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Speaker 1: Oh, it's Behind the Bastards again. The podcast that is

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Speaker 1: every week, but it's also this week, and we'll be

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Speaker 1: the next week until the heat death of the universe

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Speaker 1: or the end of my contract. This is a podcast

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Speaker 1: where we talk about the worst people in all of

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Speaker 1: history and folks, we got a banger for you this week,

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Speaker 1: and to help me deliver give birth to this banger,

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Speaker 1: the midwife of of several hours of of of Russian history.

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Speaker 1: Jeff consider right now, like I'm gonna get your hands

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Speaker 1: up in They're gonna get all do it really get

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Speaker 1: in there, just get all the placenta of information all over.

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Speaker 1: We do male placenta to every one of our guests.

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Speaker 1: Don't ask where it comes from that it's I take

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Speaker 1: it from my vitality. It is one of my favorite

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Speaker 1: moments traveling was in Japan, going to like a pharmacy

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Speaker 1: to get contact solution and stumbling onto an entire aisle

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Speaker 1: of placina based products, mostly horse um, but I had

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Speaker 1: not been aware that it was used for that until

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Speaker 1: that point. It was a fun moment. Are you gonna

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Speaker 1: get strong erna? Exactly? If you're not taking horse Place

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Speaker 1: center to get you going? That's why I run so fast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I run like, you know, forty five miles an hour

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Speaker 1: when I read now, Jeff, Jeff May, you are a

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Speaker 1: stand up comedian. You are also a podcaster. UM. You

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Speaker 1: do a podcast on the game Fully Unemployed Network Friends

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Speaker 1: of the Pods, Tom and Dave have both also been

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Speaker 1: on the show where you talk about Batman. Tom and

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Speaker 1: Jeff watch Batman. You also have the Jeff May Has

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Speaker 1: Cool Friends podcast Jeff has called Friends, Jeff Has Cool Friends. Um.

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Speaker 1: Anything else you want to plug up here at the top. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I also do a show called You Don't Even Like

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Speaker 1: Sports with Adam Todd Brown, sports podcast for people that

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Speaker 1: hate sports, um, and which is most of my fan

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Speaker 1: base because I am a professional nerd specifically, as well

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Speaker 1: as you have a Batman podcast, I do. Well. It's

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Speaker 1: funny too because Jeff Has Well Friends used to be

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Speaker 1: a corporate podcast for a big nerdy company and then

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Speaker 1: we we split up, and I was just like, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm just going to change the name and keep doing

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Speaker 1: what I was doing. Mm hmm. Well, Jeff, speaking of

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Speaker 1: what you were doing, were you having a good day

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Speaker 1: up until this point? No? No, no, no no no.

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Speaker 1: For two years, that's that's good because we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about somebody really unpleasant. How do you how do

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Speaker 1: you feel about czars? Well, I don't know. I mean

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Speaker 1: I think you knew this about me, but I am.

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Speaker 1: Before I got into stand up and this, I was

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Speaker 1: a teacher, taught world history, including Russian history. Uh. And Buddy,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you there's a few of them that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you got a favorite, are or at least favorite. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I would say that if we're if we're going through

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Speaker 1: like the entire history of up since the inception of

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Speaker 1: the words, are up towards Nicholas the Second, I gotta

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Speaker 1: be honest. Peter the Great is fascinating to me. He

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Speaker 1: was pretty great because people were like, this man is

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Speaker 1: a seven foot tall giant monster that toward Europe and

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Speaker 1: came back and decided to just shave everyone's beards or

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Speaker 1: tax them on it. And that's just wild to me.

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Speaker 1: What a life. Yeah, Pete the Great's a fun one.

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Speaker 1: We're not talking about a fun one today, Jeff. You're

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Speaker 1: talking about the least impressive of the czar's Nicholas the Second.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And it's so it's one of

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Speaker 1: those things like there's this weird thing Americans kind of

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Speaker 1: have with royalty sometimes. Right, there's a lot of Americans

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Speaker 1: who love the British royal family FETs your thing, like whatever. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's a weird number of Americans thereout history who've gotten

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Speaker 1: really obsessed with the Romanoffs since you know, they were

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Speaker 1: all killed by the Bolsheviks. Right, there's like movies and

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Speaker 1: that's really comes down to, Right, it's like Anastasia. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they got a bad rap and they It's one of

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Speaker 1: those things where there's this attitude people have. Obviously the

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Speaker 1: kids got a bad rap, right, kids never deserved to

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Speaker 1: be machine well gunned down by a variety of forms

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Speaker 1: in a basement. That's always bad. Um. But Nicholas and

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Speaker 1: Alexandra get who's the czar and the arena, get a

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Speaker 1: lot of like slack from people. They're they're nearly always

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Speaker 1: portrayed even when like they're shown to be incompetent. You

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Speaker 1: can't really show Nicholas is being anything but incompetent um.

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Speaker 1: But you know, like, well, he was a good man,

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Speaker 1: he loved his wife and his kids. He was you know,

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Speaker 1: he was you know, broken down by the weight of

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Speaker 1: this impossible job, and like he was a terrible person.

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Speaker 1: He loves a monster. I love what people are like,

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Speaker 1: he's a good person. He loves his family. It's like,

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Speaker 1: that is not the criteria for being a good person.

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Speaker 1: I hate to break it to you, but that's just biology. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people love their families and manned concentration camps.

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Speaker 1: There's pictures of them with their kids outside Auschwitz. You know,

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Speaker 1: you know, you know. But he said, it's just a

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Speaker 1: horrible crap. Yeah, yeah, it's it's um. He's like, he's

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Speaker 1: he gets way more slack than he deserves. And this

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Speaker 1: is going to be an episode about trying to put

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Speaker 1: him in his proper context, because I think if you've

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Speaker 1: seen Nicholas the Second and Alexander accurately, they're like Bashar

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Speaker 1: al Assad, they're like Hitler, They're like like they're they're

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Speaker 1: real bad people who kill a lot of folks to

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Speaker 1: stay in power. They there's a reason that they finished

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Speaker 1: the way they did. Ye not for nothing. I think

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Speaker 1: we put Resputant, we give We were like, well, Resputin

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Speaker 1: was bad and he victimized these people. So yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things where like if you actually

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Speaker 1: read the history, Resputin is not not the most objectionable person,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, there's times when he's the guy being

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Speaker 1: like boy seems like, yeah, I'm pretty anti Semitic. I'm

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Speaker 1: not down with that. It's this is I have a

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Speaker 1: feeling because obviously it's been a while. I've I've been

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Speaker 1: retired for almost a decade now, and i haven't been

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Speaker 1: in college in twenty years. But at this point in time,

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Speaker 1: like it seems like a story that's not going to

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Speaker 1: have a lot of heroes in it. No, no, um,

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Speaker 1: not none at all really now, um, And I think

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Speaker 1: that's that is really the overarching story when we talk

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Speaker 1: about like the murder of the entire Romanov family, when

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Speaker 1: we talk about the tragedies that came in the Russian

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Speaker 1: Civil War and the millions that died in that Um,

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Speaker 1: part of why everything was so ugly and so violent

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Speaker 1: was that the system that the Romanovs perfected over the

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Speaker 1: course of generations was inherently brutalizing, and when it collapsed,

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Speaker 1: there was nowhere for things to go but really badly.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's Russia. That's Russia. Baby. Let's tell you

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Speaker 1: that there's so many there's so much retroactive like, well,

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Speaker 1: they did what they could they say things were different.

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Speaker 1: It was bad time. Yeah, you know what Ivana people

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Speaker 1: on giant frying pan. It's just what you do when

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Speaker 1: you have power. Is intense part of world. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's crazy. He did the next Siberia. Granted he killed

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Speaker 1: many people there, but he didn't exit. And you do

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Speaker 1: have when you go over to that part of the

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Speaker 1: world to have conversations with people. They are often very

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Speaker 1: phlegmatic like that where it's like, you know, it was

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Speaker 1: a rough time. Everyone did what they could. We tried

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Speaker 1: to do what we want, but you know, things that

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Speaker 1: sometimes your rule or cut your head off. There's nothing

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Speaker 1: you can do about that. You just move forward. It's

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Speaker 1: all like Russian literature is so depressing. Yeah, like all

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Speaker 1: the happiest stories are like and then he died in prison,

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Speaker 1: isn't that nice? Yeah, it finally was over. So UM,

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Speaker 1: I think we need to start by noting that because

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Speaker 1: number one, monarchy thankfully has has mostly passed um, although

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Speaker 1: it's getting its little resurgence in some areas. UM people

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Speaker 1: tend to forget how successful monarchism wasn't a lot of cases,

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Speaker 1: and how successful the Romanov version of monarchism was. This

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Speaker 1: is by by any reasonable if you're looking at this

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Speaker 1: as a historian, by any reasonable judgment of you know, success,

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Speaker 1: the Romanov dominated monarchy in Russia was one of the

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Speaker 1: most successful governments in human history. The Romanov family came

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Speaker 1: to power in sixteen thirteen after a civil war and

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Speaker 1: like ten years of fighting and stuff in the death

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Speaker 1: of the previous are and they stayed in power for

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Speaker 1: more than three hundred years. That's longer than the United

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Speaker 1: States has existed. This one family ruled Russia. UM. While

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Speaker 1: the Romanovs were in charge of the Russian Empire, it

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Speaker 1: grew consistently by an average of fifty five square miles

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Speaker 1: per day twenty thousand miles per year. By the end

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Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds and the events of the story

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Speaker 1: we're talking about this week, the Russian Empire ruled one

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Speaker 1: sixth of the land mass of planet Earth. Um. They

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Speaker 1: were good at this. I like how they're basically like

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Speaker 1: you can describe their monarchy like the blob. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: people are just like and then within three months look

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Speaker 1: at what we've predicted. It's like that scene in the

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Speaker 1: Thing where they used the apple too to show you

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Speaker 1: what's going to happen to the world. Yeah, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: what That's what the Romanovs were doing for like a

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Speaker 1: couple of centuries without a whole lot of pushback that

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Speaker 1: was effective. You know, you get your moments. There's always

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Speaker 1: you know, military successes and reversals, but like they really

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Speaker 1: kept chugging along. And the benefit that they always have

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Speaker 1: is that, like, yeah, their military is usually not the

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Speaker 1: best or the most easiest to maneuver into place, and

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Speaker 1: their their navy, you know, waxes and wains and its efficacy.

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Speaker 1: But there's just so much Russia that that you never

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Speaker 1: want to start a fight with them. No, you never

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Speaker 1: get into land war in Asia. I think we've learned

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Speaker 1: that very specifically. Yeah, now, yeah, yeah, well, but before

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Speaker 1: they came to power, czar was more or less before

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Speaker 1: the Romanovs, um czar was just kind of an interchangeable

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Speaker 1: word for king, right, Like it didn't being a zar

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Speaker 1: wasn't wildly different than being a king and a lot

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Speaker 1: of other parts of like the feudalist Europe in that period.

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Speaker 1: But it means right, yeah, it comes from Caesar's same

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Speaker 1: root word as kaiser, right, Both kaiser and tsar come

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Speaker 1: from Caesar, which is you want to talk about having

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Speaker 1: an influence on history that used to just be a family,

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Speaker 1: Like that's the last name that became our by word

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Speaker 1: for billions of people for king. I mean, that's that's

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Speaker 1: influence right there, that's that's influenced baby's. Yeah. And actually

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Speaker 1: you could say czar has kind of had its own

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Speaker 1: journey like that because like especially, I think people say

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Speaker 1: it less now, it really in like the eighties and

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Speaker 1: early nineties, constantly you would hear like, oh, the president

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Speaker 1: has appointed a drugs are you know, someone to like

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Speaker 1: oversee the specific aspect of the government or a trade

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Speaker 1: gaps are or whatever. Um, So it's you know, the

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Speaker 1: Romanovs are really responsible for that because by the modern era,

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Speaker 1: being a czar is not like being a king kings

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Speaker 1: and most of Europe there's constitutional monarchies, there's limits on

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Speaker 1: their power. The nobles will hold. Even in a lot

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Speaker 1: of areas where there's not really democracy, it's still ceremonial

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Speaker 1: because the nobles are the ones in charge and the

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Speaker 1: king is more of a figurehead, um. And it's not

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Speaker 1: that way with the czar's and they are really um,

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Speaker 1: they're totalitarian rulers in a way that very few government

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Speaker 1: in history have ever really been. The czar is in

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Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds very close

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Speaker 1: to an absolute autocrat um. That means no real checks

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Speaker 1: on their power, no real influence from the people. This

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Speaker 1: starts to change in Nicholas period, but um czars maintained

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Speaker 1: total power long after pretty much every other crowned head

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Speaker 1: of Europe has been either turned into a figurehead or

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Speaker 1: reduced to just another organ of the government. And that's

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Speaker 1: that's significant. That says a lot about what the Romanov

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Speaker 1: family valued that they maintained that kind of absolute power. UM.

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Speaker 1: You could probably argue that Russian the Tsarism was kind

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Speaker 1: of the most controlling sort of feudalism practiced on the

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Speaker 1: largest scale, at least in Europe UM, and you can

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Speaker 1: make a case for worldwide, because again it's a sixth

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Speaker 1: of the world's land mass. For most of the history

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Speaker 1: that the Romanovs are in charge, the vast majority of

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Speaker 1: people in Russia are serfs. They're pretty close to slaves.

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Speaker 1: They are bound to the land. They are kind of

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Speaker 1: the property of the noble that controls that land. UM.

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Speaker 1: And the way the whole system works is the nobles

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Speaker 1: maintained the peace in their little area, and they pay

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Speaker 1: taxes to the czar. In an exchange, the czar uses

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Speaker 1: those taxes to build an army, to take more land,

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Speaker 1: to exercise more power, and to maintain this absolute structure.

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Speaker 1: So these are let's the nobles have total control over

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Speaker 1: their little area, and in exchange, he's the absolute monarch

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Speaker 1: of the entire country. It's like an MLM scheme. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is a lot. I mean, yeah, feudalism absolutely is right.

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Speaker 1: When I used to teach feudalism, I used to teach

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Speaker 1: it based on like the kids working their desks. I

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Speaker 1: was like that, you're the surf, this is your plot

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Speaker 1: of land you have to work. I am your noble,

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Speaker 1: I have a noble my principle that I have to

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Speaker 1: answer to, and then he has a superintendent that he

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Speaker 1: has to answer to. And it all kind of like

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's all. It's all a similar structure

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Speaker 1: to to most things. When you read break down what

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Speaker 1: feudalism is. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, we could talk

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Speaker 1: a lot about the way our system works, um, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: yeah that's that's a fair point. Um. But this is

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Speaker 1: obviously a more hints a version because you don't have.

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Speaker 1: You don't have you don't have the ability to like

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Speaker 1: move around. Um. And this is one of those things

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Speaker 1: that works pretty well when kind of everybody's doing it. Um.

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Speaker 1: As things modernize, you suddenly have this problem of like, well,

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Speaker 1: how do you industrialize if somebody is a part of

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Speaker 1: the land that they live on, as opposed to an

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Speaker 1: individual who can move to a city and get training

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Speaker 1: to be a machinist or um. And in fact, oftentimes

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Speaker 1: when zars were overthrown or killed and these are romanovs

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Speaker 1: was we're talking about, it wasn't because they'd been super brutal.

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Speaker 1: It was because they had used a mix of brutality

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Speaker 1: and like liberalizing things. So they had given people some

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Speaker 1: power and then not liked what they did with it

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Speaker 1: and like tried to crack down. And that often leads

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Speaker 1: to like the kind of upset that gets as are killed. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's not Simon Montfiore, who was a historian who wrote

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Speaker 1: a great book called the Romanovs um describes it as

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Speaker 1: like the problem a lot of Tsars have as not

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Speaker 1: being consistently harsh. Right, Um, that's the thing that will

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Speaker 1: get you killed as czar. And that's the thing when

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Speaker 1: you're a kid, if you're going to inherit the Romanov dynasty,

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Speaker 1: that's what's drilled into your head throughout childhood is you

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Speaker 1: have to be consistently harsh. Um, And it's a dangerous gig.

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Speaker 1: Six of the last twelve Romanovsars are assassinated in office. Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's not that bad. Yeah, Like I feel like

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Speaker 1: I could make it through, you know, yeah I could.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I could have been a great czar.

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Speaker 1: I bet I would have been. Yeah, I know I

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Speaker 1: would have been killed. Yeah, I don't think I would

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Speaker 1: have a great czar. I'm pretty chill. Yeah, so, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'd be like, you guys can do that.

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Speaker 1: You're gonna kill me, Okay, I guess I saw this

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Speaker 1: one coming. If the way I played video games with

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Speaker 1: confidence not a job for you, I think I'd be

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Speaker 1: a great czar. Hey, again, it's just consistent brutality. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so Iphie would be better. Usually when tsars were assassin senated.

