Saparmurat Niyazov, the Turkmen dictator who declared himself Jesus, transformed his nation through an extreme personality cult, renaming currency and erecting gold statues while demanding a 33% cut of foreign investments. He replaced movie theaters with a single puppet theater to prevent foreign influence and published The Runama, a book he deemed more important than the Quran, requiring citizens to kiss copies for entry into heaven. Despite funding free utilities via gas reserves, his regime utilized electric shock torture, banned foreign languages, and rigged elections, ultimately revealing how autocratic whims can dismantle education and civil liberties under the guise of spiritual superiority. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Taking Control of Your Money00:01:25
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Ernest, what's up?
Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
From stocks to real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, our goal is simple.
Make financial literacy accessible for everyone.
Because when you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
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Readers, Katie's finalists, Publicists.
We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
Turning Income Into Real Wealth00:15:03
They put on Lindsay McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
This guy's playing.
2 a.m.
2 a.m.
Whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm Wynne.
Wild.
Wild Bashi away.
It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful.
I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like, but listen to Las Co Tristas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
How much away, Wanda?
Right now, I'm about 130.
I'm at 183.
We should race.
No, I want to lead here with my original hips.
On the podcast, The Matchup with Aaliyah, I pair prominent female athletes with unexpected guests.
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What's ringing my bells?
I am Robert Evans.
This is Behind the Bastards, the show where every week I try out a new introduction.
This one got Sophie's approval, so that's good.
It's also a show where we talk about the worst people in all of history, tell you the things you don't know about them.
My guest today is David Christopher Bell.
Hello.
How you doing, Dave?
I am well.
I almost hit a man with my car on the way here.
Oh, sweet.
Yeah.
Did he have it coming?
Yeah, actually.
He was jaywalking.
Well, fuck him.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good.
I'm going to share a little bit of your personal business, Dave, because it makes me laugh.
Your parents came here from the blighted hellscape that is the East Coast to escape the snow.
Yes, that's true.
They're very old, so they do what old people do, and they went to a warm climate during the winter.
And then Los Angeles got its first snow in 60-something years.
It sure did.
They are very bummed out.
Because when it's not snowing, it's been raining non-stop.
We've had our first winter in decades.
Which has been delightful.
It's been great for the people who live here.
It's nice.
Yeah.
Especially after the summer.
Although it is a dire sign of climate change when Los Angeles has seasons.
Yeah, the world has died.
The world is still a little bit more.
But it's clearly nice out.
Yeah.
But it's nice to get to wear a jacket in Hollywood.
Well, Dave, today we are talking about a special fellow, very special fellow.
Okay.
Have you ever heard the name Sapar Murat Niyazov?
No.
Oh boy.
Oh no.
Oh, oh boy.
Now, the last show we had you on was Muamar Gaddafi.
That's true.
Qaddafi's kind of the gold standard for just a lunatic who winds up in charge of a country.
Like, not like a guy like Hitler or Stalin.
People call them crazy, but they really weren't.
Like, if you look at them, everything they did kind of made sense, like, based on where they're coming from.
Qaddafi was a fucking maniac.
And Sapar Murat Niyazov may be even crazier than Gaddafi.
He might be the craziest person who's ever run a country.
But we'll have to judge that at the end of these episodes.
Oh, I am ready.
Before we get into that, I have a new sparkling water beverage called Bubbly.
And I got it hoping for an orange soda of some sort, but I don't know if that's what it is or if it's more like one of those LaCroix.
So I'm going to learn right now.
All right.
How is it?
It's actually really nice.
It is on the LaCroix scale.
So it's like someone put an orange in.
It's like an orange was in the same room as some sparkling water.
But in this case, the orange talked to the water and they reached an accord.
It's good.
Okay.
It's good.
It's like a melted popsicle.
Bubbly.
I'm going to have to try it.
You want to pour some in wine?
Yeah.
Pour it in your LaCroix.
All right, here we go.
Over the equipment.
Oh, we're reaching across the table.
Oh, Jesus.
All right.
Is it good?
Has it mixed with that passion fruit?
But I'm going to keep drinking it.
So that's a little bit of science for you listeners at home.
Do not mix passion fruit LaCroix with orange bubbly.
No.
Not a good idea.
All right.
Speaking of bad ideas, let's talk about Separ Murat Niyazov, the lunatic god-king of Turkmenistan.
I'm so psyched.
So today we're talking about a guy who was, at one point, probably the most powerful, crazy person on planet Earth.
He was the absolute ruler of a nation of 5 million people.
Separ Murat Niyazov was the dictator of Turkmenistan, and I think you're going to enjoy him, Dave, although Turkmenistan did not.
Okay.
I am extremely ignorant of the world.
So where is Turkmenistan?
It's like near Afghanistan and in the old Soviet Union.
It's one of those little chunks of the country.
It was like when Genghis Khan started doing his thing, when he like left China and started conquering his way towards the Middle East, they were like the first empire he ran into on his way out of China.
Okay.
Yeah, and he had to, he fucked them up pretty bad.
Okay.
So Turkmenistan, the actual country, did not exist as a political entity until 1924.
Like it wasn't a thing anyone had ever thought about as like an area.
It was just a place where a bunch of, like, it had been a bunch of different kingdoms, but like no one had called them Turkmenistan or whatever.
They wound up under Russian control during the era of the Tsars, and not much was done with them.
They were a little bit of a backwater.
So they pretty much just stuck to themselves and did Turkmen stuff, which mainly meant outdoor picnics, fantastic wine, and horseback riding.
Oh, good for them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They seem to have their shit together.
Yeah, they were just like, no one's noticing us.
Let's just have a great time.
Let's just chill out.
They like falcons, big, big falcon people.
Who doesn't?
Who doesn't love a good falcon?
They got great horses, and they're one of those pieces of the Muslim world where everybody drinks still.
Because they became Muslim, but they'd been growing wine since before they were Muslim.
So they were like, well, let's just ignore that part.
We've been drunk earlier than we've been Muslims.
This got grandfathered into the religion.
Yeah, that's fair.
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
In 1924, the brand new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics decided this chunk of the world and its people needed an official designation and borders.
The Turkmen SSR was considered to be the backwateriest backwater in the entire Soviet Union, save maybe some of those chunks of Russia that were too cold for anything but gulags.
An American diplomat told New Yorker author Paul Theraux that, quote, it was the sleepiest, most remote, least favored of the USSR's republics.
They don't get much love.
Yeah, but I mean, I want to live there.
Yeah, if you're going to live in the Soviet Union, you want to live in the place that like Stalin doesn't think about ever.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
And they were basically the Soviet Union's gas station.
They had either the third or the fifth largest natural gas reserves in the world.
And so the Soviet Union just kind of took all of their fuel and didn't really give them money for it.
