Behind the Bastards - Part Four: Tzar Nicholas II Was A Real Dick
Aired: 2022-02-24
Duration: 01:32:03


=== Trust Your Girlfriends (02:18) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:36]  Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists.
[00:00:38]  We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
[00:00:41]  We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
[00:00:45]  They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
[00:00:47]  This guy's playing.
[00:00:48]  2 a.m.
[00:00:49]  2 a.m.
[00:00:49]  Whatever time it is.
[00:00:50]  Lizzie McGuire and I'm like, wild bats for away.
[00:00:53]  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.
[00:00:58]  No, no, no.
[00:00:58]  I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
[00:01:03]  I'm not like, but listen to Las Culturistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:14]  You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
[00:01:16]  He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
[00:01:19]  But did you know he was a spy?
[00:01:21]  Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
[00:01:28]  All episodes are out now.
[00:01:30]  Was this before he wrote his stories?
[00:01:31]  It must have been.
[00:01:32]  What?
[00:01:33]  Okay, I don't think that's true.
[00:01:35]  I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
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=== Beyond Racism in Russia (10:51) ===

[00:02:19]  You know who else was over with Star Nicholas II, Sophie?
[00:02:22]  By the end of this episode, all of the people in Russia, the people, they made their opinions on him very clear.
[00:02:30]  This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast that is not particularly competently handled by me, but is competently handled by my producer, Sophie, and our guest on this beautiful, beautiful day, Jeff May.
[00:02:44]  Jeff!
[00:02:45]  It's me.
[00:02:46]  It's me.
[00:02:46]  Aren't you people sick of me yet?
[00:02:48]  No.
[00:02:48]  No, I'll never get sick of you.
[00:02:50]  But you know who I am kind of sick of?
[00:02:52]  It's like Sophie said, Nicholas II of Russia is sick of him.
[00:02:56]  Nicholas Romanov, ready for him to be dead, huh?
[00:03:00]  We're all there.
[00:03:01]  And that's just needed to be a four-parter because you need to understand the position of the Bolsheviks, who also were like, kind of wish this guy wasn't around anymore.
[00:03:10]  Yeah, like all we did is just talk about him.
[00:03:13]  Yeah.
[00:03:13]  They had to live to live under him for a long time.
[00:03:18]  Yeah.
[00:03:19]  So I think maybe we can all understand why in this period after the Russo-Japanese war, increasing numbers of people are like, boy, we probably ought to kill that guy at some point, huh?
[00:03:28]  Yeah, he should no longer have hidden.
[00:03:30]  You know, he has a fist that I would like to shoot in basement.
[00:03:33]  Yeah.
[00:03:34]  He is a man that no longer should be living and definitely not ruling large country.
[00:03:40]  Unfortunately for Russia, they would not get better at picking people to lead large country.
[00:03:45]  It's pretty much like, it hasn't been downhill since Nicholas, because as we've established, he was terrible.
[00:03:51]  But it hasn't been uphill.
[00:03:52]  It's just kind of been like this flat plane of history.
[00:03:57]  Russian history is a series of lateral moves.
[00:04:00]  It really is.
[00:04:02]  It is one of those things we could try into like, you could try to parse out who you think was like worst in objective terms, the USSR or Tsarist Russia.
[00:04:10]  But it's like they weren't going from a good system to a bad system.
[00:04:15]  They were like going from, all right, I've eaten a lot of food out of this dumpster filled with poop.
[00:04:21]  Now I eat from trash can.
[00:04:23]  See if better.
[00:04:24]  And no, it was not.
[00:04:25]  It was not much better.
[00:04:26]  You know, one of the joys of this episode for the listener, Jeff, is going to be hearing you do a much better job of a Russian accent than I do.
[00:04:34]  I don't know.
[00:04:34]  I always think I'm good at stuff, and then I hear it later, and I'm like, that sounds like shit.
[00:04:38]  Yeah, that is also something Tsar Nicholas II probably could have identified with.
[00:04:42]  I thought I was a lot better at running Russia than I turned out to be.
[00:04:46]  I did not expect to have my head get cut off.
[00:04:49]  But who knows?
[00:04:51]  You win some, you lose some.
[00:04:52]  I mean, he kind of keeps his head.
[00:04:55]  He just doesn't get to do anything else with it past a certain point.
[00:04:58]  So one thing we didn't get to last time, but should probably talk about now, is that as a part of his attempt to put down the rebellion, Nicholas does give Russia a constitution on October 17th, 1905.
[00:05:10]  So he cracks down brutally, kills a shitload of people, allows pogroms to occur across the country.
[00:05:16]  But he does be like, all right, you get your Duma.
[00:05:19]  You know, he agrees that you get to have, like, the Russian people get to have some representation in government now.
[00:05:26]  All right, all right, fine, fine.
[00:05:29]  We will let you speak.
[00:05:30]  After I shoot a thousand of you, you get to vote.
[00:05:34]  It is good trade.
[00:05:35]  Good trade.
[00:05:36]  Because he's the autocrat of Russia in the documents that like announce this constitution, it's framed as the czar imposing civil rights on the people.
[00:05:46]  Like, I am forcing you to have rights now.
[00:05:49]  You better believe you are going to have rights.
[00:05:52]  But they do get a bicameral parliament.
[00:05:55]  One of the houses of parliament has like pretty full representation of the people who get to vote with kind of close to universal suffrage.
[00:06:04]  And the other house is kind of like a house of lords situation where there's a little bit less representation, but it's a lot more than people had before.
[00:06:10]  Like it is, it's one of those things on objective terms, oh yeah, this is a big move forward towards democracy in Russia and towards like a more representative, you know, social and political system.
[00:06:25]  But Nicholas doesn't really take it seriously because he doesn't think he should have had to do this.
[00:06:29]  Like he hasn't been convinced this is a good idea.
[00:06:32]  He just tried to bribe people with it.
[00:06:34]  And he spends the rest, the next several years, basically anytime things happen that he doesn't like, he dissolves the Duma and he like makes there be elections for a new one until he gets his way.
[00:06:45]  And he's kind of plotting to get rid of it from day one.
[00:06:47]  He is not, he isn't bought in on this as a good idea.
[00:06:51]  Part of his comeback plan after the Civil War and the horrible disaster in fucking with fighting Japan is to create a far-right anti-Semitic militia.
[00:07:01]  He'd had kind of a far-right anti-Semitic militia in the black hundreds, but those weren't very organized.
[00:07:06]  They did a lot of economic damage too.
[00:07:08]  He wants to do a better job.
[00:07:09]  You know, he wants his proud boys.
[00:07:12]  I was going to say, yeah, also something that we have seen similarly.
[00:07:16]  It is uncomfortable how many of the things in the story of Russia, the Tsarist Russia falling apart are like, all right, well, that's not that uncomfortable.
[00:07:24]  That's not that unfamiliar.
[00:07:26]  We had one of those like the other day.
[00:07:28]  Oh, yeah, that's going on right now up in Canada.
[00:07:30]  Okay.
[00:07:32]  So this anti-Semitic militia he forms is called the Union of Russian People.
[00:07:37]  And it was kind of a political and respectable equivalent to the Black Hundreds.
[00:07:41]  By 1906, it had 300,000 members.
[00:07:45]  In the wake of the revolution, Nikki grew a lot more anti-Semitic, as did Alexandra, his wife, the Tsarina.
[00:07:51]  Simon Montfior writes, Nicholas's table talk was peppered with anti-Jewish banter, typical of many a European aristocrat of this era, telling his mother how a courtier amused us very much with funny Jewish stories, wonderfully good at imitating Jews, and even his face suddenly looks Jewish.
[00:08:08]  So that's pretty cringe.
[00:08:09]  Yeah, that's a that's one of those things where you're like, I don't know, man.
[00:08:13]  This is even beyond the times.
[00:08:16]  People are like, yo, it was the time.
[00:08:17]  But even at this time, people would be like, man, it's not.
[00:08:20]  No, he is.
[00:08:21]  And like, again, a lot of his ministers are repeatedly like the craze, the sex-crazed rapist monk is like cool it with the anti-Semitism.
[00:08:31]  Maybe calm down a little bit.
[00:08:32]  When Rasputin is like sitting you down, we need to talk about some of the things you're saying.
[00:08:38]  People are starting to talk.
[00:08:40]  You will not look good.
[00:08:42]  Alexandra regularly would talk about, quote, rotten, vicious Jews.
[00:08:47]  After like someone would say the name of someone, which sounded like they might be Jewish.
[00:08:52]  She would like call out whenever like, so she would have all these arguments with her husband about like the ministers say to do this and she doesn't like it because the ministers were usually saying you need to give a little more power to the people.
[00:09:04]  You need to not be so anti-Semitic, yada, yada.
[00:09:06]  And Alexander would be like, no, fuck that.
[00:09:08]  You've got to be powerful.
[00:09:09]  Who said that?
[00:09:10]  And he'll say someone's name and she'll be like, oh, that's got to be a Jew.
[00:09:14]  Like, she's that kind of person.
[00:09:16]  She sucks, too.
[00:09:17]  Again.
[00:09:18]  Yeah, I was going to say, I think you just say she sucks.
[00:09:20]  Yeah, because her ending is so tragic, and her children absolutely did not deserve to be gunned down.
[00:09:25]  Like that, because of how sad the end is, she gets this kind of rap as being like maybe a little bit histrionic, but like basically a sympathetic person.
[00:09:35]  And like, she's trash.
[00:09:36]  She's a terrible person.
[00:09:38]  She's a really, really bad human being.
[00:09:40]  She's a bastard.
[00:09:41]  Yeah.
[00:09:41]  She sucks really bad.
[00:09:45]  Yeah.
[00:09:45]  And racism was kind of, it was not, this is not, as we're talking about, this is not in line with things because Nicholas, Jewish people are, this isn't just like he learns some slurs and like he goes back to some jokes that are kind of racy because he doesn't really think about it.
[00:10:01]  Jewish people represent modernity to him.
[00:10:04]  And that's the thing he hates more than anything because modernity is the enemy of czarist power.
[00:10:09]  He saw, he would say stuff like, the Englishman is a yid, like, which is a slur against Jewish people, like to say that.
[00:10:16]  I'm like, yikes.
[00:10:17]  Yeah, really fucked up.
[00:10:19]  And the reason he's saying that is like, well, they're modern and they're successful and they're they've they've, they're not an autar like a monarchist state in the same way that I am, like people have power like they've, they have modernized with the times and mechanized and like that's got to be Jewish influence, because that's the only reason people wouldn't want to live as literal slaves to a czar.
[00:10:41]  Um, he's just like out of his mind, kind of which is what being a king does to you.
[00:10:47]  I think I was gonna go online.
[00:10:48]  Kind of rude yeah, kind of a dick.
[00:10:50]  It's kind of rude.
[00:10:51]  In december of 1905, an Anti-semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders OF ZION, which we have done several episodes about.
[00:10:58]  Um bad book.
[00:11:00]  I, I would, I would say um, this gets published By the Petersburg Military District Press, probably under the orders of Nikolasha, that guy who cut his dog in half.
[00:11:12]  And Witt, who's his prime minister, the Tsar's prime minister, discovers that the Interior Ministry is printing up the protocols of the Elders of Zion and like sending them out all throughout 1905 and 19, late 1905 and 1906 during these pogroms.
[00:11:25]  And when he reports this to Nicholas, Witt writes, quote, His Majesty was silent and appeared familiar with all the details.
[00:11:33]  So there's a lot of people who will allege that the protocols of the Elders of Zion, which have a big role in the Holocaust and a bunch of like all of the pogroms that occur in Russia during the Russian Civil War, was deliberately directed by the Tsar, that he like approved it.
[00:11:48]  It was definitely, again, there's a lot of kind of debate over the exact origin of it, but it was definitely spread by his secret police.
[00:11:56]  In The Last Tsar, author Edvard Redzinski cites several people close to Nicholas II who claim that he did not create, he did not order the creation of the protocols, and he didn't believe they were real.
[00:12:08]  They were the result of a secret police conspiracy within Russia, this like right-wing conspiracy that acted under the Tsar's nose.
[00:12:15]  And in this telling of events, this conspiracy was actually angry at Nicholas because he didn't buy into the protocols of the Elders of Zion.
[00:12:24]  And he refused to back as much violence as they wanted.
[00:12:26]  I think this is kind of a lie.
[00:12:29]  And I'll tell you why, because when Nicholas gets kicked out of office and he's sitting alone in like a safe house with his family, one of the things he reads his daughters and son is the protocols of the elders of Zion.
[00:12:41]  So even if he didn't sign off on it, it's not exactly like he's like, yeah, don't listen to it.
[00:12:45]  I will say, I don't think he signed off on it specifically, and I don't think he ordered its creation.
[00:12:50]  And the reason why is because that was a very competent job that did a lot of damage and was successful.
[00:12:57]  And I don't think Nicholas could have been a part of something successful.
[00:13:02]  Is that a deleted scene from Anastasia?
[00:13:04]  Yeah, where he helps spread the proto, where his soldiers spread the protocols of the elders of Zion throughout Europe.

