February 17, 2022 • 58 mins
Robert is joined by Jeff May for part two of our four part series on Tzar Nicholas II.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Oh my gosh, it's behind the Bastards again, Part two
of what will be our four partner on Czar Nicholas
the second a dude who sucked pretty hard with me?
Or episodes worth Yeah, what a dick bizar huh. A
lot of possible titles for this one. Jeff, how how you?
(00:23):
How are you doing? How are you holding in there? Jeff?
I mean I feel great. I love that, like the
fact that this is I was you know how sometimes
like you were like structurally designed to do something. Yeah,
that's this specific thing right now. Yeah, you were built
for it, like built for it. A Russian history podcast
where I get to talk about how much someone sucks,
your knowledge of Russian history, your experience as a teacher,
(00:46):
your years is a boxer, all of it coming together
in this in this endurance test of a podcast episode.
I'm in. I'm I'm all in. Boy. Howdy, Jeff. You
are a podcaster. You have a podcast called Tom and
Jef watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployed Network. Um.
You have a podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends. UM,
(01:07):
and you've got a sports cop podcast. That's that's about
the sports is I do you don't even like sports?
Which I don't. I don't know anything about sports. That's
fair that that would be perfect for you then, because
that's the name of your podcast more or when? Yeah,
so I do that, So Tom and Jeff watch Batman
is with Tom Ryman, who you may know. And you
don't even like sports with Adam Todd Brown. So we're
(01:28):
all it's all very incestuous, yes, circle of the circle
of content creators getting the gooey ideas all over each other.
M hm, like those are doing I don't know, actually,
more like those ours uncle uh Turk, one of those,
one of those with the voice. Yeah, hanging out with
(01:49):
the boys now, Jeff, you famously unless this has changed.
Got drunk exactly once while performing a live show. I did. Yeah,
just a one time I did at a thing called
performing under the Influence. Uh. It was the partial subject
of a Cracked article. I got drunk for the first
time at thirty three, which is a rough time to
(02:12):
deal with your first hangover. Yeah. You know what's funny
is I didn't wake up hungover. I drank the water
before I went to bed, and then I just woke
up still a little drunk, and then fine, excellent. But
I haven't been drunks since well, I don't think the
Czar and his buddies had a lot of easy nights
because champagne hangovers are a fucking nightmare, and it kind
of seems like they pounded nothing but champagne and hard liquor,
(02:34):
real champagne in the ass right there? Uh, Jeff. When
we last left, our buddy, our old friend, are our
our pal Nicholas the second Um, his dad had just
died um, which is normally a very sad thing and
I'm sure was for him. But also his dad was
an anti Semitic monster who used his brother to force
(02:55):
all of the Jews out of Moscow. And so I
don't know, I don't have I'm pretty glad that he
died of kidney failure at age forty nine. That seems
like a good time for him to die. Here's what
I'll say, though, is that you're not doing your behind
the bastards about him. No, although he plays play quite
a role, yeah oh yeah, yeah, you know, he's definitely
a key ingredient. Yeah in this in this stew that
(03:17):
is now about to be the Czar and Nicholas, you know,
he's basically the Tsar as soon as his dad dies.
He doesn't get coordinated for like two years. Like it's
a whole thing. When you're making a grounding a news are,
you gotta get a lot of ship locked down. Um,
it's it's it's a big deal for everybody in Russia,
I would think, and like all around Europe. You gotta
(03:38):
get all of the Queen Victoria's kids to come over.
You gotta get set up a special house for the
Kaiser who's weird and nobody wants to hang out with.
You gotta figure out who's sitting where at the table,
and again, nobody wants to sit next to the Kaiser.
You gotta get your your late century Russian version of
Garth Brooks to come to sing yeah yeah, and songs
(03:59):
for the czars that they're all about how cool this
are or how hard it is to be as are.
I would guess it's that it's like my my peasants
left me and my carriage got bombed by the communists.
It's friends in low palaces. Yeah, thank you now, that's
that's that's that's pretty good. So Nicholas obviously not a
(04:22):
particularly optimistic uh journey to power. He's immediate reaction is
oh funk. I'm going to be terrible at this, which
would mark the only time in his life that he
would be right about something meaningful. He nailed that ship.
He really got that one right, like perfect. He's like,
I'm gonna eat a big old donkey dick about this moment.
I am gonna fuck this up. Boy, howdy? Am I
(04:44):
going to be bad at this? Like it's like the
quantum left into into that job. He just shows up
out of nowhere being like, well, I have to figure
out how to do this now. It was like me
when I briefly worked at Sonic, like I am not
gonna do well with this. Wait what? Oh? Yeah I
was when I was a kid. Yeah the first job. Yeah,
(05:05):
your first job was at Sonic. It was horrible, very
jealous because when you find out what my first job is,
it's very weird. I dug holes in a graveyard. That
sounds so much better than working at Sonic. It sure doesn't,
I dug You know who doesn't want to know that
is everyone that you go to school with. That is
probably true. The plots to headstones, the foundation the foundation
(05:29):
holds for headstones. That is a rough series of conversations
with your peers, like Yeah, I gotta double shift at McDonald's,
so I gotta go, you know, work as a cashier
at the Barnes and Noble. Yeah, I gotta go dig
some graves. Yeah, I gotta dig some graves holes in
the ground. It paid so well. But like people would
be like, what do you do, and I'd be like nothing,
(05:50):
I don't know. Ideal drugs, I mean ship it does
sound like a great job to listen to books on
tape during yeah, but right right were just a glimmering
steve jobs as I. Yeah, you'd have to have like
an old skipping disc man next to you listening to
one of the four CDs that you own at the time, Yes,
(06:14):
getting tired all over him. Yeah, there's no, that's it's
boom box era, and you can't have a boom box
in a graveyards. I don't know if you know this
about graveyards, but they preferred to not have loud, blaring music.
That would be really funny, just like listening to fucking
Fleetwood Mac and digging graves. Yeah, while something they're trying
to lower somebody down, while like the chain is blasting. No, no, yeah,
(06:38):
you you put on for them lowering the corpse down
you put on oh M, the answer is um is freebird, freebird.
That's the actual answer, which is what they lowered my
cousin to. It was yeah, yeah, took songs for it.
Took a while for them to start it. And to me,
(07:01):
I thought that was really funny that they were like
trying to figure out how to get and I was like, man,
the poetry to this is weird because it was like
a shitty small boot box. The acoustics weren't great. Alexander
the Third does not have a great funeral um because
(07:21):
they funk up the embalming. So it's like horrible and
nasty and it's the kind of thing where like the
number one thing you read about him and like Summaries
of the Czars is that like they didn't involve him
properly and it was super gross um, which I guess
is a fair thing to have. Is your your main
legacy as a guy who's did a bunch of racism, Like, yeah,
(07:41):
he had a gross funeral. William the Conqueror exploded it
like so like I like a good bad funeral. Yeah,
there's a lot of fun ones with royalty. Uh so yeah,
he he becomes the czar. His younger brother is his
heir at first, because though he and Alexandra are together,
they have not had a boy yet. Um. Georgie scar, yeah, yeah,
(08:08):
he's this yeah yeah, except for Georgie like dies of tuberculosis,
so he's not a very good scar. He's got He's
got a lung scar. He does have a lung scar. Yeah,
and it kills him slowly, which is a problem because
he's the only one of them who has any sense um,
and he probably would have done a much better job.
(08:28):
But he has to spend all of this time. Like
they have him stay on the beach, basically because they
think it will not kill him faster. But he he
dies pretty quick anyway. Um, so Nicholas gets coordinated in
eight six, I wrote nineteen eighty six. That's not when
it happened. They had a bit of a waiting period. Yeah, yeah,
they waited until Reagan was in office. They need to
get him down there. Um. He has a big ceremonial party, right,
(08:53):
the thing you'd expect. Um. And it's not just a
party for the nobles of Europe and stuff. There's also
a party for the peasants because the Romanovs and the
peasants have this sacred bond, right, and and Nicholas wants
to honor that and build some goodwill with the little people.
So he makes like a bunch of gift bags for
them that have like some sausage and some special uh
(09:13):
baked goods and like a nice mug um. And he
gets like three hundred thousand of these gift bags together
for the poor people. Damn. Now. Problem about a million
of them show up, seven eight hundred thousands something like that.
So it's not like it's like Bobblehead Night you gotta
do like the first t it's like bobble Head Night
or ten cent beer Knight. Like it goes immediately awry
(09:34):
because there's not enough of this ship. Um. Now. The
other problem is that he had put grand Dukes Sergei
who uh you know, the drunken racist uh piece of
ship dude. Um. He was the guy in charge of
planning this event for the peasants. Um. So he doesn't
get enough gift bags, and he doesn't have any kind
of real crowd control. Um. He doesn't have enough people
(09:57):
there to like deal with the size of crowd that
there's going to be. And when people realize there's not
enough gifts, they start like rushing to try to get
at the last ones, and then there is a stampede. UM.
And it is a stampede of eight hundred thousand people
in an area that is not prepared at all for
crowd control and doesn't have anybody dedicated to keeping people safe. Um.
It's real bad. Is anything prepared for eight hundred thousand people? Yeah?
(10:21):
I mean, you know what I went to when I
was younger in two thirteen, and it was I went
to the Coombe Mela in India. And every time this
gathering is held, it's this big religious gathering UM. And
it's held in four different cities once every four years,
and there's one city, Allahabad, where it's like most holy
when they do it there every twelve years. And every
time they do it, it's the biggest gathering of people
in the history of the human race for any reason. Um.
(10:41):
And when I was there, it was about a hundred
million people intense, UM. And there was like there was
one stampede at a train station that killed like thirty
something people, but really like it was fine. Um, I
think it went pretty well. There was like one day
where thirty million people all based at the same time
in the ganchis like India handles that ship pretty well. Actually, yeah,
I remember, like the Hajj people would die. There's been
(11:05):
so horrible, horrible stampede with thousands. Like a bonus if
you die on the Hajj. Well, it is like it
is pretty holy way to die. You know. I don't
know if it's a bonus, but if you well, if
you die on the Hodge, you get you immediately get
sent to paradise. I'm not an expert, I know that, Like,
it's definitely like if you if it's not the worst
(11:25):
way to go. Um, although I think getting crushed to
death is the worst way to go. But like dying
doing like the holiest thing you can do in your
religion is probably of some comfort. This is not that
because nobody's doing anything holy. They're trying to get cups. Um,
they're trying to get cups and sausage, and it goes
horribly horribly wrong and people are crushed to death in
a stampede. Umsages more meat for the sausages. We finally
(11:48):
have enough. Um. There are some estimates people, is what
the state estimates. Uh, it's probably more like three or
four thousand people die crushed to death, and this this horrible, horrible,
like mass of people. Now this is considered bad luck
for the news are right, this is his coronation and
he's just killed several thousand of his own people. Um
because he let his drunken uncle plan the whole event. Uh.
(12:11):
Nicholas writes at the time, this news left me a
disgustful impression, um, and noted that he thought the stampede
was a great sin. But he doesn't call off the
ceremony or any of like the celebrations and stuff. Um,
that's not it's because like he seems to want to.
He's like, I don't really want to party after people
or just got stomped to death in my name, I
(12:33):
kind of feel like maybe just sitting quietly in a chair. Um.
But his uncle, yeah, his uncle, the Greg dude, was like, no,
you can't cancel it. We made all these plans. Everyone's coming,
you have to do this big event. Like them they're
just peasants, and a lot of other people in the
family are like, yeah, you have to do this. Um.
And though kind of you could see this as like, yeah,
(12:54):
like you have to do this. This is like about
more than those people. This is like how the change
of power in our states and all of these international
people here, like we just have to do the thing.
You could like, that's definitely a fair take. You could
also see it as he feels like something is wrong
and will be taken badly by people, and he's not
strong enough to stand up to his family. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:17):
both of those things could be true. Also, you know, um,
it's probably better for the other crowned heads of Europe,
like in terms of like their opinion of him, that
he continues the festivities, but it probably is worse for
the peasants. Um. Yeah. And I'm gonna quote from a
rite up in Russia. Beyond the Moscow society had considered
nicholas refusal to stop the parties as disrespect for the victims.
(13:39):
In his memoirs, Uh, one of his Bizar's men remembers
the phrase of an old type setter in the newspaper
printing house, this means trouble. The rain will bring no good.
There were a lot of problems like that. So people
are like talking about this, you know, like it it's
it definitely is problematic within Russia that he continues the celebrations.
(13:59):
One thing. Everybody. The people are talking. The people are
talking about the thousands you got killed because you didn't
make it a fucking cups. Um. Now, for his part
in the disaster, Nikky gets the nickname Bloody Nicholas, which
is a dope nickname to have as an emperor, but
not for this reason. Yeah. No, that's the worst way.
You wanted to be the blood of your enemies, right, yeah,
(14:21):
not the blood of the people that were going to
send you off into congratulations. Yeah, you don't want to
get it because you were You didn't bring enough sausage
to the party. That's not why you want to be
bloody Nicholas. Yeah, it's actually the British version of bloody words.