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Speaker 1: In fact, all of the times ours were assassinated up

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Speaker 1: to the modern period, it's never the peasants, right, There's

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Speaker 1: not that you don't have successful peasant revolutions in Russia. Um,

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Speaker 1: like not during the time the Romanovs are in power,

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Speaker 1: it's the noble. It's the nobility who murders them, like

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Speaker 1: it's someone sums are does something that pisces off these

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Speaker 1: nobles that are also powerful, and they kill the czar

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Speaker 1: and others are winds up in charge, you know, tail

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Speaker 1: as old as time. That's that's like that happens every

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Speaker 1: time you see some kind of assassination. It's very rare

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Speaker 1: that somebody bumps into an archduke or you know, successfully

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Speaker 1: breaks through the walls of the Imperial Palace or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Not counting you know, recent events in American history. The

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Speaker 1: populace will have access to people at that level. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you do not, um. And in fact, part of why

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Speaker 1: Tsars actually really tend to be at least most historians

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Speaker 1: tend to think that the Csars were beloved generally by

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Speaker 1: the peasants. And this is because of the distance they

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Speaker 1: have it because the peasants don't ever get to see

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Speaker 1: this are really uh. They referred to him as the

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Speaker 1: literal the little Father Um God is you know, the

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Speaker 1: big Father Um and he was kind of this benevolent

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Speaker 1: but almost ethereal force because the nobles who ruled them directly,

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Speaker 1: were the ones they had issues with. Right, That's kind

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Speaker 1: of the brilliance of this system. All the peasants are

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Speaker 1: gonna hate the noble who's telling them what to do.

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Speaker 1: But the tzarre like you never see that motherfucker, Like

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Speaker 1: he doesn't know what's going on. Right, he make life

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Speaker 1: easier for you. But the nobles, you know, they got

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Speaker 1: to do their thing, and I'm I try to be

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Speaker 1: hands off. You know. Yeah, you actually hear this story.

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Speaker 1: If you read people talking about like like kind of

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Speaker 1: political discontent with the Nazi Germany. A lot of Nazis

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Speaker 1: would when when members of the Nazi high command would

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Speaker 1: do ship that like even Nazis thought was fucked up.

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Speaker 1: They'd be like, well, Hitler must not know about this, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: he wouldn't do this to us. He must just not

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Speaker 1: be aware of what's going on. Classic good guy Hitler, Hitler,

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Speaker 1: he just got again. I'm good. I'm doing I've been

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Speaker 1: paintings this whole time. Just Hitler fumbling with papers like

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Speaker 1: Chevy Chase at his desk. I'm just playing with my

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Speaker 1: my good German shepherd here. Why would I be doing

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Speaker 1: anything evil? Allav There's this very common phrase among the peasantry. Um,

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Speaker 1: that is the czar is good. The nobles are wicked, right,

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Speaker 1: so he is he is beloved. Often at least that's

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Speaker 1: what you're not getting Gallops, not rolling through the Russian

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Speaker 1: steps and being like how do you feel about this? Right?

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Speaker 1: There's I think and I do tend to think that

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Speaker 1: this is so consistent. I'm not gonna obviously, I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna second guess a bunch of historians who write stuff

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Speaker 1: like this, but it's also consistent enough that I think, well,

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Speaker 1: the czar believe this, and maybe that's why that went

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Speaker 1: down in history, but maybe a lot of peasants would

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Speaker 1: have been like, well, actually funk that, dude. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: definitely you definitely see the cult of personality in situations

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Speaker 1: like that where you where you see you know, the

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Speaker 1: person that's on a annable up at the top, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're great. He's the champion. And the people that I

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Speaker 1: actually have to deal with our assholes. Yeah. And part

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Speaker 1: of why I do think this is probably still broadly

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Speaker 1: accurate is that you see this today, right, you see

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Speaker 1: a lot of like a conservatives who will be like, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't like this thing that happened under Trump, but

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Speaker 1: I don't like I like Trump, and like he probably

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Speaker 1: just like couldn't do anything about this, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: it's just how human beings work, you know, like Russian

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Speaker 1: serfs and Americans in Kentucky or or California are all

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Speaker 1: the same people. Basically, they're just in different circumstances. Um

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Speaker 1: at the table, you don't know what's happening at the table, right,

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Speaker 1: And it's easy to just pretend that this guy that

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Speaker 1: you've been conditioned to like by a shipload of propaganda,

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Speaker 1: and there has a lot of propaganda. It's very easy

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Speaker 1: to just be like, oh, he's like God, you know,

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Speaker 1: like I don't have to think about him as a

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Speaker 1: person because he's not a person, you know, he's this

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Speaker 1: like semi divine figure. And there are really is they

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Speaker 1: would not say it that way. Desires did not pretend

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Speaker 1: to be divine, but they are chosen by God. Like

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Speaker 1: that's the whole thing about this. Are they are picked

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Speaker 1: by God to absolutely rule Russia. And so there's this

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Speaker 1: attitude that like if you question those are or if

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Speaker 1: people want to have input in their own ruling, that

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Speaker 1: is satanic because God has set down this this system. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: this happens other parts of the world, you know, the

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Speaker 1: Mandate of Heaven, YadA, YadA, YadA. Um. This is not

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Speaker 1: the only time this sort of thing happens. But what's

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Speaker 1: unique kind of about Russia is that up until the

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Speaker 1: modern era, the tzar is owns everything in Russia. He

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Speaker 1: is the personal owner of basically a sixth of the

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Speaker 1: world's land mass. Like, we can talk about who the

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Speaker 1: richest person in history was, it's almost certainly whatever the

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Speaker 1: last Tsar was, because he was the personal owner of

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Speaker 1: all of Russia effectively. Um, Like, it doesn't get much

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Speaker 1: wealthier than that, Jeff Bezos doesn't, can't pretend to that ship. Um,

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Speaker 1: And like, well, wealthy enough that when they tried to

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Speaker 1: gun down the Tsar's family, it was it took a

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Speaker 1: ton of bullets and a ton of time because people

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Speaker 1: bullets kept getting stopped by all of the diamonds sewn

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Speaker 1: into their clothing. They removed set and teen pounds of

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Speaker 1: diamonds from from the dead Romanov family. Um, they could

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Speaker 1: have done better. That's just what they could get out

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Speaker 1: of the palace, you know, Like that's how fucking rich

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Speaker 1: these people are. Um. Yeah, And so this is a

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Speaker 1: really totalitarian system um and probably the most totalitarian system

385
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Speaker 1: could be in an era before modern technology, and being

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Speaker 1: the center of that as the czar, like fox with

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Speaker 1: your head and I want to read a quote from

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Speaker 1: the book The Romanovs by Simon Montfior which describes kind

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Speaker 1: of how what this does to a person? Then this

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Speaker 1: is him kind of giving a broad overview of czarism.

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Speaker 1: All of the monarchs were dutiful and hard working, and

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Speaker 1: most were charismatic, intelligent and competent. Yet the position was

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Speaker 1: so daunting for the normal mortal that no one sought

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Speaker 1: the throne anymore. It was a burden that had ceased

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Speaker 1: to be enjoyable. How can a single man manage to

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Speaker 1: govern Russia and correct its abuses? Asked the future Alexander

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Speaker 1: the First. This would be impossible, not only for a

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Speaker 1: man of ordinary abilities like me, but even for a genius.

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Speaker 1: He fantasized about running off to live on a farm

400
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Speaker 1: by the Rhine. His successors were all terrified of the

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Speaker 1: crown and avoided it if they could. Yet when they

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Speaker 1: were handed the throne, they had to fight to stay alive. Yeah,

403
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Speaker 1: it's not good to be the king, like it really is.

404
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Speaker 1: Not all it's great to be a noble, it's great

405
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Speaker 1: to be like the younger brother of this r or whatever. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot like those guys get up

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Speaker 1: to some ship and exercise a lot of power. But

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Speaker 1: being the czar kind of, especially in the last hundred

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Speaker 1: years of the Romanov monarchy, is a fucking trash gig.

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Speaker 1: Some could say heavy is the head that wears the crown.

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Speaker 1: That quote me on that we could we could turn

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Speaker 1: that into like a soap brand. Yeah, don't google it,

413
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Speaker 1: just just take my word for it. Don't google anything

414
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Speaker 1: in this show as a rule. Um, we are the Google. Yeah, yeah,

415
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Speaker 1: we we did it for you. Don't need to learn

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Speaker 1: anymore than what we give you. That's part of what

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Speaker 1: makes it a good cult. Um. You know what else

418
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:05,040
Speaker 1: is a good culture of the cult of personality. But

419
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:07,520
Speaker 1: the cult of the products and services that support this

420
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:11,360
Speaker 1: podcast all have cult followings, especially the Washington State Highway Patrol.

421
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Speaker 1: Real culty. Motherfucker's there. Oh we're back, So I'm gonna

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00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:28,440
Speaker 1: involve myself and all those things. Yeah, yeah, it's during

423
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:32,200
Speaker 1: the cult of all of those sponsors. So the thing

424
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:34,600
Speaker 1: to keep in mind when we're talking about these are

425
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:37,040
Speaker 1: is that this is a job people hate. It is

426
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:39,800
Speaker 1: a job that like destroys you over time. It's it's

427
00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of like effort and labor you have

428
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:45,480
Speaker 1: to do. You're the head of the church. Effectively, you're

429
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:47,440
Speaker 1: the head of the military. You're the head of state,

430
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:52,000
Speaker 1: like you're kind of the pope and the commander in chief. Um,

431
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: And like all of Congress at the same time, and

432
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:58,919
Speaker 1: think about like like all of our presidents, even the

433
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:02,160
Speaker 1: really really bad ones, uh, think of like what eight

434
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 1: years in office does to them, how much they age.

435
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:08,960
Speaker 1: Most Czar's rule more than twenty years, Like like you're

436
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 1: out of your mind by the end of this. Yeah, yeah,

437
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that has to be just

438
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,920
Speaker 1: so like try doing two things. Yeah, when you're when

439
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:19,560
Speaker 1: it was like when I when I started moving more

440
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:21,720
Speaker 1: to podcasting, I'm like, well, stand up is going to

441
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: have to take a huge step back, and those are

442
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:28,280
Speaker 1: both easy jobs. And I'm like, no, no, I can't

443
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:32,359
Speaker 1: imagine if you had to do stand up podcasting and

444
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 1: reform the Russian military while leading every major state religious

445
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: service every single year. I mean I feel like I

446
00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 1: could do that. I do feel like you could do that. Um,

447
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 1: especially given your experience reforming national militaries. Jeff, A lot

448
00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: of people don't know this. You're the guy who reformed

449
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 1: the El Salvadorian military. Yeah, you know, I don't like

450
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:59,160
Speaker 1: to brag, but yeah, it's just like it's a side gig. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

451
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 1: you know, everybody needs like stand up. Doesn't pay all

452
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:03,199
Speaker 1: the bills every now and then you got to go

453
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:06,160
Speaker 1: like overseas and you know, use a lot of US

454
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: AID money to arm paramilitaries. It's just what, you know, Yeah,

455
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: it's very it's a very Jeff of Arabia existence that

456
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: I'm having over here. Yet. So the thing about this

457
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: is like fucked up. As this is the system works

458
00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: pretty good for like two hundred and fifty years or so,

459
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:27,160
Speaker 1: um like time too as old at time, right, yeah,

460
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 1: we're dealing with right now. This formal government works pretty

461
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: good for up to yeah, up to but not past.

462
00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: I've never when when when the Czaris system really starts

463
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: to show its age in a calamitous way. Is the

464
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: Crimean War which happens in like the eighteen fifties, and

465
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: this is a battle. This is some people will say

466
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the First World War in

467
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: some ways, there's like five or six wars people say,

468
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: are the First World War, you know, um, but this

469
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 1: is like this is basically everybody and fighting Russia. Um.

470
00:24:57,840 --> 00:25:00,160
Speaker 1: And it's like Russia trying to take the Crimea, which

471
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,440
Speaker 1: they took recently from Ukraine, but we're trying to take

472
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 1: it back then and like Turkey gets involved in the

473
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: British get involved in the French get involved. Um. I

474
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:09,159
Speaker 1: think there's Austrians up in that bitch. Like it's this

475
00:25:09,280 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: whole fucking thing. Um. And it doesn't go really well

476
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 1: for Russia. It's it's a fucking disaster for Russia. And

477
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 1: a big part of why is that their army is

478
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: hideously outdated. Not just like their guns aren't modern. Um,

479
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,719
Speaker 1: they don't have an advanced rail system in the country

480
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:26,239
Speaker 1: so and they don't have like their navy isn't as

481
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 1: as nimble as it needs to be. So everyone's running

482
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: circles around him. You know, who needs a system. They're

483
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:34,760
Speaker 1: such a compact and tight. There's so little Russia. Why

484
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: would you need ray Town, you know, That's what that's

485
00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: what everyone says about Russia, the smallest country. Yeah, there's

486
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: five whole sixth of the rest of the world that's

487
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: not Russia. Come on, it's one is the smallest number,

488
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:55,159
Speaker 1: that's right, less than one. So so this this is

489
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: a fucking ship show for Russia. Um, they kind of

490
00:25:57,560 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: get their butts kicked. There's also a pretty good poem

491
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:01,919
Speaker 1: that comes out of it, Charge of the lie Brigade,

492
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: which which you know you can you can like or

493
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: see his problematic depending on how you feel about men

494
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: charging into lines of guns on horseback. I think it's

495
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: rad and we should do more of it, but other

496
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: people have different opinions. Crimean war, Yeah, so like, yeah,

497
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: I think we can give problematic a bit of a

498
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: bit of a push on something written years ago. Well yeah, um,

499
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: so yeah this is uh, Russia gets its butt kicked

500
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: and like that bums everybody out in Russia. Um. And

501
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:34,400
Speaker 1: so there's this big drive to modernize, right every it's

502
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:36,440
Speaker 1: it's you're kind of made aware of how flawed the

503
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: whole system is. And so Russia really rapidly industrializes, and

504
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: they do this by going hideously into debt to a

505
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:45,919
Speaker 1: bunch of Western nations. And the Czar who takes another

506
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: tale is all this time right, yeah, everybody does this

507
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 1: ship um and the Czar who takes charge during this period,

508
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: he actually comes to power, like in the last year

509
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: of the Crimean War eighteen fifty five. This is our

510
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: is a guy named Alexander the Second and he's Nicholas's

511
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: and Paul. He's the grandfather of the Last Star. Um.

512
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: So he walks out of that war dedicated to reforming things.

513
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: And he's like a bold dude. This is not one

514
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,440
Speaker 1: of those like Joe Biden kind of nothing will fundamentally

515
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: change guys. Um. Alexander the Second is a very courageous

516
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: person because it is not easy to make big reforms

517
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,800
Speaker 1: in Russia. Um and the spoilers it doesn't end well

518
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: for him. No, No, there's always there's always there's always

519
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:30,240
Speaker 1: people pushing back. Generally, half the time it's the Orthodox Church, Yeah,

520
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: that pushes back, and they have a lot of influence

521
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: as well. And then half the time it's the nobility. Yeah.

522
00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 1: And he fights with all of that. But that's actually

523
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: not who's gonna wind up being his undoing um So,

524
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 1: his number one, Alexander the Seconds number one, claimed to fame.

525
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:46,480
Speaker 1: The biggest thing that he does, and this is a

526
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: pretty titanic change, is he abolishes serfdom in eighteen sixty one.

527
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:52,920
Speaker 1: Um So, the start of the U. S. Civil War

528
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:56,359
Speaker 1: is when Russia decides every single person basically in the

529
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 1: country is no longer part of the land that someone

530
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: else owns. Um So, that's a good move. I would say,

531
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: do you think somebody's like, uh, there's something going on

532
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 1: over in the United States? Seems like it doesn't. There's

533
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 1: something about house divided? Very Ugo. President has big problems

534
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 1: over there. Long beard, though we have complex history, good

535
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: Russian beard on that guy, which is also very Russian.

536
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: Um So, Obviously, abolishing serfdom, like every other massive social

537
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 1: change in every other country in history, is not like

538
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: a super even process. It's not like one day everything

539
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 1: is different. You know. We talked about this somewhat in

540
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 1: our two part or on nestor mak No. It's it's

541
00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: a messy thing. It's a really big change. Um but

542
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: it does lead to like an enormous, unthinkable social to

543
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: Everything that happens in the Soviet Union is possible in

544
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: part because serfdom starts being a thing. Right. That's why

545
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:54,240
Speaker 1: Russia is able to industrialize, It's why they develop a proletariat,

546
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:57,280
Speaker 1: It's why everything else that happens happens, you know, um,

547
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,560
Speaker 1: and Alexander becomes known as the Czar Liberal Raider for

548
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 1: for freeing the serfs. Um. So a lot of people

549
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: feel pretty good about Czar Alexander the Second. A lot

550
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: of peasants feel pretty good about this dude, but not

551
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 1: all of them. He is not popular everywhere, particularly among

552
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: the kind of this is when Russia is starting to

553
00:29:15,240 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: have a socialist movement and all pretty much all these

554
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: early socialists are like rich or nobles, right, Like, that's

555
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 1: a lot of this early period of like Russian socialism

556
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 1: is guys who are like very highly born, because that's

557
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: who has access to like education and gets to read

558
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: books and stuff. You know. Um, not a lot of people,

559
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: like a lot of peasants aren't coming into contact with

560
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: the communist manifesto in eighteen fifty you know whatever, m

561
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: or my uncle would disagree, Okay, so Alexander, uh yeah,

562
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 1: So the socialists really don't like Alexander the Second because

563
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: they see fundamentally his reforms are conservative. He's freed the serfs,

564
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: but he's done it to maintain this system of absolute autocracy.

