Being Pagan with "The Russians" (Yasha Levine and Evgenia Kovda)

Another great podcast discussion: how to listen

For your listening pleasure, here’s another great recorded discussion in which I participated recently. This time, it was with

Yasha Levine

(author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet) and writer and filmmaker Evgenia Kovda on their fantastic podcast, “The Russians.”

The audio quality was excellent, and our conversation was both easy and very engaging. Evgenia and Yasha are deeply intelligent people, with a really important perspective on our modern situation sorely lacking in US-centered discussions.

I was really thrilled they invited me on, especially since a previous discussion they’d done with Anya Bernstein on the very bizarre history of cosmism, a transhumanist philosophy dreamt up by a Orthodox Christian in Russia, Nicholai Fyodorov. That interview had led me on a wild chase down subsequent paths exploring the later metaphysics of Soviet thinking. Also really good was their conversation with Anthony Galuzzo.

Our discussion centered on my book, Being Pagan: A Guide to Re-enchant Your Life. Specific topics we talked about were, among others:

• The end of “the enlightenment”

• Western exceptionalist ideas of time

• The persistence of the Pagan past into the present

• Pagan versus neo-paganism

• Magic as atrophied/unacknowledged human capacity

• Alienation and the problem of modern identity

• The “management” ideology’s affects on modern life

• Ethnic identity as a historical guide

• Modern gender identity versus animist soul-dualism

• Identity as a “consolation prize” for lack of community and meaning

• The problem of trying to “escape” the body

• Animist relationality as antidote to environmental destruction

• Increased interest in the occult as a sign of a crumbling center

You can listen to the episode at the link below (currently for paid subscribers of Yasha’s substack—definitely worth your money).

Being Pagan with Rhyd Wildermuth