(In bed with) the Russians
Episodes
Negative Revolution with Artemy Magun
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When people think about Perestroika in the USSR the general sense most have is that it was a liberal and democratic movement. We talk to Russian polit...
30 Days In The Hole with Tobin Auber
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about Russian films and the hierarchical world of Russia’s intelligentsia with Tobin Auber, an honorary Russian.In the first half, we talk a...
Trapped in a demonic web
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk to Jordan Castro about The Novelist, his debut novel. It’s the only book we’ve seen that comes close to conveying the lived expe...
Borscht Belt Roadtrip
05 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Israel/Russia. Twin problems.
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe finally come out of the haze of our move and record an episo...
Kidnapping on the Moscow Express
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 b...
Country Life
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
California oligarch farmers with Rowan Wernham
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Prigozhin vs Putin
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Better late than never, we talk about the latest crisis in Russia: the head of paramilitary Wagner Group Evgeniy Prigozhin rolling his tanks towards M...
The Soviet Jew: Introduction
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comI’ll be serially releasing The Soviet Jew in audio format on ...
Techno slavery and Ted Kaczynski
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
"Lost Son" with Brett Forrest
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 journalis...
Religion is the new black?
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFirst we talk about Compact magazine and it’s promise to go b...
The Homeless
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We’re leaving San Francisco next month and decided to record an episode about Haight-Ashbury, where we’ve lived for the last year and a half, and ...
No escape from Palo Alto
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk to Malcolm Harris, a journalist and author of the new b...
Mary Harrington's Joyless Utopia
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the first half hour we talk about the Ukrainian war and the attempted assassination of Russian novelist Zakhar Prilepin. Then we move on to our ma...
Against the Vortex w/Anthony Galluzzo
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We have our friend Anthony Galuzzo on to talk about his upcoming book, Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today, whi...
Immigrant Parenting w/Keith Gessen
28 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I have Keith Gessen on to talk about Raising Raffi, his new book about being a dad and raising his son as a “Russian” in America. We d...
Immigrant Deprogramming w/ Dasha Nekrasova
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we do another Immigrant Deprogramming episode — this one with Dasha Nekrasova, the cohost of Red Scare. We talk about her immigrant experi...
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about the new film — How to Blow Up a Pipeline — that was inspired by the Andreas Malm book of the same name. We discuss environmental pol...
All the drugs and all the riches
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe’re back with another episode. In the first half hour, we c...
Filmsuck archives: Chernobyl with Kate Brown
18 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since I wrote a bit about nuclear contamination here in San Francisco and mentioned the work of Kate Brown on nuclear history and politics, I figured ...
Triple Threat: Julian Assange
12 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe recently went to the local theater to watch Ithaca, a new do...
War anniversary
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We recorded this episode on February 26, two days after the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its attempt to take Kiev. We ta...
Sorokin in America with Max Lawton
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we talk to Max Lawton — translator of Vladimir Sorokin, a cult Russian novelist whose cult status has only grown after the start of ...
Being Pagan with Rhyd Wildermuth
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week we talk with Rhyd Wildermuth, author of Being Pagan. We talk about paganism, animism, religion, the Enlightenment, and about reconnecting wi...
The Rejewification of Soviet Jews
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Sergey Serebryany, my uncle. He is a Doctor of Philosophy and a professor of Indian Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanit...
New Year's Fireside Chat with Mark Ames
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For the closing episode of 2022, Evgenia and I talked to our good friend Mark Ames.We touch on a bunch of things — The eXile, his escape from subur...
The Invention of the Podcast with Dave Anthony
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For this ep Evgenia and I talk to Dave Anthony, comedian and cohost of The Dollop, about the politics and history of podcasting.Podcasts are such a bi...
Immigrant Deprogramming w/Andrey
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our Immigrant Deprogramming series by talking to Andrey, a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in 1993 — brought over by his...
