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Speaker 1: Ah, what's mummified my persons? This is Robert Evans, host

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Speaker 1: of Behind the Bastards, here with some exciting news from

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Speaker 1: the world of museums. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Speaker 1: and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have adopted the

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Speaker 1: term mummified remains and mummified persons to refer to mummies.

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Speaker 1: So we're good, everybody. Finally, the long problem of people

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Speaker 1: not respecting mummies is over. Uh. We we did it, everybody.

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Speaker 1: I just I know there's a lot of activists out

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Speaker 1: there in the streets who have been fighting for mummy

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Speaker 1: rights for a long time, and I just wanted to

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Speaker 1: let you all know it was all worth it. Jeff May,

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Speaker 1: how do you feel about mummified persons? I'm calling them

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Speaker 1: mummies and I don't care. Let the woke mob come

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Speaker 1: from me. All right, they are mummies, They've always been mummies.

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Speaker 1: I'm not Are they going to go back and change

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Speaker 1: the classic horror film to the mummified person? Absolutely not, nonsense.

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Speaker 1: Is it the m word now? Yeah? Horrible. If anyone

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Speaker 1: ever calls it a mummified person to me, I am

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Speaker 1: I am going to read from the Book of the dead,

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Speaker 1: and I know from the movie The Mummy how badly

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Speaker 1: that can go. I would give somebody a d d T.

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Speaker 1: If somebody was just like, um, do you mean mummified persons?

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Speaker 1: I would immediately just jake the snake Roberts d d

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Speaker 1: T them into the ground. Now, I know you're talking

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Speaker 1: about a martial arts term, but I assumed you were

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Speaker 1: talking about the pesticide that was made famous in the

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Speaker 1: book Silent Spring. And now I assume that you always

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Speaker 1: carry a full canister of DDT on you it all. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I gotta take I gotta fight malaria. Now it's I

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Speaker 1: would say martial arts term is that's loose? Is that

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Speaker 1: I would say a professional wrestling term. That's where you

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Speaker 1: put somebody in sort of like a like a headlock

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Speaker 1: is kind of a thing here, and then you just

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Speaker 1: kind of catapult the top of their head into the ground. Well,

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Speaker 1: that wrestling is the only martial art I respect um.

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Speaker 1: So there, it's the only one you can do while

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Speaker 1: you dressed like a like a garbage manner. Yeah, Jeff,

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Speaker 1: this is Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast about you know,

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Speaker 1: people who aren't great um in in history. Speaking of which,

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Speaker 1: today are subject in part two is still Nikolai Cechesco.

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Speaker 1: How are you feeling about Nikki as we as we

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Speaker 1: go into to part two? We love a bastard nick

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Speaker 1: on this show with with you and I together here. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, he's he's he's something, he's something, He's something,

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Speaker 1: all right, he's he's he earned the name. I know

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Speaker 1: we were building up to it last episode. It's fun

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Speaker 1: to see that it's going to build up to the

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Speaker 1: crescendo that we're going to see here. There was a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of background last episode. Gotta you

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Speaker 1: gotta cover the background. Um, the you know, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of like how if you really want to understand the

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Speaker 1: humanity of a mummified person, you have to understand I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: what did you say? You son of a bit? Also

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Speaker 1: a side note here that the Chicago Studies what was

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Speaker 1: the name of the place, the Chicago, Plicago Institute of

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Speaker 1: Oriental Study something like that, is that it's it's referring

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Speaker 1: to the region. I know, I get it seems like

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Speaker 1: it's a way to work. Okay, you know what you

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Speaker 1: do kind of you do kind of want to know

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Speaker 1: when they started calling at that and like, yeah, I wonder,

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Speaker 1: I wonder Chicago anyway, whatever, I'm sure it's fine. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it's fine. You know who's not fine, Marshall Antonescu.

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Speaker 1: So this guy winds up and again Marshall Antonescu. He's

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Speaker 1: this interesting character because he's ideologically he is not a

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Speaker 1: guy who is particularly interested in fascism. Um, but he

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Speaker 1: winds up in bed with these fascists and becomes like

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Speaker 1: one of the worst of them in terms of like

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Speaker 1: his actual death toll for a stump of fascism. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's weird. He's he's he's he's a fascinating, geting figure

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Speaker 1: because yeah, he's the forest gump of of of the

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Speaker 1: Axis powers. So under Antonescuu Romania again when kind of

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Speaker 1: you know, there's this whole World War thing that starts

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Speaker 1: up again. And the last time Romania had gone with uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Britain, France, Russia, uh and and and sided

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Speaker 1: with them, and it had gone terribly for Romania. Right,

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Speaker 1: the war kind of ends and they get some land,

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Speaker 1: but they don't do well. All of their oil fields

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Speaker 1: are lit on fire, all of their young men get killed. Um.

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Speaker 1: And under Antonescu they're going to back the opposite side

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Speaker 1: and the next World War. And you know what, Jeff,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't go well for them either. World Wars not

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Speaker 1: a good call for Romania. Yeah, they're not. They're not

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Speaker 1: the champions of World Wars. No, it only really goes

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Speaker 1: well for us in Switzerland. But um, you know that's

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Speaker 1: a story for another day. So Romania, and again, the

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Speaker 1: kind of the reason Antonescu sides with the Nazis, there's

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff going on, but one of

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Speaker 1: the big ones is that he wants to get back

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Speaker 1: best Arabia, which based on the treaty that the Nazis

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Speaker 1: its side with the Soviets. The Soviets got to take

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Speaker 1: from Romania just a little bit earlier. So the Romanians

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Speaker 1: side with the Nazis, who would agreed to give up

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Speaker 1: this territory that now the Nazis are saying, hey, if

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Speaker 1: you side with us, you can get this territory back,

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Speaker 1: which may seem like a shitty deal to you, Um,

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Speaker 1: maybe not trustworthy of the Nazis. I know, this is

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Speaker 1: going to like blow a lot of people's mind historically speaking,

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Speaker 1: this is really going to cause some people's tops to

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Speaker 1: pop here. Yeah, wild stuff. So Romanian troops fight alongside

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Speaker 1: the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa, which works really well for

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Speaker 1: a little while, right for there's a couple of months

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Speaker 1: there where it seems like, hey, maybe a good call

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Speaker 1: back in the Nazis. We're taking a lot of territory.

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Speaker 1: Romania is suddenly much bigger. What a cool time. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it goes really well for a little while. But

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Speaker 1: then the bulk of Antonescue's military, the pride of Romania's army,

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Speaker 1: a huge chunk of their young male population, winds up

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Speaker 1: in a in an interesting position. They are put watching

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Speaker 1: the flanks of the German I believe it's the sixth

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Speaker 1: Army as it encircles Stalingrad. Now, jeff right, you think

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Speaker 1: that's gonna play out? I don't know if anybody's ever

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Speaker 1: heard of Stalingrad, but it's pretty well known as far

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Speaker 1: as battles go. It's in like I would say, as

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Speaker 1: far as battles go, that's a top three historically probably, yeah,

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Speaker 1: probably a top three, very fair. Yeah. And if you're

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Speaker 1: going to pick a position to be in in World

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Speaker 1: War Two, there's a lot of bad ones, but one

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Speaker 1: of the worst is watching the flanks of the German

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Speaker 1: Army is the circle Stalin hard to get much worse

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Speaker 1: than that, trying to get famed sniper ed Harrison to

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Speaker 1: take out Jude Law. Yeah, Jude Law is fucking running

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Speaker 1: rough shot over these Romanians. Um, it doesn't go well

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Speaker 1: for them. Romanian military gets its ass handed to them

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Speaker 1: shortly before the German military gets its ass handed to them,

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Speaker 1: and things only get worse after that point. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: go well after Stalingrad. Yeah yeah, I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: land war in Asia and all that beyond them too,

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Speaker 1: Like the Russians. This is like the guy at the

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Speaker 1: bar that tries to pick a fight with the bouncer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the friends like, I don't think that's a good idea. Man,

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Speaker 1: This guy, you know, he got the job for a reason.

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Speaker 1: And it's like I've taken a couple of mm A classes.

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Speaker 1: I think I's like three times your size. Man. There

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Speaker 1: is a scar on his face bigger than your fists,

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Speaker 1: not a real tooth in his mouth at that point

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Speaker 1: in time. Yeah. Um so yeah, thanks go downhill from there. Um.

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Speaker 1: And despite being again on paper, Antonescu, he is not

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Speaker 1: a guy that has a long history of like anti

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Speaker 1: Semitic agitation. He's not a guy who I think under

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Speaker 1: his own devices, would have cared much in either way

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Speaker 1: about kind of Nazi policies in that regard more of

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Speaker 1: a hobbyist. But his policies against Romania's Jewish population lead

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Speaker 1: to an unprecedented level of mass death in Romania. Um

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Speaker 1: and this is not the subject for this episode today.

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Speaker 1: We will talk about this at some point. Antonescue probably

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Speaker 1: deserves his own episode. But more Jews are murdered by

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Speaker 1: the Romanian government, but then by the government of any

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Speaker 1: other acts as state besides Germany itself. Um, it is

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Speaker 1: it is a japan didn't have a lot of options there,

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Speaker 1: although there are a couple of interesting cases. I mean

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Speaker 1: there's there's there's a couple of interesting cases of Japanese

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Speaker 1: officials who saved Jews, um and parts of the world

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Speaker 1: from the Nazis, and at least one interesting case of

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Speaker 1: a Nazi who saves Chinese citizens from rampaging Japanese troops.

