Krystal Kyle & Friends

It’s spooky season (we hope) for Republicans. On this Halloween episode of KK&F, we’re joined by Ben Meiselas, head of independent news network MeidasTouch and author of the NYT bestselling WTF America?! . For Episode 301, we’re checking in with Ben about the possibility of an electoral trainwreck for Trump-world in the upcoming midterms (less than a week away!), whether the dreams of blue Texas,...

The Bulwark writer Tim Miller is here for a debate with us on what it means to build a stable and effective coalition between leftists and liberals. Tensions have flared in recent weeks between his outlet and progressives over the role former Republicans should play in the Democratic Party, and whether these centrists are secretly or not so secretly cheering for left wing candidates to lose so tha...

We’re calling out Pete Hegseth’s warmongering BS, talking progressive organizing in “deep red” zones of Trump country, and taking stock before the midterms with this week’s guest, Richard Ojeda, Democratic candidate for NC-09. As we near Election Day, Richard is on the ground campaigning 24/7, doing multiple events a day. What’s seemed impossible for many other Democrats to accomplish over the pas...

Abdul El-Sayed and Jon Ossoff showed us how it’s done when they destroyed their Republican opponents on live TV during last week’s debates. Kyle is joined by Vaush, our special guest this week, for play-by-plays of our favorite moments, where Democratic nominees made MAGA look unhinged, bigoted, and out of touch with what American voters want to change. Jon Ossoff pretty much gave a masterclass in...

You’ll be thrilled to see political commentator Touré making a return to KK&F for a discussion on one of the biggest stories in recent memory. Nikole Hannah-Jones, domestic correspondent for the NYT and founder of the 1619 Project, wrote a piece in the NYT grappling with the ramifications of sending her daughter to an under-resourced public school from a young age. Najya, Nikole’s daughter, is the...

Mike Prysner, this week’s guest and executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, knows what it’s like to be radicalized by firsthand experience of the brutality of the U.S. military. He joined the Army himself at age seventeen, right before 9/11, and was part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. So he witnessed the rhetoric that military leadership used to get buy-in from the rank and file...

The usual suspects currently burning American democracy to the ground are also leading the torture, kidnapping, and murder of civilians abroad in order to terrorize and exploit foreign countries, reminding us that our struggle for freedom against our government is intimately and inextricably tied to the struggle of people across the world This week, we talk to the courageous independent journalist...

Gil Durán rejoins KK&F to talk about the tech overlords doing a hostile takeover of American democracy, multibillionaire prepping for the apocalypse, and why it’s so necessary for this political issue to become front and center. Among the sordid cast of characters we discuss are Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and every other ungodly rich (and therefore dizzyingly powerful) denizen of the shady crypto, su...

This episode with Garrison Lovely, we survey the recent and horrifying Hugging Face AI hacking scandal, a reminder of the high stakes of our battle against AI’s stranglehold on our society. If you need another reason to worry about our future under the tech overlords, enter the Hugging Face hack, an event in which a small “collective” of AI agents generated by OpenAI tricked their cybersecurity te...

This week with the guys from The Vanguard pod, Zac and Gavin, we talk about the firestorm surrounding Hasan’s recent remarks about Zionism. When conservatives tried to drag Abdul El-Sayed through the mud for having campaigned with Hasan, made a public statement clarifying that Hasan did not speak for the campaign. And, of course, it still wasn’t enough for the MAGA ghouls! Rogers, the Republican o...

We’re grateful to Wajahat Ali, writer of The Left Hook on Substack, for his keen insight as our special guest for post-Dem primary discussion! Waj is a fantastic chronicler and analyst of the most depraved and inhumane dimensions of the Trump presidency, helping us to understand the systems in place and the coalitions of right-wing goons that prop Trump up, even when they have their reservations a...

We’re getting ready for a potential MAJOR win for democratic socialists by talking to candidate Oliver Larkin. He’s running in the Dem primary for FL-25 in a primary that will take place in just a few days, where he’s a bright spot in a larger movement of leftist candidates fearlessly championing Medicare for All. Oliver talks to us on this week’s episode about his campaign and the issues motivati...

