Latest / Ridiculous History / The Rasputin Episode, Part One: A Young Mystic On The Rise

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The Rasputin Episode, Part One: A Young Mystic On The Rise · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Spoiler, this is a momentous
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: occasion for several reasons. First off, it is the six
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  Speaker 1: year anniversary of our super producer, Max, the freight train Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Six years old.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, not as a person on the show.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, no, I came out of a vat six years
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: ago and started making podcasts.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Fully formed, fully ready to pod.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Because we put most of our money into that grandfather
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  Speaker 1: clock for the Quister fight, and then we put the
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  Speaker 1: rest of it into a vat to grow Max Williams.
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: Matt technically is a pod person. We grew him from
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  Speaker 4: a pod into a pod person.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: That's the legendary Mr. Noel Brown. They call me Ben
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  Speaker 1: Bullen for tax purposes. And we are going to spend
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  Speaker 1: the week here, Noel, delivering on something we did not
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  Speaker 1: think would ever happen. Now, my brother in podcast arms,
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  Speaker 1: you and I well recall– October 24th, 2017, when we
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  Speaker 1: finally figured out why British lawyers wear those crazy powdered wigs.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't a syphilis?
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  Speaker 1: It was a syphilis.
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  Speaker 4: It was either one of the two, possibly both.
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  Speaker 1: Possibly both, possibly both. And we also together learned the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: term for those wigs. Peruk.
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  Speaker 2: Peruk.
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  Speaker 4: What a jolly and dignified term. Ben, it was around
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  Speaker 4: that time that we, because that being what?
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  Speaker 2: Was that the first?
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  Speaker 1: That was the very first one.
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  Speaker 2: I guess that's why you brought it up. It would
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  Speaker 2: make sense given the circumstances.
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  Speaker 4: That was right about the time or just after that
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  Speaker 4: we more or less okayed a logo that was presented
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  Speaker 4: to us featuring an archival and free-to-use image of Of
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  Speaker 4: a very spooky-looking man. And you'll recall, Ben, we tried
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  Speaker 4: to offer suggestions to zhuzh it up and ridiculify it
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  Speaker 4: a little bit. I think there was a version where
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  Speaker 4: he was wearing some, like, sunglasses or something.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Or a couple of other, you know, alt versions of it.
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  Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, you know, we
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  Speaker 4: had to make this show lickety-splickety. It was quite the
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  Speaker 4: homework assignment that needed to be completed yesterday. And so
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  Speaker 4: we didn't have much time to style on that logo.
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  Speaker 4: And like many things... The rest was history. Ridiculous history.
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  Speaker 5: There we are.
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  Speaker 2: And that's been our logo for, how long has.
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  Speaker 1: It been, Lothi? Nine years.
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  Speaker 2: I was going to say nigh on a decade.
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  Speaker 1: One year short. Nine on a decade.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: We thought we were in for a six-week tour, fellow
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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, and now here we are. It's your favorite, well,
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  Speaker 1: your fourth favorite, according to the ratings, History Podcasters. For
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  Speaker 1: years and years, as you said, Noel, we have subtly
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  Speaker 1: and not so subtly teased an episode about a certain
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  Speaker 1: controversial guy. And you, Max, Casey Pegram of yore, we
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  Speaker 1: have all received questions saying, hey, what's up with that logo?
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  Speaker 1: And Noel, like you pointed out, you and I both
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  Speaker 1: essentially said, ah, we were in a hurry.
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  Speaker 2: Sure. It's fine.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's fine.
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  Speaker 2: Roll with it. Yeah, roll with it.
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  Speaker 4: Because to your point, Ben, we were thinking this was
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  Speaker 4: going to be quite a short-lived thing, and now we
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  Speaker 4: are approaching a decade. And I do think it's funny,
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  Speaker 4: and very much in Ridiculous History style, that we're celebrating
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  Speaker 4: the ninth year anniversary of the show rather than the
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  Speaker 4: tenth year anniversary of the show.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and we're also technically celebrating celebrating the ninth year
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  Speaker 1: anniversary a week late. So, folks, if you are listening
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  Speaker 1: and you are in a place where you're not driving
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  Speaker 1: or operating heavy machinery, please check out the logo for
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  Speaker 1: our little show that could. The time has come. Folks,
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  Speaker 1: we've teased it. Can you guess who we are talking about?
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  Speaker 4: It's that guy from that animated movie about the Russian princess.
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  Speaker 2: He was the bad guy.
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  Speaker 5: Yes, yes.
