PODCAST

Krystal Kyle & Friends

Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski dive into politics, philosophy and random BS with people they like. krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com

news politics

All Episodes

Episode 57 Audio: Peter Goodman

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2022/01/23

In this conversation with author and journalist Peter Goodman, we delve into Peter’s argument for “how billionaires devoured the world” — how a few people with a lot of money are able to command massive control over our politics, our culture, our society at large. It’s also an opportunity to think about the world we might build instead. What rules and regulations could be implemented to stop our billionaire overlords? Do we need an entirely new political system to ensure that nobody reaches Amazon

Episode 56 Audio: Henry Williams

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2022/01/16

This week’s guest, Henry Williams, gives us a look into how he and the Gravel Institute team have built a major digital platform to spread leftist ideas and debunk reactionary claims. As a Columbia undergrad, Henry helped to launch and run the campaign of Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel, the antiwar champion who put the Pentagon Papers in the Congressional Record. Now, as the co-founder of the Gravel Institute, he’s built a home for essential video primers on the struggles we face under capitalism —

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Episode 55 Audio: Christopher Leonard

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2022/01/09

The Fed remains a mystifying, secretive institution that defies classification. It combines elements of a public, governmental entity with elements of the private banking system. It’s run by a government-appointed team and owned by banks (through non-transferable stock). Confused? We can’t blame you. This week’s guest, Christopher Leonard, is the author of The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy. He takes us through the ins and outs of the Fed’s history and

Episode 54 Audio: Chris Hedges

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2022/01/01

Happy first birthday, Krystal Kyle & Friends. With guests from Nina Turner and Thomas Frank to Noam Chomsky and beyond, we’ve covered a lot of ground this year, and we’re so grateful to you for joining us. We’ve debated the popularity of today’s socialist project and discussed how it will be successful going forward; we’ve taken stock of today’s Democratic Party, and with this week’s guest, Chris Hedges, we’re thinking about whether we should move beyond that party.In the new year, we’re returning

Episode 53 Audio: Max Alvarez

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/12/26

We’re at the peak of a season of hyper-consumerism, where the main struggles covered in mainstream media are not low wages and long hours for retail workers but supply chain issues delivering late holiday gifts. Against this backdrop, Max joins us for a necessary conversation on the mainstream narratives putting customers’ convenience over workers’ needs, the ongoing legacy of Reagan-era fetishization of wealth, and the problems and potential we see in current bipartisan support of

Episode 52 Audio: Steven Donziger

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/12/19

Steven Donziger joined us for an exclusive interview this week, describing his experiences in prison for the crime of exposing Chevron’s environmental destruction. He was just released last week to serve the rest of his sentence at home. Steven still isn’t free, but as we discuss in this episode, there’s hope that his supporters can turn the tide — in his case and beyond. Advocacy from leftist groups and organizations, coverage from independent media, and outreach from everyday people contributed to

Episode 51 Audio: Freddie DeBoer

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/12/12

This episode finds us sitting down with political writer Freddie DeBoer to discuss his work and ideas, particularly a debate around the popularity of the Left’s platform. In a recent piece for the New York Times, Freddie argues that major leftist electoral losses (think the two defeats of the Sanders campaign) can’t be written off as election-rigging; they must be explained by the fact that socialists don’t command the support of the voting base as well as their opponents. From the article’s title —

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Episode 50 Audio: Adolph Reed Jr.

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/12/05

This week, we’re joined by professor of political science Adolph Reed Jr. to discuss the power of organizing versus mobilizing, how to address capitalism as a root problem, the task of getting money out of politics, and more. We explore how and why the left has fallen short of building robust, lasting coalitions, and why it’s so important now. We also get into the central issue of money in politics — what kind of model, existing or otherwise, will bring about democracy in American elections? We’re

Episode 49 Audio: David Doel

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/11/28

This week, with guest David Doel, we talk about the business of labeling our politics as leftists. For someone like Kyle, who feels terms like “social democrat” might apply alongside elements of terms like “libertarian socialist,” a single label doesn’t necessarily jump out. After all, what is made to seem radical and revolutionary in mainstream U.S. politics is moderate in other industrialized countries, from single-payer healthcare to paid family leave and more.We also cover big-ticket questions

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Episode 48 Audio: Katie Halper

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/11/21

This week’s guest, Katie Halper, takes us through the country’s strike wave and other current events with her trademark humor and sharp political insight. Katie speaks openly about the frustration and despair she’s felt with electoral politics since the defeat of Bernie 2020, but she also points out the political developments that are giving her hope, and can give you hope, too.As the host of The Katie Halper Show and co-host of Useful Idiots, Katie is a major voice in leftist independent media