And that was kind of what happened for... like 70 years or so.
So they were doing fine.
Saparmirat Niyazov was born into this quiet region of the world in 1940.
His father was Ataya Niyazov, a farmer, and his mother was Gurban Sultan Eje.
They lived in the town of Gipchak, a small village six miles from the capital, Ashkabat.
If you know much history, you're probably aware that 1940 was not a great time to be born in the Soviet Union.
The Nazis invaded before Separ Morat was one, and in 1942, his father died in battle fighting the Wehrmacht.
So not the best start so far.
No, bit of a bummer.
Bit of a bummer.
The Nazis really ruined it.
Yeah, the Nazis really fucked things up for this kid.
And 20 million other people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This prompted Separ Morat's mom to move them into the capital where they all lived together until 1948 when a massive earthquake struck the city and killed 110,000 people, including Saparmurat's entire family.
Okay, so he's just having none of the luck.
None of the luck.
Really, really bad first eight years of his life.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Rough, rough start.
Fair to say.
So young Saparmirat grew up in a Soviet orphanage until the government found a family member he'd never met for him to go live with.
In spite of the rough start, he did pretty well, winning a place in Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and graduating with a degree in power engineering in 1966.
He got a job at a power plant near the capital, and it seemed like he was just going to be a normal Soviet dude.
So far, so good.
So far, so good.
Rough start, but he's getting his life on track.
Getting his life on track, working as an engineer.
If I know anything about engineers, it's that they never turn into power-crazed maniacs.
Right.
Yeah, that's for sure something about engineers that we know.
Saparmirat joined the Communist Party back in 1962, and his ambitions immediately extended beyond just working at a power plant.
Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, he steadily rose the ranks in local politics due largely to the fact that he was a member of the largest Turkmen tribe in the region, the Teki.
Now, Saparmirat Niyazov was named the first secretary of the Communist Party of Turkmen by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.
He was put in power because his predecessor, a guy named Gapasov, had been incredibly corrupt and stealing huge amounts of money from, you know, the Republic.
So that's his predecessor.
Now, the good thing about Gapasov is that he'd almost completed construction of the world's longest aqueduct during his term.
So it was like a couple of weeks away from being finished when he got shit canned, and then Niyazov comes to power and he immediately takes credit for building the aqueduct.
Oh, which solid.
Yeah.
So Gorbachev promised that Niyazov's promotion meant the dawning of a new age of corruption-free governance in Turkmenistan.
This would prove to be about as wrong as a statement can be.
That feels like how a lot of monsters start.
Yeah.
Of like the guy before them was terrible and corrupt, and they come up and they're like, no more corruption.
No more corruption.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a good pitch.
That's basically how this starts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he probably would have gotten busted by Gorbachev eventually because he was really corrupt too.
But about five years after he comes to power, the USSR starts to fall apart.
And so when the Soviet Union collapses, he's the guy in charge of Turkmenistan.
So in like 1990, the Turkmen parliament declares its independence during a couple of different votes.
And on October 26th, 1990, the state of Turkmenistan was officially born.
It held its first presidential election immediately afterwards.
Niyazov was the only candidate, and he received 98.3% of the vote.
Okay, so yeah, as everything collapsed around him, he just took, it's like having, it's like being the manager at the final blockbuster.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and just being like, we're going to do things differently around here.
Yeah, he is that guy.
So as the autocratic ruler of a new nation, Niyazov's immediate goal was to be as neutral as possible and make a shitload of money.
So not a bad plan at the start.
He started selling gas, oil, and electricity to Iran, but also sweet-talked Saudi Arabia and flew to Mecca to do his pilgrimage.
So he's kind of trying to play both sides of every angle.
He's trying to be nice to Russia, be nice to the U.S.
He just doesn't want anybody to fuck with Turkmenistan.
So reasonable stuff.
Yeah, that's fair.
He's protecting his people.
Protecting his people.
Now, when he came to power, most Turkmen were still dirt poor because the Soviet Union had basically just been stealing their gas, like paying them, but paying them in Soviet money that wasn't worth anything.
Wow.
And being like, yeah, you guys are getting a fair market value for this fuel.
It was a free gas station for the Soviet Union.
But now that they were an independent nation, these guys had like a shitload of money, like something like $5 billion a year coming in in fuel money.
And there's only 5 million people.
So in a fair and equitable system, everyone in Turkmenistan could be really rich.
Yeah.
Like they are in Kuwait or something.
Of course, I assume that's what's going to happen.
Yeah, that they all get taken care of really well.
Yeah.
And then we're going to watch the episodes.
Yep.
That's it.
Well, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at BastardsPod.
Dave.
No.
So that was what a lot of people hoped for, that the economy would be reformed and they'd all get some of this sweet, sweet gas money.
But Niyazov was worried about what might happen if he reformed the economy too much.
He thought it might be too much change for people in too short a period of time.
Right.
You got to protect the people from progress.
From money.
Change.
You just don't want those people to have.
Who knows what they'll spend it on?
Exactly.
Houses?
Food?
Yeah, you don't want to risk that.
So he promised that he would eventually add in some free market stuff.
But in the short term, he decided that he really needed absolute power to get stuff started on the good foot.
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Makes sense.
That's understandable.
I just need a little absolute power.
Just a couple of years.
Yeah, absolute power.
Yeah.
I swear, I'll give it up.
Yeah.
Like all the times people have given up absolute power in the past.
So he got his wish when Turkmenistan's new constitution was drafted in 1992.
It declared that power is held by the president who is elected by the people, which seems reasonable until you realize that once elected, the president's power was essentially infinite.
And that included the power to determine how elections were held in the future.
Oh.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Now, under the Constitution, citizens did have the right to form political parties.
As long as they could get a thousand other people together, that was like the minimum threshold.
You could make a political party.
So several citizens did this.
They created political parties.
They kept in line, scrupulously followed the law.
They avoided any calls for violence.
They filled out all the required forms of petitions, and their parties were immediately banned.
Since the state controlled all media, no political parties were allowed any airtime.
So yeah, that's how Niyazov sort of starts off.
Tagan Jumikov, a journalist working for a state paper that was essentially owned by Niyazov, explained, quote, at this time, there is no need for a multi-party system.
Many problems have to be solved.
Social problems, and we must raise living standards.
When our living standards are high and we are economically independent, then we can have a multi-party system.
But if this happens now, there will be anarchy.
Feels like there's a lot of putting it off.
A lot of like, you know, no, it's a great, it's great.
We'll do that at some point.
But right now, we really can't.
Yeah.
I'll clean up my room after I finish stealing all this natural gas.
Yeah.
I'll clean my room, but first I got to do this cocaine.
And that'll help me clean up.
I can't make my bed with all this cocaine on the table.
Exactly.
