Don't Know Much About with Naya Lekht
Jul 16, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 11 segments
What happens when a scholar of religion turns his critical eye on the very ideas he once championed? On this episode of Don't Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with writer Kile B. Jones, a man who…
Kyle JonesGuest
Naya LekhtHost
I want to ask you what you meant by when you said I was a leftist, like what, what were your core beliefs? Like, what does that mean to you then? Not now, I guess, but because.
I think it's so interesting to me because when I was in college, I met many fellow peers who were also communists.
And then when I returned back to college as a grad student, I would see them tabling with like Engels and Marx literature and the communism and all that.
So I would always ask, and I'm curious to get your answer, I would always come up to these students and say, okay, but everywhere that it's been tried, everywhere that this idea has been operationalized, it's been not just failure, it's been like massacres of people have to be killed.
oh yeah get it right and they didn't I'm like okay one time you don't get it right two times you don't get it right you know that like but we're like talking Venezuela China Cuba North Korea Soviet Union the Soviet bloc countries like did you ever did anybody ask you like when you when you believed in these ideas did you think like oh they just didn't get them right I'm just curious like
No, no, that's a great question, because it actually is a difficult thing for people to answer.
I want to ask you what you meant by when you said I was a leftist, like what, what were your core beliefs? Like, what does that mean to you then? Not now, I guess, but because.
I think it's so interesting to me because when I was in college, I met many fellow peers who were also communists.
And then when I returned back to college as a grad student, I would see them tabling with like Engels and Marx literature and the communism and all that.
So I would always ask, and I'm curious to get your answer, I would always come up to these students and say, okay, but everywhere that it's been tried, everywhere that this idea has been operationalized, it's been not just failure, it's been like massacres of people have to be killed.
oh yeah get it right and they didn't I'm like okay one time you don't get it right two times you don't get it right you know that like but we're like talking Venezuela China Cuba North Korea Soviet Union the Soviet bloc countries like did you ever did anybody ask you like when you when you believed in these ideas did you think like oh they just didn't get them right I'm just curious like
No, no, that's a great question, because it actually is a difficult thing for people to answer.
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