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Speaker 1: That's why World War Two lots of lots of neat

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Speaker 1: interesting history moments there. Yeah, it's like each country of

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Speaker 1: doing horrendous things is like these other guys need to

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Speaker 1: call down. Kind of seems like there's some got bad

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Speaker 1: guys on the Axis side, they're massacring the wrong people. So, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's Antonescu, nightmare monster. UM kills about three hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: Romanian Jews. I think something like that UM. Now. Supporters

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Speaker 1: of Antonescu, because he's kind of been rehabilitated by some

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Speaker 1: corners of Romanian culture recently, will note that he also

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Speaker 1: saved three hundred thousand Jewish lives by refusing to deport

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Speaker 1: those people to people to Poland when the Nazis asked

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Speaker 1: what he could kill them himself. I'm not sure that

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Speaker 1: you get credit for saving three hundred thousand Jewish lives

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Speaker 1: when you've just killed three hundred and eighty thousand or

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Speaker 1: so Jewish people. I don't know that. Yeah, I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to really give you credit. In Vegas terms, they

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Speaker 1: call that a push. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that's UM.

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Speaker 1: I feel I feel weird being like, look at all

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Speaker 1: these lives he's saved. Does he's massacring um like a

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Speaker 1: city's worth of human beings. We're not gonna we're not

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Speaker 1: gonna be doing that here on this show. That said,

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Speaker 1: we're also not going to be getting that into the

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Speaker 1: Holocaust in Romania. Not that obviously it's a worthwhile topic,

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Speaker 1: but I don't want to just like, you know, we

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Speaker 1: should just I'm just trying to acknowledge the extent of

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Speaker 1: how bad it was. We'll talk about it more detail

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Speaker 1: at some other point. So they don't know what you're

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Speaker 1: talking about. Um, Jeff, we may need to sit down

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Speaker 1: and talk about that after class. Don't you have a

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Speaker 1: history degree? I'm like, I don't know how I got. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it's from Florida, so they're not allowed to have

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Speaker 1: books Diaria and Frank hasn't gotten approved by De Santis yet. Yeah. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: as the war unraveled, resistance to Antonescue coalesced behind the scenes,

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Speaker 1: and there's this alliance of like liberals and royalists led

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Speaker 1: by the new King Michael and a guy named Giulio

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Speaker 1: Manu who's the head of the National Peasants Party we

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Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode, and they decide we're

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Speaker 1: going to do a coup and get Antonescu out of here.

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Speaker 1: But it's kind of useless for them to do a

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Speaker 1: coup if the Allies aren't going to lie stop doing

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Speaker 1: a war on Romania, right, Like, there was no real

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Speaker 1: point in getting this guy out if they're just gonna

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Speaker 1: have to fight the war more. Um, I mean, to

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Speaker 1: be fair, historically speaking, we've seen it happen where people

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Speaker 1: do a coup and then they pull out of the

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Speaker 1: war and they're like, yeah, but it's also they're trying

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Speaker 1: to like make it less messy than it's other one,

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Speaker 1: because like this, the Russians do that, right, and in

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Speaker 1: World War One, you get your revolution and then the

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Speaker 1: revolutionary government kind of awkwardly winds up still at war

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Speaker 1: with Germany for a while and it's it's it doesn't

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Speaker 1: doesn't go great. Um. So they have this back channel

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Speaker 1: to the Allies and the Brits, who is the people

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Speaker 1: they're talking with directly, are like, look, we'd love it

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Speaker 1: if you get Antonescu out, be real great for us.

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Speaker 1: But Stalin's really the guy you got to talk to

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Speaker 1: because your romania. Um so we are not going to

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Speaker 1: be your main point of contact. They're like, hey, you

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Speaker 1: know who you need to talk is too, is our

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Speaker 1: very stable friend, are sane and totally reason bold buddy

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Speaker 1: Jason to send guy now ja Stall To be fair,

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Speaker 1: it's not an unreasonable thing. He says, Hey, look, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you want to work something out with us and

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Speaker 1: coup this guy, that's great, it will save me some trouble.

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Speaker 1: But you gotta bring the Romanian Communist Party into the

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Speaker 1: coup government, right, They've got to be part of it,

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Speaker 1: which is again not an inherently unreasonable thing, except for

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Speaker 1: the fact that again there's like seven hundred Romanian communists, right,

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Speaker 1: so it's not a major party that will take an

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Speaker 1: afternoon to get me. Yeah, exactly, so, man, you the

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Speaker 1: National Peasants Party guy is like, of course, look, man,

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Speaker 1: we're this is a bad situation. I'm not gonna fight

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Speaker 1: you over this matter. Um. But he is like, there's

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Speaker 1: not really a whole lot of communists in Romania, Joseph Stalin,

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Speaker 1: who do you recommend? We put In? And Stalin and

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Speaker 1: the Soviets recommend a law professor named Lucres Patronascano, patresh Canoe.

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Speaker 1: Sorry Lucres, you, I'm sorry. I did look these names up.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to keep them all straight. Lucreshu, petrash Canoe, Um,

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Speaker 1: and he and Menu. They plan to basically take Antonescue

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Speaker 1: down by inviting him over for dinner and having the

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Speaker 1: king be like, hey, Antonescue, you're under arrest now. Funk

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Speaker 1: off um, which is kind of a funny way to

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Speaker 1: do it. Yea exactly on party. Come over, No, no,

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Speaker 1: it's fine. We just want to all hang out together

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Speaker 1: in a room. It's gonna be totally cool. How do

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Speaker 1: you don't agree on a lot of stuff? Come on

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Speaker 1: over to my house, Come on in a room. Leave

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Speaker 1: your guards, leave your guards, um. And it's very funny.

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Speaker 1: The coup actually works great. And there's this moment where

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Speaker 1: like they're like, hey, Antonescue, do you have a gun?

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Speaker 1: And he's like, I don't need a gun. You know,

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Speaker 1: my authority doesn't derive from a gun. Um. And then

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Speaker 1: they're like, okay, cool, well you're under arrest and then

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Speaker 1: we're gonna have you executed and they do. It works

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Speaker 1: out great, This part works out really good for them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: brought that gun and and the National Peasants Party guy

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Speaker 1: Manu is kind of an old man at this point.

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Speaker 1: He's like, look, man running a coup government, that's young

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Speaker 1: man's work. So this communist petresh Canoe winds up being

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Speaker 1: kind of the first person to take a public role

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Speaker 1: in the new government. And he's actually a pretty reasonable

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Speaker 1: dude all things considered, Like I think he handles this

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Speaker 1: about as well as it could have been handled. Um. So.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that happens, though, is because this

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Speaker 1: guy is kind of your public facing dude, and the

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Speaker 1: National Peasants Party, all of the Liberals who are much

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Speaker 1: more numerous, and the royal like folks who are much

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Speaker 1: more numerous and actually in like the you would suspect

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Speaker 1: be the people who would wind up in charge are

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Speaker 1: all kind of scared, right because they're they've just cooed

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Speaker 1: the other leader. There's still a bunch of German soldiers

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Speaker 1: in the country, so they don't want to make too

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Speaker 1: much of a public stink. Meanwhile, the Communists, even though

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Speaker 1: there's not many of them, these guys have been beaten

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Speaker 1: and in prisoned and starved. They're all like hard sons

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Speaker 1: of bitches. So the Communists are like, why don't we

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Speaker 1: just immediately take power? Um, which they do, and it

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Speaker 1: works pretty well for them. They they get in and

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Speaker 1: they basically like put themselves in a lot of positions

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Speaker 1: that are going to to to kind of give them

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Speaker 1: the ability to control the direction of Romania at least

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Speaker 1: help with that. Obviously, the fact that the Soviets are

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Speaker 1: so nearby helps too, and the Romanian or the Red

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Speaker 1: Army enters Romania soon after that. So the Communists kind

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Speaker 1: of despite the fact that up until this point there

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Speaker 1: had been very few of them and they'd had no power,

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Speaker 1: when World War two wins, they're kind of the preeminent

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Speaker 1: power in Romania. Um and Stalin. Yeah they stepped up. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they stepped up. And they have an election and show

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Speaker 1: Cescu gets to practice his faking at election skills, um

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Speaker 1: and and goes about making sure that the Communists win

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Speaker 1: that election, even though again there've been about seven hundred

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Speaker 1: of them in the company prior in the country prior

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Speaker 1: to to World War Two. To be fair, if the

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Speaker 1: people that actually stepped up to rule are running for something,

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't be the worst to be like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess I'll vote for the guys that actually said

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Speaker 1: they yeah no again. And it's it's not an unreasonable

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Speaker 1: thing that as as Romanians in World War Two, you

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Speaker 1: would see the Communists taking over, given everything that happened

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Speaker 1: with the Nazis, and be like, maybe this will work

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Speaker 1: out better. Hey, not like anything else had been working

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Speaker 1: very well. It's the opposite of a Nazi economist. Nothing

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Speaker 1: could go wrong. Let's let's try it. Um So Georgiu

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Speaker 1: Day that that um, that peasant who had been like

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Speaker 1: the uh the leader of that railroad union, um that

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Speaker 1: had done all those strikes that chess Cou had helped support.

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Speaker 1: He becomes one of the leaders of the country. Um.

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Speaker 1: Now there's a bunch of this is it's more complicated

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Speaker 1: than that Anna Poker. That other lady is also kind

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Speaker 1: of one of the people who's running Romania initially after

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Speaker 1: the communist kind of take over. But you know, you

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Speaker 1: know how it goes. You get your show trials, you

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Speaker 1: get your people start getting put in jail and locked

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Speaker 1: up on bullshit charges, and over the course of time,

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Speaker 1: George you Day kind of consolidates his power. One of

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Speaker 1: the things that this means is that he executes this

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Speaker 1: guy pro trash Canu who got the king out, who

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Speaker 1: helped overthrow or who not the gout the king out,

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Speaker 1: who got um antonescu at who like overthrew the dictator.