What if I knock the cocaine off the table?
Exactly.
Yes.
Yeah.
That logic isn't exactly how Niyazov justifies what he does.
So at a People's Council in December 1992, Niyazov estimated it would take 10 years for Turkmenistan to achieve the prosperity it needed for people to be allowed to vote.
After the Constitution was ratified, Niyazov ran for president again, winning 99.5%.
Oh.
Yeah, he's very popular.
Very popular.
Good for him.
Very popular.
Also the only candidate.
He was the only Central Asian head of state to continue to govern after the USSR's fall.
So of the guys who are in charge when the Soviet Union falls apart, he's the only one who manages to hang on to power.
Turkmenistan's Path to Prosperity00:06:49
Now, Turkmenistan had never been a country before, not in the modern sense of the world.
And Niyazov knew he had to do something to bind all of his people together.
So he held conferences using sketchy history to claim that all Turkmen were part of the same ethnic group, the Turan, which was essentially just an ancient Persian word for the region.
He also announced to great fanfare that his name was now Turkmenbashi, which means first among Turkmens.
He created an ethnic group?
Yeah, kind of.
Okay.
He just said, we're all this thing.
That's bold.
Yeah.
He didn't want the tribalism to get in the way.
So he said, we're all part of the same thing now.
All right.
Yeah, you got to invent stuff if you create a country.
His full title was Serdar Turkmen Bashi, great leader of all Turkmen.
Now, as natural gas money started to flow into the country, Turkmenistan found itself with money for the first time in ever, really.
Turkmenbashi, a man who had promised his people prosperity, knew what he had to spend his windfall on.
Wait, what do you think it was?
Oh, God.
I don't know.
What do you think he spent the billions of dollars that is the first money his country's ever gotten on?
I mean, this could go in so many ways.
It could be like war, but I feel like it's like a clown party or something.
That's not super far off.
I've listened to enough of this show to not make too many predictions.
He spent it all on statues.
Hey!
Oh, of course.
Of course.
Of course.
Why didn't it steal that?
Oh, man.
I think there's something in our DNA where we want to.
It's just a natural thing we want to do is make statues.
Like, if you give me...
If you gave me a million dollars, I'd be like, okay, well, the statue, and then I'll get a nice apartment.
I guess a second Robocop statue in Detroit would make sense.
Yeah, yeah, let's do that first.
And then another Rocky statue in Philadelphia.
Oh, yeah.
All slightly bigger.
All slightly larger.
Like, drive the statue by homeless people in the street.
Yeah, it was expensive.
Check out that statue, guys.
New Yorker writer Paul Thoreau visited Turkmenistan near the end of Turkmenbashi's reign.
Here's how he described the capital city.
Quote, Ashgabat was filled with gold statues of Turkmen Bashi.
In these statues, which had an ecclesiastical aura, Bashi was Eldorado, the man of gold, all-powerful and all-knowing.
Statues show him sitting, striding, waving, saluting, and smiling a 24-karat smile.
One even showed him as a precocious golden child sitting in the lap of his bronze mother.
He once said to a journalist, I admit it, there are too many portraits, pictures, and monuments of me.
I don't find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it because of their mentality.
Yeah, guys, just give me a few more years.
Everything will be fine.
We'll get a few more statues up, and then that's it.
Just a couple of more statues and love democracy, I promise.
I swear you're going to vote at some point.
I do love that he makes his mom bronze, but he's gold.
Oh, yeah.
A little bit of mom shade there.
It's just more aesthetically pleasing.
Yeah, you want the baby to really pop in your statue of yourself as a baby.
Now, we don't know what the people actually demanded because they weren't allowed to vote or form political parties or speak freely.
Several of them were eventually allowed to operate political parties, but these were just for show, and most did not meet the minimum number of members required in the Constitution.
It was just so that Turkmenbashi could be like, no, we're not a one-party state.
Look at all these other parties.
There's like nine guys in that one.
Whenever Turkmen Bashi got in hot water with the Democratic World, he'd sponsor a party or two and let his people have the illusion of a tiny amount of choice.
Or to be more accurate, let the world have the illusion that his people had a tiny amount of choice.
Right.
Now, Niyazov immediately started renaming parts of the country after himself.
It started, not crazily at least, changing the name of a major street in the capital from Lenin to, you know, Turkmenbashi.
That's fair.
That's fair.
You know, the Soviet Union's gone.
You don't want it named after Lenin?
Okay.
We name streets after presidents all the time.
Yeah.
He renamed a collective farm in the Lenin Canal with his own name also.
When people compared what he was doing to Stalin's personality cult, he said, quote, Stalin achieved his personality cult through repressive measures, whereas I achieved my popularity without conflicts.
So overall, I'm just sorry.
I'm thinking about his childhood and stuff.
There's nothing like that messed up that happened to him.
I mean, there's before he was eight.
And the earthquake.
I'm saying that there's not anything like horrible things happen to a lot of people.
Yeah.
This feels like a story of like, this is just like you give someone too much power.
It feels like this could be anybody.
It's just like, let's give them a lot of power.
And then the next thing you know, they're a golden baby statue.
That's possible.
We'll see how you feel at the end of this.
Okay.
I feel like he might.
I mean, yeah.
So far, I'm not saying what he did is understandable so far.
It's just that it's, I find it remarkable that his childhood isn't that over the top.
Well, we just don't know that much about like what happened in the orphanage or whatever.
Oh, that's true.
That's a fucking Soviet orphanage in the late 40s.
That probably wasn't the best place.
That could probably mess you up.
Probably some bad stuff happening.
Yeah.
But I really don't know because there's just not like Turkmenistan is still a very closed society.
So there's not a whole lot of information on that.
I can't imagine this guy keeping good records of what's going on.
Not a big fan of that.
Now, Turkmenistan launched its own currency, the Manat, or in the early 1990s.
Its great wealth meant that the money launched at parity with the U.S. dollar.
So at the start, the Turkmenistan Manat is worth one U.S. dollar, which is great.
Yeah, new country.
The dollar is a pretty good thing to be worth in the early 1990s.
Niyazov's face was, of course, prominently printed on each and every bill.
Sure.
Now, it's not true that his popularity was without conflict.
Dissidents were punished brutally.
Although he was pretty popular at first because the Turkmen had been treated like shit by the Soviet Union, and now that they were independent, there was enough money for both ridiculous statues and social programs.
So Turkmenbashi tripled the salaries of public employees.
He heavily subsidized food, and he offered free gas, electricity, and water to all citizens.
He also spent $130 million turning his presidential 767 into an airborne palace.
Oh.
Yeah.
A little bit for you, a little bit for me.
A little bit for you.
A lot for me.
Yeah, he's just golden statues for me.
Right.
Gasoline's basically free.
So, you know.
