Red Scare - A Thiel as Old as Time

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

The ladies discuss the latest on Ukraine, the return of Russophobia, Dasha's SAG journey and

We're back we're back y'all what a great day to be Russian what a great yeah what a great country to be Russian in as always yeah how are you feeling I'm okay today I was crying like crazy yesterday I was crying I could barely pull it together to go to personal training and then I was crying in the locker room and then I was yeah I was crying and praying primarily yesterday and then what does your black personal trainer think about this conflict he was just like damn that's fucked up and he was like I know how that goes and I was like oh I was like

do a family and he's Haitian and I said do a family and Haiti and he said yeah I don't really he doesn't really know them kind of like Trevor Basil rest in peace we're potting from our actual office today yeah yeah change of pace what an experience the Red Scare headquarters it's nice right yeah it's nice it's a comfy I'm sitting on like a tailgating chair Dasha's sitting on our green velvet couch like a fainting couch shut out to Maddie yeah keeps a keeps a clean house here at here at Red Scare HQ she runs a tight ship she sure does yeah I've got I you see I have all my horny anime dolls yeah yeah I just know I look

down and at this merch shelf and notice that there's a nutcracker here which would be banned under today's current rules because this is a symbol of Russian imperialism he's very cute though no cracker yeah so the docket today I guess war wages on seemingly without end yeah though it's very hard to hard to tell especially because you know when I am upset I'm my cognitive reason reason faculties are even more impeded yeah so it's very hard to make sense of also there's just very much there's lots of like conflicting information there's lots of men online talking about you know military strategy right which

eludes me as well as like lots of people posting maps of Ukraine as if I'm supposed to discern something like what's going on there's like little arrows and like tank and some parts are red and some people are saying yeah that Russia is just crushing and leveling Kiev which from some of the videos I've seen does seem to be the totally devastating case then some people are saying that the Ukrainians are like mercilessly slaughtering the Russian soldiers there was some Belarusophobia I saw that yeah I saw you chipping out on the TL I was so upset I couldn't handle it yeah dude it's upsetting I I for one

I'm looking forward to my first brush with Russophobia so I can you know go and cry about it I feel like I feel like how you know Muslims must have felt when Trump did the Muslim ban yeah except you know never mind never mind I'm not gonna finish that sentence but I saw this Swedish guy named Anders Ostlund who lives in Kiev because he's clearly a sex tourist I thought you're gonna say like some intelligence operative but sex tourists is probably more probably why not both probably both probably both and he said one way to wake Belarusians up might unfortunately be to destroy Belarusian troops in the field once

coffins start coming home to Belarus it might wake up the 90% who didn't protest in Minsk in 2020 then maybe Belarus will really rise against Lukashenko and exit the war my question is why are all of these people like calling for like Russians and Belarusians to protest you can't do that shit over there I mean you can but they'll literally like Belarus especially down a prison sentence a Swedish some sick Swedish fuck yeah thinks he has a position from which to tell Belarusian people to try and overthrow their regime which they've been under for 30 years yeah basically well and it's

crazy because this guy ostensibly has kind of like the knowledge and information advantage because he lives in Kiev you know but I realized that with a lot of these people like they'll be up in there like you know embedded in a war zone or like filing their little articles and they actually like in spite of their like wealth of factual knowledge don't know anything yeah yeah and their blood thirsty yeah well that's natural I feel like the this latest conflict has really brought out people's bloodlust and of course they love war people love war that's Lindy people love yeah it is Lindy it's Lindy to love

war and I was thinking like there's a Susan Sontag quote that's like war is terrible and it is normal and like how quickly war becomes normal is with one of the things that's the most terrible about it makes me horny here's another one from from our friend Anders who I will destroy he said maybe the best way to motivate the Russian the Russian people is to sanction the country so hard that they all lose their jobs maybe then they will miss their iPhones Mercedes and sushi bars so much that they will actually protest against Putin in large numbers these people always tell on themselves too it's like

when Jen Psaki was like okay have a margarita and go to your kickboxing class it's always like they're gonna miss their lattes and iPhones and sushi bars and yeah once these shitty nasty Russians finally do something to stop their corrupt government once we take their ginsu away yeah so the Russophobia Anna well the people that care about those things those hoes ain't loyal already yeah they're not gonna be taken rootless cosmopolitan exactly exactly like they have no love for Putin and that's our prerogative I'm not get me maybe a coke zero or something out of our this is the perk of maybe in the

podcasting there is not that you're gonna have to settle with the room temp yeah yeah but like one of the perks of potting from this office which we've never done before is that there is coke zero on top which feels great and that's a business expense mm-hmm yeah but I think like Russians have historically fulfilled the role of like like they you know Russophobia is like sanctioned racism against white people there's sort of like you know typically that role is fulfilled by Italians mm-hmm in American culture but I think Russians are an even better target because they're more foreign and illegible you know yeah like I

think they're probably scary to Americans they're more Eastern yeah and yet so similar similar to Americans and Americans are obsessed with them right well arguably they're just like the alternate universe they're like the the yin to the yang well yeah it's I mean I think what I've surmised from people that I know in Russia or people who know people in Russia is that yeah Putin is like is D platforming kind of non-state and sank sanctioned right media orgs and stuff like echo and dorshed where I was getting a lot of my news back when there was like the the election Belarus last year or however long ago it was but then