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Speaker 1: They they come after this guy on bullshit charges and

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Speaker 1: they kill his ass um It's so crazy when it's

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Speaker 1: just such a throwaway thing and like and then they

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Speaker 1: executed that guy. Let's move on. That cool dude you

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Speaker 1: know that cool dude who was the communist that Stalin

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Speaker 1: picked to take over and they fucking killed his ass. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And and Parker, they get rid of Poker. Um, it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's as ugly as it usually is when

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Speaker 1: a guy consolidates power. Um, it's it's a real end

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Speaker 1: of the Godfather energy when that ship happens. And it's

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Speaker 1: a gradual process. Um. And Nikolai Chachescu is a quiet

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Speaker 1: figure for most of this. He does not stick his

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Speaker 1: neck out, He does not try to take any big

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Speaker 1: fancy jobs for himself. He sticks close today and he

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Speaker 1: he kind of like just sort of keeps him as

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Speaker 1: happy as possible. And I'm gonna I'm gonna read a

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Speaker 1: quote from journalist cattle and Gruya here under the protective

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Speaker 1: wing of day, whose favorite he had become. While in prison,

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Speaker 1: Chauchescu struggled, flattered, adapted, worked and raised himself up step

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Speaker 1: by step, tenaciously, stubbornly and with a real instinct for power.

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Speaker 1: At seven, he was the leader of the Communist Youth

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Speaker 1: Organization and later of the Central Committee of the Romanian

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Speaker 1: Workers Party. At twenty eight, party instructor in Constanta and

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Speaker 1: Olinia at twenty nine deputy in the Grand National Assembly,

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Speaker 1: after he had mobilized motorized troops in the electoral precinct

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Speaker 1: to convince electors to place ballots in the urns which

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Speaker 1: had already been filled by the communists ahead of time.

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Speaker 1: His meteoric rise continued, culminating with his election at age

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Speaker 1: thirty seven to the Politbureau as Minister of the Interior. Now,

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Speaker 1: this gave him a lot of control over what's called

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Speaker 1: the Securitat, which is Romania's answer to the k g B,

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Speaker 1: which means he is in a position to put people

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Speaker 1: into the Securitat, the organization that is surveilling everybody in

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Speaker 1: the country, um sweeping out corruption. Good position to be

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Speaker 1: in if you're a guy like this and everyone's kind

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Speaker 1: of like, well, yeah, we want like, you want someone

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Speaker 1: dumb and pliable in that job if you're not going

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Speaker 1: to be running that if you're someone with power in

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Speaker 1: the Romanian communist infrastructure and you can't be doing that job,

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Speaker 1: you want a dumb person in that job, right, You

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Speaker 1: want somebody who, like you feel like it's controllable, and

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Speaker 1: everyone kind of feels like Chowchesku is just sort of

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Speaker 1: this like not a very serious person, right, So they're like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: give him the job. You know, what's the worst that

359
00:19:33,600 --> 00:19:37,840
Speaker 1: could happen. He's not that, he's not that dangerous. Um. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the worst that could happen is pretty rough. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: worst that could happen is about to occur. Um. But

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Speaker 1: for a while, everyone's like, yeah, you know, at least,

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Speaker 1: you know, if someone's going to have that job and

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Speaker 1: it's not gonna be me, we might as well have

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Speaker 1: it be this lick spell who kisses everybody's ass and

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Speaker 1: who wasn't very threatening. He's not, you know, really worth fearing,

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Speaker 1: and he's not worth fearing as long as George you

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Speaker 1: day is is healthy and and doing good. Um. And

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Speaker 1: given that he is an old time communist street fighter

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Speaker 1: who smokes like a chimney, surely he's going to live forever. Yep.

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Speaker 1: That's classic. Yeah yeah. Um. So, as Nikolai climbed the

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Speaker 1: ranks of the Romanian Communist Party, there's this combination of

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Speaker 1: as kissing and convincing everyone else that he's too dumb

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Speaker 1: to be a threat. His wife Elena experienced numerous career

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Speaker 1: benefits as well. All of the different wonderful things that

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Speaker 1: nepotism can provide to you. He's a plus wife guy.

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Speaker 1: By the way, Oh my god, you have never wifed

378
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Speaker 1: a guy as hard as this guy. Wife's that shout

379
00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:40,720
Speaker 1: out to this guy for just being just like a

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Speaker 1: He's like the Rob Zombie of wife guys of Romania,

381
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Speaker 1: just being like, I don't care what you can or

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Speaker 1: can't you. I'm still giving you opportunities. I wish, I

383
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Speaker 1: wish I could. Given that this is Romania, I should

384
00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:55,239
Speaker 1: have been able to make a Dragula joke, but um,

385
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Speaker 1: I'm really not sure how to work it out. I

386
00:20:58,040 --> 00:21:01,560
Speaker 1: threw your curveball with that. It's not it's not coming

387
00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:03,239
Speaker 1: to me, Jeff. It's not coming to me, And I

388
00:21:03,280 --> 00:21:06,480
Speaker 1: feel ashamed for that. Um, But you at home make

389
00:21:06,520 --> 00:21:10,360
Speaker 1: your own, make your own joke about Rob Zombies, hit song,

390
00:21:10,560 --> 00:21:16,199
Speaker 1: Dracula and the Romanian historical figure Dracula. Well, Jeff, and

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Speaker 1: I listen to some ads, Jeff, that that all got

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Speaker 1: me pumped up. I'm gonna be honest, man, I'm going

393
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Speaker 1: to consume all of the things that were just advertised,

394
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Speaker 1: gonna slam them in the back of my Dracula was

395
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Speaker 1: that his car was that Rob Zombies car. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: the monster's car, isn't it. Are you serious? Is that

397
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Speaker 1: song about the monsters? Yeah? I think Dracula is the

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Speaker 1: name of their car. That's cool. It's cool because he

399
00:21:50,680 --> 00:21:55,440
Speaker 1: wrote a cool, heavy song about Are you serious? Yeah,

400
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:57,600
Speaker 1: I mean there's a reason, oh my god. And it

401
00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:01,359
Speaker 1: is based on the drag racer Dracula for the Munsters. Yeah,

402
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:04,359
Speaker 1: you don't know how I know that really well, aside

403
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 1: from the fact that I'm I I study this ship,

404
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:12,080
Speaker 1: the pinball machine, the munsters pinball machine has a dragula thing. Wow. Wow,

405
00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:16,240
Speaker 1: uh that's right. That's kind of a baffling piece of

406
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Speaker 1: pop culture. Why did that song go so hard if

407
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 1: it's about the Munsters? Because Rob Zombie did it. I

408
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 1: guess that makes sense. It does make sense that Rob

409
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Speaker 1: Zombie would do a song about the munsters and he

410
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: would go hard. Yeah, and he would, he would he

411
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Speaker 1: would go baffling lee hard with it. Speaking of baffling

412
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Speaker 1: Lee hard, Nikolai is baffling Lee hard for his wife Elena,

413
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:42,440
Speaker 1: who sucks. Ass um. That actually worked out pretty well,

414
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:45,679
Speaker 1: so nailed it. There we go. As Nikolai climbs the

415
00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:48,400
Speaker 1: ranks of the party, He's he starts putting his wife

416
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Speaker 1: in jobs. Now, at first, she's just kind of like

417
00:22:51,600 --> 00:22:53,919
Speaker 1: raising their kids and stuff while he's in you know,

418
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Speaker 1: moving on his way up to the polit bureau. But

419
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Speaker 1: she's got this ambition to be a chemist from the

420
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Speaker 1: time when she worked in a legal pill mill um.

421
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:03,919
Speaker 1: She thinks it would be really cool to be to

422
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:07,400
Speaker 1: be in chemistry, So she takes starts taking college classes

423
00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:10,560
Speaker 1: in chemistry, hoping that she can achieve her lifelong dream

424
00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:14,200
Speaker 1: of being a serious scientist. Now, in most cases, that's

425
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:16,359
Speaker 1: a perfectly respectable thing to do. In fact, I have

426
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 1: a lot of any any woman who could raise three kids,

427
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:22,159
Speaker 1: support her powerful husband in his career, and get a

428
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: complex degree in science, that's incredibly impressive. Yeah. Absolutely. Unfortunately,

429
00:23:28,480 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 1: Elena was nearly illiterate, and she had no interest in

430
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:35,040
Speaker 1: actually being taught anything by the tutors that Nikolai got

431
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:37,800
Speaker 1: for her, who become increasingly desperate with the fact that like,

432
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:39,800
Speaker 1: oh my god, we have to we have to teach

433
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:41,280
Speaker 1: her how to be a chemist, and she does not

434
00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: want to read anything or like chemist. Yeah, she wants

435
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:50,399
Speaker 1: to put on a white coat and poor things and beakers. Really,

436
00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:54,880
Speaker 1: isn't it like that? I think it's a Romanian textbook.

437
00:23:55,040 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 1: There's like a Roman or there's a textbook I forget

438
00:23:57,320 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: what country it's in that has Jesse Pinkman on the

439
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 1: cover of their chemistry thing of him. Uh, I'm looking

440
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 1: that up right now. Um. Yeah, Jesse Pinkman textbook cover

441
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,560
Speaker 1: should give you exactly worth if it's from Romania. That's

442
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: the symmetry for that is unbelievable. Yeah, because it is

443
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:21,679
Speaker 1: just satisfying to see because you know, it's just a

444
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 1: cursory Google image search for chemist and that one clearly

445
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 1: has the best look because it was, you know, directed

446
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: by this I think that language is Romanian. Um, it's

447
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: definitely not Romane. Oh Sri Lanka Okay, Okay, that's just shame.

448
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:40,080
Speaker 1: Um that that would have been beautiful Jesse Pinkman. Jesse

449
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: Pinkman actually is objectively a better chemist than Elena czechesscu Um,

450
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 1: which is unfortunate because of the job she's about to have.

451
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,600
Speaker 1: So these tutors who are just struggling to teach her

452
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: something get a brief reprieve because she's caught cheating on

453
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: her exams and expelled from university in the mid nineteen fifties.

454
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: But By nineteen six, Nikki is in the polit bureau.

455
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 1: So you can't keep her out of university just because

456
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: she's cheating in a danger to herself and everyone else

457
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 1: around her. So he forces the Scientific Establishment of Romania

458
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,680
Speaker 1: to give his wife a job. She's made a junior

459
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: technician at the Central Institute for Chemical Research, and then

460
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: she gets promoted to run the institute five years later.

