Rev Left Radio - Big Announcement: Tripling Our Patreon Output + More

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Join the Rev Left Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Changes Starting Mid-Feb: - Tripling our monthly patreon output  - Covering the headlines more consistently - Being more selective about the topics we cover on the public feed - The integration of Red Menace and Rev Left   

Hello, everybody. This is Brett O'Shea from RevLeft Radio. So today I have an announcement, and this is just basically an announcement about where RevLeft is going to go in the future, going right now, some changes I'm going to make, basically. And this is going to be mostly centered on the Patreon, but also a little change or two for the public feed. And I just want to announce this to make this very, very clear, and just to announce to everybody who may enjoy RevLeft, may support Rev. left but might not be on the Patreon or might not think that one bonus episode a month is enough to justify tossing us a few dollars for the Patreon. So the first and biggest announcement is that I am going to triple my Patreon output every month. One of the problems I've run up against recently is that I don't have a consistent enough outlet to keep up with the news. And my

scheduling for Rev Left has often, because of various factors and because you want to give guests enough time and work around schedules, I usually plan my episodes a month, sometimes even as far as two months out from the agreement to come on. And then, of course, there's the editing process that can sometimes take up to a week or longer. And sometimes we have backlogs, making it even longer before those episodes get out. And one thing this makes it difficult to do is to keep up with issues in real time, events that are happening in real time. And, you know, even if an event pops off to find a good guest for that event quickly is often very hard to try to schedule it right away so that we can cover the topic while it's still in the news is incredibly hard with

trying to get, you know, my schedule and that person's schedule quickly on the same page, etc. And so one of the things that has happened is we're putting out a lot of episodes, as always, but sometimes we'll miss some of the very important stuff that's happening. Like right now with the Atlanta Forest and Cop City, with the murder of Tyree Nichols, the Iranian women's protests that have happened a few months back, probably are still happening to some regard now, just developments in the news that I'm often unable to address because of scheduling in its various complexities. So, I'm going to start putting out a Patreon exclusive episode where I cover topical issues as well as take questions from the audience. So I think every month I'm going to put up a sort of mailbag post on Patreon. So people can just ask questions and I'll answer maybe two or three questions at the end of every Patreon episode. And I'm also going to continue to do one thing that I've done off and on throughout the years, which is take clips from popular.

influential people making political arguments often against the left or against Marxism or against socialism and respond to them in full. I've done this in the past with figures like Joe Rogan, I think Bill Marr, probably Sam Harris, who make very lazy anti-socialist, anti-left arguments that are never pushed back on in their own shows. And I like taking on, you know, high-level popular figures who are well-respected in certain circles, taking on their arguments against us. because I think all too often we don't directly respond to those people. They have huge audiences. They never, ever hear the other side of the story.

And I would like to provide that more often. So I kind of envision these future Patreon episodes to be ones where I'll maybe cover a couple issues that are hot in the news and help people maybe break it down or just give my take on it, take some questions from the mailbag from patrons, and answer a couple of those, which might be a fun way to end those sorts of episodes and probably somewhere in the middle I'll place a clip or two of some figure with a popular figure with a real audience making arguments against broadly conceived our side of the political coin and responding to them as robustly as I can. I think that's an important thing to do and I think it'll it'll give back to the people that support us with Patreon instead of just one episode a month you will get consistently three episodes a month maybe even four if I have time. I want to leave at least one week for things that come up. I have three children, for example. Things are always coming up. It would be very hard for me to say every single week

I'll be able to do it. And if I miss a week just to have it at three, I think would help. So I might not be able to do it this week, but I can get right back on track next week. But that's still a tripling of our Patreon output every single month. And so if you're on the fence about supporting us, if you've listened to us but haven't supported us, or you just figured one episode is not worth supporting us for, we are tripling that output. So hopefully some of you might be inclined to come and support us given the new Patreon output that we're going to do. Another thing that I wanted to announce is revolved around the episodes that I choose. And when you are doing what I've done for six years now, this February will be six years we've been doing Rev Left, eventually you build

up a certain sort of a certain list of guests that you've already had and those guests have new things that come up in their life, they just release a book or they have a new topic or whatever. And what will happen over time is that instead of me choosing hey, this month I want to cover this topic

and this topic and this topic, let me go find guests and ask them to come on to cover those topics. What has happened as of late is I'll start taking requests. Hey, I was on your show two years ago. I have a new book. Hey, me and my organization are working on this project.

We'd love to come on Rev Left and promote it. And all of that is fine and dandy. And I love people that want to do that. And it means a lot that people want to come on the show and promote their stuff. And I'm still going to create a little space to allow for that because sometimes there really are really important projects, organizational struggles or new works that are definitely worth covering. And I'm excited to cover them.

But what I found out last year, at the end of last year, especially I think in November, was I had like 10 episodes planned and every single one of them was a request. Now there's still great episodes, very appreciative that people request to come on the program, but I found that the show was kind of, and I always want Rev Leff to be a big tent show, but kind of losing a little coherency.

