Join us for the story of Tzar Nicholas and his wife Alex! They were the last of the Romanovs - right before their rule over Russia ended they put their trust into a Religious Maniac from Siberia - The one and only Rasputin. Was he magic? No, because Magic isn't real... but what did he know and how did he gain so much trust? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Join us for the story of Tzar Nicholas and his wife Alex! They were the last of the Romanovs - right before their rule over Russia ended they put their trust into a Religious Maniac from Siberia - The one and only Rasputin. Was he magic? No, because Magic isn't real... but what did he know and how did he gain so much trust?
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod
Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
hi everyone Taylor at Doom to fail today we're re-releasing episode 9 part one so as a reminder we're re-releasing our
older episodes that we used to do two stories at a time now we're just going to do one at a time so you have a
shorter episode to listen to and we'll we release them until we're done with them we have about 26 episodes and this
is number nine this starts off with the story of SAR Nicholas and his wife Alex and of course their BFF Rasputin learn
more about this wizard of the night to got a lot of people to sleep with him
and kind of in the name of God I'm honestly I can't even pinpoint it it's
wild and also we have photographs of this man he feels very ancient but he's
not he's not that old um I mean he's dead but you know what I mean um so learn a little bit more about RP and let
us know your thoughts let us know what you think please review us on Apple podcast wherever you get your podcasts
um you can leave comments on YouTube you can write us an email jpod gmail.com
hope you enjoy a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my
fellow Americans ask not what your country can
do for you ask what you can do for your [Music]
country what's your drink tell me so my drink is called car
all right you can talk about it okay great because I did such a great job pronouncing it yeah um okay so let's go
ahead and get started welcome to Doom to fail the podcast where Taylor uplifts
and I do whatever the opposite of that is my name is fars I'm joined here by my co-host Taylor hi Taylor hello how are
you groggy sound it yeah and it's like two
hours ahead of your time and I'm still groggy and I don't chase kids and I'm still having a hard time yeah it's
Saturday um you're joining us from lovely lovely Joshua tree that is currently raining is that right yeah it
is we had tons of snow this week as well um we had a couple inches that stayed on the ground for a while so it's been wild
that's incredible I love talking about the weather and it's been wild so yeah look we're at that age where talking
about the weather's kind of all we got no totally I want to hear about it tell me what's going on outside look out your
window give me a play byplay I want to know it's overcast I'm looking at right now it's overcast it's a little bit
chilly um but it's supposed to be um pretty good weather later on here in
Austin I'm going to take Luna for a nice little hike and just it's G to be an outside day I think very nice I'm going
to Dallas next week so I know that's far away from you but I will be in Texas
maybe I'll be there because I haven't been to Dallas in long enough time to where my parents were complaining about
it so maybe I'll join you there when we can grab dinner yay let me let me let me admonish my dog for a second okay I'm
back uh Taylor what is going to be your drink for today's episode um well I
am shockingly going back to Russia I don't even drink that much vodka I
really like I feel like I I've never like have vodka at home but I'm going to
try vodka again but I'll tell you about it in a second but first tell me your drink and then I'll go into my story well do you have a brand that you
like oh and I feel like I don't know don't people like Tios isn't that like
the in on Trend right now it is awesome based so that would then great that's what I'm going with yeah perfect okay
awesome um my drink I actually don't really totally know how to pronounce this I'm going to try it looks like it's
pronounced car carada how do you how do you spell it k
a r k a d D and it this my story involves an
Egyptian man which is why I went to Egypt to find a traditional drink there
it is made from boiling dried red hibiscus flowers with water then you
chill it then you add sugar to it cool so it actually sounds really good I
think Starbucks kind of makes something like this yeah it looks like a Starbucks drink it's like I'm looking at it now
it's like a deep red te yeah exactly exactly so um I'll
uh go into details of why I picked any you know who this person is and the connection to Egypt later on but that's
my drink for the day it's not alcoholic unlike your penchant for just drinking straight vodka someday I will buy VOD in
the morning I'll remember and maybe next week next week I won't go to Russia but I will drink Vodka anyway um I'll just
