Hello, we are to making entertainment podcasts for you today. Pull up a
wooden chairl but you made with own hands. Yes, he's such entertainment for
you. You listen with ears that are on head. I am make David
Steckel, I am due David Flora by photos. Nah, take a drink
of vodka every time someone say blurry photos, body photos. Oh, two
drinks the vampire rush. I don't know that, did it? Welcome,
Hi, weary traveler. You've stumbled upon the podcasts of the ages. That's
right, nobody knows about it. You made it through the twirly wirly hollow
Earth, all the way through the waste lands of the apocalypse. Yep,
you even survived Crumpus. All of these things have brought you to this the
new year. Yeah, good for you, and happy twenty thirteen. Right,
you did it. And now that we've dated ourselves, Yeah, how's
it going going? All right? Hey, Hey, hey, buddy,
what's you're thinking? We're just kidding? I can't hear you don't answer that.
Yeah, it'll get weird in here real quick, real quick. So
this week I don't know if you noticed, but we were a fact.
John t Russian accents at the beginning, and um, I know what you're
thinking. Oh, you guys must be talking about the Tunguska event, the
Siberian explosion. Wrong, wrong, right, Shirley, Shirley. Then we're
talking about the Loft Pass. Oh no, no, we're not. No,
we're not talking about that, Nick, No, sorry, lots of
dead Russians in space. Oh oh, do you think maybe like the rumors
of Chernobyl mutants? No, no, not that. How about yet he's
in the side. Okay, we're talking about Rasputin. That's right, Gregory
Rasputin. Apparently Russia has a lot of stuff with it. I know,
I'm gonna make notes of everything. I was kind of surprised we kept it
going. Oh no, we just shafted ourselves because all these people are like,
oh, I can't Yeah, come on, we're oh no, no,
we're just listening about, right, what's here everything? Maybe maybe you
do know about him, Maybe you don't. Chances are though you've heard the
name, Yeah, but you're not sure what all this cat's about. Yeah,
what's all the buzz about all the hullabaloos arounding the mutant Rascal? He's
a he's a pretty interesting guy. Yep. There's a lot of controversy going
on with with him now, a lot of it as as we'll go through
here in this episode. Will it'll be like we're jazz inside your brain,
man, you just gotta feel it. We'll be we'll be discussing how exaggerated
it is that you know, the stuff about him, how much stuff was
true, how much stuff maybe wasn't true. Who knows? But to begin
with rest Sputin was a Russian mystic and a man of God yep, or
one of history's biggest religious charlatans. Could have been one or the other?
Did it have to be one or the other? Couldn't be both? Well,
if you're religious charlatan, you're a man of God and a jag.
Maybe maybe I'm just editorializing. I'm just saying I don't feel like the two
are mutually exclusive. Could could be, could be the same thing. He
was a Siberian peasant who became the closest advisor to the Czar and the Czarina
before the Bolshevik Revolution in the yearly nineteen hundreds. Now, he was a
purported psychic and healer. Yeah, and a visionary, so he said.
He was also a purported alcoholic sex fiend and the Devil Russia. See now
here's I see a lot of Alister Crowley. Oh Crowle, you're going You're
going there. You're going there pretty early, and I love it. Yeah,
yeah, I really Crowley. He's got his wang and all this stuff.
Oh yeah, absolutely, he is stirring the chili with his junk and
uh, I don't know if that really applies, but I wanted to say
it out loud, but yeah, this is this is what happens when you're
Russian and you still want to get into weird. Yeah, if you don't,
If if if Mummy and Papa haven't created this gigantic industrial supply company for
you to plunder and you don't have weird secret of societies to hang out in,
you're like, get I'm just gonna go to church and get weird with
that. Yeah. Is that good enough for you. I'm gonna make up
my own rules about religion. And there's still plenty of room for the ladies.
So maybe we'll we'll find out at the end of this episode if he
was for real or if he's just a legend and truly a really evil dude.
Yeah, it's but regardless, he is fascinating and worthy of an exploration.
Oh sure, the finest the Internet can provide. So, uh,
let's let's talk about his early life. Yeah about it. He was born
Gregory Yefimovich Rasputin, and that's he was born January twenty second, eighteen sixty
nine, in uh, the Siberian village of Pakrovsky. That's Siberia, of
course, being the vast empty, worst place on her boring cold place in
him in Russia. And no offense to to you know, any of our
Russian friends or listener sends Siberia. Yeah, apparently you know you're living You
know you live in a rough spot. You know that you don't. As
a matter of fact, I think that you're right now nodding yourself, going
they get it. Dah Dah's at fun place to be. The only thing
to do is look at the horses and drink. He's winter, He's dying
outside the sum He's dying outside these mosquitos. His winter mosquitoes are worst.
I probably do have snowsquitos. By the By the way, we're going to
be doing this a lot for episode. Unfortunately. That's that's that's what we
got with this one um Happy New Year. So as a teenager, apparently
he was a big drunk. He was a thief, a womanizer. He
also apparently led a gang and was even paid by a priest to stay away
from church services in this gang. You know you are ahead of the crib.
You know you are winning when a priest is paying you to stay away.
Yeah, oh that is That is as cool as it gets when you're
when you're an anti establishment guy with your own street gang, that's you win.