Fucking Nicholas. Yeah, fucking Nicholas. Yeahs um make the sausage
dip ship. And now his brother Georgie, who is still
(14:43):
alive at this point, Um, tries to use the disaster
to convince Nicholas to sack their uncle, the Grand Duke.
He's like, look, Sergey is obviously bad at things, don't
maybe we shouldn't have him have a government job anymore
because look at all these people he got killed. But
Nicky shoots his brother down, and and what he says,
why he says he's not going to fire his uncle,
(15:03):
is really revealing about his character. This is what he's
saying to his brother in this argument they're having. I
don't want to talk about Moscow. It makes me sick
to remember. It's not particularly comforting to think about the
sad side of the coronation. This seems to be a
year of hard labor with me and Alex as the
martyrs four thousand and nine eleven just died, and he's like,
(15:24):
I am the victim here. I mean this ties into
his his old train review. Yeah the train was awful.
We got derailed, people died, but more often it took
us a while stepping over corpses and like, yeah, the
plates got broken. I was trying to bring a bottle
of wine to a friend and it's shattered. It's a
real Oh that's a long Yeah, it's real bad. Can
(15:45):
I be honest? My steak dinner ruined somebody's skull. My wine.
Um So, after losing a couple of thousand peasants and
you know, getting through the coronation, Nikki and Alex settle
into a routine of fly and work Nicholas spent most
of his time at his desk, in the words of
his cousin Sandro, listening with near awe to the bellowing
(16:06):
of his towering uncle's um. Nikki was particularly frightened of
his uncle Sergey. Sandro claimed he dreaded being alone with them.
And obviously these are the guys who like helped raise him.
These are his father's brothers, and he feels inadequate next
to them. He's also much smaller than them. I think
Sergey is like six ft five and Nicholas is a
little dude. Um. So there's a lot going on here,
(16:28):
and he's just like he's he's kind of dominated during
the early years of his reign by his his just
kind of It's the Serge show, you know, and as
we've established, not a good show. No, no, no, not,
it's one of the worst. It's like that show that
that that that Friends like spin off that was all
about Joey. That's that's the Surgy show. Yeah Joey. Yeah.
(16:49):
I was going to call it the Big Bang Theory.
It's like the biggest things. I would say his Dad's
show was the Big Bang Theory. His granddad show was
the big bang theory very fair. So after yeah, they
get into this routine, might call it a rut um
and Nikki, yesman's a few years just getting dominated by
(17:10):
his uncle's um. Sandro, who become came a naval officer,
begs his brother to fire the Gray Sandro, his cousin
um begs his cousin to fire the Grand Duke, but
Nicholas replies, sacked my father's favorite brother. I believe they're right,
you didn't turn socialist in America. His cousin has just
gotten back from America. Like, firing this incredibly incapable racist
(17:30):
man would be like communism. Um my shitty father's favorite
shitty dude. Yeah yeah, like kinda yeah maybe, Like I
don't know, you know, I think forgiveness is important. It's
important for people to have second chances, but I would
also like, I would not give an employee a second
(17:50):
chance if they killed four thousand people. Yeah, you know,
we have our little hiccups every now and then on
the podcast Stee, I get something wrong or there's something
else goes awry. But um, I think if one of
us were to kill four thousand people making this podcast,
I think that would probably need to be the end
of that person's job. Let he who is without saying
(18:13):
casting first. Yeah, I mean it would be pretty cool
to have the well, no, Joe Rogan beat us to that.
Yeah topic body count. Yeah yeah, that's a shame. Stop
trying to censor him. So you know who's not trying
to censor Joe Rogan? Jeff, I mean I feel worried.
(18:33):
I M really anyone, No one really is. Nobody is
no no, no one has at all, but certainly not
the podcasts or the whatever. The ads. These ads aren't
you know what, you know, just threw off your game there, Robert,
he did this is my killing four thousand people at
the czar's coronation moment. Ah, we're back. You know what
(19:05):
I loved about those ads, Jeff Zero censorship of of
Meathead podcast and I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on
a limb and say less than a thousand people trampled
to death as a result of those ads. It's going
to be really awkward when you when you listen to
the episode again, like there's a big people, it's some
(19:25):
new insurance company. A thousand people you know, got trampled
to death. The Geico tramplings uh so um, czaren Zarina
settle into their new life, which you know, he's working
all the time, but not from the same place. They
travel constantly throughout the year. Air conditioning isn't really a thing.
(19:46):
So like at the start of the year, they're they're
in the capital in the winter palace um where a
whole social season in St. Petersburg revolved around like partying
while it's really cold outside with the Romanovs and their cousins.
So there's all these big dances and balls and things
that I think I would rather die than attend. Um,
Like you don't like big balls? No, yeah, it depends
(20:07):
like if they're cradled properly. Um, but I certainly don't.
Like they were clever, Oh yeah, clever, like get it
and they're like can we get it? Man? Yeah, yeah,
I see d C. We we understand the joke. We
get the bit. This is a four minute song. So
(20:28):
there's are spends a few weeks each year, you know,
in the winter doing galas and balls and you know,
I had a had these big, insufferable parties. And then
in the spring they go to their second they're like
their palace, the peter Hof, which is in an area
that has nicer springs, and then in late summers they
go on their imperial yacht and sail around the coasts
and the Baltic and all that stuff. Um, and then
in autumn they go south and travel to their castles
(20:50):
in Poland and hunt throughout the fall. That sounds so dope.
It does sound pretty rad, right. That sounds like a
man now. I mean he is like working eighty hour
nightmare weeks and like heading religious ceremonies and all this
stuff at the time. But yeah, it sounds like a
pretty fucking dope work schedule. What's even doper is his
(21:10):
like noble cousins and uncles who have that lifestyle but
also don't have anything to do, like have zero responsibilities.
That's the man that's the sweet spot. Not the czar,
but his like first cousin. Yeah, yeah, like tight enough
that the blood is very similar, but not so tight
that you're going to get murdered in an upright and
when things go awry you can just kind of bounce
(21:31):
actually Dutch. Yeah, oh thank god, I spend so much
time in Germany. This worked out good for me. I'm
gonna turn this accent on real quick. Yeah. So um
Nicholas keeps a rigorous schedule. He wakes up at eight
every morning. He works until the night most days. Simon
Mountfiori writes, refusing to delegate, Nikki signed off on trivialities
(21:54):
such as every change of name and divorce in the empire,
and lists of staff to receive easter eggs, as well
as instances of exile and death. So he is he
takes this thing of like absolute autocrat very seriously, and
he is like micromanaging. He's doing DMV ship. He's covering
a lot of ground. Yeah, congratulations you are married, and
(22:14):
congratulations you ought to be hitted. Yeah. It is like
we talked about, like he's working all the time, but
a lot of it is stuff that like he doesn't
need to do, Like hey, yeah, you can even delegate
some of this, buddy, but he doesn't, um and so
he has a lot of like busy work. He's again
(22:35):
like kind of the national DMV slash warlord Pope. It's
a weird thing to do, man, it is. It's a
weird way to set up your gigantic country. Yeah, just
be like, no, I have to sign off on every divorce. Yeah, no,
one expects this of you, Nicholas. Yeah, so fairly. Early
on in his reign, Nicholas the Second had to make
(22:57):
a crucial decision. Would he follow in his grandfather footsteps
and push for reform or would he be like his
dad an advocate of sacred auto criticism. He chose the latter,
vowing that when he had a son, he would pass
on to him and intact monarchy. This would prove to
be problem Yeah, oh NICKI boiler alert. Yeah, does not
(23:18):
wind up being that story. Um. This proved problematic for
a couple of reasons. But the first thing that stymied
his goal was the fact that Alex just wasn't making
baby boys. You know. Um, obviously that's not that's not
on her. Um, you don't have any choice in the matter.
But it's also the most important thing for him to
do is to make an air, right, like every's our
(23:39):
job number one is make another boy who can take
over keep. Yeah. Um, it's like it's a big deal.
And like the rain is, there's unrest in the kingdom
and ship when you don't have an air because people
don't really know, is clearly how things are going to
shake out. Because even if it's like your first cousin
or whatnot. It's a lot messier if it's not the
(24:00):
way it's supposed to go in this system. So everybody's
got a lot writing on he and Alex having a
baby boy, and by god, they try, um, but they
are They just keep making girls. Um he has four
daughters over the course of years. Um, well she has
four daughters. Uh, and and he he helps. It's like
a shaking bake situation, you know. Um, and their credit,
(24:23):
they're very devoted to them. There's this story from his
first daughter that like his wife starts sobbing when she
realizes she's had a daughter because she hasn't you know,
done her duty yet and give him a son. And
he reassures her by saying, hey, we're gonna have a
son one of these days, and he's going to belong
to Russia. You know, this girl is ours, like our
this child is just is just our daughter, and like
that's that's that's great. Yeah, that's a sweet thing to say.
(24:45):
Like that's in a situation that can't possibly be healthy.
The healthiest way to think about this, I think, I
gotta be honest. He sounds like a real wife guy.
He's a wife guy. He is he is, he's he
loves super wife. Dude. I love that for him because
apparently everyone else hates his wife. They share do and
and spoiler, his wife is sucks, is trash. His wife's bad,
(25:06):
but he is too, So it's a good match. Like
it's like an Ava Brown Hitler situation where it's like
we were both deeply unpleasant, but you know, at least
you found each other. Yeah that's good. Yeah. Um, I
don't know. Maybe some people should not ever do anything
like Hitler, but we don't have that option. Whoa, whoa,
(25:28):
whoa whoa. Who are you canceling Hitler? Who are you
to judge? Yeah? What was he supposed to do after
not getting into art school? What was the are supposed
to do other than be the czar? Um? Don't man? Yeah,
quit buddy, take your money and run like that's the thing.
It's been a year as this are sock and ship
(25:49):
away in Switzerland. Then go on a diplomatic trip one
day and just never come back. Just Bruce Wayne at
the end of the dark Knight, just do a fucking
Irish goodbye on being the Czar of all Russia. Good
Russian goodbye. Yeah, I was hanging out he's like a
tin smith and like Boston. Yeah, figure it out. So
(26:11):
when duty kept the czar and his wife apart, the
Emperor in Price would exchange letters on a daily basis. Um.
They usually had telegrams, and so they're like again, they're
like texting each other, like they are corresponding on a
rate that is pretty much modern, and they're like the
Russian royal family really are the only people in the
world who get to do this. I guess there's some
other royals like this, um, but like they're basically texting
(26:34):
all the time, and so they talk to each other
about everything, and we, unfortunately, as a result of this,
no a dismal amount about their sex life and what
they called each other. Man, how awkward must that have
been for the dudepic guy who's like writing this down. Yeah, whatever, goddamn,
(26:54):
we have message back for confirmation. Do you want to
come on my neck? Did you mean neck? Right? Neck?
His pet name or her pet name for him was
boise um like b o y s y, not like
idaho um. And and his pet name for her was
(27:15):
lady um, which is fine, it's just some funny texture.
Not judging them whatever. Everybody has weird pet names. One
example letter reads, this is going to be hard to
get through doing an accent. It'll be easier tell Boise
that lady sings him her tenderest love and kisses and
often thinks of him in lonely sleepless nights. Like it's
(27:36):
sweet they love each other. But I expected something a
lot more like graphically sexual. They're too boring for that. Um,
here's how boring they are. We do they talk about
their sex life a lot, but it's all pretty bland. Um.
Because he's such a repressed dude in the eighteen hundreds,
Czar is terrified to use the word period. So when
he's like messaging her on the telegram as he's driving
(27:58):
back on a train and wants no, like are we
gonna be able to fuck? Because he's he's obviously he's
not that cool. Um, so he's asking like, are we
gonna be able to funk when I get back? And
so he'll ask, is madam Baker home? That's his like
slang for like are you are you having me mad?
That's fair? Because remember this is going through to other people,
like it makes sense, like how's that puss? He's not
(28:21):
gonna do that, I mean, other people do in this
period and it's pretty funny. But yeah, they're a little
more coy. He also calls it the military engineer. Um.
So I also remind you, by the way, I'm sorry
to interrupt again, but I would also like to remind
you that we're talking about this now. So he is
funny correct to not be too graphic about this because
(28:41):
we're like, let's talk about this other dipshit telegraph that
he wrote Google James Joyce love letters and see how
it can go when someone sho gets into someone else's hands. Yeah, yeah,
I'm good about that. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I
just find it funny. That's not a particular moral mark
against them, Like, it is interesting to me that they
are basically like sexting each other in the eighteen hundreds
(29:03):
because they have the ability, like they get to use
telegram machines that way. But also it means that someone
else has to do all of the actual sexting for them, um,
which is awkward. It's some guy that's most likely wearing
an official uniform. He's he's got the biggest hat you've
seen in your life. He's at work, he's a work
(29:23):
setife how was your job, honey, I don't want to
talk about Let me tell you this baker lady won't
go away months she shows up to her place. It's
really bizarre. So Nicholas doesn't seem to have really liked
his cousin Kaiser Villehelm because nobody liked Kaiser however, and
(29:46):
never never weird dude, um horny for his mom's hands.
