This week in the Petersburg studio (Lily's room) we're joined by social entrepreneur, activist, and all around inspiring human, Olya Polyakova. We talk about how she documented her arrest and 12-day detainment for peacefully protesting in June, how to best use the toilet in a 2-person prison cell, what it means to feel freedom in the city, and why it's important that Ksenia Sobchak is running for president. Follow Olya on Instagram: @PolyakovaPolyakova Watch the tour of her cell: https://www.you...
Oct 24, 2017•46 min
We talk with Lily's friend Nastya all about Russian movies since perestroika. Well we were supposed to, but we lost most of the recording. So instead we bring you a baby episode about heating pads (get one!), and a theory about how The Return and Leviathan, both directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, exemplify Russia's changing relationship with The West. Fear not, in the future, we'll re-record a full episode on Russian film. Telegram channel: https://t.me/shesinrussia
Oct 17, 2017•14 min
Another variety show! This time we listen to clips from U.S. media specifically from the first year of Putin’s first term as president, resuming our peanut gallery position with light commentary and analysis. The clip topics range from Clinton and Bush’s brief overlap, to Bush musing about Putin’s soul, to the thorn in the two men’s 8 year relationship as presidents together - what to do about anti-ballistic missiles. We also check in with this week's protests in Russia, and shill for Turkish Ai...
Oct 10, 2017•48 min
This is the ryumochnaya - a humble drinking house featuring hard liquor, maybe some beer, an assortment of open-faced sandwiches, pickles and perhaps some other simple, hearty fare. Also known as the place you go to drink cheap vodka by the milliliter. We went to some of St. Petersburg's finest ones, got really drunk, and interviewed some other drunk strangers. Here's what we have to show for it. Telegram channel: https://t.me/shesinrussia
Oct 03, 2017•45 min
Rob Reiner’s latest production is an absurdly sincere piece of civilian propaganda -- the freshly minted Committee to Investigate Russia (website + trailer starring Morgan Freeman), whose advisory board consists of a hodgepodge of 'non-partisan' figures, ranging from liberals to centrists to never-Trumpers. We go through this latest iteration of Cold War II content and connect it to the larger contexts of American jingoism and Hollywood’s peculiar history of politicizing. Telegram channel: https...
Sep 26, 2017•59 min
With Sean Guillory of the SRB Podcast, we map out the Russian Left (not just Navalny folks!), question why Russia is always expected to mimic America, and go on some fruitful tangents about the likes of Jefferson and teen-aged John Quincy Adams. Check out Sean's podcast at seansrussiablog.org, he does good interviews. Telegram channel: https://t.me/shesinrussia
Sep 19, 2017•53 min
This week’s episode is all about Russian-language rap: the history, how to think about race in a non-American paradigm, and a nice set of samples from some Russian artists. Telegram channel: https://t.me/shesinrussia
Sep 12, 2017•45 min
This episode we discuss three things with Lily’s dear friend Maksim: a NYT op-ed that posits Russia as America’s foil, the recent rap battle between Oxxxymiron and Gnoyniy, and the dubious arrest of theater director Kirill Serebrennikov.
Sep 05, 2017•46 min
On this episode we switch it up a bit and bring you a menagerie of clips; from special CIA movies made for Reagan, to the second-hand embarrassment of HRC’s “reset” button moment, to the voice of the Soviet Union in America, we give our analysis and hot takes. We discuss the hypocrisy of American exceptionalism, struggle through a clip of 2016’s final presidential debate (who’s the puppet? -__-), and get a little into how race influences how we see Russia and Russians. Also, the infamous airplan...
Aug 29, 2017•1 hr 9 min
It's 1905 and this is the story of how a Siberian peasant mystic w/ apparently real healing powers and a propensity for debauchery and assault befriended the last royal family of Russia (and contributed to their demise). Scandal, intrigue, murder - and all because the heir to the Russian throne was a 'bleeder'. Also, Lily is outed as a decadent cosmopolitan and Smith intercepts an unrequited love/catcall.
Aug 22, 2017•46 min
Wait, was the annexation of Crimea illegal per international law? To answer this question, we start at the beginning -- the 15th century, when Crimea was ruled by the ottoman empire and was the center for the Slavic slave trade -- and end at present day. The Ukrainian crisis and the annexation of Crimea mark the beginning of the so-called Cold War II. On this week’s episode we answer the questions: What laws did the Russian government break in annexing Crimea? How do we balance the will of the C...
