Podcasts

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  July 27, 2026: Rallying Around the Flag

  Russia Decoded This week’s Vesti Nedeli broadcast focused not on victory but on hardship. Russian correspondents fanned out from Volgograd to Vladivostok to report on fuel shortages, ten-day blackouts in Crimea, and the sixth successful Ukrainian strike on the warehouses of Russia’s largest online retailer. After four years in which most Russians have experienced the

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  The Cost of Second Place in the AI Race (w/ Jamil Jaffer)

  Three Questions For years, American labs held an uncontested lead in artificial intelligence. That is no longer obviously true: Chinese open-weight models have closed much of the gap, and by some measures have pulled ahead. The stakes are not merely commercial. Whoever leads sets the terms for what the world runs on, who gets access

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  July 20, 2026: Getting Down to Business

  Russia Decoded With Dmitry Kiselyov away on vacation, the latest Vesti Nedeli fell to a substitute host, Yevgeny Popov, and the resulting broadcast felt like a different show entirely. Gone were the familiar tropes, the bandits and fascists and postmodern flourishes, replaced by a stripped-down, fact-heavy recitation of the news. As Kiselyov’s propaganda machine idles

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  July 13, 2026: “Time Is on Our Side”

  Russia Decoded This week, Vesti Nedeli contrasted the two warring nations: Russia endures mere discomfort, from gas lines to rationing to rising prices, while life in Ukraine becomes unsustainable, with empty Patriot batteries, draft riots in Lviv, and Russian missiles landing at will. The message to Russian viewers is unmistakable: “we are taking some blows

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  Russia’s Pain at the Pump (w/ Sergey Vakulenko)

  Three Questions Since April, Ukraine has dramatically escalated its drone campaign against Russia’s oil refineries, knocking out a substantial share of the country’s refining capacity and triggering gasoline shortages from Crimea to central Russia. What was once a nuisance for Moscow has become something closer to a full-blown fuel crisis. Yet the strikes’ effects are

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