Best Of The Left - The Best Of Progressive And Liberal Talk

Air Date: 10/3/2026 Today we examine the mechanisms of complicity. We're not all complicit in the worst atrocities but we are complicit in something so it's good to know how it works. Good people go along with bad ideas and thoughtful people allow themselves to be thoughtless all the time. The reasons are often structural but they can be resisted on both the personal level and collectively. Full Show Notes Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Link in Bio - Everything in one place! (Support, contact, socials, books + merch) TOP TAKES KP 1: How To Live Happily Next to a Death Camp | The Zone of Interest - Life Is A Story - Air Date 2-11-24 KP 2: "Do Not Obey in Advance": Timothy Snyder on How Corporate America Is Bending to Trump - Democracy Now! - Air Date 12-20-24 KP 3: Harry Potter Is Manufacturing Your Complicity - Jessie Gender - Air Date 8-30-26 KP 4: Politically Neutral? - PissedMagistus - Air Date 9-15-26 KP 5: Ta-Nehisi Coates: American Culture 'complicit' in Dehumani

Air Date: 9/30/2026 Today we look at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, which was in full swing 15 years ago and changed how the country talks about inequality and the 1%. In the meantime, the cumulative wealth of the 1% in the US has roughly tripled and Trump has the wealthiest cabinet in history running the country, so the concerns expressed at Occupy have only come into sharper relief. This miniseries helped inspire today's episode, check it out! Occupy! An Unfinished Uprising Full Show Notes Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Link in Bio - Everything in one place! (Support, contact, socials, books + merch) TOP TAKES KP 1: Episode 1 The Invitation Part 1 - Future Hindsight - Air Date 7-7-26 KP 2: America Lost Trust in Its Government. Now Comes the Dangerous Part. Part 1 - The Hartmann Report - Air Date 9-17-26 KP 3: The Long Fight Against Equality in the United States with Kim Phillips-Fein Part 1 - This Is Hell! - Air Date 9-3-26 KP 4: Occupy Wall Street 15 Years Later

Air Date: 9/26/2026 Today we explore the layers of chaos surrounding the AI industry, including the idealistic nerds-turned-nazis, the grift, bubble, and doom-marketing business model, and what people are doing to fight back. Full Show Notes Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Everything in one place! (Support, contact, follow, books + merch) TOP TAKES KP 1: Do Silicon Valley Billionaires Want to End Democracy? - Political Breakdown - Air Date 8-14-26 KP 2: The AI Bubble Is Bigger And More Dangerous Than You Think Part 1 - The Tea with Myriam François - Air Date 9-11-26 KP 3: OpenAI's Math Battle - Elena OnOffline - Air Date 9-9-26 KP 4: Muskism Is the New Fordism with Ben Tarnoff & Quinn Slobodian - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 5-7-26 KP 5: Monologue: Jacob Coxon and the AI Safety Grift - Better Offline - Air Date 9-10-26 KP 6: The Real AI Jobs Apocalypse - Blood in the Machine - Air Date 9-4-26 KP 7: AI Has Ruined the Internet - Adam Conover - Air Date 8-31-26 KP

Air Date: 9/22/2026 The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on the news from July and August without being overwhelming! Organized around a single idea: ask who the system is for, and every story this summer gives the same answer. The administration rewrites the national story while libraries lose their funding. Corporations fence off ideas as private property. Latin America gets treated like a portfolio and Greenland like a drilling site. Police cameras put every driver under permanent investigation. The seats it all runs from are held until death, and the fixes on the table aim at prying some of them open. Covering: July–August 2026 Full Show Notes BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Everything in one place! (Support, contact, follow, books + merch) SECTION 1: OWNING THE STORY (00:01:52) #1815 - Sanctioned Ignorance: The Assault on Museums, Libraries, and American Memory 1: Trying to Rewrite History - Letters From an American - Air Date 7-28-26 2: Why Libraries Matter in

Air Date: 9/18/2026 Today we're doing something new and different but also very old. Occupy Wall Street just hit its 15th anniversary this month and we thought we'd do something that only we can, which is dip into our archives and pull out the best of the Occupy coverage we played in real time as it was happening as well as some other retrospective coverage that aired 10 years later. Full Show Notes Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Everything in one place! (Support, contact, follow, books + merch) TOP TAKES KP 1: Keith Olbermann Reads First Collective Statement of Occupy Wall Street - Countdown - Air Date 10-6-11 KP 2: 99% V 1% the Data Behind the Occupy Movement Animation - Library Of Electronic Press - Air Date 11-16-11 KP 3: News Coverage Numbers of the Occupy Protests Vs Tea Party Protests - On the Media - Air Date 10-7-11 KP 4: What the Occupy Wall St Movement Wants Part 1 - Planet Money - Air Date 10-7-11 KP 5: The General Strike in Oakland - Rachel Maddow - Air