461
00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 1: Now again, her credentials are was kicked out of college

462
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 1: for cheating on her exams at this point, so five

463
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 1: years it's time to learn r Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.

464
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: You learn that. You learn most of that ship on

465
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: the jet, like Jesse Pinkman. Actually, you're gonna learn most

466
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:34,359
Speaker 1: of that ship on the job anyway, right. He didn't

467
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:36,600
Speaker 1: do good in school either, he flunked out. And look

468
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: at how Jesse did. Yeah, exactly. So she was as

469
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:44,440
Speaker 1: bad at this as you would expect. When her scientists

470
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,639
Speaker 1: would request supplies of ethyl alcohol, which is needed for

471
00:25:47,680 --> 00:25:50,159
Speaker 1: a lot of experiments, she would turn them down with

472
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:52,200
Speaker 1: a note that said she knew they just wanted the

473
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:54,919
Speaker 1: alcohol to get drunk with. Now I'm gonna say this

474
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: for al I'm gonna I'm sure she wasn't wrong a

475
00:25:57,680 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time. This is this, this is

476
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,439
Speaker 1: the easter in block right, Like I'm sure of the

477
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:07,040
Speaker 1: time she wasn't wrong. Um. But what's really funny is

478
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 1: the researchers realized that, like, Okay, if we request ethyl alcohol,

479
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: she's gonna like really drill us and turn us down,

480
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,160
Speaker 1: turn it down because she thinks we're gonna drink. So

481
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: they put in the exact same request, but they used

482
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: the chemical name for ethyl alcohol, and Elena would grant

483
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: it every time because she doesn't know anything about chemistry

484
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: because she's a dumb guy. Yeah yeah, yeah. And now

485
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 1: over time she she is aware that she doesn't know

486
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: anything about chemistry, and she has impostor syndrome because she's

487
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:39,919
Speaker 1: an impostor, because she's actually a look, impostor syndrome is

488
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: not always wrong. Some people who have impostor syndrome are impostors.

489
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 1: And Elena starts avoiding actual chemists, you know, the people

490
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: she's managing, because conversations with them would inevitably reveal she

491
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: had no idea what she was doing. My favorite example

492
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: of this was how she pronounced c O two, calling

493
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: it coutu or doi in in Romanian, right, so she

494
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: she wouldn't call it kutu, but like she called it kudi,

495
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of calling c O to couto, right,

496
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: because she's just kind of sounding it out because she

497
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: doesn't know how you're supposed to read um chemical names. Now,

498
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: Cody in Romanian is a slang term, or it's at

499
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: least close to a slang term for someone who has

500
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: a huge ass, right, Like it's it's like a dump

501
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:26,200
Speaker 1: truck ass like cody. That's kind of what that means.

502
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: So since Elena herself has kind of a big butt,

503
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: again this is what historians will say, her scientists started

504
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 1: calling her kudi behind her back, like big ass. Basically, um,

505
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 1: she got that, Yeah, she's she is caked up uranium baby. Yeah, well,

506
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:47,919
Speaker 1: please don't let her around the urane. That would have

507
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 1: gone very badly for everybody. Yeah, we could have had

508
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: a Chernobyl incident. Yeah. So, like most incompetent people who

509
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: wind up at the heads of large complex organizations, Elena

510
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 1: decided to focus her efforts on the one thing she

511
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: knew how to do, which was deny people resources in

512
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 1: order to save money. Right with bile as Yeah, yeah,

513
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 1: you swagger in with that big butt and start cutting money. Um.

514
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: It is kind of the thing that if you don't

515
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: know anything about an organization and you're promoted to lead it,

516
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: just start trimming the budget, you know. Um, you can

517
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: always make it look like you know what you're doing then,

518
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,120
Speaker 1: and you can funk with the people who are actually

519
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,520
Speaker 1: good at their jobs. This is not a thing that

520
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: you or I or any of the people we've ever

521
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: worked with have had experience with ever in our careers.

522
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: Not It only happens in communist states. So that's good.

523
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: It's good that we are immune from that here. Now,

524
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: this basically drives all Romanian efforts in the chemical sciences

525
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: into the ground, and it's stymies basically all of their

526
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: progress on chemistry and ship. But her institute did spend

527
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: less money over time, so that's good. Um, probably probably

528
00:28:55,480 --> 00:29:00,760
Speaker 1: worthwhile now that the chemistry labs that look making it

529
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: at a low budget. You say that, but I'm waiting

530
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: for the James Cameron uh to to appear in this story.

531
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: There's that we We still don't have that here, probably

532
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: because Elina would have had him purged. Yeah, maybe maybe

533
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: that would have been for the best. Would a would

534
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: a would have saved us that whole period of time

535
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: and which everyone thought three D tv s were going

536
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:25,120
Speaker 1: to be a thing. Sorry, but I will not sacrifice

537
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: true lies. No, yeah, that is that is true lies. Uh.

538
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: Strange Days films. Oh, he was involved in those. Huh

539
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Um, I wonder if people know that James Cameron. Right. Yeah,

540
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: I was just yeah, I'm really confused, and I'm like,

541
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: did I say a wrong name? No, David Fincher, And

542
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know he did Terminator too. I do

543
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 1: kind of want to see David Fincher's Terminator too, would

544
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: be something, right. Yeah. So, in person, Elena was extremely

545
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 1: anti social and quick to anger. She was jealous of

546
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: any of the other polit bureau wives she thought were

547
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: more attractive than her, and she preferred to spend her

548
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: time avoiding social engagements. Altogether, she was disgusted with the

549
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 1: other wives because they were traditional homemakers, whereas she had

550
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: a career of her own. Now, the fact that her

551
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: career was an absolute sham does not seem to have

552
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: upset Alda. It is also worth noting that she was

553
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: a pretty piss poor mother. Um. Look some people with

554
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: with well, with a large ass um that's that everything

555
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 1: like that's all up to up to personal up to

556
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: personal judgment. Um. So, Nikko cho Chesku, her son born

557
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: in ninety one, was the baby of the family and

558
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: from the jump seemed to realize that his parents position

559
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: made him untouchable. He was disruptive in school, He threatened

560
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 1: teachers and classmates. No one could discipline him. He would

561
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 1: just start punching teachers and students whenever he got angry.

562
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: Because you know, his dad is helping to run the country,

563
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: nobody can actually punish him. It's a good situation. We

564
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: call this like the U We call this the day

565
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: and Kusa route. Right, that's kind of where if you

566
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: believe now, I'll say this. A lot of our sources

567
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 1: on Niku chow Chesku come from a guy who defects

568
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 1: from the country after running the secret police. So there's

569
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: some debate over how accurate all this is because maybe

570
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 1: he has a vested interest in making the family sound

571
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: worse than they were at that. That said, the idea

572
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: that Nikko chow Chesko would be a violent asshole um

573
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: not a not a big stretch either. So I don't know,

574
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: you know, grain assault m According to this guy who

575
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: later defects who we will talk about later. At age fourteen,

576
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: Nikko rapes one of his classmates. Um. At age fifteen,

577
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:43,600
Speaker 1: he gets his first boat and he drunk drives it

578
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: before he gets his first car at sixteen, at which

579
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: point he becomes one of the leading causes of car

580
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: accidents in the capital of Bucharest. Um, because he is

581
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: just a you know, he's he's he's a dictator's son, right,

582
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: This is all pretty standard dictator's good stuff. Go than

583
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: golden weapons and and you know side palace isn't ship. Yeah,

584
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: he doesn't have the panash of Uday and kusay, So

585
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: he's not I don't know, firing a golden machine gun

586
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,480
Speaker 1: and do a crowd at a party. Um. But he

587
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 1: is crashing his car constantly, so he's got that. He's

588
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,479
Speaker 1: got that good Assad energy, the Assad kid who fucking

589
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: killed himself in his car drunk driving. Um, he's he's

590
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: that kind of dictator's son as opposed to more of

591
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: the more of the days dash day esque variety. So

592
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,719
Speaker 1: for the first decade or so that Communist Romania is

593
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 1: doing its thing, the Soviet Union keeps a bunch of

594
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: soldiers in country, right, because you know, they want to

595
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: make sure things keep going, keep going in a direction

596
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: they're comfortable with. Now, this means that for a while

597
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: Romania's Communist Party is a subservient branch of the party

598
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: in Moscow. George U. Day, who's running the country, and

599
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: his polit bureau are not happy about this, especially once

600
00:32:56,520 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: Stalin dies and Khrushchev takes power, because Cruise have kind

601
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: of repudiates some of the stuff that Stalin had done. Right,

602
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: he gives the speech where he's like, hey, you know

603
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 1: what everything Stalin did wasn't perfect. Um, you know what

604
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 1: it was George you Day? Where I oh, oh, George

605
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 1: U Day. Yeah, George you Day, Georgie. That's that is

606
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: my personal headcanon, like fantasy fiction mash up between George

607
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: Bush and Uday Husain Um mainly or actually, no, you

608
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 1: know that's that. Yeah, that's the that's that's what I'm

609
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 1: shipping them together, right, that's what you'd call it. We

610
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: shipped them. Yeah, we should, Yeah, ship George Bush and

611
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: Uday Hussein somebody somebody gets some fan art going, use

612
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: that chat GPT, make it real horny and make sure

613
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: they're both caked up in honor of Elena. Just just

614
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: huge asses on both Day and George Bush and just

615
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:52,480
Speaker 1: sweaty against each other. Get him in there. Yeah, and

616
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: then you would have George H. W. Bush and Saddam

617
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 1: Hussein looking down on them both from heaven, smiling, smiling,

618
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: proud George as George Bush paints Day done up like

619
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 1: the chick from Titanic, but instead of the heart of

620
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 1: the ocean, it's a golden ak forty seven. Somebody do this.