But he came calling regularly on like Kaiser Wilhelm came
to Russia to hang out with Nikki pretty regularly. And
this is for totally self serving reasons, and in he
wants to get back into an alliance with Russia, so
he's like always dropping by to be like, hey, can
I borrow your entire military at the event of a
(30:08):
European conflict. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what usually happens. Um,
and he starts trying to, like, as part of his
plan to win back the Tsar, he tries to convince
Nikki to expand um in in Asia rather than expanding
into Europe because like, Germany's doing some expanding stuff in
(30:30):
this period right there unifying they're getting getting their ship
locked down. Um, They're they're quarreling with a couple of
folks um. And he doesn't want Yeah, it it ends fine, um,
but he doesn't want he doesn't want the Czar to
to look towards Europe. He wants him to like look
towards Asia. Um. And also the Kaiser kind of has
some designs for taking part of China, which is sort
(30:51):
of falling apart in this period. Um. And so he's like, hey,
why don't we like steal a little bit of of China.
And because he's the Kaiser and very racist, he describes
this as setting Russia up to quote defend Europe from
the inroads of the Great Yellow Race. All of the
letters and this that that that racist phraser capitalized I
think by the Kaiser, who also spoke great English. He
(31:15):
didn't say great Yeah, I don't think you meant it
in a good way um. And he advocated working together
to steal a bunch of ports from China. Um. And
Russia really wants a Chinese port because China has some
ports that don't freeze, and all of the ports in
Russia freeze at some point, right, Like it's not for
all the ports at least on the east side of
the Empire. They they've got that problem. He wants like
a warm weather port um and he wants to take
(31:38):
it from China. UM. And this is kind of like,
you know, the Kaiser is sort of like really pushing this,
but Nicholas definitely once again, as we said, like every
czar's job is to expand the empire um and this
is kind of the only real place to expand. So
Nicholas he hasn't made an air yet. He can't put
another boy into the Imperial you know, baby cavern or
(32:01):
whatever you want to call it. But he can conquer
some land for Russia and maybe prove that he deserves
to be the czar that way. Um. So he sees
his port arthur on the Chinese coast because again China
sort of falling apart, and the Kaiser is like, yeah,
this is a great idea. Do it, do it? Do it?
So he sends troops talk He's like, yeah, man, do it,
do it. It's gonna it's gonna go great for everybody.
(32:22):
It's like jackass, yeah yeah. But I'm Nicholas the second
and this is invading China, this is conquering the Chinese
coast um. And his ministers in the navy are like
this is a bad idea, Bro. You don't know what
you're getting into. Bro. We don't have a lot of
troops on that side of it is far the funk
away from Moscow. I don't know if you know how
big your country is, but like it's gonna be a
(32:45):
problem fighting in China for US. UM. But the Czar
is like, uh, I note, I want I want a port, Um,
And the Navy is even like, well, this is a
bad one to if you're going to go through this,
if you're gonna like take all the risks of seizing
apport from China, this is into very good port. Why
don't we like go further south and take a port
in Korea. Um and his prime minister at the time,
(33:06):
a guy named Wit who we've met, you know, used
to be running the trains and stuff. Um points out
that this is going to funk up the alliance that
he already has with China. He's got like treaties because
he's building the Trans Siberian Railway, which goes through territory
China controls, so he has like a treaty with China.
And his prime minister is like, well, you know they're
not gonna be happy with you if you started conquering them. Yeah,
(33:29):
I don't know if you know what a treaty is. Yeah,
generally with someone in the treaty is like that's a
no no yeah. And he's also Wit is also like,
Japan is not gonna be cool with this because they're
in the Japan is waging war in China right now.
They are actively conquering chunks of China, and Japan and
(33:49):
Russia are at peace at the moment. And Wit is like,
do you really want to like funk with Japan and
like their sphere of influence because like, we're not We're
not great at fighting over there. It's kind of far away. Um.
But the Young's are didn't listen. And again his two issues,
his two duties are to expand the empire and to
make a baby, so like this is he sees this
(34:09):
is like this is the one thing I can do. Um.
And during his world tour, that big road trip we
talked about last episode, Nikki had met a prince um
named Esper who was really into Buddhism. And this prince
had claimed like, hey, people at Tibet are waiting for
the Great White Tsar to conquer Tibet from China and
free them. Everybody in Tibet wants to be ruled by
(34:30):
the czar. You just get you overthrow the British who
are running things at the moment in there, and like
they're going to be psyched with you. Um, which is
not Tibet, classic Tibet. Everybody just gets a picture of
a Russian dude on their wall one day. Yeah, the
Dali Lama just has an Ivan Drago poster hanging up
in his So Nikki was very superstitious and religious, and
(34:57):
he was entranced by this vision of himself as a
great white czar. Driven by fantasies of a Russia expanded
across Manchuria and Korea. He committed more and more of
his troops to Asia. Now, his brother dies in July
of eight from tuberculosis. And when his brother dies, that's
like the last reasonable voice that he's sometimes listened to.
You know, he's got with He's got some like ministers
(35:19):
that are reasonable, but he doesn't give a ship what
they say, because they're not they're not there. They weren't,
they weren't God given. Yeah, exactly, he did kindness sometimes,
not all the time, not often listened to Georgie. But
now Georgie's you know, dead as shit. Um, so this
isn't gonna go great for anybody, at least of all China.
Now in ninet Dred, we have the Boxer Rebellion, which
(35:39):
is this big populist uprising against the West in China.
A bunch of embassies and Peaking get besieged, and like
everybody who's not China puts a big army together to
go funk up China. Um, it's pretty yeah, we'll talk
about it that this is like a criminally brief explanation
of what happens. I mean, it's a lot of people
(36:00):
that it's some dudes that thought they were in Crouching Tiger.
And yeah, it did not go the way it was played.
It did not nothing, nothing, None of this goes well. Um.
Nicholas doesn't really want to send troops to China. He's
like very anxious about actually having his soldiers in peking um,
but he's also bullish on conquering a bunch of China.
So after his troops get back from the Boxer Rebellion,
(36:21):
he sends a hundred and seventy thousand soldiers into Manchuria, um,
which he does not control, and his goal is to
provoke a reaction that will justify like conquering all of Manchuria,
which Japan is fighting over at the time and is
owned by China. So he's he's really just like sticking
his national dick in a hornet's nest um for no
(36:41):
real reason. Like I love that phrasing. Yeah, yeah, he
is about to fuck a hornet's nest. But you know
who won't fuck a hornets nest? Jeff, go on, who
who would that be? Well? Would um, well, they they'll
have your cook one first, Yeah, they would have you.
They would have you, well, they would they would use you.
Would you would marinate your dick in be venom or
(37:04):
hornet venom and then or something, Yeah, probably filled with hornets,
filled with hornets um or the Washington State Highway Patrol
mostly hornets. Anyway, here's some ads. Ah, yeah, we're back.
(37:25):
Jeff just got his first bleep I did, and then,
you know what, I gotta be honest, felt great. It
does trying to censor me on the New Joe Rogan.
That's right, you're gonna you've gotta crowdfund and half a
million dollars off of this. You can't. You can't censor me.
I'm unsensorable. I'm a straight white man with a background
and fighting. You can't get you. You are the anti Rogan.
(37:49):
We could get you guys to touch and uh yeah,
we'd we'd merged together like time cop. Yeah, and then
you would produce season five of Cereal. I don't know
how that works out, but it does. Um anyway, Yes,
So how do you feel all this goes getting involved
(38:09):
in in China trying to take a China fuxing with Japan.
I'm flipping them off a little bit. I think this
guy is good. I've seen the Princess Bride. I know
for a fact you never get involved in a land
war in Asia. You you sure do not. Um, and
you also you really don't want to fuck with Like
early nineteen hundreds, Japan. They have their ship together, they're
(38:31):
doing okay. They had some walls, they had some ups
and some downs. Japan has been pretty victorious all things considered. Um, China,
they did not have a great second half of the
You kind of can funk with China in this period,
which is why the entire world does repeatedly. I mean,
Jesus Christ, how many, how many drug dealing wars? Did
(38:51):
we have in order to protect our right to turn
the entire country into opiumatics? Yeah? Yeah, out and it
was all for tea. That's right, everybody. Look it up.
British invaded a country to force them to buy drugs
so that they could get tea more easily. Um so
us not even top ten of British Empire crimes. Like yeah,
(39:16):
man I, the open door policy in the opium Wars
is so wild, it's really we we really need to
get into that more on this because it is a
fascinating period and it says just everything about the kind
of individuals who were involved in colonialism in this period,
one of whom is Nicholas the second so Um. In
nineteen o one, the Czar and z Arena have their
(39:36):
last daughter. Um, they've had four so far. I think
it's four. M Who can keep track of them? Um?
Well the Bolsheviks could. Well, maybe it's kind. They were
little nesting dolls, just keeps popping. They have the one
daughter and they just keep popping her in half and
pulling out another day. Inside is a tiny little son,
the tiny little son who can't bleed right. Um So,
(39:58):
about a month after they have their last daughter, two
princesses who married into the Romanov family. They're called the
Crows and simon Montfior's book, they're kind of occultists. Um,
they're really into like weird witchy stuff, but like Christian
I think it's pretty dope. There's a lot of that
going around in this period. Um. They introduced Nicholas and
Alexandra to a French healer. These princesses were originally from
(40:20):
Montenegro and they were part of like they were into
these really occult Christian traditions. Um. And they introduced the
Romanovs into like the world of like weird spiritual healers.
And Nicholas and Alexandra fall hard for this ship. And
I'm gonna quote from the Romanovs. First, the sisters introduced
to Nicki and alex to the epileptic holy idiot Mitka Colebia.
(40:45):
But when, but when the the fucking names? That was amazing.
Um yeah. But then one of the sister's sons falls
ill and she consults a French peasant boy who working
at his uncle's butcher shop, had experienced an epiphany and
set himself up as a hydrophant specializing in the power
(41:06):
of psychic fluids and astral forces to heal sickness and
cure female sterility. Now, this guy's name is Philippe, and
by the time the Czar and Zarina meet him, he's
about fifty small, with black hair and black mustache, very
unsightly in appearance, with an ugly Southern French accent of
someone close to the Romanov's rights. As Nikki and Alex
struggled to conceive a boy, Philip visited Petersburg at the
(41:29):
Palace of the Crows and her one of the Crow women,
and her husband, the Grand Duke Peter, noted Nicki this
evening we met the amazing Frenchman. So they like, they
fall for this guy hert um and it's you know,
it's a rasputant kind of thing. It's exactly that these
people are what we referred to as marks. Yes they are.
They would be devastatingly online and fall for every single
(41:52):
scam number one, number one. The Czar would have like
a thousand n F T s right now. Um, they
would be pouring bleached down their kids throats. They would
they would have bought into everything they got trying to
escape the palace. They got caught with seventeen pounds of
board ape pictures they're running out of. Yeah, these are
(42:13):
these are I can't emphasize this enough. Not smart people. Um,
my precious, my precious ape's all gone. The Bolsheviks, Oh
could you do this to me? Is what the future? Yeah?
And then you've got like Stalin in a room with
I don't know, one of the red generals. They're like, no,
that Lennon is dead. The board apes can go to
(42:34):
the people. And Stalin looks at the board ape and
puts it in his pocket. No, no, this is my ap.
Oh apes are stolen's. Um. So the Romanovs fall for
this guy fucking immediately. They start calling him our friend
with the F capitalized, which is what they call respute
in decades later or years later, and they take him
(42:56):
immediately into their confidence. Again, these people have like no
guile at all, Like they're like the holy man who
can heal using magic? Let's tell him every state secret
we have. I would love for you to plant these beans.
It would have been very easy to spy on the
czar and Czarina if like you, you are a little
(43:17):
good at tricking people, like if you're a sub magician.
Perhaps he would like to see this ruple behind your ear.
I've watched the man pull his finger in half. We
must give him our boy's health or he will be
pulling us all in heath. Yeah, so just just lose
(43:39):
every dime at a carnival. One carnival would have ruined
the Romano doctors. You cannot take this man's advice. Um.
He has graduated from no school and he has no
medical license. Like, you can't. You can't take his advice
on your wife's fertility or on the health of your children.
(44:01):
You like, what are you doing? And those are is like, Oh,
your problem with him is that he doesn't have a license.
We'll all make him a medical doctor by declaration and
give him a medical license. No, that's not how it works.
It doesn't Russia. That's not dude, that's not how it works.
