Krystal Kyle & Friends

Krystal and Kyle take on Congressman and Presidential candidate Dean Phillips for a wide ranging interview and debate. Should Trump be kicked off the ballot? Is Israel committing a genocide? What would Dean do as president? For a country that prides itself on upholding democracy (don’t think about those overseas regime changes, please), the U.S. has also revealed itself to be a nation in which you...

A confluence of powerful figureheads and institutions come together in the story of the religious far right’s rise, bookended by the popularity of televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. in the ‘70s and, in our own time, his son Jerry Falwell Jr. Founded by Jerry senior, Liberty University joined Baptist church and austerity state, drawing in young conservatives, preparing the next generation of the Repub...

Welcome back to KK&F, where we’re hosting this week’s conversation with Katie Halper, host of the Katie Halper show. Katie’s here to talk to us as an advocate of Palestinian liberation about the weaponization of antisemitism she’s observed, why it matters, and what we can do about it. Under the guise of protecting Jews in America from the “hate speech” of Palestinian liberation, many Jews will in...

Our topic with this week’s guest, Dimi Reider, is the IDF’s genocidal plan for Gaza — and why more Israelis don’t oppose it. Dimi is cofounder of +972 Magazine and Editor at The Lead. The strategy is nothing short of wiping out civilians, and a recent poll showed that only 1.8 percent of Israeli Jews think that the IDF has gone too far. We talk about the political situation within Israel and how w...

We’re joined by Scott Horton to get his insightful analysis of relations between the Palestinian Authority, the occupying Israeli government, and American leadership gives us insight into key moments in modern occupied Palestine. He covers the role of the Bush administration in pushing for an election, the outcome — Hamas’s victory — and the truth about this election, often twisted by Zionists: Ha...

Welcome to Episode 151 of KK&F, featuring Ryan Grim discussing his new book on the secret history of the Squad. The Squad has expanded beyond its original four members to become a significant, popular entity with which the Democratic Party has been forced to contend, never more so than now as Joe Biden provides unconditional support to Israel’s war on Gaza. At times, members of the Squad have been...

Generations of Palestinian families have been wiped off the map. People choosing to stay in their homes in the North have been labeled terrorists and warned to flee. The IDF is bombing the convoys of those who follow their orders to leave. And yet there is hardly international consensus among the ruling elite that what’s unfolding in Gaza is a genocide. As massive protests like the one that stoppe...

A whole day early, we’re bringing you our recap of the third Republican presidential debate, which took place last night in Miami. Watch below for our review of the night’s winners and losers, debate highlights, our thoughts on who’s headed for the Republican nomination, and much more: The pool of candidates for the Republican nomination is shrinking. Five candidates took the stage in Miami last n...

Few members of Congress have had the tenacity and the moral compass to oppose massive funding for Israel’s genocide. Just today, the House passed a bill allocating $14.3 billion in funding to Israel, with twelve Democrats voting in favor. Meanwhile, recent reporting from the Intercept testifies to how pro-Palestine voices within the Democratic Party — especially those of Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bus...

This week, Adam Johnson joins us to discuss Western media’s complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Earlier this week, the Palestinian Ministry of Health released the names of over 7,000 Palestinians murdered by the Israeli government after President Biden callously called the death toll into question. News stories about violent acts committed by Hamas have gained wide traction without th...

Welcome back to KK&F! This week we sat down with Cenk Uygur to discuss his recently-announced bid for the presidency. Cenk’s presidential campaign was launched out of his sense of panic that Joe Biden is poised to lose to Donald Trump. Cenk hopes that his entry into the race will be successful enough to trigger other contenders into a Democratic primary so that voters might have the opportunity to...

This week, we’re bringing you a special episode on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. With Mac’s help, we think through the greater terrain of Mideast politics in which the Israel-Palestine conflict is situated, drawing connections to Israel’s attempted deal with Saudi Arabia, relations with Iran, and more. Our conversation looks back at the history of Israel’s colonization of Palestine...