565
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: He just wants to have a government that a country

566
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: that works a little bit better. But he doesn't want

567
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: to up end any of the social or class relationships. Um,

568
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: he just wants to really be able to like more

569
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: efficiently use the people that he still owns, which is accurate.

570
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: The Socialists are not misreading this situation like, well, he's

571
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: not He's not trying to make anything better. He's just

572
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: trying to make the country work better for the ship

573
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: that the rich people want to do, you know, Um,

574
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 1: which is true. Yeah, I mean, not for nothing, but

575
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 1: like if I was in that position, I'd be like, yeah,

576
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: I would like to also solidify my power prevent myself

577
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: from being murdered. Yeah. Yeah, And they they fundamentally like

578
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 1: see through what he's doing. He also adds a bunch

579
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: of capitalistic elements to the Russian economy, which hadn't really

580
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: been in place before. That's how he wants to like

581
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 1: fund the reformation of the military. He's trying to make

582
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 1: the state more efficient economically. This also pisces off the

583
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: Marxists for you know, obvious reasons. They're not not huge

584
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: on capitalism, the Marxists. This is surprising to a lot

585
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: of people now hold the phone bold statements about ideology

586
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:03,960
Speaker 1: behind bastards state communists. I need a refund on my

587
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 1: education because that is not what I remember. So on

588
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 1: April fourth, eighteen sixties six, a guy named Dmitri Kara

589
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: CAUs Off attempts to shoot Alexander the Second in the

590
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: middle of the capital uh St Petersburg. He's a socialist, obviously,

591
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 1: he misses and is arrested and executed. Um And this

592
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: is a huge moment in Russian history. And I want

593
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: to quote now from the English Historic Review. Russian emperors

594
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: were no strangers to attempts on their life. Indeed, Paul

595
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: the First had been strangled to death in his own

596
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 1: bedroom in eighteen o one. But Paul had been murdered

597
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: by a group of noblemen, and these palace coups had

598
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 1: been the principal threat to the tsar's before mid nineteenth century.

599
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:41,719
Speaker 1: Karakozov's assassination attempt was the first occasion in which an

600
00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:45,239
Speaker 1: ordinary Russian had tried to kill the monarch, motivated by

601
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: a desire to bring down the Russian regime. So that's

602
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: a big moment, right, Suddenly there's forces in part maybe

603
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: because like we we we freed us some motherfucking surfs.

604
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: Now the people are going to play an increasing role

605
00:31:57,920 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: in like Badge it happening Tasaars. I would like to

606
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: add they said ordinary Russian, he was extraordinary. He was extraordinary,

607
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,400
Speaker 1: not quite extraordinary enough, but no, no, his aim wasn't extraordinary.

608
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: His name was was not extraordinary, but his his his

609
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: go get itness. Yeah, I really, I really admire the

610
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: way he tried to shoot the Tsar to death. You know,

611
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: can't you can't teach that, you know, can't teach HERT. Yeah,

612
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: you can't teach HERT. That's the key. He would have

613
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: been an incredible baseball player. So this brings us to

614
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: May six, eight sixty eight, when Nikolai the second Alexandrovitch

615
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: Romanov was born in the Alexander Palace south of St. Petersburg.

616
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: He was the first child of the Crown Prince or

617
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: Zarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch and his wife, Prince Princess Dagmar of

618
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 1: Denmark Um, which brings up an interesting point. The Tsars

619
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: of all Russia, we're not really Russian, not like by blood,

620
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, royalty kind of that's how it works.

621
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: How many I'm an English monarchs were French, you know, Yeah,

622
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: I mean Queen Victoria is the grandmother of all of

623
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: the crowned heads of Europe at World War Two, you know, right, Yeah.

624
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: Edward Razinski in his book The Last Star explains, as

625
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: a result of countless dynastic marriages, by the twentieth century,

626
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: scarcely any Russian blood flowed in the veins of the

627
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 1: Russian romanovs Rs. Nicholas. His mother was the Danish Princess,

628
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: his grandmother the Danish Queen. He called his grandmother the

629
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: mother in law of all Europe. Her numerous daughters, sons

630
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,240
Speaker 1: and grandchildren had allied nearly all the royal houses. You know,

631
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: I need the continent in this entertaining manner, from England

632
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: to Greece. So this is a very incestuous family, which

633
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: will there will be some issues for that for Nicholas

634
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: the second later on here. Yeah, I was gonna say,

635
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some problems when you interbreed that much.

636
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 1: But maybe just being like the guy who gets all

637
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: of the power and owns everybody is a complete roll

638
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: of the dice based on the same family marrying each

639
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: other off to other members of their family for forever.

640
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: Maybe not the best system. Legitimately, one of my favorite

641
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 1: things to teach about was the Habsburgs, because I was

642
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 1: just like, these motherfucker's were like, look at this they had.

643
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 1: They had jowls. The whole family of of of emperors

644
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,319
Speaker 1: with jowls. Yeah, because they're all married to their first

645
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: cousins and they have been for forever. And that's not

646
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:25,560
Speaker 1: great for anybody, especially Europe. It ends really bad for

647
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 1: like what eighteen million young men roughly. Yeah, but what

648
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: are we gonna apologize for that? Yeah? Yeah, you know,

649
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,120
Speaker 1: at least there's less traffic. You know. I think about

650
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: how bad the traffic would be in London if there

651
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 1: hadn't have been a World War One. I mean, so

652
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: don't think about that. The m one is already a mess.

653
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: I was gonna say how much traffic was in World

654
00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: War One? Was there like nine cars? A couple of

655
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: million boys? Less worth of it after the end of it.

656
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,720
Speaker 1: So for a while in the in the the Tzarevitch's household,

657
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: Nicholas's dad's household, the Crown Prince's household, things are pretty good.

658
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: Nicholas comes from a rare, happy royal home, so this

659
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,319
Speaker 1: isn't something that starts with him. His parents, like really

660
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 1: genuinely loved each other, which is again very uncommon with

661
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: like most royal marriages, like they have separate castles. They

662
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: don't talk to each other outside of like dealing with

663
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 1: the kids and stuff. Um, it's pretty abnormal for like

664
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 1: his dad and his mom though, love each other, and

665
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 1: that's probably why he winds up marrying for love later

666
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: in life too. Write is he like this is how

667
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: he's raised. He's not raised with like, well, you're just

668
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,320
Speaker 1: your your your partners, whoever is your partner, and you

669
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: see them when you have to make an air. How

670
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 1: bummed would they be to look at divorce rates now

671
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 1: and they're like, what was it you guys were arranged to?

672
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: And like, no, we we did it for this was

673
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: all us. It turns out we're just bad at it. Yeah,

674
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: it turns out we just don't know what that word

675
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: means at all. Very just pretty hard. Actually, yeah, man,

676
00:35:57,200 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 1: when you're not living in a giant palace with seventeen

677
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,839
Speaker 1: hounds of diamonds just hanging around yet the willy nilly

678
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: things good, rob Let me give you advice on marriage. First,

679
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 1: be owner of one sixth of the world helps a lot.

680
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 1: It's only finest non poisoned meats and Jesus. So his

681
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: family is real happy. His father was faithful to his mother,

682
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 1: which everyone at the time found really shocking because when

683
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:24,920
Speaker 1: he was when he was a kid, he was a

684
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,000
Speaker 1: real horn dog like most crown princes. He's fucking his

685
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 1: way across Russia. But then, as far as we know,

686
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: he meets his wife and he's that that that's it

687
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,360
Speaker 1: for him. Um, so he actually is. I don't know.

688
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 1: You know, it's like learning about a monogamous baseball player. Yeah,

689
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:44,759
Speaker 1: we're a professional cyclist who isn't on a shipload of

690
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:50,839
Speaker 1: drugs and you're like, no, no, that's not right. Yeah. Now,

691
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,800
Speaker 1: the first years of Nicholas's life very very happy. He

692
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: has a bunch of siblings. They spend a lot of

693
00:36:55,640 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 1: time playing outdoors at various vacation palaces with their dad.

694
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: Die Airy. Entries from Nicholas's youth that he writes contains

695
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: passages like this, Papa turned on the hose. Then we

696
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 1: ran through the jets and caught terribly wet. That's the

697
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,760
Speaker 1: height of technology. Yeah, they had hoses. They were very excited.

698
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 1: Yeah like that, that's like having a PS five. These

699
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 1: are have you heard about the new hose? Four. It's

700
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: all out of stock, but I've got one on pre

701
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: order and when it comes in. We ordered one from

702
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:32,719
Speaker 1: hose Stop. We got the pre ordinary. You can put

703
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: handover in then it makes different shapes. Oh, yes, he

704
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: got he got a little adapter that makes it look

705
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: like a fan coming out is great. It's great. So. Um,

706
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:47,280
Speaker 1: Nikki's dad pretty loving, definitely kind of your best case scenario.

707
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: Royal upbringing that said, he's also a czar. He's a

708
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: very strict guy. Nicholas wrote that his dad could not

709
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: tolerate weakness. Um, but he also was never physically abusive

710
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:00,279
Speaker 1: that we know. Um. The kind of most aggressive story

711
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:01,919
Speaker 1: we get from his dad as a as a parent

712
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: is one time when Nicholas let a playmate take the

713
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: blame for something bad that he'd done. His father yelled,

714
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: you're a girly at him. Um. So that's like the

715
00:38:10,640 --> 00:38:12,799
Speaker 1: extent to which this guy gets punished as a kid. Really,

716
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: this guy is a better dad than like most of

717
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 1: us had. Yeah, this guy wasn't beating his kids in

718
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yeah that is wild to me. Yeah, yeah,

719
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:32,440
Speaker 1: so nailing it as a parent. Alexander the second dare

720
00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 1: the Rod, but also kill a shipload of peasants, like not,

721
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:38,879
Speaker 1: don't spare the rod on the peasants. Spare the rod

722
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: on your own child so you can use more of

723
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: the rod on the peasants. Yeah, spare the rod on

724
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:46,080
Speaker 1: your child so they can learn how to use the

725
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: rod on large indistinct to them masses of civilians. And

726
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 1: to the civilians, you spare the hose. Yeah, I don't know.

727
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:57,399
Speaker 1: They don't get they don't get hoses. Uh So, while

728
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: his kids played, um, and while Alexander second is enjoying

729
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,800
Speaker 1: being the crown prince, revolutionary discontent is building in Russia.

730
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: One group called the People's Will, who are like nihilists. Um. So,

731
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: there's definitely there's a number of influences they have, but

732
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 1: they're like Russian nihilists being Russian. Yeah, it's just like

733
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 1: being Russian. Um, that's not a big stretch. And there

734
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: I think, broadly speaking, people who are super into Russian

735
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: politics will be screaming at me for for narrowing it

736
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 1: down this way, I'm sure. But like they spend a

737
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:30,239
Speaker 1: bunch of time early on as an organization trying to

738
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:33,839
Speaker 1: organize and radicalize peasants to revolt um and eventually We're like, well,

739
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: this is hopeless. We're never going to get these people

740
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:38,239
Speaker 1: to revolt. We'reever we're gonna overthrow the system that way.

741
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 1: So let's just murder the czar and maybe that will

742
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: send the whole system into a tailspin and we'll get

743
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 1: what we want that way, and if we don't fuck it,

744
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,359
Speaker 1: at least we killed as are right, Like, you get

745
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:50,239
Speaker 1: the sense that, like more than anything, they're just like,

746
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 1: funk this guy, Let's kill him. You know, there's a

747
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: very slot machine vibe to that where it's like, you know,

748
00:39:55,440 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: like happen. We we have these folks today, right, Um,

749
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: these people. I think it's more understandable because again, if somebody,

750
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: if somebody makes you their property, I think it's fine

751
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: to try to try to kill them, you know, like

752
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 1: it's the slave thing if if you're if somebody makes

753
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: you their slave and you can kill them, well okay, good,

754
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 1: Oh you should amistad that ship immediate. You have to

755
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 1: do that, you absolutely should. Yeah. Um. And they try

756
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:26,360
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, seven times unsuccessfully to kill Alexander

757
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: the second and he survives. I think like twenty something

758
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 1: assassination attempts. Lots of people are trying to kill the liberator.

759
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 1: You know, like the people cannot try enough to kill

760
00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: this guy. And god, he is just he's unkillable. He's

761
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: pretty hard, well quite, but he's pretty hard to kill.

762
00:40:42,600 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: You gotta give him credit for that. So he survives, Yeah, right, right, right,

763
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Um. So he survives like seven assassination

764
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: temps from people's will alone, and he executes twenty one

765
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:58,399
Speaker 1: of their members as a result ofly, you know, people

766
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 1: have failed and they get captured whatnot. Um, but you know,

767
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:05,840
Speaker 1: the people's will, despite like the intense death toll taken

768
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:07,800
Speaker 1: on their organization from these failed attempts. They were the

769
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: kind of folks who took bacun In seriously when he

770
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: said the revolutionary is a doomed man. Their attitude is like,

771
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 1: we're all already dead, like, so fuck it, We're gonna

772
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 1: keep trying. God, this is so Russian. It's very Russian.

773
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 1: It's also pretty I ra a yeah, yeah with with

774
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: with like a dollarp of Sylvia Plath in there by

775
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: the poetry a little bit of that up in there. Yeah,

776
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: your fatalism needs to exist in a long term situation.

777
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: Put some fertilizer in the bell jar and hook it

778
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: at his are. I remember, dude, I remember being in

779
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: like in like tenth grade and we read like a

780
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 1: Day in the Life of Ivan Dvinovich or whatever. And

781
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: while I was reading this, I was like, why are

782
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 1: you making us do this? Like I was so I

783
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 1: was so hurt they may they subjected me to something

784
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: like that. Ah, yeah, I need to read more Russian literature.

785
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,360
Speaker 1: Um I did. I did read that. That one poem

786
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: about the Turk in the Russian Ivan Petrovsky scove are

787
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:08,120
Speaker 1: pretty good poem that a Turk in a Russian killing

788
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 1: each other? Um classic, check it out. I read it

789
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: on the back of a beer. Try trying to find

790
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 1: like good Russian literature that isn't about somebody with a

791
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 1: gun hard to find. It's like trying to find Irish

792
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: literature that doesn't start with a man masturbating through his

793
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 1: hole in his pocket, right yeah yeah yeah, and then

794
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: and then eventually dying of liver failure. Yes. So um,

795
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 1: these guys keep right on their stick tuitiveness and trying

796
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: to kill the czar is laudable. And on March one

797
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:40,919
Speaker 1: one they get it right. Uh, they throw a punch

798
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,320
Speaker 1: of bombs. This is they kill a lot of people

799
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 1: as a general rule, not a lot of Like you know,

800
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: you're not discriminating when you're trying to assassinate ahead of

801
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: state with a bomb. You're accepting that, Like we're gonna

802
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:54,280
Speaker 1: kill a shipload of folks, you know, like we're setting

803
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 1: off It's like Stalin robbing banks and killing seventy people

804
00:42:57,400 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 1: with bombs. It's just like how things are back then.

805
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: It's horrible, it's fucked up damage. But yeah, it's terrorism,

806
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: you know. That's how it works. People set off a

807
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: lot of bombs, kill a shipload of people. It's all

808
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: pretty ugly. Um, you get things done. They do. In

809
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,920
Speaker 1: this case, they they set off one bomb and like

810
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: the Czar Alexander gets out of his like carriage to

811
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: be like what what the hell is going on? And

812
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: then they blow his legs like two pieces. Um, so

813
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 1: it's like a gnarly death. He doesn't die immediately, his

814
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: legs are just like shredded. The whole Royal family, including

815
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:33,759
Speaker 1: thirteen year old Nicholas, who had been ice skating at

816
00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: the time, are like rushed away from ice skating to

817
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: like see their grandpa bleed to death from a bomb wound.

818
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: Um and again even though these people are like the

819
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 1: most privileged folks at the time, it's an ugly period.

820
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:47,799
Speaker 1: They have a like they see some ship as kids.