We'd just jump around whiplash from topic to topic, and I was not having any control over what we covered. So sometimes I'll agree to do something that my heart's not really in or whatever, and it's still a good show. It's still interesting. I still do my best. But I really want to get back on track of what I did in the early days especially was I'm interested in covering this topic for this month. I'm going to go find a guest. I'm going to make that show happen. Me being interested in it means I'm going to do more prep. It means my heart's going to be in it more. And the episodes

that come out will be, I think, hopefully, on the whole at least, more interesting or at the very at least you can tell that I'm more engaged in that topic. I don't want to make too big of a deal about it because, you know, those episodes are great. Some of the best episodes we've had has come through requests from people saying, hey, I got a new thing. Can I come on and talk about it? It turns out to be a wonderful episode. But it just decreases the amount of precision I get when choosing certain topics that I actually want to cover.

So I'm going to be a little bit more choosy on that front and I'm going to take less requests. And I don't want anybody to take that personally. I'll try to be open to it when I can be, but for the most part, and I still want people to reach out and let me know that they have a new project that I might be willing to have them on to talk about, but I really want to be more precise and more conscious with the specific topics that I cover, maybe try to cover themes, so maybe two or three episodes in a row that are with different guests on different topics, but they might interlock and reinforce each other in interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff I could do on that front. So I'm going to step

a little bit back from requests and I'm going to be much more choosy with the topics and guests that I have on and more coherent with them as well. And I do want to say on that point about Rev Left being a white umbrella, you know, sometimes we get criticized for this. You have on too many people. You know, you have on people all across the spectrum and you let them talk and you don't push back on them enough and, you know, people will criticize us for that all the time. But I just want to say that Rev Left was always, not only the flagship show, but the broadest show. We're casting the widest net with Rev. Left. It was always meant to be a wide open conversational show where people with different beliefs, with different tendencies, with different ideologies could come on the show,

could express their points of view in a friendly space that's not going to devolve into an ego debate or, you know, I'm not personally, I'm not a journalist who is going to hold your feet to the fire on every single claim you make it's a space where we can have friendly open discussions and if listeners disagree with the guest or don't like their take on a topic you don't have to agree with every single one and just by the nature of the show you're not going to but hopefully you can still leave a conversation even one that you disagree with with some useful information now on the other two shows they're they narrow in a little bit right so for example on guerrilla history we narrow the topics we're often talking about history and it has a much more of a consistent ideological thrust and i think over on red menace we do that as same we do that as well we read texts in depth and we get very critical so my specific ideology um will come out on rev left of course you know where i stand on most of these issues but it really comes out especially with its critical edge on red menace where we're tackling texts and wrestling

with ideas and have entire segments of our criticisms of those texts, and is a little bit more narrow than on Rev Left on Gorilla History, where we, you know, all three of the co-hosts are more or less in the same ideological category, the same tendency, more or less. And, you know, we'll have guests on from different tendencies, and we always treat them with respect. But there's much more of a sort of ideological center thread to that show. But Rev. Left was always meant to be much more open to be an accommodating space where people on the left can talk from different angles from different perspectives we can disagree with one another but we can hear each other out and we can even have random conversations with people on stoicism or eumian psychology or the

neuroscience of addiction right a big tent where we have those conversations and the other shows were meant to be you know different in that i can focus more on simply history over here and maybe even with guerrilla history not only history but it has an academic edge to it. So there's a really in-depth, insightful people who have studied these issues for a long time talking about them. And that's a separate thing than having on somebody who's not an expert but just loves this topic and can shoot the shit with me on Rev. Left. And then, of course, over on Red Menace, we get rid of guests all together and really get into the ideas. And me and Allison's ideological tendency, I think, is most apparent on Red Menace,

where we are reading, criticizing, and discussing texts, anarchists, reactionary, and, of course, many Marxist texts through our very specific ideological lens and that critical lens as well. And so all three shows are meant to be seen together and seen as more or less three different faces of a singular project. And I don't want people to lose sight of that because I think it's important that we have, you know, a big umbrella, multiple conversations, even random-ass topics that are allowed on Rev. Left, and then we can narrow down on history and theory with Red Menace and Guerrilla History, but they're all ultimately aimed at the same goal of political education, and they all sort of reinforce each other,

and they do things that the other shows don't do. And so seen as a whole, Red Menace, Guerrilla History, and Rev Left together is my big project, and they are all interlocking and reinforcing. So I just kind of wanted to make that a little bit more explicit. And the very last thing I wanted to announce for the changes being made going forward. I'm not going to get into the details, but I've obviously talked with Allison about this in depth. And Allison, because of a certain career situation, isn't necessarily allowed to take outside income. And so Red Menace has been a place on the Patreon where we have sort of pulled back a little bit.

We haven't been fulfilling our duties on Red Menace Patreon. and I'm trying to rectify that by having a more of an integration now because of Allison doesn't can't at this point except that side income that comes from Red Menace Red Menace need not be as fundamentally separate from Rev. Left as it otherwise would be. So what we're going to do is integrate Red Menace and Rev. Left while allowing them to both exist separately.