From her work as Ohio State Senator to her leadership on the Bernie campaign and runs for national office, Nina Turner has been a consistent voice in favor of working people. In our interview, we ask her why she’s putting her political efforts into bolstering striking workers right now — rather than into electoral endorsements or runs (which she says aren’t off the table). Because Nina wants to se...

While Trump skipped the debate (and the UAW picket line, unlike his Democratic rival, Biden) for a rally at a non-union auto plant in Detroit, seven competitors for the Republican presidential nomination took the debate stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last night to try to challenge Trump’s lead and stand out among the pack. Who succeeded? Who fell short? In our discussion, we take...

Welcome back to another week of KK&F! This week we’ve got a special episode for you, featuring activist and writer Naomi Klein on her latest book covering conspiracy culture. Heading into an election cycle, it’s hard not to acknowledge the massive impact conspiracies (from vaccine fearmongering to misinfo on the results of the 2020 election) have on electoral outcomes — and the lack of confidence...

What would it mean for there to be another civil war in the United States? Under what conditions could it happen? These are the questions we’re asking this week’s guest, political commentator, author, and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Yang’s recent book, The Last Election , captures a nation beset by systemic corruption, on the brink of collapse. Yang himself has been thinking about h...

This week, we bring political commentator Briahna Joy Gray on the show to debate the big question: Where, if anywhere, does the Democratic Party deserve credit? And when does it become dishonest to ignore the real gains made by the current administration? Certainly, in the past few years, we’ve seen movement in the right direction, and state democrats in the Midwest passing phenomenal legislation,...

In this episode of KK&F, Sohrab Ahmari joins the show to discuss how right-wing populism makes the attempt to reconcile conservative social views with leftist economic principles. Our conversation takes the form of a debate: What do left- and right-wing populists have in common? On what issues can they unite — if they can at all? Per Sohrab’s description, right-wing populists hold opinions that ar...

What happened on the debate stage in Milwaukee among Republican presidential candidates last Wednesday — and what’s Trump got to do with it? In this special episode of KK&F, we give you a detailed breakdown of the first debate of the campaign season. Analyzing everything from spicy exchanges between the candidates to who came out on top Wednesday night (and whether or not it’s enough to threaten T...

Welcome to Episode 137 of Krystal Kyle and Friends, featuring special guest Matt Karp. The focus of our conversation is this: How do we build a party apparatus worthy of support from working-class voters — and capable of making good on its promises? As we’ve discussed in past KK&F convos, the Biden admin’s gambit — making centrist-friendly proposals to begin with, then, in many cases, watering the...

This week on KK&F, we’re bringing you a heated debate with our guest, Michael Tracey, on the topic of Trump’s indictments. Michael maintains that a reasonable person wouldn’t judge Trump’s behavior as criminal. Of course, the Trump campaigns and presidency have heavily featured a high degree of political theater, so that it’s possible to take the stance — as Michael does — that the charges of (for...

This week on the pod, we’ve got writer Freddie deBoer joining us for a conversation about the fate of the Bernie movement, the bona fires of progressives in Washington, and the all-important question of how to relate to leftist electeds — especially when they stray from their professed principles. In this episode, Freddie lays out evidence against AOC as a consistently leftist figure, describing i...

From conservative media outlets to the campaign trail, there’s nothing the right loves to obsess over more than wokeness. Their claim is that an obsession with political correctness has veered into authoritarianism — and that culturally, intellectually, and politically, we’re all worse off for it. We think it’s worthwhile to open up a debate about whether or not this argument actually holds up. Ar...

With the return of The Vanguard hosts Zac & Gavin to KK&F, we’re looking at the field of 2024 presidential contenders. The frustrations and letdowns of the Biden presidency — expected, to be fair, from someone who promised wealthy supporters that “nothing will fundamentally change” — have us thinking about what it would mean to have a substantial progressive challenger going toe-to-toe with Biden...

This week, we’ve got an exciting debate with Representative Ro Khanna, who joins the show to share his perspective on Biden’s debt relief plan, progressives’ endorsement of Biden, and much more. Congressman Khanna has emerged as a leading elected critic of the Biden administration’s slow and incremental approach to student debt relief in the wake of a Supreme Court Ruling which struck down their i...