Yeah, that's it. When you get paid to not cause trouble,
it's like Halloween every day. That's awesome. So he exhibited signs of spirituality
around this time, apparently being able to calm horses by just talking to them
and heal them by touch. So he was a horse whisper. That's brilliant.
How crazy, huh. He also apparently had visions of divine forces and
I'm gonna put quotes around divine forces, okay, and glimpses of the future.
So at this time, now, granted this was him saying most of
the stuff about himself, but he convinced people that this stuff was was real
because of of some you know, a few things that he was able to
either predict or or tell u and one of those was he heard his father
once talking about a horse that was stolen from him, and Resputin went directly
to the thief that stole it and pointed him out. And everybody in the
town was like, what an idiot? You know this this guy does nothing.
He you know, he's much lazy. He's uh saying, you know,
just laughing him off. But a couple of people followed that guy home
and found the horse there, so it was proved that he was correct,
and so everybody was like, wah Resputin, he, oh my god,
Oh she knows how to tail the future. Yeah. He and he,
you know, especially at this time of his life. He's a teenager.
He's out there, he's making his name for himself, and uh, one
of the one of the weird who's you know, who knows what actually happens
of history. Goes from being paid to stay away from church to becoming very
involved in it. Oh yeah, spends three months at the oh boy,
viculture Vicultier monastery. I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm not I
think it's Vercatia, Yeah, something like that. Now here's the thing.
Though, it's like saying you got sent to management training, but you actually
got sent to anger management training. Well, it's he may have gone of
his own volition, maybe got sentenced there because he stole a bunch of right,
right, Yeah, nobody knows it was either yeah, it was either
penance for for this theft or a refuge. Yeah, or it could just
that could have been his spin on it, because it what if what if
his old gang finds out, Hey, Rasputin, where had you been hanging
out with them? Sis? No, No, I'm not hanging out with
I am roughing up and roughing in face of monks. No, no,
it's not. I go there because they're like this, muted you're such bad
man, you must come ute to mona stadium. Mike, you are such
CC's I stay with you to prove I am man. Jesus, Oh he
really, we really might have to knock that. So far, I'm enjoying
the ride. So who knows why he went. Maybe he told everybody ucause
I was stealing too much. Yeah, I don't know, but he did.
He did set out on this path of religious involvement, and that was
Yeah, he was around eighteen or nineteen when Yeah, when that happened a
little bit before that. He had two siblings growing up, Maria who was
epileptic drowned in a river and Dmitri who fell in a pond, and then
soon after that died of pneumonia, and those affected him quite a bit apparently.
Yeah, that will, that will, that's gonna leave a mark.
Yeah, that that reminds me a little bit of mister Tesla. Yep that
you know. I think the same thing happened to him with his brother and
Crowley. Crowley's father died when he was one eleven or something like that,
so you know that that kind of I don't know if that messed him up
or if he was just like, yeah, I get money now. I
don't know how he felt about that. But but we're we're gonna drug.
We're gonna take some strings on the corkboard and connect him to different pictures.
Here for you, the corkboard of madness. So yeah, after he went
to Verkaturia Monastery. Yeah, that one, That one's the toughest name we're
gonna come across, I bet you. Um. Now, while he was
in there, he did claim to see a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Oh yeah, and from from that day forward he considered itself a religious man.
He was from that day forward, he was like a mix between like
Joel Austen and Bruce Banner. He was just gonna like just wander the lonely
roads, dude, dude, hoping not to hulk out, and also praying
and bringing God to the people. He also he also met a holy man
named McCary, who had advised Zar Nicholas the Second and the Zarina Alexandra earlier
in his career, and maccari apparently had a huge influence on him because McCary
was kind of a wandering holy man at the time. There's nothing that a
young wandering holy man likes more than an old wandering holy man. Yeah,
he kind of, I think set the tone for for what Resputin would become
later. He's like, I like this guy. I like the guy.
Like this good guy. He's out there, he's doing he smells a little
like a bear claws in hot summer Mosquito weather. Is it like a peace
from little dog? He smells smells this good guys what this guy? So?
Um? He He may have also come in contact and this is not
of course confirmed, but it's very highly suspected with a band Christian sect known
as the Kleisti. Oh yeah, who danced them That Kleisti means the flagelence.
Kind of these types that would you know, beat themselves and yeah,
forgive themselves. They weren't all um albinos as you believe. No, no,
screw that. Some of them are quite swarthy. Uh. And apparently
they danced themselves into fervors and ended services in physical exhaustion, and some rumors
were spread that they even achieved this exhaustion through orgies after this dancing, and
m m, it's besides the orgies. It kind of sounds like the Sufi
dancers. Yeah, yeah, the whirling dervishes things like that, and the
orgies sound like the seventies. So so they were ahead of their times,
so I think, no, not ahead of his time. There were even
to be a time traveler. Oh, I'm just gonna I'm just throwing some
more stuff on the pile. Yeah, yeah, that's fine, we'll sort
through it later. And keep in mind, this is Siberia, not a
lot going on, right, So I imagine people are going to say whatever
pops into their heads. And I know, whenever I'm looking to slander a
person, the first thing I go to is orgy accusation. Oh, sure,
because what are they gonna say, Oh, no, I've never had
an amazing group sex. Oh they can't. They have to own it.