when I'm I was watching like an echo video on on YouTube yesterday and there was it's obviously nowhere near as bad as it is in Russia but even here like much like there was with COVID there's these like little disclaimers that are like this is from a Russian site like yeah or like get click here to get the real the real-estate sanctioned intel or whatever well now it's not a full-on like suppression of the press but there I mean we banned our president from Twitter right our democratically elected president Mr. Donald Trump from Twitter yeah and how is that less heinous than what Putin is doing to the media at

least yeah I mean it's not and also like I sent you that the cursory doc I made a dog and I made a dog because yeah because there was a lot of oh wait is there a cup holder sick yeah you're in a full camping chair yeah the the doc of well it's interesting yeah that the our pod is called Red Scare yeah and now we're in the midst of a little bit of a real I actually bled through my Red Scare Los Angeles apparel sweatpants and I was like no that's yeah no I said I made a really kind of spotty and shitty doc that is by no means comprehensive of all like the kind of cultural institutions that are like boycotting Russian

companies and sources the BDS of yeah of Russia yeah and it's like Nike and Apple Facebook Disney Disney plus pulled Anastasia off of its streaming platform which is not a Disney film okay it's a 20th century Fox film but then I read that they had sort of planned to do that anyway and it was just of course sort of a coincidence like the doctor sees thing like it was like yeah I think there's a lot of that going you know I saw also people being like Tarkovsky was taken off the IMDb like or like come and see was taken off like the real IMDb list of 250 best films or something for reals but I think that also has to do maybe less

with like IMDb proper than people like down voting it or what you know there's there's there's lots of factors at play it's really it's much like the war in Ukraine it's really really hard and confusing and upsetting to know like what is actually going on and who is to blame and who but yeah so like the big ones MSC and Marisk which are kind of shipping giants they suspended container shipping to and from Russia Boeing and Airbus have stopped so where is where are people gonna get all our other sex slaves if they're not putting them in those shipping containers I don't know I mean I'm sorry to keep invoking sex

tourism but yeah Ukraine and Eastern Europe much like Southeast Asia is also a hub for sex trafficking yeah so so it's like another incentive for all these amateur war hawks and independent journalists to parachute themselves into the war zone should we go cuz they're well you know that Michael Tracy announced that he's en route to Poland a Strafsky's in Poland our previous guy that makes sense and I've been texting him a bit because because I really was like you really think these sanctions are are right you really think that this is going to de-escalate things and I don't think yeah that these kind of blood

thirsty journalists are interested in de-escalating no and I think like the sanctions thing like it's really like the jury's out it's like an open question as to whether it will turn Russian people en masse against Putin like he has something like a 70 percent approval rating which I would take with a grain of salt that's very very dubious I doubt that there's no way to know what Putin's approval rating is but I've asked so you know I've asked like Russian friends what kind of the climate is over there and what people's impressions are and of course kind of the liberal Western leaning upper middle-class people in

Moscow and St. Petersburg or like almost unanimously anti-war and but I think like everyday Russians a lot of them are probably pro-Putin's actions in Ukraine you think and I think some of them are for sure yeah and I think a lot of them don't care so much and are mainly concerned with the way that the sanctions will impact their livelihoods I think that's the first thing that people think of in any well the idea is like this is yeah is that things will get so dire that they will revolt against Putin yeah and there's hold him accountable right yeah yeah and but there's an argument the anti-woke film

festival but there's an argument to be made that actually sanctions imposed by an external power unite and galvanize people against that external oppressor and strengthen the local government because yeah yeah people feel like they're hated and targeted and no one likes feeling that way especially if you're like an innocent Russian who has nothing to do with anything is just going about your business who is suffering from us you and impose sanctions so due to a war that they did not want and have no pardon yeah I mean besides being Russian yeah and you see how like kind of like nasty and punitive

it gets like those Russians with attitude guys were tweeting about how like the something called like the International Feline Federation I'm translating from French it like they banned Russian breadcats from being imported or registered in their pedigree book or entered into any one of their competitions and Russia apparently I did not know this has the highest share of cat owners of any country in the world that's cute it's cute but it's you know that's just like that's just nasty like a power move it just like a fuck you yeah and I think the other thing with sanctions that you have to keep in mind is

that they're a highly visible and low-cost method of like stunting on your enemy from the perspective of the of the country doing the or the organization doing the imposing right yeah so it's all I mean it all feels like virtue signaling maybe Ostrovsky and Tracy can meet in Poland and like duel it out they can start a podcast over there bushkin or the element of style yeah so what else Russian commercial flights have been banned over Canadian and European air space mm-hmm yeah well like meaning that you can't I don't think that you can fly to Canada or to many countries in Europe if you're if you have a Russian

passport that's what I'm assuming and you probably can't fly into Russia a lot yeah and I think like airflow like a lot of the kind of suppliers so we just daddass can't go to Russia we can't which is you know like you know I I can't go see my family I know I know I'm like very upset about that I mean obviously like I said it pales in comparison to anything going on in you know I'm very even Belarus but yeah that shit is like heartbreaking to me because my dad's whole family is in Moscow most of them are like getting on in age my plan was to take Lenny over there after he turned one to meet his family members that's

clearly not happening anytime soon I haven't even I mean yeah it's my gorgeous busty cousins are upset yeah Masha just had her like second baby I haven't even met her first baby I it's it's I yeah yesterday I was really just having kind of the intrusive thought that the worst is is yet to come yeah I think so too and that is devastating and the the situation in Ukraine is horrible but hey congratulations on your sag award congratulations on my on my sag award I did see some people speculating that I was on cocaine or suffering from autism up on stage due to my expressive face did you just dissociate I would

