1
00:00:02,800 --> 00:00:06,360
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastard Heart, four of our

2
00:00:06,519 --> 00:00:12,120
Speaker 1: epic series on Nikolai cha Chessco with the inimitable Jeff May. Jeff,

3
00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:15,040
Speaker 1: you know you you have an interesting background. You were

4
00:00:15,160 --> 00:00:18,960
Speaker 1: a teacher, um, and you decided, you know, you had

5
00:00:18,960 --> 00:00:21,400
Speaker 1: to make the very difficult choice to leave that career

6
00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:24,480
Speaker 1: behind to focus upon another career as a live performer.

7
00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:28,840
Speaker 1: I mean that's teaching. It's very live performer esque, just

8
00:00:28,920 --> 00:00:31,960
Speaker 1: with health insurance. And I will not not anymore with zoom.

9
00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:35,680
Speaker 1: But um, but yeah, you know I empathize with that.

10
00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:37,839
Speaker 1: I also had years ago. I had to make a

11
00:00:37,880 --> 00:00:41,720
Speaker 1: really tough choice, which was to proceed with my career

12
00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,640
Speaker 1: as a as a writer and a journalist, um, but

13
00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,640
Speaker 1: to give up my ambitions of being a musician and

14
00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:51,519
Speaker 1: and and really participating, which has been with one of

15
00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:53,800
Speaker 1: the maybe the hardest choice I've ever had to make. Well,

16
00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:56,280
Speaker 1: one thing, people don't know you were on the cusp. Yeah,

17
00:00:56,400 --> 00:01:00,640
Speaker 1: I was, darling. I was about to break through. Um.

18
00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:03,280
Speaker 1: But you know, I made peace with the choice that

19
00:01:03,320 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 1: I made. But but every now and then I feel

20
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:09,120
Speaker 1: the urge to get back into it. So recently I

21
00:01:09,200 --> 00:01:11,039
Speaker 1: reached out to some old friends of mine from back

22
00:01:11,080 --> 00:01:12,520
Speaker 1: in the day when I was when I was doing

23
00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:14,319
Speaker 1: a lot of stage shows. You might have heard of

24
00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:18,319
Speaker 1: a little band called Destiny's Child and we we put

25
00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:20,960
Speaker 1: together a little bit of collab based on my my

26
00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:23,800
Speaker 1: incredible Boston accent. So I want to just play that

27
00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:39,399
Speaker 1: for everyone right now. Is a little treats them from

28
00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:43,720
Speaker 1: Okay that ought to do there? That was? That was beautiful.

29
00:01:43,880 --> 00:01:48,040
Speaker 1: Wow wow. Honestly, like I'm kind of like, I mean,

30
00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:50,160
Speaker 1: I'm glad we have this show, and I'm glad we

31
00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:52,640
Speaker 1: have all the great work you're doing, but I do

32
00:01:52,840 --> 00:01:55,560
Speaker 1: feel like this is sort of like a reminder of

33
00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:58,600
Speaker 1: sort of like the other day the music died. Yeah exact,

34
00:01:58,680 --> 00:02:01,160
Speaker 1: you decided to give up your career, and I'm glad

35
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:03,760
Speaker 1: that you guys are you and Destiny's Child, that you're

36
00:02:03,800 --> 00:02:07,600
Speaker 1: still you Still it's all amicable, I know you kind

37
00:02:07,600 --> 00:02:09,520
Speaker 1: of they felt like you left him in the lark

38
00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:12,560
Speaker 1: for a while. They had to lift up a lot

39
00:02:12,639 --> 00:02:15,799
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you left behind. But she's done, okay, right,

40
00:02:15,840 --> 00:02:19,120
Speaker 1: she's done. Okay for she did okay, Um, you know,

41
00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:21,720
Speaker 1: we're very proud of her. I just I really wish

42
00:02:21,760 --> 00:02:23,720
Speaker 1: I could have seen, you know, that's a glimpse into

43
00:02:23,760 --> 00:02:26,400
Speaker 1: the alternate reality that we could have had if you

44
00:02:26,440 --> 00:02:28,400
Speaker 1: get stuck with it. You know, it's just one of

45
00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:31,000
Speaker 1: those one of the tiny tragedies that is that is

46
00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:33,800
Speaker 1: everyday life. But you know the upside of it is

47
00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:36,600
Speaker 1: that now that we have released this in twenty five years,

48
00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:39,440
Speaker 1: I do qualify for admission to the Rock and Roll

49
00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:41,640
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. So I'm sure we're all looking forward

50
00:02:41,639 --> 00:02:45,799
Speaker 1: to that. I mean, you have my vote. You're you

51
00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:48,480
Speaker 1: and Billy Joel um both both back in me on

52
00:02:48,520 --> 00:02:53,080
Speaker 1: this one. Um, he's actually back acting you. That was

53
00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:55,799
Speaker 1: That was a solid Billy Joel joke. Jeff, I hope

54
00:02:55,800 --> 00:03:00,400
Speaker 1: you're proud of yourself. It's a Billy joke. Wow, Well

55
00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:02,800
Speaker 1: we're doing good. So you want to talk about a

56
00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:04,919
Speaker 1: piece of sh it a little bit more. I thought

57
00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:13,120
Speaker 1: we just were. Wow. No, Billy, come on, he does Okay, Yeah,

58
00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:16,760
Speaker 1: he's he's he's he's a good guy. William William Joel

59
00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:20,280
Speaker 1: Oh God, why is my phone ringing? Stop us? Because

60
00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:22,920
Speaker 1: you're popular. Oh it's another spam call. It's one of

61
00:03:22,960 --> 00:03:25,920
Speaker 1: the five spam calls I get every single day because

62
00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 1: the FCC under uh fucking Donald Trump, decided that phones

63
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:35,320
Speaker 1: should no longer be things that people can use, isn't

64
00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:37,520
Speaker 1: isn't that nice? Isn't that a nice change that was

65
00:03:37,560 --> 00:03:42,720
Speaker 1: made classic. Yeah, it's like it's like when commercials were

66
00:03:42,760 --> 00:03:46,120
Speaker 1: allowed to be cartoons again. Yeah's just one of these

67
00:03:46,120 --> 00:03:51,120
Speaker 1: decisions that his low key destroyed civilization and shaped my

68
00:03:51,360 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 1: entire personality. Yeah. Absolutely, I've seen all the he Man

69
00:03:54,960 --> 00:03:57,400
Speaker 1: and g I Joe and stuff that I have behind

70
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:00,840
Speaker 1: me here. But yeah, you and Michael Bay completely changed

71
00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:04,560
Speaker 1: as a result of that move. Um, just like I

72
00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:07,360
Speaker 1: was completely changed by the fight Beyonce and I had.

73
00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:10,440
Speaker 1: But you know, that's that's that's that's that's water under

74
00:04:10,440 --> 00:04:13,880
Speaker 1: the bridge now? Is it in an elevator? Yeah, that

75
00:04:13,880 --> 00:04:16,040
Speaker 1: would probably be the most cinematic place for us to

76
00:04:16,080 --> 00:04:19,200
Speaker 1: have had a fight. Right, but on a security camera?

77
00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:21,279
Speaker 1: Did you get did you get the joke or is

78
00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:24,840
Speaker 1: that over your head? No, Sophie, if you make a

79
00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:27,240
Speaker 1: joke about Beyonce, you can assume I'm not going to

80
00:04:27,279 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 1: get it. But I thought you were so close. I

81
00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:34,880
Speaker 1: know out exactly exactly when you're too close to somebody.

82
00:04:35,120 --> 00:04:38,000
Speaker 1: It's like, how I'm too good at basketball to to

83
00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:41,719
Speaker 1: compete on camera against Lebron James. Can you just do

84
00:04:41,800 --> 00:04:45,760
Speaker 1: that episode? M Yeah, of course Sophie happened up on

85
00:04:45,839 --> 00:04:50,160
Speaker 1: an episode on Lebron James. He's like a good dude. Yeah,

86
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:53,039
Speaker 1: I mean, he's okay again, he's done all right for himself.

87
00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:58,680
Speaker 1: So we're talking about Nikolai chaku Um. Now when we

88
00:04:58,760 --> 00:05:01,279
Speaker 1: when we had left off, we were talking about the

89
00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:04,440
Speaker 1: gigantic series of palaces. He built the third largest building

90
00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:07,919
Speaker 1: by volume in the world. UM. And as Czech excuse

91
00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:11,240
Speaker 1: ambitions for control over the country that he was gradually

92
00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:14,080
Speaker 1: grinding into the dust grew, he decided he found the

93
00:05:14,120 --> 00:05:17,719
Speaker 1: need to establish and expand a state security force UM

94
00:05:17,839 --> 00:05:22,680
Speaker 1: that could surveil his populace to an unprecedented extent. In Romania,

95
00:05:22,760 --> 00:05:25,360
Speaker 1: the state's security force, the secret police, whatever you wanna

96
00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:27,880
Speaker 1: call them, they were called the Securitat UH and they

97
00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:29,560
Speaker 1: were run by which is actually I think the name

98
00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:33,040
Speaker 1: of like a local rent a cop company that you

99
00:05:33,080 --> 00:05:36,320
Speaker 1: can have like do armored car ship. Here, you got

100
00:05:36,320 --> 00:05:42,000
Speaker 1: some some Portland's Pinkerton's or whatever. Yeah, I mean, uh,

101
00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:43,839
Speaker 1: maybe I'm getting that wrong. I should have checked on this,

102
00:05:43,839 --> 00:05:46,280
Speaker 1: but anyway, the Securitat, the Romanian one was run by

103
00:05:46,680 --> 00:05:49,359
Speaker 1: Jan Pasipa, who we talked about a little bit last episode.

104
00:05:49,760 --> 00:05:52,560
Speaker 1: And you know, folks talk about the KGB, they talked

105
00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:54,800
Speaker 1: about the East German Stazi, you know when they talk

106
00:05:54,839 --> 00:05:59,840
Speaker 1: about communist secret police forces. Yeah, none of these mother

107
00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:02,560
Speaker 1: suckers had ship on the Security TOT in terms of

108
00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:05,359
Speaker 1: its actual like the extent of the repression that it

109
00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:09,160
Speaker 1: was capable of carrying out. Oh oh yeah, No, these

110
00:06:09,200 --> 00:06:11,880
Speaker 1: are this is a good state security force, not like

111
00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:14,960
Speaker 1: an immoral sense, but in a in an efficiency sense,

112
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:18,400
Speaker 1: in an efficiency sense. Yeah, and in being perfect villains

113
00:06:18,440 --> 00:06:20,880
Speaker 1: in a James Bond movie. Since and I'm gonna quote

114
00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:24,280
Speaker 1: from Cattle and Gruya here, that's that Romanian journalist. In

115
00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:26,960
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five there was a central phone tapping center

116
00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:30,440
Speaker 1: and eleven regional ones. That's when Chichesco takes power. Thirteen

117
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:33,680
Speaker 1: years later there were two hundred and forty eight centers

118
00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:36,880
Speaker 1: and a thousand portable stations. By the nineteen eighties, the

119
00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:38,880
Speaker 1: Security TOT had become one of the most feared secret

120
00:06:38,920 --> 00:06:42,440
Speaker 1: police organizations in the world. In nine it had fourteen thousand,

121
00:06:42,520 --> 00:06:45,080
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty nine employees, of which eight thousand, one

122
00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:48,240
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty nine were officers. According to PACIFA, each

123
00:06:48,279 --> 00:06:51,599
Speaker 1: officer had to have fifty collaborators members of the Romanian

124
00:06:51,640 --> 00:06:55,679
Speaker 1: Communist Party and fifty informants outside of the Romanian Communist Party.

125
00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:59,200
Speaker 1: The result was the constant surveillance of the population, so

126
00:06:59,640 --> 00:07:04,440
Speaker 1: damn near everybody was either in the employee of the

127
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:09,120
Speaker 1: securitat or directly under surveillance of the security talk like both, yeah,

128
00:07:09,240 --> 00:07:12,520
Speaker 1: or both in many cases both the other part. Yeah,

129
00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:15,040
Speaker 1: that's I mean, it's they always used to make the

130
00:07:15,400 --> 00:07:18,720
Speaker 1: you know, the KGB jokes. We've all seen that where

131
00:07:18,840 --> 00:07:23,440
Speaker 1: yeah yeah and stuff like that, but this seems less funny, Yeah,

132
00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:26,720
Speaker 1: somehow less funny than the KGB. Who were who are

133
00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:30,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of lab hucksters? Chuckle chuckle buddies. I did

134
00:07:30,520 --> 00:07:33,840
Speaker 1: a research paper on the KGB and the title of

135
00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:38,160
Speaker 1: it was Cops and Robbers. That's not a bad title, fair,

136
00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:40,120
Speaker 1: And the professor was like, this is supposed to be

137
00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:43,320
Speaker 1: like a serious class. Yeah, a lot of people died

138
00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:45,560
Speaker 1: and were tortured, but you know that's the case with

139
00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:48,360
Speaker 1: secret police all the time. Um, it's a shame that

140
00:07:48,480 --> 00:07:53,000
Speaker 1: secret police are absolutely necessary to have in every single country. Um. Yeah,

141
00:07:53,640 --> 00:07:56,720
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna on a limb here. A cab includes

142
00:07:57,400 --> 00:08:03,640
Speaker 1: secret police establishing WHOA I'm sorry. I know every time

143
00:08:03,640 --> 00:08:08,040
Speaker 1: I come on, I cause chaos, um, and this is it.

144
00:08:08,120 --> 00:08:11,400
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. But yeah, wow, that's gonna be that's gonna

145
00:08:11,400 --> 00:08:15,800
Speaker 1: be really, really controversial among our listeners, fully half of

146
00:08:15,840 --> 00:08:20,720
Speaker 1: whom work in secret police forces. But you know, everybody

147
00:08:20,720 --> 00:08:23,200
Speaker 1: needs to hear stuff that's difficult to listen to sometimes.