TraumaPorn from Adam Curtis
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I talk about TraumaZone, Adam Curtis’ latest doc series. It’s about seven hours long and tries to tell the story of the twin destructi...
Talking SF politics w/Misha Steier
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
San Francisco has a real bad rep in the national imagination these days. If you follow the news it can feel like this place is melting — nonstop cri...
RIP Mike Davis
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I talked to Mike Davis almost exactly 9 years ago on October 31, 2013. I wasn’t sure if I still had the audio from the interview. But turns out that...
The Politics of Technology w/Joe Costello
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I talk to Joe Costello about the politics of technology — nuclear energy, the internet, Wall Street, American democracy, the Romans, th...
"We Are As Gods"
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I talk about “We Are As Gods,” the Stewart Brand hagiomentary that just came out. We were at the film’s theatrical premier in San Fr...
The Jetsonian Left w/Anthony Galluzzo
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I talk to our friend Anthony Galluzzo about his views on the politics of technology, degrowth, the left’s inability to imagine a way of ...
Problematic Russians (preview)
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep Evgenia and I talk about our trip to Fort Ross — Russia’s old colonial outpost just north of San Francisco — and the ridiculous rece...
"More of the same, except worse."
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to anthropologist Jeremy Morris about the internal Russian reaction to the war and how the war’s affe...
Mortals of the Earth Unite!
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Evgenia and I talk to Anya Bernstein about Nikolai Fyodorov, Cosmism, and Russian/Soviet anti-death utopias of the industrial age.Me, ...
Old pogroms and current events
18 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk about the recent work I’ve done on recovering my Ukrainian family’s lost history of pogroms. W...
Crimes of the Future (preview)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I sit down for a late night talk about David Cronenberg’s newest film: Crimes of the Future. A couple of notes. 1. We throw around some ...
Red-washing the war
15 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I recorded a late night episode on the May 9th Victory Day celebration and parade that took place last week in Russia. Unfortunately, not ...
The Immigrant Multiverse
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Michelle Yeoh going into paranoid multiple personality immigrant mode.On this episode of The Russians, Evgenia and I talk about Everything Everywhere ...
History's Revenge
16 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Capitalism — save us and forgive us! Russia, 1991 For this ep of The Russians Evgenia and I talk to Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov about his tho...
Lenin's flesh (and no blood)
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Russians, Evgenia and I talk to Alexei Yurchak about his work on Lenin and the history and politics of the ongoing preservation of Lenin’...
Russians against the war (preview)
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This war’s been going on for a month now. Evgenia and I sit down to talk about it. Some of the things we discuss: the ridiculous online discourse ar...
White Russians in California — Immigrant Deprogramming with Denis Lavinski (preview)
19 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our Immigrant Deprogramming series by talking to Denis Lavinski, an artist in LA, who was raised in the White Russian/Vlasovite-influenced...
The Russian Exodus: Istanbul Dispatch (preview)
12 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands and maybe even tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country in a panic following Putin’s regime change invasion of Ukraine — goin...
“Operation Z” (preview)
05 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A week into Putin’s regime change war, Evgenia and I sit down to talk about our thoughts on what’s happening and about what we’re hearing from f...
Putin's Grievance Speech (preview)
26 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Putin shocked and surprised pretty much everyone in Russia by launching a regime change war on Ukraine. Two days before that, he went on Russian TV an...
“Inventing Anna” (preview)
19 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep Evgenia and I talk about Inventing Anna, the new show that just landed on Netflix based on the story of Anna Sorokin — a young Russian im...
China's Olympic Menace and Immigrant Deprogramming with Carl Zha (preview)
12 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep Evgenia and I are joined by Carl Zha to talk about the insane reaction — including accusations of treason and betrayal — coming out of...
“Navalny,” the documentary (preview)
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A new “Navalny” documentary was all the rage a few days ago, when it won several awards at the Sundance Film Festival. We review this shallow, pre...