821
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: Know you're going to keep going back to that. Well,

822
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is extremely Russian. You know you must

823
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: see this. Yeah, So Nicholas watches his grandpa bleed to

824
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 1: death after he receives last communion Um and then his

825
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: dad becomes the czar because you know that's how Zarism works.

826
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: Nicholas's dad is Alexander the third Um, and he pretty

827
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 1: immediately decides he's going to be a real different kind

828
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: of ore from his father, uh, from the father that

829
00:44:14,200 --> 00:44:16,959
Speaker 1: he watched explode. That he watched explode. So he sees

830
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:20,240
Speaker 1: his father pass all his liberalizing reforms and then get exploded,

831
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, that doesn't seem like the right

832
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: way to go. I don't want I don't want that

833
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: specific thing. I don't want to explode. It looks like

834
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: a bad deal. I'm probably gonna die, but I'd rather

835
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: get strangled in my bed than have my legs blown off.

836
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um. So he two months after his dad's assassination,

837
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: he issues what's called the Manifesto on Unshakable Authority, which

838
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: is co written by one of the heads of the

839
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 1: Russian Orthodox Church. Now, this manifesto said, in short, that

840
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 1: Alexander the Liberator had been wrong to push for more

841
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:56,120
Speaker 1: liberal attitudes rather than what Alexander the Third called unshakable autocracy.

842
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 1: Alexander the Third argued that unshakable autocracy wasn't just a

843
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:03,520
Speaker 1: form of government, but it was what God commanded. It

844
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: was their sacred duty as the chosen of the Lord

845
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 1: to rule Russia this way. So he cancels a plan

846
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: right before getting killed. His father had like agreed to

847
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: create a legislative assembly a Duma for Russia for the

848
00:45:15,719 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: first time. Like they were gonna, okay, we're gonna have

849
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: like a congress basically that people have some representation. And

850
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: Alexander the Third is like, oh, that's not fucking happening,

851
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Um and that one yeah yeah, big old,

852
00:45:27,360 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: big old in y e t right on that one.

853
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: A couple of backwards punctuation points and we're good to go. Um.

854
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,120
Speaker 1: So instead he launches a huge crackdown and I'm gonna

855
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,440
Speaker 1: quote from the romanofs here, troops were deployed to restore

856
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:43,760
Speaker 1: order and in September, Alexander's signed emergency laws to preserve

857
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: state security, followed in eighty two by temporary regulations on Jews,

858
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:51,360
Speaker 1: which banned pogroms. But we're more concerned with protecting the

859
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 1: interests of the local populace by banning Jews from living

860
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 1: in the countryside or outside the pale. The Paliff settlement

861
00:45:57,480 --> 00:45:59,319
Speaker 1: is the area in Russia you're allowed to live as

862
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:02,720
Speaker 1: a Jew. Which, uh, it's really interesting that he's banning

863
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 1: pogroms while also being like you can't be here. Yeah,

864
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 1: like that's that is in of itself. Yeah, it is.

865
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,759
Speaker 1: It's like, no programs, but all of these people have

866
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: to leave immediately. Don't kill him though, But I'm not

867
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 1: going to do anything to stop this. And like there

868
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:21,440
Speaker 1: are programs, right, there's a there's a wave of violence

869
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: against you because they get they get blamed for this.

870
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: Jewish people do represent a higher percentage of revolutionary organizations

871
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: than of the general population. I wonder why. I wonder why.

872
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:37,920
Speaker 1: I wonder as they're forced on several diasporas out of Russia,

873
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: and there's some amazing moments, one of Nicholas the seconds

874
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:42,800
Speaker 1: we're going forward in time by decades. But one of

875
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:46,600
Speaker 1: his advisers, like his prime minister at one point, is like, motherfucker,

876
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: If I were a Jew, I'd be throwing bombs too.

877
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 1: It's rough for them out there. You've made a bad

878
00:46:51,239 --> 00:46:55,799
Speaker 1: situation for them. Um and boy, howdy, Alexander the Third

879
00:46:56,040 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 1: is not a good czar for Jewish people. Um that one. Yeah,

880
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: there's not like there's a lot of great ones and

881
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:07,399
Speaker 1: people around Alexander the Third. Note that he also kind

882
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: of goes mad with power immediately. Uh. And I'm gonna

883
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 1: quote from Simon montfior here. When a female political prisoner

884
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: insulted a gendarme, Alexander ordered flog her. His minister asked

885
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: for a lesser sentence than the maximum hundred strokes, since

886
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:24,440
Speaker 1: she was fragile, but the Czar insisted give her the

887
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,879
Speaker 1: hundred strokes. They killed her. He is not wicked, wrote

888
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:31,560
Speaker 1: the diplomat Vladimir Lambsdorf, but he's drunk with power. His

889
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: war minister, General Vanowski, joked that he was like Peter

890
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: the Great with his cudgel, except here is only the

891
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,879
Speaker 1: cudgel without the Great Peter. Alexander's contempt for his own

892
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:44,440
Speaker 1: ministers was a feudal attitude in the modern world and

893
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:46,759
Speaker 1: his reverence for his autocracy. He failed to see that

894
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: his own arbitrary nous was a flaw. Sire explained one

895
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: of his advisers. We have a terrible, evil lack of law,

896
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: but I always stand for compliance with the laws. The

897
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: Czar replied, I'm not talking about you, but about your administration,

898
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 1: which uses its power today. Russia is like a colossal

899
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:05,439
Speaker 1: boiler in which pressure is building. When it gets a hole,

900
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,240
Speaker 1: people with hammers rivet them. But one day the gases

901
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 1: will blow out a hole that can't be filled and

902
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:15,560
Speaker 1: will suffocate, and we'll explode your goddamn legs off. Yeah, yeah, dude,

903
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: did you not watch what Happened to your dad? I

904
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: love that he's like, I don't think you understand what happened. Also,

905
00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: the way Alexander the third season is like, well, yeah,

906
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:26,480
Speaker 1: because he tried to liberalize it. That's why you've got

907
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: to be consistently a dick. I don't know, man, if

908
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:32,319
Speaker 1: I was born with a target on my head, i'd

909
00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:34,839
Speaker 1: be I'd be trying to be cool as hell. Let

910
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: me translate this in a way I think will make

911
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: sense to our male listeners. At least you know how.

912
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:41,319
Speaker 1: A lot of times you pretend to not know how

913
00:48:41,400 --> 00:48:44,320
Speaker 1: to do things because then it will get done for you, like,

914
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: oh boy, do it. Yeah, exactly, It's like that. But

915
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:51,800
Speaker 1: it's with murdering people where if you if you just

916
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,520
Speaker 1: don't let people know that you can be nice, then

917
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:57,280
Speaker 1: maybe they won't funk with you. That's Alexander the Third's idea.

918
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 1: So if he looks very angry furious, are you mad

919
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 1: about the murdering part. No, for the fact that I

920
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: need help cleaning my room. Yeah, I could use some

921
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 1: help cleaning my room. So in eighteen eighty two, Nicholas

922
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 1: gets a gift from his mother, a golden edged book

923
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: of souvenirs bound with wood. This became his first diary,

924
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 1: and for the remainder of his life he would make

925
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:21,719
Speaker 1: daily entries in it. For example, began writing in my

926
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 1: diary on the first of January eighteen eighty two. In

927
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: the morning, drank hot chocolate, dressed in my life Guard

928
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: reserves uniform, took a walk in the garden with Papa.

929
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: We chopped and sawed wood and made a great bonfire.

930
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:36,240
Speaker 1: Went to bed at about half past nine. Papa, Mama

931
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: and I received two deputations, presented me with a magnificent

932
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,160
Speaker 1: wooden platter inscribed the peasants of Verona's and there's to

933
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: the Tsarevich with bread and salt and a Russian towel.

934
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:49,919
Speaker 1: That's like his diary injuries. I would like to add

935
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: that hot chocolate cost a thousand dollars back then. Yes, yes,

936
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 1: this is. This is they had. They had to just

937
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 1: straight up shoot four people to afford that. Hot chocolate

938
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 1: was the thing that's stuck out in that entire thing.

939
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: To me, I was like, you know, that's nice that

940
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: you've got some hot chocolate. Dude. Yeah, I mean, he

941
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,880
Speaker 1: owns more of the world than anyone else pretty much

942
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:11,759
Speaker 1: ever has. I mean maybe one of the cons, you know,

943
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:15,440
Speaker 1: So it was kind of one on Russia. Yeah. And

944
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:18,240
Speaker 1: also the cons devolved a lot more power to local

945
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: areas and ship than the czars did. They were a

946
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 1: mom yeah, yeah, they were pretty dope. So it was

947
00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: the kind of idyllic childhood for Nicholas that you only

948
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 1: get when your father owns like most of the inhabited

949
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:32,719
Speaker 1: world or a big chunk of it. It's so wild too,

950
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: But when you think about that, like hot chocolate, like

951
00:50:34,719 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 1: no peasant has had ever had hot chocolate, and they

952
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: never would. They would live their life dying without ever

953
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: tasting anything sweet. Yeah, and then we think about it's

954
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 1: like some weird sweet thing. Yeah, yeah, a date, that's

955
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: But then we think about I could just go over

956
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: to my cabinet and eat like a czar two. That's

957
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: so goddamn wild. Yeah yeah, you you you probably eat

958
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: a lot better than Bazar because Russian cook I don't know,

959
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:04,320
Speaker 1: there's some great Russian meals, but hit or miss on

960
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 1: some things. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't need stroke

961
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: enough to get me through the day exactly. I do

962
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: eat sort of like in a medieval way, Like I

963
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: ate a lot of eggs. Yeah, it's pretty medieval. Or

964
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: it's just like and then I had nine eggs and

965
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 1: they're like, I remember, I had a fascinating story, And

966
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: I get a guy who he had He had been

967
00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:24,920
Speaker 1: the Hitler youth as a kid. He was fourteen when

968
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 1: World War two ended, and so he grew up in uh,

969
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,800
Speaker 1: you know, this this Germany that still had shades of

970
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:34,959
Speaker 1: the of the Imperial Germany to it, and his family

971
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 1: was Prussian and his big memory was that like they

972
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 1: didn't have enough money for everybody to have eggs. So

973
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 1: every morning during breakfast, they would get you know what

974
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: stuff they got, and they would all sit around to

975
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:46,840
Speaker 1: watch their father eat a single egg because that was

976
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:48,560
Speaker 1: like the way that you did it right, Like it

977
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:50,520
Speaker 1: was of course the father is going to get the egg.

978
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:52,359
Speaker 1: He has to go out and like you know, make

979
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: things happen for the family, and everyone would watch in

980
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 1: awe as he ate this single egg every morning. It's

981
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: like watching people play video games on YouTube. What are

982
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: you doing? Don't you want to play the game? No,

983
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 1: we just want to see. There's so few eggs that

984
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 1: we have access to. We just want to watch it.

985
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: And I'll just go to a farmer's market and then

986
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 1: buy a dozen eggs and then eat a dozen eggs.

987
00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:16,720
Speaker 1: It's like how like back in the forties and stuff,

988
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 1: like people used to send around pineapples while they were

989
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 1: ripening and like put them out at parties and like

990
00:52:21,560 --> 00:52:24,120
Speaker 1: brag that, like we have a pineapple and eventually we're

991
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 1: gonna get to eat it. But until then, look at

992
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:28,800
Speaker 1: this pineapple. You know they do you ever hear the

993
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 1: story of Louis and the Pineapple? Know when they introduced

994
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:37,400
Speaker 1: the pineapple to him and sparing what actually he was

995
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: portrayed in artistically. He did not look like what the

996
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:44,120
Speaker 1: pictures did. He was a very corpulent man, and he

997
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,800
Speaker 1: was a relatively greedy eater. And somebody presented him with

998
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: a pineapple and he didn't know what it was, so

999
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,760
Speaker 1: he tried to eat it like like whole like an apple,

1000
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 1: and just shredded the ship out of his mouth. Got

1001
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: embarrassed and then like stu ass like and then he

1002
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 1: like banned pineapples for France because he was a stupid

1003
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:08,880
Speaker 1: asshole about it. Look, there's some ship that like I

1004
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:10,799
Speaker 1: can knock down to like, oh yeah, if you if

1005
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: you're not instructed on how to eat certain things, it's confusing.

1006
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 1: But a pineapple is not that. Like you look at

1007
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: a pineapple and you're like, well, I should probably cut

1008
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 1: into this, Like this doesn't look like a bite into fruit.

1009
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:23,360
Speaker 1: I forget who did the tweet, but somebody talked about

1010
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: how like pineapple is the most metal food on the

1011
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 1: planet because it just like it dissolves your tongue when

1012
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 1: you eat it, and it's covered in like thick bark

1013
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:37,200
Speaker 1: of pineapple. Now you're making the fiend for pineapple and

1014
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:39,719
Speaker 1: the leaves are sharp, even the leaves are violent on

1015
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: a pineapple can fall down and kill you like a coconut.

1016
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: It is good. Don't they grow on um like bushes,

1017
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 1: coconut bushes. Yes, yes, sure, let's go with that. Oh sorry,

1018
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of iguanas. So yeah, he the Czar has

1019
00:53:57,960 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 1: a pretty great childhood. All things can sidered. One of

1020
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: the few things that's kind of traumatic for him as

1021
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 1: a kid is that he realizes his parents prefer his

1022
00:54:05,760 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 1: brother Georgie to him. His younger brother is like the favorite. Um,

1023
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: and he like acknowledges as a kid, like they don't

1024
00:54:12,480 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: really love me. They love my brother, not in a

1025
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:16,360
Speaker 1: way that like they're shitty to him because he's the

1026
00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: oldest one. He's going to be the czar. They just

1027
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: think Georgie is a better kid. And also he is

1028
00:54:21,320 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 1: like Georgie's way smarter, like Nicholas sucks. Georgie will become

1029
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 1: like the guy who's a voice of reason. Um a lot.

1030
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: Do you have a sibling, yes, who who's better? Oh?

1031
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 1: I mean geez i I he might listen to this podcast, um,

1032
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: but clearly me right obviously if he's listening to your podcast, Yeah,

1033
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:46,080
Speaker 1: absolutely right, he doesn't have a fucking podcast just has

1034
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:51,880
Speaker 1: you know, a good hasn't gone and traumatized himself for

1035
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: very little reason in random parts of the world, you know,

1036
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:58,320
Speaker 1: like a like a jerk. It's like, why don't you

1037
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:02,879
Speaker 1: go to war? Yeah, asked anyway, Um No, he's he's

1038
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:05,600
Speaker 1: a much better person than me. Um. You see. That's

1039
00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:07,520
Speaker 1: that's the thing is like there's all there always is

1040
00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 1: a sibling that's a better person for sure. And in

1041
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:13,400
Speaker 1: this case it's Georgie um and and Nicholas knows this.

1042
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:17,360
Speaker 1: And in the Romanovs, Simon Montfior claims his adolescent insight

1043
00:55:17,480 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 1: did not make him mean, sullen or less obedient. He

1044
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,400
Speaker 1: simply became reticent. So he kind of becomes like hesitant,

1045
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: like he doesn't like to make decisions or like calls

1046
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:29,239
Speaker 1: because he I think he just kind of feels insecure.

1047
00:55:29,320 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to like push anything that will make

1048
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:33,759
Speaker 1: somebody not like him, which is a problem when you're

1049
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 1: about to own all of Russia, right, you should really

1050
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,600
Speaker 1: need to be decisive. Um. As we've talked about, it's

1051
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: one of the things that stops you from getting murdered.

1052
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,759
Speaker 1: So the news are Alexander the third Nicholas. His dad

1053
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: picks a tutor for his son, a guy named oh

1054
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:51,239
Speaker 1: Boy Pabetta notes Papetta, notes of Pabetta, notes of like,

1055
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: come on, people, you expect me to get all these

1056
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: Russian names, right, I can't get English towns America. We're

1057
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 1: gonna call him Popo. Okay. So Popo is a traditionalist,

1058
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:03,880
Speaker 1: and he's such a traditionalist that he would have been

1059
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:06,719
Speaker 1: a fascist in a different country and time. Um. He

1060
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 1: lectured young Nicholas about how foolish his grandfather's reforms would be.

1061
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: His argument to Nicholas was that Russia was unique, special

1062
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 1: and stuff like a free press would lead to inevitable collapse.

1063
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:19,360
Speaker 1: Like other countries can maybe handled this, but not Russia.

1064
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: We're just not. We're very different. We're different kinds of people. Um.

1065
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 1: They viewed themselves as as Rome. Yeah, yeah, as the

1066
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 1: as the as the heirs to the Roman Empires, the

1067
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:32,880
Speaker 1: third Rome. Yeah. Um. Now one of his other tutors,

1068
00:56:32,920 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 1: when of Nicholas's other tutors didn't feel the need to

1069
00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:36,919
Speaker 1: actually educate him. You know, this is the guy who's

1070
00:56:36,920 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: supposed to be teaching him, because he believed quote mysterious

1071
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:43,480
Speaker 1: forces emanating during the sacrament of coronation, provided all the

1072
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:46,360
Speaker 1: practical data required by a ruler. Well, we teach this

1073
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 1: kid about the world, God's gonna tell him how to

1074
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:50,560
Speaker 1: do his job. He's going to get a ghost learning.