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  Speaker 4: Spooky fingers. He was sort of a wizard type figure.
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  Speaker 4: Bit of a Rick Rubin type character.
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  Speaker 2: Grigori Raspusin.
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  Speaker 1: Yes. We're going to call him Greg for part of this.
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  Speaker 1: Or Grig.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, or Grig.
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  Speaker 1: What follows is peak ridiculous. And as we begin, we
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  Speaker 1: have to note the story of this Rasputin guy is
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  Speaker 1: kind of tough to parse because even during his own life,
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  Speaker 1: he was surrounded by rumors and legends and conspiracy theories.
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  Speaker 1: And he himself encouraged at least a few of those.
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  Speaker 1: So Noel, as you, Max, and I, and all the
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  Speaker 1: rest of us stroll through this guy's early days, we've
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  Speaker 1: got to do our best to point out where the
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  Speaker 1: information is lacking, where the theories compete, where some things
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  Speaker 1: are utter hogwash, or where it just gets super duper weird.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is a guy that had a lot
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  Speaker 4: of power and a lot of control over the narrative
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  Speaker 4: about his own life kind of perception. So he did
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  Speaker 4: a lot of myth-making on his own that sort of
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  Speaker 4: stands up to the test of time.
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  Speaker 1: Also, sorry to jump on you there. We just have
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  Speaker 1: to be clear that we are not, either of us,
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  Speaker 1: Russian speakers. So we're not going to do too many
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  Speaker 1: crazy voice yet, yet, yet to the yet. We are
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  Speaker 1: not going to do too many crazy, crazy voices.
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  Speaker 2: Speak for yourself, Ben.
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  Speaker 1: All right.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know what?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes. And a Merry Matryoshka to you, my friend.
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  Speaker 1: You love those matryoshka dolls. I do love them. They're efficient.
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  Speaker 1: They're efficient in the space. Right. So here we go.
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  Speaker 1: Our pal Greg is born Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin on January 24th, 1869.
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  Speaker 1: And he's born in a small Siberian village named Pokrovsky.
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  Speaker 2: Can you do it better?
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  Speaker 1: No. Yeah, yeah, there we go.
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  Speaker 2: Ben, I don't know if I told you this.
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  Speaker 4: I have certainly mentioned that my mom is an opera singer,
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  Speaker 4: but the one opera aria that I memorized in an
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  Speaker 4: authentic accent is a Russian one from the opera Eugene
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  Speaker 4: on Yegan by Tchaikovsky.
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  Speaker 2: So my Russian accent is on point.
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  Speaker 1: Nice, nice. And clearly authentic.
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  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. At least in the operatic sense, yes.
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  Speaker 1: So like most of the people in this village, Greg's
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  Speaker 1: family is of the peasant class, and life in Siberia
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  Speaker 1: has never been pleasant for peasants. We don't know a
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  Speaker 1: ton about his parents. We do know his father, Yefem,
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  Speaker 1: because we call it, I think, a patronym in this
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  Speaker 1: kind of naming thing. system. Yefimovich basically means son of Yefim.
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  Speaker 1: And Yefim is a farmer. He's a church elder. He's
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  Speaker 1: a government courier. Let's go to you, Max.
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  Speaker 3: I do just want to point out that I do
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  Speaker 3: think it's ironic that it is only one additional letter
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  Speaker 3: between pleasant and peasant, because it is kind of an
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  Speaker 3: oxymoron whenever we're talking about peasants.
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  Speaker 5: It doesn't seem very pleasant. I just want to say that.
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  Speaker 2: The pleasantries of the peasantries. No, I was thinking the
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  Speaker 2: same thing, Max.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if that's a Max, but the fact is.
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  Speaker 2: A Maxervation is what that is. There we go.
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  Speaker 1: I was also kind of in a rap phase.
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  Speaker 5: Writing some of this.
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  Speaker 2: You remain in your rap phase, my guy.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, man.
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  Speaker 2: And you wear it well. Yes, indeed. So Yefimovich, right. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: so that's true, huh? Yefimovich is a– what is it?
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  Speaker 1: Like a– Like son of.
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  Speaker 2: Got it, got it, got it, got it. So you're right.
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  Speaker 4: He was a farmer, church elder. He worked as a
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  Speaker 4: government courier, which meant that he– was he the messenger
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  Speaker 4: that might get shot?
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  Speaker 2: I think he might have been.
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  Speaker 1: He might have been, yeah. He essentially just moved people and–
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  Speaker 1: stuff back and forth between regional population hubs in that
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  Speaker 1: area of Siberia. Greg's mother is even more obscured by history.
