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