(In bed with) the Russians

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe 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 Pris

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comFor 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 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, wh

We got out of bed yet again…this time to talk to Miloslav Chemodanov, a Russian journalist now seeking refugee status in New York. He talks about fleeing the war, his experience growing up gay in Russia, about how anti-gay politics are cynically deployed by the government for political control…and a lot more. A note: We had a slight technical issue with the recording…the issu

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe 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 mov

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

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 yasha.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comWe 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.” Swee

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit yasha.substack.comYasha 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 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