148
00:08:23,560 --> 00:08:29,240
Speaker 1: So yeah, except that people disagree with you secret police officers,

149
00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:32,520
Speaker 1: that's not what secret police officers do. Um. What they

150
00:08:32,520 --> 00:08:35,440
Speaker 1: did in Romania, in addition to domestic repression, was carry

151
00:08:35,440 --> 00:08:39,280
Speaker 1: out a steady stream of assassinations of foreign dissidents, including

152
00:08:39,559 --> 00:08:43,160
Speaker 1: Romanian citizens writing for Voice of America, a US funded

153
00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:46,640
Speaker 1: Cold War era news and propaganda agency. At the most

154
00:08:46,679 --> 00:08:49,520
Speaker 1: basic level, this could mean hiring gunmen or assassins with

155
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:52,400
Speaker 1: knives in other countries. There's one particular guy that they

156
00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:55,040
Speaker 1: tried to kill like three different times, and they shot

157
00:08:55,120 --> 00:08:57,719
Speaker 1: him and they stabbed him, and he kept like not

158
00:08:57,880 --> 00:09:01,400
Speaker 1: quite dying. I've gotta respute and everybody yeah yeah, and

159
00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:03,920
Speaker 1: then it was like a year after getting stabbed, he

160
00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:07,480
Speaker 1: dies of this like mysteriously virulent cancer and it's kind

161
00:09:07,480 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 1: of come out since then that it's almost certain they

162
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,640
Speaker 1: slipped him radioactive poison. Um, that's the thing they did

163
00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:15,920
Speaker 1: a couple of times, I think. Uh. And it's honestly,

164
00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:19,880
Speaker 1: that's kind of a cool way to kill someone. Yeah. No, no,

165
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,520
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if you're a journalist writing against

166
00:09:23,559 --> 00:09:25,880
Speaker 1: the state and they have to use the radioactive poison

167
00:09:25,880 --> 00:09:28,800
Speaker 1: against you, you know, you've that's like, that's like the

168
00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:34,160
Speaker 1: Pulitzer getting getting radiation, getting like radioactive poison, Uh, slipped

169
00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:38,640
Speaker 1: in your Yeah, of Jeff dying as a journalist for shure,

170
00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:43,360
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, we should all be so lucky. But

171
00:09:43,400 --> 00:09:45,439
Speaker 1: of course, Jeff, I don't know if you've ever priced

172
00:09:45,600 --> 00:09:49,840
Speaker 1: radioactive poison. It is not cheap. And having someone assassinated

173
00:09:49,880 --> 00:09:53,960
Speaker 1: across international lines also very expensive unless they live in

174
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:57,360
Speaker 1: like Toronto. Um. So this this is something that the

175
00:09:57,440 --> 00:10:00,320
Speaker 1: Romanians we're gonna have to spend a lot of money on. Um.

176
00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:02,680
Speaker 1: And when titened Belts put the security tot in a

177
00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:05,680
Speaker 1: budget crunch, they were able to rake in extra cash

178
00:10:06,080 --> 00:10:08,760
Speaker 1: millions of dollars over time, hundreds of thousands of dollars

179
00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:12,240
Speaker 1: a year from a foreign benefactor. Now, Jeff I'm gonna

180
00:10:12,360 --> 00:10:15,160
Speaker 1: you want to guess what foreign company secretly funded the

181
00:10:15,160 --> 00:10:18,280
Speaker 1: Secura tot during the most repressive years of Czech excuse regime.

182
00:10:18,679 --> 00:10:21,400
Speaker 1: You know what, I have a lot of guesses, Okay,

183
00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:23,640
Speaker 1: but I feel like I'm not going to nail it

184
00:10:23,679 --> 00:10:28,280
Speaker 1: down because my first answer was McDonald's. No, not McDonald's.

185
00:10:28,559 --> 00:10:31,120
Speaker 1: You might call them the McDonald's of furniture, because it

186
00:10:31,240 --> 00:10:38,520
Speaker 1: was I kea, I'm sorry, it was like Kia, I

187
00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:41,480
Speaker 1: still like them. Yeah, I'm gonna go and say I'm

188
00:10:41,480 --> 00:10:44,640
Speaker 1: still going to go there. Wow, wow, bold, brave. Well,

189
00:10:44,679 --> 00:10:46,720
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't know. I'm sure they're supporting a

190
00:10:46,760 --> 00:10:49,920
Speaker 1: completely different series of secret police agencies now and and

191
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:52,280
Speaker 1: the good ones, you know, the secret police agencies you

192
00:10:52,280 --> 00:10:54,680
Speaker 1: want to trust? Am I supposed to not eat potential

193
00:10:54,720 --> 00:10:57,800
Speaker 1: horse meat balls? Because I'm gonna eat potential horse meat balls? Yeah?

194
00:10:57,840 --> 00:10:59,520
Speaker 1: Where are you gonna get horse meat? If you're not

195
00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:02,520
Speaker 1: getting it somewhere sketchy, right, That's that's how I feel

196
00:11:02,520 --> 00:11:04,520
Speaker 1: about And when that came out and everyone was mad

197
00:11:04,559 --> 00:11:07,000
Speaker 1: about the about the meatballs maybe having horse, I was like,

198
00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:10,439
Speaker 1: it's about time I get to eat horse. Yeah, exactly, exactly,

199
00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:13,559
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the securitat said. So during the

200
00:11:13,640 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties this was actually a thing across a lot

201
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:18,760
Speaker 1: of Eastern Europe. A number of communist states are having

202
00:11:18,760 --> 00:11:21,800
Speaker 1: these like economic crunches, and so they start opening themselves

203
00:11:21,920 --> 00:11:25,040
Speaker 1: up to more capitalist businesses and being like maybe you

204
00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:27,320
Speaker 1: come in a little bit in the help of sweet things,

205
00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:30,600
Speaker 1: and is like, oh, yeah, you would like to be

206
00:11:30,679 --> 00:11:33,440
Speaker 1: coming in. I don't know how to that's they're not

207
00:11:33,520 --> 00:11:36,400
Speaker 1: from Boston. They're not from Boston. Yes, sorry, I can't

208
00:11:36,400 --> 00:11:40,680
Speaker 1: do a good Swedish What was that? It was not

209
00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:44,000
Speaker 1: your best? Yeah, I am a speed in modern and

210
00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:51,439
Speaker 1: I went offensive. I went Muppet pretty pretty deep in there.

211
00:11:51,440 --> 00:11:53,240
Speaker 1: But it's okay to make fun of the way Swedish

212
00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:56,199
Speaker 1: people talk here because they're funding a secret police force.

213
00:11:56,640 --> 00:11:59,960
Speaker 1: So one of the things that KIA did was they

214
00:12:00,120 --> 00:12:02,280
Speaker 1: they realized that it was really cheap to have East

215
00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:05,719
Speaker 1: German political prisoners build their billy bookshelves and other you know,

216
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:09,000
Speaker 1: announceable bedframes. So that was one of the things i

217
00:12:09,120 --> 00:12:12,160
Speaker 1: KA got up to in this period. But they were

218
00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:15,560
Speaker 1: really interested in Romania because Romania has these huge again

219
00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:18,880
Speaker 1: is forcing people to leave rural areas and move to

220
00:12:18,920 --> 00:12:22,280
Speaker 1: the cities. So there's lots of free timber in Romania

221
00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:26,679
Speaker 1: that nobody's living around massively forested. Yes, there's a lot

222
00:12:26,679 --> 00:12:29,960
Speaker 1: of wood anyway. It's sort of like like Siberia when

223
00:12:29,960 --> 00:12:31,880
Speaker 1: you see what's and most of people are like tundra

224
00:12:32,040 --> 00:12:33,360
Speaker 1: and then you look at it you're like, no, it's

225
00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:35,920
Speaker 1: just like the biggest forest on the planet. Yeah, it's

226
00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:39,520
Speaker 1: just like trees all all up in everybody's business. And

227
00:12:39,800 --> 00:12:42,680
Speaker 1: that's so you know that i KEA is like, well,

228
00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:45,280
Speaker 1: we need trees. We have a lot of low quality,

229
00:12:45,840 --> 00:12:49,840
Speaker 1: easily breakable furniture to produce. We'll take all the trees

230
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:53,840
Speaker 1: that you can give us um and Romania is like, well,

231
00:12:53,920 --> 00:12:56,920
Speaker 1: how about you know, you pay our state run timber company,

232
00:12:57,120 --> 00:13:00,079
Speaker 1: you know, ten million pounds ish a year for it,

233
00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:03,640
Speaker 1: and we will skim a significant chunk of that off

234
00:13:03,679 --> 00:13:05,760
Speaker 1: the top and send it to our secret police force

235
00:13:05,800 --> 00:13:09,920
Speaker 1: so they can buy radioactive poison. Now, IKEA denies that

236
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:12,800
Speaker 1: they knowingly funded a secret police agency through this deal.

237
00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:15,400
Speaker 1: There is a lot of debate between journalists and scholars today.

238
00:13:15,400 --> 00:13:18,040
Speaker 1: There is some evidence that I think the fair thing

239
00:13:18,040 --> 00:13:21,760
Speaker 1: to say is that while nobody ever wrote this out directly,

240
00:13:21,880 --> 00:13:24,680
Speaker 1: based on their dealings in other countries and their understanding

241
00:13:24,679 --> 00:13:28,040
Speaker 1: of the situation in Romania. They absolutely knew the Secret

242
00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:30,000
Speaker 1: cops were taking a cut off the top of the

243
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:32,959
Speaker 1: money that they were paying. Where do you think your

244
00:13:33,000 --> 00:13:37,880
Speaker 1: money is going after you send it to a dictatorship? Yeah,

245
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:40,440
Speaker 1: some of it's gonna pay for the secret police. Everybody

246
00:13:40,480 --> 00:13:43,120
Speaker 1: knows this. Everybody. It's cheap labor. It's sort of like

247
00:13:43,120 --> 00:13:45,760
Speaker 1: how people still have Amazon accounts even though they know

248
00:13:45,960 --> 00:13:49,240
Speaker 1: the human toll that it takes on people. And I

249
00:13:49,400 --> 00:13:53,160
Speaker 1: sure do like immediate shipping because I'm impatient and I

250
00:13:53,240 --> 00:13:56,560
Speaker 1: like things being slightly cheaper, so I like the media shipping.

251
00:13:56,679 --> 00:14:00,360
Speaker 1: I'm okay that Jeff Bezos is buying radioactive reason to

252
00:14:00,440 --> 00:14:04,240
Speaker 1: use on his enemies. Um, it's it's such a easy

253
00:14:04,360 --> 00:14:06,520
Speaker 1: way to be like, well, they didn't tell us they

254
00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:10,360
Speaker 1: were doing that. Yeah, you guys knew. Um there's some

255
00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:12,520
Speaker 1: other evidence to believe that they actually had a decent

256
00:14:12,559 --> 00:14:16,080
Speaker 1: amount of knowledge about how this was working. Um, but yeah,

257
00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:18,600
Speaker 1: if you if you bought any products in the Billy

258
00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:22,360
Speaker 1: range or any Albert chairs or any Abbo table tables

259
00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:25,720
Speaker 1: or Jonas desks from Ikea in the nineteen eighties. There's

260
00:14:25,760 --> 00:14:28,520
Speaker 1: a very good chance that your purchased directly helped fund

261
00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:31,560
Speaker 1: to the securit tot. So that's neat. Those are specific

262
00:14:32,120 --> 00:14:35,760
Speaker 1: product lines that they really Oh. I had two and

263
00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:38,880
Speaker 1: both of them broke within a year. I love Ikea.

264
00:14:39,400 --> 00:14:44,160
Speaker 1: This thing right here from Ikea is great. That's good. Well, listeners,

265
00:14:44,280 --> 00:14:47,080
Speaker 1: if your Ikea send us money and I will edit

266
00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:49,360
Speaker 1: out that part where I talked about how billy bookshelves

267
00:14:49,560 --> 00:14:53,640
Speaker 1: are not made particularly well, Now that's how you do it. Extortion,

268
00:14:53,880 --> 00:15:00,000
Speaker 1: that's how you get money, just like the securitat. Yeah. So, uh,

269
00:15:00,160 --> 00:15:02,760
Speaker 1: that's good. That's that's cool stuff. And obviously, while all

270
00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:05,840
Speaker 1: this is happening, this is pretty fucked up, especially the

271
00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:10,800
Speaker 1: assassinations they carry out in foreign countries and like NATO countries. Um.

272
00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:12,960
Speaker 1: But the West put up with it for quite a

273
00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:16,000
Speaker 1: while because as horrific as Cheski was to his own people,

274
00:15:16,440 --> 00:15:19,240
Speaker 1: he never failed to back up u S interests at

275
00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:21,800
Speaker 1: critical junctures. And I'm gonna quote from a ride up

276
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:25,600
Speaker 1: by the Wilson Center here in nineteen seventy nine, Shaochesku

277
00:15:25,640 --> 00:15:28,800
Speaker 1: attacked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In nineteen eighty one,

278
00:15:28,800 --> 00:15:31,360
Speaker 1: he counseled caution in the Warsaw Pacts response to the

279
00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:34,240
Speaker 1: crisis in Poland. In the following year, he opposed packed

280
00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:37,680
Speaker 1: plans to increase defense spending and in fact reduced Romania's

281
00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:40,640
Speaker 1: defense budget. In nineteen eighty three, he repeated his call

282
00:15:40,680 --> 00:15:43,680
Speaker 1: for a halt to the arms race and advocated multilateral

283
00:15:43,760 --> 00:15:46,720
Speaker 1: nuclear disarmament in Europe, and the following year he proposed

284
00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:49,480
Speaker 1: a moratorium on the deployment of new nuclear weapons in Europe.