be like taking shots of vodka and like sleep all day my husband my family would love that that' be real proud of me um
so far as we're going back to Russia again and I know we've gone to Russia like a million times so far in this
podcast and I'm trying to think about like why do I talk about it so much like what is my current problem and I think
it's because so many good stories that come out of Russia so much tragedy so much grander um there's just like a lot
and it's so interesting because it's so isolated and it's cold and like I'm just thinking about like the idea of being in
Russia and there's this woman that I really like she was the editor of Vogue in the
1960s her name is Diana vand she's like another like really like over-the toop personality she like Smoked Cigarettes
all the time and like was like like very just very funny she was from Paris um
and Ian making like I'm moving my arms like you know what I mean a lot of hand waving on yeah a lot of hand waving so
she was great and then there's a documentary about her called the ey has to travel and in that documentary and
jelica Houston is talking about her and she's like Diana was like why worry about this and this when there's Russia
like Russia really big and I feel like that's how I feel about it even though like not super stoked about the current
state of Russia but it's like a an I don't know how to explain it does that kind of make sense why it's fascinating
it is fasc I mean their their history's incredible everything yeah the Arts
fantastic they have Fab eggs nobody else does Fab eggs yes exactly I feel like that's that's yes faj eggs that's
exactly right exactly right um so today the couple I'm going to talk about um is
a couple that Marcus parks from last podcast on the left called one of the most tragic love stories of all time
because they were thrust into something they weren't prepared for and like yes
that's true but you are also The Company You Keep and they kept company with Rasputin yes I knew it
the second you brought up Marcus parks I was like yep yep I know where she going so we're talking about the last emperor
of Russia Z Nicholas and his wife Alexandra so some of the sources um I
watched this amazing made for TV movie called Rasputin dark servant of Destiny
and Alan Rickman plays him great cting unbelievable so I took I was like taking
pictures literally of my screen to send them to my husband because it's so funny and then Google photo made me this like
really like stylized collage of just pictures of alen Rickman as R butin it's hilarious so I'll put it on our
Instagram but he does a great job it's everything that you could ever imagine an alen Rickman performance to be um Ian
McKellen plays our Nicholas it's great so highly recommend I watched it on YouTube uh I also listened to last
podcast whole series on rest buttin and read a little bit of a book that I wanted to read more of but 25 hours long
I didn't have 25 hours to listen to it um but called about rutin as well so I'll put that in the notes my favorite
want talk my favorite part of the rutin series was when the guards had a scale
for how drunk he was yes drunk very drunk totally overcome with drink and
then uh Ben Kissle at the end goes they left one off which is oh I'm just drunk
enough to be good to drive right now exactly he was very drunk a most of
the time in the story but I also don't want to talk about him as much as I want to talk about Alex and and Nicholas
because let's talk about their relationship but also like rest obviously played a big part of it so
some of the characters that we're going to meet so Nikolai alexandrovich Romanov
it was born in 1868 his father was in line to be Emperor and when his grandfather was assassinated um he
became heir to the throne so he was pretty World worldly he he traveled
around Europe meeting with other royal families and Queen Victoria so it sounds
like he loved like the rich part of being heir to the throne and the
traveling and all of that but he wasn't really thinking about the ruling part or like actual politics he was more like
this is fun I'm having a good time and had really thought through when he was going to actually be in charge his wife Alexandra was born
Princess Alex of hessen of Hessa by the rine in 1872 she came from Germany but
she was also Queen Victoria's granddaughter so a lot of this is like they're not related but like everyone's
related you know what I mean it's like a small a small pool have you seen the Kingman the Kingman yeah it's on Netflix
um Ray fines is in it oh yes I have it's all about this part of world history and
how like those three the German guy um the Nicholas and
then the guy in the UK the king George you talked about them
already before but they were all like they were raised together like they were like yeah they were cousins like they
were like very close to each other it's very it's an interesting dynamic they had yeah exactly so it's like the small
pool of like royalty all over Europe and Russia and everywhere um