It's very funny, um. Simon Montfior continues. Soon Philip was
(44:23):
giving political advice. When Nikki met kaiser villelm Alex told
her husband, our dear friend will be near you and
help you answering William's questions, giving him the toughness to
be friendly and severe so that he realizes he dare
not joke with you that he learns to be afraid
of you. As for reform, Philip advised Nikki that a
constitution would be the ruin of Russia. In the spring
of nineteen o two, Alex fell pregnant and our friend
(44:46):
was prophesying Russia was chosen to dominate the Far East.
So this guy isn't is reinforcing again. He's doing the
thing that like helps you can powerful people. You tell
them what they want to hear. Those are wants to hear. Know,
the people don't need a constitution. And yes, you're you're
going to conquer China. Yeah, which is such like a
big gamble. Yeah to gamble. Yeah, like like you're gonna
(45:08):
be able to do this one very hard thing about that. Yeah,
the the guy who fell for my tricks are going
to be able to tie this, not this fucking rube.
You're gonna be able to take care of it all. Oh, yeah,
it's gonna go great for you. Send more guys to China.
That's gonna be really good. Yeah, you know what, I
got a mustache do So at this point, absolutely nothing
(45:33):
but garbage is getting into the tsar's brain right like
his his information Funnel is just pure trash um. Now
he's introduced by Sandro, who's normally like who's his cousin
and is normally like one of the more level headed
people around him, to a captain named Bezobrazov who wants
to be the Cecil Rhodes of Russia and basically is like,
send me over to Asia and I'll conquer it for you.
(45:56):
I think your historic destiny is to conquer the East,
and I'm gonna do it for you, right me, best
of Brazov, I'm gonna be the guy you like. Give
me troops and money and I'll conquered Manchuria for you,
and Korea too. Um, give me enough troops and enough
money and I could do it. Yeah, I mean, I
feel like it wouldn't be that hard to I mean
if from what I remember of the Korean War, pretty
(46:16):
easy war. Honestly, I'm gonna be like so easy that
I barely even remember it, barely even talk about it.
It's like a forgotten war or something, probably because it
was so boring, so boring. Japan is engaged at this point.
They're they're again trying to conquer China. Congratulations Japan. Yeah,
it doesn't work different. Mhmm. They're not getting married. You
(46:43):
would not you would not call this a marriage. Um.
So they start clashing with Russia diplomatically over the fact
that Russia's expanding into the areas that Japan is already
trying to conquer. And Japan does not want a war
with Russia because it's a bad idea to go to
war with Russia historically, most most of the time. Um,
Japan likes to avoid wars that are not defensive in general,
(47:05):
until they see the opportunity. You don't want to You
don't want to leave the island for a war with Russia.
It's not a good idea, it's not I mean, especially
you're already fighting this war with China right like you're
trying to You're you're engaged in conflict all over. Your
resources are extended, and Russia is huge and rich. Um,
you don't really want to funk with them. And they
have a reputation as being a good naval power too,
(47:26):
And maybe Japan doesn't really want to like test this ship.
Just look at there. He's dressed like a like a sailor. Yeah,
he's gonna be great with boats. He's wearing that little
outfit dressed like a sailor, his whole goddamn life. Now,
Japan is scared of getting into a fight with with
with Russia. But because he's listening to Bezo Brasov, Nicholas
(47:47):
is not at all freight frighten the for war with Japan.
He thinks it's going to be a cake walk, and
Bezo Brazov convinces him that conflict is inevitable, so the
best thing to do is to start threatening Japan with
open war. And basically like, hey, if we lay our
cards out on the table, they'll either fight us and
we'll win, or they won't fight us and we'll get
our ship. Right Like, that's Bezobrazov's attitude. He tells there
(48:07):
only the bayonet can guarantee the success of our activities
in Manchuria. Um it does not. So, despite the fact
that this guy is kind of unhinged, Nikki gives him
two million roubles and sends him east on a secret
mission to set up a paramilitary force in Manchuria to
help them conquer it Um, which Bezobrazov has. There's nothing
in his background that would make him capable of this. Yeah,
(48:29):
that's that's when you make that Irish goodbye. That's when
you just take your money and bounce. That is, that
is a bounceable amount of money to have. But he
does not bounce um. And when he finds out Wit,
who's again one of the few reasonable people in the
Czar's orbit, uh Like laments that a quote half mad,
(48:50):
preposterous adventurer is purely in charge of their policy in
the East. So Nicholas is basically like, yeah, crazy dude,
do whatever you want. You're in charge of Russia's policy
towards China. This is going to end. Well, that's like
giving mel Gibson's character from Lethal Weapon in charge of that. Like,
it's just like a very unhinged existence to see somebody
be in charge of anything with Yeah, it's it's not
(49:12):
a great call. And while Nicholas is edging Japan towards
the brink of war, ship is not copasetic in the
Imperial interior. This article by Shlomo Lambrosa, writing for Oxford
University Press, lays out the situation. The lack of any
substantive reform policy, compounded by a deteriorating economy, led to
increased incidents of popular violence. Poor harvests in nineteen o
(49:34):
two and nineteen o three caused wide scale unrest in
rural areas. Peasants roamed the countryside in search of work
and food, occasionally resorting to violence. In nineteen o two,
in the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava, peasants looted homes
from the nobility, causing thousands of rubles worth of damage.
So that is a is a problem for the Russians, right,
It's not a problem people starving, but now rich people
(49:56):
for the Russians. Yeah, oh, ship, small pockets of the
or are rising up against the nobility. Yeah, I guess
we should just do the same thing for the next
sixteen years. Yeah, I guess we should continue taking no
changes whatsoever and maybe start a war with Japan. Um. Yeah,
so economic the fact that the economy is falling apart,
(50:16):
it doesn't unfortunately, like there are some isolated pockets of
people going after nobles. For the most part, they go
after the people that Russian peasants go after, and Russian
nobles go after. When they're angry, they make the same
call that Alexander the Third does. They they go after
the Jews. Um, you know, doubt again, this is why
like tens of thousands of Jewish people are leaving Russia
(50:38):
every year because it's it's not a not an easy spot. Um.
They're like, you know what's better. Yeah, yeah, it sounds
like that's a lot gotta be a lot safer for us.
In nineteen o three, all of this culminates in the
first Pegram of the century in a city named Kishenev.
It started with what was basically a drunken party where
(50:58):
several kids vanned lies Jewish properties. So you get these
like young kind of nationalist, right wing youth and they
vandalize a synagogue, um, and then some Jewish own stops, shops,
and things just kind of keep escalating. Thank god that
doesn't happen in modern times anymore. Yeah, we we got
that out of the species is system. Thank god the
Jews are no longer targeted by hate crimes anymore. That's
(51:21):
what everyone says about the Jews, that things are simple
for them now. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from the
Harvard Crimson here or Harvard Gazette here, Sorry, not the Crimson.
Fuck the Crimson. This is the Harvard Gazette. Gangs of
twenty armed with hatchets and knives stormed through the town's
narrow streets and into its courtyards, where Jewish families defended
(51:44):
themselves with garden implements and other meager weapons. In the end,
forty nine Jews were killed and an untold number of
Jewish women were raped and Jewish homes were damaged. This
sudden rush of hoodlum violence, prompted by accusatory rumors of
Jewish ritual murder, quickly became a talents of imperial Russian
brutality against its Jews. So, yeah, that's cutting out, guys,
(52:10):
just cut it out. Great, Yeah, it's it's yeah. Maybe
maybe don't have you tried not about it and his
his his empire. Maybe not so Nikki. When he hears
about this big pagram Um, he puts a dude in
charge of dealing with it Um, a minister named Pleeve
who has taken part in anti Semitic violence before and
(52:32):
is one of the most infamous anti Semites in the
Russian government. Um And actually Pleeve becomes one of the
more moderate people around him, which is not great Um,
but his move he fires the governor of of Kishenev,
which fine Um and Nikki seems to barely kind of
notice that a pogram has happened. This does not really
(52:52):
take up a lot of cycles in his brain. He's
concerned with the fact that his wife is pregnant. Again, say,
he's probably too busy sexty. Yeah, he is too busy sexting.
Does not care about this program um on the day
of it, He's just kind of like writing home to
his wife about ship. He doesn't. This doesn't seem to
really left a mark on him at all, um and
he can Tee and his wife continue to get all
of their medical advice from Philippe. Uh. This was deeply
(53:13):
worrying to the old wind Impress, the Czar's mother, and
so she sends a secret agent with the acrona Russian
secret service, to investigate Philippe. This this healer, and the
investigation realizes, like, this guy has been charged with practicing
medicine without a license in France. A bunch like arnest, Yeah,
He's like yeah, this one car and he got close
(53:35):
to the Tsar and immediately conned his ass. Smooth the
ship man. This guy, this guy would talk himself anywhere,
and when this report was brought to the Czar, he
fires the agent who writes it, not Philippe. UM. And
Philip's health advice during this this pregnancy that Alex is having,
UM is that she's not allowed to be weighed or
inspected by doctors in any way whatsoever. Um. And the
(53:57):
reason is because she's not actually pregnant. She's like some people,
she may have had like kind of a miscarriage or something. Basically, UM,
we don't really know. He may have just been lying
to her and trying to get her to put on
a little weight and telling her that she was pregnant
so that he could try to get a bunch of
money out of them. It's kind of unclear exactly what happened,
but he's definitely yeah, he knows she's not pregnant, because
(54:18):
he's like, oh, yeah, I don't let anybody weigh you
and don't let the doctors look at you. Yeah. This
six ft party sublivered and and the Zarin Zarina are
like that makes sense. Um. Now, obviously, eventually you can
only hide from someone that they're not pregnant for so long.
There is a point at which it will become very
clear that you were not pregnant. Um. This happens, Uh,
(54:42):
And when it does. This does kind of break the
spell a little bit, and Nicholas finally fires Philip. Simon
Montfio writes, before he left, laden with presents, including a
Surpole motor car, he gave the Impress a little bell
that would ring if dark forces lurked. Philip died soon afterwards,
but not before he had warrant that he would merely
vanish and then reappear. Sometime. You will have another friend
(55:04):
like me who will speak to you of God. That's good.
You ain't never had a friend. Lock me a Latin
genie ng he is. He is genieing him and he's
also like setting him up for Rasputin, which I kind
of he must have known he was an old man,
Like he must have known he didn't have that much longer.
I wonder if he was just like, I'm going to
do a solid for the next con man who gets
(55:26):
close to these idiots. You know what, you gotta get
a look out for the next generation. Yeah, he's really
setting ship up for rass S. Butin like another guy
is going to come and con these rich people out
of more of their stuff. And I want it to
be easy for him because there is something fascinating about
these uh, these like mystics that the that the Tsars
(55:46):
are pulling in at the end here the Romanos because
like they say ship that's like oddly like it's an
odd portant, Like they'll say ship that. Because we talk
about like Resputin, he's like, yeah, he doesn't think of him,
like he's got some really prophetic sounding stuff, the ones
I remember being very specifically, he's like, you know, if
you kill me, you are bucked. Yeah, you're fucked. Uh,
(56:09):
this war is gonna go bad. Like but also if
you rest boot Putin and you're a pretty good con
man and you know these people, it's a safe bet
to be, like I'll just tell them things are gonna
get real bad because they probably are going to keep
getting real bad because these people yeah, yeah, yeah, Um
I don't know, Jeff, but I do know that that's
(56:32):
going to be in the end of part two. You get, yeah,
let's do it for this for this week. You know,
Like I said, if you guys find me on social
media Twitter and Instagram at hey there, Jeff ro come
say hi. I'm actually uh pretty funny on the old
on the old Twitter, damn straight. We have a good
time on there. You can also check out my shows.
I have Jeff Has Cool Friends, which is available at
(56:52):
patreon dot com slash Jeff May for early on censored
episodes with bonus content, or you can listen to it
for three a week later. I have a lot of
really cool friends. If you're a nerve, you absolutely love it.
I also have Tom and Jeff watch Batman on the
Gamefully Unemployed Network. You can check that out with Tom
Ryman as well as you don't even like sports and
on Popular Opinion both on the Unpopps network with Adam
(57:13):
Todd Brown. Yeah, Robert, what do you got to plug? Man?
Tell me something something good. I got a novel called
After the Revolution. It's you can preorder it now and
get it signed. If you google a k Press After
the Revolution, you can find my novel. It'll come sign
to your house. So order order that ship check it out.
Hell yeah, I'm gonna do that. I want you to
know my address. I will not, but somewhat at a
(57:36):
k Press will learn your address. Well, yeah, and we
eat it for for unsettling purposes. That's that's the guarantee
unsavory books. All right, Well, that's gonna do it for
us behind the bastards this week. Come back next week
for several more hours of talking about Zar Nicholas the Second,
so much, Nicholas the Second, way too much Nicholas the
(57:58):
Second any responsible amount, Not Nicholas the Second. I would say,
that's what Nicholas the Second said right before he got
shot by the Bolsheviks. He's like, you know, maybe a
few more weeks. I feel like more of me would
have been good. I was really going to pull it
out in the last quarter. Give me a chance. I
can fix. I can fix. I can change baby's tiny war. Fine, perfect,
(58:25):
I'll see you next week, all right, bam
Oh my gosh, it's behind the Bastards again, Part two
of what will be our four partner on Czar Nicholas
the second a dude who sucked pretty hard with me?