285
00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:52,200
Speaker 1: At the same time, refused to join the Soviet led

286
00:15:52,240 --> 00:15:55,640
Speaker 1: boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And I'm

287
00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:58,000
Speaker 1: noting this because he's he's doing this to stay in

288
00:15:58,040 --> 00:16:00,440
Speaker 1: the West good graces. That's not like necessary the bad

289
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:03,640
Speaker 1: stuff to do obviously, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

290
00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:07,840
Speaker 1: was bad. It's good to disarm and advocate for nuclear disarmament.

291
00:16:07,880 --> 00:16:11,560
Speaker 1: His foreign policy moves are continue to be more right

292
00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:14,120
Speaker 1: than wrong kind of in this period. This is just

293
00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:17,360
Speaker 1: all paired with the unspeakable levels of domestic repression that

294
00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:19,840
Speaker 1: he's carrying out at home. He seems like a sleeper

295
00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:22,560
Speaker 1: agent we forgot about and then things got way out

296
00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:25,400
Speaker 1: of control. Yeah, yeah, he did. He just kept right,

297
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:29,040
Speaker 1: letting it ride. Brasco energy coming out of him here

298
00:16:29,040 --> 00:16:31,600
Speaker 1: on this one. For the record, the Soviets were right

299
00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:34,800
Speaker 1: to boycott the Olympic Games, not necessarily because of whyever

300
00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:37,040
Speaker 1: they did it. I actually have no idea why they

301
00:16:37,040 --> 00:16:39,480
Speaker 1: did it, but because fun the Olympics. Anyone who boycotts

302
00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:41,800
Speaker 1: the Olympics is in the right. I'll stand with whoever

303
00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:45,320
Speaker 1: against the Olympics. If you hate the Olympics, you're my homie.

304
00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:51,760
Speaker 1: Get them. Yeah, so chow Chessco. You're uncanceled, buddy. Um,

305
00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:54,160
Speaker 1: that's probably not a thing I should Oh wait now

306
00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:57,680
Speaker 1: he refused to join it. You're still canceled, motherfucker. Um. So.

307
00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:00,480
Speaker 1: Nixon had been the first U S President to visit Romania,

308
00:17:00,520 --> 00:17:02,680
Speaker 1: and a follow up to his nineteen sixty seven visit,

309
00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:07,000
Speaker 1: but Nikolairam maintained excellent relations with every US president during

310
00:17:07,040 --> 00:17:09,680
Speaker 1: his time in office. His success in this was close

311
00:17:09,720 --> 00:17:12,280
Speaker 1: to perfect until in nineteen seventy eight he sent Yon

312
00:17:12,359 --> 00:17:16,480
Speaker 1: Paspa to Germany with apparently a plan to assassinate a journalist.

313
00:17:16,960 --> 00:17:20,280
Speaker 1: I say apparently because Paspa defected to the United States

314
00:17:20,320 --> 00:17:23,840
Speaker 1: and offered up a comprehensive list of Romania's overseas narratives

315
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:26,560
Speaker 1: in exchange for one presumes a pile of cash in

316
00:17:26,600 --> 00:17:29,639
Speaker 1: a lifetime of protection. His intel on the securitat was

317
00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:32,760
Speaker 1: obviously good because he'd been running it. But you also

318
00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:35,560
Speaker 1: have to remember there's like a book that exists that

319
00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:39,240
Speaker 1: stories about the Chowchcuse, but it's based on the stuff

320
00:17:39,280 --> 00:17:43,360
Speaker 1: Paspa claimed almost exclusively. And again, this guy is not

321
00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:47,320
Speaker 1: necessarily a credible source on his old boss because he's

322
00:17:47,560 --> 00:17:52,399
Speaker 1: defected and had invested interest in ignoring a lot of

323
00:17:52,400 --> 00:17:54,159
Speaker 1: the fund up things he'd done as head of the

324
00:17:54,200 --> 00:17:57,879
Speaker 1: secret police and making his boss seem more directly responsible

325
00:17:57,920 --> 00:17:59,960
Speaker 1: for it um, which is not to say that Czech

326
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:03,080
Speaker 1: Ascue wasn't but just like you shouldn't take anything Paspa

327
00:18:03,119 --> 00:18:07,879
Speaker 1: says at face value, right, Yeah exactly, exactly, yeah exactly

328
00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:10,000
Speaker 1: that Like that's literally what he's doing. Like he's not

329
00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:11,960
Speaker 1: a hero because he came out with the story of

330
00:18:11,960 --> 00:18:15,600
Speaker 1: how BADU is he was his secret police head. He's

331
00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:21,239
Speaker 1: a snitch, yeah exactly, And snitches get stitches even when

332
00:18:21,280 --> 00:18:25,000
Speaker 1: they're snitching on Actually, in this case, snitches get a

333
00:18:25,320 --> 00:18:28,000
Speaker 1: house paid for by the US government for the rest

334
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:31,520
Speaker 1: of their lives. Um. I mean, I'll snitch on whoever.

335
00:18:31,560 --> 00:18:33,480
Speaker 1: If that means I could own a house, I think

336
00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:37,439
Speaker 1: a lot of people would. So Paspa was the first

337
00:18:37,480 --> 00:18:40,800
Speaker 1: public figure in the West because obviously it's big news

338
00:18:40,920 --> 00:18:44,199
Speaker 1: when he defects to portray Romania and kind of like

339
00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:47,840
Speaker 1: a mass sense as a totalitarian hellscape significantly worse than

340
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:50,800
Speaker 1: anywhere else in communist Europe. Kind Of before this point,

341
00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:53,080
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of you know, Romania had had

342
00:18:53,119 --> 00:18:55,080
Speaker 1: a lot of good press in like the US media

343
00:18:55,160 --> 00:18:57,679
Speaker 1: and stuff, and that starts to turn around after this.

344
00:18:58,119 --> 00:19:00,760
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen seventy nine, the irane and revolution,

345
00:19:00,920 --> 00:19:03,080
Speaker 1: you know, becomes a thing, and that brings an end

346
00:19:03,080 --> 00:19:05,760
Speaker 1: to the cheapest oil Romania had been able to buy

347
00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:09,040
Speaker 1: because Chesco had a pretty good relationship with the Shaw.

348
00:19:09,440 --> 00:19:12,000
Speaker 1: Then you would get the Iran Iraq War, which ratchets

349
00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:13,879
Speaker 1: up the price of oil more and that makes stuff

350
00:19:13,880 --> 00:19:16,960
Speaker 1: more difficult for Chochesco and for everybody. Inflation is increasing

351
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:20,440
Speaker 1: across the world at this point, but it's particularly devastating

352
00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:23,280
Speaker 1: to Romania because they've been taking on all of this

353
00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:26,320
Speaker 1: debt in order to build these ridiculous things that Chochesko

354
00:19:26,400 --> 00:19:28,959
Speaker 1: wants to create. And as you get this kind of

355
00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:32,400
Speaker 1: we all heard the term stagflation, you know, right as

356
00:19:32,440 --> 00:19:35,320
Speaker 1: that starts to really hit, Romania's creditors start calling in

357
00:19:35,359 --> 00:19:37,040
Speaker 1: their debts. And I'm going to quote from a book

358
00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:40,560
Speaker 1: by the Charles River editors here. As Western banks increased

359
00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:43,120
Speaker 1: their own interest rates, in turn, the debt repayments became

360
00:19:43,160 --> 00:19:45,640
Speaker 1: ever harder to service for many governments. At the start

361
00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:48,160
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties, many developing countries struggled to pay

362
00:19:48,160 --> 00:19:50,400
Speaker 1: the interest on their debt, leading to an era often

363
00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:53,240
Speaker 1: referred to as the debt crisis. For its part, Romania

364
00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:55,320
Speaker 1: had half a billion dollars worth of debt in nineteen

365
00:19:55,320 --> 00:19:57,200
Speaker 1: seventy eight, and that had risen to ten point four

366
00:19:57,240 --> 00:20:00,199
Speaker 1: billion by nineteen eight two, equivalent to twenty eight scent

367
00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:03,080
Speaker 1: of its GDP. In nineteen eighty one, just the interest

368
00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:06,159
Speaker 1: payments alone accounted for three billion dollars. As a result,

369
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:08,199
Speaker 1: Romania applied for an I m F loan of some

370
00:20:08,280 --> 00:20:10,359
Speaker 1: one point three billion, only for the I m F

371
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:13,360
Speaker 1: Board to reneg on it. As Misha Glennie has pointed out,

372
00:20:13,359 --> 00:20:16,040
Speaker 1: clearly the Western economic institutions had little faith in the

373
00:20:16,040 --> 00:20:19,719
Speaker 1: reliability of Choko's regime to honor its commitments. As a result,

374
00:20:19,840 --> 00:20:22,800
Speaker 1: the Romanian economy suddenly found itself in deep trouble. By

375
00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:26,000
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, was forced to cut spending and redirect

376
00:20:26,040 --> 00:20:30,080
Speaker 1: foreign currency towards interest repayments. After nineteen eighty two through

377
00:20:30,119 --> 00:20:32,480
Speaker 1: most of the Romanian budget into paying down the debt.

378
00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:36,600
Speaker 1: So you've got two things going on here. One is

379
00:20:36,640 --> 00:20:39,720
Speaker 1: that Romania has this crippling debt to pay off, and

380
00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:42,159
Speaker 1: the other is that Chochesco gets angry at the I

381
00:20:42,359 --> 00:20:44,520
Speaker 1: m F over the fact that they're not willing to

382
00:20:44,520 --> 00:20:46,840
Speaker 1: give him the kind of deal he wants, and despite

383
00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:50,040
Speaker 1: his creditors, he decides to make Romania totally independent from

384
00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:53,560
Speaker 1: the global economy. And obviously, you know it's gonna go

385
00:20:53,680 --> 00:20:56,000
Speaker 1: great for everybody. You know, the I m F is

386
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:59,000
Speaker 1: also a bad guy in this, because it was very

387
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:01,639
Speaker 1: obvious to anyone paying attention that Romania was not going

388
00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:03,200
Speaker 1: to be able to handle the kind of debt that

389
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:07,160
Speaker 1: they were taking on. Um, that these were really bad investments.

390
00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:10,200
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, so there's a lot that's sucked up here.

391
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:12,520
Speaker 1: But well, well we will we will in this case

392
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:16,120
Speaker 1: put most of the blame on Chesscu. Um, I mean

393
00:21:16,520 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 1: just the blame kind of goes everywhere in that case,

394
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:21,640
Speaker 1: all right, Like it's yeah, it's like, yeah, it's I mean,

395
00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:25,119
Speaker 1: debt happens we live. When I heard the number, I

396
00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:28,359
Speaker 1: was like, oh that is cute. Yeah, yeah, yeah it is.

397
00:21:28,560 --> 00:21:31,560
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot more money for them. Um.

398
00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:34,720
Speaker 1: But yeah, that is like a rounding error. Now it

399
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:37,399
Speaker 1: is funny that like Elon Musk could have paid off

400
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,200
Speaker 1: us debt with pocket change still has a quarter of Twitter.

401
00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:48,280
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Um, so two things, yeah, um. In order

402
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:51,280
Speaker 1: to do this, in order to uh pay off Romania's

403
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:54,000
Speaker 1: debt and also make it independent from the global economy,

404
00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:59,119
Speaker 1: Chesscu had to radically reorganized Romanian society. Uh. He exactly.

405
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:01,800
Speaker 1: He acceler rated his plans to force citizens out of

406
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:04,320
Speaker 1: rural towns they lived in for generations. And one of

407
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:07,800
Speaker 1: the ways in which he accelerated it was by dynamiting

408
00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:11,240
Speaker 1: the villages they've lived in, um and pushing everyone to

409
00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 1: labor in cities to pay down the debt by the winter.

410
00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:19,080
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And yeah, it's it's it's very fucked up.

411
00:22:19,119 --> 00:22:21,280
Speaker 1: Like one of the things they're doing is in order

412
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:24,439
Speaker 1: to like force people out of these villages because they

413
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:27,960
Speaker 1: actually dynamiting was more of a euphemism because they don't

414
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:30,400
Speaker 1: want to spend that much money on dynamite because he's

415
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:33,520
Speaker 1: not wildly coyote. Yeah, they will. He will have his

416
00:22:33,680 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 1: security Todd guys show up and be like, everyone has

417
00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:38,199
Speaker 1: to leave. You have forty eight hours. And then when

418
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:40,639
Speaker 1: they start, you know, getting ready to leave, he'll be like, well,

419
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:43,159
Speaker 1: I don't trust you not to come back to this village,

420
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:45,240
Speaker 1: So while we stand here with guns, you have to

421
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:51,879
Speaker 1: destroy your homesick access and ship. Um that's something interesting, Yeah,

422
00:22:52,320 --> 00:22:54,639
Speaker 1: that to create a regular populacet that's not going to

423
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:57,760
Speaker 1: want to kill you real bad later. Yeah, no, it's

424
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:02,240
Speaker 1: it's not gonna make anybody the angriest to have ever been. Um.