dissociate I right before I got on stage will Smith looked me in the eyes and said congratulations and that really shook me cuz I can't couldn't believe that I was it was surreal yeah I was I was I mean I was legitimately overjoyed yeah I was exuberantly happy and I'm very proud to be represent part of the cast of succession I was gonna say represent the Slavic peoples yeah well that too that too that too that a girl from the dirt of Belarus could have such a monument as yeah achievement yeah it was moving to me especially I mean when I was like a struggling actress in Los Angeles who wasn't even in sag I remember

looking at like the sag after building and looking at their little like logo which is like this little actor guy being like that is just like that this man torments me and I like will never make it in this business you know I'm like I'm doomed to be just like crushed and punished by like the spirit of the time so it was but did you watch the the acceptance speech that Brian Cox my colleague made I watched it with the sound off because I never turn the sound on videos when I look at my phone I've like literally never watched a video with the sound on I also watch all the Ukrainian combat videos with the sound

you don't want to hear that I don't want to hear that but Brian Cox did make a statement of solidarity with the people in Ukraine which he was he was right to do he also pointed out that Zelensky was was an actor and he said and we respect that for him and we do I mean that's yeah and then people were kind of being like oh these actors they just make everything about themselves and they think they're so important and guess what it's the sag awards yeah it's for actors by actors it's the screen actors guild where they're to talk about acting yeah we do think acting is important we do think it's the oldest

profession and besides the other one though they certainly overlap yeah they're very related in a way no but it's so stupid and gay to like aren't we past the point now of mocking actors for whatever a certain like perceived faux pause because I mean what's the argument that he wasn't sensitive enough to the geopolitical situation no that he that's no that he just was like well then he spoke specifically about actors in Russia who are being blacklisted essentially for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or which is true it's true a lot of celebrities and public figures in Russia have like openly

turned against Putin yeah yeah and you know are being are being faced as Brian said with like the threat of high trees and for doing so and you know as actors we are concerned with actors so and he has the authority to speak on that because he has worked with like the Moscow theater over the course of his long career and I I stand with Brian I mean I love Brian Cox because didn't he he didn't he come out against cancel culture and also he famously played a pedophile in one of the best movies ever so he's made some gutsy and brazen he's a great Scotsman incredible Shakespearean actor yeah but when I was on stage truly

not strategically placed where I was I really was there because I was hugging Scott Nicholson who plays Brian Cox's bodyguard who I'm very at the cop that's the cop yeah who I've spoken about before I'm very close to and love a lot and I thought it was you know amazing that he and I both and him especially we're up there because he's been on the show for three seasons he's on the show a lot he doesn't get a lot of speaking parts because he does play a bodyguard but he is part of the ensemble and he is a strong part of the ensemble but when when people remarked on how quickly my facial expression changed when Brian

Cox started to talk about Ukraine and Russia that was partly ironically was because I was told prior to going on the red carpet by one of my handlers that if I were to be asked about Ukraine to under no circumstances say anything so part of what was happening with me was I was just sort of you know registering the irony of speaking out against Russian actors being blacklisted for speaking their truth about Ukraine when here in America in Hollywood there is not with this situation in particular so far but there is certainly tons of black listing and things that actors are not allowed to say under threat of not high

treason but of just like obliterating their careers right well in the process is a lot more opaque and unofficial like in Russia if you're you know an actor presenter any sort of celebrity you speak out against the government it is understood that the retribution is handed down from a single source right even though it might be enforced by your particular institution here there we live it's a very Soviet situation because we live by diktat like nobody enforces anything nothing is formalized but you can be canceled if you will yeah by you know if you run your mouth and like it's also an open question whether

any of the kind of institutions or organizations canceling you even have the authority to do so yeah but you know here we are here we are so yeah I think it's like you know different equally shitty systems that's the other that's the other thing you know like I'm not pro-Putin and in fact I always been kind of repulsed by and mistrustful of Putin of course Putin's a fucking corrupt yeah and I you know I agree with everybody who's come out and said like yeah okay he he is a criminal and he's corrupt but you know that's besides the point that can't be like the first line of logic or reasoning when you're

looking to understand his position primarily so you can refute it right or challenge it but also like you know you have to give credit where it's due and in the 90s in the early 2000s he made a gambit with the oligarchs and sort of then went and turned on them and purged this these kind of sources of corruption that were like literally plundering the state sent them packing and I think what he did was institutionalize the corruption so he's like the sole vector like he and his chosen like Silovki or whatever but in doing so he really established a decent livelihood for a lot of people in the country in Russia

yeah and you can't deny that like I think in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union they experienced probably like the highest fall in life expectancy that anyone has ever recorded and yeah I mean it was literally the original deaths of despair yeah we did it first we did it first now we're doing it again yeah USA style yeah and Russians always do everything first and better we're like tastemakers and pioneers amen says I just I want the war to end and I don't have this strategic militaristic mind to know about how to do that I just literally I'm crying and praying for the war to be over so that life can go on

with not so much suffering yeah and that's all really really all I all I want we are not pro-boot and yeah and I mean I think like Ostrowski as much as I disagree with his reasoning and his conclusions did make one very salient I mean he made many but he made one salient point which is like you can't underestimate Ukraine's agency in this what is that it's the radiator sorry some ambient some ASMR I can turn that off maybe give it a shot well the Ukrainians have you know as Ostrowski said nationalism has increased yeah in Ukraine they do have a right to be sovereign if that is what they want well