=== The Peasant Token (02:58) ===

[00:13:10]  Cartoon bat reading it all.
[00:13:13]  While Ras Buten is like, I don't know, man, it kind of seems like a little, like that might bite you in the ass.
[00:13:18]  Yeah, the bad guy breaks the fourth wall.
[00:13:20]  We don't actually believe these.
[00:13:22]  Yeah.
[00:13:23]  Please chill.
[00:13:24]  Although, to be fair, Walt Disney, if it was a Disney movie instead of, I forget the company name, thought it was Disney until this exact second.
[00:13:33]  Yeah, many people do.
[00:13:34]  But if it was a Disney movie, that scene would have been in it.
[00:13:37]  Yeah.
[00:13:37]  Yes, and that would have been most of the movie.
[00:13:40]  Yeah.
[00:13:40]  That would have been actually the scene.
[00:13:42]  Rasputin would have been the villain, but for a different reason.
[00:13:45]  Yeah.
[00:13:46]  That would have been the thesis statement of the movie.
[00:13:50]  So by the end of 1906, the royal couple had already met with Ras Buten twice.
[00:13:54]  He gets introduced to them by Nikolasha, and they meet him the first couple of times at like functions with other nobles.
[00:14:01]  Because again, he's kind of this like cult leaderslash curiosity.
[00:14:05]  So if you're having a party, yeah, bring Rasputin because he's both this healer and this mystic, but he's also a peasant.
[00:14:12]  And noble people are like fascinated by peasants.
[00:14:15]  There's a lot of like idolization of peasants.
[00:14:19]  There's this ideal of the peasants as like this noble like salt of the earth, the soul of Russia, and they have this sacred bond with the Romanovs that this beautiful and like almost religious thing that the Romanovs believe in, that they have this like psychic connection to the peasantry.
[00:14:35]  And all of the nobles feel this way.
[00:14:37]  And it's not that different from how a lot of multi-millionaire conservative thought leaders like Ben Shapiro will like pose with their F-150s and cowboy hats, even though it's like, Ben, you've never needed a truck.
[00:14:48]  You've never needed a truck.
[00:14:50]  Not once in your life.
[00:14:51]  Are you helping move?
[00:14:52]  Yeah.
[00:14:54]  Can you lift one bale of hay?
[00:14:55]  Ben, you've never needed a hat.
[00:14:57]  You don't go outside that often.
[00:15:01]  And also that hat looks like it's a 20-gallon hat on your head.
[00:15:04]  But, you know, it's like Ronald Reagan going to his ranch or George Bush going to the, and like, I'm going to chop some firewood.
[00:15:10]  You know, I'm going to put up a fence or whatever.
[00:15:12]  Like, it's.
[00:15:12]  I will say this.
[00:15:13]  At least with Bush, he grew up ranching.
[00:15:17]  He had more experience with it than, but a lot of these guys do.
[00:15:20]  And there's this idea that like this connects me to the regular people.
[00:15:25]  And it's kind of like how nowadays, if you're kind of a right-wing. political leader, you're going to want a lot of appearances where you're going to like sit down with farmers and truckers and you can be like seen with them or like a minor.
[00:15:36]  Oh, yeah.
[00:15:37]  Blue collar.
[00:15:38]  It's blue collar tokenism is what it is.
[00:15:40]  And there's a peasant tokenism within the upper class in Russia, but also they're all too scared to meet with real peasants because sometimes peasants like revolt and stuff and they're gross.
[00:15:51]  Yeah.
[00:15:52]  I mean, you know, for whatever reason, obviously, occasionally, I don't know, go to a bar in your hometown.
[00:16:00]  Yeah.
[00:16:01]  Just go to any bar, not the night before Thanksgiving in your hometown and just take a look around.

=== Blue Collar Tokenism (07:42) ===

[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  Listen in.
[00:16:10]  Yeah.
[00:16:11]  That's what these people don't want to do.
[00:16:13]  So they want that connection with the peasants, but they don't want to like sit at a sports bar at 11.30 on November 5th and like hear the kinds of things people say at sports bars at 11.30 on November 5th.
[00:16:24]  Let me tell you, I've gone to my fair share of Boston bars to watch like Patriots games or something and been like, did you?
[00:16:30]  I'm sorry.
[00:16:31]  What was that?
[00:16:31]  You think we've heard some anti-Semitism today?
[00:16:34]  Dude, the amount of times you can hear like the phrase, like one of the good ones.
[00:16:38]  Yeah.
[00:16:39]  I'm sorry.
[00:16:39]  What was that?
[00:16:40]  So this is, I mean, Rasputin is kind of this token peasant who the nobles, he shows up at these, and that's how the Romanovs meet him as like, look at this.
[00:16:48]  He's both this mystic and this healer.
[00:16:50]  And he's also this peasant who represents this sacred connection that we Romanovs justify our rule by.
[00:16:57]  So they meet him a couple of times, but the first really close meeting they have is in October of 1906 when Rasputin telegrams them.
[00:17:04]  So you can tell already, even before he's in good with the family, he's savvy enough and has like made enough of a connection at these parties that like he can telegram the Tsarina directly.
[00:17:16]  Yeah, that's like having a cell phone in the 80s.
[00:17:18]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:19]  Be like, what do you do?
[00:17:20]  If Rasputin had been in the 80s, he would have had a massive car phone and he would have done, I'm going to guess his body weight and cocaine every 48 hours.
[00:17:29]  He would have been an entire season of Miami Vice.
[00:17:32]  Yeah, and he would have died in a shootout with somebody.
[00:17:36]  Yeah.
[00:17:37]  There's a 0% chance that he does not die in a swimming pool.
[00:17:41]  Like, he absolutely does.
[00:17:42]  Yeah, machine gunned by the, whichever cartel isn't sponsoring us.
[00:17:48]  Yeah.
[00:17:49]  So Rasputin telegrams the Tsar in Zarina and says, like, hey, I'm coming into town and I have a sacred icon for you, right?
[00:17:56]  Basically, it's kind of like a picture of a saint and like precious metals and stuff.
[00:18:00]  Icons generally in the Orthodox religion are just shitty paintings because you weren't supposed to make anything look real.
[00:18:07]  Yeah.
[00:18:08]  Yeah.
[00:18:08]  Because that would be idolatry.
[00:18:10]  He's got this shitty painting.
[00:18:11]  He wants to give it to them.
[00:18:13]  And they're like, okay, so they agree to see him.
[00:18:15]  And when he arrives, it just so happens that Alexi has like, the Tsar's son has like hurt himself and is bleeding.
[00:18:22]  And this happens a bunch.
[00:18:23]  Like he'll, he'll like walk into a doorknob or some shit and then he'll bleed for 17 days.
[00:18:29]  You see him like folding up his pocket knife and putting it away.
[00:18:32]  Oh, something happened to your kid.
[00:18:35]  So Rasputin comes in and he sees that Alexi's bleeding.
[00:18:39]  And he sees how scared the Romanovs are for their son.
[00:18:42]  And he talks with them for more than an hour and they take him into the nursery to pray over Alexi.
[00:18:47]  And this visit, everything he says during it, leaves this profound impression on the Tsar and Tsarini.
[00:18:52]  They find him very comforting.
[00:18:53]  And from this moment on, Ras Butin is increasingly difficult to separate from the royal family.
[00:18:57]  The Tsar will say to his ministers who get disturbed by the fact that, like, number one, it's a state secret that their son has hemophilia.
[00:19:04]  People can't know that.
[00:19:06]  But this dude who just like who he'll spend a day with the royal family and then he'll go drinking and whoring in St. Petersburg.
[00:19:13]  And his ministers will be like, this is a problem.
[00:19:15]  You got to get rid of this guy.
[00:19:17]  And the czar will be like, look, I will deal with like any number of outrages caused by this dude doing whatever he wants to do if he can stop one like hysterical fit that my wife has.
[00:19:28]  I mean, who among us?
[00:19:30]  Am I right?
[00:19:31]  I mean, seriously, like, not even like, I have, I have both been the person in a relationship with fucking PTSD and been in a relationship with somebody with PTSD.
[00:19:41]  And man, if there was just a dude I could call and he would stop one or both of us from losing our minds for the better part of a day, yeah, I probably would have told that dude some shit, you know?
[00:19:54]  Like.
[00:19:56]  Yeah, man.
[00:19:57]  I mean, the wife whisperer.
[00:20:00]  This guy come in and just fix the problem.
[00:20:02]  It's both, because it's not just he's able to calm down the czarina.
[00:20:06]  I think he is able to calm down the czar.
[00:20:08]  Again, these are, for all their faults, people who really love their kid.
[00:20:11]  And their kid is like, they have, they're traumatized by this.
[00:20:14]  Like seeing your son several times a year nearly bleed to death like is a trauma that's going to like damage you.
[00:20:21]  And it's also should be reminded that Rasputin is charming.
[00:20:25]  Yeah, he's good at this.
[00:20:26]  Yeah.
[00:20:27]  Yeah.
[00:20:27]  Like, you know, he's got a silver tongue.
[00:20:29]  There's a reason he finds himself in the situations he is.
[00:20:32]  He's smart.
[00:20:33]  Yeah.
[00:20:33]  He's charming.
[00:20:34]  He fucks.
[00:20:35]  He fucks.
[00:20:35]  He knows that.
[00:20:36]  He's crazy.
[00:20:37]  He fucks.
[00:20:38]  And it's also like people shouldn't take this.
[00:20:41]  He is, I think he is a grifter.
[00:20:42]  I think he knows there's an extent to which he's a con man.
[00:20:46]  But I also think he recognizes that like, well, sometimes it is a good thing just to be able to calm people down when they're freaking out, especially like sick and scared children and like their moms.
[00:20:55]  And I can see how this guy could be like, well, actually, I'm doing a good thing here.
[00:21:00]  Like these people need me.
[00:21:03]  And they kind of do.
[00:21:04]  Like, that's the thing.
[00:21:06]  He's not, he is a grifter.
[00:21:08]  He's not grifting them.
[00:21:09]  They're really getting value out of this.
[00:21:11]  He is in a lot of ways.
[00:21:12]  A lot of people say for the Tsarina, he's like a therapist, which don't exist at that point in time.
[00:21:17]  And that's the closest thing.
[00:21:19]  Yeah.
[00:21:20]  Is the Russian, the turn of the century version of Miss Cleo.
[00:21:24]  Yeah.
[00:21:24]  And he's also, it's worth noting, not really that bad an influence on the Tsar and Tsarina.
[00:21:29]  He will later on give them some really stupid advice, but like he's they, the czar comes up with worse advice on his own for himself, you know?
[00:21:38]  Like this is not a man who was making great decisions consistently before Rasputin.
[00:21:42]  So one of the things he's able to do is he's really able to like calm down Alexi.
[00:21:47]  They notice that Alexi seems to recover more quickly from his bleeding episodes when Rasputin is around.
[00:21:54]  And he's great with the daughters too.
[00:21:56]  Like they all love him.
[00:21:57]  They'll talk to him.
[00:21:58]  They confide in him.
[00:21:59]  He brings them gifts.
[00:22:01]  Montfior, Simon Montfior, notes that Gregory Rasputin had a way of, quote, making even czars feel they were privileged to be in his company.
[00:22:10]  And from what I can tell, the way he did this with Nicholas was by playing on the fact that the Romanovs have this belief in like the sacred union of Tsar and the peasants.
[00:22:18]  This is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe.
[00:22:21]  The fact that like this is the center of Nikki's concept of the universe, that he has this bond with the peasants, but also the government that he runs spends billions a year making sure that he's never in direct contact with the peasants.
[00:22:33]  So getting to spend time with Rasputin, who he would regularly call a real Russian peasant, that's how he would introduce him to other rich people, was like...
[00:22:41]  Like he's a transformer or something.
[00:22:42]  Yeah.
[00:22:43]  Yeah.
[00:22:43]  He's like, look, we got the real peasant.
[00:22:45]  We got a real peasant here.
[00:22:47]  This is intoxicating to him.
[00:22:49]  Because Rasputin's like, of course I have a mystical connection with you, my czar.
[00:22:53]  Of course, like I and every other peasant, we really love you.
[00:22:56]  And that's what Nicholas wants to hear.
[00:22:58]  He doesn't want to feel like, well, I just had to kill 15,000 people to secure my reign.
[00:23:03]  He wants to hear that, like, no, no, no, I'm a peasant.
[00:23:06]  And trust me, all the peasants love your ass, man.
[00:23:09]  Yeah, man.
[00:23:09]  You haven't been at the peasant meetings because, you know, obviously you can't be.
[00:23:13]  But we're you 24-7, bro.
[00:23:16]  I mean, there's fan clubs.
[00:23:17]  We have merch.
[00:23:19]  There's, there's people have you on t-shirts.
[00:23:21]  Oh, yeah.
[00:23:23]  And yeah, it's cool.
[00:23:26]  So he's both able to be like this living embodiment of the connection the czar has to the peasants of Russia.
[00:23:32]  And he's also able to convince the czar that he has special powers given to him by God, which are going to save the czar's heir.
[00:23:40]  So I think Nikki felt on some level that like God had sent this magical peasant to him to like as a reward for killing all those people, kind of.