425
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 1: So by the Winner of seven, things were so bad

426
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:09,919
Speaker 1: that gas consumption Bucharest was locked in about two hours

427
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,840
Speaker 1: a day. Um, you could again, you would get like

428
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 1: two hours a day where the gas was on, so

429
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: you could like heat your house and hopefully like close

430
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: up the windows so that as much of it would

431
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:22,720
Speaker 1: remain as possible. Because this oil rich nation is trying

432
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,679
Speaker 1: to export all of the gas that it can in

433
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: order to get foreign currency. Cheski declared that the temperature,

434
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:31,560
Speaker 1: like if it was warmer outside than ten degrees celsius,

435
00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:34,440
Speaker 1: it was illegal to burn fuel at all or to

436
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:36,399
Speaker 1: heat your house at all, and if you disobeyed, you

437
00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 1: would be prosecuted. He attempted to reduce He like set

438
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: up this plan where he was like, the average Romanian

439
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: only needs an x number of calories per day, So

440
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to start reducing everybody's food intake so you

441
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: don't get fat. Um. But but people weren't fat, like

442
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 1: not that that would make it okay. Like people were

443
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 1: already tightening their belts, and he was like, actually, you

444
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: guys need a lot less food than you think. You

445
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 1: can starve more. Yeah, you can starve more. So he

446
00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:06,159
Speaker 1: dropped It was like fifteen percent across the board. He

447
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:09,320
Speaker 1: like made a technical plan to reduce the amount of

448
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 1: calories that people got to eat. Um. And while all

449
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: this is happening, obviously Nikolai and Elina are living in palaces,

450
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: they're eating whatever they want they want, and this this

451
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: also makes people angry. Esko, in order to keep things

452
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:24,200
Speaker 1: clamped down, had to ramp up domestic repression to fully

453
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 1: unhinged levels before Pacifa affected nearly all Romanians working overseas

454
00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:31,199
Speaker 1: had some ties to the securitat. You had to be

455
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: you know, at least be passing them a little bit

456
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: of info in order to be allowed to leave. But

457
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 1: once Passifa betrayed, Nikolai. Nikolai makes overseas travel effectively illegal,

458
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,040
Speaker 1: like it basically becomes a crime as a Romanian to

459
00:24:43,119 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: have contact with people outside the country. Um Romanians. So

460
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: he for most of the nineteen eighties he's locked the

461
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: country all in together, like he's he's barred the doors

462
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: and forced everybody to stay inside with each other. Um.

463
00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,159
Speaker 1: And the next thing he does after that is he

464
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: makes it illegal to own or operate a typewriter because

465
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: he's angry that people are writing things Florida. Yeah, yeah, yes,

466
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:11,639
Speaker 1: some strong de Santa's energy there. So since nineteen sixty five,

467
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:15,920
Speaker 1: abortion had been banned um again like Florida, and as

468
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: conditions eroded through the nineteen eighties, Romania was racked with

469
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 1: several problems. For one thing, huge numbers of women were

470
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: attempting to self induce abortions to avoid the expense of

471
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:27,000
Speaker 1: a new child. And again, as as we said earlier,

472
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 1: between ten and twenty thousand, women in Romania died due

473
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: to bots botched abortions during chiscus time in power. But

474
00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:36,679
Speaker 1: for another thing, this his policy of making it illegal

475
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 1: to use contraception does massively increase the Romanian population of

476
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: orphans because a huge number of moms had died and uh,

477
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: you know, they'd left kids without moms, and a lot

478
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,719
Speaker 1: of those moms were single moms um And in addition

479
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:53,880
Speaker 1: to that, a huge number of families just had kids

480
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: that they couldn't afford to feed because Chesko is cutting

481
00:25:56,520 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: the calories people have access to. So you have this

482
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: large number of people who like little kids who can't

483
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:05,320
Speaker 1: be taken care of or who have no one to

484
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: take care of them. And you're also cutting the standards

485
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 1: of medical care. You're bulldozing hospitals for your palace. You

486
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: have more kids who are born with serious health problems

487
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: that their parents can't afford to treat. And the way

488
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: this all ends up is that by nineteen eighty nine,

489
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: there are a hundred and four thousand orphaned children that

490
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: are institutionalized in Romanian government facilities. Now for some context

491
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 1: on how many kids that is in Poland, which is

492
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 1: very close to Romania, Poland has doubled the population of Romania.

493
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: They have a third as many orphaned children in institutions

494
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: like that is an incredibly high rate. That that led

495
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:43,680
Speaker 1: to a massive adoption push, didn't it. Yes, there's a

496
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: number of things this leads to. That is what we

497
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: are talking about. So I didn't mean to jump ahead

498
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: with yeah, yeah, yeah, the orphans. Jeff, God, God, that's right,

499
00:26:56,400 --> 00:27:00,159
Speaker 1: that's what. Well, don't do that in Romania term. But

500
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: you know, um so throughout Czechiscuse reign, there's hundreds of

501
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 1: thousands of kids who wind up raised in these government

502
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: facilities with no family, and as a result of that,

503
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 1: it kind of behooves us to look at how these

504
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:14,719
Speaker 1: these government institutions were run. And I'm gonna quote from

505
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:19,159
Speaker 1: an article in The Guardian here. Florence Noire, an investigator

506
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,160
Speaker 1: for the Institute who spent several years gathering testimony, estimates

507
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 1: that between nineteen sixty six and nineteen eighty nine, there

508
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: were between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand unnecessary deaths of

509
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: children in Romania's grim network of children's homes, with a

510
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: vast majority taking place in those set aside for disabled children.

511
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 1: The most terrific abuse took place in homes for disabled

512
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: children who were taken away from their families and institutionalized

513
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:42,439
Speaker 1: at the age of three. Disabled children would be sorted

514
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: by hospital commissions into three categories, so called curable, partially curable,

515
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,880
Speaker 1: and incurable. The children who were sorted into the third categories,

516
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: some of whom had minor or no disabilities, were subjected

517
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,680
Speaker 1: to particularly brutal conditions. Across the country, there were twenty

518
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:02,200
Speaker 1: six institutions catering to the category three disabled children. Investigators

519
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: from the Institute picked three of them to investigate and

520
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: found shocking mortality levels among the children. They didn't die

521
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: from the disabilities they had. Seventy of the registered deaths

522
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: were for pneumonia. They were dying of external causes that

523
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 1: were preventable and treatable, said Swar. As the investigations occurred,

524
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: they discovered ever more horrific details. There is testimony of

525
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: children suffering from frostbite, and of children literally being eaten

526
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: by rats, being kept in cages, or being smeared in

527
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: their own feces. The investigators logged seven hundred and seventy

528
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 1: one deaths they believed could have been prevented in three

529
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 1: facilities in the late nineteen eighties, suggesting the number across

530
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: all twenty six institutions over a longer period is much higher.

531
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: There's no document that proves this, but it is clear

532
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: that the ultimate goal of this was an extermination campaign,

533
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: says Swaar. So it's not a feel good story. It's

534
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: not a field. Yeah, extermination campaigns rarely are a feel

535
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: good story. Yeah. That whole thing with the babies and

536
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: the rats, that's that's some would say. Some would say

537
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: that's negative information you're delivering. Yeah, it's not like it's

538
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: not like good to lock babies in dark rooms without

539
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: any adults until they're eaten by rats. It's like a

540
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: bad thing. I think. I think we're able to take

541
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: that stance, Sophie. Is that going to get us in

542
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: trouble with the advertisers? I don't really care. Okay, Well,

543
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: hopefully this show is not being advertised by Romanian orphanages

544
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties Romanian rat feed emporium. Yeah. Yeah,

545
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 1: if so, we're going to be in some trouble. But yeah,

546
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: keep the baby's coming. Um. Yeah, and why don't you

547
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: keep the money coming to our sponsors? Ah? What a

548
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 1: good time that money came baby. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff.

549
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:57,480
Speaker 1: I I I'm happy that we're we're getting paid by

550
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: the by that great product. Exactly, exactly good stuff. Um. So, yeah,

551
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:12,440
Speaker 1: we're talking about Chowchescu's orphan extermination facilities. Yeah, yeah, good times.

552
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: And I found a New York Times. Yeah, very very Cholley,

553
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: very cholle Um. I found a New York Times article

554
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: written after he was deposed, but like in kind of

555
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: the awkward period afterwards, when everyone's dealing with the the

556
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 1: consequences of all of his ship, and it provides additional context.

557
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: The children are left as they and this is the

558
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:35,600
Speaker 1: way the facilities kind of still were in the early nineties.

559
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: The children are left as they were during the Chochescu

560
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: era prisoners in their cribs, Romanian orphans that is estimated

561
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 1: received five to six minutes of attention a day. Attendant

562
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: still lull in the corridor, smoking and drinking coffee, leaving

563
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: the children to rock in their cots. As a result

564
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 1: of their troubled early lives. One in tent of the

565
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: children we will finish life in a psychiatric institution and

566
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: all will suffer severe trauma. Doctors without Borders said, and

567
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: it's Farewell report. That's a pretty blank yeah, and it's

568
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: Farewell report. It's the most ominous line there, and it's

569
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: we we got a bounce. We can't fix this, man,

570
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: this is fucked up. We'll see you guys in Hell Apparent. Yeah, yeah,

571
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: good luck Romania. Um, but it gets worse, Jeff, because

572
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: you know what, how could you make this worse? How?

573
00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: How could you make this story worse? I'll tell you

574
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: how you can make this story worse because it's the

575
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and it's the HIV virus. Well, you don't

576
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: have you don't have equipped for that one. Oh? I

577
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I have plenty, but I don't feel like

578
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: hearing the comments about that. Yeah that's probably recently. I

579
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: don't feel like having my good joke be destroyed by

580
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: commentersh yeah. Well, we're also going to talk about racism,

581
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: so that yeah, okay, good. So we're gonna talk about

582
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: the treatment of the czeches, SCOO regime of the Roma

583
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 1: and how it relates to all this. So in Romania,

584
00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: the Roman people are the largest single minority group in

585
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: the country. They're about ten to twelve percent of the population.

586
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: So question, now, when you say Roma, is that Romani. Yes, yes,

587
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 1: the Romany. Okay, so that's the same thing, okay, yes, yes, Um,

588
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: well yeah, we'll use Romani because that might make it well,

589
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's Romani Roma Romania, all of

590
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: the it's going to be a little bit u cumbersome

591
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: no matter how we we write it. So it's it's all.

592
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: It is what it is. It is what it is.

593
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: So while the Roma had lived traditionally on the move

594
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: kind of up until the modern period, although there's like

595
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens prior to kind of

596
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: the more democratic forms of government in Romania, like up

597
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: until like the late eighteen fifties, is it's super common

598
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: for Roman people to just be enslaved by the state,

599
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: like there's a there's a nasty obviously it's Roma and

600
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. The history is going to be unpleasant and oppressive. Um,

601
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: it's not. It's going to be good. They're treated the

602
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: way Europe also treated like choos. Yeah yeah, and right up,

603
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 1: like if they were like kind of hippies, Yeah, like

604
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: that's the way they were treated and they're not. They're

605
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,080
Speaker 1: not going to have a good history in your No, no,

606
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: it's going to be rough and in fact, as you said,

607
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:12,360
Speaker 1: they are treated in a lot of ways the way

608
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: that Jewish populations are, so they are subject to a

609
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 1: lot of the same kinds of programs, and they are

610
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: victims of the Holocaust as well. It's all across Europe,

611
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: but it's particularly true in Romania because there's a lot

612
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: more Roma in Romania. UM. So you know, when they

613
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 1: were not being enslaved or massacre, the Roma for most

614
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds lived the

615
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: way that they kind of traditionally did, which is on

616
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: the move, you know, as these kind of traveling groups

617
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 1: of people. UM. And this continued up until communism took

618
00:33:41,320 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: hold in uh In in Romania, UM, and they kind

619
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 1: of overtime the communists kind of pushed them to find

620
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,959
Speaker 1: more sort of settled areas to live. This starts as

621
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: them kind of building these more stable encampments on the

622
00:33:55,560 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 1: outskirts of major cities. UM. But they're often still kind

623
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: of like living in tents or these kind of like

624
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 1: shanty type buildings they put together. And this is kind

625
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 1: of like I know, probably broadly good that they have

626
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: the option more often for for for quality homes. During

627
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:11,760
Speaker 1: this period that's one of the achievements of the early

628
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,720
Speaker 1: communist state. As we'll talk about. There some problematic aspects

629
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,239
Speaker 1: to that too, um, but things do get a lot

630
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 1: better for them in the early years of communism. One

631
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: of the reasons why is that most Roman people in

632
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: Romania in this period are poor. They don't have any property, um,

633
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 1: and they often do not have access did not have

634
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 1: access to education. And in George you Day's Romania, those

635
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 1: are all qualifications, right, those that makes you a good proletarian, right, like, oh,

636
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:39,120
Speaker 1: you don't have any money, and you didn't go to

637
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: a fancy school, like yeah, you can have jobs from

638
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: the Communist party like that, you are exactly the kind

639
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,200
Speaker 1: of people that we want to see. Yeah, hell yeah,

640
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: come on in. And a number of towns in this

641
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: period they get that is literally how George you Day

642
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: handles a lot of stuff um. And a number of

643
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: towns in this period they get Roman mayors um, which

644
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,839
Speaker 1: had been basically unheard of before this time. UM. And

645
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:05,120
Speaker 1: Roma people become commonly well represented as like local Communist

646
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:08,040
Speaker 1: Party quadra leaders and as low level functionaries like there's

647
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: actually a really positive early period for the Roma in

648
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 1: communism where yeah, they're integrated into the power structure a

649
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: little bit, not never at the high levels, but at

650
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: kind of the lower levels of it um. But even

651
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: during this kind of positive period, there are some early

652
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: troubling signs. One of them is at the Communist Party

653
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately stops counting or listing the Roma as

654
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: a separate population within within the country. Now, again, if

655
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: you have just lived through the Holocaust, the fact that

656
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: the government is no longer counting you, you might be like, well,

657
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: this we this might work out. Okay, it's not great

658
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: when they're counting us. They usually don't do that for

659
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:47,959
Speaker 1: a good reason. I'd rather not have somebody with a clipboard. Yeah,

660
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:52,200
Speaker 1: looking at how many of us there are and where clipboard?