yeah but they also made a gambit knowingly and willingly that may or may not backfire just like Russia made a gambit knowingly and willingly that may or may not backfire because I think Putin really did probably bank on the fact that it would be like a clean assault like in and out and now there I don't know if they're mired or overextended or if it's you know turning into Afghanistan I doubt it is I think like the reports of Ukrainian victory and glory are probably way overplayed and I think that the Russians are advancing at an alarming rate you think that yeah probably I mean they're just like the

superior arm I don't know I don't know I don't know but if I had to put my money on that just like strictly technically I would say that the Russians are probably winning and things will probably turn out less favorably for the Ukrainians and the Russians though who knows but the Ukrainians did make this they figured they could make this bargain which was that they would rather be under the thumb of the US than under the thumb of Russia and that would mean accepting certain economic and political reforms and certain cultural reforms that were like liberalizing and they but NATO said today they're not going to

enforce the no-fly zone well they yeah they because they shouldn't they shouldn't yeah yeah and also this no-fly zone is like a figment of like I bear like I don't even know what I don't even know what a no-fly zone is I mean it would mean that US and NATO militaries could shoot down Russian planes or Ukraine which would literally lead to nuclear war but that's what they want that is what they want I'm a pacifist y'all y'all folks we don't want it we don't want it I don't want yeah I don't want Ukrainians Belarusians Russians I don't want any Slavic person in a coffin

yeah I don't want it and I mean that's the other thing that I would also say like I don't want people's lives to be destabilized I don't want that's what people on the West do not understand they don't care they don't care first of all they don't even they didn't even know what Belarus was yeah tell maybe a couple years ago a lot of them still probably don't but could you locate Guam on a map mm-hmm two weeks ago but they don't understand that people might not want liberal democracy at any cost right there are costs to overthrowing a regime that are not always worth it for the people who live in those

countries because they've already suffered enough yeah yeah and I think like well okay that's that's I saw Eli Lake was tweeting he said there's Eli Lake he's that guy that does those cartoons no that's Eli Valley okay poor Eli Kessler said to me the other day I hate that there's all these guys who share my name yeah you are I and Talia are like the worst drew names the worst drew names yeah so Eli Lake was like a saber rattling and warmongering yesterday he said there's a temptation to engage China to further isolate Russia this will not work we are in a new Cold War China and Russia are

allies they're out to get us the West needs to understand that we're out to get them to and never mind like the kind of narcissism of thinking China and Russia are out to get you it's like don't flatter yourself they're just serving their own national interests they're not like horny for war like you are yeah but also like the idea Americans are horny for a war that they don't have to fight right well it's always that yeah and Russians are horny for war well Putin's whole denazification thing yeah is bogus well he's I think he's trolling the the Jews who are bankrolling I think he's maybe trolling a

little bit I think he's a little delusional yeah I when I was visiting my parents in February my dad actually was lamenting to me how so much of like contemporary Russian cinema is so preoccupied with World War two yeah and like the heroism of Russia in World War two and I think I don't know not living there but my my thinking is is that I think a lot of yeah the very prominent ideology in Russia it does have to do with this like World War two to nostalgia yes and the the narrative denazification is sort of harkening harkening back to that and and that that that has been something that

has been going on in Russia for some time yeah and he's definitely making like establishing a symbolic lineage between World War two Euro-Russians as denazifiers and World War three Russians as denazifiers for the future but I really do think he's like also trolling Zelensky his sponsor Columnskoy who's like this Jewish billionaire you know not an oligarch just a billionaire just they're oligarchs if we don't like them they're billionaires yeah yeah yeah true if you're a billionaire you can keep your super yacht if you're an oligarch there's yeah well I Peter Teals and oligarch apparently oh yeah yeah yeah

that makes sense yeah but because he's not we have our non grata we have our own all oligarchs but I think like you know I was saying this earlier I feel like the somewhat incredulous response that everybody in the West had to this invasion it totally gels with like their kind of Fukuyama and whatever post-historical approach to history because the Western ruling class the political establishment they really buy into this idea that this economic interdependence that you create through free trade and open borders will keep all countries you know locked in a matrix and keep them in line because

it's it's not only like a powerful deterrent against non-compliance but it's also a huge incentive for compliance like they assume that everybody wants to buy into their like GDP based vision of the world and it doesn't occur to them like Nicolo said in his article on sub-stack which was one of the best breakdowns of the situation that I read that like for Russia Ukraine is an existential matter whereas for America it's merely an asset so like a decline in GDP is the price they're willing to pay right and all of these things you know reputation GDP like immigration opportunities don't

have as much purchase for them by which I mean the the the political class in Russia not the ordinary people necessarily so I mean it remind it like speaking of Peter teal I love when we're doing the docket and things just like dovetail nicely but it reminded me of his like flash of civilizations argument in a Straussian moment which is an essay that I love and recommend that everybody read it's good and I recommend that you read it in tandem with zero to one because they're so blatantly like mutually exclusive but anyway in that essay Peter teal talks about the the question of like Western

civilizational decline and the fact that the West is too kind of a feat and enfeebled to pose a true threat to true believers and he cites the example of like Islamic terrorism which we know now is not the big threat that it was made out to be by you know people like Bush and Obama but he he's talking about how like basically the West stands for nothing and doesn't believe in anything so it can't really enforce this free market consensus because it's unwilling to do what it takes which is use force and incur casualties in like a like open manner like Putin did where he invaded yeah but what does Putin believe in

besides his own that's a good question I don't it's not I don't think I'm not convinced that he is the kind of ethno-nationalist ideal log that he's billing himself as now no because like also the thing to remember about Putin the main thing to remember is that he is a spy which means that he's in the business of telling people what they want to hear yeah and he's like if you do you know if you look at his recent like rhetorical turns he does sound I mean I just think the casualties to him as a brutal corrupt man are inconsequential and I don't think that it is that he you know he believes in something so much

