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