Air Date: 9/13/2026 Today we trace the two-front war on the American press. On one side, government regulators and members of Congress are going after news outlets for the stories they choose to run. On the other, politically friendly buyers are taking ownership of major networks to turn them into free-market versions of state media. Full Show Notes Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Support and Get No Ads!) Everything in one place! (Support, contact, follow, books + merch) ..TOP TAKES KP 1: How to Build a State Media - Blonde Politics | The Silly Serious - Air Date 12-13-25 KP 2: Breaking: ABC SUES Trump Over Free Speech After Kimmel's WIN - The Beat with Ari Melber - Air Date 8-18-26 KP 3: How Thiel, Musk, and Other Tech Billionaires Bought the Liberal Media / Eoin Higgins - This Is Hell! - Air Date 2-4-25 KP 4: Congress Just Subpoenaed Our Newsroom for Doing Journalism - BreakThroughNews - Air Date 7-23-26 KP 5: Public Media - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - Air Date 11-17-25 KP 6:

Air Date: 9/9/2026 Today we look at the strategies being deployed by the Trump administration and their enablers to undermine the midterm elections and what it actually takes to fight back. The lawyers fighting in court against the efforts to destroy our democracy are clear-eyed that you cannot litigate your way to a free election. The most durable defense is a turnout margin too large to plausibly contest, and organizers are building toward it now. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: President Trump Is Trying to Change How Elections Are Run. Where Do Things Stand - Consider This - Air Date 8-28-26 KP 2: Trump's Strategy to Rig the Midterms + Jake Lang's Christian Nationalist Spect

Re-Air Date: 8/5/26 Original Air Date: 4/24/26 Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss: Ch. 1 - Why victims of crime are underserved and actually prefer rehabilitative, root-case approaches to justice Ch. 2 - How cashless bail reform has shrunk jail populations and fueled momentum to block new jail construction Ch. 3 - The local fight over a proposed mega-prison in Arkansas making some conservatives question mass incarceration itself Ch. 4 - A think tank report that proves the glaringly obvious facts about what reduces recidivism, and an article on the community "solutionaries" already preventing and disrupting violence without police SOLVED! BACKSTAGE: Beyond the Algorithm (Members Only!): Aramark's inhumane "service" in the prison system Leave us a message on our new system! FOLLOW US ON: YouTube (This episode premieres on YouTube on Friday - please subscribe and share!) Bluesky Instagram Facebook Mastadon Nostr public key: npub1tjxxp0x5mcgl2svwhm39qf002st2zdrkz6yxmaxr6r2fh0pv49qq2pem0e REFE

Air Date: 9/2/2026 Today we look at how public health is being gutted by a system that took ordinary parental worry and organized, radicalized and monetized it into an anti-science "wellness" movement large enough to seize real political power. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: We Need to Accept That We Elected an Actual Madman to Be President - Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie - Air Date 8-11-26 KP 2: The 'Anti-Science Disinformation Ecosystem': Experts Decode Trump's War on Health and C Limate - Zeteo - Air Date 10-22-25 KP 3: Welcome to the Vaccine Free-for-All - Radio Atlantic - Air Date 9-4-25 KP 4: Fauci Takes the 5th Amendment While MAGA Cracks His Diary Open & Calls Him Hitler

Air Date: 8/29/2026 Today we examine what happens when the state wants to decide whether a person reproduces. A century ago, American courts sanctioned the forced sterilization of women deemed unfit to reproduce. 60 years ago, a communist dictator ran a pronatalist experiment with disastrous results. Now, abortion access is collapsing and a new pronatalist movement is rising to wreak havoc. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: Buck V. Bell Part 1 - 5-4 - Air Date 5-26-20 KP 2: Fannie Lou Hamer - Who Did What Now - Air Date 3-5-26 KP 3: Erika Cohn - Belly of the Beast Part 1 - Bitch Talk Podcast - Air Date 1-27-21 KP 4: Explaining This Moment of Pronatalism Part 1 - rePROS Fight Back

Air Date: 8/25/2026 Today we explore the resistance to Flock cameras and mass surveillance as a whole. Communities across the country are voting to cancel their tracking-camera contracts, others are filing records requests to drag secret police deals into daylight, and some people stopped waiting and went out at night with wire cutters. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: Flock Cameras: ACLU Raises Alarm About Nationwide Surveillance Database - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-21-26 KP 2: Ohio Professor Specialized in Policing Nails Why Flock Cameras Are a Threat to Everyone - More Perfect Union - Air Date 8-16-26 KP 3: We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in Under 30 Seconds.

