The Idiot - Chapter 1
3/26/202622 min
For decades, M. simply disliked Allen. They saw him as a fool, a pompous “international businessman” who bragged about shady deals and drove fancy cars while living in Eastern Europe and Africa. But one day Allen suddenly shows up at their father’s home in Cape Cod with his mother and 5-year-old son. He says he has separated from his wife, whom he has left behind in Moscow. M. suspects this could be a kidnapping, but their family seems to disagree.
But finally Allen does something so bad, even M.’s family can’t ignore it.
Our ne...
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First 90 secondsEzra Klein0:01
If you find yourself bewildered by this moment where there's so much reason for despair and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me say I hear you. I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times Opinion, host of The Ezra Klein Show. And for me, the best way to beat back that bewildered feeling is to talk it out with the people who have ideas and frameworks for making sense of it. There is going to be plenty to talk about. You can find The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts.
Masha Gessen· Host0:28
My family, if I had to give it an adjective, is elastic. Forty-five years ago, my parents, my little brother, and I came over to this country from the Soviet Union, extending the family across continents. Over the decades, the family, my father really, stretched to absorb spouses, in-laws, even though they spoke a different language, children both biological and adopted, ex-spouses who chose to stick around, and eventually grandchildren. Over those same decades, as in any family, people made bad decisions, said things they hoped no one would remember, got mad at each other, held grudges, came around, and the family stretched as needed. And then it snapped. Someone did something that bad, that shocking. That person was my cousin Alan. He and his mother, my father's sister Lena, came to the US from Moscow in 1990 when Alan was 15.