This week Taylor brings us back to Russia (does she have a Russian problem? Da.) to talk about the bad decisions Tzar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra made. Specifically, trusting a wizard. Farz tells the horrible story of the honor killings of Amina and Sarah Said by their fanatical father, Yaser. Also, are eyes the window to your soul? Farz says yes. Taylor says they are weird wet organs and everyone needs to calm down. Agree to disagree. See show notes for sources + ALL the lyrics to Boney M's disco hit - Ra Ra Rasputin Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
This week Taylor brings us back to Russia (does she have a Russian problem? Da.) to talk about the bad decisions Tzar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra made. Specifically, trusting a wizard.
Farz tells the horrible story of the honor killings of Amina and Sarah Said by their fanatical father, Yaser.
Also, are eyes the window to your soul? Farz says yes. Taylor says they are weird wet organs and everyone needs to calm down. Agree to disagree.
See show notes for sources + ALL the lyrics to Boney M's disco hit - Ra Ra Rasputin
Follow us on Instagram & Facebook! @doomedtofailpod
https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Some sources:
Raspotin - dark servant of destiny
Pictures from Russia via the Creative Commons
Amina & Sarah via IMDB
Yasir via Wikipedia
SUPER IMPORTANT TO WATCH THIS:
You can literally skip Taylor's part and just listen to this -
There lived a certain man in Russia long ago
He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow
Most people looked at him with terror and with fear
But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear
He could preach the Bible like a preacher
Full of ecstasy and fire
But he also was the kind of teacher
Women would desire
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
There lived a certain man in Russia long ago
He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow
Most people looked at him with terror and with fear
But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear
He could preach the Bible like a preacher
Full of ecstasy and fire
But he also was the kind of teacher
Women would desire
Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on
He ruled the Russian land and never mind the Czar
But the kazachok he danced really wunderbar
In all affairs of state he was the man to please
But he was real great when he had a girl to squeeze
For the queen he was no wheeler dealer
Though she'd heard the things he'd done
She believed he was a holy healer
Who would heal her son
Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on
But when his drinking and lusting
And his hunger for power
Became known to more and more people
The demands to do something
About this outrageous man
Became louder and louder
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
"This man's just got to go", declared his enemies
But the ladies begged, "don't you try to do it, please"
No doubt this Rasputin had lots of hidden charms
Though he was a brute, they just fell into his arms
Then one night some men of higher standing
Set a trap, they're not to blame
"Come to visit us", they kept demanding
And he really came
Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
They put some poison into his wine
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
He drank it all and said, "I feel fine"
Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
They didn't quit, they wanted his head
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
And so they shot him 'til he was dead
Oh, those Russians
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
0:19
what's your drink tell me so my drink is called carcade
0:27
all right you can talk about it okay because they did such a great job pronouncing it yeah
0:33
um okay so let's go ahead and get started welcome to Doom to fail the podcast where Taylor uplifts and I do
0:40
whatever the opposite of that is my name is farz I'm joined here by my co-host Taylor hi Taylor
0:47
hello how are you groggy yeah yeah and it's like two hours
0:54
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
1:01
um you're joining us from lovely lovely Joshua tree that is currently raining is that right yeah it is we had tons of
1:08
snow this week as well um we had a couple inches that stay on the ground for a while so it's been wild
1:13
that's incredible I love talking about the weather and it's been wild so yeah but wait look we're at that age
1:19
we're 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
1:24
look at your window give me a play-by-play I want to know it's overcast I'm looking out right now it's overcast it's a little bit chilly
1:31
um but it's supposed to be um pretty good weather later on here in Austin I'm gonna take Luna for a nice
1:37
little hike and just it's gonna be an outside day I think very nice I'm going to Dallas next week
1:42
so I know that's far away from you but I will be in Texas I haven't been to Dallas in enough time
1:50
where my parents are complaining about it so maybe I'll join you there and we can grab dinner yay let me let me let me
1:56
admonish my dog for a second I'm back uh Taylor what is going to be
2:01
your drink for today's episode um well I am
2:06
shockingly going back to Russia I don't even drink that much vodka ready really
2:12
like I feel like I've never like have vodka at home but
2:17
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
2:23
well do you have a brand that you like oh and I feel like I don't know don't people like Tito's
2:29
isn't that like yeah the in on Trend right now it is awesome based so that
2:35
was great that's what I'm going with yeah perfect okay awesome um my drink I actually don't really
2:41
totally know how to pronounce this I'm gonna try it looks like it's pronounced carcadiah
2:50
karkoda how do you spell it k-a-r-k-a-d-e-h
2:56
[Music] and it this my story involves an
3:01
Egyptian man which is why I went to Egypt to find a traditional drink there
3:07
it is made from boiling dried red hibiscus flowers with water then you
3:13
chill it then you add sugar to it cool so it actually sounds really good I
3:19
think Starbucks kind of makes something like this yeah it looks like a Starbucks drink it's like looking at it now it's
3:25
like a deep red iced tea yeah exactly exactly so um I'll uh go into details of
3:32
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
3:39
it's non-alcoholic unlike your penchant for just drinking straight vodka
3:46
I'll remember and maybe next week next week I won't go to Russia but I will drink Vodka anyway
3:52
um I'll just be like taking shots of vodka and like sleep all day my husband my family would love that they'd be real proud of me
3:57
um so as far as we're going back to Russia again and I know we've gone to Russia like a million times so far in
4:04
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
4:10
I think it's because something good stories that come out of Russia so much tragedy so much grander
4:18
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
4:23
about like the idea of being in Russia and there's this woman that I
4:29
really likes you was the editor of Vogue of the 1960s her name's Diana Freeland
4:34
she's like another like really like over the top personality she like smoke stick her heads all the time and like
4:39
was like wow like very just very funny she was from Paris um and I mean I'm making like I'm moving
4:46
my arms like you know what I mean yeah a lot of hand waving so she was great and then there's a documentary about her
4:52
called the eye has to travel and in that documentary Angelica Houston is talking about her and she's like Diana was like
4:59
why worry about this and this one there's Russia like Russia really big and it's like that's how I feel about it
5:05
even though like Rex super stoked about the current state of Russia but it's like a an
5:12
I don't know how to explain it does that kind of make sense why it's fascinating it is fast I mean their history is
5:18
incredible everything yeah the Arts fantastic they have Faberge eggs nobody
5:25
else does Faberge eggs yes yes exactly it's like that's that's good yes that was your eggs that's exactly right
5:31
exactly right um so today the couple I'm going to talk
5:36
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
5:43
because they were thrust into something they weren't prepared for and like yes
5:48
that's true but you are also The Company You Keep and they kept company with
5:53
in yes I knew it is one of Marcus Sparks I was like yep yep
6:00
so we're talking about the last emperor of Russia as our Nicholas and his wife Alexandra so some of the sources
6:07
um I watched this amazing made for TV movie called Rasputin dark servant of
6:13
Destiny and Alan Rickman plays him interesting
6:18
unbelievable so I took I was like taking pictures literally of my screen to send them to my husband because it's so funny
