Piece Comment

Review of 'The Mad Russian': Reflections of a Cold War Wrestling Villain


This is a marvelous piece of radio. My favorite items are those which take an intriguing or off-beat tale and use it to tell a much larger story. This brief biography of Nikolai Volkoff, the "Mad Russian" wrestler contains the tragedy and the surreal comedy of cold war thinking.
It's unexpectedly poignant. There's lots of great archival audio, good writing, excellent presentation. An all round entertaining and high quality production.