Secular Talk

Kyle Kulinski (born: ), better known online as Secular Talk, is a left-libertarian commentary talk show radio commentator and political pundit. Launched in 2008, Secular Talk features Kyle talking about various news headlines and giving his own point-of-view of the situation in a humorous manner while still giving a nuanced analysis.
The channel was affiliated with The Young Turks network from 2013 to 2021.
Secular Talk blends together elements of social democracy, progressivism, and socialism.
Kyle also hosts a show with his wife Krystal Ball, titled "Krystal, Kyle and Friends". 
==Format==
Secular Talk focuses on major news issues and secular discussion. In each video, Kyle elaborates on the issue and often gives his opinion to what Americans should do with a progressive perspective.
Some of the stories he regularly talks about (and often pokes fun) are about the religious right—such as Pat Robertson—and the authoritarian left—including political correctness in academic debate and the use of safe spaces on college campuses.
For a few years, Kyle also does a podcast with his best friend Corin and discuss issues that range from news to popular culture.
==Personal Life ==
Kulinski was born and raised in  alongside an older sister. He has commented that he likely has undiagnosed autism.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOT6tWr-NXo Though he was raised Catholic, he chose to stop attending church when his mother gave him the option to do so. He seems to have taken an interest in politics at a relatively young age recollecting discussing George W Bush with his grandmother during the run-up to the US presidential election in 2000. He was at school on the day of the 911 attacks and upon returning home was comforted by President Bush's promises to fight those responsible. However, over the following years, he began to question the war on terror and US foreign policy in general. He graduated from  in 2006—NFL player Ray Rice was a classmate of his—and  in 2010 with a  in  and a minor in . 
He is of Italian and Polish descent.
=== Relationship ===
On valentine's day of 2022, Kyle confirmed he was also dating Krystal Ball by sharing a picture of him kissing her on twitter. Krystal responded to the post with four hearts emojis. Fans had been shipping them together since their started doing their podcast.
On 6 May 2023, Kulinski and Ball married in a ceremony officiated by Marianne Williamson.
==Secular Talk==
Kulinski started the Secular Talk YouTube channel in 2008. The channel began as a hobby for him as he finished his studies at Iona College. The videos Kulinski published were almost all exclusively political commentaries, with segments such as the "Nutjob of the Week" and the "Common Sense Award", where Kulinski would offer his take on the actions of public figures and groups. In 2012, Kulinski began publishing videos full-time and started broadcasting on BlogTalkRadio as "The Kyle Kulinski Show."
Kulinski covers politics, news, current events, pop culture, economics, science, philosophy and religion from a "libertarian-left; populist; social democratic; agnostic-atheist" point of view. The Secular Talk YouTube channel received its 100,000th subscriber in April 2014 and reached 500,000 subscribers in September 2017.
== Political beliefs ==
Kulinski has described himself as a social democrat as well as left libertarian in Political Compass parlance, favoring a hands-off approach to social issues while supporting government intervention on economic issues like health care and the minimum wage. He advocates for single-payer healthcare, free tuition at public colleges and universities, a living wage, reduction in military spending and an end to military interventionism, infrastructure spending, a Green New Deal, a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics, the legalization of euthanasia and the legalization, regulation and taxation of drugs and prostitution. He is also known for his opposition to various liberal political factions in the United States such as the neoliberals and corporate Democrats (Democratic politicians who oppose somewhat redistributive policies like single-payer healthcare and raising the minimum wage), but also further left "social justice warriors" whose beliefs he considers contrary to liberal values. Kulinski has referred to himself as an "international moderate", arguing that he is only considered far-left and "extreme" in the United Statesbecause "the spectrum of public discourse has shifted to the far-right".
=== Money in politics ===
Kulinski believes the main problem with American politics is the existence of corporate campaign contributions and their influence on public policy. He has called Democrats who take campaign contributions from corporate Political Action Committees a "house of cards" because they have trouble attracting public support as shown by their losses in seats during Barack Obama's presidency. Kulinski believes that if it was not for these donations, elected Democrats would almost all be in favor of Bernie Sanders' political positions because "these are ideas that are wildly popular".
=== Freedom of speech ===
Kulinski self-describes as a "free speech absolutist", saying he is truly principled on the issue of freedom of speech. As such, he would denounce calls to censor a speaker's speech whether that speaker is a right-winger or a left-winger. He notes that there is a difference between legal free speech issues, where the government censors speech, and issues related to the principle of freedom of speech, where private entities censor speech. As such, he opposed the ban of Alex Jones from multiple online platforms saying that this violates the principle of free speech. In order to prevent large social media companies from censoring speech, Kulinski has proposed to regulate them as public entities, which would put all of their users under the protection of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his advocacy for free speech absolutism, he has warned that the Left being fine with deplatforming will have unintended and often negative consequences in terms of its ability to make winning arguments.
=== LGBT issues ===
Kulinski supports the LGBT rights movement. He became familiar with transgender issues in 2013 when Chelsea Manning announced her transition. He said his initial reaction was unfavorable to this decision, but after doing a bit of research of trans people, he changed his mind. Since then, Kulinski supports hormone replacement therapy for trans inmates as a mental health issue.
