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We finally come out of the haze of our move and record an episode in our new underground studio — next to a newly installed radon gas pipe.

We cover this week’s current events and talk about the latest development in Israel — and some of the similarities between Israel and Russia. We also talk about the deeper reasons for why Putin arrested rightwing monarchist Igor Strelkov. And I talk about the 1999 Russian-French movie East/West and how its cartoonish portrayal of the Soviet Union as nothing but a large prison led to the ideological swing in the other direction — and the current weaponization of Soviet nostalgia by the government in Russia today.

—Evgenia

PS: I mentioned an ep we recorded with filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov. Listen to it here: “History’s Revenge.” After we recorded this ep Boris Kagarlitsky — a Marxist sociologist and activist — was arrested. I think our take on Putin’s ideology explains why it happened pretty well.