1075
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,319
Speaker 1: That's not everybody. Other tutors of his have a more

1076
00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: realistic view of education. Um, but none have a lot

1077
00:56:56,920 --> 00:57:00,600
Speaker 1: of luck teaching Nikki things. He's immature, he's not particularly

1078
00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: keen to learn. Popo noted that during one of history

1079
00:57:04,080 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: lesson quote, I could only observe that he was completely

1080
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 1: absorbed picking his nose. Um, which is a fine, normal

1081
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: kid thing to do, right, but also not a great

1082
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:15,439
Speaker 1: sign when you're going to rule the world. And maybe

1083
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: why people shouldn't rule one six of the world as

1084
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: their personal property. I mean, you know what that might

1085
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: be just like one time and this guy is just

1086
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 1: like dwelling on it, and he might have had something

1087
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,640
Speaker 1: sits there for history in history forever. Yeah, like we're

1088
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:32,200
Speaker 1: talking about it and like a hundred and fifty years later.

1089
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: It is pretty funny. It's just like one time this

1090
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:37,280
Speaker 1: kid had like a little crunchy in there. They had

1091
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 1: to work his way out. God picks their nose, Yeah,

1092
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: I know. Where you're going with this, And I'm very

1093
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: excited that that's the segway that you're using. It's the

1094
00:57:50,160 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: Washington State Highway Patrol and probably and we're bad. Ah,

1095
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 1: look at the ads. Good ads knows the whole time.

1096
00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:09,240
Speaker 1: I know, I know it was. It was unsettling. Yeah,

1097
00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:12,120
Speaker 1: it did seem good. So as an adolescent, Nicholas joins

1098
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:14,080
Speaker 1: the army, but he joins the army the way that

1099
00:58:14,200 --> 00:58:17,200
Speaker 1: like czar kids joined the army. This doesn't mean like

1100
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 1: he's not doing like push ups in the mud or anything. Basically,

1101
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 1: as a teenager, he gets to he becomes a member

1102
00:58:22,200 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 1: of the Lifeguards, which is the special military unit dedicated

1103
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,160
Speaker 1: to the royal family. When he joins the Cadet Corps

1104
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:31,040
Speaker 1: for training, his textbook included this line that gives you

1105
00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: an idea of how the Russian military saw itself. Russia

1106
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:37,560
Speaker 1: as a state is neither commercial nor agricultural, but military,

1107
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:40,280
Speaker 1: and it's calling is to be the wrath of the world.

1108
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: Parentheses pretend we did not get our asses kicked like

1109
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: like immediately yesterday. Basically, I mean, though that is Russia's history,

1110
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 1: Like the Crimean War is kind of weird because like

1111
00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:58,680
Speaker 1: they lose and then lose as opposed to most of

1112
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:01,120
Speaker 1: Russian military history. Is they lose, they lose, they lose,

1113
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: they lose, they win. Yeah, it's it's a long game.

1114
00:59:04,880 --> 00:59:06,920
Speaker 1: What it is is the Russians know that they can

1115
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: outlast a battle of attrition. M like they're just like

1116
00:59:10,760 --> 00:59:14,000
Speaker 1: they will just throw bodies at whatever. A problem is, Oh,

1117
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 1: Germany is invading. We have empty space is bigger than Germany.

1118
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 1: Multi problem? How many lives will it cost us? Deal? So,

1119
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: in his biography, the Last Czar Radzinsky explains quote the

1120
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: armyment obedience and diligence above all else, both these qualities

1121
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:36,440
Speaker 1: which the shot youth already possessed, the army would foster ruinously.

1122
00:59:37,160 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 1: So Nicholas is instantly put in charge of half a

1123
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: company worth of men. But this was fine because the

1124
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:45,040
Speaker 1: unit's only real duties were marching and working out. His

1125
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:48,680
Speaker 1: regimental boss was the Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovitch, who's his

1126
00:59:48,840 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: his uncle, so his dad's brother, the Russian ass name

1127
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: I've ever and Sergey is a Russian motherfucker. He is brutal,

1128
00:59:57,120 --> 00:59:59,880
Speaker 1: he loves him some programs, he loves him some crack

1129
01:00:00,160 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: down violently on on on socialists. Uh, he's hugely religious

1130
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 1: and he is also very gay, so he hates himself

1131
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:10,440
Speaker 1: and everything around him because he has these urges that

1132
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: he thinks are sinful, and because he's in the he's

1133
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 1: leading the Lifeguards, like, which is this fundamentally like pretty

1134
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 1: gay unit. It's this closed military tradition where like Radzinski

1135
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: writes that the unit quote encouraged pederasty and heavy drinking, right, like,

1136
01:00:26,480 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: all these dudes are fucking and getting wasted all the time.

1137
01:00:29,160 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 1: And then Surge gets really angry because he's super religious

1138
01:00:32,280 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: and thinks that's wrong. But it's also how he spends

1139
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 1: all his time. So he's just kind of this very angry,

1140
01:00:37,160 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 1: violent man with a lot of power and a lot

1141
01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: of repressed issues. Mike Penn's energy there, real, Mike Penn's energy. Yeah,

1142
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 1: it's bad. It's a problem. The Crown Prince Sergey becomes

1143
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 1: an issue. Um, Now, since Nicholas was the Crown Prince

1144
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,240
Speaker 1: and was straight, he probably was not exposed to a

1145
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 1: lot of like the horny nous within the Lifeguards, right.

1146
01:00:56,280 --> 01:00:58,120
Speaker 1: I don't think he was involved. I think they probably

1147
01:00:58,160 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: were like, well, we don't want we don't want this

1148
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:01,960
Speaker 1: are of itch to see. That's probably not like something

1149
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 1: to do around him. I mean, there certainly is, like,

1150
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:11,160
Speaker 1: but there's there's a difference between sexual preference, yes, being

1151
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: gay and and like that sort of like military or prison.

1152
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:17,959
Speaker 1: Within the military, where all these men kept together, people

1153
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: have this need for intimacy. Yeah, it definitely is one

1154
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:23,960
Speaker 1: of those things where like the fact that sexuality is

1155
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: a spectrum is very common in all male locations where

1156
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: you know, there aren't the options for that, people explore

1157
01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 1: that sexuality a lot more willingly. Yeah, this is not

1158
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 1: a unique kind of military formation in history. The ship

1159
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: happens all the time. I forget with their names. It

1160
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:42,560
Speaker 1: wasn't the Spartans, but it was somebody like the Spartans.

1161
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 1: It was the sacred Band of Thebes where they were

1162
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: like explicitly all right in like in homosexual like relationships.

1163
01:01:48,880 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: It was like a hundred and fifty couples and the

1164
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: idea was like, well, nobody's gonna like run and abandon

1165
01:01:53,520 --> 01:01:56,760
Speaker 1: their romantic partner on the battlefield. And they were like

1166
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 1: for a while, yeah, for a while, until then till

1167
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:02,520
Speaker 1: the macadone came around. You know, you get your your

1168
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:05,440
Speaker 1: Philip and your Alexander and that doesn't that breaks up eventually,

1169
01:02:05,520 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, they had a pretty really good combat record. Um.

1170
01:02:09,080 --> 01:02:12,320
Speaker 1: So Nicholas probably is not exposed to the horny nous um,

1171
01:02:12,360 --> 01:02:15,160
Speaker 1: but he definitely took part in the drinking, as this

1172
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:18,680
Speaker 1: quote from his diary makes clear. Yesterday during training, we

1173
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 1: drank a hundred and twenty bottles of champagne. I was

1174
01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 1: sentury for the division at I took my squadron out

1175
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 1: on the battlefield at five an inspection of military institutes

1176
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: under a pouring rain. So he then gets drunk with

1177
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 1: the boys that night, and he wrote this unintentionally hilarious line.

1178
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: Woke up and felt as if a squadron had spent

1179
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:40,840
Speaker 1: the night in my mouth. Maybe he did know a

1180
01:02:40,920 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: little thing, figured I don't think that's what he means,

1181
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:46,400
Speaker 1: you know, I think he means it taste my mouth

1182
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:49,800
Speaker 1: tastes like a bunch of horses ship in it, or

1183
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: a whole squadron. You never know the lemember you're you're

1184
01:02:54,200 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: interpreting from from the language you are. And I am

1185
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: certain there's some really horny are Nicholas and Dukes Sergey

1186
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:03,760
Speaker 1: fan fiction out there, and more power to you. I

1187
01:03:03,760 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 1: would also like to add, how funny it is, um

1188
01:03:06,600 --> 01:03:10,440
Speaker 1: that like it was champagne. I know, obviously like alcohol,

1189
01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 1: it's like what they drink, but like I expected it

1190
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:16,040
Speaker 1: to be vodka, and then it's like champagne, And I'm like, man,

1191
01:03:16,120 --> 01:03:19,720
Speaker 1: could you imagine that like from somebody like a desert

1192
01:03:19,800 --> 01:03:26,880
Speaker 1: storm like Darlan. We got fucked up on like four

1193
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:29,680
Speaker 1: cases of champagne. And I swear to fucking god, I

1194
01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:32,440
Speaker 1: woke up and in my mouth tasted like hounded brute

1195
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 1: and the Bradley. It tasted like a whole group of

1196
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:38,120
Speaker 1: marines that spent the night in my teeth. I went

1197
01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:40,560
Speaker 1: to fucking town and I swear to god, I got

1198
01:03:40,640 --> 01:03:47,280
Speaker 1: married last night. Yeah, so Grand Dukes Sergey was responsible

1199
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: for picking the drinking games, and he was really good

1200
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 1: at this, for all of his other shortcomings. His favorites

1201
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 1: were Elbows, in which a glass the length of a

1202
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:58,880
Speaker 1: forearm would be filled and drank in one gulp, The Staircase,

1203
01:03:58,920 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: which involved lining a staircase with drinks and pounding them

1204
01:04:01,840 --> 01:04:03,920
Speaker 1: one step at a time until you passed out drunk.

1205
01:04:04,240 --> 01:04:06,760
Speaker 1: And then there was Till the Wolves, in which all

1206
01:04:06,840 --> 01:04:09,200
Speaker 1: of the men would strip naked as a group run

1207
01:04:09,280 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: into the frozen outdoors, where a servant would bring them

1208
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:14,000
Speaker 1: a tub of champagne that they would all drink naked

1209
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:19,160
Speaker 1: together in the freezing cold. Sucks. That does sound like

1210
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:22,240
Speaker 1: a shitty drink. Sucks. I can we just play drink

1211
01:04:22,360 --> 01:04:26,320
Speaker 1: the beer, Sergey. Because he's got this religious conflict, is

1212
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:28,919
Speaker 1: really angry all the time, Like he'll have these nights

1213
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 1: of indulgence and then he'll just be like furious at

1214
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:34,960
Speaker 1: the world, and then he'll suggest that his brother or

1215
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: his nephew do a bunch of violent things. Whereas Nicholas

1216
01:04:38,520 --> 01:04:41,440
Speaker 1: is like pretty even tempered. I think for most of

1217
01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:43,560
Speaker 1: his life. Um, so I just I don't think he's

1218
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:46,280
Speaker 1: like I don't think he's repressing anything. Um it doesn't

1219
01:04:46,320 --> 01:04:50,760
Speaker 1: seem like it seems to do something he regrets. Yeah,

1220
01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:53,040
Speaker 1: I don't that. It just doesn't seem likely that that

1221
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:56,840
Speaker 1: was like a thing he grappled with. Um. Yeah, now

1222
01:04:57,080 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: Nicholas drank definitely. He does not say people had a

1223
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:02,880
Speaker 1: p problem. His father did, and became more of an

1224
01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:06,240
Speaker 1: issue as the czar got older. Alexander the Third had

1225
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 1: a habit of getting wasted with his friends, and, according

1226
01:05:08,440 --> 01:05:10,720
Speaker 1: to one witness quote, would lay on his back and

1227
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:13,240
Speaker 1: waved his arms and legs about, behaving like a child,

1228
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:15,320
Speaker 1: trying to get to his feet and then falling down,

1229
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 1: grabbing the legs of anyone who walked past. And again,

1230
01:05:18,280 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 1: this man owns a sixth of the world. So what

1231
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:22,320
Speaker 1: do you do when he's like that drunk. You know,

1232
01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:24,160
Speaker 1: he's just a good time and son of a bitch.

1233
01:05:25,080 --> 01:05:27,360
Speaker 1: I would be I would be stoked if you're like,

1234
01:05:27,680 --> 01:05:32,840
Speaker 1: if if somebody told me that Trump sometimes would have

1235
01:05:32,960 --> 01:05:35,600
Speaker 1: his buddies over, they would get fucked up and just

1236
01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:38,280
Speaker 1: collapse on the ground and just like wail around grabbing

1237
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:39,920
Speaker 1: a people's legs and stuff, I'd be like, well, at

1238
01:05:39,960 --> 01:05:42,720
Speaker 1: least that's kind of cool. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, that's

1239
01:05:42,760 --> 01:05:45,280
Speaker 1: a human thing he did. It's a fun time and thing,

1240
01:05:45,400 --> 01:05:48,040
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, get that wet, Yeah, I get that

1241
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:52,800
Speaker 1: wasted pretty regularly. Um. So, his binges started to cause

1242
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:56,240
Speaker 1: health problems by the eighteen eighties, and his doctors forbade

1243
01:05:56,320 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 1: him from drinking um. He but also, you can't really

1244
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 1: stop the Emperor of Russia from like doing stuff he

1245
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:05,520
Speaker 1: wants to. Um, So his wife like keeps enough of

1246
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: a watch on him that he has to hide it.

1247
01:06:07,160 --> 01:06:10,280
Speaker 1: So Alexander the third orders jack boots made with special

1248
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:13,720
Speaker 1: compartments that hold flasks large enough to fit a whole

1249
01:06:13,720 --> 01:06:16,640
Speaker 1: bottle of konyak. So these must have been big shoes.

1250
01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: It looks like kiss fucking shoes hold the whole bottle

1251
01:06:22,600 --> 01:06:27,120
Speaker 1: of kneak? Could you imagine that? Like, Uh, we have

1252
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:31,120
Speaker 1: a question about this, Uh about this this memo you

1253
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,520
Speaker 1: sent out here? Do you really want an eight foot

1254
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:40,760
Speaker 1: platform heels? Yes, hollow, very hollow with a tube coming

1255
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:43,840
Speaker 1: out of them, trying to sneak wine into like a

1256
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:46,360
Speaker 1: baseball game or soon ship. Yeah. And they'll do this

1257
01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:48,680
Speaker 1: like the Czar and his friends whenever, like they're at

1258
01:06:48,720 --> 01:06:50,840
Speaker 1: state functions, Like his wife will step out of the

1259
01:06:50,880 --> 01:06:52,720
Speaker 1: room and be like, all right, everybody drank really really fast,

1260
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:57,520
Speaker 1: pound him down, you know, the perfect crime. Yeah. On October,

1261
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:01,520
Speaker 1: Nicholas the second has a first close brush with death.

1262
01:07:01,800 --> 01:07:03,960
Speaker 1: He's on the Royal train with his father and family

1263
01:07:04,040 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 1: when it has a wreck outside of Kharkoff and modern Ukraine.

1264
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 1: And it has a wreck because his dad is drunk

1265
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,600
Speaker 1: and is telling like the the guy who's in charge

1266
01:07:12,600 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: of the railway, the director of the railway, This dude

1267
01:07:15,040 --> 01:07:17,720
Speaker 1: named Sergey Witt um, he's like, make it go faster,

1268
01:07:17,880 --> 01:07:20,000
Speaker 1: make it go faster. And Serge is like, we're already

1269
01:07:20,040 --> 01:07:22,320
Speaker 1: going as fast as he can, and these oars like

1270
01:07:22,440 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 1: what are you? Would you make it go faster? And

1271
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:34,720
Speaker 1: then it crashes. Russian, very Russian, very god. He's like,

1272
01:07:34,840 --> 01:07:41,240
Speaker 1: the guy's just like, you know this is train, yeah, comes,

1273
01:07:42,160 --> 01:07:46,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this one railway. Very

1274
01:07:47,040 --> 01:07:52,080
Speaker 1: little steering can do here. Remember, but this railway relatively

1275
01:07:52,160 --> 01:07:56,480
Speaker 1: new building. We are Russian, We're not great at these yet.