I mean, as a citizen at this point.
It's not the worst case scenario.
It's just like, okay, well, there's a bunch of just terrible statues of this guy.
Really bad statues.
But you know what?
I'm not paying for gas.
I'm not paying for gas.
No mind to complain.
We will see where this story goes.
But speaking of not complaining, you know what makes me not complain?
Eating Broke and Making It00:04:28
I want to say ads?
Yes, ads for the odd product, a couple of services.
Oh, okay.
Maybe, maybe even an ad for bubbly sparkling water, the only sparkling water that tastes terrible when mixed with LaCroix.
Is that going to get us any money, Sovi?
All right.
Ads!
I went and sat on the little Ottoman in front of him.
Hi, Dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five.
I'm going to have cookies and milk.
Come on.
On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
I'm an alcoholic.
And without this program, I'm a guide.
Open your free iHeartRadio app.
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I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything, but at first it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Straus Zelnick.
If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Making consumers see the value of a human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything.
Here at the Nick Dick and Pole Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes.
What Koogler did that I think was so unique, he's the writer director.
Who do you think he is?
I don't know.
You meet the president?
You think he goes to president?
You think Canada has a president?
You think China has a president?
Lesla Cruzette.
God, I love that thing.
I use it all the time.
I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it.
It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus.
Yep.
It was a good one.
I like that saying.
It's an actual Polish saying, it is an actual Polish.
Better version of Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes.
Yes.
Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
I actually, I thought it was.
I got that wrong.
Listen to the Nick Dick and Poll Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
Trolling a Country on Purpose00:15:10
We're talking about Turkmen Bashi, dictator of Turkmenistan.
And at this point, not doing terrible.
A lot of statues.
Way too much money on the plane.
Gold baby.
I'm really thinking about that gold baby thing.
Because I think what it is is that making a statue of yourself as an adult, like, yeah, that's messed up.
But it's celebrating your birth as this special event.
Yeah.
Like, there's really only the one person that we do that with.
Yeah, if someone else is doing it, like, it's a bold statement.
It's a bold statement.
And I got to say, Dave, you're really on the right track.
Okay.
With that, with that.
Oh.
Yeah.
Oh, delightful.
So, at this point, Niazov does not seem like the worst case scenario for a dictator.
The Turkmen people were at least getting something while he robbed the country blind.
But Niyazov's corruption quickly took its toll on the national economy.
After bribing former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig to lobby on Turkmenistan's behalf, he almost succeeded in getting the Clinton administration to open the country up to American investment.
The deal got derailed because Niyazov demanded 33% of all invested money go to him personally.
Oh, I can see them whimming that out on the negotiation table.
And they're like, what?
But I get a third of everything.
No, you don't.
No.
Now, this turned out to be a bad idea because most of Turkmenistan's regional trading partners, the former Soviet states, suffered economic collapses after their first few years of capitalism.
They stopped being able to buy Turkmenistan's fuel.
Production fell by two-thirds, and all that sweet plain and statue money stopped coming in.
Niyazov responded to this with an effort to boost the country's internal economy.
He did this by modernizing the capital, Ashgabat.
According to the book Inside Central Asia by Dilip Hero, quote, modernizing Ashgabat meant raising many central neighborhoods to create a network of boulevards with lavish palaces of white marble and green-tinted glass, dotted with massive fountains and statues of Niyazov and his parents, as well as historical Turkmen personalities, guarded by uniformed security men standing to attention.
The city would become the site of the largest fountain in the world, a multi-storied shopping mall with water gushing out of the roof and pouring down in a ring of waterfalls.
Its main avenue would end up with 22 five-star hotels where foreign guests would be accommodated only in the rooms that were bugged.
Many of the displaced families did not get alternative accommodation or compensation as they could not prove the ownership of their homes.
How modern.
It just bulldozes hundreds of houses, builds 22 hotels, and nobody's visiting Turkmenistan at this point.
Like, there's no foreign visits.
Yeah, but did you hear about that fountain?
That fucking fountain is the shit.
That's when I think the future.
I think, how can we make water fall in neat ways?
That is what the future is.
Oh, yeah.
And how can we fill a city with enough gold fountains that we need to have permanent security guards stationed to stop people from stealing the gold because we bulldoze their houses and they're all poor?
Oh, God.
Solid move.
Solid move.
Now, building a shitload of hotels and additional statues during an economic downturn may not seem like a great idea, but that's just because you and I aren't economic geniuses like Turkmen Bashi.
Yeah.
Now, to keep the economy afloat, Turkmenistan's central bank started printing money like it was going out of fucking style.
Inflation hit 3,000%, and the Manat went from being at one-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar to being at 5,200-to-1 parody with the U.S. dollar.
Oh, things took a turn.
Turns out that's not a great strategy.
Yeah, no.
Nobody could have predicted that.
No.
No.
I mean, you know, it's the economy.
Nobody knows.
It's like predicting that offering people a lot of ballooning interest rate mortgages on their houses and like loans and stuff would eventually lead to a massive foreclosure crisis.
Yeah, who could have saw that?
Who could have seen that coming?
No, they did all the right things.
They got the statues.
They got the statues.
And what is it Warren Buffett always says, when the economy's bad, build more fountains.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's basic economics, 102, at least.
Now, as his entire nation suffered, so did Turkmen Bashi.
His doctors told him that his arteries had hardened, probably because of his massive chronic alcoholism and constant cigarette smoking.
He would need major heart surgery, which he received in a German clinic.
He survived the surgery, but it seems to have wrought a change in him.
Up to this point, he had been the absolute ruler of Turkmenistan, but he was more or less normal for like an absolute ruler, you know, banning political parties, building tons of statues, secret police.
Nothing super wild.
Like, some fun stuff, but like, dictator stuff.
Yeah, as far as like ruthless dictators go, this is pretty by the book.
Pretty by the book.
After his heart surgery, Niyazov began to treat his nation as an extension of himself.
His doctor told him he had to stop smoking, so he ordered all cabinet ministers to stop smoking too.
He banned smoking in public places and even smoking out in the street.
That sucks.
That really sucks.
Why can't we smoke outside anymore?
The president's heart's bad.
Turned my house into a gold fountain.
Let me smoke.
Let me smoke.
My house is a statue of you as a baby.
While he was rebuilding his capital in the Muslim Las Vegas and dealing with heart issues and being a nut, Turkmenbashi managed to maintain his policy of careful, stringent neutrality.
He joined the non-aligned movement in 1995 and commemorated the event with a 170-foot-tall neutrality arch in downtown Ashgabat.
It is described as an amalgam of a Triffid Eiffel Tower and a marble-covered space rocket.
Sophie, I'll finish describing this first, but can you look up the neutrality arch so I can show Dave?
Now, a few years later, after his heart surgery, Turkmen Bashi added another statue to the top of the neutrality arch.