Or episodes worth Yeah, what a dick bizar huh. A
lot of possible titles for this one. Jeff, how how you?
(00:23):
How are you doing? How are you holding in there? Jeff?
I mean I feel great. I love that, like the
fact that this is I was you know how sometimes
like you were like structurally designed to do something. Yeah,
that's this specific thing right now. Yeah, you were built
for it, like built for it. A Russian history podcast
where I get to talk about how much someone sucks,
your knowledge of Russian history, your experience as a teacher,
(00:46):
your years is a boxer, all of it coming together
in this in this endurance test of a podcast episode.
I'm in. I'm I'm all in. Boy. Howdy, Jeff. You
are a podcaster. You have a podcast called Tom and
Jef watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployed Network. Um.
You have a podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends. UM,
(01:07):
and you've got a sports cop podcast. That's that's about
the sports is I do you don't even like sports?
Which I don't. I don't know anything about sports. That's
fair that that would be perfect for you then, because
that's the name of your podcast more or when? Yeah,
so I do that, So Tom and Jeff watch Batman
is with Tom Ryman, who you may know. And you
don't even like sports with Adam Todd Brown. So we're
(01:28):
all it's all very incestuous, yes, circle of the circle
of content creators getting the gooey ideas all over each other.
M hm, like those are doing I don't know, actually,
more like those ours uncle uh Turk, one of those,
one of those with the voice. Yeah, hanging out with
(01:49):
the boys now, Jeff, you famously unless this has changed.
Got drunk exactly once while performing a live show. I did. Yeah,
just a one time I did at a thing called
performing under the Influence. Uh. It was the partial subject
of a Cracked article. I got drunk for the first
time at thirty three, which is a rough time to
(02:12):
deal with your first hangover. Yeah. You know what's funny
is I didn't wake up hungover. I drank the water
before I went to bed, and then I just woke
up still a little drunk, and then fine, excellent. But
I haven't been drunks since well, I don't think the
Czar and his buddies had a lot of easy nights
because champagne hangovers are a fucking nightmare, and it kind
of seems like they pounded nothing but champagne and hard liquor,
(02:34):
real champagne in the ass right there? Uh, Jeff. When
we last left, our buddy, our old friend, are our
our pal Nicholas the second Um, his dad had just
died um, which is normally a very sad thing and
I'm sure was for him. But also his dad was
an anti Semitic monster who used his brother to force
(02:55):
all of the Jews out of Moscow. And so I
don't know, I don't have I'm pretty glad that he
died of kidney failure at age forty nine. That seems
like a good time for him to die. Here's what
I'll say, though, is that you're not doing your behind
the bastards about him. No, although he plays play quite
a role, yeah oh yeah, yeah, you know, he's definitely
a key ingredient. Yeah in this in this stew that
(03:17):
is now about to be the Czar and Nicholas, you know,
he's basically the Tsar as soon as his dad dies.
He doesn't get coordinated for like two years. Like it's
a whole thing. When you're making a grounding a news are,
you gotta get a lot of ship locked down. Um,
it's it's it's a big deal for everybody in Russia,
I would think, and like all around Europe. You gotta
(03:38):
get all of the Queen Victoria's kids to come over.
You gotta get set up a special house for the
Kaiser who's weird and nobody wants to hang out with.
You gotta figure out who's sitting where at the table,
and again, nobody wants to sit next to the Kaiser.
You gotta get your your late century Russian version of
Garth Brooks to come to sing yeah yeah, and songs
(03:59):
for the czars that they're all about how cool this
are or how hard it is to be as are.
I would guess it's that it's like my my peasants
left me and my carriage got bombed by the communists.
It's friends in low palaces. Yeah, thank you now, that's
that's that's that's pretty good. So Nicholas obviously not a
(04:22):
particularly optimistic uh journey to power. He's immediate reaction is
oh funk. I'm going to be terrible at this, which
would mark the only time in his life that he
would be right about something meaningful. He nailed that ship.
He really got that one right, like perfect. He's like,
I'm gonna eat a big old donkey dick about this moment.
I am gonna fuck this up. Boy, howdy? Am I
(04:44):
going to be bad at this? Like it's like the
quantum left into into that job. He just shows up
out of nowhere being like, well, I have to figure
out how to do this now. It was like me
when I briefly worked at Sonic, like I am not
gonna do well with this. Wait what? Oh? Yeah I
was when I was a kid. Yeah the first job. Yeah,
(05:05):
your first job was at Sonic. It was horrible, very
jealous because when you find out what my first job is,
it's very weird. I dug holes in a graveyard. That
sounds so much better than working at Sonic. It sure doesn't,
I dug You know who doesn't want to know that
is everyone that you go to school with. That is
probably true. The plots to headstones, the foundation the foundation
(05:29):
holds for headstones. That is a rough series of conversations
with your peers, like Yeah, I gotta double shift at McDonald's,
so I gotta go, you know, work as a cashier
at the Barnes and Noble. Yeah, I gotta go dig
some graves. Yeah, I gotta dig some graves holes in
the ground. It paid so well. But like people would
be like, what do you do, and I'd be like nothing,
(05:50):
I don't know. Ideal drugs, I mean ship it does
sound like a great job to listen to books on
tape during yeah, but right right were just a glimmering
steve jobs as I. Yeah, you'd have to have like
an old skipping disc man next to you listening to
one of the four CDs that you own at the time, Yes,
(06:14):
getting tired all over him. Yeah, there's no, that's it's
boom box era, and you can't have a boom box
in a graveyards. I don't know if you know this
about graveyards, but they preferred to not have loud, blaring music.
That would be really funny, just like listening to fucking
Fleetwood Mac and digging graves. Yeah, while something they're trying
to lower somebody down, while like the chain is blasting. No, no, yeah,
(06:38):
you you put on for them lowering the corpse down
you put on oh M, the answer is um is freebird, freebird.
That's the actual answer, which is what they lowered my
cousin to. It was yeah, yeah, took songs for it.
Took a while for them to start it. And to me,
(07:01):
I thought that was really funny that they were like
trying to figure out how to get and I was like, man,
the poetry to this is weird because it was like
a shitty small boot box. The acoustics weren't great. Alexander
the Third does not have a great funeral um because
(07:21):
they funk up the embalming. So it's like horrible and
nasty and it's the kind of thing where like the
number one thing you read about him and like Summaries
of the Czars is that like they didn't involve him
properly and it was super gross um, which I guess
is a fair thing to have. Is your your main
legacy as a guy who's did a bunch of racism, Like, yeah,
(07:41):
he had a gross funeral. William the Conqueror exploded it
like so like I like a good bad funeral. Yeah,
there's a lot of fun ones with royalty. Uh so yeah,
he he becomes the czar. His younger brother is his
heir at first, because though he and Alexandra are together,
they have not had a boy yet. Um. Georgie scar, yeah, yeah,
(08:08):
he's this yeah yeah, except for Georgie like dies of tuberculosis,
so he's not a very good scar. He's got He's
got a lung scar. He does have a lung scar. Yeah,
and it kills him slowly, which is a problem because
he's the only one of them who has any sense um,
and he probably would have done a much better job.
(08:28):
But he has to spend all of this time. Like
they have him stay on the beach, basically because they
think it will not kill him faster. But he he
dies pretty quick anyway. Um, so Nicholas gets coordinated in
eight six, I wrote nineteen eighty six. That's not when
it happened. They had a bit of a waiting period. Yeah, yeah,
they waited until Reagan was in office. They need to
get him down there. Um. He has a big ceremonial party, right,
(08:53):
the thing you'd expect. Um. And it's not just a
party for the nobles of Europe and stuff. There's also
a party for the peasants because the Romanovs and the
peasants have this sacred bond, right, and and Nicholas wants
to honor that and build some goodwill with the little people.
So he makes like a bunch of gift bags for
them that have like some sausage and some special uh
(09:13):
baked goods and like a nice mug um. And he
gets like three hundred thousand of these gift bags together
for the poor people. Damn. Now. Problem about a million
of them show up, seven eight hundred thousands something like that.
So it's not like it's like Bobblehead Night you gotta
do like the first t it's like bobble Head Night
or ten cent beer Knight. Like it goes immediately awry
(09:34):
because there's not enough of this ship. Um. Now. The
other problem is that he had put grand Dukes Sergei
who uh you know, the drunken racist uh piece of
ship dude. Um. He was the guy in charge of
planning this event for the peasants. Um. So he doesn't
get enough gift bags, and he doesn't have any kind
of real crowd control. Um. He doesn't have enough people
(09:57):
there to like deal with the size of crowd that
there's going to be. And when people realize there's not
enough gifts, they start like rushing to try to get
at the last ones, and then there is a stampede. UM.
And it is a stampede of eight hundred thousand people
in an area that is not prepared at all for
crowd control and doesn't have anybody dedicated to keeping people safe. Um.
It's real bad. Is anything prepared for eight hundred thousand people? Yeah?
(10:21):
I mean, you know what I went to when I
was younger in two thirteen, and it was I went
to the Coombe Mela in India. And every time this
gathering is held, it's this big religious gathering UM. And
it's held in four different cities once every four years,
and there's one city, Allahabad, where it's like most holy
when they do it there every twelve years. And every
time they do it, it's the biggest gathering of people
in the history of the human race for any reason. Um.
(10:41):
And when I was there, it was about a hundred
million people intense, UM. And there was like there was
one stampede at a train station that killed like thirty
something people, but really like it was fine. Um, I
think it went pretty well. There was like one day
where thirty million people all based at the same time
in the ganchis like India handles that ship pretty well. Actually, yeah,
I remember, like the Hajj people would die. There's been
(11:05):
so horrible, horrible stampede with thousands. Like a bonus if
you die on the Hajj. Well, it is like it
is pretty holy way to die. You know. I don't
know if it's a bonus, but if you well, if
you die on the Hodge, you get you immediately get
sent to paradise. I'm not an expert, I know that, Like,
it's definitely like if you if it's not the worst
(11:25):
way to go. Um, although I think getting crushed to
death is the worst way to go. But like dying
doing like the holiest thing you can do in your
religion is probably of some comfort. This is not that
because nobody's doing anything holy. They're trying to get cups. Um,
they're trying to get cups and sausage, and it goes
horribly horribly wrong and people are crushed to death in
a stampede. Umsages more meat for the sausages. We finally
(11:48):
have enough. Um. There are some estimates people, is what
the state estimates. Uh, it's probably more like three or
four thousand people die crushed to death, and this this horrible, horrible,
like mass of people. Now this is considered bad luck
for the news are right, this is his coronation and
he's just killed several thousand of his own people. Um
because he let his drunken uncle plan the whole event. Uh.
(12:11):
Nicholas writes at the time, this news left me a
disgustful impression, um, and noted that he thought the stampede
was a great sin. But he doesn't call off the
ceremony or any of like the celebrations and stuff. Um,
that's not it's because like he seems to want to.
He's like, I don't really want to party after people
or just got stomped to death in my name, I
(12:33):
kind of feel like maybe just sitting quietly in a chair. Um.
But his uncle, yeah, his uncle, the Greg dude, was like, no,
you can't cancel it. We made all these plans. Everyone's coming,
you have to do this big event. Like them they're
just peasants, and a lot of other people in the
family are like, yeah, you have to do this. Um.
And though kind of you could see this as like, yeah,
(12:54):
like you have to do this. This is like about
more than those people. This is like how the change
of power in our states and all of these international
people here, like we just have to do the thing.
You could like, that's definitely a fair take. You could
also see it as he feels like something is wrong
and will be taken badly by people, and he's not
strong enough to stand up to his family. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:17):
both of those things could be true. Also, you know, um,
it's probably better for the other crowned heads of Europe,
like in terms of like their opinion of him, that
he continues the festivities, but it probably is worse for
the peasants. Um. Yeah. And I'm gonna quote from a
rite up in Russia. Beyond the Moscow society had considered
nicholas refusal to stop the parties as disrespect for the victims.
(13:39):
In his memoirs, Uh, one of his Bizar's men remembers
the phrase of an old type setter in the newspaper
printing house, this means trouble. The rain will bring no good.
There were a lot of problems like that. So people
are like talking about this, you know, like it it's
it definitely is problematic within Russia that he continues the celebrations.
(13:59):
One thing. Everybody. The people are talking. The people are
talking about the thousands you got killed because you didn't
make it a fucking cups. Um. Now, for his part
in the disaster, Nikky gets the nickname Bloody Nicholas, which
is a dope nickname to have as an emperor, but
not for this reason. Yeah. No, that's the worst way.
You wanted to be the blood of your enemies, right, yeah,
(14:21):
not the blood of the people that were going to
send you off into congratulations. Yeah, you don't want to
get it because you were You didn't bring enough sausage
to the party. That's not why you want to be
bloody Nicholas. Yeah, it's actually the British version of bloody words.