661
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:55,839
Speaker 1: Real quick? Yeah, it would be reasonable to feel good

662
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: about this. But what it kind of meant in this

663
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: case is that the Communist Party, obviously they don't want

664
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:03,320
Speaker 1: to do a physical genocide, but they don't want the

665
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,799
Speaker 1: Roma to exist as a distinct group within society. They

666
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: want to kind of erase them as a culture in

667
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: the process of integrating them into mass society um, which

668
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: is a thing they do not just do to the Roman.

669
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 1: That does not just occur in communist Romania. But it's

670
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: it's a thing. Um. It happens in a lot of places.

671
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,160
Speaker 1: It happens in many places, but we're talking about Romania.

672
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: So under Chowchescu's systematization is the process by which they

673
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,319
Speaker 1: are bulldozing these um these rural towns and forcing people

674
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:32,560
Speaker 1: into the cities. And another thing they do during this

675
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:36,360
Speaker 1: is they bulldoze these Roman neighborhoods um and the people. Obviously,

676
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: they're not just like making them homeless. Nobody is homeless

677
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: in Chowchescu's Romania. They're moving them into these new and

678
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: more modern developments. And in some ways this is positive

679
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:47,279
Speaker 1: because the homes that they had lived in previously were

680
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 1: not of good quality and we're often like somewhat dangerous,

681
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: and the homes they move into are are much better

682
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 1: quality and much safer. But when the government is moving them,

683
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: it isn't keeping these communities together. They're not like splitting

684
00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:05,120
Speaker 1: up like individual families, but they're not keeping these groups

685
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 1: that had traveled and lived together for generations together, and

686
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 1: that's kind of a soft ethnic cleansing. There's debate about this. Yeah,

687
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: I think the balance of what I'm reading suggests it's

688
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:25,279
Speaker 1: more accidental or just a byproduct of the way the

689
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 1: Communists felt about every group in the country. But there

690
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: are allegations, and there's reason to believe them that that

691
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 1: a significant amount of this was intentional because they also

692
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:37,479
Speaker 1: just saw it as potentially dangerous to have these people

693
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:40,439
Speaker 1: as a separate community. I'm not gonna be able to

694
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 1: give you like. Again, a lot of stuff is is

695
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: debated about this. Still, you are right that there are

696
00:37:46,360 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: benefits to having like a wall. Yes, yes, yes, this

697
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: is not all negative. It's like, but it's it also

698
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: you are they this is one of the things that's

699
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 1: occurring here is kind of the destruction of the community

700
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: that had existed previously. UM. Still, given how things had

701
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: gone prior to the eighties, it could be argued that

702
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:06,720
Speaker 1: the situation for Roma in Romania was in most ways

703
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: better than it had been for the last couple of

704
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: centuries in the area. But then, as we've been talking about,

705
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:17,160
Speaker 1: the economy and Romania collapses and Chicheski forces his vaunted

706
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: austerity measures on the populace. Now, the Roma had always

707
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: had larger families than most other people in Romania. UM.

708
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,240
Speaker 1: But prior to Chaocheski, Roma women had utilized pretty frequently

709
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: legal and safe abortions to aid in family planning. Um

710
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,719
Speaker 1: with abortion now illegal, families had more children than they

711
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: could afford to feed or take care of. Under Chichesko's

712
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 1: new regime, and so Roma families were forced to send

713
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: their children to state orphanages at the highest rates in

714
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: the country. And I'm gonna quote from an article in

715
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: the Open Society Foundation here. The results were a high

716
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: level of poverty and an increase and unwanted children. Romanian families,

717
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: which were already traditionally larged, also increased in size at

718
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: this time because even though birth control had never been

719
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: widely accepted, abortions were common among the Roma. Children of

720
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: all ethnicities were now being dropped off at railway stations

721
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: and churches, causing the population and orphanages to swell to

722
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 1: an unmanageable number. State institutions were forced to deal with

723
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 1: slash budgets. Hospitals resorted to reusing needles and other materials

724
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 1: that could be rinsed or quickly sterilized. Blood, however, was

725
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,080
Speaker 1: in large supply because donors were paid a small fee,

726
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:20,879
Speaker 1: so when the orphanage pantries were down to just powdered milk.

727
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: It seemed like a good idea to give the smallest

728
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 1: and weakest children whole blood transfusions under the theory that

729
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:30,319
Speaker 1: new blood would have more nutrients for their bodies to use. Now,

730
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 1: can you see how this could go vampires? Yeah, yeah,

731
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: well it is a little okay, it's a little vampire e.

732
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,279
Speaker 1: That's a little a little too on the nose as

733
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: far as your region is concerned. Yeah, it is a

734
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: bit of a thing. But can you see how maybe

735
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:50,640
Speaker 1: giving sickly orphan children blood transfusions in the nineteen eighties

736
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: could be a serious problem. They should have gotten like

737
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: power lift or blood. Yeah, they probably shouldn't have gotten

738
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,240
Speaker 1: much blood in the eighties because again the AIDS crisis

739
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:05,279
Speaker 1: is hidden. Um So there's a horrible health crisis as

740
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: a result of this. In Yeah, um so, only about

741
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,280
Speaker 1: twenty of the blood being donated in Romania is tested

742
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 1: for disease in nineteen because again budget cuts and the

743
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: person who's in charge of all of the chemistry related

744
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: things as Elena, and she doesn't really think you need

745
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 1: to test all that much of the blood. Um well,

746
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,720
Speaker 1: of course she's got her her advanced degree, and yeah,

747
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:32,600
Speaker 1: she she understands blood like, yeah, it's don't tell me

748
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:37,280
Speaker 1: my job. Yeah, blood is what you drink. Yes, this blood.

749
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 1: How do you say oil through body? So in in

750
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, the government reported just three cases of

751
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: HIV infection to the World Health Organization UM but in

752
00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:50,680
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine the next year, the number swelled to

753
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:53,719
Speaker 1: twelve hundred and nearly nine percent of those were in

754
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: children under four years of age. Sixty of them were

755
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 1: kids in orphanages, and all of them had had a

756
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 1: history of multiple trains fusions. This is the start of

757
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 1: a children's epidemic. Forty percent increase. Yeah, it is pretty rough.

758
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 1: And in all of these orphanages, like eight percent of

759
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: the children or roma, so it is. It is primarily

760
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 1: an AIDS crisis among forced or forcibly orphaned romani Roman children. Um.

761
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 1: So they need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Well,

762
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 1: that is hard to do when you were wasting away

763
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:29,880
Speaker 1: from a variety of AIDS related illnesses, when you were

764
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,719
Speaker 1: wasting away before the AIDS. And and also you have

765
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:38,200
Speaker 1: no access to bootstraps because sold to IA. Yeah. Yeah,

766
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:41,160
Speaker 1: Ikea is using them to make those horsemeat boss. Yeah,

767
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: horse is horsemeat and boot robbers very good. Somewhere around

768
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: eleven thousand Roman children are believed to have been infected

769
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,600
Speaker 1: with AIDS as a result of all this, compared with

770
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: around three thousand other Romanian orphans, which gives you an

771
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: idea of just how significant the scale of this was. Okay,

772
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 1: and I just yeah, it's because they made the plan

773
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,400
Speaker 1: to just instead of like feeding these kids properly, to

774
00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: just give them bonus blood. Give them bonus blood. It's

775
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: such a weird way that a large group of people

776
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: is getting HIV or or or full blown AIDS in

777
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: the case, because it's just like they're like, there's this

778
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 1: thing that nobody should ever be doing anyways, and see

779
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 1: how it goes in the middle of one of the

780
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: greatest epidemics in all of him in history. If AIDS

781
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: had never happened, and there was just the anecdote in

782
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: here that they were feeding orphans blood because there wasn't

783
00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: enough food, that would still be one of the worst

784
00:42:35,560 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 1: things I've ever read. It would be fucking weird. Is

785
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: what like, like this fucking weird what you do the

786
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: whole country? You don't need to do this, Yeah, why

787
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:47,760
Speaker 1: are you giving why are you feeding their baby bodies

788
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: blood you feel freaks, you monsters like, yeah, but it

789
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: was also AIDS blood. Yeah, that went from weird to

790
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 1: like fully sinister. And here's here's may The one of

791
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,880
Speaker 1: the bleak is obviously a huge number of these children

792
00:43:03,920 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 1: who get infect in the late eighties die fairly quickly

793
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: from it because there's very little in the way of

794
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 1: treatments for AIDS. But once the country gets liberated and

795
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: and sort of Western aid agencies come in in the

796
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 1: mid nineties and there's also some more treatments available. You're

797
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 1: better off in some ways being a Romanian orphan with

798
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 1: AIDS than you are being a Romanian orphan without AIDS,

799
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:28,799
Speaker 1: because there's more international funding to take care of the

800
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,960
Speaker 1: kids with AIDS, there's better group homes for them, and

801
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: they also because people start to get sympathetic to kids

802
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 1: who get AIDS through blood transfusions in the West, you're

803
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 1: more likely to get adopted out of the country. And

804
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:45,520
Speaker 1: so after chow Chesscoo falls, some of the luckiest orphans

805
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 1: are the AIDS orphans, which is there's an asterisk citation

806
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: needed real. Yeah, it's just like one of those things

807
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,319
Speaker 1: where like for an example of how bleak. This is

808
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: some kids were better off because they got aids in

809
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: Roman and orphanages. Like that is how bad the fucking

810
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: situation was. That's like, that's like winning the lottery at

811
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:11,200
Speaker 1: the asbestos factory. Yeah, and and the lottery prizes all

812
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: all of the leftover asbestos cigarettes. Um god, I could

813
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: go for an asbestos cigarette. It's just the normal ones

814
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: hurt my throat so much. You need a better filter,

815
00:44:22,760 --> 00:44:25,760
Speaker 1: you know. That's what everyone says about asbestos. I really

816
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 1: if we if we had the asbestos crisis today, I

817
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:33,240
Speaker 1: think with the way culture wars go in this country,

818
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: we would get rid of a lot of problem voters

819
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah, it would be called mesotheliorida at this time.

820
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:48,919
Speaker 1: That's that's eighty percent of a T shirt idea. Jeff's yeah,

821
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:51,839
Speaker 1: there is that that. You know what, That's fine, send

822
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: me money. Everybody, print it, print it. So as the

823
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 1: eighties dragged do a close. The whole Warsaw Pact is

824
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: enduring shortages of basic goods and political arrests. I'm sure

825
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: you all remember from like middle school or high school,

826
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 1: you know, Glass nost In pairs Stroika and the USSR

827
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: and Grbachov which are these These policies meant to kind

828
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: of open up the Soviet Union and relax it from

829
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: some hardline positions. Um. This is obviously praised in the West.

830
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: People are like, yeah, Glass nost In player Stroika, we're

831
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: not quite as close to nuking each other as we

832
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: used to be. But Chowchesku hates again, you never stops

833
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 1: being kind of a hardline Stalinist, and he publicly mocks

834
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 1: Glass nost In per Stroika, warning that easy to do

835
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:32,839
Speaker 1: from your palace, by the way, Yeah, yeah, exactly. When

836
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:35,800
Speaker 1: you have a palace, it's very easy to attack these ideas.

837
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: If I had a palace, I would talk so much ship.

838
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would never not be talking shit.

839
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:43,239
Speaker 1: The only time I wouldn't be talking ship is when

840
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 1: I am pouring boiling oil on the poor people gathered

841
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 1: below the parapets of my castle. Are you I would

842
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: be like, who's who's running? That's gonna keep me in

843
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,719
Speaker 1: the palace. I'm gonna vote for them, Yeah exactly. That

844
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:57,399
Speaker 1: is how people with palaces didn't to vote hence most

845
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: of the history of Europe. Um, So the USSR is

846
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,640
Speaker 1: doing this stuff, and and Chescu publicly mocks these new

847
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,399
Speaker 1: policies and and Gorbachev he announced that similar reforms would

848
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:12,760
Speaker 1: only come to Romania when pairs grew from apple trees.

849
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,359
Speaker 1: Now that's a weird thing to say, and I think

850
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: a bunch of students in Bucharest felt the same way,

851
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:22,359
Speaker 1: because a group of theater kids get so incensed by

852
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: this that they gather as many pairs as they could.

853
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:26,799
Speaker 1: And again, they're all hungry, so the fact that they're

854
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 1: using pairs for a protest is meaningful, and they hang

855
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: the they hang pairs from just trees in the capital

856
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: and mass as a sign of protest to be like, Okay,

857
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: you said, you said we'd get changed when there's pairs

858
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: growing from the tree, so we'll just make that happen. Um.

859
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 1: This does not go well with Chowchescu. He he takes this,

860
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:50,319
Speaker 1: he takes offense at this. And I'm gonna quote from

861
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: a writer an article in the Los Angeles Times. The

862
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:56,359
Speaker 1: taughts so infuriated Chessco that he ordered his security taught

863
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,320
Speaker 1: secret police to identify the perpetrators and attack the students

864
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: in their dormatory bories, killing many of them. Other students

865
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 1: took to the university square were more than a hundred

866
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,840
Speaker 1: were slaughtered that night. So that's a lot for a

867
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 1: college prank. Yeah, I mean I've seen worse, but m

868
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: hm yeah, not by much. Not not by much. It's

869
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: it's enough that you would have trouble making a good

870
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: John Landis movie about it. So, Jeff May, yeah, I've

871
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:29,880
Speaker 1: heard of him. Yeah, well you know what I've heard of, Jeff.