6:24
and then Google photos made me this like really like stylized collage and just
6:29
pictures of Alan Rickman as Rasputin it's hilarious so I'll put it on our Instagram but he does a great job it's
6:35
everything that you could ever imagine and Alan Rickman performance to be um Ian McKellen plays our Nicholas it's
6:41
great so highly recommend I watched it on YouTube I also listened to last podcasts
6:46
whole series on Rasputin and write a little bit of a book that I wanted to read more of but 25 hours long I didn't
6:52
have 25 hours to listen to it um but called about rest again as well so I'll put that in the notes
6:59
my favorite part of the Rasputin series was when the guards had a scale for how
7:07
drunk he was yes drunk very drunk totally overcome with drink and then uh
7:15
Ben Kissel the end goes they left one off which is oh I'm just drunk enough to
7:20
be good to drive right now exactly he was very drunk most of the
7:25
time in this story but I also don't want to talk about him as much as I want to talk about Alex and and Nicholas because
7:32
let's talk about their relationship but also like rescue and obviously played a big part of it so some of the characters that we're
7:39
going to meet so Nikolai alexandrovich Romanov it was born in 1868. his father
7:46
was in line to be Emperor and when his grandfather was assassinated um he became heir of the throne so he
7:54
was pretty word worldly he traveled around Europe meeting with other royal families and Queen Victoria so it sounds
8:01
like he loved like the rich part of being heir to the throne and the traveling and
8:07
all of that but he wasn't really thinking about the ruling part or like actual politics he was more like this is
8:13
fun having a good time and hadn't really thought through when he was going to actually be in charge
8:18
his wife Alexandra was born Princess Alex of hessen of Hessa by the Rhine in 1872. she came from Germany but she was
8:26
also Queen Victoria's granddaughter so a lot of this is like they're not related but like everyone's related you know
8:32
what I mean it's like a small a small pool have you seen the Kingman Kingman yeah it's on Netflix
8:39
um Ray finds is in it oh yes I have it's all about this part of world history and
8:44
how like those three the German guy um the Nicholas and then
8:51
the guy in the UK or the King George you talked about him already before but they
8:58
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
9:04
interesting uh dynamic they had yeah exactly so it's like the small pool of like royalty all over Europe and Russia
9:10
and everywhere um so Alex Alexandra was called Alex and she
9:17
seemed to be like a lovely child but she was very shy and very introverted and then um diphtheria came through you know
9:24
the palace and she lost a sister and her mother and she became like really brooding and like a very like Melancholy
9:30
child she was very shy very religious so her being very religious plays a lot into
9:36
this because she believes a lot of weird [ __ ] because she's very religious and
9:41
people saw her as like maybe a little bit haughty but really she was just super shy so they met at a wedding
9:48
um of her sister to someone in Russia and um he Nicholas was interested in her
9:54
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
10:00
getting married one of the reasons that she didn't want to was because she really didn't want to convert from being
10:05
Lutheran to being Russian Orthodox but ultimately she does so she does end up converting but and stays very religious
10:13
so similar to Catherine the Great she you know became Russian Orthodox kind of right away when she got there
10:19
um also like political reasons people wanted them to get married and they did love each other so all accounts they
10:25
loved each other you know they had like a good you know connection they spoke in English which I think is is funny like
10:32
after you know living in Russia they didn't really speak Russian in the court they they spoke in English to each other
10:38
and Alexandra goes to Russia and right before their wedding the current Czar dies and Nicholas becomes becomes the
10:45
the Emperor of Russia he was not ready and he said when he found out his dad
10:50
had passed he said what is going to happen to me in all of Russia
10:56
no and he was not like a baby he was 26 you
11:01
know so you should be prepared to take this job like I'm sure like
11:07
um what's his face Charles King Charles has been preparing to be king forever even though he didn't get that job until
11:13
he was like 80 you know but at least you know he was thinking about it for a long time yeah so he should have been ready but he
11:20
wasn't another thing that is like super contradictory to that
11:25
because like he should have been more ready to be Czar he wasn't but he like firmly believes that God made him as our
11:31
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
11:37
God wanted and we talked about that I think before and other things as well it kind of goes hand in hand with them
11:44
like any monarchy is that assumption that you're that much better than everybody else yeah exactly
11:51
exactly that just like makes you a weird person you know um Taylor is that a is that a is that a
11:56
gray Nation Builder shirt or a black and wash the [ __ ] out of
12:02
okay all my black ones are great now that's why oh no it's it
12:08
but I do wear I do rock this station but this is the only Edition Builder I guess they'll have I like it
12:14
um and because it's cold so so Nicholas is from Catherine the greats
12:19
line and if you'll remember from episode one Catherine the Great was great and her son Paul was not he was a dope and
12:25
one thing that Paul did was re-change the law so that women couldn't be Emperor and that directly ties into our
12:32
story as well later and so we'll talk about that and even though it was 150
12:37
years before that it still plays a direct role so
12:43
I've got some background and some think about kind of the time that we're in right now so
12:50
he become a czar in 1896. and I don't know if you've seen pictures of Nicholas but he has an amazing
12:56
mustache I don't know if that like matters but it's like a wonderfully curled up mustache he becomes our
13:02
1896. they can get married in 1904 there's a revolution and it's more than
13:08
just like it's very complicated but it's a revolution there's a thing called Bloody Sunday where people are like
13:13
revolting people are starving they want you know more they need help they need jobs they need all these things and
13:19
um the there's like some orders and a lot of people die and it's you know a pretty
13:25
um like Turning Point there's a there's a revolution in 1905 and Nicholas ends
13:30
up giving up part of his power to a legislative body called the Duma so he's already kind of Happiness real
13:38
quick yeah here look at look I'm gonna share my screen with you
13:44
I'm excited uh how do I do the whole desktop this is the silent interactive
13:49
part oh my God it's so funny bars is showing me how how's our necklace looks just like Jack
13:56
Dorsey it really does that is terrifying
14:02
for those of Jack Dorsey is the um was the CEO and founder of uh Twitter and
14:08
square but he looks identical to the oh my gosh it's so amazing
14:15
sorry to interrupt you no I think that that is some that's important for everybody to know
14:21
wow there we go there you have it both have Global implications for their jobs
14:27
and leaving their jobs yeah no kidding lots of similarities that's amazing
14:34
um thank you for sharing that was totally worth it so yeah now you know what he looks like so he looks like Jack Dorsey with a gilded military outfit on
14:43
um so there's also speaking of the military this is a russo-japanese war happening sometimes Nicholas goes out
14:48
with his troops but it's just 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
14:56
like occult things so first would you would you have you ever gone to a seance
15:02
would you go to a seance yeah I would totally go to Seance I have not gone to a seance but I would
15:07
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
15:13
I mean I I see why you would be but I'm so it's an Austin thing of like getting
15:20
into like spirituality in weird ways I think and okay yeah I think that's where the appeal would be for me how many
15:27
crystals are you wearing right now I'm wearing one tiger's eye necklace
15:33
some lava rock beads and then another bead that I don't know what it's made of
15:39
but it's it's good looking well for you yes
15:45
um but this is also a very heavy like time it's the occult it's like I don't know if you listened to the last podcast about Madame blavatsky or like have like
15:52
um it's like people who are like oh I can communicate with the dead like come over we'll have a seance things like
15:58
