From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, October 24.

Julia Yafi is with us. You may know her reporting as a founding partner in Washington correspondent at Puck News.

She is written recently on how Vladimir Putin may have snuckered Melania Trump into softening

President Trump's stance toward him regarding Russia's war in Ukraine and soften it he did

toward Putin this week. Again, maybe you missed it with all the Gaza and Venezuela and

ICE on the streets and New York mayoral debate news. But did you see Vice President Vance

declare in Israel in yet another story that Trump will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank

as a vote in Israel's parliament, declare that they would? When I asked about it, somebody told me that it was a political stunt,

that it had no practical significance, it was purely symbolic.

I mean, look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt,

and I personally take some insult to it, the West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel.

So there's a lot going on in U.S. foreign policy right now, as well as, of course, in domestic

news, but in foreign policy on the peace track in the Middle East, on the war track in the

Caribbean, and on the leave Putin alone while saying we disapproved track, although Trump did announce new sanctions

on Russian oil companies yesterday's, so we'll get to that, but as Putin continues to bomb civilians

in Ukraine. Well, even with all of that to cover, now comes a new book by Julia Yafi, already

chosen as a finalist for the National Book Award,

with a surprising history of how Russia, of all places, led the world in feminism until it didn't.

And yes, there's a parallel with what's going on in the United States right now,

but the path to a global right-wing merger on retrograde sex and gender roles was very different in the last

century of Russian history than it's been here. The book is called Motherland, a feminist history

of modern Russia, from revolution to autocracy. We'll talk about the book and some of this week's

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