This week, we have the pleasure of discussing Abdul El-Sayed’s stunning victory in the Michigan Dem primary for senate, plus the role of independent left media — and we have the special pleasure of doing it with Nathan, who founded and is editor-in-chief of Current Affairs . He’s the perfect guest, and he’s joined us for a wide-ranging conversation this week that we very much hope you’ll enjoy. An...

Rania Khalek is our special guest for Episode 288, in which we discuss her own experience facing a subpoena from Trump as a reporter at BreakThrough News. As we survey the sorry state of free speech and independent media in a country supposedly founded on those values, we’re also inclined to think about the Democratic Establishment’s lack of support for courageous left-wing independent outlets Tru...

For Episode 287 with Kentucky Senate hopeful Charles Booker, we debate the possibility that Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is dead, both in terms of its implications for the future of American politics and in terms of what it reveals about the Republican Party’s true loathing of and lack of respect for the American people, especially working-class voters. The Party wants to brazenly put up a rus...

Episode 286 of KK&F finds us talking with political commentator Joy Reid about her political journey and the dead ends present in the Democratic Party. Joy brings our attention to the powerful connections between the genocidal violence in Gaza and the boomerang that, as we know, leads to American police officers getting trained by the IDF. In her own powerful words, “These are not separate issues....

Huge thanks to David Griscom, an expert and historian of left politics, for appearing on the show to help us see a future for Blue Texas. David shows us all the ways that our culture’s perception of Texas politics is deeply flawed, both in terms of Texan radical history (a proud tradition) and as far as the current political scene is concerned. We talk about the linkages between the political styl...

Thanks to our amazing special guest Gil Durán for a conversation about the tech overlords taking over American politics with influence on both sides of the aisle. Obviously, especially with the public trading of SpaceX, Elon Musk is our major point of reference in this discussion. Elon doesn’t think of efforts like SpaceX as big intellectual, cultural, and social steps for humanity, especially in...

Welcome to Episode 283 of KK&F with reporter Murtaza Hussain, on the penalty of the deal for peace in Iran. After this week’s news of the brokered deal went public, Murtaza wrote a piece for Drop Site News documenting mixed reactions and protests in Iran. He attests to the fact that the deal was largely accepted, but delves into a case that dissenters are making: that the US cannot be trusted to a...

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For Episode 282, we talk to journalist Garrison Lovely about the SpaceX IPO and Elon’s new coup as the world’s first trillionaire, as well as the massive impact of that debut on the tech world and on the highest echelon of global wealth. From Starlink to the SpaceX AI project, the SpaceX with stocks currently getting snapped up like crazy is in some ways a mixed bag, and that’s an object lesson fo...

We’re wading into the trenches of the right-wing influencer flame wars! And while it inspires anything but confidence in the future of American political discourse, it’s also a source of important insight into MAGA world and its craziest, dumbest drama. This week’s guest, Will Sommer, covers the right wing media and influencer ecosystem for The Bulwark’s False Flag Newsletter . Will has kept a clo...

Historical parallels between our autocrat-in-chief and the despots of the past abound. It’s hardly comfort to think that others have struggled under the many tyrants of history as we struggle now, but it is humbling and inspiring, of course, to see where mass anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist movements have prevailed and transformed their political circumstances. That’s why this week, our featur...

Young Don is joining us for a special episode unpacking the midterms and analyzing the Roganverse’s shift away from Trump-world. The center of attention is the Trump campaign’s shameless struggle to run political opponents out of office. Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie are Republicans who have largely voted along with Trump. But they’ve both recently been targeted by the President for insufficient...

Episode 278 finds us in a frankly unprecedentedly juicy convo with someone who’s been in the inner circle of the MAGA influencer ecosystem and has all the tea on their shady coordination systems: Ashley St. Clair. Through her ascendance to national attention as a major MAGA influencer, Ashley saw firsthand how comprehensively the top brass of Trump’s Republican Party controls every aspect, aesthet...