that and obviously a lot of it's like well most of it is probably all Jam but you know there's a lot of that happening and rich people [ __ ] love it because
16:04
of course they do they love going to these things um so it's relevant to our story because
16:11
Rasputin is also in this so one thing that have you ever watched
16:16
American Horror Story yes absolutely do you know the did you watch Roanoke yeah
16:22
so Bruno's my favorite season and remember the part where like in the first part of it when the wife is at
16:29
home alone and it starts raining teeth then her husband comes home and he's like you need to calm down so at that
16:36
time my husband and I made a deal that if I say something to him like one it was raining teeth while
16:43
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
16:49
if I'm like the chairs in the kitchen rearrange themselves on their own like believe me
16:54
don't Gaslight me into thinking that I'm crazy so that's our deal but also I think an
17:00
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
17:06
problems you should step back and say no you did not yeah yeah it makes sense
17:11
pretty pretty simple rule yeah so recipe is I mean imagine him being a wizard he was
17:17
born in Siberia in 1869 there's some great resources on him watch that movie
17:22
with Alan Rickman it's so good but some of the like fun things about him are I
17:29
always think of him as social ancient being you know but he's not there's pictures of him you know he's
17:35
you know he died in 1900s not like he's an ancient Mystic but he feels kind of
17:41
ancient you know what I mean yeah it was just good branding yes exactly it was exactly good branding and
17:48
we'll talk about why like his so another just timeline thing like he had kids and
17:54
his daughter lived until 1977. so it's like there's you know she wrote A Memoir
18:00
about him that I didn't get to read but I would love to read someday um he lives in Siberia which is terrible
18:06
you know it's just cold and awful and he has a family and he ends up you know
18:11
being like you know kind of the town drunk but I feel like everyone's drunk because you're cold and he takes these
18:19
like big pilgrimages walking across Russia in the name of God like abandoning his family
18:24
um doing all these weird things but it's also important to remember he's never directly in the church he's
18:29
just like around he just like wears robes and like hangs out he's never like actually a part of the church
18:35
and he ends up making friends with these sisters who are called The Black Crows
18:41
who seem really cool they're like also like you know mystical occult people but they're just like rich people having fun
18:47
in St Petersburg and he you know starts to be introduced to like some more rich
18:52
people and that's the way he gets eventually introduced to the emperor he is a weird guy so it's like his
18:59
personality is to be like eccentric he comes in and he kisses people and he hugs people and he does a lot of like
19:05
touchy things he'll talk to you and then he'll like start like learning his words and then
19:11
like come back and then he'll like turn and talk to someone else and then he'll do something else so it makes him kind of like mysterious and enchanting and he
19:18
like does this like hilarious thing that he convinces people that in order to be forgiven they have to sin so he like
19:24
that's how he gets a lot of people to sleep with him you know things like that which is like sure I feel like uh from
19:31
everything I've read about Rasputin he he created that persona
19:38
like that mannerism that you're talking about which I've read a lot about it feels like that was manufactured and
19:43
actually not who he was who he was at his core was the village drunk but he wanted
19:49
greater than that and then he's like what do I do he's like okay I gotta walk a certain way I gotta have the right swag where I gotta have the right voice
19:55
the right like all that [ __ ] right exactly to like be appealing to these people to people who want something to
20:01
happen like the reason that like the occult is so popular is like these rich people want something to happen so
20:07
they're like looking for it so they see that in him exactly um he has these piercing blue eyes and
20:13
everybody's like oh my God his eyes and I just also wanted to see it for the record that
20:19
your eyes are not a window to your soul that's dumb that's not true and that he
20:25
just had blue eyes are probably very watery and people were like ooh they're sparkly eyes don't Sparkle there's eyes
20:31
so I don't know Taylor I don't agree with you no they're not it's not it's magical in people's eyes just eyes
20:37
they're just like gross organs wet organs that you can see from your head yep weird take on eyes I don't know
20:44
where this hatred comes from but they get too much they get too much publicity that they don't deserve I mean
20:51
like I'm grateful for them but it's not a window to your soul okay we'll agree to disagree I agree agree disagree
20:58
um so people are entranced by him um and I love the idea of like you know going to Rooms seeing this weird you
21:05
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
21:12
like nowadays I could probably walk a place and find like a dude with a bunch of crystals who's like hey like blah
21:17
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
21:24
mystical guy you know what I mean so you don't find my um this this tiger eye necklace magical or whimsical at all
21:32
no well I find you Whimsical but not like is that because not because of the
21:37
necklace there we go that makes sense um but it's also like I don't blame people for falling for this or like
21:43
being entranced by it it's like when you meet like Bill Clinton and people are like you're the only person in the room
21:48
when he talks to you which is true because that's his job the kid understands how to talk to people so that's kind of what raspbian is doing
21:54
um I 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
22:01
it just entranced everybody so I want to learn more about that so if anyone has stories of that please let me know
22:06
um but he ends up Rasputin ends up being introduced to Alexander Nicholas and
22:11
they love him they love his mysterious they call him our friend he hangs out with them all the time
22:16
um he promises to like do magical things for them there's an awesome scene in the Alan Rickman movie where he meets
22:22
Alexander for the first time and he's like mama papa blah blah he calls the mama and papa he's like oh it's on the
22:29
floor real weird but they love it and back to the czars and that line that we
22:34
talked about where um Catherine the Great son Paul said that women cannot be that be that
22:39
Emperor they have four daughters which we've learned before is gross no one wants daughters so they have to have a
22:45
son so Alexander and Nicholas finally have a son his name is Alexi and he is
22:50
super sick he's a hemophiliac the myth comes directly from Queen Victoria she's a hemophiliac and put
22:57
brought that into the line so then like Alexandra carries the Gene and then her son has it so basically
23:03
if he gets like bruised he can die of internal bleeding he's like always in pain so he's a little sickly little
23:09
child and somehow Rasputin does actually help
23:15
Alexi in like some way that is don't really understand they talk about it in
23:21
last podcast it's like in a lot of the books like he did potentially make him feel better and
23:27
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
23:34
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
23:41
will be fine well one one thing I remember from that was he would tell the doctors to stay
23:48
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
23:53
give to somebody who's a hemophiliac yeah totally totally which I think is that sounds true but like how would the
24:00
rest of you didn't know that did he like what one of the other things I read was that
24:07
um he had nurses there who would intentionally get him sick or make him
24:13
feel worse so that he could come in and be this wizard who fixes him
24:19
I totally believe that too yeah yeah that makes sense yeah and so for her For Better or Worse however it happened he
24:25
did like theme to heal the boy enough so that they were like really beholden to
24:30
him and like really needed rasputing around but they also didn't tell anybody that the boy was sick so they were
24:37
spending all this time with Rasputin and people most people around them were like what the hell is going on like is it a
24:42
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
24:48
he's you know assuming a lot of people but not her any of this like weird drunk guy around all the time and all these
24:54
things but I think people would have maybe understood if they were like we think he heals our son but they didn't tell
