NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We got out of bed to talk to artist and filmmaker Andrew Norman Wilson about his work and his viral essay in the Baffler about the impoverished jet-setting life of an artist without a trust fund. He’s now turned the essay into a talk/stand up show he performs in New York. What he talks about is relevant to all...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We’re back in bed, struggling to stay awake, talking about October 7…one year on. Things we discuss include our wedding anniversary, the genocide, losing friends, the limits of rationalism, Yasha’s zi-fi novel, Zone of Interest , Philip K. Dick…the Black Iron Prison has captured us all. Full episode available t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We took our podcasting from bed concept to its logical conclusion: Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage style video content. We finally went full internet. We’re streamers now. We talk about Philip K. Dick and his wife Tessa who seems to be living in poverty, PKD’s concept of the Black Iron Prison, VALIS, gn...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com For the first half hour we talk about the Hebrew god, zionism, and Yasha’s newfound vocation as the self-appointed Chief Rabbi of All Jews. Then we discuss the opening salvo of Israel’s digital device bombing campaign in Lebanon and about all the nukes that Yahweh has. And in the last twenty minutes we talk abo...

We get out of bed again to do a quick ep on Pavel Durov, his arrest in France, what happens when you run a successful international tech business like Telegram without playing by the rules, and how this all fits into the thesis of my book Surveillance Valley . The fact that Durov isn’t tied into the US imperial-military complex like his biggest competitors — including Signal, which was launched wi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We get out of bed to talk to Corey Robin about the evolution of Jewish politics in the United States and how this politics has regressed to an older European model. The Jewish mainstream now only looks out for its own narrow interests, working through centralized orgs to lobby for protection and has moved away...

We got out of bed this time to talk to Vadmin Nikitin , a journalist and blogger born in Murmansk, about his immigrant experience. We had a really interesting talk. Vadim’s story is unique. His father, a captain on a fishing ship out of Murmansk, was sent to the U.S. to get an MBA during perestroika. He took Vadmin and his family with him and while they were in America, the Soviet Union ceased to...

An emergency broadcast from bed. We talk about the secretive and surprising prisoner exchange between America and Russia and get into the details of some of the cases we’ve been following for years. Sweet dreams. 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 are lying flat in our NY bed…back from Montreal. We talk about the latest political news, movies, the death of journalism, and about writing fiction vs. nonfiction. Also if you power through to the end you’ll find out which wildly successful writer Yasha calls “a cisgender white walrus.” Sweet dreams.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com Yasha is back from San Francisco and we talk about his reaffirmed disdain towards the city where he became an American. We also talk about David Berman and his rabbinical poetry, the documentary about his 2007 Israel tour, and the newly surfaced fan fights about whether he’d be supporting Israel or not right no...

We talk about Daniel Simonsen, a Norwegian comic who is blowing up in the New York comedy world. We also talk about another Norwegian, Kris Borgli, who is blowing up in the movie world with recent films like Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario. We discuss how dark Nordic humor is similar to Russian humor. We also answer a reader question about why we don’t live in Russia. All from bed in a hotel roo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We react to the debate, live from Manhattan, sitting on a couch. Yasha gets infected by Biden’s dementia and babbles incoherently while Evgenia tries to shoo him off the mic and into bed. Sweet dreams, The Russians

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We chat about the trauma of immigration. Yasha likens it to a traumatic brain injury, like a stroke and reminisces about his immigrant circle in San Francisco and why they were so heavily into psychedelics, which was a kind of attempt at self-therapy. Evgenia talks about her own “internal immigrant” experience...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We answer a couple of listener questions and mostly digress a lot. * Is NYC still cool? * Where do you find fulfillment and purpose within a culture that hyper-individualizes every aspect the journey? We didn’t have nearly enough time to get through all the q’s you sent in. But we’ll keep answering one or two i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We tried to be professional and recorded an episode after an intense petty marital fight, which usually happens after we put Eya to bed and then bicker like lowly employees whose boss has caused a rift between. I manage to gather some thoughts about an indie play I saw in NYC last week while Yasha was stuck on...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com Even though Yasha was annoyed to be recording a podcast rather than sleeping we manage to have a quite robust discussion from bed — real poisonings, fake mushrooms and fake prophets, my life as an investment banker and a single mother in a parallel reality, the now more visible evil doings of the American Empir...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com It’s a bit uncomfortable to have to write this because we only vaguely recall what we talked about before falling asleep last night. As far as we remember we chatted about Yasha’s theory of the Dentist’ Plot, decrepit parents, our recent visit to the now-cleared CUNY encampment, 1990s Russia and the docuseries...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We talk about the western phenomenon of “the MILF,” American malaise, and how grandparents are the new parents. Then we chat about Russian politics and a new documentary series released by Alexei Navalny’s movement — The Traitors — which expands on a very late realization Navalny had while in prison: that Yelts...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com As we fall into the dream world we talk about the Soviet zombie film we’re working on, historical Jesus and real Judaism , and Yasha’s impeding transformation into Les Grossman. Sweet dreams.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com At bedtime we talked about nootropics and drugs, Israel, history as a sub-genre of fiction writing, Celine, PKD, documentary filmmaking as upper class leisure…and more. Listen to our previous ep where we talk about our, eh, rebrand . Sweet dreams.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com We’re trying out a new podcast format where we record from bed before going to sleep. Last night we talked about the Huberman scandal, psychiatry and drug use, Villeneuve’s Dune, the ISIS-K attack in Moscow. We also talked about Evgenia’s precog abilities but our recorder malfunctioned and so that part was lost...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com What is Jewish identity without zionism? We talk to professor and rabbi of Fire Island Shaul Magid about the big question that’s dividing Jews all around the world. In his new book , Shaul tries to decouple zionism from the state of Israel — making the point that zionism is detrimental to Israel and should beco...

This is a recording of a book launch of Anthony Galluzzo’s Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today —  in which he examines our society’s techno-utopianism and attempts to chart a new way forward past our dead-end productivist society. I moderated the discussion by stayed mostly out of the way. It was a great talk. Check it out, follow Anthony, and buy his book !...

We talk to Fergie Chambers of the Cox family — one of America’s wealthiest clans — about class traitors and the failure of individualist ideology to provide meaning. —The Russians A couple of notes. Bari Weiss’ media op tried to do a hit piece on Fergie a few months ago but ended up writing a balanced and fair portrait. We mention a biography of Lenin by David Shub. Check more on it here . This is...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.com In this last episode of the year we talk about our recent trip to LA and our new life out here in the Hudson Valley. One thing is clear to us: the cult of California is on the wane. That state, more than any other, represented the limitless frontier of technological progress. Lots of people still cling to it, b...