No, No, I'm not gonna or they've jinxed themselves from it, you
know. So you yeah, that's a great try it out at the office,
accused co workers of having mind blowing group sex. They'll just have to
own it. Yeah, I learned that trick from Rasputin. So, returning
to Pakrovsky, he married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in eighteen eighty nine. It's just
that was the one person, just one person, just one. That's that's
where the orgy roars came from. Yeah, and uh. And he had
three children with her, and apparently he also had another child with another woman
who shall not be named. I guess ye could lost to history. But
he left the village in in nineteen oh one to wander as estronik or pilgrim,
and he walked all the way to Jerusalem and Greece, and he just
lived off the donations of people that that he helped along the way, and
healed and he also told fortunes to make money. That's amazing. Yeah,
you know, like that is I will say that I find that the most
amazing thing about Rasputin. Yeah, A, because I believe it, and
B that's just a hell of a thing. He walked from Siberia to Jerusalem,
right now, Yeah, this is this is walking. I mean,
this is when you know people people aren't going to give you a ride,
if there even are people to give rides in that part of the world.
And apparently he didn't bathe he didn't change his clothes. He smelled terrible.
Yeah, well that's a long walk, or if you're a holy man,
awesome. Smelled great. But when he came back, people definitely noticed some
kind of change in him. He had some sort of religious essence about him.
He really people really believe this. Now. The big thing with Rasputin
was his eyes. People were just mesmerized by by these deep set eyes and
apparently they were real light blue and and just people completely got drawn into them
and almost hypnotized immediately by them. He claimed to be a higher being after
he came back from his journey. Well I don't blame him for that.
He earned it. Yes, higher being granted, and it was around this
time he saw another vision that told him to go to Saint Petersburg, which
was the seat of the Russian Empire at the time. And this was around
nineteen oh three, so word had reached Saint Petersburg already about him and the
mystical stuff that was going on at the time. They occult seances, mediums,
things like that. That was all the rage in the aristocracy at the
time. People were going nuts over over mystics and fortune tellers and you know,
the people that were talking to the dead. So this was kind of
a perfect storm of stuff that would that culminated. Well, he's got massive
street cred. Now. While you were just speaking, I just tried to
Google map from Polkovskoy to Jerusalem and Google's like, nope, I don't know
how to do that. I think you can even do, like how to
drive from New York to London. I think it even tells you how to
do that. And it doesn't tell you how to do youn't. Yeah,
it won't tell you how to walk bus or car. You can't. It
will not calculate a path between those two places. But just looking at the
map, let's see you go through Kazakhstan. Depending on which way around the
Caspian see, you either go through Uzbekistan, Turkamenistan and Iran. Let's assume
he didn't do that. Yeah, then that means that you go through Russia
down through Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel.
I mean, come on, walking walking, Yeah, walking, that
is mind blowing. Yeah, I mean that'll change a person. Yeah,
I can't see how it won't, right, and he kind of want to
do it myself. Yeah, if he wasn't crazy when he started, he
was crazy at the end of it. Where should we walk to, Like
if we started in Chicago, Okay, we'd go to what Machu Picchu?
I just want to know what the distance between the two is. You keep
looking at that. I'm gonna so anyways, Rasputin met a bishop named Hermagen
who was impressed by his healing abilities. Apparently h he Rasputin would would lay
on hands for people and they would claim, yes, my headache is gone,
or my my arthritis is gone, I can I can move again.
And a lot of people apparently a lot of people believe this enough or you
know it actually happened that he was getting very like you said, this massive
street crad built, and so he he started entertaining aristocrats in the salons for
a while in Saint Petersburg. But with doing his healing and doing his fortune
telling things like that, of course, he was still just like shaggy.
I should mention he had a He had long black hair which he parted in
the middle, and it was greasy, nasty. He had a long,
shaggy black beard which had like last week's lunch, there was still stuck in
there. There was like a kaiser role that he refused to eat that just
lived in his right and that made that up. Okay, sorry, but
you can believe it about about him. He had just dark features, wore
black peasants clothes, and smelt like a goat, everybody said. And if
you've ever smelled a goat, you know the smell. You know what I'm
talking about. And even if you you know, google images of him or
pull up any any information about him, there are a lot of pictures of
him. For one thing, and he does, man, he looks like
this just wicked looking guy. You know, it looks like the type when
when you say like either Antichrist or Satan worshiper. Yeah, this this picture
could be up there. You know he is. He is a haunting looking
guy. He kind of reminds me of like Charles Manson, Yeah, in
some of his uh the way he looks. But anyway, he had this
going for him and and and he embraced this look. And the Aristocrats just
ate it up because you know, they're all they're living in opulence, and
for for this goat smelling peasant to walk in there and entertain them, it
was like, oh, yes, Dan's monkey. They's so delightfully both.
Oh my gosh, smells like last week's garbage, which I won't continywhere near.
Oh all right, um, I think I'd rather hear the Russian actor.
I just like the variety. Now let's uh, let's get to when
he was introduced to Zar Nicholas the second and now we're picking up some steam
here now. In nineteen oh five he was introduced to them. Alexandra had
a son, Alexeiya, who had hemophilia, which is a condition where the
blood doesn't clot, which means any small injury could be fatal. Made famous
by inbreeding in Europe, they want to keep that aristocratic line going right,
keep that blue, thin, unclotting blood flowing. So there was a there
was a time when Alexei a had a bad accident and he was he was
bleeding, whether it be internally or externally, he was in a bad way.