25:00
anybody that they didn't tell anybody that Alexi was hemophiliac so that's um kind of making everything worse there
25:06
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
25:13
think that at that time Nicholas thought that his grip was on the monarchy was tenuous anyways and he also thought that
25:20
if he said that the next in line was a sickly child it would have made it even worse because I think the Duma was
25:26
trying to convert to a constitutional monarchy at that time or a um whatever you call it
25:31
you know that's right like like the UK yeah exactly yeah so that's exactly right so they if they
25:37
would have known you know maybe people have been more sympathetic but he was definitely like this is I have a very like blue script on this anyway I can't
25:45
let people know this you know there's a lot more about Rasputin but he's starting to put his
25:50
friends into Power it's just like again like a better Emperor would have had better advisors than Rasputin and
25:57
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
26:02
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
26:08
at rest of you and think he's a weirdo so on December 29th 1916 a group of people decide to assassinate Rasputin
26:16
and it's a whole deal so they end up bringing him over and giving him cyanide
26:22
laced cake and wine and Rasputin just like does not die
26:27
um probably because he's alcoholic and his veins and stomach is a line for vodka like
26:33
well that happened before too they also thought part of it was um I'm going off the last podcast memory
26:39
here but Westfield was stabbed in the stomach at one point in his life yes and they had to cut out a bunch of his
26:46
intestines to like make him whole again or healthy and they also assume that
26:52
because of that because of cyanide didn't wasn't able to travel through and digest and absorb through his intestines
26:57
completely like a normal person that's probably what saved them yeah totally absolutely that totally made sense
27:04
because he definitely like ingested a lot of Cyanide and did not die like they expected him to and eventually they end
27:10
up shooting him in the head and dumping him in a river after all after all this so Rasputin dies it's already a very
27:16
tumultuous time in the palace and so um uh Alexandra and Nicholas are sort of
27:21
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
27:29
problems in Russia we had all these revolutions all these wars a better Emperor a different Emperor could have
27:35
you know navigated World War one better he could have um you know helped his people more but he you know was not able
27:42
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
27:49
reasons but that you know became the whole impetus for the whole Revolution and he is in 1917 and he is like taken
27:58
from the throne and the family is brought to Siberia to live in Exile
28:03
so the girls the Galaxy Alexander Nicholas are kind of taking prisoner and
28:09
the Bolsheviks become in charge and the emperor line of Russia is over so now
28:14
um he's the last of of the Russian emperors maybe he could have done a better job he
28:20
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
28:25
their life they were very concerned about their son they're concerned about religion they're concerned about mysticism they're trying to like live
28:32
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
28:38
if they would have done the like maybe they could have done the constitutional monarchy and there could have still been an emperor like they have in the UK with
28:46
the queen and king or whatever but they didn't and they ended up you know in this place in in Siberia and
28:54
it ends for Alexandra and Nicholas in a really terrible way
28:59
um they are in this place in Siberia in Exile and then they're brought to the
29:04
basement on July 16th 1918 the whole family along with some other you know uh
29:11
of their of their friends are brought to the basement and they are shot to death
29:16
um by a couple people just shooting into the crowd of people in this basement so they're trapped in the space man they're
29:22
shot it sounds awful they actually do it in the Alan Rickman movie let me do it in like a very like slow
29:28
motion chaotic way but the parents um Alexandra Nicholas die right away the
29:35
girls which is this is also terrible um don't die right away because they had like jewels and gold sewn into their
29:42
dress that they had like taken from the palace and that kind of acted as a bulletproof vest for them so they didn't
29:49
die right away they were just like injured and they ended up like being stabbed or shot at close range did I so
29:54
all the romanovs are killed in the basement they put them in the back of a a
30:01
like cart to take them away to bury them and then like the guys driving the cart are also drunk everyone's tired no one
30:07
wants to do it so they just kind of bury them in a field and they ended up finding their their bones like
30:13
pretty recently in identifying like who they were but um that's how they ended so they started
30:19
off as like you know heirs to a really a great Empire and coming from these
30:24
really rich families and they ended up being you know shot in in a basement and buried in a field
30:31
um so one thing that I remember because again I this is one of those rare topics that you bring up and I actually know a
30:36
lot about I love it please tell me more it's so interesting to me they the way
30:43
they struck me forever was this is just a um
30:48
married parent couple no part of the story when as I read it
30:54
listened to it understood it was you're you're dealing with these Uber
31:00
powerful people who like understand the gravity of
31:05
what their responsibilities should be they were lit all of this was because of Alexi all of it like yeah Rasputin's
31:13
involvement the way that everybody felt around the two of them
31:18
was all tied to Alexa because again nobody knew what was going on with it except the parents so right so there was
31:25
no trust in in them in their government and like yeah you're right they seem like just
31:30
like they seem like just people they don't seem like an emperor yeah yeah and I
31:35
think like that's the for me the Doom to fail part of all this is that
31:41
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
31:47
it's not then maybe you just don't maybe you abdicate I don't know yeah I
31:52
think that you you know you surround yourself with smart people and people who are smarter and people who
31:58
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
32:04
like AIDS to his father and his grandfather forever so they could have like continued to help him but he was
32:09
just like a little bit like well I mean everything I say is right because God Made Me In Charge like Henry VII did so
32:16
I'm going to do these things that maybe aren't advised correctly it's like you should have people around you who are
32:22
super super smart and really really good at their job but instead they like had rasputing around because they were
32:27
afraid their son was gonna die and they invited his friends around and it became like a
32:32
I don't know like a group of people who didn't weren't weren't qualified for the job yeah yeah you know no it's
32:40
unfortunate it's not a fun story I think that Rasputin adds this element of like
32:46
comedy to everything but it's just generally like a sad awful
32:52
especially the way they died in that basement with their kids next to them the other unfortunate part of it is that
32:58
it ushered in uh Lenin and then it
33:03
ushered him beyond that Stalin like all the downstream horrible effects were
33:08
because of frankly Nicholas's lack of leadership exactly because of this poor leadership and because they were not you
33:15
know at all prepared and then you know all these things happen then we get to you know where we are today so
33:22
fun times very very fun I recommend anybody who's interested in this go
33:28
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
33:35
yeah but it's based on their focus was Rasputin but again he's the critical
33:41
figure in this country at that time yeah they said they
33:46
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
33:53
then you wouldn't have had sorry Nicholas over run over by the Bolsheviks which means you don't have
33:59
linen which means you don't have Stalin which means you don't have the Allied Powers in World what they said was
34:05
really interesting was raspoon was weirdly one of the most consequential humans that has ever existed because all
34:11
the downstream impacts of it you probably don't even have the 2016 election because you don't have someone
34:16
like Putin who is a KGB officer installed like right you don't have like Russia on Facebook yeah and I think yeah
34:22