so Alex Alexandra was called Alex and she seemed to be like a lovely child but
she was very shy and very introverted and then um diptheria came through you
know the palace and lost a sister and her mother and she became like really brooding and like a very like Melancholy
child she was very shy very religious so her being very religious plays a lot
into this because she believes a lot of weird [ __ ] because she's very religious
and people saw her as like maybe a little bit hotty but really she was just super shy so they met at a wedding um of
her sister to someone in Russia and um he Nicholas was interested in her she
was 12 he was 16 and she was like whatever they didn't get married right away and four years
later they ended up getting married one of the reasons that she didn't want to was because she really didn't want to
convert from being Lutheran to being Russian Orthodox But ultimately she does so she does end up converting but and
stays very religious so similar to Katherine the Great she you know became Russian Orthodox kind of right away when
she got there um also like political reasons people wanted them to get married and
they did love each other so all account they loved each other you know they had like a good you know connection they
spoke in English I think is is funny like after you know living in Russia they didn't really speak Russian in the
court they they spoke in English to each other and Alexandra goes to Russia and
right before their wedding the current Zar dies and Nicholas becomes becomes the the Emperor of Russia he was not
ready and he said when he found out his dad had passed he said what is going to happen to me and all of Russia so just
like not ready at all not not a good sign no and he was not like a baby he
was 26 you know so you should be prepared to take this job like I'm sure
like um what's his face Charles King Charles has been preparing to be king
forever even though he didn't get that job until he was like 80 you know but at least you know he was thinking about it for a long time yeah so should have been
more ready but he wasn't another thing that is like super contradictory to that
cuz like he should have been more ready to be Zar he wasn't but he like firmly believes that God made him Zar like 100%
like he believes that like God put him there and everything that he says is like has to go because it's what God wanted and we talk about that I think
before in other things as well it kind of goes hand inand with the
like any monarchy is that assumption that you're that much better than everybody else yeah exactly so that just
like makes you a weird person you know um Taylor is that a is that a is that a
gray Nation Builder shirt or a black you wash the [ __ ] out of it's gray okay
always gray all my black ones are gray now that's why oh no it's it was always gray but I do wear I do rock this
station this is the only nation bullsh I think I still have ni I like it because um and because it's cold so you go so
Zar neckolas is from cathine the Great's line and if you'll remember from episode one Katherine the Great was great and
her son Paul was not he was a dope and and one thing that Paul did was rechange the laws so that women couldn't be
Emperor and that directly ties into our story as well later and so we'll talk
about that and even though it was 150 years before that it still plays a direct
role so I've got some background and some think about kind of the time that
we're in right now so he become AAR in
1896 and I don't know if you've seen pictures of of Nicholas but he has an amazing mustache I don't know if that
like matters but it's like a wonderfully curled up mustache he becomes Zar 1896
they get married in 1904 there's a revolution and it's more than just like
it's very complicated but it's a revolution there's thing called Bloody Sunday where people are like revolting people are starving they want you know
more they need help they need jobs they need all these things and um the there's
like some orders and a lot of people die and it's you know a pretty um like Turning Point there's there's a
revolution in 1905 and Nicholas ends up giving up part of his power to a legislative body
called the Duma so he's already kind of half can I cut you off real quick yeah here look at
I'm gonna share my screen with you okay I'm excited uh how do I do the whole
desktop this is the silent interactive part oh my God it's so funny far as is
showing me how zarck looks just like Jack
dorsy they like how get there he really does that is terrifying for those don't
jack dorsy is the um was the CEO and founder of uh Twitter and square but he
looks identical to the te oh my gosh it's so amazing sorry to interrupt you
no I think that that is some that's important for everybody to know wow
there we go there we have it both have Global implications for their jobs and
leaving their jobs yeah no kidding lots of similarities that's amazing um thank you
for sharing that was totally worth it so yeah now you know what he looks like so he looks like Jack dorsy with a gilded