that he's willing to make sacrifices I think that he is probably driven you know egoically by power mm-hmm and the casualties are just of no consequence to him yeah but I think like he's willing to incur the disfavor and ex communication of like the free world the global community to achieve his goals which I don't think are static like they're also dynamic because he couldn't know in advance what exactly the situation would be in Ukraine and how much of it he can write off right well yeah and much like he is invoking the denazification the narrative of a package hello I think it's hi hi oh thank

you thank you hey do you want to weigh in he seemed Chinese so are Russia and China actually allies or are they frenemies that was nice of him to bring the package and sorry what was I saying oh yes right right much like Putin is invoking denazification in this hearkening back to World War two in the West they're sort of painting Putin as this like contemporary like Hitler figure did you see the was a time magazine the cover where it was like his face and the it was like a trump how do you you know like it's like an art history term tromploi yeah tromploi type thing we're like you if you tear off the

paper it's like a Hitler mustache I thought that that cover was actually an example of like really good design okay it was like very very impactful I wonder if I could find it Putin time magazine sorry keep going I don't know God have mercy on us honestly oh the this yes it's a really like cool cover it's like him with the Hitler mustache but it's being like torn off to reveal their most and it says and and the head graphically it's it's graphically very strong which is not not what I'm used to with conceptually it's a little lazy but yes but graphically I think it's the best we can hope for and and then the headline

is the return of history which is you know a little nod to Fukuyama there yeah yeah yeah so I thought that was a strong showing from time magazine but they would Hitler yeah putler yeah well when he you know when Putin came on the scene I think Ostrovsky was right about this he was he was much more non ideological and he cared a lot more what people thought of him mm-hmm and I've never I've never you know pegged to Putin to be a particularly ideological person but he does have like a stable of consistent like sources that he cites that are very ethno-nationalist and interested in like restoring the glory I mean Russia's been

trying to restore the glory of Russia forever yeah yeah they were I'm what are we on they want it to be the third room we're now on like the fifth or sixth room it's like the waves of feminism 40th wave glory yeah though I have a dumb question though maybe somebody can can answer it maybe I can answer yeah no I mean your guess is as good as anybody else's honestly I think like a lot of these like longs and experts know not what they speak of yeah but let me see if I wrote it down but I don't know if I can even find it it's okay a lot of people whose analysis I more or less trust on the topic like Nicola have said

like he said Russia's nightmare scenario is getting dismembered from the West but then there's also an understanding that Russia is actively creating a block of influence that's independent of the West ie by allying with China trying to get ahead of sanctions that sort of thing and I'm curious like how those two things gel in Putin's mind you know what I'm saying because if his worst fear is getting bleostracized canceled whatever from the West but his greatest ambition well this is you know what Nicola is surmising I mean certainly like economically and politically it's a nightmare we want the

Jinsa yeah they want blue jeans yeah but on the other hand sushi he is sushi sushi sushi he's obviously an ambitious man with a Napoleon complex maybe and he clearly does want to create a challenge to the global homo order mm-hmm like why else would he do something so aggressive and unfathomable yeah like he really pulled the plug you know yeah I mean the question is is that is that challenge is that alternative to the global homo order right really better mm-hmm which I died out or really all that different all that well yeah yeah yeah because ultimately American cultural hegemony will reign on even I think it already had

yeah yeah even if America gets weaker kind of economically and geopolitically which it has the culture is strong yeah yeah and yeah nobody like nobody wants to be Chinese or Russian so maybe some people want to do want to be Russian maybe it's time for for Russia to take its rightful place as the superior culture I mean my hot take was it wasn't someone pulling Dostoevsky out of like curriculum in Italy or something yes I'm some university in Milan some stupid whop was and they I think they fired the conductor of like Morinsky theater or something some opera singers bar from the from the the mat but like

my hot take as an art her story in is that Russia has a comparable and equally strong artistic legacy to that of the West I would say stronger yeah they have all those wooden churches made without nails all the equine mm-hmm which we've grown to love yeah what what's that look no no no yeah I agree they have literature portraiture the most grand chess grandmasters in chess yeah the theater I wonder what Gary Kasparov is up to invented naturalism speaking of actors yeah Stanislavsky change the game before that every actor suck I'm looking at the vulture piece I sent you of the the cultural institutions boycott

ingrussian involvement formula one and its contract with the Russian Grand Prix Spotify closed its Russian offices indefinitely live nation is canceling which is like a touring thing canceling dates Glasgow Film Festival dropped two Russian films from its lineup met opera will no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin are supported by him Carnegie Hall canceled performances by some Russians FIFA bands Russian teams ahead of the World Cup in Qatar what oh Qatar so it will call it but it's actually pronounced Qatar oh yeah which I learned when I had a layover there that's fucking crazy yeah

international judo Federation Taekwondo strip Putin of his honors I bet that's like for him Venice Biennale Venice Biennale removes the Russian pavilion Ukraine pavilion response Eurovision Eurovision bars Russia from competing European Film Academy prohibits Russian films from the European Film Awards can bands Russian delegations pending on the outcome of the war Eurovision is just so cruel that's the hardest that's gonna be a tough pill that's raw and this is all that might be the yeah cats in the Eurovision yeah that might get them just the audacity to tell people to be protesting in a

country that you don't fucking live in and don't know what it's like to live in and don't know what it's like to be beaten by Russian Belarusian police forces and I have so much contempt for these kind of like also like if feet and enfeebled institutions like the Venice Biennale fuck the Venice Biennale isn't that where all those people like a dock collapsed and they all fell into the water and it was actually like it looked like a beautiful it was like the raft of the Medusas and then it looked like a beautiful historical painting it was like a bunch of people with like a lanyard's oh I don't know and like clip

boards I don't know falling into the water I'd like to show a film there one day but I'm doesn't seem to seem likely where at the Venice wait I thought the Venice Biennale with it's like an art event right no it's a film oh the film festival okay but there's an art event called the Venice Biennale maybe maybe I might think yeah as well yeah yeah no it's ridiculous to like a punitively and cruelly strike out like individual I don't see the art world doing too much actually I'm sure they will well so many oligarchs be yeah contributing contributing but the oligarchs I think have a very choppy relationship to