A 22-foot-tall, golden-plated statue of himself wearing Superman's cape with his arms extended into the air.
The statue rotates 360 degrees every day, so his face is always facing the sun.
Turkmen Bashi required that the statue be visible from the international airport many miles away from the city.
Also, the airport was named after him.
Oh, of course.
Of course.
Now, this is reminding me of that Futurama episode where Bender builds the giant statue.
This is exactly.
Remember me.
Like, did it shoot fire out of it?
No, but it's pretty close to that.
Sophie's a picture up on the website.
Look at that fucking thing.
Yeah, when I think the word neutral, that's what I think of when I think of neutral.
Holy shit.
I love that he saw that.
He was like, needs another statue.
Needs another statue of me made out of gold wearing a cape.
Oh, my God.
So Turkmenbashi took his neutrality as seriously as he took his absurd statues and monuments.
He renamed the official newspaper from Turkmenistan to Neutral Turkmenistan.
He replaced the national anthem, Turkmenistan, with independent neutral Turkmenistan state anthem.
He wrote both the words and the music for this song.
Oh, no.
I'm just going to read the words.
I'm just going to read the first verse because I find it funny.
I don't know how to sing this.
I am ready to give life for our native hearth.
The spirit of ancestors' descendants are famous for.
My land is sacred.
My flag flies in the world.
A symbol of the great neutral country flies.
This is why you got to outsource your songwriting.
You really got to outsource your songwriting.
Dictators of tomorrow don't think you can do anything.
It's also of the ways to inspire a people.
The word neutral is not one of them.
No!
Like the Swiss are neutral, but it's not like the passionate word.
It's again another futurama reference.
In 1998, post-surgery Turkmen Bashi succeeded in getting a second chance to dance with Uncle Sam.
He made some deals that included Unical, an American corporation, helping Turkmenistan to build a gigantic pipeline.
The fact that an American company won the contract looked very good to the White House.
There was talk of okaying more investment in Turkmenistan.
But in January of that year, those pesky State Department bastards released their yearly report on human rights.
They noted that Turkmenistan had made basically no progress towards democracy since leaving the Soviet Union.
The Clinton administration asked Niyazov to give them what Heroes book calls a gesture towards democratization.
In return, Turkmenbashi would be invited to the White House.
Now, he'd visited the U.S. once before, shortly after taking power, but he'd been ignored by everybody.
And this was something Turkmenbashi very badly wanted, for reasons I don't understand, but probably boiled down to ego.
He wanted pictures with the American president.
That was like his thing.
So that February, Niyazov got up in front of Turkmenistan's high officials and promised to amend the Constitution, giving more power to Parliament and less to himself.
True to his word, Bill Clinton invited him to the White House.
Turkmenbashi immediately reneged on his promises now that he had the invitation and said that any constitutional amendments would have to wait until the parliamentary elections in December of 1999.
What a shocker.
What a shocker.
You can't just be like, look, you have to say you'll do this, and then you can take pictures with me.
Like, you have to make sure they actually follow through, right?
I mean, if we cared about democracy.
That's a good point.
Yes, that's a good point.
I don't know if we cared.
They're like, look, you have to at least pretend just so we can all look good.
Yeah.
For at least a moment.
For at least a second.
Yeah.
Let us pretend that we care about freedom around the world.
Which, you know, he did.
He gave Americans the ability to feel like the good guys for one last time before 9-11.
That's true.
That's true.
So thank you, Turkmenbashi.
So, Niyazov spent a fun week in the United States hanging out with Bill Clinton and Al Gore and talking about democracy and all the democracy that he was totally going to bring to his people.
There were, of course, questions from the press and outrage from people who didn't like dictators.
I'm going to quote from the book Inside Central Asia here.
Quote, in his press briefing, the White House spokesman explained that, just as in the case of China, the U.S. national economic interest outweighed the administration's concern over Niyazov's dismal record on post-Soviet reform.
When questioned on the issues of civil liberties and multi-party democracy at such forums as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Niyazov repeated the argument that political liberalization would follow only after independence and stability had been consolidated.
His statement that no one had been arrested in Turkmenistan for political reasons flew in the face of the recent State Department report on Turkmenistan, that the opposition was repressed, with leading dissidents either imprisoned or committed to psychiatric hospitals.
The reality is that roughly 20,000 people had been imprisoned.
So, it's frustratingly hard to find many stories of the victims of Turkmenbashi's regime, because, again, it's still a pretty close society.
The imprisoned were generally tracked by secret police after being freed to keep them from talking.
I did find one Telegraph article that interviewed a former enemy of the state.
Here's what he said about his time in a Turkmenistan prison.
Quote, I had read about the beatings and electric shock therapy which I experienced in prison, but it was the unexpected techniques that really damaged me.
I was fitted with a gas mask and the air vent was closed.
They played tapes of my relatives being beaten after they were arrested.
Their suffering was mine.
It was terrible.
Wow.
Yeah, he did not mass execute people.
He did have some people killed, but he didn't do mass executions.
His thing seems to be if you stepped out of line, he'd arrest your whole family and beat the shit out of you.
Yeah, that is.
And then tape them and be a creative way to be a fucking villain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jesus.
Yeah, it is one of those dictator strategies that I hadn't run into yet, which is like, like, obviously people's families being threatened.
Oh, yeah.
Like, that specific way.
It's like, okay, well, at least you're an innovator.
Yeah.
He also tortured shitloads of people, although he did, you know, avoid the mass murder that like a guy like Bashar al-Assad is famous for.
Turkmenbashi was smart enough to avoid doing anything too obviously horrible, like, you know, bombing, you know, a dissident chunk of the city or whatever.
And so he never really provoked mass outrage from the United States or any of its allies.
Since he only tortured and imprisoned people, our government was happy to take his money or to be more accurate, let major U.S. corporations take his money.
Right.
He's staying under the radar here.
Staying right under the radar.
Yeah.
Smart guy.
Smart guy.
1999's elections came.
98.9% of the country showed up to choose between 104 candidates for 50 seats in the parliament.
So he kept his promise.
People got to vote.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, they got to vote for parliament.
Now, all of the candidates were members of the same party, which he headed.
But it's something.
But it's a, yeah, you got to press a button or like write a name.
Absolutely.
You vote.
You vote to write it.
It's democracy.
It's rolling.
You had twice as many choices as there were seats.
Yeah.
And even though they were all from the, it's something.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not send out election observers, which they normally do in situations like this, because the elections were seen as too much of a sham to be worth observing.
After the election, the delegates who had been voted in unanimously declared that Niyazov was president for life.
Oh, wow.
Democracy.
So lucky for him.
He really nailed it.
Yeah.
You must really like him then.
He must be very popular.
Yeah.