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  Speaker 1: Her name is Anna. We do know that life was
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  Speaker 1: brutal out there. Most of Greg's Seven siblings, seven other
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  Speaker 1: siblings died either in infancy or early in childhood. Some
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  Speaker 1: historians are going to tell you that there was a
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  Speaker 1: ninth child who survived long enough to start her own family.
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  Speaker 1: But either way you look at it, a lot of
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  Speaker 1: this guy's childhood is still a matter of educated guesses
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  Speaker 1: and assumptions. One of the primary assumptions being that if
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  Speaker 1: Greg is like most other peasants who were pleasant, living
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  Speaker 1: an unpleasant life in the area at the time, he
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  Speaker 1: probably grew up not going to school. He was probably
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  Speaker 1: illiterate for a while.
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  Speaker 2: Well, he grew up going to the school of hard knocks, Ben.
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  Speaker 2: There we go. That's for sure.
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  Speaker 4: Historians like Douglas Smith found local archival records that gave
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  Speaker 4: us just a little bit more insight into Greg's youth.
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  Speaker 2: It would appear that he was a bit of a rapscallion,
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  Speaker 2: a troublemaker. A razor of hell.
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  Speaker 4: He was a hard-drinking, petty, thieving, local authority, disrespecting young fella.
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  Speaker 4: And in fact, this would be one of the key
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  Speaker 4: pieces of information that would later lead to some of these,
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  Speaker 4: you know, more outsized legends concerning the man.
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  Speaker 2: This idea that he.
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  Speaker 4: was a horse-thieving, blaspheming, fault-witness baron team.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. We also have to shout out several books,
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  Speaker 1: which we'll do along the way. One of the first
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  Speaker 1: books we have to shout out is by a guy
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  Speaker 1: named Joseph T. Furman. It's called Rasputin, A Life. Also,
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  Speaker 1: the second book from Furman we have to shout out
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  Speaker 1: is his sequel to that book, Rasputin, The Untold Story.
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  Speaker 1: We're getting a lot of this from these folks, from
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  Speaker 1: these historians.
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  Speaker 4: I think Rasputin, A Life is a very lazy titling,
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  Speaker 4: just putting that out there.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I 100% agree with you, not just because
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  Speaker 1: we have a nine-year covenant to have each other's backs,
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  Speaker 1: but because you are objectively correct.
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  Speaker 2: Rasputin, he was alive.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you could put anybody's name colon a life and
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  Speaker 1: publish a book. I mean, I would be cool with
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  Speaker 1: like a life of, or a life in, but just
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  Speaker 1: a life.
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  Speaker 2: Give me a break.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 5: Right. Oh, let's do like life of Rasputin, like life
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  Speaker 5: of Brian. There we go.
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  Speaker 1: There we go. Uh, life of Chuck. Wasn't that the, uh.
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  Speaker 2: With the dancing guy?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I quite liked that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, what, what we do know is this it's, uh, 1886, uh,
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  Speaker 1: And our buddy Greg is 17 years old. He's tired
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  Speaker 1: of the village life in the hinterlands. And whatever you
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  Speaker 1: think about what happens to and from Rasputin later, it's
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  Speaker 1: pretty easy to agree with him here, you know. So
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  Speaker 1: he hits the road. He goes to a place called Abalok.
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  Speaker 1: It's about 155 miles away, and that's where he meets Abalok.
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  Speaker 1: a young woman named Proskovia Dubrovina. She is also a peasant.
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  Speaker 1: She's super into him. She's like, oh my God, what
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  Speaker 1: a handsome, charismatic guy. They date for, get this, just
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  Speaker 1: a few months before they jump the broom, tie the knot,
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  Speaker 1: and get married in February of 1887. I feel like
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  Speaker 1: a courtship of just a few months before you get
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  Speaker 1: married is, I don't know, feels kind of crazy.
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  Speaker 4: Ben, I know I've really missed my window for this,
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  Speaker 4: but I'm going to have to drop it just the same.
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  Speaker 4: Siberia is the Delaware of Europe.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, ridiculous.
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  Speaker 5: Why?
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  Speaker 2: Nothing happens. Nothing happens there.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing happens in Siberia.
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  Speaker 2: Except tax havens or something. I don't know. Aren't there
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  Speaker 2: gulags in Siberia?
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  Speaker 4: People always talk about scary Siberian prisons and the frozen tundra.