Fucking Nicholas. Yeah, fucking Nicholas. Yeahs um make the sausage
dip ship. And now his brother Georgie, who is still
(14:43):
alive at this point, Um, tries to use the disaster
to convince Nicholas to sack their uncle, the Grand Duke.
He's like, look, Sergey is obviously bad at things, don't
maybe we shouldn't have him have a government job anymore
because look at all these people he got killed. But
Nicky shoots his brother down, and and what he says,
why he says he's not going to fire his uncle,
(15:03):
is really revealing about his character. This is what he's
saying to his brother in this argument they're having. I
don't want to talk about Moscow. It makes me sick
to remember. It's not particularly comforting to think about the
sad side of the coronation. This seems to be a
year of hard labor with me and Alex as the
martyrs four thousand and nine eleven just died, and he's like,
(15:24):
I am the victim here. I mean this ties into
his his old train review. Yeah the train was awful.
We got derailed, people died, but more often it took
us a while stepping over corpses and like, yeah, the
plates got broken. I was trying to bring a bottle
of wine to a friend and it's shattered. It's a
real Oh that's a long Yeah, it's real bad. Can
(15:45):
I be honest? My steak dinner ruined somebody's skull. My wine.
Um So, after losing a couple of thousand peasants and
you know, getting through the coronation, Nikki and Alex settle
into a routine of fly and work Nicholas spent most
of his time at his desk, in the words of
his cousin Sandro, listening with near awe to the bellowing
(16:06):
of his towering uncle's um. Nikki was particularly frightened of
his uncle Sergey. Sandro claimed he dreaded being alone with them.
And obviously these are the guys who like helped raise him.
These are his father's brothers, and he feels inadequate next
to them. He's also much smaller than them. I think
Sergey is like six ft five and Nicholas is a
little dude. Um. So there's a lot going on here,
(16:28):
and he's just like he's he's kind of dominated during
the early years of his reign by his his just
kind of It's the Serge show, you know, and as
we've established, not a good show. No, no, no, not,
it's one of the worst. It's like that show that
that that that Friends like spin off that was all
about Joey. That's that's the Surgy show. Yeah Joey. Yeah.
(16:49):
I was going to call it the Big Bang Theory.
It's like the biggest things. I would say his Dad's
show was the Big Bang Theory. His granddad show was
the big bang theory very fair. So after yeah, they
get into this routine, might call it a rut um
and Nikki, yesman's a few years just getting dominated by
(17:10):
his uncle's um. Sandro, who become came a naval officer,
begs his brother to fire the Gray Sandro, his cousin
um begs his cousin to fire the Grand Duke, but
Nicholas replies, sacked my father's favorite brother. I believe they're right,
you didn't turn socialist in America. His cousin has just
gotten back from America. Like, firing this incredibly incapable racist
(17:30):
man would be like communism. Um my shitty father's favorite
shitty dude. Yeah yeah, like kinda yeah maybe, Like I
don't know, you know, I think forgiveness is important. It's
important for people to have second chances, but I would
also like, I would not give an employee a second
(17:50):
chance if they killed four thousand people. Yeah, you know,
we have our little hiccups every now and then on
the podcast Stee, I get something wrong or there's something
else goes awry. But um, I think if one of
us were to kill four thousand people making this podcast,
I think that would probably need to be the end
of that person's job. Let he who is without saying
(18:13):
casting first. Yeah, I mean it would be pretty cool
to have the well, no, Joe Rogan beat us to that.
Yeah topic body count. Yeah yeah, that's a shame. Stop
trying to censor him. So you know who's not trying
to censor Joe Rogan? Jeff, I mean I feel worried.
(18:33):
I M really anyone, No one really is. Nobody is
no no, no one has at all, but certainly not
the podcasts or the whatever. The ads. These ads aren't
you know what, you know, just threw off your game there, Robert,
he did this is my killing four thousand people at
the czar's coronation moment. Ah, we're back. You know what
(19:05):
I loved about those ads, Jeff Zero censorship of of
Meathead podcast and I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on
a limb and say less than a thousand people trampled
to death as a result of those ads. It's going
to be really awkward when you when you listen to
the episode again, like there's a big people, it's some
(19:25):
new insurance company. A thousand people you know, got trampled
to death. The Geico tramplings uh so um, czaren Zarina
settle into their new life, which you know, he's working
all the time, but not from the same place. They
travel constantly throughout the year. Air conditioning isn't really a thing.
(19:46):
So like at the start of the year, they're they're
in the capital in the winter palace um where a
whole social season in St. Petersburg revolved around like partying
while it's really cold outside with the Romanovs and their cousins.
So there's all these big dances and balls and things
that I think I would rather die than attend. Um,
Like you don't like big balls? No, yeah, it depends
(20:07):
like if they're cradled properly. Um, but I certainly don't.
Like they were clever, Oh yeah, clever, like get it
and they're like can we get it? Man? Yeah, yeah,
I see d C. We we understand the joke. We
get the bit. This is a four minute song. So
(20:28):
there's are spends a few weeks each year, you know,
in the winter doing galas and balls and you know,
I had a had these big, insufferable parties. And then
in the spring they go to their second they're like
their palace, the peter Hof, which is in an area
that has nicer springs, and then in late summers they
go on their imperial yacht and sail around the coasts
and the Baltic and all that stuff. Um, and then
in autumn they go south and travel to their castles
(20:50):
in Poland and hunt throughout the fall. That sounds so dope.
It does sound pretty rad, right. That sounds like a
man now. I mean he is like working eighty hour
nightmare weeks and like heading religious ceremonies and all this
stuff at the time. But yeah, it sounds like a
pretty fucking dope work schedule. What's even doper is his
(21:10):
like noble cousins and uncles who have that lifestyle but
also don't have anything to do, like have zero responsibilities.
That's the man that's the sweet spot. Not the czar,
but his like first cousin. Yeah, yeah, like tight enough
that the blood is very similar, but not so tight
that you're going to get murdered in an upright and
when things go awry you can just kind of bounce
(21:31):
actually Dutch. Yeah, oh thank god, I spend so much
time in Germany. This worked out good for me. I'm
gonna turn this accent on real quick. Yeah. So um
Nicholas keeps a rigorous schedule. He wakes up at eight
every morning. He works until the night most days. Simon
Mountfiori writes, refusing to delegate, Nikki signed off on trivialities
(21:54):
such as every change of name and divorce in the empire,
and lists of staff to receive easter eggs, as well
as instances of exile and death. So he is he
takes this thing of like absolute autocrat very seriously, and
he is like micromanaging. He's doing DMV ship. He's covering
a lot of ground. Yeah, congratulations you are married, and
(22:14):
congratulations you ought to be hitted. Yeah. It is like
we talked about, like he's working all the time, but
a lot of it is stuff that like he doesn't
need to do, Like hey, yeah, you can even delegate
some of this, buddy, but he doesn't, um and so
he has a lot of like busy work. He's again
(22:35):
like kind of the national DMV slash warlord Pope. It's
a weird thing to do, man, it is. It's a
weird way to set up your gigantic country. Yeah, just
be like, no, I have to sign off on every divorce. Yeah, no,
one expects this of you, Nicholas. Yeah, so fairly. Early
on in his reign, Nicholas the Second had to make
(22:57):
a crucial decision. Would he follow in his grandfather footsteps
and push for reform or would he be like his
dad an advocate of sacred auto criticism. He chose the latter,
vowing that when he had a son, he would pass
on to him and intact monarchy. This would prove to
be problem Yeah, oh NICKI boiler alert. Yeah, does not
(23:18):
wind up being that story. Um. This proved problematic for
a couple of reasons. But the first thing that stymied
his goal was the fact that Alex just wasn't making
baby boys. You know. Um, obviously that's not that's not
on her. Um, you don't have any choice in the matter.
But it's also the most important thing for him to
do is to make an air, right, like every's our
(23:39):
job number one is make another boy who can take
over keep. Yeah. Um, it's like it's a big deal.
And like the rain is, there's unrest in the kingdom
and ship when you don't have an air because people
don't really know, is clearly how things are going to
shake out. Because even if it's like your first cousin
or whatnot. It's a lot messier if it's not the
(24:00):
way it's supposed to go in this system. So everybody's
got a lot writing on he and Alex having a
baby boy, and by god, they try, um, but they
are They just keep making girls. Um he has four
daughters over the course of years. Um, well she has
four daughters. Uh, and and he he helps. It's like
a shaking bake situation, you know. Um, and their credit,
(24:23):
they're very devoted to them. There's this story from his
first daughter that like his wife starts sobbing when she
realizes she's had a daughter because she hasn't you know,
done her duty yet and give him a son. And
he reassures her by saying, hey, we're gonna have a
son one of these days, and he's going to belong
to Russia. You know, this girl is ours, like our
this child is just is just our daughter, and like
that's that's that's great. Yeah, that's a sweet thing to say.
(24:45):
Like that's in a situation that can't possibly be healthy.
The healthiest way to think about this, I think, I
gotta be honest. He sounds like a real wife guy.
He's a wife guy. He is he is, he's he
loves super wife. Dude. I love that for him because
apparently everyone else hates his wife. They share do and
and spoiler, his wife is sucks, is trash. His wife's bad,
(25:06):
but he is too, So it's a good match. Like
it's like an Ava Brown Hitler situation where it's like
we were both deeply unpleasant, but you know, at least
you found each other. Yeah that's good. Yeah. Um, I
don't know. Maybe some people should not ever do anything
like Hitler, but we don't have that option. Whoa, whoa,
(25:28):
whoa whoa. Who are you canceling Hitler? Who are you
to judge? Yeah? What was he supposed to do after
not getting into art school? What was the are supposed
to do other than be the czar? Um? Don't man? Yeah,
quit buddy, take your money and run like that's the thing.
It's been a year as this are sock and ship
(25:49):
away in Switzerland. Then go on a diplomatic trip one
day and just never come back. Just Bruce Wayne at
the end of the dark Knight, just do a fucking
Irish goodbye on being the Czar of all Russia. Good
Russian goodbye. Yeah, I was hanging out he's like a
tin smith and like Boston. Yeah, figure it out. So
(26:11):
when duty kept the czar and his wife apart, the
Emperor in Price would exchange letters on a daily basis. Um.
They usually had telegrams, and so they're like again, they're
like texting each other, like they are corresponding on a
rate that is pretty much modern, and they're like the
Russian royal family really are the only people in the
world who get to do this. I guess there's some
other royals like this, um, but like they're basically texting
(26:34):
all the time, and so they talk to each other
about everything, and we, unfortunately, as a result of this,
no a dismal amount about their sex life and what
they called each other. Man, how awkward must that have
been for the dudepic guy who's like writing this down. Yeah, whatever, goddamn,
(26:54):
we have message back for confirmation. Do you want to
come on my neck? Did you mean neck? Right? Neck?
His pet name or her pet name for him was
boise um like b o y s y, not like
idaho um. And and his pet name for her was
(27:15):
lady um, which is fine, it's just some funny texture.
Not judging them whatever. Everybody has weird pet names. One
example letter reads, this is going to be hard to
get through doing an accent. It'll be easier tell Boise
that lady sings him her tenderest love and kisses and
often thinks of him in lonely sleepless nights. Like it's
(27:36):
sweet they love each other. But I expected something a
lot more like graphically sexual. They're too boring for that. Um,
here's how boring they are. We do they talk about
their sex life a lot, but it's all pretty bland. Um.
Because he's such a repressed dude in the eighteen hundreds,
Czar is terrified to use the word period. So when
he's like messaging her on the telegram as he's driving
(27:58):
back on a train and wants no, like are we
gonna be able to fuck? Because he's he's obviously he's
not that cool. Um, so he's asking like, are we
gonna be able to funk when I get back? And
so he'll ask, is madam Baker home? That's his like
slang for like are you are you having me mad?
That's fair? Because remember this is going through to other people,
like it makes sense, like how's that puss? He's not
(28:21):
gonna do that, I mean, other people do in this
period and it's pretty funny. But yeah, they're a little
more coy. He also calls it the military engineer. Um.
So I also remind you, by the way, I'm sorry
to interrupt again, but I would also like to remind
you that we're talking about this now. So he is
funny correct to not be too graphic about this because
(28:41):
we're like, let's talk about this other dipshit telegraph that
he wrote Google James Joyce love letters and see how
it can go when someone sho gets into someone else's hands. Yeah, yeah,
I'm good about that. Yeah. Um, I don't know. I
just find it funny. That's not a particular moral mark
against them, Like, it is interesting to me that they
are basically like sexting each other in the eighteen hundreds
(29:03):
because they have the ability, like they get to use
telegram machines that way. But also it means that someone
else has to do all of the actual sexting for them, um,
which is awkward. It's some guy that's most likely wearing
an official uniform. He's he's got the biggest hat you've
seen in your life. He's at work, he's a work
(29:23):
setife how was your job, honey, I don't want to
talk about Let me tell you this baker lady won't
go away months she shows up to her place. It's
really bizarre. So Nicholas doesn't seem to have really liked
his cousin Kaiser Villehelm because nobody liked Kaiser however, and
(29:46):
never never weird dude, um horny for his mom's hands.
