This podcast is far too good for me to put 1-star to make a point about how UNETHICAL and greedy it is to suddenly PAYWALL Spy Affair on Wondery+. You just gave the OVERSTOCK GUY another win because now NO ONE can hear what he did because you REMOVED IT!!! Remove the paywall and actually make NEW content for Wondery+ “exclusives.” This is wholly unfair and wrong. Now I’m panic downloading and archiving hundreds of episodes of every single Wondery podcasts. You’ve removed SO MANY of the most important and OLDEST Wondery podcasts. Do the right thing and let this critical podcast be heard by everyone again! It’s political to paywall this podcast, which is EVIDENCE in a criminal case and the Jan 6th Committee right now.

I was listening with an open mind until the host introduced her “expert” from the FBI, “Pete Strzok”. How in the world can anyone believe a word out of this guys mouth? I stopped listening right then. This guy is ten miles of bad road and immediately makes the whole podcast tainted.

This documentary film maker turned podcaster did a great job revealing how corrupt maria butina and her old white men are. Let no one be fooled by the subject’s deception, while she may not have been trained by the fsb she meant harm to the USA. She deserved her punishment.

What happened to unbiased journalism?

This was a very interesting, informative and well done podcast. One question: in my opinion Maria‘s lawyer Bob Driscoll clearly violated an ethical rule by telling Celia what Maria, his client, told him during their relationship. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

I loved listening to this story and I hope more are made describing fascinating, deceptive, intriguing and powerful female characters like Maria.

It’s kind of interesting, but not captivating. The story gets boring, so you realize you could miss episodes and not notice. I would say one of the worse wondery podcasts.

Great production and very entertaining. There is a common “left” leaning with many of the Wondery podcasts. This one stood out for me simply because of the current information we have regarding the time frame of the story. Regardless they do a great job with entertaining podcast. Worth listening with a mindset of seeking truth and not propaganda. There is certainly both with in. Don’t be a sheep!!!

An entire podcast series dedicated to what has been proven to be a hoax by the Democratic Party and FBI to target a political campaign.

I’ve looking for NON murder podcasts for some time now. But I still want the espionage aspect. This was fascinating to learn.

Tale told from a fouled source, can’t trust it

I’m surprised you used Peter Strzok as a source. He’s mired in his own controversy and is arguably a traitor himself. This whole series is now compromised.

This is an intriguing story that reflects the current political era where voices of reason compete with deep-state paranoia and everyone is carving out their own narrative. In today’s world, objective truth has collapsed and left us with dueling narratives. If anything, Butina represents a new type of spy, the social influencer/millennial seductress of powerful (or seemingly powerful) older men. I wish more would have been said about her financing and her former life as a Siberian furniture saleswomen.

Any podcast that ends with the same question with which it began is asking you to enjoy the ride, because you’re going to hate the destination. If this is your cup of tea, then Spy Affair is for you. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste of time.

What a joke. This is such a one sided left wing hatchet job. They have the adulterous Peter Strzok as the only source telling the side of the FBI. Such a hatchet job, Wondery you should be ashamed at this propaganda garbage podcast.

A very good podcast, interesting and compelling, but.. Using Peter Strzok? Are you kidding? You could not get any other FBI agent to be an expert for this podcast? It lowered the authors’s credibility. Talk about having the wolf testifying about henhouse. That was disappointing.

This is awful. She never gets a corroborating comment but always manages to say she asked but wasn’t able to obtain one. Not journalism in any way shape or form.

Super interesting and showing of multiple perspectives

Already disproven through multiple sources on both side of the aisle

This is the worst wondery podcast I’ve listened to. I’m unable to respect anyone who takes the rambling, gibberish-filled interviews w Patrick Byrne (just one example of multiple unreliable subjects who believe themselves to be geniuses interviewed for this podcast) seriously, or takes any lessons from this narrative. That obviously includes the host and writer. I continued to listen out of a sense of curiosity of what idiocy would be presented next, but don’t recommend wasting your time on it.

While the subject matter was interesting, each time the host interjected, her "pretend grownup voice" nixed the story’s groove & it’d take several minutes of listening to authentic adult voices to scrub the etched piercing before I could get back into the podcast. Pro tip (from a non pro) When you emphasize yourself, it often leaves the opposite impression.

Enjoyed your podcast. It was well done. It provided opposing points of view about the political chaos the country experienced the last four years.

This podcast is very well-written and reported. The story intrigues and does not disappoint! I was left both satisfied with the conclusion, yet wanting more! Great work. Top notch!