91:05

Episode 47 Audio: Katie Rader

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/11/14

This week’s guest is Katie Rader, a professor of political science at Christopher Newport University, who was involved with Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working Class Politics’s recent study on the kind of candidates, messaging, and political strategy that can win working-class votes and deliver for those voters. (You can read the study here.) How can leftist political campaigns build bona fides among working-class voters? The research shows that it’s about focusing on the issues, not shying

Episode 46 Audio with TJ Kirk

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/11/07

This week’s guest, TJ Kirk, gets us to think about atheism, nihilism, morality, and the social role of religion. You might know TJ from his YouTube presence as The Amazing Atheist, where he’s discussed his atheist perspective in front of millions of viewers. Kyle’s conversation with this week’s guest gives us the opportunity to reconsider conventional takes on our value systems: on the topic of nihilism, TJ makes the case that forgoing a greater meaning behind our existence doesn’t require giving up

Episode 45 Audio: Jordan Chariton

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/10/31

This week, the story at the front of our minds is the recent unwelcome development on the budget bill: because establishment Democrats like Manchin and Sinema are determined to deliver for their corporate donors, Americans won’t be getting the broad Medicare expansion, paid family leave, and free community college provisions that they were promised, among other things. As KK&F alum David Sirota points out in a Jacobin piece co-authored with Andrew Perez, there won’t be any building back better until

107:27

Episode 44 Audio: Jonah Furman

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/10/24

This week's guest, Jonah Furman, gives us a crash course on why John Deere workers are striking, why the proposed contract was a no-go, and what’s at stake for the labor movement at large. Taking a look at the conditions that brought the workers to reject the proposed contract, John Deere management is using a strategy dating back to the beginning of capitalist exploitation: dividing workers to prevent them from uniting behind common interests. But instead of accepting these divisions, Deere workers

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Episode 43 Audio: Ken Klippenstein

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/10/17

This week, Ken Klippenstein joined us for Episode 42 of Krystal Kyle and Friends, giving us the scoop on national security, the political clout of big business, what’s new with the Left’s best friend Kyrsten Sinema, and our current media landscape. Recently, Ken has broken big stories for the Intercept on Kyrsten Sinema’s class on fundraising (leave it to the experts!) and CIA-backed Afghan resistance leaders fleeing the country. In his free time, you can find him filing FOIA requests and

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Episode 42 Audio: Jeff Stein

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/10/10

How can we contextualize Biden's leadership style with the Obama years? How do the important deals get made in US politics — and what can leftist agitators do to make the deals they want to make? We address questions like these with this week's guest: Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter for the Washington Post. From the budget bill to the debt ceiling and beyond, Jeff speaks to the key political and economic struggles of the moment, the role our president is playing in them, and how they will

Episode 41 Audio: David Sirota

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/10/03

This week, David Sirota joined us on Krystal Kyle & Friends to discuss everything from his latest foray into film to his perspective on current events, particularly the holdup of the budget. David explains the strategy corporate lobbyists are pushing to kill the reconciliation bill — breaking its link to the infrastructure bill, which they hope to pass. By joining the bills, however, progressives in the Senate have created a “take it or leave it” situation for Kyrsten Sinema, who will need to

Episode 40 Audio: 2008 Crash Experts, Eric Vaughan...

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/09/26

In this week’s episode of Krystal Kyle & Friends, we discuss current events alongside the history of corporate greed condoned by the government. This is told through the lens of the 2008 financial crash, a story brilliantly brought together in the documentary The Con by writer/director Eric Vaughan and producer Patrick Lovell. Vaughan and Lovell join us to explain how the story of government regulation figures into the timeline of the crash: How was the corruption of the financial sector enabled by

89:14

Episode 39 Audio with Russell Brand

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/09/19

Hi all: here’s a reminder about the weekly Krystal Kyle & Friends posting schedule. Paid subscribers receive videos of our weekly conversation at 9pm on Fridays through Substack. Audio conversations are available through Substack, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more on Saturday evenings, and we post a weekly sneak peek on Tuesdays at 9pm. To become a paying subscriber, just press the button below.Thanks to Russell Brand for joining us on Krystal Kyle & Friends this week to discuss his

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Episode 38 Audio: Faiz Shakir

Krystal Kyle & Friends ·

2021/09/12

This week, we’re joined by Faiz Shakir as we dive into the left pressures on the Biden administration, the challenges and rewards of creating independent media, the future of the reconciliation package, and much more.After the Bernie campaign, Faiz has shifted to independent media work, founding More Perfect Union — which provides coverage of the labor movement, from the unionization effort in Bessemer to the current strike among Nabisco workers. He tells us about his experiences sharing

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