and he he was just like a peasant from Siberia who wanted to do something exciting so he was like let me go for a
34:28
walk and see what happens you know yeah yeah pick your friends wisely
34:34
um exactly well thank you for that Taylor that's awesome I'm really glad I yeah I'm really glad you covered that
34:40
one that was it's such an interesting story so I'm gonna segue us into the
34:45
true Prime side of our Doom to fail stories so my story this week elicits a lot of
34:51
feelings for me um okay for one it starts as a story I can totally resonate with
34:58
if it wasn't clear by my name already to folks or general appearance I'm Middle
35:04
Eastern I'm Iranian specifically and my family immigrated to the United States when I was two years old so in 1986
35:10
for folks who don't know um Iran's history in the mid 70s onward
35:16
was very very turbulent and I'm not going to go down to history Rabbit Hole here Taylor like that's a that's a youth thing but um it's important for the
35:23
context of setting this up what was going on but the tldr is that Iran was basically a secular country for most of
35:29
its history it was a constitutional monarchy leading up to the revolution in 1979
35:35
with their Revolution the leadership in institutions that were ushered in were focused primarily around Islam and
35:41
forcing a strict moral code on people which is where we're at now so if you
35:46
follow right and use even a little bit that's why women are protesting why they can't go see soccer matches or why they
35:52
have to keep their hair in a I don't know what you call it the the hijab hijab yeah yeah and then you know
35:58
there's constant protests that are immediately followed by executions because that's a kind of right but also
36:05
but it's not just um going to soccer games wearing the hijab
36:10
it's like they can't go to the doctor unless the doctor's a woman but also women can't be doctors so yeah yeah it's
36:15
it's you know I put this within the context so I could actually have folks try to
36:21
conceptualize what this actually means because that's how quickly things shifted in Iran specifically was 79 it
36:27
happened like you are living one way again it's just it was a secular country the shot there was no auspices of
36:34
religion there so to put it in context imagine you're living your cool hip life in LA or New York going out with your
36:40
friends meeting people and then one day you have police telling you to stop holding hands to your partner they all
36:45
the places that you socialize are shut down like that's how Stark in different things ended up being which is you know
36:53
like again like I have a point to all this but think about what happens to those people who are like no I'm not
37:00
gonna live like that like all the cool people leave right like all the ones who
37:06
are not insane religious zealots leave because well then the ones who have the
37:13
opportunity to right they have the reasons the ones that can so and that's exactly what my family did
37:18
right they were like they made a decision that we do not want to be religious zealots so we're going
37:26
to leave and that's what we did and that's how we ended up in Texas so the reason I'm bringing all of this up is
37:32
because as I mentioned the start of this story resonates with me because it is about someone trying to
37:38
escape their home country for a better life but the story also enrages me because of
37:44
what one member of this family ends up doing okay I am going to
37:51
[ __ ] on religion a little bit on this we've never done that before as far as that's totally up off character
37:57
yeah it's totally offline for me yeah it will be a thousand percent Justified every time I do it
38:05
I'm I'm gonna keep going on this rants because I'm like riled up now and this has nothing to do with what's in the outline
38:11
please do if you come to the United States for a better life because you're trying to
38:16
escape things that are going on in your home country don't try to make this like
38:21
your home country right if you're already decided like I left something bad don't bring the bed with you yeah it
38:27
has nothing to do with assimilation really like maintain your language maintain your religion maintain your whatever but don't be the thing that you
38:35
needed to escape for a better life that's my general thesis to anybody who
38:41
is you know over here from a different country anyways whatever I'm not I'm Gonna Keep I'm gonna get into more
38:47
romance later no totally I wanna I wanna know more because I'm also curious is like is that how hard is that to do
38:53
well I I I actually do put that in the outline I actually discuss a piece of this in the outline because I think that
38:58
there's a point in time when you have to decide at what point do you have to diverge
39:05
from your cultural understanding of the world and there's
39:13
going to come a point in time when this guy could have done it and he didn't do it um and I'm gonna point that out I'm gonna put a punctuation point on that so
39:20
the person we're discussing is a guy named Yasser Abdul Syed
39:25
is from Egypt and he came to the U.S at 26 years old uh he did it for exactly the same reason
39:32
anybody does it it's for opportunity uh specifically he was here to pursue higher education because in those
39:38
countries like it's I'm not going to keep going down that ramp like it is impossible to get like a decent education there if you're not like the
39:44
1.001 of smartest people in the country basically Yasser married an American woman named
39:51
Patricia when he was 30 and she was 15. we've learned a lot about oh no it's
39:58
dynamic how they meet I actually don't know how they met but I would say that not at a
40:05
bar that's not a bar on Tinder but I would say that um but I discussed Patricia sparingly
40:12
here because I mean I hate to be mean about it but she just seems like a nothing like she just seems like a nothing person like
40:18
like just like an empty vessel basically so the two of them would go on to have
40:23
three kids they have a son named Islam who was born in 1988 a daughter named Amina born in 89 and another daughter
40:30
named Sarah who was born in 90. to three kids okay to say Yasser was controlling is a bit
40:37
of an understatement he had an almost abnormal predilection to know exactly
40:43
what his daughters were doing at any given point in time by all accounts this Behavior did not extend to Islam he
40:48
really didn't give a [ __ ] what the son was doing got it yeah
40:54
yes exactly uh and this is where my speculation is going to come I've been into play there aren't I've watched a
41:02
lot of news shows about what goes on here I've read a lot about it but it's not a super meaty topic
41:11
um people we don't go into a ton of details about the inner workings of these this family
41:17
or the news doesn't really go into the inner workings of this family very much so there's gonna be some speculation here because again I feel a little bit
41:24
like it's appropriate for me to talk on it given that it's a master guy and I've like I'm we'll get into it
41:31
so part of the speculation is I'm assuming and I think correctly that part
41:37
of why he really didn't care about Islam the sun I'm just gonna call him the Sun be sun because it's confusing
41:43
yeah versus a daughter is is really religion it's cultural
41:48
I think Yasser came up in an Islamic household and in a country where women just aren't seen as equal to men he
41:55
doesn't have to keep tabs on the sun because the sun probably he in his mind he knows what's up it's the girl's got to keep tabs on right
42:02
per usual I hate making excuses for this type of behavior but I feel like if you've lived in that
42:09
environment for 26 years breaking that programming has to be hard yes totally I reference what I was
42:16
thinking yeah I referenced this a little bit earlier about like where that Divergence happens I think in any
42:22
situation a person who has been programmed by life or culture or whatever it is comes to a certain point
42:28
and then has to make a decision go with the programming or break the cycle
42:33
that is an inflection point I think happens again as as an immigrant like I
42:39
can speak with some knowledge of that like there you reach a point where like uh this is what I know this I was raised
42:45
what do you do what what path do you take here Yasser is going to take the exact wrong path and we're going to see
42:52
that happen here in a moment so going back to the two daughters there were reports of abuse of course there
43:00
were some physical abuse and by some accounts sexual abuse as well I won't go into them
43:05
but mostly it's because that's not the interesting part of this story the interesting part is the extent to which
43:12
Yasser wanted to control the daughters he almost sounds like a jealous
43:18
ex-boyfriend like he'd go he belonged to me yeah yeah 100
