Episode 6: Finesse
What Is Happening Here | Canadaland Investigates
Canadaland
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Who just wants to be a nice guy?"
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Transcript
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| 0:34.7 | There's something I haven't told you yet about why Slava wanted to tell us his story. |
| 0:39.8 | When he first reached out to us, he asked for money. When we said no, he asked if perhaps it could be a |
| 0:46.6 | partnership. We'd work on this podcast together and co-own the rights to it. We said no. If you |
| 0:53.2 | wanted to be our source, there could be no business |
| 0:55.8 | relationship between us. He thought about it for a moment, and then he still told us everything. |
| 1:05.9 | Later, he explained his thinking. If our podcast goes viral, he would still own his life rights, which producers sometimes |
| 1:14.4 | pay for when adapting true stories for the screen. |
| 1:17.8 | My life rights are worth more than the actual telling of things. |
| 1:22.1 | So I just wanted to make sure I continue to keep ownership over my life. |
| 1:28.0 | We asked him which actor he thought should play him. |
| 1:31.0 | Jonah Hill, but he's going to do a Christian bail thing where he gets skinny and fat in the same movie. |
| 1:35.7 | To give his story the best chance of success, Slava hedged his bets. |
| 1:40.8 | While he was talking to us, he was also giving interviews to another journalist, Kate Nibbs, who at the time reported for The Ringer. |
| 1:47.6 | He also wrote and released an e-book titled Finesse, which he says is a work of fiction about the Toronto rap scene, an aspiring music journalist, and drug dealing. |
| 1:58.1 | And, while subject to a court order forbidding him from using a computer without parental supervision, |
| 2:04.1 | he took to Twitter. |
| 2:05.8 | He tweeted using both his real name and various pseudonyms, like Epstein Forever and Feminism |
... |
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