But he came calling regularly on like Kaiser Wilhelm came
to Russia to hang out with Nikki pretty regularly. And
this is for totally self serving reasons, and in he
wants to get back into an alliance with Russia, so
he's like always dropping by to be like, hey, can
I borrow your entire military at the event of a
(30:08):
European conflict. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what usually happens. Um,
and he starts trying to, like, as part of his
plan to win back the Tsar, he tries to convince
Nikki to expand um in in Asia rather than expanding
into Europe because like, Germany's doing some expanding stuff in
(30:30):
this period right there unifying they're getting getting their ship
locked down. Um, They're they're quarreling with a couple of
folks um. And he doesn't want Yeah, it it ends fine, um,
but he doesn't want he doesn't want the Czar to
to look towards Europe. He wants him to like look
towards Asia. Um. And also the Kaiser kind of has
some designs for taking part of China, which is sort
(30:51):
of falling apart in this period. Um. And so he's like, hey,
why don't we like steal a little bit of of China.
And because he's the Kaiser and very racist, he describes
this as setting Russia up to quote defend Europe from
the inroads of the Great Yellow Race. All of the
letters and this that that that racist phraser capitalized I
think by the Kaiser, who also spoke great English. He
(31:15):
didn't say great Yeah, I don't think you meant it
in a good way um. And he advocated working together
to steal a bunch of ports from China. Um. And
Russia really wants a Chinese port because China has some
ports that don't freeze, and all of the ports in
Russia freeze at some point, right, Like it's not for
all the ports at least on the east side of
the Empire. They they've got that problem. He wants like
a warm weather port um and he wants to take
(31:38):
it from China. UM. And this is kind of like,
you know, the Kaiser is sort of like really pushing this,
but Nicholas definitely once again, as we said, like every
czar's job is to expand the empire um and this
is kind of the only real place to expand. So
Nicholas he hasn't made an air yet. He can't put
another boy into the Imperial you know, baby cavern or
(32:01):
whatever you want to call it. But he can conquer
some land for Russia and maybe prove that he deserves
to be the czar that way. Um. So he sees
his port arthur on the Chinese coast because again China
sort of falling apart, and the Kaiser is like, yeah,
this is a great idea. Do it, do it? Do it?
So he sends troops talk He's like, yeah, man, do it,
do it. It's gonna it's gonna go great for everybody.
(32:22):
It's like jackass, yeah yeah. But I'm Nicholas the second
and this is invading China, this is conquering the Chinese
coast um. And his ministers in the navy are like
this is a bad idea, Bro. You don't know what
you're getting into. Bro. We don't have a lot of
troops on that side of it is far the funk
away from Moscow. I don't know if you know how
big your country is, but like it's gonna be a
(32:45):
problem fighting in China for US. UM. But the Czar
is like, uh, I note, I want I want a port, Um,
And the Navy is even like, well, this is a
bad one to if you're going to go through this,
if you're gonna like take all the risks of seizing
apport from China, this is into very good port. Why
don't we like go further south and take a port
in Korea. Um and his prime minister at the time,
(33:06):
a guy named Wit who we've met, you know, used
to be running the trains and stuff. Um points out
that this is going to funk up the alliance that
he already has with China. He's got like treaties because
he's building the Trans Siberian Railway, which goes through territory
China controls, so he has like a treaty with China.
And his prime minister is like, well, you know they're
not gonna be happy with you if you started conquering them. Yeah,
(33:29):
I don't know if you know what a treaty is. Yeah,
generally with someone in the treaty is like that's a
no no yeah. And he's also Wit is also like,
Japan is not gonna be cool with this because they're
in the Japan is waging war in China right now.
They are actively conquering chunks of China, and Japan and
(33:49):
Russia are at peace at the moment. And Wit is like,
do you really want to like funk with Japan and
like their sphere of influence because like, we're not We're
not great at fighting over there. It's kind of far away. Um.
But the Young's are didn't listen. And again his two issues,
his two duties are to expand the empire and to
make a baby, so like this is he sees this
(34:09):
is like this is the one thing I can do. Um.
And during his world tour, that big road trip we
talked about last episode, Nikki had met a prince um
named Esper who was really into Buddhism. And this prince
had claimed like, hey, people at Tibet are waiting for
the Great White Tsar to conquer Tibet from China and
free them. Everybody in Tibet wants to be ruled by
(34:30):
the czar. You just get you overthrow the British who
are running things at the moment in there, and like
they're going to be psyched with you. Um, which is
not Tibet, classic Tibet. Everybody just gets a picture of
a Russian dude on their wall one day. Yeah, the
Dali Lama just has an Ivan Drago poster hanging up
in his So Nikki was very superstitious and religious, and
(34:57):
he was entranced by this vision of himself as a
great white czar. Driven by fantasies of a Russia expanded
across Manchuria and Korea. He committed more and more of
his troops to Asia. Now, his brother dies in July
of eight from tuberculosis. And when his brother dies, that's
like the last reasonable voice that he's sometimes listened to.
You know, he's got with He's got some like ministers
(35:19):
that are reasonable, but he doesn't give a ship what
they say, because they're not they're not there. They weren't,
they weren't God given. Yeah, exactly, he did kindness sometimes,
not all the time, not often listened to Georgie. But
now Georgie's you know, dead as shit. Um, so this
isn't gonna go great for anybody, at least of all China.
Now in ninet Dred, we have the Boxer Rebellion, which
(35:39):
is this big populist uprising against the West in China.
A bunch of embassies and Peaking get besieged, and like
everybody who's not China puts a big army together to
go funk up China. Um, it's pretty yeah, we'll talk
about it that this is like a criminally brief explanation
of what happens. I mean, it's a lot of people
(36:00):
that it's some dudes that thought they were in Crouching Tiger.
And yeah, it did not go the way it was played.
It did not nothing, nothing, None of this goes well. Um.
Nicholas doesn't really want to send troops to China. He's
like very anxious about actually having his soldiers in peking um,
but he's also bullish on conquering a bunch of China.
So after his troops get back from the Boxer Rebellion,
(36:21):
he sends a hundred and seventy thousand soldiers into Manchuria, um,
which he does not control, and his goal is to
provoke a reaction that will justify like conquering all of Manchuria,
which Japan is fighting over at the time and is
owned by China. So he's he's really just like sticking
his national dick in a hornet's nest um for no
(36:41):
real reason. Like I love that phrasing. Yeah, yeah, he
is about to fuck a hornet's nest. But you know
who won't fuck a hornets nest? Jeff, go on, who
who would that be? Well? Would um, well, they they'll
have your cook one first, Yeah, they would have you.
They would have you, well, they would they would use you.
Would you would marinate your dick in be venom or
(37:04):
hornet venom and then or something, Yeah, probably filled with hornets,
filled with hornets um or the Washington State Highway Patrol
mostly hornets. Anyway, here's some ads. Ah, yeah, we're back.
(37:25):
Jeff just got his first bleep I did, and then,
you know what, I gotta be honest, felt great. It
does trying to censor me on the New Joe Rogan.
That's right, you're gonna you've gotta crowdfund and half a
million dollars off of this. You can't. You can't censor me.
I'm unsensorable. I'm a straight white man with a background
and fighting. You can't get you. You are the anti Rogan.
(37:49):
We could get you guys to touch and uh yeah,
we'd we'd merged together like time cop. Yeah, and then
you would produce season five of Cereal. I don't know
how that works out, but it does. Um anyway, Yes,
So how do you feel all this goes getting involved
(38:09):
in in China trying to take a China fuxing with Japan.
I'm flipping them off a little bit. I think this
guy is good. I've seen the Princess Bride. I know
for a fact you never get involved in a land
war in Asia. You you sure do not. Um, and
you also you really don't want to fuck with Like
early nineteen hundreds, Japan. They have their ship together, they're
(38:31):
doing okay. They had some walls, they had some ups
and some downs. Japan has been pretty victorious all things considered. Um, China,
they did not have a great second half of the
You kind of can funk with China in this period,
which is why the entire world does repeatedly. I mean,
Jesus Christ, how many, how many drug dealing wars? Did
(38:51):
we have in order to protect our right to turn
the entire country into opiumatics? Yeah? Yeah, out and it
was all for tea. That's right, everybody. Look it up.
British invaded a country to force them to buy drugs
so that they could get tea more easily. Um so
us not even top ten of British Empire crimes. Like yeah,
(39:16):
man I, the open door policy in the opium Wars
is so wild, it's really we we really need to
get into that more on this because it is a
fascinating period and it says just everything about the kind
of individuals who were involved in colonialism in this period,
one of whom is Nicholas the second so Um. In
nineteen o one, the Czar and z Arena have their
(39:36):
last daughter. Um, they've had four so far. I think
it's four. M Who can keep track of them? Um?
Well the Bolsheviks could. Well, maybe it's kind. They were
little nesting dolls, just keeps popping. They have the one
daughter and they just keep popping her in half and
pulling out another day. Inside is a tiny little son,
the tiny little son who can't bleed right. Um So,
(39:58):
about a month after they have their last daughter, two
princesses who married into the Romanov family. They're called the
Crows and simon Montfior's book, they're kind of occultists. Um,
they're really into like weird witchy stuff, but like Christian
I think it's pretty dope. There's a lot of that
going around in this period. Um. They introduced Nicholas and
Alexandra to a French healer. These princesses were originally from
(40:20):
Montenegro and they were part of like they were into
these really occult Christian traditions. Um. And they introduced the
Romanovs into like the world of like weird spiritual healers.
And Nicholas and Alexandra fall hard for this ship. And
I'm gonna quote from the Romanovs. First, the sisters introduced
to Nicki and alex to the epileptic holy idiot Mitka Colebia.
(40:45):
But when, but when the the fucking names? That was amazing.
Um yeah. But then one of the sister's sons falls
ill and she consults a French peasant boy who working
at his uncle's butcher shop, had experienced an epiphany and
set himself up as a hydrophant specializing in the power
(41:06):
of psychic fluids and astral forces to heal sickness and
cure female sterility. Now, this guy's name is Philippe, and
by the time the Czar and Zarina meet him, he's
about fifty small, with black hair and black mustache, very
unsightly in appearance, with an ugly Southern French accent of
someone close to the Romanov's rights. As Nikki and Alex
struggled to conceive a boy, Philip visited Petersburg at the
(41:29):
Palace of the Crows and her one of the Crow women,
and her husband, the Grand Duke Peter, noted Nicki this
evening we met the amazing Frenchman. So they like, they
fall for this guy hert um and it's you know,
it's a rasputant kind of thing. It's exactly that these
people are what we referred to as marks. Yes they are.
They would be devastatingly online and fall for every single
(41:52):
scam number one, number one. The Czar would have like
a thousand n F T s right now. Um, they
would be pouring bleached down their kids throats. They would
they would have bought into everything they got trying to
escape the palace. They got caught with seventeen pounds of
board ape pictures they're running out of. Yeah, these are
(42:13):
these are I can't emphasize this enough. Not smart people. Um,
my precious, my precious ape's all gone. The Bolsheviks, Oh
could you do this to me? Is what the future? Yeah?
And then you've got like Stalin in a room with
I don't know, one of the red generals. They're like, no,
that Lennon is dead. The board apes can go to
(42:34):
the people. And Stalin looks at the board ape and
puts it in his pocket. No, no, this is my ap.
Oh apes are stolen's. Um. So the Romanovs fall for
this guy fucking immediately. They start calling him our friend
with the F capitalized, which is what they call respute
in decades later or years later, and they take him
(42:56):
immediately into their confidence. Again, these people have like no
guile at all, Like they're like the holy man who
can heal using magic? Let's tell him every state secret
we have. I would love for you to plant these beans.
It would have been very easy to spy on the
czar and Czarina if like you, you are a little
(43:17):
good at tricking people, like if you're a sub magician.
Perhaps he would like to see this ruple behind your ear.
I've watched the man pull his finger in half. We
must give him our boy's health or he will be
pulling us all in heath. Yeah, so just just lose
(43:39):
every dime at a carnival. One carnival would have ruined
the Romano doctors. You cannot take this man's advice. Um.
He has graduated from no school and he has no
medical license. Like, you can't. You can't take his advice
on your wife's fertility or on the health of your children.
(44:01):
You like, what are you doing? And those are is like, Oh,
your problem with him is that he doesn't have a license.
We'll all make him a medical doctor by declaration and
give him a medical license. No, that's not how it works.
It doesn't Russia. That's not dude, that's not how it works.
It's very funny, um. Simon Montfior continues. Soon Philip was
(44:23):
giving political advice. When Nikki met kaiser villelm Alex told
her husband, our dear friend will be near you and
help you answering William's questions, giving him the toughness to
be friendly and severe so that he realizes he dare
not joke with you that he learns to be afraid
of you. As for reform, Philip advised Nikki that a
constitution would be the ruin of Russia. In the spring
of nineteen o two, Alex fell pregnant and our friend
(44:46):
was prophesying Russia was chosen to dominate the Far East.