43:24
he'd go through their phone he would record them without their knowledge to see what they were talking about and in
43:30
particular he had an extreme aversion to them I mean really just growing up and dating
43:36
boys that's what it was yeah the latter part the dating Boys Part seems to be
43:41
the biggest trigger for Yasser there were multiple stories and accounts of these um
43:47
this understanding that Yasser was very violent can you hear that their dog yeah
43:54
I can kind of hear it but I I barely I don't think I was able to hear it they might think it's farts though
43:59
feedback your brother's so wrong like if he
44:07
re-listens to it I don't even know how you would make that sound that like the pitch of it is obviously the Yelp of a
44:13
dog you heard that you heard you hear that Kincaid talking to you yeah
44:20
um so so like I said with with Joshua the trigger with him was really like the
44:27
girls in their relationship with boys he did one of these gross old guy things
44:34
that was just all about like protecting the virtue of his daughters yeah there's one story about how when Amina turns 16
44:41
Yasser took her to Egypt to marry a friend of his which at this point yosters 48 so how old is this yeah
44:49
friend who's marrying a 16 year old also these girls were born in the United States or born in Texas like right they
44:58
you know what I'm getting flashbacks to that family um the one with the dad who looks like
45:03
Harry from Dumb and Dumber where it's like where you have exposure to the real world and then
45:11
now you're going to Egypt to marry some guy and be in this like Islamic family like I don't know
45:17
it sounds awful yeah obviously the more you push the girls in the way that he
45:23
pushed them the more he repel them so Amina starts dating a boy she meets in a karate class
45:28
they would have to use code words and stuff to get around yasser's surveillance which just shows really the
45:35
unflappable resolve of a teenage boy dating a girl I know okay seriously poor
45:41
guy at one point Yasser suspected that she was dating someone and beat the [ __ ] out of her to try and get her to tell
45:47
her him the boy's name she took the beating she refused to give the boy's name because she legitimately
45:54
thought he would kill him if she did wow yeah and again constant theme that I
46:01
read over and over again was like yeah the mom thought that he was going to kill them he was going to kill like constantly which comes up over and over
46:07
again the mom just yeah like she just seemed like
46:12
maybe resigned to it that's probably the right I shouldn't talk bad about it like I
46:17
think that she was just so beaten down by this guy that she was just like whatever whatever happens
46:24
yeah why I mean like I don't I'm so sorry but I don't understand
46:30
why he's so mad because he wants to like he wants him to just completely be controlled by him then like why even
46:35
send them to school okay so I sent her to karate class so that so that's the thing like that's why I I mean I hate to say it this way I
46:43
know this guy like I grew up with guys like this
46:48
um I'm not gonna go into details because it'll be obvious to the people who hear the story who know me like what I'm talking about but but
46:55
there's something about this cultural grip that when some people just can't
47:00
handle it like it's it's almost like a known thing when you come to America that like if you're from one of these
47:06
countries it's almost known that some people just can't take it there's too
47:12
much stimulation too much going on I think that he just Falls in this
47:17
category I think I don't think that it was like I'm so mad thing I think it's like a I'm just out of my element thing
47:24
totally yeah I definitely don't understand that so I appreciate perspective because
47:29
yeah it's a thing it really is um so that relationship with Amina progress to the point where her and the boy
47:36
actually got engaged come on to me it's just cutesy teenage [ __ ] he probably got her a ring out of one of those
47:42
gumball machines you know by some accounts um that I actually couldn't verify the other daughter Sarah
47:48
had also started dating someone and also got secretly engaged to me the girls at this point as I was reading this it
47:54
sounded like they were just trying to find any exit anyway yeah yeah and I'm sure those boys were like
48:00
very I don't know like Brave and like comforting you know to be like it's
48:06
gonna be okay yeah of course um so I'm gonna take us on a bit of a side quest here
48:12
Taylor have you heard of the concept of honor killings before yes I think that's when like a dad kills
48:18
their daughter to stop her from doing something that would dishonor the family like yeah that that's roughly it so I I
48:24
did put a little bit of facts together here so I did a bit of research on this and several things I found will probably
48:30
shock no one again I'm not trying to [ __ ] on religion
48:35
or the ethnicity but obviously this is something that happens in Middle Eastern cultures like I don't know that's not
48:42
Prejudice or racist for me to say that is actually what ends up happening so I remember Taylor when I was around 16
48:48
years old I found this book at the library because I used to actually read that was called the stoning of Soraya M
48:54
and because it was um framed as like a Iranian book it was it is it's about an
49:01
Iranian woman I picked it up because I was just like trying to learn more about like Iran and what goes on there and I
49:07
was 16 and I thought okay let's see what this is all about it's the true story of a woman named Soraya in a village in
49:13
Iran whose husband wanted to marry someone new but didn't want to return her Dowry or support to families at the
49:20
same time so he spread a rumor that she was having an affair so the village in her own family would agree to kill her
49:26
by stoning her to death that's exactly what happened to Anne Boleyn yeah
49:31
exactly he wanted to marry someone else yes so he accused her of having an affair and had her killeds
49:37
yeah I guess I guess this is more common than it probably should be I put this part in I literally wrote this is for
49:44
one because he asked for more gruesomeness so in a stoning what ends up happening is the victim is buried in
49:50
the ground up to their neck and people just take turns throwing stones at their head oh my God in soraya's case it was
49:57
documented that her father had to start the process he was the first one to throw the stone
50:04
followed by her son and then followed by the guy they made up the story about
50:09
that she was cheating on her husband with he didn't get killed like that guy was fine
50:15
but he did have to also throw Roxas woman's head but they all like knew that it was a lie
50:21
the husband knew was a lie and the this guy knew was a lie yeah yeah but apparently when it was his turn uh he
50:28
was supposed to throw a few and I guess he threw one and he just picked up the other Stone and was disgusted and just threw it away and walked away he
50:33
couldn't do it oh how Brave so super awful story and also
50:40
surprisingly not uncommon the vast majority of honor killings are women and girls as you stated with the exception
50:45
of men really being homosexuality or if they're caught you know diddling a kid or a family member or something like
50:52
that the UN estimates that about 5 000 of these killings occur annually
50:57
and as the name implies and as you also mentioned the killing is meant as a way
51:03
to restore the family name when someone is perceived to have Dishonored it so
51:09
I did a lot more research on this don't need to go into details the one thing I would note is that the Quran actually itself does not reference or bring up
51:15
the concept of death for the sake of Honor so it is what it is
51:21
it's a weird thing because I feel like there's no like in my family there's no like dishonor the family
51:27
thing you know like it just not something that we like think of something look I can I can feel this
51:34
even from my perspective of like you know having to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer like it's it's like it's
51:40
it's a no like if you weren't then that is a dishonorable like it's a thing it
51:45
really is totally so going back to our story these girls are basically constantly plotting their escape with
51:52
the boyfriends why they're getting engaged anyways and Yasser is a constant Terror to be around and on January 1
51:58
2008 he tells the girls to get into the taxi cab he drives for work so that they can
52:05
all go get something to eat by all accounts they do not want to do this they they are terrified of this guy
52:12
at this point he drives them to a parking lot of a hotel in a part of Dallas which I'm
52:17