So Red Menace Public Feed and Red Menace Patreon are still absolutely there as they're separate. entities, and Rev. Left Patreon and Rev. Left public feed are absolutely there as its separate entities. But the Patrions that I'm putting out on Rev. Left, tripling those, they're also going to be posted on Red Menace. And when me and Allison do a Red Menace episode, the next one we're going to do is on Engels, the origins of family, private property in the state. We're going to do a multi-episode series on that important text from Frederick Engels. That's going to be posted on Red Menace's public feed as well as Rev Left Radio's public feed.

Now, if Allison's life circumstances change and we need to go more into, you know, segregated boxes of support so that Allison can get one third of the Red Menace Patreon and Rev. Left is a wholly separate thing with just me and Dave. We can return to that because, again, we're still allowing them to continue on. But for the time being, they're going to be much more integrated. So you can sign up to Red Menace's Patreon or Rev. Left's Patreon. and you're going to get three Patreon episodes a month going forward. They're going to be the same on either one.

So you don't need to join both. You can join one or the other, whichever one you prefer, for whatever reason. So there's going to be more integration on that front. And then the very last thing I wanted to say is with the tripling of our Patreon output, I also wanted to bring in a little bit more consistency. We're going to try to do that with the public feed. You know, you know us. Sometimes we go a week or a week and a half without an episode.

sometimes we'll throw three episodes out in one week. And I kind of like the flexibility on the public feed there. But for Patreon in particular, I really want to get more consistent. So I think I'm going to come in either Tuesdays or Wednesdays. I'm going to do my full Patreon episode. And I'm going to release them on Thursday mornings. That might change, but I think we're going to go with that, especially to start. So people can now expect, maybe not exactly when the Rev Left public episode is going to drop,

but the Rev. Left Patreon episode is going to be much more consistent. And I think we're going to aim for Thursday mornings. So Thursday morning, when you wake up, you're going to work, to school, whatever, you'll have a Rev. Left Patreon episode to listen to. And that will be on both Red Menace and Rev. Left Patreon. And that kind of consistency is something I definitely want to shoot for. And hopefully it brings in more support. And importantly, the people that have supported us, it's going to be us giving back much more.

So I think we already do wonderful Patreon episodes, and as of late, the one Patreon episode we've done a month has sometimes two, three hours long. And of course, if you join our Patreon now, you can have access to six years almost of Patreon episodes in our back catalog, many gems in there that were never released publicly for those that are interested. We just recorded, for example, an almost three hour episode on our Patreon with my friend, David, covering a bunch of different topics that, people like those episodes because they're much more laid back and funny, but we still cover a smorgasbord of topics and different interests and stuff like that that people find interesting. So joining the Patreon, you'll immediately get access to all of that. But importantly, going forward, every Thursday morning, at least three Thursdays a month,

you will get a consistent Rev Left Patreon episode covering topical issues that are in the news, in the headlines that we don't always get to address on the public. feed, taking questions consistently from our patrons and responding consistently to arguments against our politics from mainstream public intellectual figures that don't like the left and need to be pushed back on because there's far too little pushback on their shows and in mainstream media more broadly. And I think that's one of the things that hopefully separates us a little bit is our willingness to take the most robust arguments from anti-socialist, anti-communist, anti-Marxist, public intellectuals and really wrestle with them. And I think it behooves us well

to not straw man arguments against us or to be an echo chamber such that we lose grip with the actual criticisms of our position, but to take the fucking head on and respond to them and dismantle them and give our full-throated response to your criticism of us. And it might not be heard by their audiences, but it will equip ours with better ammunition and arguments for when they're inevitably faced with those sorts of arguments or they're wrestling with a

criticism that they might not have heard the response articulated well. And so they wish somebody would be able to push back on that crazy thing Jordan Peterson said about postmodern neo-Marxists and this exact claim that he made about what we believe.

And I would love to hear somebody just to play that clip and respond to it in full. And we've done that in the past. People really like it. And I'm going to continue to double down on that going forward in the 2023. So those are the big changes happening for the most part. The public feed will remain the same. The big changes are coming with regards to our Patreon and the tripling of our output.

And if you're somebody that likes what we do at RevLeft, likes the content we put out, and wants to hear us address more of the topical issues as they come, the stuff in the headlines, which we don't always get to do. It's a wonderful opportunity to join our Patreon to give us that support and in return get that bonus content. And then to everybody who has been a supporter of Rev Left

on Patreon through the years, deeply, deeply appreciative. We love you so much and we want to give you even more content, even more bang for your buck, as it were, and really give back to the people that have been so generous with their finances and their support over the years.

So that's it. So yeah, 2023, some changes are happening, doubling down, tripling down in our Patreon output, taking less requests, being more choosy with the topics and guests that I cover, and integrating in a deeper way, Red Menace and Rev Left while still maintaining the autonomy of both of those patrons and public feeds. And that's that. Love and solidarity. Talk soon.