military outfit on um so there's also speaking of the military this is there's a Russia Japanese war happening
sometimes Nicholas goes out with his troops but it's just not like a long game plan he just like kind of doesn't really know what he's doing right now so
we're also in a very heavy time with like occult things so first would you
would you have you ever gone to a seance would you go to a seance yeah I would totally go to a seance I have not gone to a seance but I would I don't know if
I would I think I'd be too scared like I would really want to but I think in the moment I'd be like really really scared
I mean I I see why you would be but I'm so it's an Austin thing of like Get
getting into like spirituality in weird ways I think and okay yeah I think that's where appeal would be for me how
many crystals are you wearing right now I'm wearing one tiger's eye
necklace some lava rock beads and then another bead that I don't know what it's
made of but it's it's good looking all right well those seem to be working well for you yes um but this is also a very
heavy like time of this it's the occults like I don't know if who listen to the last podcast about Madame blavatsky or
like have um there like people who are like oh I I can communicate with the dead like come over we'll have a seance
things like that and obviously a lot of it's like well most of it it's probably all sham but you know there's a lot of that happening and rich people [ __ ]
love it because of course they do they love going to these things um so it's relevant to our story because R butin is
also in this so one thing that um have you ever watched American Horror
Story yes absolutely do you know the did you watch Rowan Oak yeah so ran Oak is
my favorite season and remember the part where like in the first part of it when the wife is at
home alone and it starts raining teeth and her husband comes home and he's like you need to calm down so at that time my
husband and I made a deal that if I say something to him like Juan it was
raining teeth while you were gone he will believe me and we will move because that is something that like you just don't make up you know so we're like
okay let's believe each other if I'm like the chairs in the kitchen rearrange themselves on their own like believe me
don't gasl me into thinking that I'm crazy so that's our deal but also I
think an exception to that is if one of us comes home and says hey babe I just met a wizard he's going to solve all of
our problems we should step back and say no you did not yeah yeah that makes
sense pretty pretty simple rule yeah so Ruan is I mean imagine him being a
wizard he was born in Siberia in 1869 there's some great resources on him watch that movie with alen Rickman it's
so good um but some of the like fun things about him are I always think of
him as so an ancient being you know but he's not there's pictures of him you know he's you know he died in 1900s not
like he's an ancient Mystic but he feels kind of ancient you know what I mean and
it was just good branding yes exactly it was exactly good branding we'll talk about why like his so another just
timeline thing like he had a kids and his daughter lived until 1977 so it's
like there's you know she wrote A Memoir about him that I didn't get to read but I would love to read someday um he lives
in Siberia which is terrible you know it's just cold and awful and he has a
family and he ends up you know being like you know kind of the town drunk but I feel like everyone's drunk because
you're cold and he takes these like big pilgrimages walking across Russia in the
name of God like abandoning his family um doing all the weird things but it's also important to remember he's never
directly in the church he's just like around he just like wears robes and like hangs out he's never like actually a
part of the church and he ends up making friends with these sisters who are called The
Black Crows who seem really cool they're like also like you know mystical occult
people but they're just like rich people having fun in St Petersburg and he you know starts to be introduced to like
some more rich people and that's the way he gets eventually introduced to the emperor he is a weird guy so it's
like his personality is to be like eccentric he comes in and he kisses people and he hugs people and he does a
lot of like touchy things he'll talk to you and then he'll like start like Loring his words and then like come back
and then he'll like turn talk to someone else and then he'll do something else so it makes him kind of like mysterious and enchanting and he like does this like
hilarious thing that he convinces people that in order to be forgiven they have to sin so he like that's how he gets lot
of people to sleep with him you know things like that which is like sure I feel like uh from everything I've read
about Rasputin he he created that
Persona like that mannerism that you're talking about which I've read a lot about it feels like that was
manufactured and actually not who he was who he was at his core was the village