=== Living Embodiment of Power (04:34) ===

[00:23:51]  You get that feeling.
[00:23:52]  And you know who else will reward you for killing people, Jeff?
[00:23:55]  Ooh, some very interesting sponsors, I'm guessing.
[00:23:58]  That's right.
[00:23:59]  All of our sponsors.
[00:24:00]  Sophie, what?
[00:24:01]  No.
[00:24:02]  Yeah.
[00:24:03]  You know, in particular, just send them proof of the crime and they will send you a free mealbox.
[00:24:11]  You can win a free William refrigerator parry with enough flag points.
[00:24:17]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:24:18]  Yeah.
[00:24:19]  So get on down to.com and also commit murder.
[00:24:27]  What's up, everyone?
[00:24:28]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:24:29]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:24:37]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:24:40]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:24:43]  I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:24:48]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:24:51]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:24:52]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:24:55]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:25:00]  Yeah.
[00:25:00]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:25:03]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:25:04]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:25:13]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:25:15]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:25:23]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:25:25]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:25:26]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:25:27]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:37]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:25:41]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:25:44]  If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:25:47]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:25:51]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:25:54]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:25:56]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:25:58]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:26:00]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:26:05]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:26:07]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:26:09]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:26:11]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:26:14]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:26:15]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:26:18]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:26:22]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:26:24]  Trust me, babe.
[00:26:25]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:35]  I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:26:41]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:26:47]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
[00:26:54]  From power to parenthood.
[00:26:56]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:26:59]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:27:01]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:27:04]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
[00:27:08]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:27:15]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:27:17]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:27:24]  Find out a Mostly Human.
[00:27:25]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI.
[00:27:28]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:27:37]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:27:42]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:27:47]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:27:53]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:28:02]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:28:07]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:28:10]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:28:13]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:28:15]  That's so funny.
[00:28:17]  Shari stay with me each night, each morning.

=== Cold Baths and Control (15:23) ===

[00:28:25]  Say you love me.
[00:28:28]  You know I.
[00:28:30]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:40]  We're back.
[00:28:41]  Oh, yeah.
[00:28:45]  You've all killed one person and gotten your free mealbox.
[00:28:48]  Have you slaked your thirst for blood?
[00:28:52]  One of the things that all Behind the Bastards fans know is that when you draw your machete, you can't sheath it again until it's tasted the blood of an enemy whose death gets you a mealbox from I mean, how else are we gonna eat?
[00:29:05]  How else are we gonna eat?
[00:29:07]  Well, cannibalism.
[00:29:09]  But as Rasputin grew closer to the royals, their ministers and the family grew to hate him.
[00:29:15]  So, like, the other Romanovs, like the cousins and whatnot, his uncles and shit, they don't like this guy because like they keep getting edged out by him.
[00:29:26]  The ministers don't like Rasputin because they're like, he's not listening to us.
[00:29:29]  He's just listening to this dude who, by the way, smells horrible and fucks all their wives, right?
[00:29:34]  Like that's the rest.
[00:29:36]  I don't bae that I'm gonna fuck all your wives.
[00:29:38]  Yeah, no, we've seen that guy.
[00:29:41]  We've seen him in college.
[00:29:42]  He had Petruli.
[00:29:43]  He played a didgeridoo.
[00:29:44]  And he fucked everybody's wives.
[00:29:47]  Oh, yeah.
[00:29:47]  And that's Rasputin.
[00:29:49]  So there's a lot of reasons he's unpopular with the people around the Romanovs.
[00:29:54]  And despite all this, his council becomes increasingly influential.
[00:29:59]  He's generally anti-war, probably because he's a pretty smart guy and he recognizes like, I got a good thing going here.
[00:30:06]  This dude's not good at anything.
[00:30:08]  If he gets into a war, he might wind up getting overthrown.
[00:30:12]  And then where's Rasputin going to be?
[00:30:13]  Also, Rasputin, lover, not a fighter.
[00:30:16]  I think we've established.
[00:30:17]  Yeah, definitely a lover, not a fighter.
[00:30:19]  Although, I got to say, based on some of the stories, probably would have been a good boxer.
[00:30:24]  He could take hits.
[00:30:25]  I feel like we learned that very specific punishment.
[00:30:28]  The man's got a strong chin.
[00:30:30]  Yeah.
[00:30:32]  The real fight of the century would have been Grigory Rasbuten and Joe Frazier.
[00:30:37]  Right?
[00:30:38]  I thought the Klitschkos are just the...
[00:30:40]  They just inherited that Russian steel jaw.
[00:30:46]  So he, yeah, I should note something here, probably, about the kind of parents that Nicholas and Alexandra were.
[00:30:53]  They get a lot of credit historically because, again, they did love their kids.
[00:30:57]  They put their kids sometimes before the lives of millions and millions of Russians.
[00:31:02]  But if you're, and so, yeah, if you are rating totalitarian dictators as parents, he's probably top of the list.
[00:31:08]  He's definitely a better father than Saddam, better father than Stalin, better father than Castro, better father than, you know, I don't know.
[00:31:17]  Bashar al-Azad's probably.
[00:31:19]  Was Saddam a bad father?
[00:31:21]  Yeah, I mean, his children, one of his sons repeatedly murdered people at parties with like machine gun the women dancers and stuff during like drunken bacchanals.
[00:31:30]  That's not great parenting.
[00:31:31]  Was that was that Uday or?
[00:31:33]  That was, I think, I think that was Uday.
[00:31:35]  Yeah, I get him mixed up sometimes.
[00:31:38]  My friend was in the Marines and he sent back this photo of him holding like a gold AK.
[00:31:43]  Yeah.
[00:31:43]  And he was just like, we went into the pals.
[00:31:45]  Look what we got.
[00:31:46]  There were a lot of those around at the time.
[00:31:48]  Yeah.
[00:31:49]  There sure were.
[00:31:51]  So yeah, they're probably better parents than most dictators, but he and his wife were not great parents.
[00:31:58]  And I'm going to read a quote from the Romanovs that I think makes that clear.
[00:32:02]  The Empress concentrated on babysweet Alexi, who was escorted by two Cossack bodyguards at all times, while she treated her daughters, known by the collective acronym OTMA or Otma for Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, as a single entity, dressing them in identical clothes, or when the older two could no longer wear youthful dresses in pairs, the big two and little two.
[00:32:24]  The girls shared rooms in twos, slept on hard beds, and suffered cold baths every morning.
[00:32:29]  So they grew up without a trace of hauteur.
[00:32:31]  Their only luxury was a single pearl and diamond for their birthday, and each had their own favorite Cotier scent.
[00:32:38]  The family, especially the girls, embraced photography, taking thousands of family shots with their box brownie cameras.
[00:32:43]  Anastasia even pioneered the selfie, sitting on a mirror, on a chair before a mirror, holding a camera at her waist.
[00:32:50]  So that's kind of weird, right?
[00:32:52]  It seems unnecessary.
[00:32:53]  All of my daughters are like showers.
[00:32:55]  Yeah.
[00:32:56]  Yeah, and to give them a shitty, it's like a shitty one unit.
[00:32:59]  Yeah.
[00:33:00]  Man, cold baths?
[00:33:02]  Yeah, cold baths, which I don't know that the czar and zarina are taking.
[00:33:06]  And just also, well, the son is his own person.
[00:33:09]  All of our daughters are collectively one child.
[00:33:11]  Otma.
[00:33:12]  That's a little messed up.
[00:33:15]  Especially because you could make it moat.
[00:33:17]  Yeah.
[00:33:17]  And there's Alexei as he grows up becomes kind of there's some quotes that he's kind of he's pretty spoiled.
[00:33:24]  He doesn't sound like a pleasant kid to be around.
[00:33:26]  I'm not going to go into detail on that because he is a small child who's sick his whole life and then gets murdered.
[00:33:30]  So I don't really want to like dunk on Alexei Romanov.
[00:33:33]  That kind of seems fucked up because he had a bad enough run of it.
[00:33:37]  But I don't think they're very good parents.
[00:33:39]  I just think they're not abusive parents.
[00:33:43]  Not to everyone, but.
[00:33:44]  Yeah, I mean, to their people.
[00:33:45]  But not to the Russian they are.
[00:33:47]  But yeah.
[00:33:48]  They're just kind of like weird and sort of shitty to their daughters, but not in like a mean way.
[00:33:54]  I don't know.
[00:33:55]  It's uncomfortable to me.
[00:33:56]  Referring to four girls as a single person to save time is kind of not great.
[00:34:03]  It's emblematic of a future problem.
[00:34:05]  Yeah.
[00:34:06]  Yeah, that didn't get to happen because Bolsheviks had access to handguns.
[00:34:11]  But it probably, I don't know, there probably would have been some fascinating therapy sessions if these people had all like gotten to live out their lives.
[00:34:20]  So the Romanov girls were as much as is possible pretty normal kids for their socioeconomic status.
[00:34:28]  Alexei didn't really get that chance because again, he's dying most of his childhood.
[00:34:33]  He's going to be in bubble wrap.
[00:34:34]  Yeah, like anything could do it.
[00:34:36]  Like he could fuck, again, he could like walk into a doorknob and that could be the end of him.
[00:34:41]  So it's a rough childhood for little Alexei, which is why we're not going to dunk on him too much for growing up kind of spoiled.
[00:34:46]  It would be hard not to spoil your son if he was always on death's door.
[00:34:51]  Yeah, and also the rightful heir.
[00:34:53]  And also the rightful heir to a sixth of the world's landmass.
[00:34:56]  Yeah.
[00:34:58]  A big part of Rasputin's appeal is that he was able to convince Nicholas II that Alexei was going to live long and inherit the realm.
[00:35:06]  He would say stuff like, Olya, Olya was what Rasputin called Alexei, will triumph because he's not an ordinary earthly being.
[00:35:13]  There's never been such a czar.
[00:35:15]  The look in his eyes is similar to Peter the Great's.
[00:35:17]  I mean, Peter the Great was dead and Alexei was half dead, so I guess that's part of it.
[00:35:21]  That's fair.
[00:35:22]  No, this is.
[00:35:23]  It's so hard.
[00:35:23]  Like every, there's that obsession with Peter the Great.
[00:35:26]  You either loved him or hate him.
[00:35:27]  Yeah.
[00:35:28]  And I mean, it's the night.
[00:35:29]  It's the thing that you can, if you're, if you're trying to get like the czar drunk on the possibility of the future, you try to convince him that his son is going to be a new Peter the Great because then he'll that Peter the Great was a strong czar and he also didn't die at age 13 or whatever.
[00:35:45]  He was a giant.
[00:35:46]  He was a big man.
[00:35:47]  Alexey was not ever going to be a big man.
[00:35:50]  No.
[00:35:50]  Spoiler alert.
[00:35:51]  He was never going to end up a man.
[00:35:52]  Yeah.
[00:35:54]  Yeah.
[00:35:54]  That that is that is one of our classic Vladimir Ilyich Lenin spoilers.
[00:36:00]  Um so Rasputin was also capable of calming down the increasingly anxiety riddled and riddled hypochondriac Tsarina.
[00:36:08]  Nicholas needed this because in 1907, there's another attempt at overthrowing his government.
[00:36:13]  Now, this one occurs through the Duma, and it's an attempt to democratically take more power for the people from the Tsar.
[00:36:21]  We might call this the people of Russia being like, hey, maybe we shouldn't have an absolute ruler anymore because it doesn't seem to work very well.
[00:36:29]  Let's try and change this a little bit.
[00:36:31]  But Nicholas.
[00:36:33]  Yeah, Nicholas dissolves the government.
[00:36:35]  He arrests all of the socialist elected leaders he can get his hands on.
[00:36:39]  He destroys the Social Democratic Party through purges.
[00:36:42]  Now, Nicholas's prime minister at the time, a guy named Stolypin, begs him to allow more democratic reforms and lift restrictions placed upon the Jews.
[00:36:52]  Stolypin is the guy who's like, hey, when the Tsar is ranting about Jews being behind the revolution, you know, one day, Stolypin's like, well, I think if I was Jewish and had to live under your government, I would be throwing bombs at your men, too.
[00:37:08]  He's one of these occasional rational humans who wanders into the Tsar's orbit.
[00:37:13]  Yeah.
[00:37:14]  And just drops a little piece of information, but it's just for the wrong century.
[00:37:18]  Yeah, it's not going to get through the Tsar's head.
[00:37:22]  Now's not the time.
[00:37:23]  Yeah, Stolypin sees another revolution coming.
[00:37:25]  And again, he's kind of trying to head it off.
[00:37:28]  He's rational enough to be like, well, the Tsar is not going to wind up, he's not going to be able to be the absolute ruler of Russia forever.
[00:37:34]  But we can probably work out a situation where he has some power and his family keeps their wealth and influence and doesn't get murdered in a basement.
[00:37:41]  But Nikki is not going to have that shit.
[00:37:44]  Nicholas tells him.
[00:37:45]  Not on my watch.
[00:37:45]  Not on my watch.
[00:37:47]  Keep my family alive.
[00:37:48]  Not if I'm in charge.
[00:37:50]  Yeah.
[00:37:52]  Nikki tells Stolypin, quote, an inner voice keeps insisting more and more that I don't take this decision.
[00:37:57]  So far, my conscience has not deceived me.
[00:37:59]  I intend to follow its dictates.
[00:38:01]  The heart of the Tsar is in God's hands.
[00:38:03]  So be it.
[00:38:04]  So he's saying like...
[00:38:04]  That's pronounced, it's pronounced Soviet.
[00:38:07]  Yeah, that's what's coming is Soviet.
[00:38:11]  Yeah, he's like, he's like, me keep my watch, not on my watch.
[00:38:17]  And he's also saying that, like, because I don't want to give up power and because God put me here, it means God doesn't want me to give up power, which some could call circular logic.
[00:38:25]  Yeah.
[00:38:25]  That is, that is right there.
[00:38:27]  That's, that's royalty 101.
[00:38:29]  Yeah.
[00:38:29]  They do that shit.
[00:38:30]  They pull that shit off all the time.
[00:38:32]  Sometimes you get magna carted because of it, and sometimes you don't.
[00:38:35]  Yep, that is, that is the way it works.
[00:38:37]  Sometimes you feel like a Magna Carta.
[00:38:39]  Sometimes you feel like having your family get massacred in a basement because you got everyone roped into World War I, which is what we're about to talk about.
[00:38:47]  Oopsie.
[00:38:49]  Yeah, and that is Nicholas.
[00:38:53]  It would probably be fair to say Nicholas does not have as much guilt in starting World War I as Kaiser Wilhelm, who's probably the one dude who gets the most blame.
[00:39:05]  Yeah.
[00:39:05]  I mean, I mean, you could obviously there's history involved in that, but I mean, you can, that's all the way back to the Franco.
[00:39:14]  Sure, it's one of those things.
[00:39:15]  Blaming any individual ruler is almost like, because they're all locked into these systems, these systems of alliances and grievances and like promises to back one another up that like everyone knew was going to end.
[00:39:27]  France is so mad that they got their dicks pushed in the dirt.
[00:39:30]  Yeah.
[00:39:31]  And then to then have the tree, the Palace of Versailles be where they signed the armistice or the treaty.
[00:39:39]  Like, that's so insulting that you know that there's going to, I mean, they literally called it La Révenge.
[00:39:46]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:46]  And it's one of those things, like, there's a lot to say about like the decisions these guys made that made World War I happen.
[00:39:53]  But like, if it had been a totally different set of rulers, could have happened 10 years earlier, 10 years later.
[00:39:58]  Like, I don't know.
[00:39:59]  I don't know that if it's fair to say it was, it had to happen because they did pull their fat out of the fire a bunch of times before this.
[00:40:07]  There's like shit in 1908, 1909, or whatever, like a bunch of different things.
[00:40:11]  This almost happens.
[00:40:12]  Like, there's this, in 1908, there's this, like, Nicholas helps arrange a revision of this treaty with Austria that creates spheres of influence over the Balkans.
[00:40:25]  So, like, Austria gets to be influential over this because the Balkans had been controlled by the Ottomans for a while, right?
[00:40:31]  And they've kind of lost control in this period.
[00:40:33]  And, like, who's going to wind up in charge of different chunks of the Balkans is this big, this thing that keeps threatening to cause a giant European war.
[00:40:40]  So, Nikki makes this like treaty with the Austrians that splits up influence over the Balkans.
[00:40:47]  And then there's this whole conflict breaks out with the Serbs, who the Tsar considers to be basically Russians.
[00:40:53]  And the Serbs want to take Bosnia.
[00:40:56]  And the Austrians are like, well, no, this is like part of our sphere of influence.
[00:40:59]  And like, we don't want you to do that.
[00:41:01]  And so basically, this deal that Nicholas has made over the Balkans with Austria goes sour almost immediately.
[00:41:08]  And Austria and Russia very nearly go to war in 1908, which would have been a World War I situation.
[00:41:13]  All of those alliances were still in place.
[00:41:15]  So it's one of those things where like they're right up to the shooting before this kind of thing gets pulled off.
[00:41:21]  Yeah.
[00:41:21]  They're playing Jenga.
[00:41:23]  Yeah.
[00:41:23]  Exactly.
[00:41:24]  It's just like it's at some point in time the tower is going to go down.
[00:41:27]  It's just when's it going to go?
[00:41:29]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:41:29]  And the reason, the big reason why it doesn't go this time is that Russia is in the process of rearming and reorganizing its military after the revolution.
[00:41:38]  And Nikki's advisors are like, basically like, we don't have the toys you want.
[00:41:42]  We just got our asses kicked.
[00:41:44]  You don't want to get into a European war right now.
[00:41:46]  We couldn't handle Japan.
[00:41:47]  Like, give us some, give us some time.
[00:41:50]  We couldn't handle one island that we were racist about.
[00:41:54]  Yeah, we couldn't handle one island we were racist about who had to ship troops in from overseas.
[00:42:02]  And you want to start a war with all of Europe.
[00:42:04]  Like, no, that's not going to work out, buddy.
[00:42:07]  And Nicholas does take the good advice in this time.
[00:42:10]  They back down, but there's this understanding that, like, well, it's going to happen.
[00:42:13]  Eventually, it's going to happen.
[00:42:16]  So some things do go better for Nikki in the years leading up to the war.
[00:42:20]  He starts to appoint some more competent ministers, a guy named Sukhumlenov, who rearms the military and reorganizes it and does get it into much better shape.
[00:42:29]  Russia starts to get some more money.
[00:42:32]  They like pay for this rearming because they have this run of really good harvests and this railway system that had been one of the few good things that Nicholas and his dad put through is they massively expanded the railways in Russia.
[00:42:45]  And in this period, right after the Russo-Japanese war, that starts to bring a bunch of money.
[00:42:50]  So things are going better domestically for Nikki at this period, but there's also constant scandals with Rasputin.
[00:42:57]  Letters between he and the Tsar and he and one of his daughters leak.
[00:43:01]  And particularly the letters with Rasputin and Alexandra, they really seem sexual.
[00:43:07]  They're like talking about like, I want to lay my head on you.
[00:43:09]  I can't wait until you're back.
[00:43:11]  And that's obviously like the rumors.
[00:43:13]  It seems mildly scandalous.
[00:43:15]  Yeah.
[00:43:16]  And it's unlikely.
[00:43:17]  I don't think like Rasputin fucked damn near everybody, but he was also pretty smart.
[00:43:21]  And I think you would know like, well, that's the one thing you don't want to do.
[00:43:25]  Never put it in writing.
[00:43:26]  No, well, I don't want, well, he did put it.
[00:43:28]  I mean, he, yeah, he wrote letters to her, but I don't think he would have like...
[00:43:32]  That's like too much of a risk to have sex with the Tsarina because that's going to piss off the Tsar.
[00:43:37]  You can keep the Tsar going forever and you can fuck everybody else's wife.
[00:43:41]  But if you fuck the Tsarina, also, what if she gets angry at you, right?
[00:43:44]  You've got this grift going.
[00:43:45]  You don't want to mess that up with starting a relationship.