Putin and to Russia they're not like I don't think like Abramovich is like a Putin pal no no because they they were all chased out yeah and kind of like I don't know like Berezovsky killed himself in bold quotes strangled himself kind of like Epstein style yeah yeah um Hedarkovsky is in London doing color revolution shit yeah that's another thing America and Russia have in common is well murdering the corrupt adversaries and making it look like I'm not even gonna go down this this route because it's it's like try it pointless but it's like such a double standard we murder journalists no we

don't murder journalists not yet but we certainly do business with countries that murder oh absolutely and we murder political opposition but anyway I I do think that like the climate of Russophobia is probably gonna get worse do you think they're gonna put us in a internment cam in a gulag do you think they're gonna do you think red scare is at risk do you think we might get finally get D platformed that's a good question I'm sure we'll land on our feet also the thing we always do Russian hate unlike Asian hate is that it's kind of hard to tell who's Russian when you're just like walking down the

street you know yeah it's not no it's true yeah we're not gonna be getting Jesse Smollett yeah though that would be a good move for me yeah yeah I have been getting post SAG awards there have been I have been getting like anonymous messages from people being like your days on the show are numbered cuz you're a pro-Putin sympathy really yeah yeah where on Instagram really on it's actually really embarrassing because a lot of my colleagues on the show are not widely maligned online the way that I am yeah when they like post pictures with me and stuff they'll get like comments from you know rabid succession fans being like

get this Russian scum off your show yeah the showrunners hate Russia and I hate you and your days are numbered that's no it is really embarrassing I remember like having I forgot who I posted a picture I like storied a picture with somebody who was like kind of like a normal journalist and got a bunch of hate or like I've gotten when people post pics with me people comment like she's a fascist. I feel guilty pulling people into our retarded orbit. It makes you feel pathological. I know I'm like I swear I'm not toxic yeah it's just the culture yeah yeah it's just the Russophobic sentiment and like it looks bad it rubs off on you you know

poor it like yeah yeah and then you have to like double down on being like a positive influence and a good person that doesn't feel right either like shit yeah when Simon asked to come on the show I was like okay it's not gonna be like the kind of PBS stuff you usually feedback you usually got I'm sure he knew it going in but Instagram is like a very positive and low stakes platform for me even though I am shadow band because people just like are overwhelmingly nice mm-hmm like you go girl congrats on your family but actually like last week I started getting like a lot of Russian hate and I was

like okay I mean I think it's really funny yeah I'm not like it is funny it certainly doesn't hurt my feelings yeah but I do get a lot of like Russian Kant messages and I'm just like okay cool yeah I should start responding yeah that's a good use of your time trolling yeah but I I feel like I expect it'll probably get worse like in general not for us yeah like Russian tea room right didn't they have to like tack a sign to the wall they made a pre-emptive pro Ukraine yeah my question is how is this gonna affect the stock specialty gourmet shops in Brighton Beach because I like to run up in there and yeah we're gonna

make a gold supply mm-hmm they stopped carrying Baltica at KGB bar because the owner is Ukrainian wait what Baltica the beer wait but what why cuz it is a Russian beer it's a Russian beer but they replace they replaced it with a Ukrainian beer oh I see that I'm look forward to trying after Lent is over because I am observing you explain Lent to me what's up with the Ash Wednesday yeah Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent okay where in Catholics remember that they are dust and the dust they will return and then you undergo a period of 40 44 days until Easter I think it's 44 days this year of you make a Lent in

sacrifice mm-hmm a lot of people give up chocolate that's what the movie Chocolat is about mm-hmm it's about a chocolate here opens a chocolate shop during Lent but I am giving up alcohol okay and eating Taco Bell well because I do be doing that too much and it's not it's not a sin to eat Taco Bell but it's not good for me and it's yeah you just sort of meant to yeah it's a period of pettenance for one sins and abstinence from things you would enjoy yeah well I I love it when myself sacrifice links up with my self-interest and like ooh I can't drink alcohol and I'm I can't eat yeah I'm fasting and I'm close and I'm closer to