drunk but he wanted greater than that and then he's like what do I do he's like okay I got to walk a certain way I
got to have the right Swagger I got to have the right voice the right like all that [ __ ] right exactly to like be
appealing to these people to the people who want something to happen like the reason that like the occult is so
popular is like these rich people want something to happen so they're like looking for it so they see that in him
exactly um he has these piercing blue eyes and everybody's like oh my God his
eyes and I just also wanted to State for the record that your eyes are not a
window to your soul that's dumb that's not true and that he just have blue eyes
that are probably very watery and people were like o they're sparkly eyes don't Sparkle just eyes though I don't know
Taylor I don't know agree with you no they're not it's not is magical about people's eyes just eyes they're just
like gross organs wet organs that you can see from your head you have a weird
take on eyes I don't know where this hatred comes from but it they get too
much they get too much good publicity that they don't deserve I mean like I'm grateful for them but it's not a window to your soul okay we'll agree or
disagree okay great agree or disagree um so people are transed by him um and I
love the idea of like you know going to room and seeing this weird you know guy and everybody being like this is the guy
but I feel like personally I'd be pretty uncomfortable if I saw him and I'd be like what is this and I feel like nowadays I could probably walk a place
and find like a dude with a bunch of crystals who's like hey like blah blah blah blah blah but like I'm a little
skeptical of that but it'd be fun just like give yourself into being like this is a a magic mystical guy you know what
I mean so you don't find my um this this tiger R necklace magical or whimsical at
all no well I find you Whimsical but not it's not because it's not because of the
necklass that Mak sense um but it's also like I don't blame people for falling for this or like being in transed by it
it's like when you meet like Bill Clinton and people are like you're the only person in the room when you talks to you which is true because that's his
job they can't understands how to talk to people so that's kind of what res in is doing um also was thinking and I'm
curious like I don't feel like I hear this about women very much that like idea that like it just entranced
everybody so I want to learn more about that so if anyone has stories of that please let me know um but he ends up
raspon ends up being introduced to Alexander Nicholas and they love him they love that he's mysterious they call
him our friend he hangs out with him all the time um he promises to like do magical things for them there's an
awesome scene in The Ellen Rickman movie where he meets Alexander for the first time and he like mama papa blah blah
blah he calls him Mama and Papa he's like always on the floor real weird but they love it and back to the Zars and
that line that we talked about where um Katherine the Great's son Paul said that women cannot be the be the emperor they
have four daughters which we've learned before is gross no one wants daughters so they have to have a son so Alexander
and Nicholas finally have a son his name is Alexi and he is super sick he's a
hemophiliac and this comes Direct from Queen Victoria she's a hemophiliac and put brought that into the line so then
like Alexandra carries the Gene and then her son has it so basically if he gets
like bruised he can die of internal bleeding and he's like always in pain so he's just like this little sickly little
child and somehow Rasputin does actually help Alexi in like some way that like is
don't really understand they talk about it in last podcast it's like in a lot of the books like he did potentially make
him feel better and maybe a lot of it's like psychosomatic like having this wizard over you makes you feel better um
but one story that is kind of crazy he used to heal him like over telegram if he was like near death he would send a
telegram to the family and be like he will be fine blah blah blah well one one
thing I remember from that was he would tell the doctors to stay away from him because they would keep giving him
aspirin at the time they didn't realize that aspirin was a blood thinner which is the worst thing you give to somebody who was a hemophiliac yeah totally
totally which I think is that sounds true but like how would the rest of you know that did he like what well one of
the one one of the other things I read was that um he had nurses there who
would intentionally get him sick or make him feel worse so that he could come in
and be this wizard who fixes him I would totally believe that too yeah makes
sense yeah and so for better or worse however it happened he did like seem to
heal the boy enough so that they were like really beholden to him and like really needed rutin around but they also
