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It\u2019s a bird, it\u2019s a plane\u2026 no, it\u2019s a spy balloon. On this week\u2019s On the Media, how to grasp a news event that\u2019s equal parts concerning and absurd. Plus, the hunt for who poisoned the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, and re-reading classic Russian novels in the shadow of the Ukraine war.

1.\xa0Jon Allsop [@Jon_Allsop], freelance journalist and author of the Columbia Journalism Review's newsletter The Media Today, on how to understand polarizing reactions to the Chinese spy balloon. Listen.

2.\xa0Christo Grozev\xa0[@christogrozev], lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat,\xa0and\xa0Daniel Roher\xa0[@DanielRoher], director of the\xa0documentary "Navalny,"\xa0on investigating, and filming, Alexei Navalny's search for the truth behind his own poisoning. Listen.

3.\xa0Elif Batuman [@BananaKarenina], novelist and staff writer at The New Yorker, on revisiting classic Russian literature in times of war. Listen.