621
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,719
Speaker 1: You know you've got, You've got. It's perfect, perfect opportunity

622
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 1: for giving you God. Yeah, and do it. Do it? Aii.

623
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,720
Speaker 1: So everyone has really fucked up, unsettling hands. George Bush

624
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:26,800
Speaker 1: has like three long fingers painting it'll be great. Oh

625
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: so I'll be able to call you a loser on

626
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: the internet for doing that. Let's let's get a T

627
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,759
Speaker 1: shirt out. I mean that's up to Sophie. Sophie make

628
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: the merch. Yeah, I think I think this will She's

629
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 1: still there. I'm here only if the people demand it.

630
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,319
Speaker 1: I think the people are going to demand it, not

631
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: want you demand Yeah. So um yes. As a Stalinist,

632
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:56,239
Speaker 1: Day is not thrilled by the fact that Kruschev has

633
00:34:56,280 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 1: repudiated uh some of the stuff that Stalin did Um.

634
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,320
Speaker 1: So they're all kind of figuring, how can we get

635
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: a little bit more autonomy from the U. S. S R.

636
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: How can we get these soldiers out of our country,

637
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: How can we kind of like take actual control for ourselves.

638
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six, protests and Hungary boil up into

639
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:18,040
Speaker 1: an uprising, which is again right next to Romania. Now

640
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: that includes the destruction. Like in these protests and Hungary,

641
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: they destroy a bunch of statues of Stalin and Budapest.

642
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: Unrest spreads widely from there and it reaches Romania by

643
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 1: October of that year. You know the way protests do.

644
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: You get protests in one capital, they move over to

645
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: the other soon. And I'm gonna quote in a right

646
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 1: from a rite up by the Wilson Center here. On

647
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,800
Speaker 1: the twenty ninth of October, railwaymen in Bucharest held a

648
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: protest meeting calling for improved conditions of work, and in

649
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,280
Speaker 1: the asse there were street demonstrations in supportive better's food

650
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 1: supplies and exceptionally poor harvest had drastically cut food production

651
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: and cues, and Bucharest and the other main towns were commonplace.

652
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: Georgia Day and a Romanian delegation cut short of visit

653
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 1: to Yugoslavia in the October to address the crisis. Thousands

654
00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: of arrests were made in the centers of protest, especially

655
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,720
Speaker 1: among students who participated in meetings in the Transylvanian capital

656
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: of Clues and tim Assura. One of the largest meetings

657
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 1: took place in Bucharest on the thirty of of October.

658
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: The Timnasaura, Radia and the Assy regions were placed under

659
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: military rule as Soviet troops were brought in across the

660
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,880
Speaker 1: Romanian border in the east and concentrated on the frontier

661
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: with Hungary in the west. Important question did that postpone

662
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:27,400
Speaker 1: trick or treating? I don't think there's a lot of

663
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: trick or treating going on in Georgia Day's Romania, So

664
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: that's the time for draculas. It would have been perfect.

665
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 1: It would have been perfect, um. But I think it's

666
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 1: interesting here. One of the things you're seeing Georgiu Day

667
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: is a railway man like running like was the guy

668
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: organizing in a legal railway union and spent a shipload

669
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: of his life in prison for doing so, And now

670
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 1: that he's in charge, he's cracking down on protests by

671
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: railwaymen and throwing a bunch of them in prison. Always fun.

672
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: How that keeps happening? It's the circle of life. Yeah,

673
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. It's beautiful in its own way. Um we

674
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: are yeah yeah, or it's the flat circle thing. So

675
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: the Hungarian crisis concludes when Soviet sent tanks into Budapest

676
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: to crush the crush the uprising. And this actually, the

677
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: Romanian Communist Party is going to benefit from this hugely

678
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: because Soviet troops helped them stop protests in their own

679
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: capital from turning into an uprising. And the fact that

680
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:29,440
Speaker 1: the Romanian regime is so supportive of crushing these protests

681
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 1: means the USSR is like, well, we can't trust Hungary

682
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 1: because we just had to send in tanks here, but

683
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: we can trust Romania. And so now the Romanian Communist

684
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: Party and Georgiu Day are like, hey, you know, we

685
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:42,560
Speaker 1: don't need all these troops in our country. Khrushchev, you

686
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: know you guys, you guys need those dudes in Hungary.

687
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 1: Why don't you send all those troops to Hungary and

688
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: and we'll take care of Romania. You know, we can.

689
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:52,879
Speaker 1: We can keep a lock on things ourselves. Um So

690
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: in this works, the Soviets withdraw troops from Romania, and

691
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:58,359
Speaker 1: as a result, Romania is going to have a lot

692
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 1: more autonomy than other country. These who are kind of

693
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: in the Warsaw Pact in the region are going to

694
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: have in this period of time. So in nineteen sixty five,

695
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: Georgio Day gets sick with lung cancer, which is a

696
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 1: huge surprise for a for a communist dictator in the

697
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:19,280
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties to have lung cancer just absolutely shocking stuff

698
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: because because that was back when cigarettes were really good

699
00:38:22,040 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, this is back when doctors recommended them.

700
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's smoking the good ones, he's smoking

701
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 1: the lucky strikes, which which I'm sure every yeah, every

702
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 1: dum listening. The air quality was general, like the air

703
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 1: quality was roughly the same as like a cigar lounge. Yeah. Yeah.

704
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: The way they would do it is they would just

705
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:44,080
Speaker 1: light giant piles of lead on fire every time you

706
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:47,719
Speaker 1: bought gasoline and celebration. Uh, that's what we were all doing.

707
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: It's why everyone liked brain. Like, we found these rocks

708
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 1: that radiate heat, so we've been just hovering around them

709
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: like that one episode of Star Trek. Yeah. Um, so

710
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,839
Speaker 1: org you day gets his ask some lung cancer, um and,

711
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: and it's he's the whoever it becomes clear that like

712
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: whoever is going to inherit power from him, is going

713
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: to inherit a really centralized, strong state in Romania that's

714
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: more independent than basically any of the other countries in

715
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: the Soviet Block other than Yugoslavia. I mean, whether or

716
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 1: not you want anyway whatever, it's it's it's a lot

717
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:28,680
Speaker 1: of power. Who that who coming into whoever takes over

718
00:39:28,719 --> 00:39:33,040
Speaker 1: for this guy? Um And because he had been such

719
00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: a private man, effectively, right, he was number one in

720
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,319
Speaker 1: total power. But he was also because he was in

721
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: power able to hide the fact that he was sick

722
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: until the signs of the fact that he had terminal

723
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:46,319
Speaker 1: cancer got too obvious to ignore. Like you read that

724
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: like a baseball stat you like, you know, he was

725
00:39:48,080 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: actually number one in total power. Yeah, he was Mark McGuire,

726
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 1: he was the Mark McGuire of of of the Warsaw Pact.

727
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 1: A lot of people right down to the well, I mean,

728
00:39:59,520 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: cigarette were steroids for for for dictators. But yeah, if

729
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:06,720
Speaker 1: you're a member of a of a of a communist dictatorship,

730
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: you're yeah, you're really the performance enhancing cigarettes really get

731
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,239
Speaker 1: through you. I guess we'd probably say that Tito was

732
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:16,799
Speaker 1: the Nolan Ryan, just because I think he probably could

733
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:19,359
Speaker 1: have cold cocked anybody else in the Warsaw Pact if

734
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: he had to. Yeah. Yeah, and longevity, Yeah, and longevity.

735
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:25,919
Speaker 1: He really did stay in there a while. And Ryan

736
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: throwing a hundred three four years old, that's something that

737
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: is Tito energy. Yeah. So chow Chessco, you know the

738
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:37,359
Speaker 1: fact that so first off, like all of these other guys,

739
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: because everyone in the polit bureau right either has someone

740
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: else that they want to take over for Georgie you

741
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: day or once that job themselves. Um, but they don't

742
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: realize he's sick until he's very close to death. Now,

743
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,400
Speaker 1: chow Chesscu again, he's the ass kisser. So he's in

744
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: there daily. He's seeing Georgiu day all the time. He's

745
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 1: talking to him all the time. How you doing. Yeah,

746
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: you're looking like you're losing white man and hair and

747
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 1: some skin. Yeah, you seem to be wasting away more.

748
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 1: You want to sign this piece of paper real quick,

749
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 1: don't ask about it. Yeah, you're good. So, um, all

750
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: of these other guys kind of suddenly find themselves scrambling

751
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,880
Speaker 1: to figure out how to set themselves up for the

752
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: post George you Day world, whereas Chachesko knows exactly what's

753
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: going on. And I'm gonna quote from Paul Kinyon again here.

754
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:26,879
Speaker 1: The list of possible successors was short. The nine member

755
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: polit bureau was hardly overburdened with talent. Five of them

756
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: had barely completed elementary school, and three were former rail

757
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: workers from George you Day's union days who had been

758
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,800
Speaker 1: elevated for loyalty, not literacy. Not only had George you

759
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:42,239
Speaker 1: Day purged the upper echelance of the party, he had

760
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: impoverished the entire country with his anti intellectual policies. Children

761
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,720
Speaker 1: of political detainees were denied a university education, their extended

762
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:53,759
Speaker 1: families were considered stigmatized. Schools were barred from teaching critical thought.