didn't tell anybody that the boy was sick so they were spending all this time with rutin and people most people around
them were like what the hell is going on like is it a sex thing what does he have over you like what is this is he having
an affair with the empress which like he was not he's you know sleeping with a lot of people but not her and he's like
this like weird drunk guy around all the time and all these things but I think people would have maybe understood if
they were like we think he heals our son but they didn't tell anybody that they didn't tell anybody that Alexi was
hemophiliac so that's um making everything worse there was a reason for that I don't remember what it was but it
was something around how they couldn't let the next because I think that at
that time Nicholas thought that his grip what on the monarchy was tenuous anyways
and he also thought that if he said that the next in line was a sickly child it would have made it even wor because I
think the Duma was trying to convert to a constitutional monarchy at that time or um whatever you'd call it yeah know
that's right like like the UK yeah exactly yeah yeah so that's exactly right so they if they would have known
you know maybe people been more sympathetic but he was definitely like this is I have a very like loose grip on
this anyway I can't let people know this you know there's a lot more about Rasputin but he's starting to put his
friends into Power it's just like again like a better Emperor would have had better advisers than rutin and
Rasputin's friends so a lot of it is like if you're in charge of something like a country or a company or anything
like you need to hire the right people and they were not hiring the right people at this point so a lot of people long story short a lot of people are mad
at rpu and think he's a weirdo so on December 29th 1916 a group of people
decide to assassinate Rasputin and it's a whole deal so they end up um bringing
him over and giving him cyanide laced cake and wine and rutin just like does
not die um probably because he's alcoholic and his veins and stomach is lined with vodka like well that happened
before too they also thought part of it was um I'm going off the last podcast memory here but resion was stabbed in
the stomach at one point in his life yes and they had to cut out a bunch of his
intestines to like make him whole again or healthy and they also assume that
because of that because of a sign I didn't wasn't able to travel through and digest and absorb through his intestines
completely like a normal person that's probably what saved them yeah totally absolutely that totally makes sense
because he definitely like ingested a lot of Cyanide and did not die like they expected him to and um eventually they
end up shooting him in the head and dumping him in a river after all after all this so rutin dies it's already a
very tumultuous time in the palace and so um uh Alexandra and Nicholas are sort
of like resigned to it they're like okay like they're trying to figure out what to do what to do next so essentially
like there were a lot of problems in Russia we had all these revolutions all these wars a better Emperor a different
Emperor could have you know navigated World War I better he could have um you know helped his people more but he you
know was not able to Nicholas was not able to effectively address these problems and the government was seen as
corrupt and ineffective you know because of a lot of reasons but that you know became the whole impetus for the whole
Revolution and he is in 1917 um he is like taken from the throne and the
family is brought to Siberia to live in Exile so the girls SI Alexi Alexander
Nicholas are kind of Taken prisoner and the buvik become in charge and the
emperor line of Russia is over so now um he's the last of of the Russian
Emperors maybe he could have done a better job he didn't really want to he relied a lot on on Alexandra who also
didn't know how to rule they were both kind of like living their life they were very concerned about their son they were concerned about religion they were
concerned about mysticism they're trying to like live this life that wasn't compatible with the time because the
time was like a really revolutionary time and things were going to change no matter what so if they would have done the like maybe they could have done the
constitutional monarchy and they could have still been an emperor like they have in the UK with the queen and the
king or whatever but they didn't and they ended up you know in this place in in in Siberia and
it ends for um Alexandra and Nicholas in a really terrible way um they are in
this uh place in Siberia in Exile and then they're brought to the basement on July 16th 1918 the whole family um along
with some other you know uh of their of their friends are brought to the basement and they are shot to death um
by a couple people just shooting into the crowd of people in this basement so they're trapped in this basement they're
shot it it sounds awful they actually do it in the Ellen Rickman movie they do it in like a very like slow motion chaotic