The Ayahuasca Special (preview)
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For this ep we have something special for you: Evgenia and I talk about a trip we took a few years ago to the jungles of Peru for an ayahuasca retreat...
Christmas Special: Ghost of Epstein (preview)
25 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We got a Christmas Eve Special for you. Evgenia and I talk about the Epstein case and the reaction to it here in America. The starting point of our di...
St. Paul of Amsterdam
16 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back for another episode of The Russians. Today we talk about Paul Verhoeven’s latest movie, Benedetta, and what unites Verhoeven and Todd S...
Immigrant Deprogramming with Nika Dubrovsky (teaser)
28 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For this installment of our ongoing Immigrant Deprogramming series, we talk with a truly special and impressive guest: Nika Dubrovsky — artist, auth...
Episode #16: Imaginary Futures with Richard Barbrook
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the last episode we talked about the Californian Ideology, for this ep we have on the man himself: Richard Barbrook, who co-coined the term and co-...
Episode #15: Behind the Silicon Curtain (teaser)
24 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We’re back! And we have a new episode from San Francisco, where it looks like we’ll be living for a while. Evgenia and I talk about the enduring p...
Episode #14: The Soviet Jew & good riddance Los Feliz
17 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I talk about my decision to serialize my new book — The Soviet Jew: A Weaponized Immigrant’s Tale — and the difficulty of writing ...
Episode #13: Immigrant Deprogramming with Anna/Аня (teaser)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep Evgenia and I interview Anna/Аня, a fellow member of California’s Soviet immigrant community. We talk about why her parents left Lenin...
Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine (teaser)
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week Evgenia Kovda and I talk to my dad Boris about American movies he watched in Leningrad and the effect they had on him. What’s funny is tha...
Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of Stalker.In this ep Evgenia and I talk about Jewish nationalism and other identities that started cropping up in the So...
Episode #9: The End (teaser)
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is a low energy episode, befitting our new lowly status. We return to the topic of having a baby. We talk about ayahuasca trips, the anti-clima...
Episode #8: Breeders
06 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia at the LA River.We’re about to become parents so this ep has serious breeder energy. We start off by talking about Evgenia’s recent great ...
Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head.
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this ep we talk about Adam Curtis and our lack of excitement about his latest doc series, and how it’s gotten to the point that the promotional i...
Episode #6 Preview: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Separated at birth — a young Navalny and a young Yeltsin. Alexei Navalny — returned from the novichok-dead — is back in Russia, back in jail, a...
Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Evgenia and I talk about the newest Russian film sensation: Serf — a comedy of the Russian oligarchy, by the Russian oligarchy. It’...
Episode #4 Preview: Palestine and Soviet Jews
05 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eating knafeh in Nablus.In this episode Evgenia and I talk about a short trip we took to Palestine last year and get into all sorts of related topics ...
Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews
05 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eating knafeh in Nablus.In this episode Evgenia and I talk about a short trip we took to Palestine last year and get into all sorts of related topics ...
Episode #3 Preview: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac
08 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Eduard and Natalia in Paris, 1989.In our last episode Evgenia and I talked about the sad state of Soviet immigrant literature produced today. In this ...
Episode #2 Preview: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’re about three months late but Evgenia and I finally did it: we recorded episode #2 of our Immigrants as a Weapon podcast. This one’s important...
Episode #1: Russians Against Politics
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Evgenia Kovda takes over and we talk about something that might come as a surprise to a lot of people. It’s the rabid pro-police re...
Episode #0: Alex Boykowich, the Ukrainian Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa
09 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Somewhere in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during WWII. From the personal files of Chrystia Freeland’s grandpa, Michael Chomiak. Courtesy of Alex Boykowich....
Preview: "The International Kingdom of Judah has always been in one yoke with the Muscovite Tsardom of Satan"
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
UPDATE: Listen to the full interview here. I just recorded an interview with Alex Boykowich, who was one of the Ukrainian Canadians responsible for su...