Rasputin walked into the palace basically and was like, let you got a
little bug I was playing the death say what um. That's how he changed.
He changed to he was crazy. No, but he walked in the
palace and he just, uh, he asked to pray over Alexeiya's body.
Uh, not that the kid was dead, He just wanted to pray over
him. And to the onlookers, he seemed to know what was going on,
which was a big deal because they kept this hemophilia a secret as best
they could because they didn't, you know, this was the only heir to
the throne. They didn't want the Russian public to be in an uproar because
you know, and it's never a good idea for people to know that you
can assassinate the head of the nation with the paper cut right right, or
just like throw a beer can against him and Bruce who could poke him with
a pillow he would kill him, so he asked to pray over him.
Alexeyer was bleeding. Resputant was able to stop Alexey's bleeding apparently somehow, mystically,
somehow, and people to this day debate on how he did this.
Was it some kind of mystical healing ability. Was it hypnosis? A lot
of people said that, you know, he was able with those eyes to
just hypnotize people. And and was it saying no more aspirin because aspirin was
a new thing that was invented in all the doctors were like, this a
miracle drug, give it to everybody for everything. But aspirin is a blood
thinner, which would just exacerbate the problem. And it could have been him
saying nope, no more aspirin, just let him rest or It could have
just been he was a calming influence and just calmed him down and let let
the boy's body, you know, take care of itself. Nobody knows for
for real, but he was able to continue curing Alexei a of bleeding and
making things okay for many years and this just comp completely endeared him and earned
the trust of Alexandra. Yeah, the mother the Tzarina that's basically when all
hills started to break loose. Yeah, yeah, he once he had established
the trust with the family, now he's an advisor. And anyone in the
Russian government at that time had to have been made very nervous by this absolute
lunatic who has now seen shuffling through the hallways muthering to himself, healing people
whether they like it or not. Right, and at this time, don't
forget he is not done with the group sets. Yeah, this is this
is all going on, and we're about to blow the doors wide open on
the sexy stuff by get comfy by night, candle. By nineteen twelve,
he was visiting the Royal Palace at will without invitation, just showing up willie
nilly, and he was referring to the Czars as Mamma and Papa. This
is the this is how in with them he was. Now, to his
credit, I think Czar Nicholas the second wasn't a big fan of him,
but Zarina was such a huge fan and she had such influence over Nicholas that
he basically had to go along with you know what what she wanted and what
Resputin said. Now, apparently he used his fame and his abilities, you
know, to administer healing and forgiveness, particularly to women and particularly to their
genitals, yet to their jennels. Uh, and this is this is great.
He thought that sexual contact with women healed them. His sexual contact with
women healed them. He believed this. He's brilliant. He also believed in
sinning greatly. So the forgiveness was a greater bringing everyone closer to God,
and sexual sin was the easiest. Oh my gosh, he's won me over.
You're gonna, You're gonna, I mean he was at this point,
he was pretty much pan sexual. That's like eating a birthday cake before you
start your diet. Yeah, but over and over and over and over and
over and over, and the birthday cake is sex exactly. That's it.
It's like, I will not commit that any more sins. I will be
completely washed clean. But I've got to really do it up before I know
true forgiveness. Yeah, but that means that he's like, no, I'm
not gonna eat some cookies. If I can't eat five boxes of cookies,
I'm not eating any It's about big sin here, people. Yeah. He
doesn't write bad checks. He just drobs banks. He would hold religious gatherings
and services at his apartment and take the girls in a back room and help
them sin and then forgive them brilliant and by that I mean rape them.
Oh wa wah, you just tricked me. Sorry, totally tricked me.
Now I sound like I'm pro rapist now not. You see how labels can
can change it? Damn it. I thought that everyone was all into it.
He had a he had a big interest in prostitutes too. Well,
they were into it or the money. But man, now it sounds like
I was high fiving a rapist. I am no longer a part of his
ecumenical teachings, and I'm outside of his congregation. Now some people began seeing
his life as nothing but debauchery. Hermagen, the guy that introduced him to
the Tzar, and a fellow cleric named Eliodor, accused him of using the
power of the devil to do all this madness, and one day they cornered
him and beat him. Of course, what's rasputin new? But runs straight
to alex Andra and tell her all about it. They hit me and zaid
I was working with the devil, and so she she banished them, banished
them from Saint Petersburg. Oh that that didn't sit too well with Iliodor.
Yeah. And in nineteen fourteen, Rasputin was visiting his wife and his family
because you know, yeah, this is going on, but he's still family
man. He was visiting them in Pokrovski. He was attacked by a woman
who was a former prostitute and a victim of his, named Zenya Guseva.
And she was at this time a disciple of Iliodor's, so he kind of
trying to get his revenge her. She stabbed Rasputin in the abdomen and by
all accounts, she basically gutted him like he had intrails hanging out. This
was how bad she she got him, and and he had immediate surge,
free performed and survived. They stuffed his his guts back in him, sewed
him up, and which especially at that time, in his general habits of
hygiene and alcoholism, he's still million to one against him coming out of that,
right, So I mean, and that added, you know, fuel
to the fire of like this guy's a little more than human or something.