Air Date: 8/22/2026 Today we look at how the Republican Party made climate denial its policy more than twenty years ago and is now removing the government's ability to see the problem at all. The Environmental Protection Agency under Bush refused to regulate carbon in 2003, and now the Trump administration is dismantling the science that would help us both avoid worsening the climate emergency and mitigate the inevitable destruction to lives and property now baked into the system. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: When It Comes to Climate Change, Is There a Point When Adaptation Isn't Enough - Consider This - Air Date 7-31-26 KP 2: Fire Climate Hot, Dry, Windy Days Are Becoming Co

Air Date: 8/19/2026 Today we trace the corporate capture of ideas themselves. What began as a brief legal incentive granting fourteen years of exclusive rights to a creation has become a system that kept a pandemic vaccine from reaching poorer countries and where entertainment conglomerates and technology giants fence off and sell our own culture back to us. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: Why We Should Get Rid Of Intellectual Property - Second Thought - Air Date 11-18-22 KP 2: How Patent Abuse Blocks Patient Access to Generic Drugs - PIRGvideos - Air Date 4-18-23 KP 3: YouTube's Copyright System Isn't Broken. The World's Is. Part 1 - Tom Scott - Air Date 5-23-20 KP 4: How Disn

Air Date: 8/16/2026 Today we look at what Toni Morrison called "sanctioned ignorance," the deliberate manufacture of a version of the past that keeps citizens from connecting the dots between what their government did then and what it's doing now. They're doing it by attacking museums, libraries, and everyone dedicated to ensuring that people have access to accurate information because that's what it takes to implement authoritarian control over a society. It's also the reason that countries under authoritarian rule suffer from the lack of benefits that comes with the free exchange of ideas. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: David Blight Makes Opening Statement in Hearing on How Sm

Air Date: 8/12/2026 Today we follow the latest in Western Hemisphere imperialism. American presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump have invoked the Monroe Doctrine and its claim on the whole hemisphere to justify coups, sanctions, and now an outright military abduction in Latin America. Trump, as always, is bragging loudly about the parts most before him knew to keep quiet. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: "Imperial Laboratory": Alexander Aviña on the "Donroe" Doctrine & U.S. Intervention in Latin America - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-6-26 KP 2: Trump Took Billions From Venezuela, Congress Is Demanding Answers - The Ring of Fire - Air Date 7-24-26 KP 3: Where Did Ve

Air Date: 8/8/2026 Today we examine the mass deportation machine that's been intentionally designed to inflict suffering, from the conditions inside immigration jails to the reckless actions of ICE agents, and the systematic dismantling of accountability. All of this in service of a blatant demographic engineering program to forcibly Whiten the country. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: Lauren Bonds on ICE Murders Part 1 - CounterSpin - Air Date 7-17-26 KP 2: Trumps National Killer Police Force Part 1 - The Intercept Briefing - Air Date 7-24-26 KP 3: Uncovering Abuse Inside America's Largest ICE Detention Center Part 1 - Fresh Air - Air Date 7-14-26 KP 4: ICE Took Mom and Dad. N

Publish Date: 8-5-2026 Original Air Date: 8–13-2021 Today we dig through the archives to give context to the news of the 2021 IPCC report ringing the alarm bells for the climate crisis. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: The IPCC's new report - @greennewsreport - Air Date 4-3-14 Ch. 2: Green News Report w/ Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen - Air Date 8-10-21 Ch. 3: Global Water Shortages Pose Threat of Terror & War - @davidpakmanshow - Air Date 02-16-14 Ch. 4: The World's On Fire and There's Money in the Flames - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 8-10-21 Ch. 5: Why humans are so bad at thinking about climate change - Vox - Air Date 4-19-17 Ch. 6: Report confirms the eff

Air Date: 8/1/2026 Today we investigate how the argument moved from what the Supreme Court decides to whether the Court should be rebuilt. Only about one in five Americans has strong confidence in the Court, and the proposals on the table would end lifetime seats, set fixed terms, and add judges across the federal bench. We're arguing that these reforms are necessary for a functioning democracy. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: 'Unhinged and Racist': Hayes EVISCERATES Trump's Birthright Argument - All In with Chris Hayes - Air Date 6-30-26 KP 2: "We Continue to Fight": Chase Strangio on the Supreme Court's Ban on Trans Girls & Women in Sports - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-1-

Air Date: 7/25/2026 Today we look at the idea that America has become a gerontocracy, a country run by the old, and then interrogate the premise a bit. The wealth, the politicians, and the voting electorate really do concentrate at the top of the age ladder, and benefits for the old tend to stay protected while younger people wait their turn. But several of our sources argue age is the wrong name for the problem, that it is really a story about money and who the whole system was built to serve. Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: What Is There to Say About Lindsey Graham - Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie - Air Date 7-12-26 KP 2: Where Is Mitch McConnell? - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Dat

Air Date: 7/25/2026 The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on the news from June and July without being overwhelming! Organized around a single idea: the same politics that left America friendless abroad is keeping Americans apart at home. The war with Iran ends and America's word counts for less around the world, so Europe starts building its own software instead of buying ours, NATO war-games its own doubts, and China quietly steadies the world's oil markets, while Taiwan shows that real security comes from connection, not threats. At home, the administration revives the red scare, hands the Justice Department to the president's personal lawyer while judges face death threats, and turns the country's 250th birthday into a fight over who counts as American, and billionaires cash out while everyone argues. And the way back starts small: a psychologist's simple habit for a happier social life, organizers who treat loneliness as a political problem with a political cure, and a Michigan Senate campaig