Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy

Air Date: 10–5-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

• Ch. 1 - The state of American media consolidation
• Ch. 2 - The debate over free speech and the how the history of the right proves they have never been in favor of it.
• Ch. 3 -  The Trump administrations latest aggressive anti-free speech moves, and the Jimmy Kimmel suspension
• Ch. 4 - A look at how independent media was a...

Air Date 10/10/2025

The strategy that Trump and the masterminds behind Project 2025 are following is to move as fast as possible to implement their agenda because they know perfectly well how unpopular it is and will be as time goes on. It's hard to argue that anything good will come of this but I'm going to try during my comments anyway.

Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the h...

Air Date 10/7/2025

The Trump administration has been doing what we knew it would: breaking laws and losing about 95% of their court battles. And the conservatively stacked Supreme Court has been doing what we knew it would: overwhelmingly ruling for Trump to cover his tracks because that's what they were put there to do.

Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the handle bestofthelef...

Air Date 10/3/2025

People around the world are angry, often for different reasons and even more frequently based on falseities - though not always. For instance, the Right in the UK and France are upset about immigration though most of those who are angry are wrong about the facts. But there's also widespread dissatisfaction with national governments and pessimism about their ability to make life better over the short term which is...

Air Date: 09/30/25

The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on recent news without being overwhelming! This month we track the dangerous convergence of domestic collapse and international chaos by looking at political violence and martyrdom accelerating division, institutional capture from the courts to the media, the dismantling of voting rights and public health infrastructure, military deployments at home and wars abroa...

Air Date: 9–24-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

• Ch. 1 - Intro, and quick follow up on bad satire

• Ch. 2 - The new culture of ‘buy now pay later’ and how these companies are manipulating the public to normalize the culture of overconsumption

• Ch. 3 - How companies pass the environmental toll of their products on the public, and the rise of “cute” debt

• Ch. 4 - The way heavy ‘buy now ...

Original Air Date: 11/15/2022

Today, we take a look at our extremely steady history of political violence from the Revolution, through the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, into the Civil Rights era, the Militia Movement and domestic terrorism, and now to our current once-again-radicalized, right-wing movement willing to use and tacitly condone violence as a political ...

Air Date 9/23/2025

All that is happening in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination was quite predictable because we've actually seen this game plan play out before. The only thing we didn't know was what would be the catalyst to really put the autocracy into high gear.

Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

Full Show No...

Air Date: 9–20-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

• Ch. 1 - The right-wing’s continued attempts at satire
• Ch. 2 - Manufactured outrage about male cheerleaders and sorority dances
• Ch. 3 - How political outsiders always adopt new tech, and how that ties to pushing back against misinformation
• Ch. 4 - Final thoughts o...

Air Date 9/20/2025

The escalations are happening so fast now that even though this episode is about Russia increasing tensions by violating NATO airspace in Poland with drones and Israel intensifying their belligerence by bombing inside Qatar, those aren't even the most recent incidents now that Russian jets have entered NATO airspace in Estonia and Israel has launched a new attack on Gaza City while Netanyahu says he wants Israel ...

Air Date 9/16/2025

Between recent Labor Day rallies and Republican Town Hall meetings, we're seeing that resistance to Trump's deeply unpopular policies is alive and well. Plus we're going to look at some historical legacies of resistance movements that can both inform and inspire us today.

Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the handle b...

Air Date 9/11/2025

I've always learned the high-level understanding that the Nazis were partly able to come to power because the opposition at the time was too caught up with infighting to create a coherent resistance. With hindsight, it's easy to lament how badly they miscalculated the circumstances but living through the modern day and watching the Democratic Party struggle gives even more clarity to how that kind of inability to...

Air Date 9/7/2025

Trump has been setting a new tone both at home and abroad which is shaking up everything from the war in Ukraine to threats of force against Mexico, Venezuela, and our own American cities with the militarization of domestic policing. And we made all of this before Trump posted an Apocalypse Now meme about using the Department of War against Chicago.

Be part of the show! Le...

Air Date: 9–3-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

• Ch. 1 - The surprising origins of Gerrymandering

• Ch. 2 - The options we have to improve congressional representation for everyone in the country

• Ch. 3 - Democratic states response to Republican gerrymandering threats

• Ch. 4 - The argument for DC statehood and the people to blame for why it hasn’t happened yet

• Ch. 5 - How to end home...

Air Date: 6–20-2023

Today, we take a look at the story of how neoliberalism was born, how corporations were organized to help push it into the mainstream, and how the courts were reshaped to permanently tilt the rules in favor of corporate power.

Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

Full Show Notes

Check out our new show,...

Air Date 9/1/2025

The way people consume almost every variety of media, entertainment, and art is different now than it was only 10-15 years ago. That means that the way protest music, revolutionary art, and even mass market productions and performances are going to be different, feel different, and likely find you in different ways than in the past. But the drive to create never dies and art will always...

Air Date: 8–28-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, Deon, and Erin discuss:

• Ch. 1 - How scientific empires fall
• Ch. 2 - How fascists of the past have destroyed their country’s scientific progress in fear of inconvenient truths
• Ch. 3 - How other countries are taking the opportunity to poach American scientists
• Ch. 4 - Living in a society that is shifting away from believing in evidence based science
• Ch. 5 - The 1938 pro-science manifesto th...

Air Date 8/27/2025

RFK Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement aren't completely wrong about everything, they often identify the larger structural problems with the US health industrial complex even if their proposed solutions are wildly off the mark. But the problem they failed to see coming when partnering with Trump and the Republicans is that they're only going to be allowed to misguidedly defu...

Air Date 8/24/2025

The nature of politics and public policy is that there's always a need to balance opposing interests. Almost nowhere is there a more intractable set of opposing interests than in the attempt to protect children from harmful content on the internet while maintaining free access to adults, particularly because people wildly disagree about what qualifies as harmful and what degree of privacy invasion is an acceptabl...