872
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: I would love to know the things that you've heard of,

873
00:47:33,440 --> 00:47:37,399
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. In fact,

874
00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: the only thing I hear is them. When I closed

875
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: my eyes at night, when I when I put on

876
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 1: my noise canceling here headphones, all I hear is the

877
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,439
Speaker 1: repeated sounds of the ads for this podcast. And now

878
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: you can have a piece of my eternal waking hell

879
00:47:53,680 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 1: for yourself right now. Ah, oh my god. That's such

880
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:05,799
Speaker 1: as effect right there, I'm going to be closing my

881
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 1: eyes and seeing these commercials in my head. That's how

882
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:10,319
Speaker 1: I live every day of my life, Jeff, I never

883
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 1: get to escape. But honestly, that's just called living in America, Baby,

884
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 1: Living in America. That was pretty good for baby. Pretty

885
00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: good song, Yeah, not great, pretty good. So it's a

886
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: passable song, Yeah, passable song. Acceptable song, much like my

887
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: collaboration with Destiny's Child. So if you can we play

888
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:37,160
Speaker 1: that again, getting a nail from selfie getting a wow. Well,

889
00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:47,640
Speaker 1: I guess that's Sophie's choice. Uh. Good times. So speaking

890
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:52,200
Speaker 1: of good times's good times are nearing an end by

891
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 1: the process by which was forcing villagers out of their

892
00:48:55,719 --> 00:49:00,320
Speaker 1: homes and into massive housing developments was not popular. People

893
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 1: do not like being forced out of their homes. Actually, Jeff,

894
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing that a lot of

895
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:08,439
Speaker 1: folks don't know about. People. Um. In nineteen eighties seven,

896
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: he announced that half of Romania's remaining thirteen thousand villages

897
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:14,840
Speaker 1: were going to be bulldozed and people were given forty

898
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:17,719
Speaker 1: eight hours to move. So half of the people who

899
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:19,840
Speaker 1: live in the country, you all have to leave your homes,

900
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: right the funk? Now? Um? Now, this is very unpopular

901
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 1: and it contributes to the protest movement against him. And

902
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,799
Speaker 1: while this is also happening internationally, his luck is running out.

903
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:32,919
Speaker 1: Because I don't know if you know about this, because

904
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: Gorbachev became a Pizza Hut spokesman and then kind of

905
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 1: a laughing stock and then shipped with Russia. Didn't go

906
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:41,439
Speaker 1: so great. Uh, In the post Soviet Union period either,

907
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: but back in during this period in the late eighties

908
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 1: when he's he's doing this glass nosest in perce Droika.

909
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: He is the dandy of Western media people not getting

910
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 1: enough of How much do you remember watching where they

911
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: were like Gorby Gorby, like that, like the Simpsons episode

912
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,919
Speaker 1: where where dude was in Mad magazine every month. Yeah,

913
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,759
Speaker 1: people fucking loved this guy because he had that that

914
00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: the birthmarket's firstingishable and he was just he was open

915
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 1: for all forms of it's of entertainment. He was just

916
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 1: people liked him over here. I remember that. Yeah, people

917
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 1: liked him. I've talked to my My parents are much

918
00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: more are very conservative. But one of the things that

919
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: my dad said about him that did make sense to me,

920
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: he's like, look, if you're growing up in the US

921
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:27,800
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and it's this constant drumbeat of

922
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:30,320
Speaker 1: we are going to have a nuclear exchange with Russia,

923
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: and then they finally have a guy who's like, now

924
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:36,240
Speaker 1: you know what, everything's gonna be cool. Like you feel

925
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 1: good about him, you know, you feel good to your

926
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 1: television program Funky Brewster. Yeah, everybody's feeling pretty good about this.

927
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 1: But the fact that everyone's feeling pretty good about Gorbachev

928
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,880
Speaker 1: means that what's the use of right, his whole value

929
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:53,920
Speaker 1: was the US and the Soviet Union are mortal enemies,

930
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: but here's this guy in their backyard who's willing to

931
00:50:56,320 --> 00:50:58,759
Speaker 1: work with us and like be part of a communist

932
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: power block. That's kind of posing sometimes Soviet policy. Now

933
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:05,719
Speaker 1: that the US and the Soviet Union are like becoming

934
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:08,719
Speaker 1: friendly with each other, he doesn't have any use to

935
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:11,880
Speaker 1: the United States. And you know what the United States does.

936
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 1: Two countries that we no longer have a use to,

937
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: we continue to support them. Yeah, we Yeah, that's exactly

938
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: what happens. We support them like we support all of

939
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:23,280
Speaker 1: our good friends that we no longer have a vested

940
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:28,319
Speaker 1: financial interest in. Um ask I don't know roughly half

941
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:30,400
Speaker 1: of the country's on Earth. How that works for them.

942
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:32,800
Speaker 1: Usually when that happens, we just throw Coca Cola in

943
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:36,759
Speaker 1: there to take care of the rest um. Nikolai's health

944
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 1: begins to decline during this period too. He's he's not

945
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: doing very well. Um He's less able to kind of

946
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: manage his own affairs, and Elena starts taking a more

947
00:51:45,520 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: and a more active role in governing, eventually becoming something

948
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 1: akin to the Regent of Romania. She creates a second

949
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:54,760
Speaker 1: shadow pullit bureau of her own to review all proposals

950
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: before they're brought to her husband Um, and she starts

951
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:01,080
Speaker 1: spending huge amounts of state resources exp banning the personality

952
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: culed around both of them. From an article by the

953
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:08,320
Speaker 1: Romanian Cultural Institute quote, the birthdays of the Chaochescus represented

954
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:11,880
Speaker 1: occasions for pompous ceremonies when the two geniuses were showered

955
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 1: with the numerable gifts. The range of accolades was extremely wide,

956
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 1: grandiose manifestations on stadiums which involved tens of thousands of people,

957
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:21,759
Speaker 1: a never ending stream of messages of gratitude, works of

958
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: prose and poetry written especially for the occasion, celebratory editions

959
00:52:25,520 --> 00:52:30,240
Speaker 1: of the national festival, the praise of Romania, hymns, odes, songs, dances,

960
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:33,520
Speaker 1: paintings and sculptures produced by armies of artists. The zealots

961
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 1: of the personality cult placed the dictator among the authentically

962
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:40,359
Speaker 1: great figures of Romanian history. Thus, Chowchescu shortly evolved from

963
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,520
Speaker 1: being just a hero to a hero among heroes, to

964
00:52:43,640 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: being the nation's hero, to being the most important hero

965
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:50,239
Speaker 1: of the nation's heroes. Painted portraits counted among the most

966
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 1: frequent and appreciated gifts offered to Nikolai Chauchescu and his wife.

967
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,879
Speaker 1: The party organizations would commission various artists to create them.

968
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 1: Depending on the budget, the artist was a household name

969
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 1: or a lesser known an artisan. The request could be

970
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:03,800
Speaker 1: for a painting in which Czechesko is pictured as a

971
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 1: defender of the piece, friend and mentor to all Romanians,

972
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: heir to the great forerunners and millennial ideals, the creator

973
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:14,360
Speaker 1: of the multilaterally developed socialist society. Other paintings would highlight

974
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:17,920
Speaker 1: the great scientific achievements of his poorly educated spouse, depicted

975
00:53:17,960 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: as a member of the Romanian Academy and a PhD

976
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:24,799
Speaker 1: in engineering with international scientific contributions. And she gets like

977
00:53:24,800 --> 00:53:28,000
Speaker 1: a British fancy British university gives her an honorary degree

978
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 1: because they get like strong armed into it. It's very funny.

979
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 1: You don't want to You don't want to be the

980
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: one that hands in a subpar painting. No imagine if

981
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: you show up and you're just like, I've worked really

982
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 1: hard on this, and that I did not like the

983
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: way my art well, it's very funny too, because if

984
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:47,360
Speaker 1: you look at these, I'm actually gonna share screens so

985
00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: you can see one of these fucking portraits. Um. Choochesco

986
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,279
Speaker 1: is usually portrayed kind of close to how he looks like.

987
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: It's slightly idealized, obviously, as as they always are. Um,

988
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:01,240
Speaker 1: it's slightly ideal eyes, but he just kind of looks

989
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:03,840
Speaker 1: like himself, you know, his hair and his face shape

990
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 1: is the same. He looks about the age that he is,

991
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:10,120
Speaker 1: kind of middle aged. Elena is almost exclusively portrayed in

992
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:14,879
Speaker 1: portraits as like a girl in her twenties. Yeah, like

993
00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 1: here checked this one out. Um, oh yeah, wow, it's

994
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:23,760
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it looks like his child bride.

995
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: She looks so young and that, Yeah, it is. It

996
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: is unsettling when like, Yeahku can be a man in

997
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 1: his sixties, but we gotta make his wife look twenty five. Um.

998
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's uh, that's the kind of you know

999
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:39,839
Speaker 1: art that that they would apparently made them happy. Um,

1000
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: it did not actually make the people who lived in

1001
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:45,879
Speaker 1: Romania happy, and they protested against the cult of personality,

1002
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,839
Speaker 1: against the constant austerity, and against most like kind of

1003
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:52,720
Speaker 1: the last big thing people protest is this forced push

1004
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:55,319
Speaker 1: to destroy half the villages in the country and make

1005
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: people move to the cities. And one of the people

1006
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 1: who protest, people are just going to complain about any thing,

1007
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:03,359
Speaker 1: aren't they. I know, I know, it's it's unreasonable. Um

1008
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:05,400
Speaker 1: do you have the snow flakes? Sophie and I have

1009
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: the same problem with our employees at cool Zone. They

1010
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:09,560
Speaker 1: hate it when we forced them to leave their homes

1011
00:55:09,600 --> 00:55:11,919
Speaker 1: and destroy them with pick axes in order to move

1012
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,359
Speaker 1: to insular apartment blocks in the cities that they can

1013
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: work in our factories making low quality televisions. We just

1014
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:22,120
Speaker 1: don't understand why they're playing so much. Garrison just does

1015
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:26,560
Speaker 1: not stop with it anyway, endless. So one of the

1016
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:29,880
Speaker 1: people who protests in Romania is a traveling and tenerant

1017
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 1: preacher named Laslow Tokes. Laslow refused to leave his home

1018
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,560
Speaker 1: when he was evicted, you know, basically this village he's in,

1019
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: Timissoura Cichesko is like, you gotta get the funk out,

1020
00:55:41,680 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: I'm going to destroy it. Everybody's moving to the city,

1021
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 1: and Tokes is like the fuck. Also, it is spelled

1022
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,359
Speaker 1: Laslow Tokes, as in if he was like a pot icon.

1023
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a pretty cool name. Actually,

1024
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: today he would have a podcast called Laslow Tokes where

1025
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:01,719
Speaker 1: he where he reviews different Romanian strains. Um, he would

1026
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: be super big on the Joe Rogan Hour four Hours. Um.

1027
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,560
Speaker 1: So he actually is a very cool guy. Um. He's

1028
00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:11,879
Speaker 1: so he's he's like, fuck you, I'm not leaving my home,

1029
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:14,480
Speaker 1: and soldiers and police bear down on the town of

1030
00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 1: tim Asura. Because he starts getting like attention from people,

1031
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:20,759
Speaker 1: this movement forms around him, and he's like, you know,

1032
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:22,839
Speaker 1: when all the cops show up, he's like, don't get

1033
00:56:22,920 --> 00:56:25,279
Speaker 1: arrested for me. You should go home. And all of

1034
00:56:25,320 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 1: the people who have gathered are like, you know what, No,

1035
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:30,280
Speaker 1: we're not gonna abandon you to get arrested by the police.

1036
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:33,839
Speaker 1: Fuck these guys, we have to take a stand at

1037
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 1: some point. And they do, and so the security forces

1038
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: firewater cannons into the crowd. Um that disperses most of

1039
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: the people and they're able to rush in and grab

1040
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: Laslow and they beat him half to death and they

1041
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:47,360
Speaker 1: drag him out of his home. Now, this is the

1042
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:49,920
Speaker 1: kind of thing we talked about that peasants uprising when

1043
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 1: that dude got hit in the face with a fucking rock.

1044
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:54,879
Speaker 1: This short sort of ship again had happened all over

1045
00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: Romania to a bunch of people for years, but this

1046
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 1: time and the way that these things happened, it ignited

1047
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:05,719
Speaker 1: something uncontrollable. Protests erupt in response to the beating of Laslow,

1048
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:08,239
Speaker 1: and they erupt in Timisoura, and then they spread to

1049
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:11,080
Speaker 1: the surrounding areas, and in very short order it becomes

1050
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 1: clear the securitt does not have the manpower to repress this.

1051
00:57:15,560 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 1: And you know, initially, yeah, boy, they sure don't do.

1052
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: Every secret police not Yeah, they that is the case

1053
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: always with the secret Republican Guard do in Iraq. Yeah, great,

1054
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:35,200
Speaker 1: that's why Saddam Hussein is enjoying his like ninety birthday.

1055
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:37,320
Speaker 1: Uh this was, by the way, shout out to friends

1056
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,360
Speaker 1: of the pods. Saddam um any I don't know what

1057
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,440
Speaker 1: to take that king. Yeah, So the Securitat gets overwhelmed

1058
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 1: very quickly. Chesco and Alina at first they don't kind

1059
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 1: of recognize how serious the situation is, and then they're like, well,

1060
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 1: why don't you just start killing people, Just start firing

1061
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: into crowds, and the securitat is like we have been

1062
00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:58,160
Speaker 1: doing that the entire time, and it is not working

1063
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: that people. It's like trying to take a bucket at

1064
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 1: the beach, trying to throw the water back in. Well,

1065
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: we have problems, we have we are shooting into crowds,

1066
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 1: but people have no fear of death because you have

1067
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: mismanaged country so grievously. Are you aware of events? Technic? Yeah,

1068
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:21,680
Speaker 1: it turns out thousands of orphans with AIDS. He's more

1069
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 1: frightening than our bullets. We are. Um, the military, who

1070
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:32,160
Speaker 1: had the ability, presumably to have put down this uprising

1071
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: are also just kind of do the thing that often

1072
00:58:34,760 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: happens with militaries. Were like enough of them are like, well,

1073
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 1: for one thing, I don't want to murder my own

1074
00:58:39,000 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 1: family members, And for another thing, this doesn't look good.