=== Thickening the Blood (03:57) ===

[00:43:49]  I don't think he's that dumb.
[00:43:51]  I don't believe that Rasputin and the Tsarina actually did anything.
[00:43:55]  But a lot of people believe they do in this period.
[00:43:57]  Yeah.
[00:43:58]  I mean, the rumors happen.
[00:44:00]  Yeah.
[00:44:01]  And it's like, it just kind of like fuels the anti-czarist movement that like, okay, now like this monk is in and who knows what kind of decisions the Romanovs are making because the Tsar is being cocolded by this monk and his wife's German.
[00:44:18]  We don't like that either.
[00:44:19]  Yada, yada, yada.
[00:44:22]  And while all this is going on, so he gets, Rasputin gets kicked out for a while, right?
[00:44:26]  Like these letters leak and the Tsar does send him away because he gets embarrassed by this.
[00:44:33]  But then in late 1912, Alexi gets sick again, and it's serious enough that the priests do last rites on the little boy.
[00:44:40]  Like they really think he's right about to die.
[00:44:43]  So the Tsar and Tsarina get desperate and they telegram Rasputin and he responds saying the little one will not die and advises them not to let the doctors bother Alexi too much.
[00:44:54]  And Alexi recovers.
[00:44:55]  And so obviously that brings Rasputin back into the family, right?
[00:44:58]  He just says.
[00:45:00]  Get back in here, you hairy son of a bitch.
[00:45:02]  He does seem to have an ability to like heal this kid.
[00:45:05]  Like people at the time can't really explain it.
[00:45:08]  There's a number of theories.
[00:45:10]  Probably the most likely is that he would tell them not to send the doctors back in and the doctors were prescribing Alexi blood thinners without knowing what they were doing.
[00:45:19]  And that's not good for a kid.
[00:45:21]  If your blood doesn't clot, you don't want blood thinners?
[00:45:24]  You want a blood thicker.
[00:45:26]  Yeah, you want to thicken.
[00:45:27]  You want to put some like pectin up in that, you know?
[00:45:29]  Really, really thicken that blood up a little bit.
[00:45:32]  Pour a little bit of cornstarch in it, you know?
[00:45:36]  Give that kid a cornstarch, Ivy.
[00:45:38]  That'll fix him.
[00:45:39]  But so there's a theory that like maybe all it's as simple as like Rasputin doesn't trust doctors and the doctors are not good at what they're doing in this period.
[00:45:47]  And so keeping the doctors away helps him recover.
[00:45:50]  It's possible.
[00:45:51]  You know, it'll help?
[00:45:52]  An apple a day.
[00:45:52]  An apple a day.
[00:45:53]  Is that a blood thicker?
[00:45:55]  That is, I mean, I don't know how many apples he eats.
[00:45:57]  He does eat a lot of guava jam that's brought by John Hercules.
[00:46:02]  John Hercules.
[00:46:04]  John Hercules coming back with the guava jam to paste up those wounds.
[00:46:08]  Yeah, it's fucking amazing.
[00:46:10]  Good winter jam in there.
[00:46:12]  Yeah.
[00:46:13]  So in 1914, things are broadly speaking doing better for Nicholas II.
[00:46:18]  The economy of Russia is in great shape.
[00:46:20]  The military has reformed itself to a significant degree.
[00:46:24]  It's been going to the gym.
[00:46:25]  He's been going to the gym.
[00:46:26]  You know, he's lost some weight.
[00:46:28]  He's a little less depressed.
[00:46:30]  He got a calm subscription, too.
[00:46:32]  So he's on like a good level.
[00:46:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:34]  He started taking CBD just like at night, but it's really helped with his sleep patterns.
[00:46:40]  He's just in a good, he's just in a good place.
[00:46:43]  And it's actually like this is a period of time in which it kind of seems to guys like Lenin that czarism has won.
[00:46:51]  Lenin writes like these letters where he's despairing in this period that like, well, we almost had them in like 1905, but it seems as if they've, they've, they've beaten us and they've, they've successfully, you know, it's going to keep going another 300 years.
[00:47:04]  Like he's really like kind of heartbroken in this period about Lennon.
[00:47:08]  Yeah.
[00:47:09]  Buddy, don't give up.
[00:47:10]  Yeah, don't give up, man.
[00:47:12]  You're right.
[00:47:13]  You're almost there.
[00:47:14]  Yeah, you're on the cusp, baby.
[00:47:15]  You're right there.
[00:47:16]  Yeah.
[00:47:17]  You are going to get to do some real, real shit very soon.
[00:47:21]  Yeah, there's a, one of the things that disappoints Lenin, there's this big workers' strike in, I think, 1914 in one region that gets put down by like shooting 150 people to death.
[00:47:31]  And all of the socialists in Russia are like, oh, we're going to have another 1905.
[00:47:34]  We're going to have another revolution.
[00:47:35]  This is going to like spark things off.
[00:47:38]  But nothing happens because everyone else is like, things are going well enough for the rest of Russia that people are like, well, I didn't know those people that he shot.
[00:47:44]  So I'm not going to stir things up.