way um but the parents um Alexandra Nicholas die right away the girls which
is this is also terrible um don't die right away because they had like jewels
and gold sewn into their dress that they had like taken from the palace and that kind of acted as a bulletproof vest for
them so they didn't die right away they were just like injured and they ended up like being stabbed or shot at close range to die so all the romanovs are
killed in the basement they put them in the back of a a like cart to take them
away to bury them and then like the guys driving in the cart are also drunk everyone's tired no one wants to do it so they just kind of bury them in a
field and they ended up fing their their bones like pretty recently and
identifying like who they were but um that's how they ended so they started
off as like you know heirs to a really great Empire and coming from these
really rich families and they ended up being you know shot in in a basement and buried in a field um so one thing that I remember
again I this is one of those rare topics that you bring up that I actually know a lot about I love it please tell me more
it's so interesting to me they the way they struck me forever was this is just
a um married parent couple no no part of the story when I I
read it listened to it understood it was you're you're dealing with these
Uber powerful people who like understand the gravity of what their
responsibilities should be they were L all of this was because of Alexi all of it like yeah Rasputin's
involvement the way that everybody felt around the two of them was all tied to
Alexa because again nobody knew what was going on with them except the parents so right so there was no trust in in them
and in their government and like yeah you're right they they seem like just like they seem like just people they
don't seem like an emperor yeah yeah and and I think like that's the for me the the Doom to fail part of all this is
that I I don't know what you do if you're them because it's just not in their character to be these people but I
don't know if it's not then maybe you just don't maybe you abdicate I don't know yeah I think that you you know
you surround yourself with smart people and people who are smarter and people who know what they're doing so it's not
like he became emperor and there was no one to help there were people who had been like AIDS to his father and his
grandfather forever so they could have like continued to help him but he was just like a little bit like well I'm
mean everything I say is right because God Made Me In Charge like Henry the E did so I'm going to do these things that
maybe aren't advised correctly so like you should have people around you who are super super smart and really really
good at their job but instead they like had rest Putin around because they were afraid their son was going to die and
they invited his friends around and it became like a I don't know like a group of people who didn't weren't weren't
qualified for the job yeah yeah you know so it's
unfortunate it is unfor it's not a fun it's not a fun story I think that Rasputin adds this element of like
comedy to everything but it's just generally like a sad awful especially the way they died
in that basement with their kids all next to them the other unfortunate part of it is that it ushered in uh linen and
then and then it ushered in beyond that Stalin like all the downstream horrible
effects were because of frankly Nicholas's lack of leadership exactly
because of this poor leadership and because they were not you know at all prepared and then you know all these
things happen then we get to you know where we are today so fun times
very very fun I I recommend anybody who is interested in this go listen to the last podcast on the left episode I think
it's it might be five parts or four I can't remember it's four yeah but it's
based on their focus was Rasputin but again he's the critical figure in
this country at that time yeah they said they said something in that that I thought was really interesting which was
like if you because like I just said if you didn't have Rasputin
then you wouldn't have had Zar Nicholas over run over by the bolix which means
you don't have linen which means you don't have Stalin which means you don't have the Allied Powers in World what
they said was really interesting was rasp was weirdly one of the most consequential humans that has ever
existed because all the down impacts of it you probably don't even have the 2016 election because you don't have someone
like Putin who is a KGB officer and like right you don't have like Russia on Facebook yeah and I think yeah and he he
was like a a peasant from Siberia who wanted to do something exciting so he was like let me go for a walk and see
what happens you know yeah yeah pick your friends wisely um exactly well
thank you for that Taylor that's awesome I'm really glad yeah I'm really glad you covered that one that was it's such an
interesting story so I'm going to segue us into the True [Music]
Crime n