1075
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if we want to like back up

1076
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 1: the securit toad. Guys, maybe we sit this. Obviously there's

1077
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:48,919
Speaker 1: places where the military cracks down, but there's enough places

1078
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: where the military is like, we're just gonna wait this

1079
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 1: one out that the movement is able to really gain steam. Um,

1080
00:58:56,480 --> 00:58:58,680
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a little yeah, I mean, and it's

1081
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:01,880
Speaker 1: obviously like the military. As with in Germany, the military

1082
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:06,240
Speaker 1: had been complicit in some pretty horrible things. But they

1083
00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:08,360
Speaker 1: now that they see that, like, oh, we might have

1084
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: to we might not be able to put a lid

1085
00:59:10,080 --> 00:59:13,680
Speaker 1: back on this thing. They they they decide they have

1086
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: principled objections to the chow Chesscu regime um, much like

1087
00:59:18,080 --> 00:59:22,360
Speaker 1: the principled resistors in the Wehrmacht. UM. So Nikolai organized

1088
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 1: as a speech to be delivered from the same balcony

1089
00:59:24,520 --> 00:59:26,920
Speaker 1: that he'd spoken from a nineteen sixty eight You know

1090
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:29,640
Speaker 1: that big that was, That was his big moment. Uh.

1091
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:32,320
Speaker 1: It was a good time for him this time trying

1092
00:59:32,360 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 1: to reprise his his his big moment does not go well.

1093
00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:40,440
Speaker 1: As Paul Kenyon describes in Children of the Night, was

1094
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:43,160
Speaker 1: one minute and seventeen seconds into his address when he

1095
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 1: heard yells from somewhere in the back. Such an intervention

1096
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:49,000
Speaker 1: was unprecedented. He glanced up and stumbled over his words.

1097
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:52,840
Speaker 1: Considering it is, he began losing his way. The yells

1098
00:59:52,880 --> 00:59:56,880
Speaker 1: became louder. Considering it is, cheers and whistles echoed around

1099
00:59:56,880 --> 00:59:59,840
Speaker 1: the square. Churchesco never finished his sentence. He did not

1100
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,680
Speaker 1: have to his audience was never there for his oratory.

1101
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: It was a moment frozen in time and in history.

1102
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:07,840
Speaker 1: Chowchesko stood with his mouth half open and his forehead

1103
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: creased with confusion. And you can see this moment. You

1104
01:00:10,720 --> 01:00:14,040
Speaker 1: can watch him realize like, oh God, I've lost control.

1105
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,480
Speaker 1: They're not scared of me anymore, and I no longer

1106
01:00:16,520 --> 01:00:18,960
Speaker 1: have the power to stop them. Yeah, and he has

1107
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 1: no improv skill and he's got no ember. Yeah, he

1108
01:00:21,520 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 1: doesn't even have a tight five ready to kind of

1109
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:28,240
Speaker 1: get the crowd back. I can't imagine Chowchesky like doing

1110
01:00:28,240 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 1: the Bill Hicks where he just starts rolling around on

1111
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: his back shouting about how everyone needs to be killed. Um,

1112
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:40,919
Speaker 1: that's one way to deal with Heckler's certainly. Yeah. Cho's

1113
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 1: way of dealing with Heckler's is having his military form

1114
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:47,400
Speaker 1: of ring of steel around the Capitol building and repeatedly

1115
01:00:47,400 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: shoot at everybody who gets close. Um, this does not

1116
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:53,080
Speaker 1: work out well. And I should note the architects of

1117
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: that that that Heckling was not entirely organic. It was

1118
01:00:56,360 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: part of a protest campaign who was led by those

1119
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:01,680
Speaker 1: theaters to who had had a bunch of their friends

1120
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:07,320
Speaker 1: massacred for the pair thing. They took improv classes. They

1121
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:10,160
Speaker 1: took improv and they knew how to heckle. Yeah, the

1122
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:13,200
Speaker 1: kids know how to handle a stage experience like that,

1123
01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:17,320
Speaker 1: and they do it very very well. The last good

1124
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 1: thing theater kids ever did it that this is this

1125
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: is also the case. Um, there's a lot to say

1126
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:25,960
Speaker 1: about Romanian politics and the failures theater kids had in

1127
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:30,280
Speaker 1: the anyway, whatever, that's a story for another day. Cesco

1128
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:33,200
Speaker 1: was effectively chased from the stage, and protests around the

1129
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 1: capitol swelled, and of course security forces get overwhelmed, and

1130
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:39,640
Speaker 1: by the next day it becomes clear like we're not

1131
01:01:39,680 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: going to be able to hold onto the capitol building.

1132
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:44,920
Speaker 1: And in fact, Nikolai and Alina barely escape a mob,

1133
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: Like they get into the helicopter just like seconds away

1134
01:01:49,080 --> 01:01:51,480
Speaker 1: from being pulled into a crowd of people who probably

1135
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 1: would not have made that a pleasant experience for them. Yeah,

1136
01:01:55,560 --> 01:01:58,680
Speaker 1: they have to abandon the capital, and they like the

1137
01:01:58,760 --> 01:02:01,480
Speaker 1: pilot there with soon as because the pilots just like

1138
01:02:01,520 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 1: you know, some guy in the Romanian military who gets

1139
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:05,800
Speaker 1: called in and he's like, wow, these protests look bad

1140
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:08,240
Speaker 1: as shit. I wonder what they want before and then

1141
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:10,000
Speaker 1: he winds up with the boss and his wife and

1142
01:02:10,040 --> 01:02:12,160
Speaker 1: no one else on the helicopter as a mob takes

1143
01:02:12,200 --> 01:02:14,360
Speaker 1: the capital. So this guy is like, I don't want

1144
01:02:14,360 --> 01:02:16,840
Speaker 1: to be doing this, and he's like, I I do

1145
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:18,800
Speaker 1: not want to be with these folks. This is not

1146
01:02:18,880 --> 01:02:20,760
Speaker 1: going to end well for me. He's like, this is

1147
01:02:20,800 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: either going to be very good for me very very

1148
01:02:24,040 --> 01:02:27,520
Speaker 1: bad for me. So he basically does the trouble with

1149
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 1: the helicopter. I gotta put you guys down, but don't worry.

1150
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 1: Once I let you out, I'll let you out near

1151
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: an army base and then I gotta I'm gonna go

1152
01:02:34,880 --> 01:02:38,560
Speaker 1: get another helicopter and I'll be right back and we'll

1153
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:43,720
Speaker 1: we'll take care of you. Don't worry, guys. Yeah, it's

1154
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:48,080
Speaker 1: a very funny story. He absolutely makes the the right

1155
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: calculation in the moment. So it's also very funny to

1156
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:56,000
Speaker 1: notice that this is in late December in Romania. Yeah, yeah,

1157
01:02:56,080 --> 01:02:58,600
Speaker 1: they are. He has just leaves two old people by

1158
01:02:58,600 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: the side of the road and it's by so out

1159
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:09,800
Speaker 1: of here. They wind up getting to a military base

1160
01:03:09,880 --> 01:03:11,920
Speaker 1: and are like, this will be our new capital and

1161
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:14,440
Speaker 1: we will, you know, retake the country with these forces.

1162
01:03:14,480 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: And the military is like, we might have a note

1163
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:20,600
Speaker 1: or two on that one, but why don't we lock

1164
01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 1: you in an armored vehicle for a little while? Um,

1165
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:28,400
Speaker 1: and and you can sleep there. Uh. And then they

1166
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 1: wake them up kind of after a little while in

1167
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 1: here um and the church excuse see that they're that

1168
01:03:33,680 --> 01:03:36,560
Speaker 1: like their military chief of staff is there, the guy

1169
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:38,680
Speaker 1: who would help them escape in the helicopter, And they're like,

1170
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:41,080
Speaker 1: oh good, you made it out too, And he's like,

1171
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: now you're all gonna be on you both are going

1172
01:03:43,080 --> 01:03:46,120
Speaker 1: to be on trial for crimes against humanity and genocide. Surprise.

1173
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:50,080
Speaker 1: At that point in time, he probably was like, hey, guys,

1174
01:03:50,120 --> 01:03:53,240
Speaker 1: like a good news and bad Yeah. The good news

1175
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:58,840
Speaker 1: is I he got everyone to back off. The news

1176
01:03:58,960 --> 01:04:03,440
Speaker 1: is we're gonna we're gonna shoot you. We're gonna pretty bad.

1177
01:04:03,480 --> 01:04:05,400
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna have us a show trial. And

1178
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:08,200
Speaker 1: it is. It's one of those things. You can watch this.

1179
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: I recommend watching the footage of Choku giving that speech

1180
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: in realizing he has lost control of the country. I've

1181
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:18,600
Speaker 1: also watched the footage of them being executed, because that's

1182
01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 1: what's happened, what happens next and could not see it yeah,

1183
01:04:22,280 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: how could you not see it? And if you want

1184
01:04:23,720 --> 01:04:25,760
Speaker 1: to see a dictator and his wife who is also

1185
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:29,320
Speaker 1: a dictator get gunned down, I don't know. There is

1186
01:04:29,360 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 1: an element of it that's cathartic. I certainly get why

1187
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 1: you would feel that way if you were Romanian. It's

1188
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:36,000
Speaker 1: important to recognize the people doing this. I mean, the

1189
01:04:36,040 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 1: soldiers doing this are just like kids. But the the adults,

1190
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: like the the leadership of Romania who make the decision

1191
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:44,920
Speaker 1: to give him the show trial and execute him, are

1192
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 1: not doing this for justice. They're doing this because maybe

1193
01:04:48,280 --> 01:04:51,800
Speaker 1: we don't get killed if we shoot boss. Right. Maybe

1194
01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: you delivered that almost sheepishly. You're like, I need you

1195
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:00,880
Speaker 1: to know these people weren't revolution reads that were behind

1196
01:05:00,880 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 1: this guy two days ago. No, they're trying not to

1197
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:06,760
Speaker 1: get killed, and like, are you scared? As ship? That

1198
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 1: has to be Like that conversation absolutely happened the guys probably.

1199
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:12,280
Speaker 1: He's like, why are you doing this? He's like, dude,

1200
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill me. Do you know how angry they are?

1201
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:19,280
Speaker 1: Like you're clearly getting killed. I don't know how you

1202
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:22,920
Speaker 1: don't understand that I might not get killed and all

1203
01:05:22,960 --> 01:05:24,720
Speaker 1: I have to do is do the thing that is

1204
01:05:24,880 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 1: definitely gonna happen to even way. Yeah and on Christmas, no,

1205
01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:33,040
Speaker 1: and yeah, it happens Christmas day nine and they get

1206
01:05:33,120 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 1: gunned down by by their own soldiers and they were

1207
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:40,400
Speaker 1: caught by like on the two right, Like, yeah, it's

1208
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:42,840
Speaker 1: very quick, like they spend a lot of time in

1209
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:45,320
Speaker 1: lock up. This is a a what we refer to

1210
01:05:45,400 --> 01:05:49,840
Speaker 1: in America as a quick and speedy trials. Yeah, this

1211
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:53,960
Speaker 1: is this is they do rommate. The new regime institutes

1212
01:05:54,000 --> 01:05:56,480
Speaker 1: itself by en sharing the right to a speedy trial

1213
01:05:56,560 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 1: for Nikolai more like habeas corpse. That is how this

1214
01:06:02,640 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: all ends, and that is the life of Chescu and Nikolai,

1215
01:06:07,080 --> 01:06:11,840
Speaker 1: and it is they do like, look, they absolutely deserve

1216
01:06:11,920 --> 01:06:15,560
Speaker 1: to be shot, and they absolutely deserve to be shot unceremoniously.

1217
01:06:16,040 --> 01:06:18,640
Speaker 1: That part's fine. It's just a lot of the people

1218
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:21,440
Speaker 1: having them shot also probably should have been shot themselves.

1219
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:27,080
Speaker 1: But hey, in't that always the case? I mean yeah, yeah,

1220
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:30,480
Speaker 1: some would say broadly speaking, this is about as well

1221
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,080
Speaker 1: as a story if a dictator ever ends and Romania,

1222
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:36,040
Speaker 1: you know, obviously they're in a bad position when he falls.

1223
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:41,600
Speaker 1: The next decade and change are challenging, but this is

1224
01:06:41,600 --> 01:06:44,400
Speaker 1: one of those cases where revolution comes and the government

1225
01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 1: that replaces it things get a shipload better. It is

1226
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 1: much better to be in Romania now than it wasn't

1227
01:06:49,880 --> 01:06:52,720
Speaker 1: under Ku in the eighties. I don't think anyone would

1228
01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: disagree with that. I would like to add to that,

1229
01:06:55,080 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 1: like when you think about like Christmas, it's just like, oh,

1230
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:00,280
Speaker 1: I got a game Boy and they're like, yeah, got

1231
01:07:00,600 --> 01:07:03,920
Speaker 1: we we got a dead ruler. Yeah we did have

1232
01:07:03,960 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: a game but the not we've boy. Um, so yeah,

1233
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:11,600
Speaker 1: that's that's that's good. Things do get a lot better.

