NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

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Borscht Belt Roadtrip Aug 05, 2023

Show notes

We can as well rename the podcast to “The Jews,” since we can’t stop talking about them. This week we first talk about the country life and our utter incompetence at it. Then we go on and on about the Jews — mostly the ones in the Catskills, where New York Jews used to spend their summers in their own little vacation ghettos until the 1970s when they became “white” and joined the mainstream. Now a whole new wave of Jews is taking over the region: neo-trad religious types that are creating their own shtetls.

—The Russians

A few notes.

A few books on Jews in America that we like: An Empire of Their Own, which charts how low-class junk peddlers found themselves building Hollywood and controlling the movies. Then there’s one called Followers of the Trail, a book of interviews with people who attended a Jewish communist family camp in the Hudson Valley set up by Jewish workers and which is now a liberal vacation spot stripped of its old radical history. Also, back when Bernie Sanders was still a thing, Yasha wrote about the old Jewish world that used to exist here in New York — a world that produced Bernie, a politician not very much liked by most American Jews today. Also, the last WYSK has a bit more on the religious trad takeover of Upstate New York.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

Israel/Russia. Twin problems. Jul 28, 2023

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com

We finally come out of the haze of our move and record an episode in our new underground studio — next to a newly installed radon gas pipe.

We cover this week’s current events and talk about the latest development in Israel — and some of the similarities between Israel and Russia. We also talk about the deeper reasons for why Putin arrested rightwing monarchist Igor Strelkov. And I talk about the 1999 Russian-French movie East/West and how its cartoonish portrayal of the Soviet Union as nothing but a large prison led to the ideological swing in the other direction — and the current weaponization of Soviet nostalgia by the government in Russia today.

—Evgenia

PS: I mentioned an ep we recorded with filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov. Listen to it here: “History’s Revenge.” After we recorded this ep Boris Kagarlitsky — a Marxist sociologist and activist — was arrested. I think our take on Putin’s ideology explains why it happened pretty well.

Kidnapping on the Moscow Express Jul 27, 2023

Show notes

This is another audiobook installment of my ongoing book The Soviet Jew. Part One of Chapter One: Kidnapping on the Moscow Express.

It’s starts out by telling the story of how one Palestinian group came to believe that Israel was using Soviet Jewish migration as a weapon against Palestinian nationhood — and tried doing something about it.

—Yasha

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

Country Life Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

We talk about our epic move from San Francisco to the Hudson Valley this week and about cultural curation as a job. We also discuss the phenomenon of How Long Gone and wonder if we might be the Ted Kaczynski of podcasting.

—The Russians

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

California oligarch farmers with Rowan Wernham Jul 05, 2023

Show notes

We talk to our old friend — filmmaker/designer Rowan Wernham — about the trip he and Yasha took to California’s Central Valley, where they got to see a zombie lake, rotting pistachio orchards, and some oligarch farms that got flooded this year. We also talk about Pistachio Wars, the documentary about California’s weird and rapacious planter class that Rowan and Yasha have been shooting, and which will finally be done this year.

—The Russians

PS: Yasha posted photos from their trip in his previous WYSK.

Sunset beers on the shore of a California dystopia.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

Prigozhin vs Putin Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

Better late than never, we talk about the latest crisis in Russia: the head of paramilitary Wagner Group Evgeniy Prigozhin rolling his tanks towards Moscow and then changing his mind in the last minute and retreating to Belarus. In his last communique, Prigozhin published a voice message saying he wasn’t doing a coup or a mutiny — he was just doing “a justice march.” Joke’s on you, Putin!

Anyway, things are back to normal now…normal war.

—The Russians

P.S. Yesterday, after we recorded our ep, Putin released another 5-minute speech that is like a sad stand up routine where he acts like there was no treason, thanks Wagner soldiers and calls them brave patriots, and completely backs off from his threat to persecute the mutineers. Big loser vibes.

Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians…and subscribe.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

The Soviet Jew: Introduction Jun 22, 2023

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com

I’ll be serially releasing The Soviet Jew in audio format on our pod. Today’s installment is the introductory chapter. More will follow once a week or so. The full audio is for paying subscribers only.

—Yasha

Want to know more? Check out The Soviet Jew, listen to previous episodes of The Russians and…subscribe.

Techno slavery and Ted Kaczynski Jun 20, 2023

Show notes

Our last episode from our Haight-Ashbury living quarters. We talk about the cult of technology, the annoying self-driving cars that have been taking over San Francisco, and we discuss Ted Kaczynski’s work — what he got right, what he got wrong. RIP Ted.

Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians…and subscribe.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

"Lost Son" with Brett Forrest Jun 13, 2023

Show notes

We talk to our old friend Brett Forrest about his new book Lost Son and about the war in Ukraine — which he experienced firsthand as a WSJ journalist stationed in Kiev on the eve of the invasion and reporting from Bucha right after the Russian army retreated from there.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe

Religion is the new black? Jun 05, 2023

Show notes

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com

First we talk about Compact magazine and it’s promise to go beyond right and left, while sneakily trying to sell organized religion as something new. We also discuss why disaffected liberal feminists and former pickup artists choose Jesus Christ.

In the second half, we discuss nuclear family propaganda in American children’s books and what’s different about the communist-era Czech hit cartoon “The mole” and the iconic Soviet kid’s book “Uncle Fyodor.”

—Evgenia

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