God than ever yeah totally okay cool so you it's it's sort of like Ramadan for Christians yeah you got to give stuff up yeah yeah yeah okay good to know exactly I like that every religion has like a month or something do you think like giving up I mean giving up alcohol is definitely gonna have some effects you think giving up Taco Bell first of all how often do you eat Taco Bell three two to three days a week okay that's a lot but all in that is also connected to my drinking I see cuz I'll be drunk and we eat Taco Bell so they'll they'll they'll happen in tandem and I God will give me the strength to abstain from these

earthly pleasures that I love so much yeah Taco Bell not on the list of who owns Taco Bell not Mexican no no clue no clue not russians not russians yeah so should we talk about the BuzzFeed yeah yeah why not I guess BuzzFeed Joe Bernstein over at BuzzFeed news published an expose on the NPCC mm-hmm which stands for the New People's Cinema Club mm-hmm I guess mm-hmm but obviously is also kind of a clever little mpc like a non-playing character previously preemptively known as the anti-woke film festival yeah the director of which was this young man named Trevor Brazil who was meme Lord

and former programmer I guess at the Borscht Film Festival in Miami I believe he was from Miami mm-hmm and he was the yeah the creative director of this I'm no I'm hesitant to call it a film festival honestly because it seemed like they did a lot of podcasts including us the one we did with John Waters yeah it was part of their it was part of their programming so does this mean we are getting paid by Peter Teal or we didn't get paid for that I don't know yeah that's right I forgot we did not we did not get paid to participate in the NPCC Fest mm-hmm partly because John Waters speaking fees are so exorbitant so he's

getting paid by Peter Teal he's getting paid by Peter Teal how do you like that your favorite queer director yeah actually on the payroll of fascist paymaster Peter Teal but not us we're in the clear because we didn't really see a dime really from that no we didn't even we didn't even really get that many pages and we didn't me maybe sold some merch yeah I don't think very fruitfully yeah it wasn't our best it did have love John Waters he clearly did not know who we were that's okay which is fine but it did have a little bit of like a elder abuse hostage crisis vibe to me as someone who who was there he was

a good sport he was a good sport he's a great he's a you know he has his talking points and we love to hear him mm-hmm so no no shade towards him so Trevor Brazil tragically died mm-hmm from a drug overdose like the day after the day after the festival the festival ended and the article sort of makes well you read it right yeah I felt like the the Russians advancing on a strategic location in Ukraine it was a real slog and route and I thought it was quite ugly to sort of use this young person who very tragically died as this like public city centerpiece for this article that didn't really make a ton of super salient

points I mean there's no story the story is that this queer black kid died and is now the main character and he probably the the reporter probably had to like strain to give him kind of an outsized dramatized arc mm-hmm within this organization mm-hmm in which he was by no means the sole organizer right by linking him to Teal who probably did not even know who he was or what this festival I'll read the paragraph this is like this was like a particularly I also you know in full disclosure I mentioned a couple of episodes back right that a reporter had contacted me and I didn't about Peter Teal and I

didn't say more but this is yeah who what like what this ended up as and at the time I was you know reluctant to talk to him not because I have anything to hide but a because I knew there was no story and be because I don't trust reporters nope but I'm so cocked I end up giving them mixed signals anyway like I don't I'm like some woman at a bar you know flirting with a guy like I can't just say no yeah you're like maybe I'll give you my number and we'll connect later yeah and I just like keep kicking that can down the road but here's the paragraph oh why Bazil wanted anything to do with Teal the billionaire

venture capitalist pro-trump political donor and magnet for liberal fear and loathing was in one way very simple Bazil was the creative director of the New People Cinema Club a controversial film festival and Teal helped fund it why Teal wanted to anything to do with Bazil a queer black experimental filmmaker who supported himself by scooping ice cream is less obvious and it's like no offense but Peter Teal didn't know who Trevor Bazil was he probably was fairly unaware about the specifics of this film festival and like this is you know I said this to the reporter I was like listen I don't know

anything about Peter Teal or his investment strategy but it's very clear that it's like a volume game for him as I said before he just like flings darts at a board and then something sticks right like there's no and Hadrian beloved who appointed Trevor as the creative director of the film festival was the one who obtained the funding through his association with Curtis Yerubin yeah precise this is all kind of out in the open and documented I immediately had a really bad vibe from from this endeavor and I knew something really bad was gonna happen yeah and I'm really sad about what happened to Trevor

me too and I we yeah we were not up in that loft I'll say that much I'll say that much that was off the party the party loft oh no that all you know I'm too old and spiritually obese to go to cool it was debauched I'm sure it was debauched it was satanic on par with Astro worlds to me and it seemed yet to be to be driven by Hadrian's desire to sort of redeem himself as because he used to be a programmer it's in a family until he was I believe unjustly canceled yes he has you know been on this redemption arc that to me became a parent as being a way of salvaging his ego yeah and I think Trevor was

instrumentalized by this festival by this sort of cultural venture that was you know not really in service of transgressive art or some kind of based vibe shift but just pure egoic pursuits well I mean and that he was a casualty of that I don't know I mean how much can we say like I'm struggling with whether I'd rather be honest or polite you should be honest but the fact of the matter is that like this festival which is barely a film festival it's a film festival only a name it's basically like a podcasting and content creation festival was the victim not of the political climate not of any kind of

like censorship campaign it was the victim of its own poor planning and organization that's the story yeah and like I think it's forgivable and maybe understandable but there's nothing I mean to make it a question of like transgressive art in the post-trump age is just like patently false and I think again people now are like more paranoid and conspiratorial than ever and they try to establish these like Ukraine warm-up linkages between various kind of right-wing figures on the internet and it's like well Hadrian and Curtis and Peter Thiel are buddies yeah you know it's not that deep yeah in the article