Aug 15, 2017•1 hr 17 min
The topic for this week is writer/journalist Masha Gessen’s 2016 book Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region (despite our nitpicking in the episode, we very much recommend reading this book). Via our discussion of Gessen’s text, Soviet Jews and Jewish identity, we try to connect and articulate a larger theme in Soviet/Russian history of absence and the unfinished, unreal, and failed positive projections that attempt to fill these absence...
Aug 08, 2017•1 hr 39 min
Changing up the format for this week, we decided to do a little check in with American politics, in case you need help keeping up. Plus some stories from Lily’s daily life in Russia. Smith presents the meat of the episode with several hand-selected moments from the absurd mayhem that is US politics this past week. Topics include Trump & 40,000 Boy Scouts, everyone and his brother crooning over “The Maverick” McCain (aka when you get sick, people forget all the bad things you did), how Americ...
Aug 01, 2017•1 hr 6 min
On this episode Lily tells Smith about the housing crisis in the Soviet Union and how Nikita Khrushchev sought to solve it, namely by building lots of prefabricated concrete apartment buildings all over the USSR, known collectively as Khrushchevki. The proposed demolition of many of these very buildings is the subject of an ongoing debate in Moscow today, with multiple generations of residents coming out to protest the destruction of their homes, and their impending relocation. We talk about wha...
Jul 25, 2017•52 min
It truly feels like reality is trolling you when a central topic for debate in American politics and media involves a mediocre (at best) Russian-Azerbaijani pop star, his real-estate mogul father, a rando British publicist/ tabloid journalist, Miss Universe 2013, a medium-profile Moscow-based lawyer, the Russian Prosecutor General, and Trump’s eldest son's poorly thought-through email thread. On this episode we revisit the topic of Russian government meddling in the 2016 elections, also known as...
Jul 18, 2017•1 hr 4 min
Pussy Riot was/is a mostly anonymous feminist activist/performance art group formed in Moscow in 2011, in a time when widespread protests (main protest slogan of the time=”For fair elections”) were unfolding across Russia. A notorious protest-performance in early 2012 got three of the members arrested. What ensued was a highly public trial, and, for two of the accused, a brutal sentencing that main painfully evident (to regular Russians and foreigners alike) some of the more frightening aspects ...
Jul 11, 2017•1 hr 27 min
This week it’s story time. Lily talks about the stairwell in her new apartment and then reads a short story by Sergei Dovlatov called 'The Colonel Says I Love You', published in the New Yorker in 1986.
Jul 04, 2017•1 hr 11 min
Between 2015 and 2017 Oliver Stone met and chatted with President Putin on film, the result of which is The Putin Interviews, a 4-part series that aired on Showtime (US) and Channel 1 (Russia) this month. Joined by Gracie, our first guest (!), we react to the spectacle of this production, discuss Stone’s interviewing skills, and the unfortunate charm of the Russian President. Cover art by Sam Woo Staar Theme music is "Shit Happens" by Tierra Whack
Jun 27, 2017•1 hr 34 min
Yes, Trump seems to be some kind of horrible stimulus-response automata, with a weirdly specific vendetta against [most] people. But maybe he's not wrong when he says all this Russia stuff is a witch-hunt. Automata get it right sometimes, just by chance I think. On this episode we discuss the Russia Meddling Investigation (Trump, Putin, Hacking, Collusion) and all of its entanglements, try to sort through the burgeoning toxicity of the word "Russia," and give Rachel Maddow a piece of our minds. ...
Jun 05, 2017•1 hr 31 min
The past several months have seen some of the biggest protests in recent Russian history, and they've been largely galvanized by the work of one man: Alexei Navalny. Navalny is well known in Russia as an active critic of corruption and the main opposition politician standing up to the cronies of status quo politics. Western media likes to frame Navalny as the prodigal son of Western Democracy, admiring his disdain for Dmitry Medvedev’s duck house and other displays of corrupt decadence. Navalny ...
May 30, 2017•1 hr 3 min
In May of 2013 Edward Snowden leaks thousands of documents to reporters demonstrating the breadth of surveillance by the NSA on the American people. In June, he lands in Moscow seeking asylum from a government infamous for its poor record on human rights. What ensues is a series of American-Russian political reactions, an absurd novel authored by Snowden's own pro-bono lawyer, and Putin’s patronizing praise for the NSA-whistleblower -- "he's a warrior for human rights." Cover art by Sam Woo Staa...
May 30, 2017•1 hr 19 min
A little intro to our podcast, She's In Russia -- our small attempt to ward off Cold War II.
May 30, 2017•4 min