1276
01:07:58,360 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 1: And Niki later wrote in his diet writes in his

1277
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:03,520
Speaker 1: diary of this train crash and this is fun. This

1278
01:08:03,600 --> 01:08:06,880
Speaker 1: gives you some insight into how he grows up viewing

1279
01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:09,720
Speaker 1: the lives of other humans who aren't Royals. A fateful

1280
01:08:09,800 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 1: day for us all. We might all have been killed,

1281
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:14,240
Speaker 1: but by the Lord's will, we were not. During breakfast,

1282
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:16,320
Speaker 1: our train jump, the rails, the dining car and coach

1283
01:08:16,360 --> 01:08:19,320
Speaker 1: were demolished, but we emerged from it all unscathed. However,

1284
01:08:19,479 --> 01:08:23,200
Speaker 1: twenty people were killed and sixteen injured. Kind of burying

1285
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:26,439
Speaker 1: the lead on that one, isn't it Twenty people die

1286
01:08:26,520 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: and he's like, thank god, everyone who matters is fine.

1287
01:08:29,920 --> 01:08:32,680
Speaker 1: It really is like, oh, you deserve to die for

1288
01:08:32,840 --> 01:08:35,920
Speaker 1: having that mentality for your whole life. Yeah, that that

1289
01:08:36,120 --> 01:08:38,160
Speaker 1: is his entire life. And it's also worth noting that

1290
01:08:38,240 --> 01:08:40,760
Speaker 1: like twenty people die because his dad is drunk and

1291
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:44,920
Speaker 1: like make it go faster. Yeah, this is uh what

1292
01:08:45,080 --> 01:08:48,920
Speaker 1: what is it suffering from affluenza? Yeah, they have it

1293
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:53,120
Speaker 1: pretty hard in in the Romanov family. So this accident

1294
01:08:53,200 --> 01:08:56,120
Speaker 1: brings Sergey with the director of the railway into Romanov

1295
01:08:56,240 --> 01:08:58,600
Speaker 1: orbit after the crash, which gets promoted to run the

1296
01:08:58,680 --> 01:09:02,439
Speaker 1: railways for the whole empire. Then Alexander the third decides

1297
01:09:02,479 --> 01:09:05,639
Speaker 1: to make him communications minister. Before he hands in that job,

1298
01:09:05,720 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 1: he asks, are you a friend of the Jews? Because again,

1299
01:09:09,600 --> 01:09:13,120
Speaker 1: pretty racist guy? Uh now, wit who would go down

1300
01:09:13,160 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 1: in history as a campaigner for reforming Russia's anti Semitic

1301
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:18,960
Speaker 1: laws answers, Since we can't drown them all in the

1302
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:21,920
Speaker 1: Black sea, we should treat them as humans. So for

1303
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:24,680
Speaker 1: an idea of where anti semitism is, this is the

1304
01:09:24,800 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 1: good guy, this is the advocate for Jewish liberation, being like, well,

1305
01:09:28,560 --> 01:09:30,559
Speaker 1: we can't drown them all, so we should treat him better.

1306
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:34,280
Speaker 1: That's the most progressive thing any Russian had said. Yeah,

1307
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 1: it wasn't Jewish. Well if we can't, well, if we

1308
01:09:36,560 --> 01:09:42,960
Speaker 1: can't drown them, we can. Yeah, So for a heads up,

1309
01:09:43,680 --> 01:09:46,519
Speaker 1: pretty bad, pretty bad people in a lot of ways.

1310
01:09:47,120 --> 01:09:49,760
Speaker 1: Um As both his father's son and the heir to

1311
01:09:49,840 --> 01:09:52,360
Speaker 1: all Russia, Nicholas the second had the option to have

1312
01:09:52,520 --> 01:09:54,720
Speaker 1: a lot of casual sex if he really wanted to.

1313
01:09:55,280 --> 01:09:58,240
Speaker 1: Many young tsarovitch Is, including his father, were playboys, you know,

1314
01:09:58,400 --> 01:10:00,960
Speaker 1: in their youth and often as an adult to you know.

1315
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:04,800
Speaker 1: But Nicholas was a deeply religious and dedicated person, and

1316
01:10:04,880 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 1: he was dedicated to waiting for love. This next story

1317
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:10,120
Speaker 1: is based on the recollections of a noble woman named

1318
01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:13,360
Speaker 1: vera Uran neva Uh and she claims of his first

1319
01:10:13,800 --> 01:10:17,280
Speaker 1: like infatuation quote, he adored walking. There was a rumor

1320
01:10:17,360 --> 01:10:19,360
Speaker 1: that he had met a beautiful Jewis on a walk

1321
01:10:19,600 --> 01:10:21,640
Speaker 1: and a romance had sprung up. There was a lot

1322
01:10:21,680 --> 01:10:24,120
Speaker 1: of gossip about that in Petersburg, but his father acted

1323
01:10:24,160 --> 01:10:26,920
Speaker 1: as decisively as ever. The Jewis was sent away along

1324
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:29,599
Speaker 1: with her entire household. Nicholas was in her home while

1325
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:32,000
Speaker 1: all this was going on. Only over my dead body,

1326
01:10:32,080 --> 01:10:34,400
Speaker 1: he declared to the governor. Matters did not go as

1327
01:10:34,439 --> 01:10:36,920
Speaker 1: far as dead bodies. However, he was an obedient son

1328
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:39,400
Speaker 1: and eventually he was broken and taking away to his

1329
01:10:39,479 --> 01:10:42,160
Speaker 1: father at Anchikov Palace. And the Jewis was never seen

1330
01:10:42,240 --> 01:10:46,839
Speaker 1: in the capital again. So in the capital, in the capital,

1331
01:10:46,920 --> 01:10:49,120
Speaker 1: yeah it may have been. I mean, Alexander the Third

1332
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:51,479
Speaker 1: would not have been above a little bit of murder. Um.

1333
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:55,519
Speaker 1: So we've moved out to a farm upstairs. Yeah, yeah,

1334
01:10:55,760 --> 01:10:58,599
Speaker 1: it's it's bleak um. So right around the same time,

1335
01:10:58,760 --> 01:11:02,439
Speaker 1: Uncle Sergey leads a crackdown against Jewish people living in

1336
01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:05,559
Speaker 1: and around the capital, and Alexander the Third signs off

1337
01:11:05,680 --> 01:11:09,800
Speaker 1: on this crackdown. In Moscow, Uncle SERGEI closes the Great

1338
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:12,759
Speaker 1: Synagogue and he sends his Cossacks to break into Jewish

1339
01:11:12,840 --> 01:11:15,000
Speaker 1: homes and like beat and rob people. It's a knight

1340
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:17,880
Speaker 1: of It's a knight of broken glass kind of ship. Right. Um.

1341
01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:21,760
Speaker 1: He expels all Jewish citizens of Moscow. The only exceptions

1342
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:25,760
Speaker 1: are women who were togree to register as prostitutes. That

1343
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: seems that's having your cake and eating it. Two guys,

1344
01:11:28,280 --> 01:11:31,439
Speaker 1: come on, yeah, um, well not for him actually, but yeah,

1345
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: as a as a matter of jurisprudence, I guess um,

1346
01:11:36,479 --> 01:11:39,200
Speaker 1: Jewish immigration in the United States increases to one hundred

1347
01:11:39,240 --> 01:11:41,600
Speaker 1: and thirty seven thousand people a year. This is like

1348
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:44,519
Speaker 1: the five will goes west, you know. Stuff like this

1349
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:47,479
Speaker 1: is this is when you start getting huge waves of

1350
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:50,680
Speaker 1: Jewish people immigrating to the United States in particular. Um,

1351
01:11:50,760 --> 01:11:51,880
Speaker 1: some of them do, a lot of them do like

1352
01:11:51,920 --> 01:11:55,800
Speaker 1: wind up further western Europe. But like this, these crackdowns

1353
01:11:55,880 --> 01:11:58,240
Speaker 1: are what starts. Like why you you start to get

1354
01:11:58,280 --> 01:12:00,800
Speaker 1: this like huge Jewish population in York City and stuff,

1355
01:12:00,800 --> 01:12:02,960
Speaker 1: It's because a lot of people are like, it really

1356
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:05,040
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like Russia is a great place to be Jewish.

1357
01:12:05,120 --> 01:12:06,479
Speaker 1: We might need to get the funk out of here.

1358
01:12:07,400 --> 01:12:09,960
Speaker 1: You know what, maybe Europe and as a whole is

1359
01:12:10,040 --> 01:12:12,080
Speaker 1: probably the best place to get out of there. I

1360
01:12:12,120 --> 01:12:14,840
Speaker 1: don't think this is heading in a good direction. I'm

1361
01:12:14,880 --> 01:12:17,600
Speaker 1: hearing some pretty rough stuff out west to Let's go

1362
01:12:17,680 --> 01:12:21,120
Speaker 1: to America. Let's go to America, Bill, they'll hate us

1363
01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:25,240
Speaker 1: without being too violent about yeah. Yeah. In the early

1364
01:12:25,360 --> 01:12:28,840
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, the young Kaiser of Germany, Nicholas's cousin, uh

1365
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:32,320
Speaker 1: you know, auto or Wilhelm fires Otto von Bismarck, who

1366
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:34,000
Speaker 1: had been the brains of the Reich for a while

1367
01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:37,160
Speaker 1: and had organized a German Russian defensive alliance. When the

1368
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:40,320
Speaker 1: Kaiser sacks Bismarck, he also refuses to renew the treaty,

1369
01:12:40,560 --> 01:12:43,919
Speaker 1: and so Alexander the Third signs and alliance with France instead.

1370
01:12:44,840 --> 01:12:48,040
Speaker 1: The Kaiser, being an idiot, recognizes like, oh, no, I

1371
01:12:48,160 --> 01:12:50,439
Speaker 1: fucked up. I shouldn't have done that. Like it's immediately like, oh,

1372
01:12:50,520 --> 01:12:53,880
Speaker 1: this could go badly for Jerremany is this is gonna

1373
01:12:53,880 --> 01:12:56,840
Speaker 1: be rough in about twenty four years. And one of

1374
01:12:56,880 --> 01:12:58,519
Speaker 1: the things you got to realize is all of these

1375
01:12:58,680 --> 01:13:02,519
Speaker 1: these royals who are like cousin are texting each other constantly.

1376
01:13:02,600 --> 01:13:05,559
Speaker 1: Basically they have telegrams so they can actually like basically

1377
01:13:05,640 --> 01:13:08,360
Speaker 1: text with one another. And as soon as like this happens,

1378
01:13:08,400 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: he starts sending a bunch of like frantic telegrams to

1379
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:13,920
Speaker 1: the Russian royal family inviting them to hang out on

1380
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:16,120
Speaker 1: his yacht and party with him and like trying to

1381
01:13:16,160 --> 01:13:19,560
Speaker 1: get back into their good books. Um. And also, we

1382
01:13:19,640 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 1: have cool helmets with spikes on the baby check it out, um.

1383
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:28,000
Speaker 1: And Alexander the Third doesn't really want to hang out

1384
01:13:28,040 --> 01:13:31,360
Speaker 1: with kaiserville helm because nobody, nobody ever wants to hang

1385
01:13:31,400 --> 01:13:34,840
Speaker 1: out with Kayserville Helm No. Um, so he picks Nikki

1386
01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 1: to go do that job. He's like, Hey, you're you're

1387
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:39,439
Speaker 1: gonna be the bizarre one day. Why don't you go

1388
01:13:39,600 --> 01:13:41,880
Speaker 1: hang out with your weird cousin and sail around in

1389
01:13:42,000 --> 01:13:45,240
Speaker 1: circles with his stupid boats. Um. So that's what Nikki

1390
01:13:45,320 --> 01:13:47,479
Speaker 1: does a bunch of when he's a young man. Um

1391
01:13:47,640 --> 01:13:50,360
Speaker 1: And for a look at how he starts coming together

1392
01:13:50,439 --> 01:13:52,200
Speaker 1: as a young person, I want to quote again from

1393
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:55,880
Speaker 1: the Romanovs. The Air Now twenty four, wrote the Deputy

1394
01:13:55,920 --> 01:13:59,400
Speaker 1: Foreign Minister Lambsdorff makes a strange impression. Half boy, half

1395
01:13:59,479 --> 01:14:02,639
Speaker 1: man's all of stature, thin and undistinguished. He had also

1396
01:14:02,760 --> 01:14:06,880
Speaker 1: obstinate and thoughtless. His mother had tended to infantilize her boys.

1397
01:14:07,080 --> 01:14:09,760
Speaker 1: He wore his literal sailor suits longer than most boys do,

1398
01:14:10,120 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: noted Countess zz Naryshkina. He was a man with a

1399
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:16,000
Speaker 1: small horizon and a narrow outlook, and for years had

1400
01:14:16,040 --> 01:14:18,559
Speaker 1: barely gone beyond the wall of the Anchikov and then

1401
01:14:18,640 --> 01:14:22,080
Speaker 1: Gecina Palace gardens. Even when Nikki was a guard's colonel,

1402
01:14:22,160 --> 01:14:24,599
Speaker 1: his mother still addressed him as my dear little soul,

1403
01:14:24,800 --> 01:14:28,320
Speaker 1: my boy His diary tells of hide and seek, drinking games,

1404
01:14:28,360 --> 01:14:31,479
Speaker 1: and contests with conkers and fur cones well into his twenties.

1405
01:14:32,080 --> 01:14:35,680
Speaker 1: So he's like being dressed like Donald Duck. He's like

1406
01:14:35,800 --> 01:14:40,479
Speaker 1: a twenty year old. It has um, it has very

1407
01:14:40,560 --> 01:14:43,720
Speaker 1: blueth energy there. Yeah, because like he's just gets to

1408
01:14:43,760 --> 01:14:47,040
Speaker 1: be this little boy forever, because nobody can ever say, like, hey,

1409
01:14:47,200 --> 01:14:50,400
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the little sailor suits might not be the

1410
01:14:50,439 --> 01:14:52,920
Speaker 1: thing to be wearing to this party twenty one year

1411
01:14:52,960 --> 01:14:55,880
Speaker 1: old future emperor. So he just kind of does it.

1412
01:14:56,000 --> 01:15:00,240
Speaker 1: You know, he's flexing mm hmm. I mean, there's a

1413
01:15:00,280 --> 01:15:03,000
Speaker 1: way you can see that as as as healthy. I'm

1414
01:15:03,000 --> 01:15:05,439
Speaker 1: gonna add, by the way, I also dressed like a child,

1415
01:15:05,640 --> 01:15:07,679
Speaker 1: but it's more just like I wear like, oh look,

1416
01:15:07,720 --> 01:15:10,240
Speaker 1: I like Spider Man and I only wear pajamas. I

1417
01:15:10,320 --> 01:15:14,479
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah. So, uh, he's kind of a sweet boy.

1418
01:15:14,600 --> 01:15:16,720
Speaker 1: Most people will agree on that. But he's also very

1419
01:15:16,840 --> 01:15:19,719
Speaker 1: much like a boy rather than the kind of person

1420
01:15:19,880 --> 01:15:22,519
Speaker 1: suited to be the iron ruler of all the rushes.

1421
01:15:22,640 --> 01:15:25,080
Speaker 1: You know, like he does he everyone kind of notices, oh,

1422
01:15:25,160 --> 01:15:27,240
Speaker 1: you're not going to be hard enough for this job.

1423
01:15:28,080 --> 01:15:30,639
Speaker 1: A little sailor sailor suit. Yeah, I'm not not quite

1424
01:15:30,680 --> 01:15:34,320
Speaker 1: tough enough for this big lollipop and floppy blonde curls

1425
01:15:34,360 --> 01:15:39,080
Speaker 1: and duty. Um. So he had developed his intellectual talents

1426
01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:41,680
Speaker 1: by this point. He's not an idiot. He's really good

1427
01:15:41,720 --> 01:15:43,559
Speaker 1: at learning languages. And in fact, one of the things

1428
01:15:43,680 --> 01:15:45,800
Speaker 1: people will notice is that his English is perfect, and

1429
01:15:45,880 --> 01:15:47,519
Speaker 1: he writes a lot of letters to and from his

1430
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:52,040
Speaker 1: wife that are like flawless English. Um. He also falls

1431
01:15:52,080 --> 01:15:54,479
Speaker 1: in love with British romance novels. He spends a lot

1432
01:15:54,520 --> 01:15:57,360
Speaker 1: of time reading romance novels. Um. And if you were

1433
01:15:57,400 --> 01:15:59,600
Speaker 1: a member of the oppressed classes kind of eyeing this

1434
01:15:59,720 --> 01:16:02,280
Speaker 1: guy from a scullery or whatever, you might have expected

1435
01:16:02,320 --> 01:16:04,080
Speaker 1: him to be like, well, when this guy gets into power,

1436
01:16:04,160 --> 01:16:06,160
Speaker 1: he'll be better than Alexander the Third. You know, the

1437
01:16:06,240 --> 01:16:11,599
Speaker 1: dude who's constantly cracking down on everybody but a Simon who, Yeah,

1438
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:14,519
Speaker 1: the dude who jumped to train because wasted d u

1439
01:16:14,640 --> 01:16:20,120
Speaker 1: I with a train. But as Simon Montfior makes clear,

1440
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:24,000
Speaker 1: little Niki definitely took after his father, uh quote. Nikki

1441
01:16:24,080 --> 01:16:26,840
Speaker 1: embraced his father's Muscovite vision of the throne, founded on

1442
01:16:26,880 --> 01:16:29,679
Speaker 1: the mystical union of Czar and peasants whose devout loyalty

1443
01:16:29,800 --> 01:16:33,120
Speaker 1: was pure and sacred compared to the filthy decadence of Petersburg,

1444
01:16:33,439 --> 01:16:37,720
Speaker 1: Liberal Europe and Jewish modernity. Nicholas the second worship his

1445
01:16:37,800 --> 01:16:40,680
Speaker 1: imperial father, but Tzar Alexander the Third knew his son

1446
01:16:40,800 --> 01:16:43,599
Speaker 1: had no aptitude for the job awaiting him. When Wit

1447
01:16:43,800 --> 01:16:46,800
Speaker 1: suggested putting Nicholas on the committee organizing construction of the

1448
01:16:46,840 --> 01:16:49,080
Speaker 1: Trans Siberian Railway so we could get some on the

1449
01:16:49,160 --> 01:16:52,879
Speaker 1: job experience, the Zar responded, have you ever tried discussing

1450
01:16:52,920 --> 01:16:55,800
Speaker 1: anything of consequence with his Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke?