Hadrian is quoted as saying art is more interesting than politics and it's impossible to create good art when you're always looking over your shoulder you need a certain freedom from concern to create scared artists never win and that's why everything sucks now everyone's scared so he's basically making this old argument that art and politics should be separate but he's the one that made it political yeah by yeah he kept invoking cancel culture and yeah creative censorship or whatever and there was almost an undercurrent where like you could feel like they wanted to be cancelled they were like relished in

much like Ariel Pink was yeah and then he went on his like boo-hoo I'm cancelled campaign afterwards when he literally was asking for it to use that terminology very deliberately and Bernstein also makes this point that they kind of unfairly earned the moniker anti-woke film film festival that was like you know that's just simply not true that they were ordered it that they were going to call it yeah they were going to call it that and when they approached us to get us to sign of a very informal loose loose contract sort of binding us to doing the John Waters show that said anti-woke film festival on it I said no way am I

going to send this to my representatives and my distributors because I will not I do not want to be affiliated with something called the anti-woke film festival which is when they rebranded it as the NPCC and I think a lot of that branding was irony poison cynical misguided did not endear people to it besides the most kind of debauched hedonistic people who were using it as an excuse to do a bunch of drugs in some sinister loft and feel that they were partaking in something transgressive yeah and I think the way that if you want to put on a transgressive event the way you do it is with utmost discretion you

don't blow up your spot in advance that was that was a big mistake yeah that's that's and I mean can you blame people for you know not wanting to associate with something like that it's not because they were cowards who feared being canceled or kind of social professional reprisal it's because people you know are not retarded and they caught wind of the fact that it was like destined to I don't know I don't want to be mean I don't know if it failed it like I don't think it felt like you know we success for what it was yeah but I think like it was imperfect and like you know I hope that there is a better more well

organized iteration that isn't is less political right because there are problems you know because I do believe in like the underlying message of it that's not you know the one that's outside of the doing copious amounts of drugs in a doomed satanic loft yes yes I agree with that but there's there really is this it's like but the methods were reactionary and that was where it failed yeah and it's it's like it's like fawn antifa like there this is my issue with like the so-called post left they it's like yeah it's like fawn antifa they need the cancelers to exist they need them for their momentum they're also

locked into like a yin and yang style like combat zone right and that to me is just like unspeakably gay and if there was something really knew it would transcend that whole paradigm mm-hmm which frankly this did this did fail fail to here's another quote from Bernstein in the days leading up to the NPCC festival Bazeel had confided in gay penny that he feared there was no organic reason for it to exist beyond tails money and beloveds ego so when gay penny saw Bazeel on the last day of the festival he congratulated him he had pulled off something on his own terms but Bazeel scoffed I don't think I have

the capacity to do this anymore he said cryptically about the festival I need you to rip it to shreds and then it goes into yeah Bazeel's horrible death yeah what a tragic and depressing capstone like that was also like a moment of vibe shift mm-hmm but like a very bleak one mm-hmm my favorite part like on a lighter note my favorite part of the art article was when he calls Carl Bezier a journalist lol that guy needs help yeah I listen my my theory is that he's Red Scare's number one fan mm-hmm he does he do be listening do you be listening mm-hmm just stop dude he loves he loves pressing play the minute

man just go to therapy conjuring up like paranoid webs of associations and freaking out about the political connotations of a podcast name is not journalism that's mental illness mental illness love so I'm sorry yeah yeah I don't know it's I personally don't understand why this article needed to be written yeah someone had to do it someone had to do it yeah someone had to make those tenuous connections mm-hmm and you know like I'm very sympathetic toward Joe Bernstein even though I generally loathe journalists and reporters with the exception of Michael Tracy because like yeah he has he's like

you know a nice Jewish boy with a beautiful Armenian wife they have a baby who looks like he could be Lenny's cousin they have another one on the way like beautiful family God bless them we're powered to them but like I should have you know been honest about it and put my foot down and I'll try to be less of a cock in the future but I resented almost the line of questioning mm-hmm he didn't reach out to me yeah I know wonder why mm-hmm yeah whatever well I think that he probably thought that he would get more mileage out of me because of the kid thing yeah yeah more more of it in okay how long have we been going

almost an hour 20 oh whoa okay any last any parting words about RIP Trevor yeah that's really all I have all yeah all I really have to say pray for it's too bad it's peace in the Middle East has that approximate rhyme and pray for praying has pray for peace in Ukraine yeah just and congratulations on your sag word also you looked beautiful and like a real movie star and Eli and I really so proud of you thank you and I wasn't on coke I don't do coke I just don't know why you would be on coke in that type of setting like it seems like I'm just a flinch I'm just a flinchy like nervous person I just I wouldn't

want to be on any kind of like a mind or body altering drugs because you could really embarrass yourself yeah I was really or wet yourself trying my hardest not to do so it would have been great to have my Jennifer Lawrence moment wait what it does she did she trip to the Oscars and I did trip actually but backstage and immediately said my Jennifer Lawrence moment but I was yeah I was not under the influence of stimulants or drugs of any kind I was just a girl that was very excited to get an award sorry from fag hag to sag hag hey did you meet any celebs yeah yeah well you meet you met Kirsten

Dunst I met Paul Reiser cover handed you he did which whatever I get it in this climate but I was really excited to meet him because I said I love Matt about you I said I only date Jewish guys because I grew up watching Matt about you and I thought that a blonde woman and a Jewish man was what a relationship should be the most natural coupling and I think you're so great and I don't think the Kominsky methods gonna take any any actors home that's what they call the trophy the actor they say the actor goes to which is a little confusing but cute yeah where's your where's your trophy it's in my room I put it like on them

where I keep all my plans I I sat next to Patrick Wilson who is married to a Polish actress who we should have on the pot actually she's an actress on succession named Doug Mara and she's married to Patrick Wilson who is seated next to me and Maddie at the at the thing I think maybe there were some other celebs I encountered but I can't recall it was all such a blur because I was on so many drugs anyway see you anyway pray for Ukraine pray for you we'll see you in hell