763
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: Academics were regularly arrested and detained. All this was designed

764
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: to eradicate opposition, but had inadvertent starved the Romanian Communist

765
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 1: Party of even moderately capable minds. You know, so maybe

766
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:12,240
Speaker 1: don't purge people who know how to do things um

767
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:14,319
Speaker 1: from your although it does make it easier to stay

768
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 1: in power. So it really, it's a it's a it's

769
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:20,920
Speaker 1: a tough situation that they were in. Um yeah, yeah

770
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:23,839
Speaker 1: that that kind of happens when somebody withers away and

771
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: dies it is surrounded by morons. Yeah, this is this

772
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 1: is actually a version. I mean it's interesting because Georgie

773
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 1: Day is a stolidist. This is basically the same kind

774
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: of thing that happens. It's a little less severe, right,

775
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 1: the pollit Bureau that kind of stalin uh leaves behind

776
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: are more capable than the guys that Georgie Day had

777
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:46,839
Speaker 1: around him. Um, but yeah, it is. It's interesting kind

778
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:49,279
Speaker 1: of some of the similarities here. But you know who

779
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 1: else has carried out a series of anti intellectual purges

780
00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:00,359
Speaker 1: in order to ensure that no one capable can force

781
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: them from their position of power. Pot pol Pot who

782
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: is the primary sponsor of this podcast? Oh wow yeah yeah, no, no,

783
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: we got the big pol pot coickwork company, pol pots Pots. Yeah.

784
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,640
Speaker 1: He's selling cast iron skillets and you do not want

785
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:22,520
Speaker 1: to see what happens if you wash one of them

786
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: with soap. It's either that or it's like some clever

787
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: weed brand. M yeah. Um, it'll make you so stupid,

788
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:35,359
Speaker 1: you'll be anti intellectual. Just go ahead, and if you've

789
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 1: got some of this weed, just throw your glasses away.

790
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 1: You don't need them. Um, it'll I don't know, I

791
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: don't know how to keep making pull. Welcome to the

792
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:48,720
Speaker 1: smoking fields. Everybody that's a boy, yeah, will be stoned

793
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: out of your skull. Let's let's get let's break two ads. Now. Ah,

794
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:04,359
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're we're talking poll pot um. Well,

795
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: no we're not. We're talking the end of George you

796
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: Day's time in charge of the Romanian Communist Party, So

797
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: joking about pol pot we're talking about just like this

798
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: episode isn't horrible enough plot? Yeah yeah, yeah, bring a

799
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: little bit of pol pot in there. So let's have

800
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: a holiday in Romania. Yeah yeah. Now, there are only

801
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 1: three veteran members of the Pollit Bureau who had any

802
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: degree of competence um, but all of them had with

803
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: the party considered to be unhealthy origins. One of them

804
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:38,279
Speaker 1: is German, another's Ukrainian, and the third is Bulgarian. And

805
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 1: as Catalan Gruia notes, the three prerequisites for the future

806
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: leader were one to be Romanian, two to be an activist,

807
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: and three to be part of the working class. So

808
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:50,239
Speaker 1: no one in power likes Nikolai or considers him a

809
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 1: good choice to replace Georgie. But Nikki had maneuvered himself

810
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: into an incredible position um and it was one that

811
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: surprised his colleagues. His job in the Pollit Bureau at

812
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: this point was secretary for organization in Cadras, and this

813
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:06,319
Speaker 1: is kind of a boring job. It's pretty low prestige

814
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: within the pullet bureau jobs, but it provides them with

815
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,879
Speaker 1: this opportunity to make a lot of little decisions about

816
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,799
Speaker 1: who's in position where, who's booking the boss's schedule every day, right,

817
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: who gets to like set George you day schedule, all

818
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:20,839
Speaker 1: these different people, who's working in his house. He's kind

819
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: of picking all of these low level functionaries. And it

820
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: turns out when that's your job, when your job is

821
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: to hook a bunch of people up with these little

822
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,959
Speaker 1: jobs that determine everything about the boss's life, you kind

823
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: of control the boss's life, especially when he's dying of

824
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: cancer and doesn't have as much wherewithal as he used

825
00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: to have. Um So, because Nikki is in charge of

826
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:45,240
Speaker 1: the people making the boss's schedule, Nikki effectively has control

827
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: over who gets to visit George you Day every day,

828
00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:50,759
Speaker 1: and once the man gets sick, Nikki is able to

829
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: exercise near total control over who sees the boss and win.

830
00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:57,239
Speaker 1: The last weeks of George you Day's life where a

831
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 1: constant series of pullar bureau members trying to get him

832
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 1: to confirm his successor, and Shochesco being like, now he's

833
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: sick today, he doesn't want to talk politics. Don't come

834
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 1: around another day. You know, you just gotta let him,

835
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: let him chill out um. And Ko is doing this

836
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 1: because he knows he's in the best position. He's a Romanian,

837
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: you know, he's got peasant credentials. He's the best positioned

838
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:22,319
Speaker 1: to take over for for for George you Day. And

839
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,200
Speaker 1: so if you can just kind of keep the others

840
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: away from him and stop them from getting him to

841
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:29,720
Speaker 1: agree to make someone else's successor, he's got a pretty

842
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: good shot of getting the job. Now, George you Day,

843
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: despite his illness, realizes what Nikki is doing and he

844
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 1: sees it as a major threat to the country. And

845
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:39,640
Speaker 1: this is kind of a thing that happens with Lenin

846
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:42,640
Speaker 1: and Stalin. Right when Lennon's on his last legs, He's like,

847
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:44,919
Speaker 1: I don't really think this Stalin guy is a good

848
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 1: job to follow me up. I think this could go badly.

849
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 1: He's like, excellent point, I'm going to Mexico. Yeah, yeah,

850
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 1: that's how that went. So in snatched conversations with old comrades,

851
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 1: he warns of Nicolai's feverish maneuver rings, but the boss

852
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:03,800
Speaker 1: has already been out maneuvered himself. While half the Pullet

853
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 1: Bureau was angling to try and get Georgie to make

854
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: it a selection, Nikolai is getting the other half to

855
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: line up behind him, and he promises them, Hey, guys,

856
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: you know me, I'm a blank slate, right, you could

857
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: just make me do whatever. I'll do anything you want.

858
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,399
Speaker 1: You know, It's fine. Yeah, I'll be your guy. I'm

859
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:22,720
Speaker 1: a I'm a fun time guy. I just want the title.

860
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: You know, you guys will be the power behind the throne.

861
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,959
Speaker 1: I just want the title. Um, just a fun time

862
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,479
Speaker 1: and guy, ain't nothing wrong with me again. Georgiu Day

863
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 1: has pretty systematically purged anyone most of the people who

864
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: are good at things, so all of the other Pollet

865
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: Bureau guys are like, well, this seems reasonable. Why would

866
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: he lie about this? Why would somebody in a position

867
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:47,759
Speaker 1: of power. Lie, It's like, dude, what what war do

868
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: you think you just lived through by wild wires? Uh?

869
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: So this works incredibly well for chat CHESSCO. The Boss

870
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: dies on Mark nineteenth, nineteen sixty five, and CCO is

871
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter confirmed as Prime Secretary of the Romanian Socialist Republic,

872
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:11,399
Speaker 1: which is a new term. They've been using other terms

873
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: for their leaders before that. He decides, I'm going to

874
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: pick a new title, you know, new guy at forties seven,

875
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:19,080
Speaker 1: I think he's the youngest leader in Europe at the

876
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:25,919
Speaker 1: time when he when he gets power out there is it? Yeah, yeah,

877
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:28,360
Speaker 1: he's doing good. These guys. Everyone else kind of running

878
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: communist countries in Europe at this point time is a

879
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:35,239
Speaker 1: lot older. He's he's young, he's considered handsome, he's a

880
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: he's the JFK of communism, right. That is actually kind

881
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: of how he's viewed when he takes power. Um yeah yeah,

882
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:45,880
Speaker 1: And and to be fair, he does pretty well at first.

883
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: You actually wouldn't be there were not initially warning signs

884
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:52,680
Speaker 1: that like this was gonna be worse than kind of

885
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 1: anything going on around him. Right, It's like, hey, this guy,

886
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,160
Speaker 1: he's not going to do like like a genocide or anything, right,

887
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:03,279
Speaker 1: like yeah, not per pussfully. So despite being essentially he

888
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 1: is an old fashioned stalidist, and he's pretty consistent about

889
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:11,280
Speaker 1: being a stalinist, particularly like economically most of his career. Um,

890
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: but he supports a lot more liberalization than Georgia Day

891
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 1: had allowed. He opens up some space for private enterprise.

892
00:49:18,080 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 1: Mostly what he does is he kind of opens up

893
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:24,320
Speaker 1: space for foreign trade, which means Western music is getting

894
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: in right. People are getting to listen to like rock

895
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:28,760
Speaker 1: and roll in that kind of stuff, which is cool.

896
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: Some movies and some TV is getting in um and

897
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:35,359
Speaker 1: that makes people really happy. He also provides a little

898
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:38,400
Speaker 1: bit more space for public speech. He allows newspapers you

899
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: can't criticize the system, but you can kind of poke

900
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:45,359
Speaker 1: around edges of like certain programs that might not work. Well.

901
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,320
Speaker 1: It's a lot more than they've had right under George

902
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: you Day, because it's a pretty pretty strict system under him.

903
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,919
Speaker 1: So he he liberalizes quite a lot. And people are

904
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:56,880
Speaker 1: really optimistic. This is actually considered a lot of Romanians.

905
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: It was like it was not a bad time, you know, Um,

906
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:03,800
Speaker 1: there's there's plenty of food. Uh. People are like the

907
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:06,879
Speaker 1: state was actually doing a decent job of taking care

908
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: of people. It's it, It seems it seems good everything.

909
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: That's it. That's just the pretty cool breeze of a dude.

910
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: None of these guys ever stopped there, um, And part

911
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:22,279
Speaker 1: of why things are good is that he kind of

912
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 1: wants he's part of part of One of the things

913
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: Chichisco is doing is like, like anyone who takes power

914
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:29,799
Speaker 1: in a system like this, you gotta consolidate it, Nicks, right,

915
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 1: you gotta push out your rivals, you gotta jail some people.

916
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: You've got to force them out of their jobs so

917
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:37,279
Speaker 1: you can take total power. And you don't want to

918
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 1: be cracking down on the people well that's going on, right.

919
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:43,040
Speaker 1: You want to keep them happy while you're taking power.