1451
01:16:56,080 --> 01:16:57,960
Speaker 1: Don't tell me you never noticed. The Grand Duke is

1452
01:16:57,960 --> 01:17:01,600
Speaker 1: an absolute child. His opinions utterly childish. How could he

1453
01:17:01,880 --> 01:17:04,960
Speaker 1: preside over such a committee? And like, that's a bad

1454
01:17:05,160 --> 01:17:08,920
Speaker 1: sign if your kid is gonna inherit the throne literally

1455
01:17:08,960 --> 01:17:11,200
Speaker 1: the instant you die and you're like, well, he can't

1456
01:17:11,240 --> 01:17:14,800
Speaker 1: build a railroad, like, dude, to be fair, I don't

1457
01:17:14,840 --> 01:17:17,040
Speaker 1: know if you should be living in a pretty glass

1458
01:17:17,080 --> 01:17:20,679
Speaker 1: house railroad stones, buddy, Yeah, yeah, maybe it'll be Also,

1459
01:17:20,720 --> 01:17:23,519
Speaker 1: maybe it'll be shipping on Nikki about railroad stuff. How buddy,

1460
01:17:24,000 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 1: how much did you black out that night? Yeah? Do

1461
01:17:27,120 --> 01:17:34,759
Speaker 1: you remember that, remember the people people. Yeah, so Nicholas

1462
01:17:34,840 --> 01:17:36,920
Speaker 1: did eventually get added to that committee in the end,

1463
01:17:36,960 --> 01:17:38,840
Speaker 1: but he doesn't receive a lot of training on the

1464
01:17:38,920 --> 01:17:40,640
Speaker 1: job from his dad. His dad's the only one who

1465
01:17:40,680 --> 01:17:42,640
Speaker 1: can give him this, and his dad, you kind of

1466
01:17:42,760 --> 01:17:44,840
Speaker 1: get the feeling his dad is just irritated by him

1467
01:17:45,040 --> 01:17:47,320
Speaker 1: and like doesn't want him around, so he doesn't teach

1468
01:17:47,400 --> 01:17:51,120
Speaker 1: him a whole lot. Um. He just length, Yeah, he's

1469
01:17:51,120 --> 01:17:54,960
Speaker 1: an asshole. You know. Um, this might have been fine, right,

1470
01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:58,080
Speaker 1: Alexander's young, you know, he had time to gradually learn

1471
01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:01,200
Speaker 1: things and pick them up from ministers. Um, Alexander the

1472
01:18:01,280 --> 01:18:03,560
Speaker 1: Third was like not old, you know, when Nicki's in

1473
01:18:03,600 --> 01:18:05,840
Speaker 1: his twenties and he was expected to have like people

1474
01:18:05,880 --> 01:18:09,080
Speaker 1: are generally expecting. Nicholas probably wouldn't inherit the third Throat

1475
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:12,600
Speaker 1: until he was closing on forty. Um, but that's not

1476
01:18:12,720 --> 01:18:18,400
Speaker 1: quite what happens. So, Uh, Nicholas meets Alexandra Fyodorovna when

1477
01:18:18,479 --> 01:18:21,520
Speaker 1: he's in his early twenties. She's a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

1478
01:18:21,640 --> 01:18:25,360
Speaker 1: She's a German and a Protestant. Her childhood had been rough.

1479
01:18:25,439 --> 01:18:28,760
Speaker 1: Her mother was depressed and constantly ill. Her brother had hemophilia,

1480
01:18:28,840 --> 01:18:30,920
Speaker 1: which was called the English disease because it was so

1481
01:18:31,040 --> 01:18:34,320
Speaker 1: common with royalty. Um, and he died bleeding from bleeding

1482
01:18:34,360 --> 01:18:36,679
Speaker 1: after he fell out of a window. When she was six,

1483
01:18:36,760 --> 01:18:40,040
Speaker 1: her mom died along with her favorite sister, from diphtheria.

1484
01:18:40,520 --> 01:18:43,120
Speaker 1: So Alexandra is always going to be kind of nervous

1485
01:18:43,200 --> 01:18:45,920
Speaker 1: and scared of losing everyone around her because that's how

1486
01:18:46,000 --> 01:18:49,200
Speaker 1: her childhood goes, because that's what happened, because that's what

1487
01:18:49,360 --> 01:18:53,360
Speaker 1: happened obviously. Yeah, that's like being like, oh man, I'm

1488
01:18:53,360 --> 01:18:57,240
Speaker 1: afraid I'm going to vomit because I vomit literally every day. Yeah,

1489
01:18:57,520 --> 01:19:01,360
Speaker 1: that's and she she grows into an unpleasant person, but like,

1490
01:19:02,040 --> 01:19:04,559
Speaker 1: you know, it's understandable, like why she does a lot

1491
01:19:04,600 --> 01:19:07,200
Speaker 1: of the things she does. Her background makes it makes sense.

1492
01:19:07,640 --> 01:19:12,280
Speaker 1: Tense all the time. Yeah, she's just never okay with anything. Um. Yeah,

1493
01:19:12,400 --> 01:19:15,920
Speaker 1: And and so she's she is, though kind of insufferable.

1494
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:18,360
Speaker 1: She's like a lot to deal with. And all of

1495
01:19:18,439 --> 01:19:21,040
Speaker 1: the Romanovs except for Nicholas, feel this way about her,

1496
01:19:21,400 --> 01:19:24,120
Speaker 1: like he falls in love immediately and the rest of

1497
01:19:24,160 --> 01:19:28,320
Speaker 1: his family's like her. We've all been there. Yeah, it

1498
01:19:28,479 --> 01:19:32,840
Speaker 1: is that kind of story. Somebody that's like really into

1499
01:19:32,920 --> 01:19:35,880
Speaker 1: the person they're dating, and we're all just like okay,

1500
01:19:35,920 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: But like, is it like a different person? Yeah? Is

1501
01:19:39,120 --> 01:19:42,000
Speaker 1: she completely different every moment that we're not around? Um?

1502
01:19:42,280 --> 01:19:43,760
Speaker 1: Or is she like, are do you have like a

1503
01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:46,560
Speaker 1: different plane of existence? Is she's saying different things in

1504
01:19:46,600 --> 01:19:48,880
Speaker 1: the quantum realm that we're not seeing here? Yeah? Is

1505
01:19:48,920 --> 01:19:51,880
Speaker 1: he just like hiding everything about himself when he's around

1506
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:55,240
Speaker 1: us and only plays beer pong when he's around us

1507
01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:57,639
Speaker 1: and the rest of the time he has a personality? Um.

1508
01:19:58,920 --> 01:20:03,720
Speaker 1: So there's other reasons why Alexandra isn't popular as a

1509
01:20:03,840 --> 01:20:06,920
Speaker 1: choice for Nicholas's partner. For one thing, she's Protestant, right,

1510
01:20:07,240 --> 01:20:09,880
Speaker 1: all of the Romanovs you have to be Orthodox, you know,

1511
01:20:10,000 --> 01:20:12,400
Speaker 1: you're you're like the Russian Orthodox Church. It's you're the

1512
01:20:12,439 --> 01:20:14,439
Speaker 1: head of it, as these are. Your wife can't be

1513
01:20:14,520 --> 01:20:17,920
Speaker 1: a Protestant um. And Yeah, there's other reasons. There's like

1514
01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:20,599
Speaker 1: weird royal bloodline reasons, I don't we need to get into.

1515
01:20:20,760 --> 01:20:22,800
Speaker 1: There's like a lot of reasons people are not happy

1516
01:20:22,880 --> 01:20:26,920
Speaker 1: with this, this this match. Um. But Nicholas is in

1517
01:20:27,040 --> 01:20:29,840
Speaker 1: love with this woman, um, and she's in love with him. UM.

1518
01:20:30,080 --> 01:20:32,479
Speaker 1: But there's like a years of conflict, right, they don't

1519
01:20:32,479 --> 01:20:34,840
Speaker 1: get their way right away. Um, And it says a

1520
01:20:34,920 --> 01:20:37,000
Speaker 1: lot about how strongly he felt that he goes through

1521
01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:39,320
Speaker 1: the effort because there's like years of him trying to

1522
01:20:39,400 --> 01:20:43,040
Speaker 1: convince his father and his father refuses. Um. Like most

1523
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:45,160
Speaker 1: love struck men, who can he decides to go on

1524
01:20:45,240 --> 01:20:48,479
Speaker 1: a road trip to clear his head. Um and yeah, yeah,

1525
01:20:48,560 --> 01:20:50,920
Speaker 1: He's like, well, I might as well go traveling, yeah,

1526
01:20:51,479 --> 01:20:53,599
Speaker 1: on the train, because they have bad luck with those

1527
01:20:53,840 --> 01:20:55,840
Speaker 1: trains and boats, and they have bad luck on this.

1528
01:20:55,960 --> 01:20:57,840
Speaker 1: He and his brother Georgie go to I think Greece,

1529
01:20:57,960 --> 01:21:01,000
Speaker 1: and Georgie gets tuberculosis, which eventually he kills him. Um,

1530
01:21:01,120 --> 01:21:03,080
Speaker 1: So he has to head back home to like slowly

1531
01:21:03,160 --> 01:21:05,720
Speaker 1: die of tv um. But Nikki gets to go to

1532
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:08,400
Speaker 1: Japan with his other friend and relative, the Prince of

1533
01:21:08,439 --> 01:21:11,200
Speaker 1: Greece uh and this doesn't go great either, so they

1534
01:21:11,240 --> 01:21:13,719
Speaker 1: spent up. The Russians usually have great luck with Japan,

1535
01:21:15,120 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 1: Nicholas especially, so Nikki reads mostly romance novels and just

1536
01:21:20,400 --> 01:21:23,559
Speaker 1: kind of walks around Nagasaki buying souvenirs. While he's in Japan,

1537
01:21:24,120 --> 01:21:26,280
Speaker 1: Um hangs out with his cousin the Prince of Greece,

1538
01:21:26,840 --> 01:21:29,160
Speaker 1: and since Prince George this is funny. Prince George has

1539
01:21:29,200 --> 01:21:31,680
Speaker 1: a tattoo, and so Nikki decides to get one too,

1540
01:21:31,800 --> 01:21:36,519
Speaker 1: of a dragon on his right floe arm. What a web.

1541
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:39,960
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a weep. Right, goes

1542
01:21:40,040 --> 01:21:43,120
Speaker 1: to Japan and gets a dragon tattoo, comes back there

1543
01:21:43,200 --> 01:21:48,200
Speaker 1: in like a like a black trench coat. He gets katana. Yeah,

1544
01:21:48,280 --> 01:21:51,880
Speaker 1: why are better than dubbed? It's very funny. Yeah, he

1545
01:21:51,920 --> 01:21:55,160
Speaker 1: gets real into anime during this period of wall scrolls

1546
01:21:55,200 --> 01:21:58,479
Speaker 1: in the palace. There's there, there's there's rioters at the

1547
01:21:58,560 --> 01:22:02,600
Speaker 1: gates that he's building a gunda. It's just we'll make it.

1548
01:22:07,640 --> 01:22:09,920
Speaker 1: So he's just kind of there to have a good time,

1549
01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:12,640
Speaker 1: you know. But Japan has, I don't know if you

1550
01:22:12,680 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 1: know this about Japan has a pretty intense right wing

1551
01:22:15,360 --> 01:22:18,080
Speaker 1: um and they start developing all these conspiracy theories that

1552
01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:20,560
Speaker 1: he's secretly in Japan to spy on their weaknesses so

1553
01:22:20,640 --> 01:22:23,639
Speaker 1: Russia can attack. They credit him with being a much

1554
01:22:23,680 --> 01:22:29,080
Speaker 1: more capable person than he is. The Japanese not always

1555
01:22:29,160 --> 01:22:32,240
Speaker 1: stoked on outside influence in any right, right. Yeah, So

1556
01:22:32,400 --> 01:22:34,640
Speaker 1: a lot of people are real honory about this and

1557
01:22:34,680 --> 01:22:37,040
Speaker 1: they're angry, like he doesn't The first thing he does

1558
01:22:37,120 --> 01:22:38,960
Speaker 1: isn't go about or the emperor. He like goes and

1559
01:22:39,040 --> 01:22:41,080
Speaker 1: does other stuff first because he's kind of on vacation.

1560
01:22:41,160 --> 01:22:43,120
Speaker 1: He's he's not trying to be disrespectful, he's just like

1561
01:22:43,880 --> 01:22:46,920
Speaker 1: doesn't really doesn't know anything about Japan. You know, Um,

1562
01:22:47,320 --> 01:22:52,559
Speaker 1: there's nothing about the Yamato clan. Yeah in English, Uh,

1563
01:22:53,479 --> 01:22:57,120
Speaker 1: romance novels, Yeah, exactly, which is all he knows. So

1564
01:22:57,479 --> 01:23:00,439
Speaker 1: one of these paranoid right wingers is a cop names Sanzo,

1565
01:23:00,560 --> 01:23:02,200
Speaker 1: who was supposed to be one of them in guarding

1566
01:23:02,240 --> 01:23:03,840
Speaker 1: the futures are And I'm going to read a quote

1567
01:23:03,840 --> 01:23:08,719
Speaker 1: from Japan today here. According to the Julypaper eyewitness account,

1568
01:23:08,800 --> 01:23:11,840
Speaker 1: Sanzo quote drew his sword and struck at the Prince's neck.

1569
01:23:12,200 --> 01:23:14,040
Speaker 1: His Royal Highness, who was writing at the head of

1570
01:23:14,080 --> 01:23:17,320
Speaker 1: a long line of rickshaws with two coolies drawing him,

1571
01:23:17,600 --> 01:23:19,720
Speaker 1: jumped back as Sando cut at him, and the force

1572
01:23:19,760 --> 01:23:22,000
Speaker 1: of the blow was broken by his cap. However, he

1573
01:23:22,120 --> 01:23:23,479
Speaker 1: was cut on the head, and it is said that

1574
01:23:23,520 --> 01:23:26,519
Speaker 1: a small piece of the skull was chipped off. Prince George,

1575
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:29,240
Speaker 1: seeing the attack from Afar, jumped out of his rickshaw

1576
01:23:29,360 --> 01:23:32,760
Speaker 1: and ran to after Sando, striking him with his bamboo cane.

1577
01:23:33,040 --> 01:23:35,799
Speaker 1: It did not bring him down, but fortunately two rickshaw

1578
01:23:35,920 --> 01:23:39,519
Speaker 1: drivers abandoned their strollers and sprinted towards Sando. The attack,

1579
01:23:39,560 --> 01:23:41,960
Speaker 1: which occurred in only a few seconds, rippled across two

1580
01:23:42,000 --> 01:23:45,560
Speaker 1: competing nations. Nicholas suffered all his life from headaches and

1581
01:23:45,600 --> 01:23:48,160
Speaker 1: had been traumatized enough to ask every May eleven that

1582
01:23:48,200 --> 01:23:51,040
Speaker 1: the Russian public prey for his well being. The nine

1583
01:23:51,120 --> 01:23:54,280
Speaker 1: centimeter wound would be a lifelong reminder of how close

1584
01:23:54,360 --> 01:23:57,040
Speaker 1: to death he'd been. This is like a pretty serious incident.

1585
01:23:57,240 --> 01:24:01,160
Speaker 1: That's an assassination attempt. Yeah. Yeah, a dude tries to

1586
01:24:01,240 --> 01:24:03,880
Speaker 1: kill him with a katana um and get pretty close.