So this guy isn't is reinforcing again. He's doing the
thing that like helps you can powerful people. You tell
them what they want to hear. Those are wants to hear. Know,
the people don't need a constitution. And yes, you're you're
going to conquer China. Yeah, which is such like a
big gamble. Yeah to gamble. Yeah, like like you're gonna
(45:08):
be able to do this one very hard thing about that. Yeah,
the the guy who fell for my tricks are going
to be able to tie this, not this fucking rube.
You're gonna be able to take care of it all. Oh, yeah,
it's gonna go great for you. Send more guys to China.
That's gonna be really good. Yeah, you know what, I
got a mustache do So at this point, absolutely nothing
(45:33):
but garbage is getting into the tsar's brain right like
his his information Funnel is just pure trash um. Now
he's introduced by Sandro, who's normally like who's his cousin
and is normally like one of the more level headed
people around him, to a captain named Bezobrazov who wants
to be the Cecil Rhodes of Russia and basically is like,
send me over to Asia and I'll conquer it for you.
(45:56):
I think your historic destiny is to conquer the East,
and I'm gonna do it for you, right me, best
of Brazov, I'm gonna be the guy you like. Give
me troops and money and I'll conquered Manchuria for you,
and Korea too. Um, give me enough troops and enough
money and I could do it. Yeah, I mean, I
feel like it wouldn't be that hard to I mean
if from what I remember of the Korean War, pretty
(46:16):
easy war. Honestly, I'm gonna be like so easy that
I barely even remember it, barely even talk about it.
It's like a forgotten war or something, probably because it
was so boring, so boring. Japan is engaged at this point.
They're they're again trying to conquer China. Congratulations Japan. Yeah,
it doesn't work different. Mhmm. They're not getting married. You
(46:43):
would not you would not call this a marriage. Um.
So they start clashing with Russia diplomatically over the fact
that Russia's expanding into the areas that Japan is already
trying to conquer. And Japan does not want a war
with Russia because it's a bad idea to go to
war with Russia historically, most most of the time. Um,
Japan likes to avoid wars that are not defensive in general,
(47:05):
until they see the opportunity. You don't want to You
don't want to leave the island for a war with Russia.
It's not a good idea, it's not I mean, especially
you're already fighting this war with China right like you're
trying to You're you're engaged in conflict all over. Your
resources are extended, and Russia is huge and rich. Um,
you don't really want to funk with them. And they
have a reputation as being a good naval power too,
(47:26):
And maybe Japan doesn't really want to like test this ship.
Just look at there. He's dressed like a like a sailor. Yeah,
he's gonna be great with boats. He's wearing that little
outfit dressed like a sailor, his whole goddamn life. Now,
Japan is scared of getting into a fight with with
with Russia. But because he's listening to Bezo Brasov, Nicholas
(47:47):
is not at all freight frighten the for war with Japan.
He thinks it's going to be a cake walk, and
Bezo Brazov convinces him that conflict is inevitable, so the
best thing to do is to start threatening Japan with
open war. And basically like, hey, if we lay our
cards out on the table, they'll either fight us and
we'll win, or they won't fight us and we'll get
our ship. Right Like, that's Bezobrazov's attitude. He tells there
(48:07):
only the bayonet can guarantee the success of our activities
in Manchuria. Um it does not. So, despite the fact
that this guy is kind of unhinged, Nikki gives him
two million roubles and sends him east on a secret
mission to set up a paramilitary force in Manchuria to
help them conquer it Um, which Bezobrazov has. There's nothing
in his background that would make him capable of this. Yeah,
(48:29):
that's that's when you make that Irish goodbye. That's when
you just take your money and bounce. That is, that
is a bounceable amount of money to have. But he
does not bounce um. And when he finds out Wit,
who's again one of the few reasonable people in the
Czar's orbit, uh Like laments that a quote half mad,
(48:50):
preposterous adventurer is purely in charge of their policy in
the East. So Nicholas is basically like, yeah, crazy dude,
do whatever you want. You're in charge of Russia's policy
towards China. This is going to end. Well, that's like
giving mel Gibson's character from Lethal Weapon in charge of that. Like,
it's just like a very unhinged existence to see somebody
be in charge of anything with Yeah, it's it's not
(49:12):
a great call. And while Nicholas is edging Japan towards
the brink of war, ship is not copasetic in the
Imperial interior. This article by Shlomo Lambrosa, writing for Oxford
University Press, lays out the situation. The lack of any
substantive reform policy, compounded by a deteriorating economy, led to
increased incidents of popular violence. Poor harvests in nineteen o
(49:34):
two and nineteen o three caused wide scale unrest in
rural areas. Peasants roamed the countryside in search of work
and food, occasionally resorting to violence. In nineteen o two,
in the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava, peasants looted homes
from the nobility, causing thousands of rubles worth of damage.
So that is a is a problem for the Russians, right,
It's not a problem people starving, but now rich people
(49:56):
for the Russians. Yeah, oh, ship, small pockets of the
or are rising up against the nobility. Yeah, I guess
we should just do the same thing for the next
sixteen years. Yeah, I guess we should continue taking no
changes whatsoever and maybe start a war with Japan. Um. Yeah,
so economic the fact that the economy is falling apart,
(50:16):
it doesn't unfortunately, like there are some isolated pockets of
people going after nobles. For the most part, they go
after the people that Russian peasants go after, and Russian
nobles go after. When they're angry, they make the same
call that Alexander the Third does. They they go after
the Jews. Um, you know, doubt again, this is why
like tens of thousands of Jewish people are leaving Russia
(50:38):
every year because it's it's not a not an easy spot. Um.
They're like, you know what's better. Yeah, yeah, it sounds
like that's a lot gotta be a lot safer for us.
In nineteen o three, all of this culminates in the
first Pegram of the century in a city named Kishenev.
It started with what was basically a drunken party where
(50:58):
several kids vanned lies Jewish properties. So you get these
like young kind of nationalist, right wing youth and they
vandalize a synagogue, um, and then some Jewish own stops, shops,
and things just kind of keep escalating. Thank god that
doesn't happen in modern times anymore. Yeah, we we got
that out of the species is system. Thank god the
Jews are no longer targeted by hate crimes anymore. That's
(51:21):
what everyone says about the Jews, that things are simple
for them now. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from the
Harvard Crimson here or Harvard Gazette here, Sorry, not the Crimson.
Fuck the Crimson. This is the Harvard Gazette. Gangs of
twenty armed with hatchets and knives stormed through the town's
narrow streets and into its courtyards, where Jewish families defended
(51:44):
themselves with garden implements and other meager weapons. In the end,
forty nine Jews were killed and an untold number of
Jewish women were raped and Jewish homes were damaged. This
sudden rush of hoodlum violence, prompted by accusatory rumors of
Jewish ritual murder, quickly became a talents of imperial Russian
brutality against its Jews. So, yeah, that's cutting out, guys,
(52:10):
just cut it out. Great, Yeah, it's it's yeah. Maybe
maybe don't have you tried not about it and his
his his empire. Maybe not so Nikki. When he hears
about this big pagram Um, he puts a dude in
charge of dealing with it Um, a minister named Pleeve
who has taken part in anti Semitic violence before and
(52:32):
is one of the most infamous anti Semites in the
Russian government. Um And actually Pleeve becomes one of the
more moderate people around him, which is not great Um,
but his move he fires the governor of of Kishenev,
which fine Um and Nikki seems to barely kind of
notice that a pogram has happened. This does not really
(52:52):
take up a lot of cycles in his brain. He's
concerned with the fact that his wife is pregnant. Again, say,
he's probably too busy sexty. Yeah, he is too busy sexting.
Does not care about this program um on the day
of it, He's just kind of like writing home to
his wife about ship. He doesn't. This doesn't seem to
really left a mark on him at all, um and
he can Tee and his wife continue to get all
of their medical advice from Philippe. Uh. This was deeply
(53:13):
worrying to the old wind Impress, the Czar's mother, and
so she sends a secret agent with the acrona Russian
secret service, to investigate Philippe. This this healer, and the
investigation realizes, like, this guy has been charged with practicing
medicine without a license in France. A bunch like arnest, Yeah,
He's like yeah, this one car and he got close
(53:35):
to the Tsar and immediately conned his ass. Smooth the
ship man. This guy, this guy would talk himself anywhere,
and when this report was brought to the Czar, he
fires the agent who writes it, not Philippe. UM. And
Philip's health advice during this this pregnancy that Alex is having,
UM is that she's not allowed to be weighed or
inspected by doctors in any way whatsoever. Um. And the
(53:57):
reason is because she's not actually pregnant. She's like some people,
she may have had like kind of a miscarriage or something. Basically, UM,
we don't really know. He may have just been lying
to her and trying to get her to put on
a little weight and telling her that she was pregnant
so that he could try to get a bunch of
money out of them. It's kind of unclear exactly what happened,
but he's definitely yeah, he knows she's not pregnant, because
(54:18):
he's like, oh, yeah, I don't let anybody weigh you
and don't let the doctors look at you. Yeah. This
six ft party sublivered and and the Zarin Zarina are
like that makes sense. Um. Now, obviously, eventually you can
only hide from someone that they're not pregnant for so long.
There is a point at which it will become very
clear that you were not pregnant. Um. This happens, Uh,
(54:42):
And when it does. This does kind of break the
spell a little bit, and Nicholas finally fires Philip. Simon
Montfio writes, before he left, laden with presents, including a
Surpole motor car, he gave the Impress a little bell
that would ring if dark forces lurked. Philip died soon afterwards,
but not before he had warrant that he would merely
vanish and then reappear. Sometime. You will have another friend
(55:04):
like me who will speak to you of God. That's good.
You ain't never had a friend. Lock me a Latin
genie ng he is. He is genieing him and he's
also like setting him up for Rasputin, which I kind
of he must have known he was an old man,
Like he must have known he didn't have that much longer.
I wonder if he was just like, I'm going to
do a solid for the next con man who gets
(55:26):
close to these idiots. You know what, you gotta get
a look out for the next generation. Yeah, he's really
setting ship up for rass S. Butin like another guy
is going to come and con these rich people out
of more of their stuff. And I want it to
be easy for him because there is something fascinating about
these uh, these like mystics that the that the Tsars
(55:46):
are pulling in at the end here the Romanos because
like they say ship that's like oddly like it's an
odd portant, Like they'll say ship that. Because we talk
about like Resputin, he's like, yeah, he doesn't think of him,
like he's got some really prophetic sounding stuff, the ones
I remember being very specifically, he's like, you know, if
you kill me, you are bucked. Yeah, you're fucked. Uh,
(56:09):
this war is gonna go bad. Like but also if
you rest boot Putin and you're a pretty good con
man and you know these people, it's a safe bet
to be, like I'll just tell them things are gonna
get real bad because they probably are going to keep
getting real bad because these people yeah, yeah, yeah, Um
I don't know, Jeff, but I do know that that's
(56:32):
going to be in the end of part two. You get, yeah,
let's do it for this for this week. You know,
Like I said, if you guys find me on social
media Twitter and Instagram at hey there, Jeff ro come
say hi. I'm actually uh pretty funny on the old
on the old Twitter, damn straight. We have a good
time on there. You can also check out my shows.
I have Jeff Has Cool Friends, which is available at
(56:52):
patreon dot com slash Jeff May for early on censored
episodes with bonus content, or you can listen to it
for three a week later. I have a lot of
really cool friends. If you're a nerve, you absolutely love it.
I also have Tom and Jeff watch Batman on the
Gamefully Unemployed Network. You can check that out with Tom
Ryman as well as you don't even like sports and
on Popular Opinion both on the Unpopps network with Adam
(57:13):
Todd Brown. Yeah, Robert, what do you got to plug? Man?
Tell me something something good. I got a novel called
After the Revolution. It's you can preorder it now and
get it signed. If you google a k Press After
the Revolution, you can find my novel. It'll come sign
to your house. So order order that ship check it out.
Hell yeah, I'm gonna do that. I want you to
know my address. I will not, but somewhat at a
(57:36):
k Press will learn your address. Well, yeah, and we
eat it for for unsettling purposes. That's that's the guarantee
unsavory books. All right, Well, that's gonna do it for
us behind the bastards this week. Come back next week
for several more hours of talking about Zar Nicholas the Second,
so much, Nicholas the Second, way too much Nicholas the
(57:58):
Second any responsible amount, Not Nicholas the Second. I would say,
that's what Nicholas the Second said right before he got
shot by the Bolsheviks. He's like, you know, maybe a
few more weeks. I feel like more of me would
have been good. I was really going to pull it
out in the last quarter. Give me a chance. I
can fix. I can fix. I can change baby's tiny war. Fine, perfect,
(58:25):
I'll see you next week, all right, bam
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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