If you are a fan of reputation laundering and unchecked propaganda this is your new favorite podcast. No fact checks. Straight from the mouth of the oligarch’s pawns.

Trump greatest president in our life time!!

I almost stopped listening after the first episode, but decided to give the 2nd episode a try. It was there I learned that one of the subject matter experts relied upon for this podcast is a disgraced FBI agent who famously lied under oath to Congress and and the American people, was involved in obtaining illegal FISA warrants that trampled upon the Constitutional rights of US citizens, and was ultimately fired for his transgressions. How am I to have any confidence in the integrity of the information provided in this podcast? Answer, I can't - I deleted it. I thought Wondery was better than this. I will look more critically at future podcasts from this provider. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, don't have time to waste on something like this.

While I enjoyed the first few episodes the still amateur journalist/podcaster fails to properly edit this story into a critical piece. The podcast jumps all over the place, relies too heavily on what someone says rather than digging past it and it clearly does not need episodes 6 & 7. Someone should have told Celia this podcast was not ready for prime time.

Peter Struck is America’s biggest punk. He is a lying, cheating whiner. Inclusion of comment by a corrupt deep stat government official ruined what could have otherwise been an interesting podcast.

I am a huge Wondery fan and I get excited when they release new podcasts to binge. This one will go down as one that I couldn’t finish after the first few episodes for how boring and confusing it was. This has nothing to do with politics cause I could careless. This was just a flat out train wreck from the start.

Yup. A lot of the prior reviews hit the mark. Whole herds of Sheeples on both sides of the partisan divide are triggered. The corruption is rampant in our government – except one side is a HELLUVA LOT WORSE THAN THE OTHER!!… 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇺🇸🏴‍☠️🇺🇸 Came to this by way of a CBC News pod show. Pretty sure I knew where it will lead, and how, after only 1+1/2 episodes; that’s when I decided to read the reviews.… This is a second-rate effort by Wondery , as compared to the couple of other series I listened to in the past that they’d put together. If you’re gonna listen to it , use a good, solid, intelligent dose of skepticism + critical thinking. Don’t buy into everything that’s laid out in the storytelling … people will lie. There’s lotsa places to find fuller dives into truth of the matter… And facts don’t care about your feelings. Neither do I. But I had some time to kill on my Memorial Day weekend, so I listened to the whole sloppy thing. Very little new info here. Some of the lesser-known, buried bits get brought back to light, so there IS a measure of good work put into the story …Bonus points to the host for working on the FX tv series “the Americans “— that was an awesome tv show. Way too rare nowadays.

The story of the Russian influence operation as told by a Russian Operative (Maria Butina) and a delusional Trump supporting conspiracy theorist (Patrick Byrne). A shockingly bad retelling of one the most disturbing chapters in modern American history.

i tried to like it but i couldnt. dull.

Just can’t let this debunked story go; can you? When I heard Peter Strzok I laughed out loud! Could you not have had a source that hasn’t been proven as a liar? Let the Russian story go already! Geeze!

Seems like a sexy spy story but it’s not. And the host is just awful (boring, naive), very hard to listen to her perform her “serious voice”. I can’t tell if she’s trying to sound contrived or if she thinks she’s important or what but it’s like listening to a hyper serious 3rd grader’s show & tell. The podcast is poorly done, don’t waste your time, there are plenty of better stories that are done far more interestingly by real professionals

I had no idea this would be a sympathetic take towards a Russian spy and full of debunked conspiracy theories. Wondrey, you are better than this.

This is the first disappointing podcast from Wondery. Much ado about nothing.

Loved this format of a Doce/Podcast. Looking forward for more with this production style.

Maria has a fascinating story, and this could have been told well by a real journalist and not a fan. The last episode—where the fake journalist—Celia Aniskovic, becomes the story—really shows how dumb she is. It reminded me of the scene in ALMOST FAMOUS where the young (real) journalist gets to Rolling Stone to finalise the story and then there are doubts, and he is (initially) dismissed as a “fan.” In that case, he really was a journalist; not here. I thought the interviewer—Celia Aniskovich— and Maria would have a sleepover in the D.C. jail, brush each other’s hair, and have a giggle fest about boys….What a dummy, though others have described her as “naive.” Maybe Celia could write for a teen magazine—breezy, puff pieces, about doing your nails, colouring your hair. You’re out of your depth, mate. In summary, don’t waste your time with Wondery or anything that this dummy is associated with.