=== Real Shit Very Soon (04:33) ===

[00:47:46]  Yeah.
[00:47:47]  Next time, don't get shot.
[00:47:48]  Yeah.
[00:47:49]  Speaking of not getting shot, you know who sucked at not getting shot?
[00:47:52]  Who would that be?
[00:47:52]  The Archduke of Austria.
[00:47:54]  God, at least we got a medium good band's name out of it.
[00:47:58]  Well, which one?
[00:47:59]  Franz Ferdinand.
[00:48:00]  Oh, right.
[00:48:01]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:02]  Of course.
[00:48:02]  There you go.
[00:48:03]  Of course.
[00:48:03]  Yeah.
[00:48:03]  It's a history reference.
[00:48:05]  You know what?
[00:48:05]  Ads are about to happen, but instead of listening to these ads, just put this, put this on mute for a couple of minutes.
[00:48:11]  Cue up some Franz Ferdinand.
[00:48:12]  Just rock out for a little bit, you know?
[00:48:14]  Yeah.
[00:48:14]  Yeah.
[00:48:15]  Have some you time.
[00:48:19]  What's up, everyone?
[00:48:19]  I'm Ego Modern.
[00:48:21]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:48:28]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:48:32]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:48:35]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:48:40]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:48:43]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:48:47]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:48:51]  Yeah.
[00:48:52]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:48:55]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:48:56]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:49:05]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:49:07]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:49:14]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:49:16]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:49:17]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:49:19]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:49:28]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:49:32]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:49:36]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:49:39]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:49:42]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:49:46]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:49:47]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:49:50]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:49:52]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:49:57]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:49:59]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:50:00]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:50:02]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:50:05]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:50:07]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:50:09]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:50:14]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:50:15]  Trust me, babe.
[00:50:17]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:50:27]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:50:32]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:50:39]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
[00:50:46]  From power to parenthood.
[00:50:48]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:50:51]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:50:53]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:50:55]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
[00:51:00]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:51:07]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:51:09]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:51:15]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:51:17]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:51:20]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:51:28]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:51:34]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:51:39]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:51:44]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:51:54]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:51:59]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:52:02]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:52:05]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:52:07]  That's so funny.
[00:52:08]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:52:17]  Say you love me.