920
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of part of what he's doing

921
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: in this period of time, and in fairly short order,

922
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:50,440
Speaker 1: he forces out all of these guys who'd agreed to

923
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: vote for him to take power. He pushes them out

924
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:55,359
Speaker 1: of their jobs, right, Um, some of us he does.

925
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: He opens an investigation into the purchase that had been

926
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: carried out by George you Day, that dude Petronascu who

927
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: had forced the who had taken out Antonescu. He he

928
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:10,879
Speaker 1: doesn't investigation into that guy's execution, and obviously Chowchescu had

929
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: helped with that, right, he had been a part of

930
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: killing that guy and purging all of these people. But

931
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 1: now he's being like, yeah, we're gonna look into this.

932
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 1: That was really bad. We gotta get these bad actors

933
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 1: out of here. You know. It's like when the police

934
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 1: are like, we're going to have an internal on this

935
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:28,200
Speaker 1: massacre that we did. Well, it turns out we found

936
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:30,319
Speaker 1: out we did nothing wrong. So yeah, it was just

937
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: those five guys who happened to be rivals to my power.

938
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: Dollars more please, Yeah, yeah, this is it's it's very

939
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: much that sort of thing. Um. And while he does this,

940
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 1: he also supports a drive towards Romanian nationalism, and he's

941
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:48,720
Speaker 1: he's gonna back anything that he thinks will make people

942
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: feel an identity separate from the Soviet Union and one

943
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: of them. Because again, while he's he is a strong

944
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 1: communist by this point, and and so is obviously the

945
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: Romanian Communist Party is a communist party. That doesn't mean

946
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:06,000
Speaker 1: that there like I want to be part of Russia, right,

947
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 1: This is actually a big thing for a lot of

948
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 1: countries in the Warsaw Act, and Romania has this, as

949
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:13,280
Speaker 1: we've talked about, this kind of long history of being

950
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: oppressed and attacked by their neighbors. So they don't he

951
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 1: doesn't want and obviously it's bad for his own personal

952
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:21,759
Speaker 1: power to if everyone in Romania feels like we're just

953
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 1: a satellite of Russia. So he starts backing. He starts

954
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:28,719
Speaker 1: like really supporting a series of like books and uh uh,

955
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: kind of questionable historical tracts about guys like vlad Dracula

956
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 1: and the Emperor traction, who he kind of turns into

957
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:38,879
Speaker 1: a Romanian um. And what's really funny is like, while

958
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,520
Speaker 1: they while he's kind of backing guys like Dracula and

959
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:45,400
Speaker 1: Emperor Trajan, they have to be framed as proto socialist right.

960
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 1: They're not communists obviously because communism didn't exist back when

961
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 1: Draculas walking around. But you have to say that like

962
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 1: Dracula actually, when you think about it, was like a

963
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,560
Speaker 1: pre socialist leader. You know, he had a lot of

964
00:52:56,600 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: these tendencies that we that we've now figured out as commune.

965
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 1: This So like the Emperor Trasian, classic proto socialist right

966
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: really was big about redistribution of wealth. What a weird

967
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 1: what a weird person to try to reframe the the

968
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:16,480
Speaker 1: emperor Trasian socialist here the people's hero. Yeah, it's like,

969
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,480
Speaker 1: you know who actually was a good person, Elizabeth Battery.

970
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how great she was. She loved unions,

971
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 1: couldn't get enough of unions. She was just the union darling.

972
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: Really yeah. Um, so obviously all of this was was

973
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: very questionable from historic standpoint, But again, why is anyone

974
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 1: going to complain for one thing? At least you're getting

975
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: to read more books now, you know more the papers

976
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,359
Speaker 1: are out there, You're getting some music. Um, life is

977
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,879
Speaker 1: pretty good. What do you think the most popular song

978
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 1: was when they're hitting what? Um? I know, I don't

979
00:53:51,480 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: think I know if it's in sixty five quite yet,

980
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: but the fucking Stones were pretty popular in Romania. Yeah,

981
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:07,319
Speaker 1: I mean obviously, um, the Romanian stonesiction it's just like

982
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:10,800
Speaker 1: the beach Boys. Because it is the sixties. I'm sure

983
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:15,040
Speaker 1: the beach boys are fucking blowing up out there. U

984
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 1: s in big popular. Yes, Romania's famous surf culture. Yeah,

985
00:54:24,760 --> 00:54:29,560
Speaker 1: they really get heavily until like that you Yeah, Um,

986
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:32,920
Speaker 1: so Romania had been one of the major bread baskets

987
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: of the region. Um. It was actually the Soviet Union

988
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:39,360
Speaker 1: back when they were still kind of occupying the country.

989
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:42,760
Speaker 1: Their pitch to the Romanian Communist Party was like, Hey,

990
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: we'll do all this industrializing you guys basically grow all

991
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:49,440
Speaker 1: of the food for the Warsaw Pact, right, that'll why

992
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:51,920
Speaker 1: don't we just do it that way? And the Georgia

993
00:54:52,040 --> 00:54:53,840
Speaker 1: Day had kind of been like, well, no, i'm a

994
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:56,359
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a railway union man. I want to

995
00:54:56,400 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: industrialize too. I don't want us to just be your

996
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 1: garden base. Sickly, So he had industrialized the company the

997
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: country pretty rapidly. And one of the reasons why a

998
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 1: lot of Romanians suspected that he had been because because

999
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: there's this this conspiracy theory develops that he had gotten

1000
00:55:11,719 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 1: cancer because the Russians had poisoned him because he was

1001
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:17,239
Speaker 1: so independent. I don't know how likely this is. There's

1002
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons why George you Day might have

1003
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 1: gotten cancer. Um, but anyway, there's a myriad that hard

1004
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:30,200
Speaker 1: to get cancer being that guy. Um, though I would

1005
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:32,840
Speaker 1: I will add that Romania. I looked up some of

1006
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: their number one songs and they it looks like they

1007
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 1: only charted like the international stuff around that I saw quickly.

1008
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:41,840
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. You are not alone by Michael Jackson.

1009
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice. It's like mostly American stuff. It's it's

1010
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: surprisingly it's surprisingly close to what you would think of

1011
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,279
Speaker 1: because like it was like the top charts in the

1012
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:57,719
Speaker 1: United States. I know that Chowchesku's favorite TV show is

1013
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: Kojack um, because yeah, Kojack can just shoot anybody who

1014
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:07,320
Speaker 1: wants and ask you identifies with that. There's um. Telly

1015
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: Savalis wrote a book I Think about Getting Asked, which

1016
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: I think is just really hilarious, like it's just a

1017
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: way to get ass wait when I'm I'm super into that.

1018
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:19,480
Speaker 1: The idea that Ko Jack was writing a how to

1019
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:25,000
Speaker 1: pick up women? Um, yeah, it's interesting. It's always interesting,

1020
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: like when you look at kind of these countries while

1021
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: they are under communism. What American TV shows are really popular?

1022
00:56:32,120 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: I think it was Hungry where um what's its name?

1023
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 1: The Peter Folks show, Um, Colombo Colombo. Colombo was like huge,

1024
00:56:42,680 --> 00:56:45,200
Speaker 1: I believe in Hungary where it was like people were

1025
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: absolutely out of their fucking minds for Colombo, which makes

1026
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: sense against Colombo isn't that weirdly enough? I think that's

1027
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: one of the main points of WandaVision. Oh is it

1028
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:00,320
Speaker 1: so like if you saw wand Division on Disney Plus,

1029
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:02,160
Speaker 1: the whole point of it was that she, you know,

1030
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:05,839
Speaker 1: where she grew up was clearly the Eastern Bloc, and

1031
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 1: they just like they had these old DVDs of old sitcoms.

1032
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: I've talked to a couple of people, like there were um,

1033
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: like folks who grew up in countries where like The

1034
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:20,440
Speaker 1: Simpsons was illegal, who would get like smuggled Simpsons DVDs

1035
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: where like one person you would just have some like

1036
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: random lady who would read in the local language like

1037
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: over who would basically do these like underground dubs of

1038
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 1: shows like The Simpsons. And how it's like, even now

1039
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:37,040
Speaker 1: that they have access to the show as it actually is,

1040
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:39,240
Speaker 1: the voices sound wrong because it's like, well, no, I

1041
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 1: grew up with like like Vlad from the village over

1042
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 1: was the guy who did the voice. It was like this,

1043
00:57:45,360 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 1: there's a documentary about the world. It's fascinating stuff. It's

1044
00:57:49,120 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: all It's I love this kind of like weird culture

1045
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:55,360
Speaker 1: bits like that. It's always really interesting. It's kind of

1046
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:57,440
Speaker 1: like how you had. I mean, one of my favorite

1047
00:57:57,440 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: stories from Castro's Q but is that during the aid's outbreak, Um,

1048
00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: there was like there were basically punks who you know,

1049
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: a lot of there was heavy restrictions and what music

1050
00:58:10,080 --> 00:58:11,919
Speaker 1: you could listen to and what music you could play,

1051
00:58:12,440 --> 00:58:15,480
Speaker 1: and so you had these punks who realize that like, well,

1052
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:17,960
Speaker 1: if we get AIDS, the government will put us in

1053
00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: these like basically medical facilities where because we're all dying,

1054
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: there's not the same kind of restrictions. So if we

1055
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:28,560
Speaker 1: just infect each other with HIV, we can play and

1056
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:31,600
Speaker 1: listen to whatever music we want. Um, it's a it's

1057
00:58:31,600 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 1: a fucking There was an NPR documentary about it. That

1058
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:37,919
Speaker 1: is not the most far sighted way. I think that's

1059
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: about the most punk rock anything could be. I'm not

1060
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 1: saying I wouldn't say punk rock is something that is

1061
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: not shortsighted. Well, yeah, that's probably fair given the lifespans

1062
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:51,640
Speaker 1: of a lot of those guys. Yeah, like the crust

1063
00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:56,200
Speaker 1: punk lifestyle is not designed to make it to to

1064
00:58:56,440 --> 00:58:58,560
Speaker 1: you know, you're not gonna die of old age if

1065
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: if you're like really, but you know who I love

1066
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 1: g Allen. Important to note Chow Chessco through none of

1067
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 1: this period is not listening to to punk music. He is, however,

1068
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: watching Kojack. It is interesting that, like the dictator of

1069
00:59:12,360 --> 00:59:17,560
Speaker 1: Romania's favorite TV show is a fucking cop show. Um yeah,

1070
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: Greek car Perhaps not surprising, um so yeah. Chow Chesscu

1071
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: has this plan to continue Georgiu Day's policy of industrializing Romania.