Yeah, and let's let's just call that the first point on the Rasputant is
a semi immortal thing. The scoreboard. We're now keeping track now. It
was just like a few hours after this happened, the Archduke Ferdinand was shot
and the basically World War One, Yeah just started in Sorn, just started
it did. It seemed to others that after after he recovered from this,
he was a little bit changed again. Yeah, and I'm going to have
made me less, not so much the sex to prostitutes make so much.
He's making me feel stabby. Yeah, a knife to the gut will change
a man's perspective. By this time, as we as we mentioned, he
had an immense influence over Alexandra the Zarina. He could he could make or
break people in politics and positions of authority just just by giving her the word.
In nineteen fifteen, Rasputin wanted to go to the front lines of the
Russian army and bless the troops, and Czar Nicholas the Second said, Um,
if you go there, I'm gonna hang you. You are going to
be hanged. Really Yeah, I would have thought he would have been like,
yeah, front lines, go get him, bless him all. The
Tsar wasn't wasn't the brightest uh poppy in the in the opium field. So
that's that was brilliant? Is that all right? Yeah, loved it.
Poppies are bright, but he so here's the takeaway. Poppies are bright,
but you should know. Um. So, yeah, he didn't. He
didn't want him go there. He's like, if you, if you do
this, because he didn't like him. He thought he was a fake and
thought it was just weird. But that didn't sit too well with the old
Rasputin. Apparently right after that he had a vision saying that the army wouldn't
succeed unless the Czar himself took over the forces, so that somebody's going to
the front line in this house. That sent old Nicholas the second straight out
to take charge doing it firsthand. Yeah, which left Alexandra in charge,
meaning it left Rasputin in charge. He oversaw the appointment of four prime ministers,
four war ministers, and six ministers of the Interior in the in the
year or so after. He took over a lot of turnover, a lot
of turnover. Now, between this and the declining economy, the disastrous war
that was going on. By the end of it, they had like four
million Russians die in this Yeah, that's how Russia just never loses, because
they just never stopped throwing people. But also how they never win, Yeah
they don't. No one ever called Russia a big winning army. And uh,
rumors of an affair between Russputin and Alexandra because he was always I've been
I've been waiting for this to come up because uh, and the manipulation that
he was obviously doing it made him kind of an unpopular figure in many circles
in Russia. I'm amazed that it's just kind of unpopular and still people were,
you know, he was just more and more going out, having these
these orgies, having the you know, these these parties, sex and getting
drunk and just live in this this opulence that the meanwhile, people were paying
you know, four times what they used to pay for for just a loaf
of bread, and they were doing everything they could not to starve. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. And I did hear this one account that one time
he ran to a palace balcony naked and just started swinging his way around,
saying, this is what rules Russia. He helicopter. Oh see, you
know what, it's so hard not to love this guy. So now we
come to a little dandy fop named Felix Yusupoff, Yeah, who got caught
up in the anti Rasputin fervor. Yusupov was rich, he was handsome,
he was bisexual, and he was determined to save the Russian royal dynasty.
So he gathered a small group of nobles together to hatch an assassination plot because
they believed that Rasputin was what was causing Russia to go down the toilet.
Now, along with the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch and the politician Vladimir Purishkevitch,
Yusupov lured Rasputin one night to his palace, to Yusupov's palace, with the
prospect of meeting air quotes his alluring wife Irina. Now, fun fact that
they don't tell you in the history class books is that the written invitation spelled
meeting m E A T or know what I mean? Now, what happened
next is all over the place. Yeah, and that's mostly because the details
of it came from Yusupov himself, and some of them came from autopsies later.
Yeah, so much much later, much much later, And and there's
all kinds of accounts of the murder of Rasputin. So the classic version goes
like this, Rasputin was fed small cakes and wine which were laced with cyanide,
and I mean laced like in frigging shoe laced. They're like, enough,
this sline taste awfully cyanide? Why is it so thick and paste?
Right right? I mean this is laced like a bodice. Yeah, this
is laced like okay, um, like really big tall hiking boots placed like
a goth girl's wet dream, like like those giant stupid Chuck Taylors that the
kids that hang out at the skate park where uh oh boy, apparently he
was enough sanide to kill like five men. He and he ate eight the
k and drank the wine, and hours passed and he sat there being like
where's arena? That is awesome because that is a very awkward amount of time,
and you know, occasionally everyone's just making small talk and then they forget,
oh, we just poison the shit out of him, and then and
then it would come back and like, oh my god, he's still here.
What is going on? What is taking something that is a good joke
rescipue. So after After a while, this him just sitting there being full
of poison and not dying. Uh, Yusupov decides enough's enough and he runs
and gets a gun, comes back shoots him. Yeah, which is another
great part of the dinner part. Yeah, everyone's just yeah, I was
gonna maybe go on a trip this spring. And then finally, what's along
with this guy? You can hear him chump, chummiddunt rasp beard, and
we're gonna have to do maybe maybe we'll have another podcast. It's just radio
plays of of of assassinations, dramatic reenactments. We'll put together a YouTube channel,
put the podcast up, but we'll also do dramatic reenactments. Oh absolutely,
that's what people want to see. So Rasputin crumbles to the floor and
goes upstairs to where the Grand Duke and the other fop are waiting, and
they all celebrate, Oh, what a good job we did, while they
don't know. Rasputants downstairs just banging out push ups because he doesn't give them.
