Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen Debate Russian and American Politics

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2019

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen have, taken together, written more than a dozen books and a thousand articles. Keith Gessen is a founder of n+1, an influential literary journal; Masha has written for major newspapers and journals as well as, since 2014, The New Yorker. Their parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in its latter days. Keith has spent most of his life in America, but Masha, who is older, returned to Russia as an adult and worked there as a reporter. In a conversation at the 2018 New Yorker Festival, the siblings discussed their different perspectives on the U.S.-Russia relationship. All through the Mueller investigation, Masha warned people not to expect a smoking gun to prove collusion between Putin and Trump, and then, somehow, this fierce critic of Putin was branded an apologist for his regime. Masha’s most recent book is “The Future Is History”; Keith’s is a novel, called “A Terrible Country.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.8	Masha Gessen is one of our keenest observers of Russia and Russian politics.
0:19.6	She grew up in the Soviet Union in its latter days,
0:22.3	emigrated with her family to the U.S., and then returned to Russia as a reporter. So she's got
0:27.9	a unique perspective on the U.S.-Russia relationship. And all through the Mueller investigation,
0:32.8	she warned people not to expect some kind of magical revelation or smoking gun of collusion between
0:39.4	Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. In 2018, she sat down at the New Yorker Festival with a guest
0:45.8	she knows pretty well, her younger brother, Keith Gessen. So this is a completely self-service panel.
0:55.0	We're going to talk about ourselves, interview each other, introduce ourselves.
1:00.0	So this is my brother Keith.
1:02.0	Keith Gessen is a founder of the magazine N Plus One, and he teaches journalism at Columbia University.
1:10.0	He's written two novels, most recently
1:12.9	a terrible country, which came out last year.
1:17.5	Okay, this is my sister, Masha. She is the person in whose shadow I dwell, but in fact,
1:27.1	it is more like she is the sunlight.
1:29.3	Yes, in whose rays I grow.
1:32.3	Oh, okay.
1:34.3	So I'm very happy to welcome to our conversation.
1:37.3	Yes.
1:38.3	I will ask the first few questions, if that's okay.
1:41.3	That is fine.
	...

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