=== Franz Ferdinand Grief (15:13) ===

[00:52:20]  You know I.
[00:52:21]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:52:31]  We're back.
[00:52:32]  So.
[00:52:33]  Did you enjoy that 2000 aughts era?
[00:52:38]  I tell you, nothing gets me up like Franz Ferdinand.
[00:52:43]  I liked them.
[00:52:44]  Yeah.
[00:52:44]  I enjoyed them when they were out.
[00:52:46]  They were great.
[00:52:46]  I have no issues with them.
[00:52:48]  You know who did have an issue with Franz Ferdinand?
[00:52:51]  Cavrilo Princep.
[00:52:53]  Princep and the Black Hand, I believe.
[00:52:56]  Which he expressed via bullets on June 15th, 1914.
[00:53:00]  This makes everybody big mad.
[00:53:02]  This is a real problem for Europe.
[00:53:05]  And part of the problem is that the Black Hand, as you noted, the terrorist group this guy's a member of, had kind of sort of been trained by Serbian military intelligence.
[00:53:15]  Now, this is the start of a, this is like a historical Rube Goldberg machine.
[00:53:20]  Yeah.
[00:53:21]  Like that's literally the first, the first, like the coin going in the slot.
[00:53:24]  The tiny dominoes start falling and they end with the entire modern world.
[00:53:31]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:53:33]  So this is a problem for Nicholas because Serbia is kind of like a satellite state of Russia, right?
[00:53:38]  The Slavs are like cousins to the Russians.
[00:53:40]  Like we have this, the southern Slavs are cousins to the Russians.
[00:53:43]  Like we have this responsibility to the Serbs.
[00:53:46]  So his government is giving aid to the Serbian government and the Serbian government trains this terrorist group that then murders the Archduke of Austria, which is allied to Germany.
[00:53:56]  And so like, you know, things start to go awry.
[00:54:00]  The Kaiser, being a very smart man, gives Austria a blank check to respond to Serbia.
[00:54:06]  Russia is forced to be like, well, we'll defend Serbia.
[00:54:09]  And France is like obviously forced to say like, well, we'll come in on your side.
[00:54:12]  And the British are like, well, we don't want to get involved.
[00:54:15]  But the Germans say, well, then we're going to invade fucking, oh, what is it?
[00:54:19]  The fucking Belgium in order to get to France and fuck France up faster.
[00:54:23]  And the English are like, well, if you invade Belgium, then we're going to get involved in the war.
[00:54:27]  And pretty soon, you know, things get.
[00:54:30]  France is just sitting here like, come on, we've been waiting for this.
[00:54:33]  This is going to go great for us.
[00:54:35]  There are too many Frenchmen already.
[00:54:38]  We have been waiting for this for like, what, 30 years now or something like that?
[00:54:42]  Come on.
[00:54:42]  Yeah.
[00:54:43]  We'll smack your bitch up.
[00:54:44]  And that is, there's a lot of excitement among some people for this.
[00:54:50]  Nikki kind of checks out for a large chunk of the lead up to World War I. He's on his yacht.
[00:54:56]  This is the summer.
[00:54:57]  This is when he goes yachting.
[00:54:58]  So he's like...
[00:54:59]  Classic Nikki.
[00:55:00]  Classic Nikki.
[00:55:01]  He's on his fucking boat when this is all going down.
[00:55:04]  That's so Nikki.
[00:55:06]  From the Romanovs, quote, Nicholas's decision to remain closeted there is strange.
[00:55:11]  Even with his new phones, he was still too removed.
[00:55:13]  At the great test of his hard-won autocracy, the autocrat was barely present, leaving the initiative to Sazonov and the generals.
[00:55:21]  Now, none of these generals or ministers are like all that good.
[00:55:25]  His Stolypin, the guy who was like pretty smart, who was his minister for a while, gets killed by a bomb.
[00:55:33]  Again, this happens a lot.
[00:55:34]  Oh, no, he gets shot to death.
[00:55:35]  He gets bombed, but survives and then gets shot to death.
[00:55:38]  There's constant terrorist attacks against all of the Tsar's men.
[00:55:41]  You mix them up sometimes.
[00:55:43]  But he doesn't have a lot of...
[00:55:44]  Nikki doesn't have a lot of good people around him.
[00:55:47]  The generals want to partially mobilize.
[00:55:51]  Well, some of them want to mobilize.
[00:55:52]  Some of them want to partially mobilize.
[00:55:54]  Nikki agrees to partially mobilize because he doesn't want to commit fully.
[00:55:58]  Because again, he's kind of like this milquetoast dude.
[00:56:00]  He doesn't want to, he doesn't really, like, he's never, he's the guy who will get drunk and talk shit, but he doesn't want to throw punches.
[00:56:07]  But then his generals will say, we can't just partially mobilize.
[00:56:10]  We have to fully mobilize.
[00:56:11]  We can't fight Germany without a full military.
[00:56:13]  So then he'll say, we're going to do a full mobilization.
[00:56:16]  And then his cousin, the Kaiser, calls him and threatens him.
[00:56:19]  And then he reverses again and goes back to a partial mobilization.
[00:56:22]  But then his generals are like, are you going to really take that shit?
[00:56:24]  And then he mobilizes the army.
[00:56:27]  And yeah, as the situation grows more serious and things get closer and closer to war, the Tsar gets overcome with panic and anxiety.
[00:56:35]  Ras Butin telegrams his wife who sends this message to her husband.
[00:56:40]  This is Ras Butin talking to the Tsar in Tsarina.
[00:56:43]  A terrible storm hangs over Russia.
[00:56:45]  Disaster, grief, murky darkness, and no light.
[00:56:47]  You are the Tsar father of the people.
[00:56:49]  Don't allow the madmen to triumph and destroy themselves and the people.
[00:56:53]  Yes, they'll conquer Germany, but what of Russia?
[00:56:55]  Never for all time has a land suffered like Russia, drowned in her own blood.
[00:56:59]  Great will be the ruin.
[00:57:00]  Grief without end.
[00:57:03]  Which is kind of make you think he might have had a little bit of a beeline to something.
[00:57:10]  He's nostrom in that shit.
[00:57:11]  Yeah, that's not a bad description of the next decade or so.
[00:57:15]  Well, a couple decades of Russian history.
[00:57:17]  To be fair, though, that's pretty much a good forecast for most of Russian history.
[00:57:21]  If you know your Russian history, a good forecast is grief without end.
[00:57:25]  Yeah, grief without end.
[00:57:27]  Storm clouds are arising.
[00:57:29]  Well, yeah.
[00:57:29]  Yeah.
[00:57:30]  They've been here for quite some time now.
[00:57:32]  Yeah.
[00:57:33]  So long story short, we have a World War I.
[00:57:36]  Now, Nicholas gets, you know, some blame for that because of his decisions.
[00:57:40]  But obviously, there's not great options here.
[00:57:43]  If he'd abandoned Serbia, there probably would have been rioting because it would have pissed off the Russian right wing.
[00:57:48]  But a lot fewer Russians would have died if he had abandoned Serbia.
[00:57:51]  That part is.
[00:57:52]  That does happen with war.
[00:57:54]  If you're not in a war, generally less of your population.
[00:57:58]  Population dies.
[00:58:00]  Now, the war doesn't go well.
[00:58:01]  There's a couple early victories against the Austrians, but then the Germans get involved.
[00:58:06]  And boy howdy, the Russian military just cannot go toe-to-toe with the Germans in this period.
[00:58:11]  Like, I know that the Germans have an interesting history.
[00:58:14]  You know, their win-loss record isn't particularly great, but they generally have a formidable military.
[00:58:19]  Yeah, pound for pound.
[00:58:20]  They're pretty good at fighting.
[00:58:22]  And Russia learns this very quickly to the loss of several hundred thousand Russian soldiers.
[00:58:27]  Russia's like, those helmets with point on head, they look very silly.
[00:58:31]  And then they just stab them with their helmet point.
[00:58:34]  Yeah.
[00:58:35]  Which, yeah, was the primary German tactic.
[00:58:38]  It was extremely effective.
[00:58:40]  Yeah, it was very like, you know, Looney Tunes-esque variation of fighting.
[00:58:46]  Yeah, the pointy helmet and the machine gun really changed warfare forever.
[00:58:49]  You know what it is?
[00:58:50]  They saw the human cannonball one time at a circus, and they were like, That honestly isn't that far off from some of the things the Kaiser did.
[00:58:59]  So, Nikki, when this war starts to go badly, does the thing that he does when his own decisions go badly, and he starts firing and re-shuffling generals and ministers.
[00:59:09]  Eventually, he decides the only way to turn this desperate situation around is for the most competent man in Russia to take personal control of the army.
[00:59:17]  And of course, in Nikki's view, the most competent man in Russia is Nicholas II.
[00:59:22]  So, he this is gonna go great.
[00:59:25]  He'd wanted to do this in 1905 in the war against Japan and had been argued down.
[00:59:30]  And, like, there's a wonderful counterfactual.
[00:59:32]  Like, what if Nikki had sailed off with that fleet?
[00:59:35]  You know, wound up at the bottom of the sea.
[00:59:38]  Could have saved everybody a lot of grief.
[00:59:40]  Yeah, he's he's in the he's in there in his yacht.
[00:59:43]  Yeah.
[00:59:43]  Everybody else is in their massive military, uh, their big boats and everything like that.
[00:59:47]  It's a big fleet, and then just some little schooner right next to it, his yacht.
[00:59:51]  Just daddy.
[00:59:53]  Daddy.
[00:59:55]  So, yeah, he gets his way.
[00:59:57]  And yeah, part of why he's convinced that this is a good idea, because again, his ministers are this time like, you don't want to do this if it's a bad idea for you to take, you don't really know how to do anything with the military.
[01:00:09]  Like, you shouldn't be handling this at all.
[01:00:12]  But Rasputin is like, well, yeah, absolutely.
[01:00:14]  You've got to be there.
[01:00:15]  You know, you're God's chosen vessel.
[01:00:17]  It's just the right.
[01:00:19]  You got to, the picture, the people that are like in charge are just like, we've talked about this, man.
[01:00:26]  He's taking personal command of the army.
[01:00:27]  Why?
[01:00:28]  Oh, good.
[01:00:29]  The dude who fucked my wife said so.
[01:00:31]  Yeah.
[01:00:32]  Oh.
[01:00:32]  That guy that cuffed me last week?
[01:00:34]  Cool.
[01:00:35]  That smelly dude over there with the lice in his beard.
[01:00:38]  I mean, he is actively fucking my wife right now as we're talking about this, just making eye contact with me.
[01:00:45]  Yeah, this pre-Manson ass over here is just banging out my wife, telling you to go to war.
[01:00:51]  Everything is going to go poorly, Nick.
[01:00:53]  Nick, Nick, stop it.
[01:00:56]  Somebody needs to have an intervention with him.
[01:00:58]  Nick does the thing that Nick does his entire life, which is not listen to anyone who knows anything.
[01:01:03]  And I'm going to quote what comes next from a write-up in HistoryNet.
[01:01:07]  When he left to take up his new heavy responsibility, as he described it, Alexandra praised him for having fought this great fight against the overwhelming consensus of advisors and commentators for your country and throne alone and with bravery and decision.
[01:01:22]  You bravely, it's like you've got an electrician over at the house like rewiring something, and your wife's like, what?
[01:01:30]  You just letting him get in there?
[01:01:32]  Why don't you do that?
[01:01:33]  Nikki, go grab a fork and stick it in that socket.
[01:01:36]  Fight the battle against this election.
[01:01:38]  You should be rewiring the house.
[01:01:40]  Yeah.
[01:01:40]  Everyone's against you, but I believe you can fix this.
[01:01:45]  Yeah, it's great.
[01:01:46]  She continued, Never have they seen such firmness in you before.
[01:01:50]  God appointed you at your coronation.
[01:01:52]  He placed you where you stand, and you have done your duty.
[01:01:55]  Our friends' prayers arise day and night for you to heaven, and God will hear them.
[01:01:59]  It is the beginning of the great glory of your reign.
[01:02:02]  He said so, and I absolutely believe it.
[01:02:06]  I mean, this is where you get into drinking your SPool-Aid.
[01:02:10]  Yeah, and Rasputin is just pouring that for him.
[01:02:12]  Like, oh, yeah, this is what God wants.
[01:02:16]  Now, Nicholas believed his presence would inspire peasant soldiers, the quote, devoted souls who he believed loved him.
[01:02:24]  Initially, this seemed to be the case, because again, there is this like attitude that, like, well, the nobles are shit, but the czar is good.
[01:02:32]  We do like the czar loves us.
[01:02:34]  He just doesn't know about the fucked up shit.
[01:02:36]  So, like, at first, when he shows up in, you know, hanging out around the army, meeting the troops, like, this is kind of has a magical effect.
[01:02:43]  It's really motivating, you know?
[01:02:45]  Like, even the generals who are critical about this, about him taking command are like, well, the soldiers do, this really does make them happy.
[01:02:54]  So, yeah, this really does like have an initially positive impact, but it has this negative effect, too, which is that before he takes command, if things go bad on the battlefront, it's some general's fault.
[01:03:06]  It's some noble's fault.
[01:03:07]  It's not his fault.
[01:03:09]  Now, everything that happens is his personal fault.
[01:03:13]  Is it all you, baby?
[01:03:14]  Yeah, it's all you.
[01:03:15]  That's the thing when you take control.
[01:03:17]  He wants the ball.
[01:03:18]  He's like, you know, he's like Jordan.
[01:03:20]  He wants, give me the ball.
[01:03:21]  Yeah.
[01:03:21]  Give me the ball.
[01:03:22]  And I'm going to continue with that quote from HistoryNet.
[01:03:24]  The Tsarina's warped intrigues to strengthen the Tsar's resolve were part of her campaign to make her husband a more forceful person.
[01:03:32]  An essentially timid man, a picture of loving tenderness in their domestic life, Nicholas tended to stutter when facing unpleasantness.
[01:03:39]  His wife's shining ambition was to persuade him to rule like Ivan the Terrible.
[01:03:43]  The emperor, unfortunately, is weak, she had told the British ambassador when he questioned the decision to change command.
[01:03:49]  But I am not, and I intend to be firm.
[01:03:52]  Okay, is this really the moment that you want to have your courage found?
[01:03:56]  Yeah, this might be the moment to be like putting some of them gyms in a lockbox in Switzerland to get the family out of the country.
[01:04:04]  Yeah, maybe we'll do the next, but maybe like a small uprising is where we want.
[01:04:10]  You dip your toe.
[01:04:11]  You don't dive in the deep end.
[01:04:12]  No, no, you don't dive in the deep end with like, you don't want to start your career as a military commander in the middle of World War I. In the middle of something called the Great War.
[01:04:22]  The Great War.
[01:04:23]  Maybe not a time for the amateurs to like get up in there.
[01:04:27]  Again, recently you got your ass beat by an island that you were racist against.
[01:04:32]  Yeah.
[01:04:34]  Do you think you're going to like, yeah.
[01:04:37]  And by the way, Japan, part of the world.
[01:04:39]  Yeah.
[01:04:40]  Part of the world.
[01:04:41]  Who you have now started a fight with.
[01:04:44]  You have now warred with.
[01:04:46]  Yeah.
[01:04:46]  So in her daily letters and telegrams, Alexandra repeatedly urged her husband to be stern.
[01:04:51]  She seemed to think that if he was displeased and enraged instead of gentle when his generals failed and got a lot of men killed, then they'd lead better.
[01:04:59]  She's like, well, when they lose this battle and 100,000 men die, you're not being mean enough to them because that is the problem.
[01:05:05]  You know, they're just not.
[01:05:06]  That's clearly the problem.
[01:05:07]  Yeah.
[01:05:08]  For what it's worth, a lack of confidence and decisiveness was one of Nikki's many shortcomings as a war leader.
[01:05:14]  He had one really excellent general, a guy named Brusilov, who several times carried out offensives that would beat back the Austrians and they would like win such a big victory that it would open opportunities to attack the Germans and maybe even make some major gains.
[01:05:28]  Because like, oh, this Austrian army just collapsed and now we can get around the flank of this German army.
[01:05:33]  And every time Brusilov does this, Nikki fails to give him reinforcements because he sucks at everything because he's bad at everything.
[01:05:42]  I think he's, yeah, he's bad at all of the stuff he tries.
[01:05:47]  Yeah.
[01:05:47]  I think it's important to say.
[01:05:49]  Yeah.
[01:05:50]  And he's unfortunately trying a lot right now.
[01:05:53]  Brusilov later blamed a lot of this on the royal attendants around Nicholas, who, quote, failed to use the most decisive measures, including even force, to dissuade Nicholas II from assuming those duties for which he was so ill-suited by reason of his ignorance, inability, and utterly flaccid will.
[01:06:09]  I do like the idea of somebody just kicking the shit out of him to get him to get Brusilov.
[01:06:15]  Brusilov's looking back at the guys in the Kremlin, the dudes in the capital, and being like, you should have fought him to keep him away from the army.
[01:06:22]  Like, you literally should have fought him.
[01:06:25]  Yeah.
[01:06:25]  He has a kick his ass.
[01:06:27]  Someone needs to hit him, and I cannot.
[01:06:30]  But he has cousins.
[01:06:31]  He's not going to kill you if you punch him.
[01:06:34]  Stop this shit.
[01:06:36]  So, Nikki generally would lose himself in the day-to-day tasks of being in a military camp rather than actually commanding, which is probably not for the worst.
[01:06:46]  He loved watching his soldiers in their splendid uniforms march around.
[01:06:50]  Quote, The Supreme Commander's view of the war during that supreme national crisis was of maps with brightly colored pins indicating troop positions and of picked regiments, some amazingly beautiful and astounding.
[01:07:01]  He enthused, whirling in review.
[01:07:03]  His stavka, that's his command post stay, became an enlarged version of summer maneuvers.
[01:07:08]  The czar much enjoyed the reviews.
[01:07:10]  The reviewers were so tidy, cleanly, and well-dressed and equipped, such as I have seldom seen even in peacetime.
[01:07:17]  Truly excellent.
[01:07:18]  At least one plan strong Kim Jong-il vibes on this motherfucker at this point in time.
[01:07:23]  While actively losing a war again, it can work if nobody's fighting a war with you because you've got nukes.
[01:07:29]  You know, it doesn't work so well when the Germans are 16 feet away.