Yusupov comes back to check on him a little while later, he goes
over, you know, does the old classic shake the body, see if
he's alive. Last Spruting Friday the thirteenth style. Eyes fly open and his
hands grab Yusupov's neck. It starts strangling him. This is great. He
breaks free and he and he runs out and escapes into the courtyard. Uh,
this is a spot. Who's doing He's trying to get out of this
palatial estate. The all the conspirators chase after him. Everybody grabs their gun,
their revolver. They shoot him two more times as he's trying to leave.
Still doesn't do anything. He's crawling away. He's trying to get through
the gates. So they they run over to him and they beat him with
a rubber club until he's he's subdued, and by some accounts they severed his
penis what At this time, they're like, surely he's dead. This is
this has got you know, he's got to be dead. Apparently he was
not, though. They wrap him up in a carpet or a blanket or
something. They wrap him up. Time up. They drive out to the
Nipo River and they drop his ass in there and then they then they drive
home and all celebrate with unsanided cakes, which again very awkward. Everyone just
holding the cake, yeah, coughing quietly watching everyone else so was a good
time. No, yeah, no, no, you eat your cake.
I'll tell the story, told my tail you eat you eat that cake first.
I have no appetite. And you see how much is pani stump was
bleeding. Oh guys, uh, well I'm going home. Ye, that's
what mistake. I should not have mentioned the stump. Oh we were doing
good s. So um. A couple of days later, the body washes
up. They were hoping it was gonna be taken out to see. Nope,
the body washes up and when it washed out, they discovered the arms
were free of this this blanket and in the ties and the ropes, and
apparently he had water in his lungs, meaning he drowned. After all that
stuff, he dies of drowning and possibly hypothermia, not the beating, not
the penis severing, not the shooting, not the poisoning, not the poisoning.
So that's yeah, that's how he dies. That that's how he comes
to an amazing end after an amazing life. Yeah, what's more? Now,
Now, that's like I said, that's the classic way of how he
bit it. People will I will replace the word classic with fun. That
was the that's the fun version. Well there's I think there's another version that's
that's equally as fun, involving the British Secret Service. Yeah, what a
cool angle. That is, right handgun for forensics. So there's a picture.
You can even find this on on the old interwebs. There's a picture
he's got a a bullet wound in his forehead. Yeah, like front and
center. That's how you kill a guy. And nothing. This was not
in any of the testimony of any of the conspirators in there, which leads
a lot of people to be like, Okay, this this dandy fop is
just trying to make himself look sexy. He's trying to make the story bigger
than it is. You know, this is not what happened, which is
weird because if I was going to make up a story about an assassination in
my version, everything would go according to plan. He was poisoned in the
story. Yeah, he made some cakes, he ate them, and that
was pretty much it. No, nothing else happened. I don't know why.
You would have seen me running through the streets carrying that gigantic bun Yeah
he miss in one hand, bundle in the other. No, none of
those things happened. Everything I planned came out exactly the right way. So
it is weird that he would fabricate like this gigantic comedy of errors, like
ridiculous. He Hollywood eyes did it? You know, he just made it
like die hard lass Sputin was played by Alan Rickman, which he was in
the nineteen ninety six movie, and he was Hans Gruber. Yeah, he
just he would not die. So it's and and so some of the fun
facts is that they did review the autopsies. I mean they've they've everyone takes
a crack at Rasputin's autopsy. It's like the thing you check off in medical
school, like a requirement. Yeah, it's that that thaves everyone goes through
during the third year. Um. And but the nineteen sixteen the initial autopsy
that was never really released, UM, didn't find any poison. Um.
And there's you know, I think that's fascinating, right, No no poison
in there. Now, this could be some people say it could be because
it evaporated before they got to check it, or it could be that he
didn't ingest any poison at all. Yeah, could not have even been a
player in the in the fars, Yeah, exactly. And now again with
with Rasputin sort of a run and the roost, making a lot of calls,
changing people's jobs, determining who gets what jobs. Now he starts making
international enemies. What was once just a problem in the household is now starting
to piss off other countries, including grades who happens to have just a couple
of Jolio chaps in England in Russia keeping that finger on the pulse as it
was, it was a my six and all bulle So great man, we're
taking you guys on a trip around the world. You should see how fast
we're changing mustaches. Some people say the wound in his forehead was from a
Webley revolver, which was only a British issue firearm. Now a Webley fires
unjacketed bullets and it creates a larger hole. And he was shot four times.
It's just all this stuff. I'm thinking. I think Resputin would say
this about himself health. Yeah. Nah. Oh, So he was shot
four times, and three of the bullets fit this jacketed bullet profile that Russian
firearms used at the time. But this fourth one, the head shot,
the one that the money, Yeah, the one that indisputably killed him.
Very quickly, bordering on instantaneously, was from an unjacketed gun. It was
an unjacketed bullet which none of the Russian guns were capable of firing. Right,
And so they say, all right, well, who uses unjacketed weapons
in the British Secret Service? Yeah, British Secret Service does at the time.
This this Webley uh handgun, the Webley revolver. They say, well,
were there anyone in Russia that would have those? Why? As a
matter of fact, there there was. There There are a couple chaps,
yeah, a couple of bully gentlemen. And and there is apparently some testimony
out there from a few people that were, you know, close to the
situation saying yeah, there was a there was a plot because apparently Britain knew
that this would throw the Russian aristocracy into total chaos instead of just half chaos.