actually like really really familiar with my mom used to work like right here it's called um it's this part of Dallas called Las Colinas and he parked his cab
52:24
at the Omni Hotel there after which he promptly turned to the girls who were in the back seat and shot
52:30
them oh Amina died scared yeah Amina died yeah I
52:37
actually talked about that here in a sec Amina died instantly Sarah actually lived long enough to call
52:42
the police call 9-1-1 and explicitly said that her dad shot her oh my God in total he shot off 11
52:51
bullets which like in the in the back seat the car yeah I mean I've been gun shooting
52:58
and I've had like the headphones on it is deafening with that situation much
53:04
less in the inside of a car so like I said Amina died right away it
53:09
was actually Sarah who took the Run of it because he how old how old were they oh I should know that
53:16
I don't know this happened in 2008 Amina was 89 and
53:22
Sarah was 90. so Sarah Sarah would have been 18 uh yeah sir would have been 18 and Amina would have
53:29
been two year or a year or older than that so 19. yeah
53:36
so like I said Amina died right away it was Sarah who threw the brunt she took nine shots and then also survived for a
53:42
little bit going back to my side quest um this is classic honor killing to the
53:50
T it's actually how the police also defined it he did this because the girls were dating American boys and he
53:56
couldn't handle it because in his mind and based on his behavior they were his property and he chose who they should be
54:02
married to which right again was like a mid-40s man in Egypt
54:09
and when I wanted to live in Egypt yeah yeah even though after he
54:14
yeah which like I mean to his credit good for self-awareness of knowing that you
54:20
probably don't belong living here like it's this is not your Vibe so when I said earlier that there's an
54:27
inflection point whether you go to your programming or you alternate this is
54:34
that moment this is the time when you decide upon self-reflection my I gotta
54:40
find a way to be cool with my daughters dating these guys and move Beyond it or
54:46
go to my programming my programming is telling me I gotta kill them right that was the decision point that he chose to go this route
54:53
which again I would say in any situation most people come to this country in an immigrant capacity you probably
54:59
experienced that in a much less severe way but it is it is relatively common yeah that makes sense
55:06
so like I said this all happened at the very very start it was Jan 1 of 2008. from that day until August of 2017 so
55:14
just shy of 10 years nobody heard or saw anything of Yasser
55:20
what yeah he just kind of vanished they actually thought that he went back to Egypt but they couldn't find any records
55:25
of it he walked away from the car he got out of the car after he shot them and poof that was it
55:31
wow Yasser also has the unique distinction of having been placed on the FBI's 10
55:38
most wanted list in 2014. wow yeah I actually used the Wayback
55:44
machine to figure out who else he was on the list with which is like yeah he was on the list with some crazy crazy people
55:51
he was on a list with this guy who's a cartel guy who was like a captain in some cartel like he was big enough to
55:57
where he was one of those guys who would like get plastic surgery done on his face so that nobody could recognize him
56:03
which is insane insane level of like there was another guy who was on the
56:09
list who killed his wife killed his two kids then blew up their house that they lived in in Scottsdale which oh my God I
56:16
mean don't do that again but good like the flare for theatrics is kind of appreciated
56:22
but my favorite guy that he's on the list with is this guy named semian mogulovich
56:29
who the U.S government describes as the most powerful and dangerous gangster in the world he's basically the head of the
56:35
Russian mafia yeah that's cool that's terrible but no it actually is super cool you should read this guy's
56:42
Wikipedia page his aliases alone are like several paragraphs long what's his
56:47
name again I'm gonna type it out oh
56:53
he can't right away send me in magalovich criminal it says nice okay I'll read this one we're done
56:59
it is his life is so I I wrote this I wrote this at some point if we ever start
57:04
covering just like random people that we find interesting I 100 I'm gonna do this
57:10
guy because it is he sounds like a fictional John Woo character like he sounds like he belongs to all the wick
57:16
movies it's it's fascinating so okay but but just so you everybody knows like
57:22
that's the caliber of people that he's on this list with in 2014. WoW
57:28
so going back to Yasser in 2014 his dumbass son rents an apartment in his
57:34
own name in Texas the sun was obviously trying to protect his dad so when police showed up to
57:40
interview is I mean I wrote Islam but I'm just going to call him the sun because it's confusing they show up to
57:45
interview with the son he was just very defensive and Cooperative so somebody had mentioned that they saw a figure inside this house because
57:51
everybody's looking for this guy they've been looking for for like 10 years at this point right it makes sense that he would still talk to his son because he
57:58
like care of the sun yeah yeah 100 the son was protecting him throughout this whole thing so please show up talk to him the son
58:06
gives them nothing overnight whoever was in that apartment disappeared
58:11
that the FBI showed up the next day they broke in and they just nobody was there the FBI found a pair of eyeglasses and
58:19
they used this thing called DNA kinship analysis which means they built a DNA profile of Yasser by like reverse
58:25
engineering it so essentially they took dried blood from the girls which they had they took a little swab of Patricia
58:31
which they had and they created a DNA profile of Yasser and they conclusively
58:37
determined that eyeglasses were his so the news in the area they knew that someone was protecting him so that's a
58:43
lot of information go ahead sorry how do you get your DNA from your glasses
58:49
I guess like maybe if there's like a thing of hair or dandruff on there I don't know I don't know yeah I don't know how any of this works this happens
58:56
but then nothing happens again it'll be another six years before authorities catch wind of where these guys are again
59:02
and they see Islam again the sun just name your kids something different like
59:08
Christians I mean moms like yeah the Christian I feel like we accept
59:14
that as being a name but when you like think about it more than four seconds they're like that's a weird-ass name yeah like I'm not gonna name my son
59:20
Protestant boy like why why are we equal anyways whatever it doesn't matter no no
59:25
so um they spot the sun with his uncle so yasser's brother is also a part of this
59:30
Dynamic and helping them out and they're going in and out of the house in um a part of a town called Lewisville
59:37
the FBI gets a warrant and enters the house they find and finally arrest Yasser wow
59:44
they also arrest the brother or sorry the Sun and yasua's brother the same day
59:49
for aiding and abetting a fugitive Yasser went on trial actually just last year it's very recent wow this all
59:56
happened in 2008 he just went on trial a year ago wow his absolutely inscrutable
1:00:03
defense is that someone was threatening him and his daughters in the cab that day and so he parked the cab and walked
1:00:09
away leaving his daughters alone with this person who was a threat to them because he thought that the guy was
1:00:16
after him and not the daughters that was his argument that's his defense the guy would like to follow him yeah
1:00:22
the guy would follow him and not the daughters oh my God that's dumb and not true yeah the jury took three hours to
1:00:30
deliberate which I'm shocked at this like I was like I wrote
1:00:35
down they must have had like a two and a half hour lunch break and that's part of the deliberation he's like I have no idea how this would take you three hours
1:00:41
to figure out so Yasser unsurprisingly gets life a life sentence without the possibility of parole he's incarcerated
1:00:48
this place that sounds really Charming it's called B County it's very very nice name
1:00:53
yasser's son also gets seven years and his brother gets 12 years
1:00:59
and they arguably got it a little bit worse since they're actually in the federal prison there goes that he took a
1:01:05
lot of people down with him I wanna Circle back to the topic of our show
1:01:12
and what it means here and what it means again to me personally like I said before I grew up with guys like this
1:01:19
like I understand guys like this and like I said I can literally think of three men off the top of my head that
1:01:26
obviously didn't take it this far but were in need of control and possession