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  Speaker 2: So it seems like that's where all the action is.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Siberia is often portrayed as not being a, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I would argue it's more of like, you know, the Iowa,
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  Speaker 3: the frozen tundra wasteland where no one wants to go to.
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  Speaker 5: I'm just kidding. Iowa's wonderful. Maybe it's more like Ohio.
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  Speaker 2: It's, wow.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, you washed out the street for that one, Max.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, I guess you got Delaware's back.
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: I think Delaware just has historically been, in this show anyway,
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  Speaker 4: the sort of stand-in for like a boring state.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saying pretty much because of the the commonality
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  Speaker 1: in size, Siberia and Delaware are the same.
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  Speaker 5: Well, fair enough.
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  Speaker 3: I'm saying if we're talking about depression, misery, death and plain,
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  Speaker 3: straight boringness, Ohio is the comp.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody is going to everybody is going to get a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: stray shot. in this, our anniversary episode.
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  Speaker 3: I think we made a joke, actually, because remember, we've
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  Speaker 3: had three straight episodes where somebody.
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  Speaker 5: Oh, you found a thing to hate.
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  Speaker 2: That's what you're doing, Max.
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  Speaker 5: I'm part of the crew.
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  Speaker 1: All right, Max, bonus points to you if you can
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: somehow bring Negging Ohio back over the course of these
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: two episodes.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Have we done an Ohio episode?
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  Speaker 1: We did.
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  Speaker 5: We've definitely done Ohio.
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  Speaker 4: All right, Max, I put to you the task of
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  Speaker 4: At some point telling us.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: What episodes we did about Ohio and why they sucked.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we can play the sound cue. But also
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: that doesn't count for bringing up Ohio organically later in
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: the story.
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  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. Thank you, man.
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  Speaker 1: Ground rules. Ground rules. So Dubrovina, her story is pretty sad.
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  Speaker 1: She is Rasputin's wife. for the rest of her life.
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  Speaker 1: And she and he moved back to his parents' hometown.
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  Speaker 1: And she stays there raising the kids all the while
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  Speaker 1: as Greg turns into Rasputin and rises to infamy, his
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: later travels and so on. And she hears all these
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  Speaker 1: crazy rumors, but she is solely devoted to this guy
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  Speaker 1: until the day she passes away. And like so many
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  Speaker 1: other families in the area, the couple loses a lot
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  Speaker 1: of their children. They have seven kids, only three make
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it to adulthood. You got Dimitri, born in 1895, you
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: got Maria, 1898, and you've got Varvara, born in 1900.
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  Speaker 2: For sure.
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  Speaker 4: And, you know, for a lot of folks at the time,
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: life felt relatively predictable. People had their routines. Your parents
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: were farmers or small business owners. You'd get married young,
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: have children, join the family business, and then pass that
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  Speaker 4: on to the next generation, rinse and repeat. This had
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: been the social, you know, structure really for centuries at
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: this point. But Gregg or Gregg, old Gregg, He didn't
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: see himself as an ordinary guy. He already was kind
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: of starting to develop what one might call delusions of grandeur.
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  Speaker 2: There we are. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He's probably inspired by his father's heavily religious household and
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: his upbringing. Greg finds an interest in religion, a renewed fascination.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: And so he temporarily leaves his family in his hometown
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: in 1897 and And he goes on a pilgrimage, which
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: was a thing people just did back then.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: To where? To the Holy Land? To some site? Doesn't
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: a pilgrimage require a destination?
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: It does.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And he had several pilgrimages, as we'll see. The history
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: is kind of murky, Noel, because some historians, even now
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: in 2026, say his 1897 field trip was entirely because
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: he needed to skip town on those horse theft charges.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Other people, and more historians agree with this, they will
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: say that young Greg was struck with a vision, an epiphany,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a revelation. He was visited by either the Virgin Mary
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: or a guy named Saint Simeon of Vercuturie. I think
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I did all right on that.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: I think you did just gloriously, Ben, more than all right.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: And this was the patron saint of the Urals? That's
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: a mountain range, right?
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Ural region.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: And that's, for anybody who tuned into our patron saints conversations,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: you know that often a saint in Christianity is going
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: to be the patron of multiple things. Saint Simeon is
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: just the patron saint of this area. Other sources say
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: claim that Greg was inspired to travel by a young
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: theology student. And this person was named Meliti Zaborovsky. We
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: have to throw that in there because of the later,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: darker stuff we're going to get into. So he left
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  Speaker 1: town either because he was accused of horse theft, had
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a religious experience, or got a little close with a
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: young woman studying theology.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: Well regardless of why he left it would appear that
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: at this point the 28 year old uh greg we're
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: going to start calling him rasputin at this point because
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: he's beginning to he's going through his arch phase, right?