=== Five Million Killed (15:23) ===

[01:07:33]  It's going to be rough.
[01:07:34]  There's at least one case where a planned offensive is delayed because he wanted to review the Imperial Guard units that were going to take part.
[01:07:41]  He wanted to see them march in front of him.
[01:07:44]  But he couldn't do that because the Tsarevich, his son, was bleeding.
[01:07:48]  And so, like, well, we can't have the offensive until I get to see these guys march.
[01:07:53]  And I got to take care of my kids.
[01:07:54]  So, like, can we push this two weeks?
[01:07:56]  I need a post-blood parade before war can happen.
[01:07:59]  Yeah.
[01:08:00]  Not great as military things go.
[01:08:03]  While the Tsar is playing with his toy soldiers, his real soldiers are dying in titanic numbers.
[01:08:08]  One and a half million Russians would die fighting in the war, and another million are still missing.
[01:08:13]  So, you know, like something like that.
[01:08:15]  We haven't found them yet.
[01:08:16]  Two or three million dead, conservatively, probably.
[01:08:19]  Another four million would be wounded.
[01:08:21]  More than 1.3 million civilians also perished.
[01:08:25]  The Tsar was mostly focused on the fact that he missed his wife during this period of time.
[01:08:30]  So that's great.
[01:08:33]  Again, it's good to love your wife.
[01:08:35]  Not when you've just gotten like five million-ish people killed.
[01:08:39]  Maybe ignore your wife.
[01:08:40]  You have bigger problems.
[01:08:41]  I'm sorry, but you do.
[01:08:43]  I mean, who among us hasn't accidentally cost anywhere from three to five million lives just because you were.
[01:08:49]  I mean, one time, but like, I was young, you know.
[01:08:53]  Yeah, we were all in our 20s at one point, right?
[01:08:55]  Yeah.
[01:08:56]  We all have that sowing your wild oats period.
[01:08:59]  So when he visited field hospitals, Nicholas would hand out huge racks of medals to his injured soldiers.
[01:09:05]  He was convinced they found this inspiring.
[01:09:08]  One of his generals felt otherwise, noting that the Tsar, quote, did not know how to speak with the troops and thus tended to just not say anything.
[01:09:15]  So he was just kind of mutely handing medals to dying men.
[01:09:18]  And they didn't, they were not inspired by this.
[01:09:20]  They were like, oh, this seems weird.
[01:09:23]  Maybe this guy shouldn't be in charge.
[01:09:25]  Does this mean I can stab you with these medals?
[01:09:27]  I've lost my legs, sir.
[01:09:29]  There's this one wild moment where there's this, again, one of these few generals he has who's competent, General Alexeyev.
[01:09:35]  He's not a nobleman.
[01:09:36]  He's actually like a normal person who just rose to command by dint of being good at things.
[01:09:42]  And Alexandra fucking hates him because during this whole war, while like millions are dying, she keeps trying to like give noble boys who say nice things to her regiments to command.
[01:09:52]  She's like writing Nikki, like, could you give this man control of this regiment?
[01:09:56]  I think he'd really appreciate it.
[01:09:57]  And oftentimes, like, Ras Butin is like advising her of like, oh, yeah, give this regiment to this guy, probably because he wants something.
[01:10:05]  And General Alexeyev is like, no, and tells the Tsar, like, you can't do this.
[01:10:09]  We're fighting a war.
[01:10:10]  Your wife doesn't get to determine who runs these military units from the fucking capital.
[01:10:14]  She doesn't know anything about this.
[01:10:16]  And Alexandra starts writing.
[01:10:18]  And when Alexia finds out that Ras Butin is behind a lot of this, he starts telling the Tsar, like, you can't listen to this dude.
[01:10:24]  And you have to stop sending letters home across this vast expanse of country with military secrets in them.
[01:10:31]  It could end badly.
[01:10:33]  Please stop doing this.
[01:10:34]  Please stop doing this.
[01:10:36]  Alexandra writes her husband that any person, quote, so terribly against our friend, who's Rasputin, couldn't possibly be blessed by God.
[01:10:44]  And when he gets cancer in 1916, she celebrates, telling her husband that God had sent him cancer for disrespecting Rasputin.
[01:10:52]  He's like the one dude keeping your military afloat.
[01:10:55]  Yeah, like there are two competent guys here, and you've shat on both of them because they don't like your friend, the priest, who fucks everybody's wife.
[01:11:03]  Now, by the end of that year, Nicholas is thoroughly broken by the realities of war and by his own incompetence.
[01:11:08]  One of his noble officials noted that he seemed quite apathetic and was no longer seriously interested in anything.
[01:11:14]  He goes to apathetic loser.
[01:11:17]  Yeah.
[01:11:20]  Yeah, so things aren't going great.
[01:11:22]  He keeps taking battlefield advice from Rasputin.
[01:11:26]  And yeah, it's just kind of a disaster.
[01:11:33]  Some of this advice, like in June of 1916, leads to this failure to support Brusilov again in the situation that causes what could have been a victory to be a horrible defeat.
[01:11:46]  And this is kind of the fact that this goes so badly and that it's so clearly the Tsar's fault sends his army for the first time to the verge of mutiny.
[01:11:54]  Soldiers start openly mocking him as the little colonel.
[01:11:58]  And protests and riots start to break out in Russia again, just like in 1905.
[01:12:03]  Soldiers start joining revolutionaries, sometimes even handing over their guns.
[01:12:07]  Everything gets really ugly.
[01:12:09]  By the end of 1916, there's this conspiracy of Romanov nobles to murder Rasputin.
[01:12:15]  And they get the job done.
[01:12:17]  This sends the Tsar into a tailspin emotionally.
[01:12:20]  And by the start of 1917, Nikki's prime minister has to sit him down and warn him that people hate him and his wife so much that if he doesn't install a new government, he will be overthrown by force.
[01:12:31]  This prime minister, a guy named Brozyanko, gives him some of the first good advice he actually listens to.
[01:12:38]  Sire, not a single honest or reliable man is left in your entourage.
[01:12:42]  All the best have either been eliminated or have resigned.
[01:12:45]  The Tsar responds by asking Rodzyanko.
[01:12:48]  He asks his new prime minister, like he has this moment of lucidity and asks, is it possible that for the last 22 years, I have just done nothing but fuck up constantly?
[01:12:57]  And God bless him.
[01:12:58]  Rodzyanko, who is in all of our position in this, says, yes.
[01:13:02]  Like, you have been doing the wrong thing the entire time you've been Tsar.
[01:13:06]  Yeah, right.
[01:13:06]  He's just like, no, it's the children who are wrong.
[01:13:09]  Nope, no, it's you.
[01:13:10]  You were wrong.
[01:13:11]  You were wrong.
[01:13:11]  It's always been you.
[01:13:13]  And the dynasty does not last much longer.
[01:13:16]  Alexandra urges him to fight to the last, to rally troops, crush the rebellion, kill as many Bolsheviks in the street as he has to, do anything but give up his power.
[01:13:25]  She thinks he needs to prove that he is, quote, the autocrat without which Russia cannot exist.
[01:13:30]  But out in the streets, the people of Russia have decided they don't really need a czar anymore.
[01:13:34]  Now, we don't need to dial into the details of this.
[01:13:37]  There's other stories you can find, including the Revolutions podcast, of what is actually happening in the streets.
[01:13:43]  But on March 15th, 1917, Nicholas II abdicates the throne, a broken man.
[01:13:50]  And I'm going to quote from HistoryNet one more time here.
[01:13:53]  Quietly, the Tsar remarked that he had been born for misfortune, a notion many of his subjects shared.
[01:13:59]  Russians believed that Tsars were either lucky or unlucky, and that Nicholas fell into the latter category for many reasons, including mass deaths caused by a stampede of celebrants at his coronation and more deaths in 1905 during the war with Japan.
[01:14:11]  He himself, when defending his fateful decision to lead the army, had reminded an imperial cousin that he had been born on the saints' day of Job, the righteous sufferer.
[01:14:20]  Perhaps, he reflected, a scapegoat was needed to save Russia, and he was ready to accept his destiny.
[01:14:26]  I mean to be the victim, the Tsar had said.
[01:14:29]  May the will of God be done.
[01:14:31]  Which is some real narcissist shit to pull.
[01:14:34]  Yeah, and also he's doing this born under a bad sign shit.
[01:14:37]  And it's like, no, dude, you did this.
[01:14:40]  You're not unlucky.
[01:14:41]  You didn't.
[01:14:42]  You're not the scapegoat who is sacrificing himself nobly for Russia.
[01:14:46]  You caused all of this.
[01:14:48]  Like, you told me that.
[01:14:50]  I need somebody to blame because I did all this shit.
[01:14:56]  Yeah, he's the guy from that I think you should leave sketch in the banana costume.
[01:15:01]  Yeah, we're all trying to find the guy that did that.
[01:15:03]  Yeah, that is Nikki in this period.
[01:15:07]  But, you know, he abdicates.
[01:15:10]  A lot of people celebrate.
[01:15:12]  And, you know, the government doesn't last a lot longer.
[01:15:16]  He initially gives it up to his younger brother, Mikhail, who becomes briefly the czar for like a minute.
[01:15:25]  Brief is the understatement of the century.
[01:15:27]  Yeah.
[01:15:27]  Mikhail is a bit smarter than his big brother and like quits pretty much immediately, like gives power to the newly formed provisional government.
[01:15:36]  That's his whole job at this point.
[01:15:38]  He's just like right off.
[01:15:40]  Yeah.
[01:15:41]  The czar tries to make one last speech as the monarchy is dissolved to his troops, asking for God's blessing and victory in the war.
[01:15:49]  But the new government suppresses this speech because they're like, we're not going to win this war.
[01:15:55]  Have you seen Germany?
[01:15:57]  They're fighting all of us and kind of winning right now.
[01:16:00]  We're not going to squeak this one out.
[01:16:02]  Yeah, they've got cool boats.
[01:16:06]  Nicholas was still insistent upon the end that he was not hated by his soldiers.
[01:16:10]  Quote, my soldiers hated me not.
[01:16:12]  They hated my crown and throne, but once I was divested of them, they made no accusation against me.
[01:16:17]  What injustice have my people suffered that I haven't suffered with them?
[01:16:22]  And that is really unhinged and inaccurate at the time he says it.
[01:16:26]  It eventually does come true because one of the things as we've talked about, Nicholas has repeatedly had groups, large groups of people, including women and children, killed and starved in order to keep his government in power.
[01:16:39]  He's been doing that for 22 years.
[01:16:42]  And now, after he is thrown out of power, his family is going to suffer in a way that a lot of families in Russia have been suffering under the czars.
[01:16:52]  They're going to feel it.
[01:16:53]  Yeah.
[01:16:55]  I don't think it's kind of like, obviously, number one, a bunch of little kids get murdered.
[01:17:01]  So you can't feel good about that.
[01:17:03]  And also, I don't think Nicholas ever realized, like, even for a moment, hey, you know, the thing that's happening to your family is the thing you spent 22 years doing to anyone who stepped out of line.
[01:17:14]  Maybe you're a monster.
[01:17:16]  He's just not that kind of guy.
[01:17:18]  No, no, and I think nobody's really going to think they're the bad guy, even when they are clearly the bad guy.
[01:17:25]  Yeah.
[01:17:27]  And he doesn't.
[01:17:29]  He gets, you know, he and his family get moved around from one place to the other.
[01:17:32]  There's this provisional government under Kerensky, and the Bolsheviks eventually take over.
[01:17:37]  There's the white Russians, these kind of, some of them are pro-monarchists.
[01:17:41]  They're all anti-communist.
[01:17:42]  You know, they rise up and there's this big war.
[01:17:44]  The Tsar and his family get moved around a bunch and they finally end up in the house, the house of special purpose.
[01:17:51]  And the reason why he and the other Romanovs are all massacred, because it's not just his family that killed.
[01:17:56]  The Bolsheviks round up all the Romanovs in Russia they can get their hands on and execute them kind of one by one.
[01:18:03]  You know, Lenin plays a big role in this.
[01:18:05]  He certainly signs off on it.
[01:18:07]  The Soviet of Ulan, I think it is, like the regional Soviet really doesn't want to keep these people alive because there's debate between Bolsheviks of like, do we keep them alive or do we kill them?
[01:18:17]  The locals who are actually responsible for like housing them want to murder them.
[01:18:21]  And Lenin signs off, in part because the white armies are advancing and they don't want the Tsar and his family to get captured and yada yada yada.
[01:18:30]  There's this, again, I think that the justified thing would have been to like, yeah, let's have a trial or if we can't have a trial, just execute the Tsar in the Tsar Arena because they committed a bunch of crimes.
[01:18:43]  But instead, they decide to shoot the entire family in a basement, which is not justified.
[01:18:48]  No, I mean, that's not fully justified.
[01:18:51]  Yeah, killing the Tsar and his wife, fine.
[01:18:53]  Killing like a 10-year-old hemophiliac boy and like four teenage girls is not cool.
[01:18:59]  Well, that's how you stop a Batman from happening.
[01:19:01]  Yeah, that is how you stop a Batman.
[01:19:04]  You know, like you, if you don't kill him, then baby, you got yourself a Batman going.
[01:19:09]  You know, that's how they, I think it is justified.
[01:19:13]  Certainly, like, within kind of Bolshevik circles.
[01:19:16]  It is one of the things, again, we've talked about some of the ways in which like popular representations of this are sanitized.
[01:19:23]  One of the things that's sanitized is how fucking ugly these killings are.
[01:19:28]  Yeah, people, I remember I had gotten written up when I was a teacher for like being too graphic about history, about the descriptions of stuff.
[01:19:39]  And he's like, remember, like, I didn't have the smartest principal that I worked with.
[01:19:44]  And he's like, remember, we're doing this like P, it's PG.
[01:19:47]  Think of it as PG.
[01:19:48]  I'm like, in what world was history PG?
[01:19:51]  No.
[01:19:52]  And it is important to note, like, so the Tsar and Tsarina die pretty much immediately when the shooting starts.
[01:19:59]  All of their kids have all of the diamonds, 17 pounds of diamonds sewn into their clothing.
[01:20:04]  And like, they act as body armor.
[01:20:05]  So the kids survive the initial flood of bullets.
[01:20:10]  Isn't that just it?
[01:20:11]  The royalty even gets diamond body armor.
[01:20:14]  Diamond body armor.
[01:20:15]  Yeah.
[01:20:17]  So one of the Bolsheviks then kills Alexei by shooting him in the head, but the girls are still untouched.
[01:20:26]  And I'm going to read one last quote from the Romanovs here.
[01:20:29]  We set about finishing them off.
[01:20:31]  As Yurovsky and Ermakov stepped over the bodies towards them, they scrambled, crouched, and covered their heads.
[01:20:36]  Yurovsky shot Tatiana in the back of the head, splattering Olga in a shower of blood and brains.
[01:20:41]  Next, the blood-drenched Irmakov kicked her down and shot her in the jaw.
[01:20:46]  But Maria, wounded in the leg, and Anastasia were still alive, crying out for help.
[01:20:50]  Irmakov wheeled round to stab Maria in the chest, but again, the bayonet wouldn't pierce her bodice.
[01:20:56]  He shot her.
[01:20:57]  Anastasia was the last of the family moving.
[01:20:59]  Slashing his bayonet through the air, Ermakov cornered her, but stabbing manically against her diamond-armored bodice, he missed and hit the wall.
[01:21:06]  She was screaming and fighting until he drew another pistol and shot her in the head.
[01:21:10]  Now berserk with intoxicated bloodlust, Ermakov spun back to Nicholas and Alexandra, wildly stabbing first one, then the other, so hard that his bayonet cracked bones and pinned them to the floorboards.
[01:21:22]  One of the servants, Anna Dimidova, suddenly stirred.
[01:21:25]  Thank God, God had saved me.
[01:21:26]  God has saved me.
[01:21:27]  Irmakov stabbed her until she was silent.
[01:21:31]  This is like.
[01:21:31]  Okay, so God didn't fully save her.
[01:21:33]  Or not fully save her.
[01:21:36]  This is like this pretty, it's one of those things.
[01:21:39]  We've been talking a lot about the brutality of the czarist regime.
[01:21:43]  The Bolsheviks rightly get a ton of credit for how brutal a shitload of stuff that they did was.
[01:21:48]  They are about to kill a few million people through a variety of ways, mostly through starvation.
[01:21:55]  But I think you have to also see the brutality in this killing as part of this cycle of violence that has been present in Russia for forever and largely exists to stop threats to the monarchy, right?
[01:22:12]  You don't murder as viciously as these people murder the Romanovs do if you are not filled with hate.
[01:22:19]  Lenin was filled with hate because his brother is executed in 1886 for taking part in a plot against the Tsar, right?
[01:22:25]  Like, you know, how you know, in true crime, when they're like, this was clearly a crime of passion.
[01:22:29]  Yeah.
[01:22:30]  That's what we're seeing here.
[01:22:31]  It's like, these aren't, these aren't summary executions of political enemies.
[01:22:35]  These are passionate massacres.
[01:22:37]  Yeah, these are passionate massacres driven by generations of hate and violence.
[01:22:44]  And it, it, it, it's, it's, you can't understand how things get so much uglier for Russia after this point if you don't understand how brutal and horrific Tsar Nicholas II's regime was.

