Jacobin Radio: Katie Halper; Murray Mednick and Maury Sterling

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Suzi and Alan Minsky talk to Katie Halper of WBAI's The Katie Halper Show about the role of independent media and politics in the Trumpian landscape we inhabit. Then Suzi speaks to prolific, award-winning playwright Murray Mednick, whose enigmatic "Mayakovsky and Stalin" runs until August 19 at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood. The play examines two lives and two suicides, related but distant, responding to the liberating freedom of revolution in the Soviet Union, but then increasingly strangled and suffocated by the top down brutal dictatorship of Stalin, played by actor Maury Sterling (best known as Max on Homeland), who joins the conversation. The play traces the parallel stories of the giant of Russian poetry, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and his relationship to his love and muse, Lilya Brik (darling of Russia’s avant garde) and her husband, the literary critic Osip Brik. Their relationship exemplifies the freedom from conventional mores in the early years of the revolution. The second life and suicide is that of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin's young wife who committed suicide during a state dinner in 1932, renouncing her husband and his horrific policies, reflecting her despair and suffocation being married to the supreme dictator while millions perished.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Jacobin Radio and I'm Susie Wiseman.
0:09.0	On this podcast, Katie Halper of WBA's The Katie Halper Show
0:17.0	joins us to discuss the role of politics in the Trumpian landscape we all inhabit.
0:22.0	She's an astute commentator and a comedian. in the Trumpian landscape we all inhabit.
0:22.8	She's an astute commentator and a comedian,
0:25.1	a writer and broadcaster, who brings us her insights
0:28.4	as we look to understand the political contours of the present.
0:32.0	And then playwright Murray Mednick and actor from Homeland
0:35.9	Mori Sterling join us to discuss the play, Myakovsky and Stalin,
0:40.7	now playing at the lounge theater in Hollywood. This remarkable play is about
0:44.8	two distantly related suicides in 1930 and 1932 in the young Soviet Union
0:51.1	one of the giant of Russian poetry, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and two years
0:56.1	later of Stalin's wife Nadezda Alileleva, in many respects the plays also about the
1:01.7	gap between the stated ideals of the revolution
1:04.8	and the harsh reality and fear of repression that increasingly dominated the lives of Soviet
1:09.8	citizens Estell and Rose to become supreme leader. We'll get their take on this and the
1:16.0	challenges that Mori Sterling faced in characterizing Stalin in his
1:20.0	incredible performance. All this when we return with Jack event Radio. Welcome to Jacobin Radio and I'm Susie Weisman Radio and I'm
1:37.1	Susie Weisman and I'm joined now by producer and director Alan Minsky and
1:41.1	Katie helper. Katie is the host of the Katie Halper show at WBAI.
1:46.6	You can catch your podcast at Patreon.
1:49.3	On iTunes and SoundCloud, but also for extra goodies, extended interviews and bonus content at
	...

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