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: He's starting to like, this is his, we're doing a.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Villain backstory kind of thing, or sorry, origin story.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't say he's fully Rasputinified yet, but he's approaching it.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: He's proto-Rasputin.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: And he had some kind of criminal and or spiritual
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: crisis is what we can surmise. So he decided he
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: was going to change himself. He was going to take
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: the steps to become a new man.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: This was not his first pilgrimage.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: In the past, he'd taken shorter little sojourns to places
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: like the Holy Znamensky Monastery at Abilak and to Tobolsk's Cathedral.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: By his next pilgrimage, however, he was ready to level up.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: as far as pilgrimages and spiritual slash criminal awakenings go.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: There we go. Well put, Noel. So our guy, our
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: pre-Rasputin character, arrives at a place called St. Nicholas Monastery,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and he is super-duper impressed and humbled by a guy
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: named Makary, M-A-K-A-R-Y, just one name, like Cher, right? And
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: this guy is awesome. kind of a Christian mystic.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Priest, kind of Matt, like wizard priest. I mean, there
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: is a, yeah, we'll get to it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: Sorry.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know when you jump the gun, but there
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: is something that sets this, this role, this star at
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: the side. We don't quite have an equivalent of it here.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: In the United States, in the forms of Catholicism and faith. Maybe,
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I kind of find rabbis a little mystical,
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: especially in the Orthodox faith.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: So maybe, I don't know, maybe something along those lines.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: Just because of the talismans they carry and the way
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: they dress and things like that.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: It has a certain amount of showmanship, let's call it.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a certain amount of esoteric wisdom that is– gate
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: kept hard. And on display.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And I say that with full respect to a couple
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: of my rabbis, actually. And so, yes, we all know
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: what that experience may feel like. I love that you're
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: dropping the word starets. That is something that doesn't really
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: have an equivalent in Christianity in the West, in the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. The best way to think of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it is an elder, a mentor, a Yoda, a Jedi. Right.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And Rasputin kicks it at St. Nicholas Monastery for several months.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Most historians believe this is where he learned to read
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: and write. And he appreciated the education and the religious
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: stuff definitely had a deep impact on him. But he
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: did eventually leave.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it just occurred to me too that, I mean,
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: it would make sense that a lot of young, poor
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: boys would be sent to monasteries to be educated because
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: there were no other opportunities for that, right?
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. Also, he would later go
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: on when he was full Rasputin, Rasputin actual, he would
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: later go on to talk a lot of trash about
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the monastery. He said their life was too rigid. he
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: said was coercive. He wanted to be a wild pony
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: running free. But he would also say a lot of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the monks at St. Nicholas were homosexual. And he said
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: that as an insult, to be clear. Sure.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: And I mean, you know, we know there's certainly a
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: historical precedent for closeted gay men in priesthood. This seems
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: to be a part of that continuum, though I'm not
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: saying that he necessarily was telling the truth, but it
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: wouldn't be unheard of.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: What I think we're both saying here is that he
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: was being kind of a jerk about it. Oh, yeah.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: He was kind of a jerk.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: Yes. Yes.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: So whatever happened at St. Nicholas really made an impression
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: on him. He returns back home to his village. But
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: now this is a totally different story. edgier Greg. It's
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: like when someone goes to New York and comes back
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: smoking clove cigarettes. He looked kind of like a bum.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: He looked like a train kid, dude.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Bit of a beatnik. Yeah.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: He decided to restyle himself kind of like you're saying, Ben,
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: almost like in a hippie fashion, but sort of more
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: of a square hippie. He became a vegetarian. He said
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: he wasn't going to drink alcohol anymore.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: He displayed signs of religious zealotry. There we go.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: You know, these manic fits, these fugue states of prayer.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: He also knew that farming was absolutely not for him.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And his spouse stuck with him for the next several years. Greg,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: becoming Rasputin, is sort of a full-time hobo. The word
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: for it at the time was strotic. which means something
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: like pilgrim or a holy wanderer, he'd leave his hometown
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: and his family.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Like Cain from Kung Fu.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He would leave his hometown and his
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: family for months at a time, for years at a time,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and he would travel across the land visiting churches and monasteries,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: other holy sites, and at every step of the way,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: he was picking up fans everywhere. that became followers.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's out there proselytizing. By the early 1900s, he.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Had a bit of a cult going.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of family members and other locals from
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: his hometown who followed him. When he was back in
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: the area, a lot of these followers would pray alongside him,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: and this represented a bit of a schism in the
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: village because his style of religion was starting to look
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: a little different from theirs.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And he is still living in his father's house. And
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: at the time, then as now, it's normal to live
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: in an intergenerational household. He and his followers in the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: village built a secret chapel in the root cellar, and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: they held secret prayer meetings there. This did not feel
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: right to the other villagers, especially, you guessed it, folks,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the official local priest. This guy is understandably kind of
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: peeved that there's new competition moving in.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Dude, he's eating their lunch, man. He's eating their wafers.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. He's transubstantiating the competition. So rumors begin to stir.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: And this is sort of the origin point of what
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: will later lead to the death of Rasputin. Spoiler, folks. What?! Yeah.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: No.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Well, we knew he was going to die eventually. This
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: was a long, long time ago after all. So not
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: too much of a spoiler, Ben.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: We all die. All men die.