Now, president for life Niyazov introduced a new set of civil rights for his citizens.
So this is seeming like he's making his promise.
Yeah, I mean, he didn't choose to be president.
No, the people demanded that he be president for life.
And he gave them new civil rights.
He did not, however, have a great grasp on what civil rights are.
So his first new civil right was to cancel all internet licenses except the state-owned telecom company.
Continuing to prove that he really didn't have a good handle on the concept of civil rights, Niyazov next banned ballet and opera, calling them alien to Turkmen culture.
Somewhere there's like a smoking ballet dancer.
Just like, I can't have a cigarette.
I can't do ballet.
Just staring at that golden baby.
God damn it.
Yeah.
He ordered the country's few movie theaters shut down, but he did replace the movie theaters with a single enormous puppet theater in the capital.
What is wrong with him?
Oh, thanks.
Puppets, don't you like puppets?
What happened at that orphanage?
That's the real question with this guy.
Did you befriend a puppet?
Like a roll of cellulose fell out of a movie theater and crushed his favorite puppeteer.
Yeah, this is starting to feel like he's trolling his country on purpose.
Like, I'm going to get rid of the movie theaters and give them puppet shows.
Give them puppet shows.
Oh, Christ.
Yeah, his exact justification was something along the lines of like, all these movies made by foreign people are going to make people not like the way we talk here in Turkmenistan.
Well, yeah, if he's trying to control the internet and movies, he's definitely trying to make people in his country not realize just how screwed they are at the moment.
Yeah, how not great it is to not be able to.
Fucking banning ballet?
Like, what's subversive about ballet?
Even Stalin had ballets.
Still, you could make your own movies.
Yeah.
Ballet.
He must have dated a ballet dancer or something.
Got his heart broken.
Banning Movies for Puppet Shows00:02:14
Yeah, it all feels so personal.
Yeah, it really does.
Like, that's the thing.
That's the thing that's weird about this guy is that every decision he makes feels like a guy who got pissed at something and like then banned it for the entire country.
Right.
But like, cigarettes fucked up my heart.
Nobody gets to smoke.
As someone who loves movies, I'm real peeved about the movie thing.
Because if you're going to ban movies and then make better movies or something, don't replace it with puppets because your people are going to see that and be like, I know there's something better than this.
I know it gets better than puppets.
I know this is the best we could do.
Yeah.
So in 2001, president for life and puppet lover Turkmen Bashi embarked on the next great chapter of his career as a dictator and as a luminary.
He wrote a book.
Oh, good.
Not just any book.
His opus, the Runama, was billed by him as the most important book since the Quran.
Part history text, part guide to life, part religious book, and all crazy, the Runama was the pinnacle of everything insane dictator literature can be.
Here's how Turkmen Bashi described the book in his own introduction.
Runama is a visit to this land.
Runama is a visit to the past of this territory and a visit to the future of this territory.
Runama is the visit made to the heart of the Turkmen.
Runama is a sweet spiritual fruit grown in this territory.
No human being who has not experienced what I have lived through can understand me.
Oh, wow.
It's a little bit of emo there.
He's real special.
He's a real special boy.
He's a real special boy.
Yeah.
Now, the book is partly fictional, jumping between modern day and the middle ages and focused around a character, Separ Muratniyazov, whose birth was ordained by God himself.
Ah, there it is.
Yeah, a character with his name who is God's prophet on earth.
I wonder if it's based on anyone.
If you're going to write a book like this, at least do it under a different name or something because you can't say you're God.
Well, God's prophet on earth.
God's prophet on earth.
He's not saying he's better than Mohammed, just that he's newer than Muhammad and so should be taken more seriously than the prophet of the Muslims.
God's Prophet on Earth00:03:54
Right.
He's the new hip Muhammad.
He's the new, the new cool Muhammad.
Yeah, okay.
He'll let you drink, but you can't smoke.
Right.
Which I, I mean, I guess actually that's a, that is a health.
Well, this is kind of a wash action.
Yeah.
Oh, so we are going to talk about the runama, and I'm going to read you some of its timeless wisdom.
But first, you know what else is timelessly wise?
Oh, God.
I want to say ads again.
You nailed it.
Ah!
Two for two.
All right.
Products.
I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
Hi, Dad.
And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
This is badass convict.
Right.
Just finished five years.
I'm going to have cookies and milk.
Come on.
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If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for a pitch, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything.
But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
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Reading the Runama Book00:15:41
Who do you think he is?
I don't know.
You meet the like the president?
You think it goes the president?
You think Canada has a president?
You think China has a president?
Lozla cruz that.
God, I love that thing.
I use it all the time.
I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it.
It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus.
Yep.
It was a good one.
I like that saying.
It is an actual Polish saying, it is an actual Polish saying.
Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Yes.
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I actually, I thought it was.
I got that wrong.
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We're back.
All right.
So we're talking about the Runama, a book in which Sapar Murat Niyazov writes about himself as God's prophet.
He goes on a quest to discover the history of the Turkmens.
And during that quest, he learns that he is God's son, essentially.
Oh, good for him.
Good for him.
Yeah.
Well, he was a child ordained by God, and probably his mom was impregnated by divine will.
In other words, Sapar Murat Niyazov wrote an explicitly Turkmen-themed Bible with himself as Jesus and mixed it with a self-help book in like one of those history books Bill O'Reilly writes.
Like that's that's kind of the runama in a nutshell.
It's all these red flags just smushed together.
It's a lot.
Yeah.
Now, I'm going to level with you all.
I did not have time this week to read the entirety of the Runama.
I may get back to it someday because apparently reading it three times guarantees you entry into heaven.
Yeah, I think next vacation or something, just read it on the beach.
Just read it on the beach.
I did learn reading Paul Thoreau's New Yorker article that apparently you are guaranteed a trip to heaven if you read it three times.
So, you know, people out there, if you're sinning, if you're doing anything terrible, maybe read the Runama three times in a row.
I also feel like more books should use that for marketing.
Because it's like, well, I mean, they're probably wrong, but what if they're right?
What if they're wrong?
It's just three.
Yeah, you buy the book once.
Yeah.
And then you just got to read it three times.
Yeah.
You got to read it three times.
Does it count if you do like the thing where like Kindle, like where it reads the book for you?
You can do it on speed.
I don't know if that would trick God, Dave.
Yeah.
Let me read to you where Paul Thoreau learned that this was apparently what Separ Murat was saying.
He apparently was told this by a cab driver during a visit to Turkmenistan.
So I'm going to quote from that conversation.
He was on TV last night, my driver said.
Well, he's on almost every night.
Turkmen almost never said Turkmenbashi's name aloud.
He said, if you read my book three times, you will go to heaven.
How does he know this?
He said, I asked Allah to arrange it.
So, so he told Allah to do that.
