



It may seem surprising that the most genuinely transgressive of the triumvirate of “Irony Left” New York podcasts is the one hosted by two uniquely beautiful, model-esque women, one blonde and one brunette, who lampoon body positivity and satirically allude to their anorexia as a running gag, but Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan make trenchant, occasionally cruel observations about gender, sexuality, politics, and pop culture that would result in the permanent cancellation of the bravest man. While they identify as Bernie-supporting socialists, the underlying theme of their show is a reactionary yearning for traditional gender roles. Dasha expresses how she wants to be treated like a baby, has never had to learn how to torrent because she has always had a boyfriend, and holds a bemused admiration for hentai, little girl roleplay, and the kind of starved, sub-legal female sexuality that Calvin Klein and Kate Moss transmogrified into corporate capitalist art of the highest degree, while Anna muses on the forgotten allure of a man fighting for a woman’s affections, the libidinal death involved in urban millennial relationships which invariably turn with time into “emotionally codependent sibling-roommates,” and the dystopian medical horror of condoms and birth control.The show began when anvideo of indie actress Dasha, endearingly dressed as a sort of anime sailor with beret, went viral. In it she is quizzed about the impracticality of socialism by a blonde reporter, who is clearly trying to make her look stupid but comes off as the less interesting and likable party. Dasha sips on her iced coffee and sardonically eyes the camera, in a moment that defies audience expectations of bias confirmation and political party lines. I was confused and intrigued by it, initially assuming her to be an average DSA hipster. How wrong I was.Both women are the children of Russian immigrants and are blessed with an unflappable Slavic stoicism in the face of their numerous haters, who not inaccurately label them dangerous crypto-fascists and react with transparent sour grapes jealousy that such women can “have it all,” that these extremely online art hoes rose above the herd to craft a cogent artistic and political statement for which there is no correlate in the barren, neoliberal-dominated cultural landscape of the 2010s. Witness how Dasha and Anna deflect the middling complaints of the bluepilled, bluechecked masses on their Twitter and Instagram accounts, which as with all media today form part of the extended universe of the show, with a few well-chosen bon mots, never letting on that anything upsets them while projecting fully fleshed and vulnerable characters nonetheless. The audio is only one facet of the show, and the ladies’ keen aesthetic eye is demonstrated by their choice of theme music—Russian girl group t.A.T.u.’s lipstick lesbian pop hit “All the Things She Said”—and visual excursions like their Valentine’s Day live show, withQ&A delivered through a Million Dollar Extreme-esque Chaturbate interface with scrolling comments about Russian collusion and paypigs.Neoliberal moral panic looms in the background of the show, and part of its subversiveness is just how casually the ladies toss off forbidden, self-evident truths: that Russian collusion was a scam concocted by the Democrat Party and the fake news media to salve the wounds of Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing loss to Donald Trump; that #MeToo is and was always a dangerous, large-scale, masturbatory exercise in Hollywood millionaire self-absorption and virtue-signaling; that no insipid “separate the art from the artist” argument is necessary to consume and enjoy the work of dubiously cancelled men like Woody Allen and Louis C.K. They have devoted entire episodes to intricate defenses of Woody Allen, calling Mia Farrow a power-mad, vengeful shrew as though blithely unaware of the last twenty years of escalating feminist rules of propriety. A frequent theme is the lack of inspiring public figures and intriguing aesthetics on the Left, while the Right is overrun with them: Kellyanne Conway, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and of course Daddy, @RealDonaldTrump, the first meme-savvy and truly hilarious American President, whose sardonic dismissals of haters and losers and brazen, crude masculinity make him a singular countercultural icon for those who have personally felt the iron fist of neoliberal puritanism. Anna is the first person to share my opinion of Lena Dunham, whose misunderstood work occupies a similar space to—that her intelligent and truthful vision was compromised by her catering to the relentless affirmative action demands of intellectually limited liberal critics.Asflirts obsessively with homosexuality and “The N Word,”flirts obsessively with the “Deplorable Alt-Right” that Hillary Clinton warned voters of on the campaign trail. In “The Climate is Cancelled,” with cancelled guest Deanna Havas, climate change hysteria is frankly discussed as a major tenet of bourgeois neoliberal religion. The sublime and melancholy “Post-Horny” with Angela Nagle paints a deeply disturbing overview of the death of sexuality as the result of sexual liberation, dating apps, dissolved gender roles, and overall erotic desensitization. In “Cinema: Dead and Loving It” with Nick Pinkerton, the hyper-politicized woke bleakness of modern Hollywood cinema is lambasted, where so-called “diverse” reboots of foolproof, regurgitated intellectual properties are rewired as mutant neolib propaganda marketed with a cynical moral imperative to pay for the product as vengeance against an alleged army of right-wing troll saboteurs. In “Bots will be Bots” with Heidi Matthews, Dasha delivers a sultry, autoerotic monologue like something fromera Madonna in defense of groypers, the post-Pepe right-wing frog avatars with curled eyelashes and long rubbery arms, as delectable agents of chaos who represent the uncontainable id of the Internet.Dasha and Anna are both fans of French nationalist treasure Michel Houellebecq and the original galaxy brain post-feminist lady academic, Camille Paglia, which is what initially drew me to the show. Frankly, they are the first women under the age of 70 whose ideas have piqued my interest after the escalating, all-encompassing anti-male, anti-white social justice movement of the 2010s which culminated in the friendship-destroying hysteria of the 2016 election. Hearing a maligned female trait like vocal fry, so long the harbinger of political conflict and passive-aggressive female bureaucratic domination, transformed into a warm, enveloping, almost maternal presence, was a profoundly moving experience which penetrated the scar tissue of bitterness and misogyny I’d developed. I became deeply emotional about all the female friends I lost or could no longer be honest with due to the brutal changing of political tides. If podcasts are friend surrogates,fills a unique place in the male heart where feminine charm and humor used to be.