1:01:31
more than would be acceptable in modern society and I wrote down here you know
1:01:37
all this is culturally informed while living in a culture that doesn't adhere to those beliefs which I think is where
1:01:43
that juxtaposition happens on someone's mind which is like how do I reconcile that
1:01:49
I would say this if you're dating someone whose background is historically on the extreme conservative side of
1:01:55
things pay attention to things if a guy tells you what to wear how to act that's
1:02:00
not something that's going to wash away by you asking him to chill that's entrenched programming it's not
1:02:07
look this isn't like look I'm in framing this as like a middle eastern thing it's not even really that like it's think
1:02:13
about the entire middle of this country think about the hardcore conservative guys who
1:02:18
I mean those are also a demographic like this that don't want women to show their faces right so
1:02:25
I don't know I would just say like again go back to the topic of this show like pay attention to this stuff like it's it
1:02:33
has consequences obviously Patricia divorced him in 2009 after the murderers but like wow whatever like she didn't
1:02:41
really help her daughter she can really protect them and I don't think she really had the wherewithal to do that anyways
1:02:47
so yeah and like yeah there's like a weird thing in in like conservative
1:02:52
Christianity where there's like the Purity thing with your dad where you like so weird you know like you're like
1:02:58
a parody ball and like promise for being pure interview Mary which is so stupid and like not real
1:03:05
um it's so creepy so again like I was raised in Texas and like I knew kids
1:03:11
growing up where like they're going to a dance with their dads to talk
1:03:18
it's all set around your virginity like it yeah you will not think that's weird so weird
1:03:24
anyways yeah it's so weird it's weird to think that much about your yeah it's
1:03:31
weird I don't know and I think that but I think it goes back to something that we
1:03:36
said a bunch is like controlling women whatever reason you feel like you have to yeah yeah I'm telling other people
1:03:43
yeah yeah so that's my story luckily This Guy's in jail he's gonna be in jail for the rest
1:03:49
of his life um I went down so many side quests on this one
1:03:54
what was the what's the is the doomed part that trying to move your culture into another culture
1:04:01
so much of it like it's it's it's just go back to Egypt man like yeah just go
1:04:07
back to Egypt like you'll find a nice girl there you'll get married and she won't show her face like just so your
1:04:14
kids will adopt that as their personas like I don't know why you have to
1:04:20
do that here so that's part of it and the other part
1:04:25
is obviously the marriage of Patricia where again I don't I don't I'm gonna sing a Swan Swan
1:04:31
Song for her but she sounds like she just had literally no power control to do anything and I think that's the age
1:04:39
difference I think that some people frame their culture as this incredibly incredibly
1:04:46
important thing I'm gonna have this conversation so I had this friend am I gonna bring up exactly how I know them
1:04:51
because again it's going to give up too many details by this friend he's a white guy
1:04:56
um and him and his girlfriend went to Spain and they went to like the bull
1:05:01
show the running of the bulls right and they recorded this and they played me
1:05:07
this video of it and they were just like we just have to honor their culture I'm
1:05:12
like no you don't this is [ __ ] Savage this is like [ __ ] my culture like this
1:05:18
whole excuse of like it's my culture I'm so vehemently against that because
1:05:24
like just because you were raised in a certain way doesn't mean that's how it should be basically right totally right
1:05:30
so yeah I think like in this case it's like I think that part of it is Patricia was
1:05:36
again trying to be super chill and was like I'm not raised in a very in-depth
1:05:42
culture so I don't know how it is so he this must be how it is it's like yeah you can also call that out you can also be like yeah actually [ __ ] that part of
1:05:48
your culture it's stupid we should abandon that yeah but that's like there's so many so many
1:05:54
people who are so like violently obsessed with their culture which is like all this stuff is happening in the
1:05:59
Middle East right now because they're like this is and like who's to say like there's like I don't want to say like
1:06:06
who's right and who's wrong but I also want to be like I do believe it's wrong to not let women outside
1:06:11
there's a thing that um Iranians do that I am going to the Next Generation I'm
1:06:19
going to change the tide of us doing this completely it's called Taro thing which is
1:06:26
you constantly are trying to like get people to like you're trying to offer them things
1:06:32
in a way that's just absolutely annoying like imagine sitting at a dinner table
1:06:38
and every two minutes your grandma or a relative just like have you tried that
1:06:43
salad it's really good you should try this out okay like two minutes later have you tried that it's really good you
1:06:49
should it's like what just leave me alone or or the worst is when you go out to dinner and it's just like everybody
1:06:55
just like tries to shove their credit card at the waiter and like they stopped even trying when I'm in those situations
1:07:01
like dude whatever like take it like it's fine like I'm not even like if this is how you want to live like we could just split it we just have been normal
1:07:07
people and split but whatever let them pay that's a
1:07:13
cultural thing that Iran is who's absolutely driving me nuts so anyways um yeah well that was terrible those
1:07:20
poor girls yeah no kidding it's a boyfriend's they had no idea what they were signing up for I know that's that's
1:07:27
a lot like for those those kids and probably like you know loved their
1:07:33
cute little girlfriends who were just like they're just normal you know they could have been like I don't know
1:07:39
cute little happy and also Patricia is white yeah which I feel like I'm just I'm
1:07:44
finding on Google and so like yeah they it wasn't like I don't know that's too bad that's really sad and it's definitely
1:07:52
like okay I wonder what he did for those years that he was on the Run yeah yeah I
1:07:57
think his son supported him his brother support him I have no idea and what a way to like I I know that we've we've
1:08:03
definitely talked about the hot take of don't kill your family I'll take don't kill your family but you
1:08:08
can also like you said freaking leave them just leave them you've also never talk to them again just just go go
1:08:15
somewhere else go to Egypt like you said like just leave so many people so many people have multiple families because
1:08:22
have your family here you got it out of your system who cares leave them go to Egypt
1:08:28
yeah you can pretend they're dead they're dead to me get out of here who cares you know but they don't have to
1:08:34
actually kill them we're just like therapists for psychopaths at this point I just I mean
1:08:40
we have so many good ideas which are like don't kill people have you worked on even Wizards have you
1:08:46
worked eyes are not the window to the soul if you've got the screen have you worked more on your um dating app for
1:08:52
widows yet um no but I think it still is
1:08:59
a top priority for me because I think it's it's a gold mine what else how many
1:09:07
widows how many widows are there in the world in their 20s are there in the US
1:09:15
um no older adults what percentage of widows are under 40 oh five percent okay
1:09:21
that's not great that great yeah we're not gonna we're not my Mumu idea was the right idea
1:09:27
that's what we actually should have done okay this is maybe my second a second plan is it my widower would you
1:09:33
but yeah I mean I think also like there's a lot of people in the
1:09:38
world so go find someone else if you feel like killing your partner no big deal yeah
1:09:44
yeah I'm uh I think I've shown that I'm a firm
1:09:49
staunch supporter of not murdering Partners um can you also when you when we're done
1:09:56
listen to the the Disco hit the rest of the Rasputin where it goes rah-rah Rasputin have you heard that song no
1:10:03
look we'll look I'll put that in the in some notes as well because you should listen to them after I love it
1:10:09
um cool well that's our story Taylor thanks for sharing yours oh thank you
1:10:15
hopefully you have a lovely weekend in Joshua Tree thank you you too and um I will yeah
1:10:23
thank you everyone for for listening and subscribing please give us those reviews and email us at dumidifelpod gmail.com
1:10:30
if you have any ideas questions yes all of it thanks everyone
1:10:36