1587
01:24:05,080 --> 01:24:09,439
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that goes because it's you're you're

1588
01:24:09,479 --> 01:24:13,160
Speaker 1: looking at a sort of likely starts himself to death

1589
01:24:13,200 --> 01:24:15,200
Speaker 1: in prison. That's what I was wondering, is if he

1590
01:24:15,360 --> 01:24:17,680
Speaker 1: was forced to, if he chose to or force to

1591
01:24:17,680 --> 01:24:21,439
Speaker 1: commit su and the to the two rickshaw drivers who

1592
01:24:21,520 --> 01:24:24,720
Speaker 1: saved the Czar's life, the Japan gives them a it's

1593
01:24:24,720 --> 01:24:26,880
Speaker 1: like thirty six dollar a month pension, which I think

1594
01:24:26,960 --> 01:24:29,559
Speaker 1: is is decent at the time. Um, but Nicholas gives

1595
01:24:29,640 --> 01:24:33,360
Speaker 1: them like a fortune, like dollars, like the equivalent of

1596
01:24:33,520 --> 01:24:36,080
Speaker 1: of of that much at the time in in roubles,

1597
01:24:36,120 --> 01:24:40,640
Speaker 1: which is like a fortune dollars. Yeah, he makes them rich. Um,

1598
01:24:40,760 --> 01:24:42,559
Speaker 1: so at least you do. He he has someone who's

1599
01:24:42,600 --> 01:24:45,759
Speaker 1: capable of being like, well, I owe, yeah, I should probably,

1600
01:24:46,439 --> 01:24:48,240
Speaker 1: I should probably let it be known that you get

1601
01:24:48,360 --> 01:24:53,320
Speaker 1: rich if you stop Bazar from getting murdered instead of

1602
01:24:53,520 --> 01:24:57,880
Speaker 1: we get rich. Yeah when there is murdered. Yeah. Um.

1603
01:24:58,040 --> 01:25:00,599
Speaker 1: So when he gets back from his his his trip,

1604
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:03,080
Speaker 1: he meets a ballerina with the last name I'm not

1605
01:25:03,160 --> 01:25:05,720
Speaker 1: going to try to pronounce it starts with the kuh.

1606
01:25:05,800 --> 01:25:07,800
Speaker 1: He feels deeply he falls in love with this girl.

1607
01:25:07,880 --> 01:25:10,120
Speaker 1: He's really conflicted about the fact that he's still in

1608
01:25:10,240 --> 01:25:12,560
Speaker 1: love with Alexandra, but he's now fallen in love with

1609
01:25:12,640 --> 01:25:15,200
Speaker 1: this other girl. And he writes in his diary, would

1610
01:25:15,240 --> 01:25:17,040
Speaker 1: it be right to conclude from this that I am

1611
01:25:17,280 --> 01:25:20,240
Speaker 1: very amorous? Which no, dude, falling in love with two

1612
01:25:20,320 --> 01:25:22,320
Speaker 1: people over the course of your entire life does not

1613
01:25:22,479 --> 01:25:28,720
Speaker 1: make you very amorous. I mean it's cute though he

1614
01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:32,760
Speaker 1: loves love. What can you say about that? You know? Yeah, yeah,

1615
01:25:32,880 --> 01:25:36,080
Speaker 1: that's cute. Um, it's oh, this must mean I'm a player,

1616
01:25:36,280 --> 01:25:39,400
Speaker 1: I've I've fallen in love with the second person. Um,

1617
01:25:40,439 --> 01:25:43,200
Speaker 1: they do. Fuck. This is encouraged by the Romanov family.

1618
01:25:43,240 --> 01:25:45,320
Speaker 1: They're kind of hoping, like his dad seems to be hoping,

1619
01:25:45,400 --> 01:25:47,640
Speaker 1: like maybe this will take his mind off of you know,

1620
01:25:48,320 --> 01:25:51,519
Speaker 1: encouraged while it was happening, We're all around him cheering

1621
01:25:51,600 --> 01:25:54,120
Speaker 1: him on. It's it's not all that far from that,

1622
01:25:54,439 --> 01:25:56,759
Speaker 1: like they're not actually in the room, but like everyone

1623
01:25:56,960 --> 01:26:01,240
Speaker 1: is like really setting this up for him. Um, and yeah,

1624
01:26:01,720 --> 01:26:03,760
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop him from being in love with Alexandre.

1625
01:26:03,840 --> 01:26:05,800
Speaker 1: He does eventually wear the rest of his family down

1626
01:26:05,840 --> 01:26:08,360
Speaker 1: and he gets engaged to marry her. They go back

1627
01:26:08,400 --> 01:26:10,719
Speaker 1: to England to celebrate with the English side of the family.

1628
01:26:10,840 --> 01:26:13,800
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria always liked to see her grandchildren married off,

1629
01:26:13,920 --> 01:26:16,600
Speaker 1: and so she hosts a party at one point for

1630
01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:19,880
Speaker 1: the new you know, crown Prince and his his uh,

1631
01:26:20,760 --> 01:26:23,880
Speaker 1: his wife to be um and she invites a rich

1632
01:26:24,000 --> 01:26:27,560
Speaker 1: Jewish man to the party, right, Queen Victoria, Yeah, and

1633
01:26:27,640 --> 01:26:29,720
Speaker 1: everyone the English relatives are like fine with this, they

1634
01:26:29,760 --> 01:26:33,280
Speaker 1: don't think much of it, but Nicholas is terrified of him.

1635
01:26:33,320 --> 01:26:35,760
Speaker 1: He won't go near him, like, it becomes obvious that

1636
01:26:35,800 --> 01:26:37,880
Speaker 1: he's treating him like he's got the plague, and all

1637
01:26:37,960 --> 01:26:39,920
Speaker 1: of his English relatives make fun of him for being

1638
01:26:39,960 --> 01:26:43,120
Speaker 1: a racist. In a letter home to his mother, Nicholas writes,

1639
01:26:43,360 --> 01:26:45,240
Speaker 1: I tried to keep away as much as I could

1640
01:26:45,320 --> 01:26:50,400
Speaker 1: and not to talk. Alright, bro, I know again can

1641
01:26:50,560 --> 01:26:53,960
Speaker 1: understand how racist this dude is. I'm pretty sure he

1642
01:26:54,080 --> 01:26:57,960
Speaker 1: poisoned the punch bowl. How specifically racist? Because one are

1643
01:26:57,960 --> 01:27:00,599
Speaker 1: the weird things about him. He has his tire pretty

1644
01:27:00,640 --> 01:27:04,920
Speaker 1: much entire time. Azar. He has a guy who's kind

1645
01:27:04,960 --> 01:27:09,760
Speaker 1: of like a body assistant almost named John Hercules, who

1646
01:27:09,840 --> 01:27:16,479
Speaker 1: is a black American man who like Hercules incredible name, Yeah,

1647
01:27:17,640 --> 01:27:20,439
Speaker 1: unbelievable name. It's going to go right past that. By

1648
01:27:20,479 --> 01:27:25,720
Speaker 1: the way, John seems to really like this gig. You

1649
01:27:25,800 --> 01:27:27,680
Speaker 1: think I think he's treated well, he's paid well. He

1650
01:27:27,800 --> 01:27:29,960
Speaker 1: like goes on vacation for months every year and like

1651
01:27:30,080 --> 01:27:32,320
Speaker 1: comes back with jam for the royal family that like

1652
01:27:32,439 --> 01:27:35,280
Speaker 1: they can't get in Russia. Um. There's rumors that like

1653
01:27:35,439 --> 01:27:38,519
Speaker 1: after the monarchy falls, he like spends the rest of

1654
01:27:38,600 --> 01:27:42,080
Speaker 1: his life dressed in like a fading like household uniform,

1655
01:27:42,160 --> 01:27:45,000
Speaker 1: wandering around Moscow, Like I don't know. It seems to

1656
01:27:45,040 --> 01:27:48,759
Speaker 1: be like a pretty good situation for him until everything

1657
01:27:48,840 --> 01:27:52,439
Speaker 1: falls apart. One of the main parts of this person's

1658
01:27:52,520 --> 01:27:55,800
Speaker 1: job was to deliver jam. No, that wasn't his job,

1659
01:27:55,880 --> 01:27:57,679
Speaker 1: that was just what he did. He would go back,

1660
01:27:58,560 --> 01:28:00,639
Speaker 1: he would go back to the US for like vacation

1661
01:28:00,720 --> 01:28:02,719
Speaker 1: to see his family, and he would bring back guava

1662
01:28:02,840 --> 01:28:04,960
Speaker 1: jam because all of like the royal kids loved it,

1663
01:28:05,080 --> 01:28:07,640
Speaker 1: and he was like part of the household, so he

1664
01:28:07,800 --> 01:28:09,880
Speaker 1: like he cared about the kids and he wanted to

1665
01:28:09,880 --> 01:28:11,680
Speaker 1: bring him jam. You know, hopefully it wasn't that jam

1666
01:28:11,760 --> 01:28:16,320
Speaker 1: from the f d A episode you got. Yeah, yeah,

1667
01:28:17,120 --> 01:28:19,080
Speaker 1: I would think you would. You would be very careful

1668
01:28:19,120 --> 01:28:21,880
Speaker 1: about your jam buying if you're purchasing for the Czars kids.

1669
01:28:24,160 --> 01:28:28,200
Speaker 1: Um So, Nikki and family get back from England, um

1670
01:28:28,479 --> 01:28:31,280
Speaker 1: and the Emperor. Pretty much immediately his dad gets sick.

1671
01:28:31,560 --> 01:28:34,360
Speaker 1: Um probably all the drinking didn't help. It's a kidney

1672
01:28:34,400 --> 01:28:42,120
Speaker 1: infection jam jam poisoning. He gets jammed. Yeah, m Um,

1673
01:28:42,200 --> 01:28:44,439
Speaker 1: I don't think John Hercules was in the picture at

1674
01:28:44,479 --> 01:28:50,080
Speaker 1: this point. Again, outstanding name. Um So. Alexander the Third

1675
01:28:50,200 --> 01:28:53,320
Speaker 1: dies on November nine at the age of forty nine

1676
01:28:53,800 --> 01:28:56,479
Speaker 1: h Nicholas was there, as was his cousin Sandro, who

1677
01:28:56,600 --> 01:28:58,880
Speaker 1: later recalled he took me by the arm and led

1678
01:28:58,920 --> 01:29:01,759
Speaker 1: me downstairs to his room, whom we embraced and cried together.

1679
01:29:01,880 --> 01:29:04,760
Speaker 1: Then he exclaimed, Sandro, what am I going to do?

1680
01:29:05,240 --> 01:29:07,559
Speaker 1: What's going to happen to me, to you, to Xenia,

1681
01:29:07,680 --> 01:29:10,000
Speaker 1: to Alex to Mother, to all of Russia. I'm not

1682
01:29:10,160 --> 01:29:12,559
Speaker 1: ready to be czar. I never wanted to become one.

1683
01:29:12,800 --> 01:29:14,840
Speaker 1: I have no idea of even how to talk to

1684
01:29:14,920 --> 01:29:19,840
Speaker 1: the ministers. It's a good sign, not a great sign.

1685
01:29:20,960 --> 01:29:23,320
Speaker 1: And again Simon wat Fior notes that, like, it's pretty

1686
01:29:23,360 --> 01:29:25,080
Speaker 1: normal for you to freak out when you're about to

1687
01:29:25,120 --> 01:29:28,080
Speaker 1: become the r which does make sense, right, Like you

1688
01:29:28,160 --> 01:29:32,719
Speaker 1: know not, but but Nikki is convinced from the beginning

1689
01:29:32,920 --> 01:29:34,439
Speaker 1: that like, I'm not going to be a good czar,

1690
01:29:34,560 --> 01:29:36,559
Speaker 1: and by god, he's right. Might be the only time,

1691
01:29:37,080 --> 01:29:40,720
Speaker 1: but he is right. He's gonna suck at this ah

1692
01:29:40,880 --> 01:29:43,240
Speaker 1: and that story is coming. But you know what's coming. First,

1693
01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:47,160
Speaker 1: you're plug dobles, Oh plugable, So I thought you were.

1694
01:29:47,240 --> 01:29:49,720
Speaker 1: I thought we were doing um sponsorships. No, no, no, no,

1695
01:29:49,840 --> 01:29:53,280
Speaker 1: We're done with that funk. That ship well, I don't

1696
01:29:53,280 --> 01:29:55,519
Speaker 1: know you mentioned this earlier before, but I have cool

1697
01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:57,759
Speaker 1: friends and I have a podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends.

1698
01:29:58,000 --> 01:29:59,800
Speaker 1: Can check that out at picture on dot com slash

1699
01:30:00,040 --> 01:30:02,280
Speaker 1: Jeff May where I have lots of other stuff like

1700
01:30:02,479 --> 01:30:04,800
Speaker 1: ug Fine with Kim Crawl, which is a monthly show,

1701
01:30:04,920 --> 01:30:06,519
Speaker 1: and I got other stuff coming that's going to be

1702
01:30:06,560 --> 01:30:08,559
Speaker 1: really exciting. You can also check out Tom and Jeff

1703
01:30:08,600 --> 01:30:11,160
Speaker 1: watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployed network, as well

1704
01:30:11,240 --> 01:30:14,240
Speaker 1: as Unpopular Opinion and you Don't Even Like Sports, both

1705
01:30:14,320 --> 01:30:16,680
Speaker 1: on the un pops Network. You can find me on

1706
01:30:16,920 --> 01:30:20,200
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram and hey there, Jeff Row. That's fun,

1707
01:30:20,400 --> 01:30:25,360
Speaker 1: Like Jeff stalk him. I mean that this is a

1708
01:30:25,520 --> 01:30:27,719
Speaker 1: way better way to do it than the last time

1709
01:30:28,000 --> 01:30:31,160
Speaker 1: that you said my name on a podcast. Yes, I

1710
01:30:31,800 --> 01:30:34,800
Speaker 1: do sorry for alleging that you were friends with Gil

1711
01:30:34,880 --> 01:30:37,479
Speaker 1: and Maxwell. I mixed you up with another Jeff. It

1712
01:30:37,600 --> 01:30:40,759
Speaker 1: was so it was it was was reading me Twitter

1713
01:30:40,920 --> 01:30:43,479
Speaker 1: at the time, but trying to think of Jeff Davis.

1714
01:30:44,040 --> 01:30:47,840
Speaker 1: It was. It was so funny because one person did

1715
01:30:47,960 --> 01:30:52,519
Speaker 1: call me an old pedophile in my um inbox messages,

1716
01:30:52,840 --> 01:30:56,840
Speaker 1: which means that they are an early adopter of your podcast. Right.

1717
01:30:57,560 --> 01:30:59,479
Speaker 1: That thing was only up for like an hour and

1718
01:30:59,520 --> 01:31:02,880
Speaker 1: then Rob, Yeah, we fixed that pretty quick. I've made

1719
01:31:02,920 --> 01:31:06,800
Speaker 1: a terrible error. Deed, we have to fix this now.

1720
01:31:07,479 --> 01:31:10,840
Speaker 1: We shared a shared listener contact me was like, hey,

1721
01:31:10,920 --> 01:31:12,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true or not, but

1722
01:31:12,680 --> 01:31:15,200
Speaker 1: you might want to look into this. Yeah, I write

1723
01:31:15,240 --> 01:31:16,800
Speaker 1: your message to me about that one. And then I

1724
01:31:17,040 --> 01:31:20,920
Speaker 1: said I was like, hey, guys, real quick, love the show,

1725
01:31:22,280 --> 01:31:24,479
Speaker 1: wondering why it's said that I was friends with a

1726
01:31:24,680 --> 01:31:29,240
Speaker 1: billionaire sex pedophile. Yeah, that was a mistake. Um, but

1727
01:31:29,400 --> 01:31:33,560
Speaker 1: everyone I think I enjoyed Jeff May best friends with

1728
01:31:34,000 --> 01:31:40,880
Speaker 1: Momarkaddafi Jeff May who Yeah he was daffy. Al Right,

1729
01:31:40,920 --> 01:31:43,080
Speaker 1: well that's gonna do it for us. Now we will

1730
01:31:43,120 --> 01:31:45,280
Speaker 1: come back with God, there's so much more z O

1731
01:31:45,439 --> 01:31:51,439
Speaker 1: Nicholas to go, Um, Jesus Christ, a second Nicholas. There

1732
01:31:51,479 --> 01:31:58,200
Speaker 1: were too many Nicholaises, Nichols, Nicholson's No, that's something else.

1733
01:31:58,840 --> 01:32:04,120
Speaker 1: Nichols son, Nickels, sons of them, nickelsons of bitches. That's

1734
01:32:04,240 --> 01:32:09,160
Speaker 1: right there. Bam h