle & Friends guests, we invite you to become a paid subscriber, just by clicking the button below. You can listen to our podcast on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and more, as it’s available on the major streaming platforms.

We talk to Glenn about his decades of work bringing important stories to light, from his refusal to buy into the Russiagate insanity to his work with the Snowden archive. We discuss what it means to celebrate when a public figure passes away — and when that figure is Rush Limbaugh, a discussion that leads to a few different conclusions. We delve into Glenn’s advocacy around the issue of homelessness and his preference for Nietzsche among the philosophers. And we truly appreciated the opportunity to see how Glenn’s willingness to confront the status quo throughout his life has led him to his current work and enabled him to do outstanding things in that work. We hope you’ll appreciate it, too.

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Friends,First of all: we were so sorry to hear that Andrew Yang couldn’t join us this week, as he’s currently battling COVID-19. Please join us in sending him well wishes for a speedy recovery.We start off by discussing the impeachment proceedings and the confirmation hearing of Neera Tanden. As Sen. Bernie Sanders has pointed out, it’s worth pondering whether Neera’s time spent securing corporate donations for CAP will bear upon her ability to lead the federal-level Office of Management and Budget. That’s precisely what we ponder, bringing up a past case in which Bloomberg’s backing of CAP led the think tank to erase their research on NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim communities from a study in 2015. At the same time, of course, there’s her past support for slashing Social Security, as well as her argument that Libya should pay the U.S. in oil to continue the U.S.’s “engaging in the world.” It’s not news that Neera Tanden is not a friend to working people. Seeing her claim this powerful position in Biden’s administration, in fact, tells us a lot about the interests and political will of that administration.

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Next, because Krystal Kyle & Friends is just Krystal and Kyle this week, the later part of the show offers a deep, introspective look at how each of us became politically radicalized, how we’ve arrived at our advocacy for issues like organized labor and universal healthcare, and how leftist politics fits into the terrain of our own lives. We’re thrilled to be able to share this with you — not only because you’ll see Kyle in a new light (pro golfer), but also because reflecting upon the meeting of our political journeys and our personal lives helps us to think about our own strategies for building leftist power, the lessons we’ve learned in the past, and the possibilities we envision for the American left in the future. We hope you enjoy! Remember that audio for this podcast can also be accessed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other major streaming platforms like Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and Google Podcasts.

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How can a new generation of leftists learn from Chomsky’s practice as well as his theory? Our own conversation with Professor Chomsky on this week’s episode of Krystal Kyle & Friends reveals how important this question is to him. Chomsky hopes that his lifetime of work will provide insight into current political struggles — against corporate looting of workers’ wages, against the repression of organized labor, and against imperialism. After speaking with him about these struggles and about how the left can respond to them, it’s clear that the lessons Chomsky offers us are truly indispensable.

There is a world of difference between Cuba’s approach to vaccine distribution — which recognizes a collective commitment to global health — and the greedy resource grabs of the U.S., which has treated vaccine development as a race to prove its supremacy. In our discussion, Chomsky points out how the U.S.’s response to the coronavirus is a disaster with international implications. His argument for international solidarity also extends through another crisis of our time: the struggle against climate change. While wealthy countries continue to exploit resources like fossil fuels, threatening communities and destroying the environment in the process, stressing individual responsibility for climate disaster won’t save us. We need international solidarity, and we need solid organizing strategies that will help us to achieve it. To hear more about Chomsky’s ideas on leftists’ challenges and goals, as well as his political journey, join us for this week’s episode of Krystal Kyle & Friends. Audio is available on major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher. To access the video, which drops on Friday through Substack, click the button below:

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Here’s a roundup of the questions that might have crossed your mind this week: Will the new Democratic-majority government write checks to bail out the banks or the people? How “girlboss” is it that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was paid $810,000 to speak for Citadel, which threw money at the hedge fund that shorted GameStop? What about Nancy Pelosi buying Tesla calls while the new president makes government vehicles go electric? (Hey, maybe she’s just showing her support for “the Green Dream, or whatever they call it.”)

These questions are animated by a common theme: workers make the profit, and capitalists steal that profit to play games with it. And our government is staffed by the people who actively engage in that theft, directly profit from it, or act as the puppets of these hedge-fund ghouls. The events of this week have shown that capitalism “playing by the rules” is a misnomer. There’s just one rule, handed down from party elites and their corporate backers: Financial gain for me, and not for thee. Under the new administration, “Nothing will fundamentally change,” remember? So if it seems wrong that Pelosi and Yellen, along with Wall Street, should line their pockets while the people who do the work go hungry or homeless — what do we do to force the change ourselves?We spoke to Justin Jackson this week to get an insightful, strategic perspective on this question, and as you’ll hear, he delivered. Theories about how we work with the corrupt Democratic Party, for example, are in no shortage, and as leftists, it’s on us to consider how to productively engage with electoral politics to deliver victories from the people — without becoming acquiescent, as Nina Turner argued in last week’s episode. Not only is Justin a stellar athlete on the national stage, as a running back for the L.A. Chargers, but he’s an advisory board member of the Movement for a People’s Party. He’s thought deeply about the value of a party that doesn’t dip into Wall Street’s pockets, and he clearly lays out the case for that party while spelling out how we make Democratic electeds fight for the change we need in the present moment. We can’t afford to let politicians attach the word “progressive” to their name while they turn around to support a status quo that bankrupts working people. Justin’s made the point that the future of this country is at stake. We know you’ll enjoy listening to his incisive analysis of how an anti-corporatist left makes a place for itself on the American political terrain. We know you’ll be excited to hear about what he’s working on politically. And we’re so glad to have you tuning in.

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