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: Well, just maybe not under such alarming circumstances.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: I don't know. I have some mercury. I want to
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: drink it. I'll be fine.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Max classic. I'll be fine.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: No, no.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Side note, the Ohio episode that I have written down,
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: and there's probably more. Once I find one, I write
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: it down. The one I've written down is, That time
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Ohio and Michigan almost went to war.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Isn't that funny? Because you, if I'm not mistaken, Max,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: are quite fond of Michigan.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: That is my birth state, and hence why a lot
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: of my hatred for Ohio comes from there.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Is this football-based hatred, Max? Ohio is the fuck I do.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: There's many things, but I do have a University of
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Michigan banner right in the back.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: One of the beautiful things about this nation of ours
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: is is that every single state in the union picks
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a state adjacent to them to hate.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Well, the thing about Michigan is, to quote John Oliver, Michigan,
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: the giant mitten holding back Detroit from.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: Fighting all of Canada. Because that's just how Detroit is.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: But also, why is Michigan one state? Geographically, it should
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: be two.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Well, that's just like your opinion.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: You should geographically be too, Ben.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: We should, we should. Thank you.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Overdue, but it's the anniversary episode. Can we play a
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: max with the facts on that?
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: So back to the story in Rasputin's hometown, the folks
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: who don't jibe with him, including the local priest, are
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: spreading these salacious, juicy rumors. They're saying, look, Greg's female
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: followers are bathing him before each meeting and bathing him hard. Whoa.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Talk about salacious, like heavy petting? What are we talking about? Okay. Yeah,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: I got it. Yeah, I mean, he is.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: He does seem to be cultivating a bit of like
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: a sex magic kind of vibe.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Jared Leto will later try to do something similar.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: Bro, there's a documentary that's coming out about Jared Leto.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: I saw like a trailer for it and it is bad.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: I mean, the accusations against that man, that's not a
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: good dude.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Rasputin, even way back in the late 1800s,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: is getting hit with accusations like this There's also a
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Lovecraftian rumor going around, and people in the village are saying, look,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: if you walk by at night, you can hear the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: group singing these blasphemous songs, and we don't know what
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they're saying, but we know it's not Christian. And then
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: some people argue that Rasputin is a secret spy for
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a very divisive cult called the Christi.
