(In bed with) the Russians

Mar 07 2025 131 ep. 52 mins 52

(In bed with) the Russians Podcast artwork

Bedtime stories with Evgenia and Yasha.

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Red Scare Bonus Pillow Talk

Mar 07 2025 1 mins

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe recorded this in bed over a week ago while we were in Miami — mostly for our ourselves…to talk through some ideas and concepts. We weren’t going to release it. But I gave it a listen and I thought we had a great conversation — genuine pillow talk before going to bed.Some of the things we disc

"Anora" and Russians at the Oscars

Mar 04 2025 3 mins

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe record an emergency ep to talk about Sean Baker’s sweep at the Oscars with his new film Anora. We talk about Sean Baker’s sentimental style and his “changemaker” interest in stories of marginalized people. He comes from good New Jersey suburb but the only layer of American society he’

Red Scared

Mar 02 2025 95 mins

We continue our discussion of Red Scare’s turn into a real red scare platform. We have been doing deconstruction of their rhetoric on Twitter the past week, which has been going viral and has been drawing all the nastiness and poison of the Red Scare universe to the surface for everyone to see. And we’ve come to a very grim conclusion about the nature of this podcast project, a

Back to the Future

Feb 17 2025 3 mins

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe talk about my recent epiphany that the scary and volatile world of Russia that I grew up in post-collapse in the 1990s might be the future of America, rather than a distant, embarrassing past that I used to think was irrelevant to my new life here. Turns out I’m a time traveler of sorts. I am from

Red Scare's Wake

Feb 12 2025 120 mins

We talk about the rise and fall of Red Scare, America’s once-coolest Soviet immigrant podcast. They lost their edge. We’re #1 now.Want to know more? * The Secret Power of Lex Fridman* Konstantin Kisin's KGB Konnektions* …other eps — and subscribe! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yasha.sub

The Theatre Experience with Matthew Gasda

Feb 08 2025 86 mins

We talk to playwright and theatre director Matthew Gasda about his plays, his theatre company Brooklyn Centre for Theatre Research, and the zeitgeist of the post-COVID downtown New York scene. We talk about how theater is a peculiar art form for a millennial to be engaged with, as it is completely offline and intentionally unrecorded, un-televised, and impossible to make viral on s

Soviet lit for kids with Nika Dubrovsky

Feb 04 2025 91 mins

Artist and author (and mother) Nika Dubrovsky is back on the show to talk about Soviet cartoons and Soviet literature for kids and the unique radical progressive ethos children’s culture had in post-revolutionary Soviet society. We talk about the utopian book series Dunno, about poems by Marshak and Chukovsky, who is considered the Russian Dr. Seuss, and we compare them to the Am

Konstantin Kisin's KGB Konnektions

Jan 29 2025 88 mins

We continue our journey through the weaponized immigrant podcaster universe — this time with Konstantin Kisin. Konstantin, a hack comedian turned political podcaster, is a classic weaponized immigrant — or a “court Russian,” as Evgenia calls it. He embodies all the tropes of one: gross subservience to “Western civilization,” trafficking in stereotypes about the savage t

David Lynch, LA fires and influencers

Jan 17 2025 101 mins

Evgenia and I sit down in the attic to talk about David Lynch’s passing, my failed attempt to make a Lynch film in my early 20s, and the similarities between Lynch and Philip K. Dick. We also talk about the end of California and how America’s vibe has shifted east to Florida and Miami — a full-speed-ahead death drive into the abyss with gaudy partying and conspicuous consumpt

LA fires, billionaire farmers, and the end of the Hollywood dream

Jan 10 2025 1 mins

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe talk about the fires in Los Angeles, Evgenia’s precog abilities that stopped us from moving back there, the similarities between me and Roman Polanski, and my reporting on the billionaire farmers and old oligarchic land speculators that built LA and California. And of course water — we talk about