Right, in addition to the fact that Resputin had actually removed some sort
of pro Britain Yeah, m minister ministers of the parliament, right, yeah,
removed some of their pro Britain ministers and replaced them. So he was
he was making he was he was up their game. He was messing making
their life more difficult, and he's just a crazy priest that likes to have
a lot of sex. Let's get him out of the picture, right.
Uh, here's a here's a fun thing. After a few months after he
was he was killed the This isn't the fun thing. Here's this is the
setup to the fun thing. The the czar and his family were uh,
the were taken by the Bolshevik revolution. Revolutionaries took them uh to a basement
and executed all of them. Which this isn't the fun thing, Okay,
just wanted to make sure this was pretty pretty terrible because remember earlier when you
got me to cheer for a rapist and then you switched it on. I'm
manipulative, I'm not an ass now now, oh look, here's the fun
part that David Flora likes so much. Execution. You're a bastard. Um.
Uh. They some of the workers dug up Rasputin's body because it had
been uh you know, the Zarina wanted it buried and everything proper. They
dug it up and then it had clawed its way halfway to the surface.
They took it to they took it out into the woods and burned it because
they didn't wanted anything to do with it. You know, they wanted to
burn this devil. Apparently, though, if you don't know what you're doing,
you know, during cremation, and you don't prepare a body correctly,
lots of fun stuff can happen, including the body sitting up and writhing in
the flames no, which completely horrified everybody was watching it. How long have
you been dead at that point, um, what a few months? Probably?
Apparently if you don't sever tendons and the ligaments and things like that,
when they when they burn, they'll constrict and make the body just do all
sorts of dances. Whoa. So this just added to the legend of Oh
my gosh, this guy was the devil. He's dancing in the fire.
Even after death. If you die and you are somehow allowed to just keep
watching the earth, that's what you hope happens. You're like, I hope
these jackasses burn me because and I hope they have no idea what they're just
freaked them out so bad. Yeah, God, I'm okay, moving on.
Where's that light up heard about? So let's let's let's talk about just
a real quick about the name Rasputin h This was a surname, and there's
a lot of controversy about what it means where it came from. A lot
of people think it means some bad stuff, as in the base Rasputiny,
which is licentious, which kind of fits yea, or Rasputnik, which is
basically dissolute that he and a lot of people are like. He was a
dissolute. That's that's where why he got that name. But many people also
think that it could come from Rasputia, which is which means a crossroads.
Oh, and Rasputin was apparently a pretty common surname at the time, so
a lot of people didn't pay that much attention to it. I think it's
just hin hindsight that people are applying this, you know. Now. He
did apparently or tell his own death to the Czarina uh in a letter to
her that said, a multi paged letter starts out, get this, so
listen up to Can you believe it? He said, no, that if
I'm killed by my brother peasants, then you have nothing to fear. But
if I'm murdered by nobles, if your relatives cause my death, then no
one, not you or your children will remain alive for more than two years,
you will all be killed by the Russian people. And that was that
was what he prophesied, and uh came true. So that's what rasputin in
a very large Russian mystic nutshell. Yep, that's better. Um, the
bearded nutshell. That's terrible. Now, I mean, going through this,
I don't think that we exaggerated a lot of the sexual exploits that he was
purported to have had. If you look, if you look up stuff,
he was a fiend for this. We just sort of touched on it.
Yeah, but if you if you turn the gas up like ten more notches,
that's that's pretty much the impression that you know, research gives you on
how he he was with the ladies and stuff. Yeah, yeah, not
a conscientious or gentle lover right. In fact, he his way to seduce
women was to just rip open their bodices and go to town, which is
yeah, not not elegant and not cool. That would yeah, I mean
I think what they just call that as rape in most parts of the world.
Now, yeah, yeah, and not not really. You know,
in his emo of using the Bible as a maneuvering tool, Um, that's
that's the kind of trick that only works once. That the you know you
got a sin hard if you want to get forgiven all right, right,
but apparently they were lining up so he only needed to use it once,
right, Yeah. I there are different depending on which things you read and
which documentaries you watch. He is painted as a very short scale of evil,
like he's either completely totally the devil, or he's sort of sort of
devilish, he's an awful person, or he's just like an old lunatic sex
fiend guy. It's like it's a to me, it's a very small scale,
but it's always on the bad side, right Yeah, No, one,
there's no there's no balancing like no. I think that he was a
misunderstood visionary who was trying to help the people. Know a lot of people.
There are plenty of people who do believe that he was legit and he
was a good person. There were probably Wickens. The people who think that
they were probably Wickens, slow slow, still waiting for a hot wick and
photographs. Sorry Wickens. But we're also looking at this halfway across the world
or all the way across the world at this point, I guess. And
a hundred years later, where all the propaganda has, you know, seeped
into history and true all that stuff. If you go, if you go
to his hometown Polkovsky, they still think he's he's a big deal, he's
great. Yeah, well he's he's I mean, it's Siberia. There's not
a lot of celebrities. So even if no matter what you do, if
people remember your name, they're gonna put a statue in a plaque. Up.
Yeah, they probably have rest Sputin Days every April maybe where everybody gets
drunk and has sex and yeah, you just eat cakes and then you shoot
marshmallows at each other and then there's like the they have a race wrath to
swim across a river with a blanket wrapped around um. One person draws the
British card, but it's secret. Nobody knows who has and you have to
figure it out. Oh man, Actually, that would be a pretty fun
party. I'm gonna I might have a Rasputin Days. Now. Here's a
fun fact. Now, the actual date of his death is Sword of Lucy
Goosey. Yeah, it is either listed as the sixteenth or and I were
usually very coquettish about dating ourselves or the date of this recording December twenty ninth.