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: Right, which is another super secret underground mystical sect of
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Christianity dating back to the 1600s. This last rumor really
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: did kind of line up with some of the others
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: because the Christi also had some pretty bizarre, as I
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: was implying, accusations against them.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: They weren't really Christian at all.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: They were basically doing like blood sugar sex magic.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Including cannibalism and self-flagellation.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: This would be like the bad guy in a Dan
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: Brown novel. You know, the spooky monk that's going around
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: beating himself with reeds while trying to pilfer sacred artifacts
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: in order to take over the world.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And that they were also having orgies. So they're beating
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: themselves up. They're eating each other. They're not really Christians.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: No, that was, you know, I'm thinking these guys might
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: not actually be so Christian.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: This behavior does not.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, clutch your pearls. As we know, and Max, we
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: have to have at least one beep in this episode.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: As we know, this was pretty much bullshit. Most historians.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: There we are. Most historians now agree that these rumors
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: of Rasputin being a clished were unfounded gossip. And it's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: easy for us to dismiss it immediately out of hand today.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: But no, you and I know if you've ever lived
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in a small town, you've seen how quickly locals can
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: grasp on to the most flimsy of rumors. And we
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: hate it, don't we? When facts get in the way
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: of a good story.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Boy, do we have, right? I mean, think about it, though.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: Like, the dude was definitely starting to exercise some undue
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: influence against the status quo of the church, and it
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: would seem that being associated with this sect would be, like,
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: kind of the ultimate nail in the coffin of, like,
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: trying to discredit a holy man.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: So you got to think.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: That it's, whether or not this exact thing was true,
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: we know we got up to some odd shenanigans.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: It does make sense.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: That this would be the kind of rumor that would
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: be started by, like, the folk's you know, occupying the
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: establishment of the church there in the community.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: A hundred percent. So the tension is simmering and bubbling
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: up in, in the guy's hometown. Despite this, Greg, who
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: is becoming Rasputin continues to practice his show. and travel along.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Other parts of Siberia heard about him, and sometimes they
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: would hear, this guy's a sketchy cult leader and sex pest.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And sometimes they would hear, he is a true spiritual force,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: like he can talk to God. Either way, 1904, 1905,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: he travels to a city called Kazan, K-A-Z-A-N. This is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a much bigger area, and it is here in this
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: city that he gains reputation as a star, similar to
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the guy he met in that monastery a little while back.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: He becomes known as a faith healer, and people in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the town of Kazan are saying, this guy has really
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: deep insights. He can help people who are struggling through
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: spiritual crises, and we think he's cool.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Well, sure, yeah.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, he definitely knew how to command a room.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: He also had to have learned at least a little
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: more diplomacy because despite the continuing rumors that he was
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: sleeping with women who followed him around, rumors that, by
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: the way, will continue to follow him around for the
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: rest of his life, Rasputin did manage to make a
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: pretty good impression on the local religious leaders at the
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: end of the day, two of whom wrote a letter
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: of recommendation and arranged for him to travel to the
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg in which contained one
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: of the best theological seminaries in Russia.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Also nailing the pronunciation there, man.
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: That was great.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I couldn't have done that one.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: It's fun for me.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: This is a huge deal, right? Because the days of
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: secret root cellar chapels are over, my babushkas, the religious
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: leaders at this monastery. They have a ton of political pull.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: One of them is a guy named Archmandrite Theophan Beistrov. Archimandrite,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: excuse me, it's kind of like a supervising abbot.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: And this Beistrov character was quite connected. He was plugged
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: in to the upper crust of St. Petersburg society. A
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: young man himself, very much on his way up in
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: the church, he regularly spent time with the super wealthy
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: in their posh homes and these salons, you know, all
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: of the most important people went to him for spiritual advice.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Eventually, this guy, Theophon, even serves as the
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: confessor for the Russian imperial family. So this is a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: good guy to know, Greg is thinking, and Greg tries
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to impress him, and it works. Theophon is like, Rasputin,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: you're awesome, dude. How long are you in St. Petersburg?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: You should stay at my house. And, Noel, if we
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: allow ourselves a bit of cynicism here, is it fair to—
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Just for a treat? Yeah, just as a treat. Is
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: it fair for us to suppose that Rasputin was manipulating
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Theophan to climb the social ladder?
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: Well, Ben, I'm very stuck in this You Can See
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: Everything documentary that I just saw that I think you're
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: going to go see soon. um, about Elizabeth Holmes and
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: sort of like Nathan Fielder, the nature of like, who's
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: telling the truth when and.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Why, and was it all an act? Like what even
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: is manipulation? You know, isn't he just trying his best
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: to do a good job to get, no, no, I
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I'm making the Futurama gift face. I squinted my eyes
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: at you.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I think, I think that's fair to say,
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: but also like he is, good at what he does
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: he is making an impression yeah and i guess he
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: definitely has um.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: Ambitions let's call.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: It there we go yeah and we we are not
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: in the room where it happens here so we have
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: no idea of greg's internal motivations but we can say
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: he did leverage his charm and persuasiveness to talk Theophan
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: into bringing him along to those top-rate salons in the town,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: and this is where he meets the local aristocracy. They
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: hang out as one-percenters in St. Petersburg, and they talk
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: about religion and the occult and the supernatural. And once
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Rasputin gains entry into that social sphere, he increasingly attempts
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: to alienate Theophan and charm the people he thinks are
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: more important, and he has a great deal of success.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: He's stabbing his boy Theophon in the back? Who got
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: him there? He got him in those rooms?
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Scorpions, man.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Now he's turning on him?