In 2014, when then-Fox News host Oliver North made a speech comparing fighting against gay rights to fighting against slavery, Kulinski covered the speech by saying: "Not only is there no comparison, if anything the opposition position on those issues is more like opposing slavery". Kulinski added: "To be in favor of gay rights and to try to treat people equally under the law—that is definitely a movement that is more in line with the idea behind the abolitionists of treating people equal and treating people right".
=== Abortion ===
Kulinski describes himself as a moderate on the issue of abortion, arguing that there is a moral conundrum to performing abortions after the development of the fetus' nervous system and at the point of viability, but none before this time. Kulinski has criticized opposition to abortion based on a belief in Christianity, arguing that, according to his understanding, the Bible is pro-abortion.
=== Russian interference ===
Kulinski is skeptical of many claims made by mainstream media figures and politicians regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He has expressed skepticism that the Trump administration serves Russia's interests to help Trump win the presidency. He has been critical of the Democratic Party and mainstream media's coverage of the subject, arguing that in their focus on Russian collusion they often leave out coverage of more important issues and delegitimize themselves in the eyes of the American public.
=== Trump presidency ===
Since the election of Donald Trump, Kulinski has criticized the Democratic Party's "resistance" against Trump, stating that they find themselves praising everyone who does not support Trump, even establishment and neoconservative Republicans. Kulinski disapproves of this because "establishment Republicans want Trump to do every single thing he’s doing minus the 'mean tweets'". Kyle stated "when Donald Trump needs to be opposed, we will do everything to block hideous legislation from getting through", but that when Trump proposes things that are "good for the American people", such as pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, implementing tariffs on steel and aluminum or rebuilding American infrastructure, Democrats should stand with him on these issues even if it means giving Trump symbolic victories.
=== International trade ===
Kulinski takes a generally protectionist approach to trade. He has, however, criticized the way the Trump tariffs has been implemented, commenting that Trump has been too bullish when implementing them. Kulinski believes that tariffs should be imposed in cooperation with the US allies, not by threatening them, and that the Trump tariffs have had a net negative effect of the United States.
=== Direct democracy ===
In many videos, Kulinski praises states ballot initiatives. Following the 2018 midterm elections, Kulinski began taking a favorable stance on having a federal referendum system in the United States akin to many European nations, stating that "we should vote on five important issues directly" every year.
== Political Activism ==
=== 2016 US presidential election ===
Kulinski supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary election and voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election. While critical of Hillary Clinton, he described her as the "lesser of two evils" in the general election against Donald Trump and stated that if he had lived in a swing state such as Ohio, he would have voted for her.
Kulinski criticized mainstream media coverage of the elections, after a Harvard study found that they devoted very little of air time to policy substance when covering the elections. He said that “they view the election, and they discuss the election solely from the horse race aspect of it. As you cover the horse race angle, you should pepper your coverage with endless policy discussion.”
His channel Secular Talk grew faster than usual during the 2016 US presidential election. His subscriber count almost doubled throughout the year, going from 234K at the beginning of the year to 444K at the end of the year.
=== Justice Democrats ===
In January 2017, Kulinski joined The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur and former communications leaders of the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in founding Justice Democrats. Justice Democrats is a progressive political action committee that says its goal is to "put an end to Washington corruption and bring about election reform".
Kulinski announced his resignation from Justice Democrats on December 23, 2017. This decision came after the staff of Justice Democrats pressured Uygur to resign following the resurfacing of blog posts he had written in the early 2000s which they argued were sexist against women. Kulinski stated that he disagreed with the staff's decision, but he still wanted to respect their wishes. However, he stated that he still intended to support Justice Democrats' candidates. As such, his was one of the only news outlets who reported on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's primary challenge against Joe Crowley before her victory was announced.
=== 2020 US presidential election ===
Kulinski again supported Bernie Sanders in the 20202 Democratic primaries and was a monthly donor to his campaign. 
After then-candidate Joe Biden became the presumptive winner of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Kulinski stated that he would not support Biden, even if it meant Donald Trump winning. When commenting on this position, Kulinski mentioned that he encourages his critics to "blame him" if Trump were to win re-election, as he believed this would have demonstrated that candidates such as Biden require the support of him and those who share his perspectives in order to win. Journalist Mehdi Hasan criticized Kulinski for this view, stating: "If you’re ok with a white nationalist winning a second term, I question your 'left-wing' credentials." Television host Joy Reid concurred with Hasan's criticism of Kulinski's position.
==Friends==
Kyle has established a number of friends and professional relationships over the years and has had regular conversations with these people. Here is a comprehensive list of friends who he has maintained friendly ties with:
*Corin (from Kyle & Corin)
*Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report)
*David Doel (Rational National)
*Tim Black
*McAuley or "Mac" (Good Politic Guy)
*Saagar Enjeti (The Rising from The Hill)
== References ==
Category:One million subscribers
Category:Commentary YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2008