Oh geez, Yeah, that's true, isn't it. Yes, it
is. That's pretty cool. Yeah, wow, yeah, And it's usually
like I said, we don't like to list the date of recording, but
I thought this was significant. That's that's pretty cool. I don't I don't
know what to think about this guy. Of course, I'm leaning towards you
know, probably probably just a dude that was that was looking to have as
much fun in life as he could through any means possible. I'm leaning I
think towards the Charlatan route because I think the things that he was purported to
have predicted, and like pointing out the horse thief, he could have witnessed
the guy taking the horse. You know, he could have been hidden in
a barn somewhere that in nobody knew, and he was hiding this information because
he was too scared to come forward. But then he's he saw an opportunity.
Yeah, you know, same thing with like by this time, he
has to know that people hate him and he's probably gonna die soon, right,
so to say, listen, I'm gonna die, but if nobles kill
me, then you're all going down. Like I think that was pretty safe.
Bet at that point, I don't think there was anything too mystical about
his predictions. No, and and it I don't think it even necessarily has
to be as simple as either he was legit or he was a charlotte.
And I mean he could have completely been a charlotte but believed himself to be
legit. Yeah, I mean people talk them into all sorts of things.
And if he has devoted his life to this pursuit of the holy church,
but he's also like, but I also want to bang a lot of chicks.
Yes, guys, any human being will will somehow find a way to
stitch those things together. And he's doing yeah ways of success. He happened
to be really good at it. Yeah. He was never ordained as anything.
He was never an actual monk or religious figure. He was uh,
like we said estronik, he was a wandering holy man thing. He crowled
it. He just wandered the earth and then was like whenever he got to
his new place, like, oh you should have seen me where I just
was all these people high five me. Now I'm like a super priest.
Like that's that's his maneuver. You know, there's a there's a staggering amount
of I think connections, or at least I don't think the two would have
gotten along at all, mostly because they would have worked with each other's games.
But there's a lot of parallels in their lives and yeah, yeah,
uh, let's let's do some puns. Let's get some puns going on about
it. Let's segue into some puns. Yeah, just by slamming it in
your face, by ripping your bodice open and shoving the puns inside you.
God puns. Okay, I've got I'm gonna start this off great. I've
got one which is a Russian anti establishment hip hop group called raps Putin,
and it works on a lot of levels. First of all, you know,
rapp Putin was was not really beloved by the government, but this is
raps Putin. They can make fun of Vladimir Putin at the same time.
See how it works. Oh my, got it? Okay, I just
wanted to make sure it's really really well thought out pun. Well. I
like it because all you have to do is switch to letters. Yeah,
that's great. I have a marketplace for Russian junk called the buzzarret get it.
Tzarrez all right, I got you bizarre, terrible. I don't have
good ones this week? Oh really, because raps Putin was really burning up
the charts. They might with Diggie Toots Diggie Toots. Oh my god,
raps Putin and Diggie Toots have to do an album together or or at least
one of those tracks featuring like raps Putin and and Diggie Toots. It's just
like, oh yeah, featuring Diggie Toots when he's like d T's up in
it, Illuminati toutes. Okay, I don't have a pun per se,
I've got a product, okay. And this podcast was brought to you by
Mama Yusupov sanide flavored teacakes. You'll swear you're gonna die. I love these.
The Death contains no cyanide, They're just cyanide flavored. Oh that's great.
I'm going to dismount softly this week with which is actually that's a Diggy
Toots track, so you kind of So after a planet Hollywood went under and
everything, uh, Sylvester Stallone opened up a new restaurant called Sliberia. Oh
god, I hope that they're only open in in northern your Northern Asia.
Yep. There. The restaurants themselves are huge, but nothing's going on.
It's always so cold, they're cold. There's nothing much going on. Bland
food Mosquitos. Oh all right, So so I feel I feel thirdday like
gold. Yeah, I smell like gold, smell like goat off their puns,
oh man, Well, please kick our asses with better puns, please
do, please send them, send them into our website blurry photos dot org.
Please like us on Facebook why not? Uh? And follow us on
Twitter. Worry underscore photos. We're covering every media base here where we're Stopchine.
If we're not on YouTube by the time this hot track drops, then
it'll it'll it'll get there soon, yeah, don't. You'll get you even
on on on the YouTube. Yeah, and then we might even put some
fun videos up that will be awesome. Right. Yeah, that's all I
got for this episode. You got anything else? I am absolutely amazing.
I just want to get that out there. I had a chance, I
had the chance myself. Well that's what I wanted the world to know today.
I accuse you of being David Flora. I deny you being David Stecco.
Oh those right, it was the bullets that they used were jacketed,
where I'm sorry, we're not jacketed. Jacket which is completely different from any
bullets that any of the Russian weapons used, which were completely unjacketed. Yeah,
and uh or jacketed. I just I'm gonna say that whole thing over
all, right, Okay, now Webley fires jacketed bullets, non jacketed,
damn it. Okay, I might keep this. How can I can't get
the two straight? I've got it right here in front of me, Okay,