So he told God that if you read his book three times, anyone who reads God's like a promo code.
Yeah, exactly.
He's doing what like podcasters do.
But God, can we work something out here?
Yeah, this is the heavenly equivalent of offering a discount code on a mattress.
Wow.
Good for him, working with God.
Yeah, working with God.
Now, Paul Thoreau, being a better journalist than me, read the entirety of the Runama.
He described it as a confused mixture of memoir, Turkmen lore, potted history, dietary suggestions, Soviet bashing, boasting, wild promises, and Turkmen Bashi's poems.
He seemed to regard it as both a sort of Quran and as a how-to guide for the Turkmen people, a jingoistic pep talk.
In fact, it is little more than a sopophoric chloroform in print, as Mark Twain described the Book of Mormon.
I read it once.
Turkmenbashi would have to promise more than heaven for me to read it two more times.
Yeah, I think if you're not a dictator, we call this a manifesto.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, this is just the ravings of a madman.
And I do feel like in another society, Turkmen Bashi is a guy who mails people bombs and forces the New York Times to print his manifesto.
Yeah.
And it's those little things that's like hidden in there, like recipes.
Yeah, recipes.
And it's like, oh, you just want to be listened to.
Yeah, you were just dictating this to somebody and stopped at some point.
It's a string of consciousness.
Now, I did skin the runama in search of some of the apparently ageless wisdom that Turkmen Bashi blessed the world with in his book.
I can tell it's definitely the book of an old man who was worried about dying because he writes about time a lot.
But the way he writes about time makes no sense at all to me.
Quote, the devil keeps a close eye over your time and faith, both of which are your precious belongings.
Time is your life in this world, and faith is your life in the other world.
Wasting time means losing one's life or oneself.
Teach your child how to save his time and life.
All that you can save of time will belong to you.
Time is a mace.
Hit or be hit.
Huh.
I don't understand that.
So you can hit time?
What does that mean, Black Hat?
I get saving time.
It's valuable to have more time, obviously.
Right.
What does time as a mace mean?
How do you hit someone with time?
I'm trying.
I mean, I want to know how.
I want to know how.
How do you get hit with time?
Like jail?
Yeah, I feel like maybe like Marty McFly had this experience.
Marty McFly might be the only person who's taken Turkmen Bashi's advice.
Yeah, get hit by the DeLorean from Back to the Future.
He did get hit by the DeLorean.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're finding some logic in this.
Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while.
You know, he did come to power in the mid-80s, so it's possible he was a big Back to the Future fan.
Yeah, DeLorean is metallic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Turkmenbashi also had a lot to say on the subject of laziness.
He was not for it.
Quote, laziness means being profligate and leaving oneself to be blown about by the winds of fate.
Be hardworking and you will generate returns in cash.
Be lazy and you will get into debt.
The comfort that laziness provides is like the taste of a sour cucumber.
Out of mercy for yourself, work.
Joblessness, lack of wisdom, and laziness will damage you more than your enemies ever could.
Time is a wild predator, but if you train it, you may use it to your benefit.
Do not be subject to time.
Let it be your subject.
Live so that you regret nothing when you die.
Living does not only mean passing time.
It means reaching eternity after passing through time.
I don't think you should train time by hitting it, though.
Yeah, that doesn't seem, that seems like time's going to grow up like abused and probably.
Yeah, I don't want time to turn on me.
You do not want time to turn on you.
Although that is the one thing time does to everybody.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, bold decision speaking out against laziness.
Yeah.
Really, really, really a dagger.
Now, the Runama also includes handy advice on how to obtain world peace.
Quote, if everybody likes their own nation, then the nations will like each other.
Feels like...
I think that's not how that works.
I think that's the opposite of how that works.
Yeah, I think historically, I feel like a nation really likes itself.
That's the first problem.
That's the first step to other nations ceasing to exist.
Yes.
This one nation really liking itself.
It likes itself so much that it's like, guys, you got to try this nation.
You got to try being Germany.
It's pretty sweet here in Germany.
Oh, you don't want some?
No, come here.
Come here.
Come here.
You're going to try this.
You're going to take some Germany.
You'll love it.
You'll love it.
Turkmenistan, that's what the Soviet Union did to them.
Right.
This is going so well.
We're just going to keep going.
Now, the Runama also includes handy advice.
Oh, sorry.
I already read that part.
I didn't edit this, which is unusual for me because I'm a hack and a fraud, so everyone should know.
No, this is raw.
We're raw dogging it.
This is punk rock.
We are raw dogging this.
That passed me by for a second.
That's one of my favorite terms.
It's just so visceral and gross.
It really is.
It's just the nastiest way to describe that.
I love it.
Okay.
So, are you wondering, Dave, how Niyazov defined the concept of a nation?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Well, nation is the transformation of human groups in the context of certain spiritual foundations.
A nation is shaped materially according to these spiritual foundations.
You get what he's...
You need statues.
You need statues.
Is that where he's going?
You got to have...
Like, you're not a nation unless you have, like, I don't know, 10 or more statues.
Yeah, I mean, way more than 10 statues.
Right.
That's the minimum.
Is that the minimum?
Yeah.
So in the Runama, Turkmen Bashi credits the Turkmen people with many great historical innovations, including the invention of robots, the invention of white wheat, and the invention of the wheel.
What?
Yeah.
Robots and the wheel.
How did robots get into that?
I do not know, Dave.
Yeah.
I can see, like, anybody can kind of claim the wheel.
Yeah.
Because it's like, who's going to prove them wrong?
Who's going to prove you wrong?
Yeah.
Might have been Turkmen.
I don't know.
Yeah, for all we know.
But robots, I feel like we have that written down.
We're pretty clear on robots.
Yeah.
So I cannot say that my limited reading of the Runama has led me to any staggering revelations about my place in the universe.
But Niyazov was adamant that his people needed to read this book.
He required anyone entering a mosque or a church to kiss a copy of the Runama before going into worship.
Yeah.
In a different New Yorker article by Macy Halford, I found one possible explanation of Niyazov's motivation in writing the Runama.
The person who provided it is just described as a scholar, I think because they're a person from Turkmenistan who doesn't want to have their family tortured.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Quote, Niyazov was somewhat illiterate.
He couldn't read or write Turkmen or Russian properly.
People who have disabilities, for example, illiteracy, want to be seen as geniuses.
That's probably what got him started.
I don't know about that logic either.
Yeah.
But it's funny that he can't read.
I mean, it's definitely most dictators are compensating for things, right?
Yeah, that part seems accurate.
It probably starts with a profound lack of confidence where it's like, you know, just you're fine, man.
You're fine.
You don't have to build this many statues and starve your people or bulldoze their houses or whatever.
Yeah.
Like, it's all right.
You're fine.
