NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

We come back from our break to do some light but cutting literary gossip and criticism. Our focus: the millennial essayist Sam Kriss. Kriss is one of the last erudite men of letters and blesses us all with his uber long Substack pieces that weave medieval history and current politics and go for tens of thousands words. Brevity is soul of the wit, as some dead British guy said. But to Kriss verbosi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We’re posting part two of our conversation with Dmitriy Khvorostov (aka Artur Dugin, son of Alexander Dugin) about politics, art, and culture in Russia today — specifically we discuss what Russian traditionalists think about America’s new right. If you missed part one, you can listen to it here: Sovereign Art .

We had a small 35th anniversary screening of Ghost at Kingston last Saturday and I had a talk with Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for it. The movie was the biggest box office hit in 1990 even though it was an original screenplay and a story that was both melodramatic, funny, scary, and spiritual at the same time. “Just like life,” as Bruce would say. It’d be hard to im...

A YASHA LEVINE VAMPIRE CASTLE TRANSMISSION With the Charlie Kirk assassination, political influencers are freaking out. It’s dawning on them that the Spectacle is not just an abstract entity. They’re realizing deep down inside that all the hate and misery they pump out into the Spectacle can be made flesh. And that this flesh can be killed. And that this flesh can be theirs. I wrote about this yes...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We dial Moscow to talk to art curator and philosopher Dmitriy Khvorostov (aka Artur Dugin, son of Alexander Dugin) about art in Russia and about current attempts by Russians to find a new sovereign identity after the war and their rupture with the west. You can follow Dmitriy on Telegram at Sovereign Art . PS:...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We put on our matching army green outfits to talk to Ori Goldberg — a former academic and a dissident Israeli — about what it’s like to live in a society as it commits genocide. (Spoiler alert: They’re mostly fine with it. Ori thinks maybe one out of a hundred Israelis opposes the slaughter in Gaza.) —Yasha

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We had filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov on again to talk Russian politics in the age of war and global realignment. Does the “Russian Idea” have anything to offer? Is there something there that’s unique? Can the Russian people be convinced to be enthusiastic about a centralized capitalism? Andrei was recently arrested...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We have a great time chatting with historian Greg Grandin about the end of the American Myth, collapse, America’s war against itself, Clinton and MAGA, how the USSR propped up the social welfare state both in America and Europe, toxic nationalism vs universal nationalism, individualism under capitalism vs commu...

Been thinking about the Vampire Castle that is the internet and how we’re being drained by information, so I sat down to talk about it a bit. I come across people all the time who can’t read anymore, are revolted by screens, made sick by technology, their minds overstimulated, groaning under the weight of news and shows and infinite content…and yet they still can’t log off. Few of us can. We can’t...

Evgenia joins me on the phone from the Duchy of Moscow for a late night convo about what’s happening in Russia and about what to her feels like the dawn of a new era for Russian society. You heard it here first… Sooner or later, for better or worse, a real monarchy is coming to the Russian Federation. —Yasha Vintage Lenin for sale This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other...

We talk to Andrew Kay about the political and cultural aspects of psychiatric disorders — looking specifically at how OCD has gone mainstream because of the kind of society in which we live. We start by talking about Andrew’s great Harper’s essay in which he chronicles his own struggles with OCD and recounts his participation in an OCD convention in San Francisco — where participants paid good mon...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We got out of bed to talk to Rania Khalek — who joined us from Beirut. What started this conversation was an offhand remark Rania made about how living in Lebanon, a country that is being attacked and invaded, is less stressful than being in America, where it seems everyone seems on edge and nervous and ready t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com If you missed it this morning, here is a recording of our first book club livestream/chat about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep — about how Philip K. Dick is a philosopher-prophet of our technological age who just so happened to have worked in the pulp sci-fi format and how the novel is a metaphor for the c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We do some pillow talk about Iran — discussing the year Evgenia spent going native in Tehran, her education as an “Iranist,” and about her experiences and her thoughts on a society that America and Israel now want to obliterate. Most people in the west know next to nothing about Iran and picture it is some kind...

We lie in bed, do pillow talk about our attempt to put a pie in Curtis Yarvin’s face and the cowardice of today’s media personalities — and how all fights are purely online now, no one does anything in real life. We also discuss the degeneration of the Red Scare women — who went from being genuinely popular and open to how they are now: keeping the details of shows secret and only inviting tiny gr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We talk to John Ganz about how the USA began to unravel in the 1990s, when it no longer had the USSR to keep things in check. This 90s identity crisis has gained momentum and is playing out today with the rise of Donald Trump, the crisis of liberalism, and the push to go back to a pre-New Deal America.   Some o...

Joe Costello returns to the show (and joins us in our attic) to talk about how the industrial revolution killed American democracy. Among topics we discuss are: the politics of technology, Trump as pure distilled America, the civilizational similarities between the USA and USSR, how technology changes society and induces amnesia, why the internet didn’t lead to democratization, how the USSR was a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com John Dolan (aka the infamous War Nerd ) joins us to talk about Philip K. Dick. Some of the topics we discuss: what first got John into Russian culture, sci-fi, growing up in California during America’s golden age, PKD as the 20th century Kafka, American decline, how Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner compares to the o...

We talk to novelist Nick McDonell — whose wonderful book Quiet Street recently reviewed — about his life among the most privileged people on the planet: the Park Avenue set. 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We talk to Oliver Bateman about how body building culture, with the help of the internet, took over the world and helped forge a path to our century of the modified self.

We discuss the Twitter scandal I unwittingly caused by talking about the connection between children and art . What was meant as an offhand remark made people angry beyond belief. The thing, as I find out, is that “kids” are a touchy subject in left-liberal creative circles, largely because America is schizophrenic place where the economic reality and culture are very out of sync. As I recently wr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We have Branko Milanovic, an economist born in Yugoslavia, on to talk about class and inequality in the USSR. How was power transmitted across generations, if inheritance was abolished? Why did the Soviet Union collapse? One takeaway message: Want more social mobility? Time to do some purges! —Yasha Branko prob...

We discuss Evgenia’s essay on Too Hot To Work . Some of the things we talk about are: the crisis of liberal feminism, incels under communism, how socialism is actually good for women and men, the unattractiveness of plastic surgery…and more. —Yasha Subscribe to NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS and help yourself thrive in these uncertain times. As always, check out some of Evgenia’s other essays: This is a publi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We recorded this ep on the centennial anniversary of the Great Gatsby but end up having a wide-ranging convo about culture, religion and politics — people’s obsession with the hereditary rich, the difference between religious vs secular values, meeting Todd Solondz and his vision of what life is like in the sub...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com As promised here’s the live taping of our AGAINST NIHILISM event at the KGB Bar — as a bonus for our subscribers. Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it this time. We’re planning to have another one sometime in the summer. Thanks to everyone who came out. It was great to spend the evening with you all in person. —...