Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the new abnormal and we thank you so much for being here.

Today we have an extra special guest with Joseph Weisberg who is of course the creator and showrunner of the amazing show of the Americans.

And he's good to talk to us about his new book today. Russia upside down.

Welcome to the new abnormal Joseph.

Thanks Molly.

It's very exciting when we have a guest who is in the intersection of entertainment and politics.

I'm at that intersection. That's where I'm at. I never thought of it quite that way.

I'm living at that intersection. That's right. So I want to know the story of how you came to this book because I think it's cinematic.

So go. Molly, I'd like to tell you that this book is at the intersection of entertainment and politics.

You know, I had a sort of a bouncy and an interesting route but it really did run through those two places.

You know, I was always really obsessed with the Soviet Union and remained obsessed with it after it collapsed.

And I also had spent a couple of years working with CIA. So I was very interested in intelligence and espionage and whatnot.

And I published a spine novel about a decade after I left the agency.

I got a call from an agent in Hollywood who said, would you like to write television?

Because we're always looking for spy shows.

And I had an answer looking for a career. I was a novelist but I wasn't looking to get into Hollywood except I was broke.

So I was looking for a job. I didn't even know it.

Exactly. And that sort of started this, you know, I'd gone down this path probably in the early 90s

where I had started rethinking the Soviet experience and my kind of early notions that Ronald Reagan was right

and it was an evil empire, you know, it was a big time cold warrior.

Did the CIA pick you up a Yale?

No, I called them. I literally looked them up in the phone book,

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