You're fine.
Yeah.
You're doing great, buddy.
We were all impressed when you were an engineer.
Yeah.
You didn't need to do the rest of this.
It would have been a great career.
It would have been a great career.
He would have done so much good things just as an engineer.
Keeping the lights on, not building golden baby statues.
You think that's where it started as an engineer?
He was like, you know, what I really need want to engineer is statues.
Statues.
That's, yeah, closer than is comfortable.
So once it was published, once the Runama was published, Turkmen Bashi did everything in his power to make it a central part of Turkmenistan life.
According to the book, Inside Central Asia, Niyazov erected a commemorative complex in his home village of Gipjak, conceived as a symbol of the rebirth of the Turkmen nation, which included a mosque whose walls carry quotations from the Quran as well as the Runama.
Yeah, that's bold.
Bolt.
The Turkmen government ordered a prominent display of the Runama, not only in bookshops and official buildings, but also in mosques and churches, sharing its place with the Quran or the Bible.
A colossal pink statue of the Runama in Ashgabat was too conspicuous to be missed.
Another decree extended the book's presence to libraries and schools and made it a part of the curriculum.
To be able to recite passages of the book became a badge of honor.
Next, civil servants, teachers, and doctors were required to pass a test on its teachings.
Then, this requirement also became part of the driving test.
The Runama was lauded in songs, and the state-run media regularly broadcast or printed excerpts from it.
Criticizing the book, even in private, was tantamount to criticizing Niyazov, an offense punishable with a five-year jail sentence.
Niyazov redesigned the educational system, reducing the compulsory schooling from two years to one, and higher education by three years down to a mere two.
Inexplicably, he reduced the college and university enrollments to 10% of the then-current figure.
He banned the teaching of foreign languages and decreed that the exceptional history and culture of Turkmen must be stressed with his runama to act as the lodestar.
The worst part is this book sounds terrible.
It's a terrible book.
And then he bans other languages and cuts, like, reduces school by a half so that nobody has any education.
So that presumably they'll find his book more compelling.
Exactly.
You can't have these people reading other books.
No, yeah.
It's like if Neil Breen or Tommy Wizo opened a theater and had Citizen Kane posters next to the room.
Yeah.
And it was just walled with that and started a film school where they're like, look, we're just going to focus on the room.
On the classics.
Yeah.
But gradually they phase out Citizen Kane for just exactly.
He's trying to create...
He's basically lowering the bar as much as he can to make his book the best thing around.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
That's infuriating.
Yeah.
Now, you may have noted from that passage I read a little note about a statue of the Runama that was put up in the Capitol.
Oh.
I have a video of that statue day.
Oh.
And it'll be up on our site behindthebastards.com.
But I've got to show it to you, and I'd like you to describe it to our listeners because most of them are probably jogging or driving or shooting at the moment and can't look at the video.
I hope they're pooping too.
Okay, I'm not sure what I'm seeing right now.
There's like cool, very cool music.
Very cool music.
I've seen a lot of colors.
I feel like there should be high.
Oh, wow.
It's a book.
It's a very colorful book.
Is this a statue?
Is this a statue?
It's opening.
Oh, my God.
It is a giant book.
Every night in Ashkabani.
It opens every night?
This is like a Disney attraction.
Like, this should be like the story of Snow White opens the new Korah.
Niazo's spiritual guide for the people.
It's an interact.
It's like a moving...
Is that a project?
There's fountains.
Of course, there's fountains.
Children are expected to learn pastoralism.
Wow.
He loves his book.
So does anyone who wants to get a driver's license?
What?
What is the point of that?
Yeah, he made you memorize bits of it to get a driver's license.
Yeah, why?
Okay.
There's so much to unpack here.
So, first of all, he loves his book so much that he made a giant statue that just opens.
Yeah, a statue-like book that opens.
Yeah, just like celebrating the act of opening his book.
Okay, so this driver's license.
Yeah.
What in the book helps with driving?
Well, you got to know how to use time as a mace, Dave.
Otherwise, you're going to get hit.
So back to the DeLorean.
Back to the DeLorean.
Yeah, okay.
See, it all ties together.
The internal logic's consistent.
I mean, I'm going to be honest, after writing a book, I'm pretty proud of it.
Right.
But I don't think I would build a giant statue of my book, A Brief History of Ice.
I would build a statue of your book.
See, if you build it, it's fine.
It is fine.
Yeah, exactly.
I should note that reading my book will not help you pass a driver's test.
You never know.
Don't sell yourself short.
Don't presume what people will take away from your book.
I learned how to merge from you.
But this is a running theme with Gaddafi with that astronaut thing.
Yeah, with the death of the astronaut, the greatest short story of all time.
Dictators are like brutal and do all these things, and then they're like, but you got to read my stuff.
Statues of Your Own Book00:05:08
You got to read my book.
It's just like, why don't we start with that?
Like, let's all read your book first, and we'll praise you, and then you don't have to hurt everybody.
You know what it is?
Like, when someone has a post go viral on Twitter unexpectedly and they link their SoundCloud or something, it's the that, but if you're in charge of a country.
Right, yeah.
Oh, God, I'm in charge.
Everybody look at this?
Yeah.
Oh, so many follows.
Didn't expect this, guys.
Didn't expect this, guys.
Here's my PayPal.
Yeah.
Oh, wait, I'm in charge of where all the oil and gas money goes, so it just goes right to my bank account.
So that's all we're going to talk about in part one of this episode.
But when we come back, we're going to talk about Turkmen Boshi's post-2001 career.
And trust me, Dave, shit's going to go even further off the rails.
Turns out all the craziness we've talked about so far was just a dress rehearsal.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you got any pluggables you want to plug before we head out?
I guess so.
I have a podcast network that I run with Tom Ryman called Gamefully Unemployed.
You can check us out at patreon.com slash gamefully unemployed.
We have a new show called Fox Mulder is a Maniac.
It's exclusive.
Yeah, it's our Behind the Bastards, but just for Fox Molder.
Just for Fox Molder.
Yeah.
So check it out.
Yeah, donate to Gamefully Unemployed.
Fantastic podcasts.
Tom and Dave are two, the funniest guys I know.
Thank you.
Please give them your dollars.
Give them your cents.
Mail them your shirts, pants.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Pop-tarts, severed heads of horses.
All of those things are appreciated.
And look up this podcast on behindthebastards.com on the internet.
Do it.
And you find the sources for this.
You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at BastardsPod.
You have wonderful t-shirts, too.
We do.
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If you're a fan of our episode on Rule Wallenberg, you can get those from TeePublic Behind the Bastard shop.
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I'm Robert Evans.
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They put on Lizzie McGuire 2 a.m. video on demand.
This guy's 2 a.m. 2 a.m., whatever time it is.
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It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, You're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
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