=== Passionate Massacres (07:11) ===

[01:22:57]  And that's why this has been a great story, Jeff.
[01:23:00]  Some could say.
[01:23:01]  Some could say a bastard.
[01:23:03]  And that's going to do it for our epic four-parter on Tsar Nicholas II, The Last Romanov, and a real dick.
[01:23:11]  A real piece of shit.
[01:23:12]  It was so delightful spending a fortnight talking about this son of a miss with you.
[01:23:16]  We did talk more about Tsar Nicholas II than I have ever talked about Tsar Nicholas II before.
[01:23:22]  That's fair.
[01:23:22]  And that's about, you know, some of the stuff that I've, you know, of all the stuff I've studied, it's very interesting to see it from that fresh perspective of like, you know, that was the last time I studied this 20 years ago.
[01:23:34]  Yeah.
[01:23:34]  So like, it's nice to get that refresher of like, oh yeah, fuck this guy.
[01:23:39]  Yeah, it's this, it's this weird thing that like, I think just because we're so distant from them historically, probably in part because of how horrible their end was, we tend to put these guys in a different basket, kings in general, in a different basket from like Stalin and Saddam and Bashar al-Assad and like dictators.
[01:23:58]  No, he was a dictator.
[01:24:00]  Like he was the same dude, you know?
[01:24:03]  Yeah, monarchs tend to be that.
[01:24:05]  Yeah.
[01:24:06]  So yeah, good stuff.
[01:24:09]  Well, Jeff, you got any pluggables to plug?
[01:24:11]  Well, I tell you what, if you enjoyed our time together, which of course we did, you guys should check out.
[01:24:17]  I have a lot of really great podcasts that you would really like.
[01:24:20]  I do a bi-weekly interview show called Jeff Has Cool Friends where I interview all of my very interesting friends.
[01:24:27]  And you can check that out, patreon.com slash JeffMay for early uncensored episodes with bonus content, as well as access to shows like Ugh, Fine with Kim Krall, which is a great monthly podcast I do as well.
[01:24:39]  You can also check out Tom and Jeff Watch Batman on the Gamefully Unemployed Network with Tom Ryman, who's done the show before, Friend of the Pod, you guys know.
[01:24:49]  And then, of course, Unpops and You Don't Even Like Sports, both on the Unpopular Opinion Network.
[01:24:54]  And then, you know, hey, I'm on the internet.
[01:24:56]  Find me at, hey, there, Jeff Row.
[01:24:57]  Yeah.
[01:24:58]  I like to talk and make jokes and things.
[01:25:00]  Yeah.
[01:25:01]  Find him on the internet.
[01:25:02]  Tell him why you think we need to go back to having a czar in Russia.
[01:25:05]  You know, my monarchist listeners get out there, you know?
[01:25:08]  We kind of have one.
[01:25:10]  Yeah.
[01:25:11]  You've gotten your wish, friends.
[01:25:13]  I was like, we've had one since like 2006.
[01:25:16]  Unfortunately, he's good at it.
[01:25:18]  Oh, I mean, he's a talented czar.
[01:25:20]  Very, very good at being the czar.
[01:25:22]  Much better than Nicholas II.
[01:25:24]  Jesus Christ.
[01:25:25]  No.
[01:25:26]  Nicholas II was good at extending it a little, but boy, he wasn't, you know what?
[01:25:31]  He was fine at being a czar.
[01:25:33]  He was bad at doing all the stuff czars have to do.
[01:25:35]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:25:36]  If he had like, ironically, if he'd given the people what they wanted and become like a ceremonial monarch, he probably could have lived the rest of his life as a very happy, rich person, not dealing with stress.
[01:25:47]  He owned a yacht like a motherfucker.
[01:25:49]  Like, dude, why do you need to be in charge of everything?
[01:25:51]  You suck at it.
[01:25:52]  It seems miserable.
[01:25:54]  Like, it seems like your worst job.
[01:25:57]  You know, when you see these things where people like, you know, like Seinfeld makes like, you know, $300 million or something like that.
[01:26:03]  And then they're like, and then he's like, oh, I got to make a new thing.
[01:26:07]  I would be like, no, I'm done.
[01:26:08]  Yeah.
[01:26:09]  What, 35?
[01:26:10]  I'm done forever.
[01:26:11]  I'm just going to fuck off for the rest of my life.
[01:26:14]  And my entire lineage will be set forever.
[01:26:17]  Yeah.
[01:26:18]  It's the, you know, the only person in all of human history who's actually been smart enough to do that is the MySpace guy.
[01:26:25]  Oh, Tom from MySpace.
[01:26:27]  Perfect.
[01:26:27]  Perfect way to handle it, you know?
[01:26:29]  Dude, you probably buy an island and just take off.
[01:26:32]  $600 million.
[01:26:33]  You don't need to do other things.
[01:26:35]  Like, I can't.
[01:26:35]  Just go.
[01:26:36]  Just get out of it.
[01:26:37]  For the life of me.
[01:26:38]  And I understand people are like, well, you get bored.
[01:26:39]  I'm like, I don't know, take up painting.
[01:26:41]  Yeah.
[01:26:42]  Like the idea of people that are just like, well, I just have to keep creating.
[01:26:46]  And it does make me feel like kind of a piece of shit.
[01:26:49]  Yeah.
[01:26:49]  I mean, like, I think of like, if I won the lottery, I'd be like, oh, I'm done.
[01:26:53]  Just not companies.
[01:26:54]  It's like Bill Watterson, you know, retiring from Calvin and Hobbes.
[01:26:57]  He's still painting shit.
[01:26:58]  He just doesn't feel the need to show everybody because he's fine.
[01:27:01]  He's fine.
[01:27:01]  He made his money.
[01:27:02]  Yeah.
[01:27:02]  Yeah.
[01:27:03]  And he made that money, by the way, without making merch.
[01:27:06]  Without selling out.
[01:27:07]  Yeah.
[01:27:08]  Who's the dictator equivalent of Bill Watterson?
[01:27:11]  Probably Pol Pod, actually.
[01:27:13]  That's not a really positive one.
[01:27:14]  But he didn't sell out, you know?
[01:27:16]  Stuck to the picture.
[01:27:17]  Oh, because I was thinking of the other version around who would be the biggest dictator of the comic strip world, too.
[01:27:23]  Oh, that would be Charlie.
[01:27:24]  Jim Schultz.
[01:27:25]  I was going to say Jim Davis.
[01:27:27]  Jim.
[01:27:27]  Yes.
[01:27:27]  Yeah.
[01:27:28]  You're right.
[01:27:28]  That is the right answer.
[01:27:29]  That is the right answer.
[01:27:30]  Right?
[01:27:30]  Because he seems like he because he doesn't do the work anymore, right?
[01:27:34]  Like he doesn't.
[01:27:35]  No, Jim Davis.
[01:27:37]  He's done what all of those airport novelists do.
[01:27:39]  He's like Jim Patterson or whatever.
[01:27:41]  James Patterson.
[01:27:42]  You guys do it.
[01:27:43]  James Patterson.
[01:27:43]  Or like in comics.
[01:27:44]  In comics when they have like these superstar artists and then you find out later that all they do is like draw the head of the character and then like every he has like a studio.
[01:27:54]  Some very famous comic book artists rarely touch pencil to paper anymore.
[01:27:58]  That's why I stand Derek Robertson.
[01:28:00]  Derek Robertson's fucking great.
[01:28:02]  I love that dude.
[01:28:03]  He's so nice too.
[01:28:05]  Yeah.
[01:28:06]  Well, fuck the czar.
[01:28:07]  Fuck the czar.
[01:28:08]  Well, I mean, he got fucked.
[01:28:09]  I mean, he fucked the czar.
[01:28:11]  Yeah, he kind of fucked himself.
[01:28:13]  Yeah.
[01:28:13]  Yeah, that's not.
[01:28:15]  He really, this is, this is really the fuck around and find out illustrated.
[01:28:19]  Yeah.
[01:28:20]  It's the fuck around and find out.
[01:28:22]  And also your, your children are going to find out because you insisted on fucking around for so much longer than it should have been obvious to you to stop fucking around, but no.
[01:28:32]  Fuck around, everyone finds out.
[01:28:34]  Yeah, and then now there's no more Romanovs.
[01:28:37]  But at least we get to dunk on you on a podcast a century later.
[01:28:41]  It is funny.
[01:28:41]  He was so scared of being seen as a bad ruler.
[01:28:44]  And he did all of the things that everyone now knows.
[01:28:46]  Well, that's the worst of the czars.
[01:28:48]  Like, that's the guy who sucked the most at it.
[01:28:50]  I would say Ivan IV still owns like the historical.
[01:28:55]  He still got like the gold medal as far as like history is concerned because Ivan was efficient and good at the job.
[01:29:03]  Yeah.
[01:29:03]  Yeah.
[01:29:04]  Nicholas was Nicholas was inept.
[01:29:07]  And so that's even somehow, it's somehow way worse.
[01:29:10]  At least Ivan IV was like an adept motherfucker.
[01:29:14]  Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, I have more respect for a dictator who had to fight to become a dictator.
[01:29:19]  You know, Saddam Hussein had to like, he didn't get handed that shit.
[01:29:22]  You know, nobody was going to give Saddam Hussein a rack.
[01:29:26]  He had to take it, you know?
[01:29:27]  Nikki taking a lot of stuff.
[01:29:29]  Yeah, he sure did.
[01:29:30]  He sure did.
[01:29:32]  Oh, well, that's probably enough for today.
[01:29:35]  Come see us next week.
[01:29:37]  We will talk about someone who is not Czar Nicholas the fucking second.
[01:29:40]  I look forward to it.
[01:29:41]  And we'll hope to come back someday in the future.
[01:29:44]  Absolutely.
[01:29:46]  All right.
[01:29:50]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:29:58]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:30:00]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:30:02]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:30:04]  We always say that.
[01:30:06]  Trust your girlfriends.

=== Not Czar Nicholas (01:54) ===

[01:30:09]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:30:10]  Trust me, babe.
[01:30:11]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:30:21]  You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
[01:30:23]  He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
[01:30:25]  But did you know he was a spy?
[01:30:28]  Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
[01:30:34]  All episodes are out now.
[01:30:36]  Was this before he wrote his stories?
[01:30:38]  It must have been.
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[01:30:40]  Okay, I don't think that's true.
[01:30:41]  I'm telling you, I was a spy.
[01:30:43]  Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:30:51]  Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists, we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
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[01:31:00]  They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
[01:31:02]  This guy's 2 a.m.
[01:31:04]  2 a.m.
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[01:31:05]  Lizzie McGuire and I'm wild back.
[01:31:08]  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.
[01:31:13]  No, no, no.
[01:31:13]  I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
[01:31:18]  I'm not like.
[01:31:20]  Listen to Las Culturalistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:31:29]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversation about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[01:31:36]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
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