I was really hoping for an informative and insightful look at Russia’s activities in the United States. Instead, I got several hours of interviews with mostly unreliable and/or self-interested sources, often poorly contextualized. Furthermore, there really isn’t enough material here to justify the runtime. Spare yourself the delusional ramblings of Patrick Byrne and Butina’s innocent victim act by skipping this podcast and reading one of the many well sourced reports on the issues instead.

No real journalism committed here.

First Wondery podcast that makes me doubt their integrity. Listened to the whole thing because some content I’d not heard before. But to the narrator: Do you even hear yourself??? Unbelievably gullible takes. Maria, poor innocent just trying to do good. So misunderstood. I’ll be watching for the addendum that covers Maria gloating over Navalney’s condition as she visits his prison for Russia TV. Is that a coincidence too? Shame on Wondery.

I think this a great podcast. I am looking for imagination and out the box thinking not a historical documentary.

Wondery please choose better topics. I’m starting to think you’re working for an agenda. I couldn’t make it through this- TBH I’m more entertained by trash TV. It’s obvious there was a story that was wanting to be told here. And how the story goes seems to have been decided before anything else. It’s really just not that exciting when research comes second to bias.

Great idea for a podcast but because it’s broken up over so many episodes with a few twists and turns, the listener begins to lose the thread given the cast of characters. Celia Aniskovich kept asking “Who is Maria Butina?” which didn’t seem like the right question to ask. The podcast seemed to hinge on the wrong supposition. Maria didn’t seem to much a mystery to me, but more of a catalyst to explore how a foreign person can be caught up in the American judicial system. That was the interesting part: one minute you’re talking with politicians, the next minute, you’re seen as a spy. That whole crux seem buried in the false construct of trying to find out more about Butina’s psyche or character which wasn’t readily forthcoming. One thing about podcasts that are problematic: the creator or host’s voice. Why does Aniskovich put undue emphasis in her speech patterns when she was narrating this? It was like “On Spy Affair Dunh Dunh Dunh!” We could deal with less of this affected, serious, pointed voice and more of Aniskovich’s regular voice, which was revealed on the last episode where Aniskovich talked about how she created this podcast. On that episode she sounded like a normal person, whereas on the podcast, the performative aspect of the narrator is off-putting and not necessary.

What a complete joke. I was going to call the host naive and stupid, but one of her guests (speaking of Butina’s sentencing statement) put it better, saying “I wasnt sure if it was incredibly naive or incredibly disingenuous”. Zero real investigative work was put in by the host. Please, I beg you to tell me what “forest” Butina was driven through from DC to Alexandria (episode 4). There isn’t one, unless they decided to take a 2-3 hour detour for fun. This was a 6 hour hit piece on Trump using a fired FBI agent, whose documented statement to his mistress “we’ll” stop Trump from being elected is well known, as a primary source. It took 5 episodes before Strzok’s clear bias and propensity to lie was brought up. Even then, it was written off as not interfering with his work (all evidence to the contrary). Wikipedia has more rigorous standards than this colossal joke of a podcast.

She did okay until episode 5 or 6. Then she let her liberal bias show.

Jumps the shark in episode 5 or 6 this crap that is said (not even saying the podcasters agree with this) is not necessary to even be given life.

This was one of the best podcasts I’ve listened to all year and it provides so many insights into one of the more bizarre stories of the Trump years. As interesting as Maria is, it is the cast of characters around her that just fascinated me. Great job and can’t wait to hear more stories like this from you.

This podcast started out interesting and brought a lot of details to light I missed from the news. But it allowed a lot of conspiracy theories to be talked up and completely failed to approach the Russian side of things. Butina was accused of being a Russian spy and zero consideration was paid to Russia itself. The fact that the hosts were completely unaware of this angle was frighteningly apparent when they parroted Butina’s line to “trust no one and do your own research.” Something we think of from Q-Anon but is actually a long standing information tactic from the Russian government. The fact that the hosts took this completely at face value is insane. Finally, while it may have been recorded before, the story should have dealt with Butina's behavior back in Russia including her *insane* visit to harass Alexei Navalney in prison by yelling at him about how "great Russia's prisons are" and how he should be thankful he wasn't in a US one. This woman was allowed by the Russian authorities to harass a man they just tried to kill for propoganda purposes. Meanwhile, Wondery seems to think she's a really nice girl who's just misunderstood. If only we would "question more"

This is a really interesting and entertaining topic. However it feels incredibly one sided and sympathetic to the subject. Allows and engages with conspiracies and you would easily assume this was funded/supported by RT or other Russian ‘useful idiots’