Episodes

  • Democratic Socialist Electoral Victories and the Implications for American Politics
    Jul 13 2026

    Alyson and Breht reflect on recent Democratic Socialist electoral victories, the ongoing contradiction between the progressive left and the corporate center within the Democratic Party, the principled and strategic approach to this development that Marxists should take, the implications for the near future of american politics, what it all means for the broader socialist left in this country, proletarian internationalism, the anti-imperialist red line, and much more.

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    1 hr and 19 mins
  • Socialism Conference '26: Labor Day Weekend in Chicago!
    Aug 6 2026

    Breht gives details on his upcoming speech and Q and A at the Socialism Conference in Chicago this September, the listener meet-up afterwards, and the patreon raffle for TWO FREE TICKETS!

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    7 mins
  • The New Red Scare: Trump's War on the American Left
    Aug 7 2026

    In this episode, Alyson and Breht examine the Trump administration's emerging campaign against what it calls "far-left terrorism." We begin with NSPM-7, the presidential directive encouraging federal agencies to investigate not only alleged political violence, but the organizations, funders, media networks, and ideological communities surrounding it. We then look at two distinct examples of this framework in practice: the sweeping Prairieland prosecutions in Texas, where defendants received extraordinarily severe terrorism-related sentences, and the separate crackdown in Minnesota following anti-ICE mobilizations and political unrest. From there, we analyze Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller's international counterterrorism summit, the effort to redirect the machinery of the War on Terror toward the radical left, and the State Department's Cuba document, which portrays socialism, anti-imperialism, Palestine solidarity, and antifascism as parts of a foreign-influenced revolutionary network. Finally, we ask whether the United States has entered a new Red Scare, what may come next, and how left-wing individuals, media outlets, and organizations can protect themselves without abandoning their political work.

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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Philosophy of Mind: Marxism, Materialism, and Dialectical Monism
    Jun 29 2026

    In this episode, Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante join forces for a deep philosophical conversation on Marxism, consciousness, and the mind-body problem. Using China Miéville's essay on consciousness and materialism as a starting point, they explore why the nature of subjective experience remains such a profound challenge for crude or reductionist forms of materialism -- and why this question matters for Marxists.

    Alyson begins by carefully summarizing Miéville's original essay and its challenge to conventional Marxist materialism. From there, Breht lays out several major positions in the philosophy of mind, including dualism, physicalism, idealism, panpsychism, neutral monism, emergentism, eliminativism, and epiphenomenalism. Together, they then work through two responses to Miéville's essay, clarifying the arguments, tensions, and stakes of the debate.

    In the second half, Breht argues for a different approach: a dialectical monism informed by dependent origination. Rather than reducing consciousness to matter, escaping into idealism, or treating mind and matter as separate substances, this view understands reality as a single, dynamic, relational process in which consciousness, embodiment, nature, society, and practice arise interdependently.

    The conversation closes by bringing Buddhist philosophy and phenomenology into dialogue with Marxism, exploring emptiness, experience, nonduality, and the limits of conceptual thought. What emerges is not a rejection of materialism, but a call to deepen it -- beyond reductionism, beyond dualism, and toward a more dialectical understanding of consciousness & reality.

    Find Fluss and Frim's response (Their Materialism and Ours) to Mieville HERE

    Find Pineda's response (Naturalized Dialectics) to Mieville HERE

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    2 hrs and 4 mins
  • Alyson and Breht Answer Your Questions
    Jun 6 2026

    Alyson and Breht spend three hours answering your questions about politics, theory, socialist stragey and much more!

    Watch the video version on Youtube HERE

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    3 hrs and 13 mins
  • The Worldwide Family of Militant Women
    May 12 2026

    In this episode, Breht and Alyson sit down with Arlene Eisen to discuss her new memoir, In the Worldwide Family of Militant Women. Eisen reflects on her political formation across the upheavals of the 1960s through the early 1980s, her encounters with Black liberation and anti-imperialist struggle, and the forgotten history of militant women who built relationships of solidarity across borders. Together they explore internationalism, revolutionary commitment, movement fragmentation, and what younger generations can still learn from an era when women fought empire not from the margins, but from the heart of the struggle. The result is a rich conversation about memory, political development, and the urgent need to build durable anti-imperialist movements in our own time.

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    1 hr and 34 mins
  • The Iran War: A Dialectical and Historical Materialist Analysis
    Apr 9 2026

    Alyson and Breht apply dialectical and historical materialist analysis to the current war of aggression in Iran. Together they break down the Marxist methodology into its three main parts - dialectics, materialism, and history - and showcase how they apply to the US and Israeli war on Iran, before bringing them back together into a coherent whole. Then they compare and contrast dialectical and historical materialism as a mode of analysis to other forms of analysis: from academic modes like liberal internationalism and Realism to common popular modes like conspiracy theories and moralism.

    Throughout the process, they aim to show the superior clarity and demystification offered by Marxism in understanding our world, as it unfolds in real time.

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    2 hrs and 25 mins
  • Iran Under Attack
    Mar 2 2026

    On this YT livestream (3/1/26) Alyson and Breht discuss the illegal war of aggression launched by the US and Israel against Iran. Throughout the discussion they take live questions from the chat.

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    1 hr and 44 mins