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a bit of context we have to establish.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Way before Greg blows through town, the rulers of St.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Petersburg are super-duper into stuff like spiritualism and theosophy.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: They were.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: fascinated by the idea of anything occult or supernatural they
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: were also really bored of their day-to-day lives because similar
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: to the lives of a siberian peasant at the time
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: if you're an aristocrat in st petersburg your entire life
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: could feel mapped out from cradle to grave.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: Dude the the malaise of the super super rich yeah
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: it's it's it's real and it also is largely what
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: leads to like You know, you hear about a lot
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: of super, super rich folks developing some very interesting, you know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: hobbies and proclivities, let's just say. In this case, yeah,
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: these salons, it's like it's almost like considered an intellectual
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: pursuit to be just a little, a little mildly blasphemous
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: as a treat.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So to these folks, and I love the way you
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: put it there, Noel, to these folks this Greg guy
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: from out of town, from way out in Siberia, he
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: is a huge breath of fresh air. He's got wild ideas.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: He's so weird. That beard! He's got that rockin' beard.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He's also a native Russian just like us, so he's
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: cooler than those French folks we've been following. We might
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: just have a mystic here at home.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: God, I'm trying to wonder if Rasputin was the mystic
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: that we have at home. Like, what's the one that's
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: like the top notch one out there in the world?
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Unclear. We'll get to it.
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: So he really is starting to get in with these
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: folks who can help him in his ambition, you know,
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: to continue to rise in the ranks. of influence, you know,
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: in Russian society. If that is in fact what he
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: was seeking, you know, if he was like really had
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: a laser focus on getting all the way to the top,
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: to the top guy.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: His first trip is only a few months and he
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: goes back home. He returns to Pokrovskoe in autumn of 1903.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And we don't really know how often he traveled back
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and forth, but we can say by 1905, St. Petersburg
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: was becoming a lot like a second home. And by
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: this point, Greg had used all his manipulative Machiavellian wiles
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: to make the most important social connection of all. He's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: going to meet the royal family. All the way to
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: the top, baby. All the way to the FBI. No,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the royal family, indeed.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: And this, y'all, is probably where the story starts to
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: ring a bell. From that Animated film that I mentioned, Anastasia.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: That is what is dramatized in that cartoon. And boy,
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: oh boy, did they make Rasputin sort of a Jafar
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: type figure. I seem to recall he like shoots green
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: magic stuff out of his pointy spindly clawed fingers.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: And he has like a bat that's like his sidekick. Yeah,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: that's his parrot basically. Exactly.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: This was, by the way, not a Disney film. It
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: was one of those kind of second-rate animation studios.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I remember it fondly.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: We should do an episode about those non-Disney animation features.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Dude, the Bluth Company. Well, no, that is a Disney.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: That is a Disney one. Okay.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like Secret of NIMH, like the Bluth Company, which,
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: by the way, that company made, like, they were the dark...
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: antithesis to Disney. And then Disney sort of had to
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: get dark almost in response. Ben, this is absolutely an
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: episode topic. But for now, we're going to take a
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: pause and we're going to come back with our next
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: episode where we start to get into the plot of
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: the animated feature Anastasia.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Yes. And folks, just a heads up. When you hear
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: this second episode in the series on Thursday, we are
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: going to have to have a disclaimer for some gnarly things.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: So that's a heads up before the heads up. That's
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: a Greg turning into a Rasputin. That's a big, big
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. That's a
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: huge thanks as well, Noel, to Jonathan Strickland, a.k.a. The Quister,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: for not showing up On this one, I feel like
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: he has a Russian accent that he's really proud of,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and it's probably insufferable.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: He is kind of our Rasputin.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: He is 100%. Are you kidding?
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: We should maybe start seeking counsel from him rather than.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: You know, bullying him.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: We should introduce him to our family members and let
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: him roam around our houses at all times of night.
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Well, Ben, huge thanks to you for doing the research
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: on this thing that's like, gosh, we're going to have
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: to figure out how to kill some of your darlings
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: here because this could be a three-parter, but we promised
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: ourselves we would make it only a two-parter. But I'm
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: super excited to jump into part two with you very soon.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Big, big thanks, of course, to Christopher Haciotis, Yves Jeffcoat,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Here in Spirit, Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance, A.J. Bahamas Jacobs,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: The Puzzler, who recently talked with one of our favorite
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: comics and comedian writers, David Wayne, and of course, the
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: folks at Ridiculous Crime. Most importantly, nine years into the game.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Noel.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, and to you as well, sir. We'll see you
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: next time, folks.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.