1234
01:07:11,680 --> 01:07:13,920
Speaker 1: And it's like again it is we are I'm not

1235
01:07:13,920 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 1: gonna we don't have the time to talk about the

1236
01:07:15,960 --> 01:07:19,680
Speaker 1: last thirty years or so of Romanian history since all this,

1237
01:07:20,240 --> 01:07:22,880
Speaker 1: But one of the things that has increasingly happened, you know,

1238
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:26,120
Speaker 1: especially after the kind of immediate chaos of the fall

1239
01:07:26,160 --> 01:07:29,080
Speaker 1: of the regime, is there have been an ongoing series

1240
01:07:29,120 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 1: of prosecutions against people who committed crimes, people who worked

1241
01:07:32,560 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 1: with a secure tat, people who were responsible for the

1242
01:07:35,120 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 1: repression apparatus. And I don't know, again, there's actually there's

1243
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:41,960
Speaker 1: a good obviously plenty of criticisms of how that process

1244
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:43,520
Speaker 1: has gone down, but if you're kind of looking at

1245
01:07:43,560 --> 01:07:48,680
Speaker 1: the broad history of revolutions that replace dictatorships one of

1246
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:52,479
Speaker 1: the better jobs of holding people to account, which again

1247
01:07:52,520 --> 01:07:55,919
Speaker 1: doesn't mean perfect, but things are better a lot better

1248
01:07:55,960 --> 01:07:58,040
Speaker 1: in Romania. This is a this is a revolution that

1249
01:07:58,080 --> 01:08:00,520
Speaker 1: things get a lot better after. I would like to

1250
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:04,880
Speaker 1: add to that. Um, you mentioned Laslow Tokes like he

1251
01:08:05,040 --> 01:08:09,560
Speaker 1: was active in politics. Yeah for a while, like that,

1252
01:08:09,920 --> 01:08:14,360
Speaker 1: dude was working for podcasting. Yeah, he's go we gotta

1253
01:08:14,400 --> 01:08:18,040
Speaker 1: get that podcast. Oh yeah, Sophie, Uh, let's reach out

1254
01:08:18,080 --> 01:08:20,280
Speaker 1: to Laslow Tokes and see if we can get him,

1255
01:08:20,439 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 1: get him to review marijuana for us. Sure, yeah, I

1256
01:08:24,720 --> 01:08:26,519
Speaker 1: bet you could be like, hey, do you want to

1257
01:08:27,560 --> 01:08:33,240
Speaker 1: He's seventy, He's got plenty of podcasting years left. You

1258
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:37,559
Speaker 1: reach out his Wikipedia now. In two thousand and ten,

1259
01:08:37,680 --> 01:08:41,200
Speaker 1: his wife filed for divorce and accused him of numerous

1260
01:08:41,200 --> 01:08:44,160
Speaker 1: affairs and absurd habits, and I kind of want to

1261
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:47,920
Speaker 1: know what the habits. Sorry, he's token, baby, he's token. Yeah,

1262
01:08:47,920 --> 01:08:53,040
Speaker 1: he's taking absurdly smokes. Yeah, that's why they call him

1263
01:08:53,120 --> 01:09:01,120
Speaker 1: Laslow Tokes. Uh so yeah, cool guy, um ish, Probably,

1264
01:09:01,520 --> 01:09:03,400
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you I expected him to look a

1265
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: lot more widely than he shows up in photos. Yeah,

1266
01:09:07,479 --> 01:09:14,960
Speaker 1: he looks like a dude, yep. Um, So I don't know. Um,

1267
01:09:15,120 --> 01:09:18,040
Speaker 1: I actually think he's pretty far right. But whatever, what

1268
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:20,800
Speaker 1: what what what are you gonna do? Um? What are

1269
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:23,760
Speaker 1: you gonna do? It's it's funny because like when you

1270
01:09:23,800 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 1: look at it and you look at like how the

1271
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:30,120
Speaker 1: Soviet Bloc collapse, and you're like, Christmas, that fits the timeline,

1272
01:09:30,400 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: But you look at like what the finish was and

1273
01:09:32,520 --> 01:09:34,599
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is a lot different than how.

1274
01:09:35,880 --> 01:09:38,599
Speaker 1: That's the thing. It's it's very interesting because the collapse

1275
01:09:38,640 --> 01:09:40,800
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union, for all of the things that

1276
01:09:40,840 --> 01:09:43,880
Speaker 1: are ugly about it, this does not happen anywhere else.

1277
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:47,160
Speaker 1: And nowhere else do you have like the people overthrow

1278
01:09:47,200 --> 01:09:50,360
Speaker 1: the government and massacre the leader. Um, that's just like

1279
01:09:50,439 --> 01:09:53,360
Speaker 1: not a thing that occurs like in in the USSR

1280
01:09:53,439 --> 01:09:56,639
Speaker 1: and any of the other places. Um, it only happens

1281
01:09:56,640 --> 01:09:59,200
Speaker 1: in Romania. And that's because of the kind of piece

1282
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: of ship. The church. Escu was Okay, well, let's not

1283
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:07,000
Speaker 1: go too far. Yeah, you're right, you're right. I don't

1284
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:10,120
Speaker 1: want me to be rude about it. Offended. The Chowchesco

1285
01:10:10,160 --> 01:10:15,320
Speaker 1: stands in the audience, who are so sorry he didn't standards. Yeah,

1286
01:10:15,520 --> 01:10:19,200
Speaker 1: nobody's perfect. Robert Chowchesco did his best. He did his

1287
01:10:19,280 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: chow best. Yeah that's probably good, probably, Yeah, no, no no, no,

1288
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:27,400
Speaker 1: he wouldn't you know, Yeah, sorry, sorry, he wasn't woke

1289
01:10:27,479 --> 01:10:34,080
Speaker 1: enough for you. Yeah, because he massacred all those people. Yeah, exactly.

1290
01:10:34,520 --> 01:10:38,599
Speaker 1: Cancel culture comes for the man who created history's greatest

1291
01:10:38,680 --> 01:10:43,960
Speaker 1: orphan in orphan crisis. Purity politics much, Yeah, geez let

1292
01:10:44,000 --> 01:10:47,719
Speaker 1: he who has not accidentally and or purposefully infected tens

1293
01:10:47,720 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: of thousands of babies with AIDS in the ages cast

1294
01:10:50,400 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: the first Stone. I can't believe all of these woke

1295
01:10:53,040 --> 01:10:56,439
Speaker 1: skulds coming out and saying they never gave eleven thousand

1296
01:10:56,560 --> 01:11:00,080
Speaker 1: children AIDS because they starved them, and where us and

1297
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:03,280
Speaker 1: blood transfusions to try and provide them with nutrients? Well,

1298
01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:07,400
Speaker 1: among us hasn't partially starved an entire populace. That's exactly

1299
01:11:07,439 --> 01:11:10,840
Speaker 1: what Jesus said. Yeah, yeah, the Loaves and Fishes was

1300
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:12,800
Speaker 1: about taking a little bit of a loaf and fish

1301
01:11:12,840 --> 01:11:15,680
Speaker 1: away from everybody. Yeah, exactly, a little bit less so

1302
01:11:15,720 --> 01:11:19,559
Speaker 1: that you can live in a palace, Yes, Christian palace,

1303
01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:24,880
Speaker 1: a Christian palace anyway, Um, Laslow tokes you actually sound

1304
01:11:24,920 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 1: like you're kind of a weird right winger. But if

1305
01:11:27,479 --> 01:11:31,960
Speaker 1: you want to do a marijuana focus podcast, hit us up. Uh,

1306
01:11:32,000 --> 01:11:36,719
Speaker 1: that seems like a thing our audience would like. Yeah,

1307
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:39,240
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, he seems like he get milkshake

1308
01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:42,400
Speaker 1: duct real fast as we It does seem like we

1309
01:11:42,479 --> 01:11:46,200
Speaker 1: in live for milkshake ductive a little bit. We're like,

1310
01:11:46,439 --> 01:11:48,680
Speaker 1: this is the real enemy of my enemy situation. And

1311
01:11:48,680 --> 01:11:54,920
Speaker 1: then you see that was more like the Taliban rama. Yeah. Um, yes,

1312
01:11:55,280 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 1: so I don't know. You know what I'm thinking about

1313
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:01,240
Speaker 1: now that you brought up Rambo. Why did we never

1314
01:12:01,280 --> 01:12:08,200
Speaker 1: make Sylvester Stallone a governor? M because he wasn't a predator? Oh,

1315
01:12:08,240 --> 01:12:11,519
Speaker 1: you're right. Well, like, sorry, dude, that's a pre wreck.

1316
01:12:11,880 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 1: That's like the fifteenth Amendment. I'm gonna guess is that. Yeah,

1317
01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:19,519
Speaker 1: governors have to have been this post episode has gone on.

1318
01:12:21,680 --> 01:12:25,680
Speaker 1: Oh I'm well sorry, we're adding color. Yeah, why why

1319
01:12:25,720 --> 01:12:27,519
Speaker 1: don't you Why don't you? Why don't you plug your plug?

1320
01:12:27,520 --> 01:12:29,840
Speaker 1: Doubles Jeff Row, I don't even know if I want

1321
01:12:29,880 --> 01:12:32,080
Speaker 1: to anymore. It's it's not fun now, Um, it is

1322
01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:35,920
Speaker 1: fun to talk about myself. So Hey, my name is

1323
01:12:35,960 --> 01:12:38,680
Speaker 1: Jeff May. You can find me across social media at

1324
01:12:38,720 --> 01:12:40,640
Speaker 1: Hey There, Jeff Row. If you want to see me

1325
01:12:40,680 --> 01:12:43,799
Speaker 1: perform live if you are in California the second Friday

1326
01:12:43,840 --> 01:12:46,360
Speaker 1: of every month in Burbank at Blast from the Past

1327
01:12:46,400 --> 01:12:48,559
Speaker 1: on Magnolia, I do a show called Mint on Card,

1328
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 1: a lot of fun comedy in a toy store. If

1329
01:12:51,040 --> 01:12:53,439
Speaker 1: you were in New England, I will be there the

1330
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:56,360
Speaker 1: twenty second of February. That's coming up real soon, folks

1331
01:12:56,880 --> 01:13:00,760
Speaker 1: at the Redemption Rock Brewery in Western Massachusetts that Wednesday,

1332
01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:04,000
Speaker 1: the twenty second. Uh if And when you want to

1333
01:13:04,000 --> 01:13:06,000
Speaker 1: hear more of me and podcasting, I do a great

1334
01:13:06,000 --> 01:13:08,360
Speaker 1: show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, which you can get

1335
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:12,799
Speaker 1: for free everywhere or at patreon dot com slash Jeff May.

1336
01:13:12,920 --> 01:13:16,120
Speaker 1: That's seven letters, and you can get early access to

1337
01:13:16,160 --> 01:13:19,160
Speaker 1: uncensraed episodes with bonus content, as well as monthly shows

1338
01:13:19,160 --> 01:13:22,320
Speaker 1: like ug Fine. You can also hear uh Nerd with

1339
01:13:22,400 --> 01:13:24,799
Speaker 1: Drey Alvarez, which is a deep dive into nerd stuff,

1340
01:13:24,960 --> 01:13:26,800
Speaker 1: which you can also get that one for free as well.

1341
01:13:27,360 --> 01:13:29,839
Speaker 1: You can also hear UH Tom and Jeff watch Batman

1342
01:13:29,960 --> 01:13:32,680
Speaker 1: with Tom Ryman on the Game Fully Unemployed Network, and

1343
01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:34,519
Speaker 1: you can also hear me on you Don't Even Like

1344
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:38,120
Speaker 1: Sports and Unpopular Opinion, both on the Unpopped Network with

1345
01:13:38,160 --> 01:13:42,040
Speaker 1: Adam Todd Brown. Wow there is Do you see how

1346
01:13:42,040 --> 01:13:44,400
Speaker 1: I just click into that plug thing? No, you did.

1347
01:13:44,479 --> 01:13:48,040
Speaker 1: You were incredible. You were like a Romanian mob taking

1348
01:13:48,040 --> 01:13:51,120
Speaker 1: over the palace. Um. I did throw a rock while

1349
01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:54,800
Speaker 1: I said that. Yeah, you did that a lot during podcasting,

1350
01:13:54,920 --> 01:13:58,040
Speaker 1: and I salute you for it. Well, there's nothing left

1351
01:13:58,080 --> 01:14:01,640
Speaker 1: for me to do but play us out, Sophie. Why

1352
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:03,960
Speaker 1: don't we Why don't we queue up my my track again?

1353
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:09,320
Speaker 1: All right, one more, one more time, just just to

1354
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 1: make you one more time for the road, everybody. Pretty

1355
01:14:16,200 --> 01:14:33,120
Speaker 1: good musicians at Destiny's Child, at Destiny's Okay to do that?

1356
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:36,479
Speaker 1: You know, we did that all in one take. I

1357
01:14:36,600 --> 01:14:44,240
Speaker 1: like Daandle's creativeness and like, all right there and there

1358
01:14:44,240 --> 01:14:48,519
Speaker 1: my favorite part. You are from Boston. I may be

1359
01:14:48,600 --> 01:14:52,719
Speaker 1: home there and I will Boston. Thank you, Thank you, Jeff.

1360
01:14:52,840 --> 01:14:56,000
Speaker 1: You all sound like my friend Robert. Yeah, thank you

1361
01:14:56,080 --> 01:14:59,439
Speaker 1: for getting the word out. All right, all right bye,

1362
01:14:59,560 --> 01:15:05,320
Speaker 1: listen on that's the Jeff chess Good podcast. Behind the

1363
01:15:05,360 --> 01:15:08,320
Speaker 1: Bastards is a production of cool zone Media. For more

1364
01:15:08,360 --> 01:15:11,280
Speaker 1: from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media

1365
01:15:11,479 --> 01:15:14,120
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the I Heart

1366
01:15:14,200 --> 01:15:17,200
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.