1072
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:31,080
Speaker 1: He wants to build it into this consumer goods mecca.

1073
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:33,960
Speaker 1: His plan is to turn Romania. Instead of it being

1074
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: a breadbasket, and Romania is very well suited to produce

1075
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:39,920
Speaker 1: a shipload of high quality food, he wants it producing

1076
00:59:39,960 --> 00:59:45,720
Speaker 1: consumer goods, appliances, refrigerators, and televisions, all sorts of electronics

1077
00:59:45,760 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 1: that can then be sold all throughout Europe, including Western Europe. Now,

1078
00:59:50,120 --> 00:59:53,800
Speaker 1: doing this, Romania not a huge country. He's gonna need

1079
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 1: a bigger population. If you want to be an industrial nation,

1080
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: you need a lot of workers. So in order to

1081
00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:02,800
Speaker 1: p vide this needed base of industrial workers, Nikolai and

1082
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: Elena calculate that the country should shoot for a population

1083
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:09,240
Speaker 1: of twenty million people. Now, what's the best way to

1084
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 1: incentivize basically doubling the population of your country. Well, first

1085
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: you've got to make sure people don't have condoms, and

1086
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:18,880
Speaker 1: then you have to ban abortion, and you know what,

1087
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:21,400
Speaker 1: you might as well just make it illegal to provide

1088
01:00:21,480 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 1: much of anything in the way of sex set or contraceptives.

1089
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 1: But just just get rid of all that and people

1090
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: will naturally make more of themselves. Now, there's some consequences

1091
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,560
Speaker 1: to this, UM. For example, the fact that over time

1092
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:38,960
Speaker 1: a huge number of Romanian women seek abortions anyway, but

1093
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:43,640
Speaker 1: they don't have access to decent medical care or information

1094
01:00:43,680 --> 01:00:45,680
Speaker 1: about their bodies that would allow them to do that

1095
01:00:45,720 --> 01:00:48,280
Speaker 1: in anything that even approaches a safe way. And so

1096
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: during the time that Nikolae and Elena are in power,

1097
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 1: between ten and twenty thousand Romanian women die due to

1098
01:00:53,720 --> 01:00:58,560
Speaker 1: botched abortions. UM. So that's pretty bad. You're not going

1099
01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:02,520
Speaker 1: to help the population well overall, I mean, they do

1100
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,760
Speaker 1: reach their population goal. We will talk more in another

1101
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 1: episode about the other things that happened as they that.

1102
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: His goal was just like, you know, why don't we

1103
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:15,360
Speaker 1: become like Japan? Yeah, and it's like just I don't.

1104
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:18,640
Speaker 1: I think they got a lot of assistance from America

1105
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:22,120
Speaker 1: in that regard that you're not getting in Romania. Yeah,

1106
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:24,160
Speaker 1: you're not going to get that in Romania, you know,

1107
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:27,440
Speaker 1: you don't have there's a lot of things that like,

1108
01:01:28,840 --> 01:01:32,160
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't immediately assume that you can go from

1109
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,760
Speaker 1: zero to like producing everybody's televisions when there's a lot

1110
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 1: of competition for that role. And yeah, getting a Magna

1111
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:42,960
Speaker 1: box or a Sorny you know, Um, it's not going

1112
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 1: to work out well, a lot of none of this

1113
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:47,840
Speaker 1: is going to work out well. But you know, in

1114
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: the early kind or in the mid to late sixties,

1115
01:01:50,720 --> 01:01:53,000
Speaker 1: while you still have this, I mean this, this abortion

1116
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 1: policies pretty nightmarish and that's going to cause a lot

1117
01:01:55,400 --> 01:02:00,560
Speaker 1: of suffering. You could be forgiving. Yeah, yeah, if you're

1118
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: living in Romania, you could be forgiven for thinking, well, ship,

1119
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,880
Speaker 1: this is actually kind of working out, okay, right, um,

1120
01:02:07,960 --> 01:02:10,040
Speaker 1: And that's that's the point at which we're going to

1121
01:02:10,320 --> 01:02:12,680
Speaker 1: end right now. On an up note, aside from the

1122
01:02:12,680 --> 01:02:16,600
Speaker 1: ten to twenty people who die in a nightmarish totalitarian

1123
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:20,720
Speaker 1: anti abortion policy, that's called dipping your toes into the pool, baby, Yeah,

1124
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: dipping your toes into the pool. And we will come

1125
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:27,480
Speaker 1: back and we will talk about what happens when Chowchesco

1126
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 1: dips a little bit more of himself into the pool.

1127
01:02:30,040 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: But first, Jeff, you you who do you? Who are you? Jeff?

1128
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 1: Where do you come from? Where did you come from?

1129
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:43,480
Speaker 1: The cotton? Jeff? Well, you know, I'm I'm a comedian podcaster.

1130
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:45,360
Speaker 1: The one thing I will say is that if you

1131
01:02:45,440 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: are in the New England area and you want to

1132
01:02:47,280 --> 01:02:49,560
Speaker 1: see me performing live, I'm going to be doing one

1133
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:54,880
Speaker 1: show uh Wednesday, February twenty second at Redemption Rock Brewery

1134
01:02:55,000 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: in Western Massachusetts. It's my one show that I do

1135
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:00,720
Speaker 1: out there. Limited tickets, but it's a great stand up

1136
01:03:00,760 --> 01:03:02,880
Speaker 1: show and I love doing stand up and I get

1137
01:03:02,920 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 1: I don't get to do it enough, so I'm very

1138
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:06,440
Speaker 1: happy to do that. You can also see me live

1139
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 1: the second Friday of every month at Blast from the

1140
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:11,919
Speaker 1: Past on Magnolia and Beautiful Burbank, California for my show

1141
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:18,000
Speaker 1: Mint on card Love Burbank. Podcast wise God, you can

1142
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:19,240
Speaker 1: hear I got a lot of good ones I got

1143
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: Jeff has cool friends, which you can hear for free anywhere.

1144
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:24,680
Speaker 1: But you can get early access to uncensored episodes with

1145
01:03:24,720 --> 01:03:28,160
Speaker 1: bonus content at Patreon dot com slash Jeff May one Word.

1146
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 1: You also have access to shows like Nerd with Drey Alvarez,

1147
01:03:31,720 --> 01:03:34,080
Speaker 1: which is a nerdy deep dive podcast. You can do

1148
01:03:34,160 --> 01:03:36,520
Speaker 1: shows like ug Find Me with Kim Crawl that's monthly.

1149
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:39,440
Speaker 1: You can go to Game Fully Unemployed, and you can

1150
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,600
Speaker 1: hear Tom and Jeff watch Batman with Tom Riman, who's

1151
01:03:42,680 --> 01:03:45,240
Speaker 1: been a guest of the show a million times. Um,

1152
01:03:45,440 --> 01:03:47,400
Speaker 1: you can check that out. You can also check out

1153
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:49,840
Speaker 1: you Don't Even Like Sports, a sports podcast for people

1154
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:53,640
Speaker 1: that hate sports, and Unpopular Opinion, both on the un

1155
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 1: Pops Network with Adam Todd Brown. Um. Other than that,

1156
01:03:56,920 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: I'm around. You can find me on social media. Yeah,

1157
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:06,160
Speaker 1: you can find Jeff. That was very thorough. That is

1158
01:04:06,480 --> 01:04:09,919
Speaker 1: what happens when you do these plugs seven times a week.

1159
01:04:11,280 --> 01:04:14,400
Speaker 1: And you can find me next to Jeff waiting for

1160
01:04:14,480 --> 01:04:16,440
Speaker 1: him to get sick and die so that I can

1161
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:21,240
Speaker 1: take over for him. Been much. I'm gonna be the

1162
01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:25,360
Speaker 1: chow chesscoo of Jeff may Um. Yeah, it's gonna be good.

1163
01:04:25,440 --> 01:04:28,080
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to turn Jeff's apartment into a

1164
01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 1: manufacturing hub for southern California. We're getting up all my toys.

1165
01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:36,280
Speaker 1: We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna melt him down and

1166
01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:40,800
Speaker 1: turn him into those big old style TVs made like

1167
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 1: seven pounds in the back. Oh yeah, oh yeah, the

1168
01:04:46,440 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 1: ones that are like of a nuclear bomb, like you

1169
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:52,880
Speaker 1: basically have a dirty bomb if the TV goes out.

1170
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:55,680
Speaker 1: That's the kind of TV that has that fizzy static

1171
01:04:55,720 --> 01:04:58,920
Speaker 1: on it when it's been off for the whole time. Yeah,

1172
01:04:58,960 --> 01:05:01,200
Speaker 1: the one that glows at night and you just wonder,

1173
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:03,600
Speaker 1: is it is there something always going on in there?

1174
01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: I miss old TV. There's something in this TV humming

1175
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,880
Speaker 1: all the time, unplugged, still humming. Yeah, the one that

1176
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 1: could kill a family of four if it fell over

1177
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:17,640
Speaker 1: while you were eating your fucking uh TV Swanson dinners.

1178
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:21,880
Speaker 1: Um God, things were so much better in the nineties. Well,

1179
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:26,960
Speaker 1: we'll be back on Thursday. Everybody Behind the Bastards is

1180
01:05:26,960 --> 01:05:29,760
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool

1181
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:33,200
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,

1182
01:05:33,360 --> 01:05:35,680
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

1183
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:38,240
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.