Behind the Bastards - Part One: Turkmenbashi: The Dictator Who Declared Himself Jesus

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

In Episode 53, Robert is joined by David Bell to discuss a man who was, at one point, the most powerful lunatic on planet earth and absolute ruler of a nation of five million people, Saparmurat Niyazov who was the dictator of Turkmenistan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's ringing my bells? I am Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, the show where every week I try out a new introduction. This one got Sophie's approval, so that's good. It's also a show where we talk about the worst people in all of history,

tell you the things you don't know about them. My guest today is David Christopher Bowell. Hello. How are you doing, Dave? I am well. I almost hit a man with my car in the way here. Oh, sweet. Did he have it coming? Yeah, actually, he was jaywalking. Well, fuck him. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, that's good. I'm going to share a little bit of your personal business, Dave, because it makes me laugh. Your parents came here from the blighted hellscape that is the east coast to escape the snow. Yes, that's true. They're very old, so they do what old people do, and they went to a warm climate during the winter. And then Los Angeles got its first snow in 60-something years.

It sure did. They are very bummed out, because when it's not snowing, it's been raining nonstop. We've had our first winter in decades, which has been delightful. It's been great for the people who live here. It's nice, especially after the summer, although it is a dire sign of climate change when Los Angeles has seasons. Yeah, the world is dying, but it's clearly dying. But it's nice to get to wear a jacket in Hollywood. Well, Dave, today we are talking about a special fellow, very special fellow. Have you ever heard the name Soparmarat Niazov? No. Oh boy. Oh boy. Now, the last show we had you on was Momar Gaddafi. Gaddafi's kind of the gold standard for just a lunatic who winds up in

charge of a country. Not like a guy like Hitler or Stalin. People call them crazy, but they really weren't. If you look at them, everything they did kind of made sense just based on where they're coming from. Gaddafi was a f***ing maniac. And Soparmarat Niazov may be even crazier than Gaddafi. He might be the craziest person who's ever run a country. But we'll have to judge that at the end of these episodes. Oh, I am ready. Before we get into that, I have a new sparkling water beverage called Bubbly. And I got it hoping for an orange soda of some sort, but I don't know if that's what it is or if it's more like one of those LaCroix. So I'm going to learn right now. How is it? It's actually really nice. It is on the LaCroix scale. So it's like someone put an

orange in a sparkling water. It's like an orange was in the same room as some sparkling water. But in this case, the orange talked to the water and they reached an accord. It's good. Okay. It's good. It's like a melted popsicle. Bubbly. I'm going to have to try it. If you want to sponsor the show. You want to pour something online? Yeah, pour it in your LaCroix. All right, here we go. Over the equipment. We're reaching across the table. Oh, Jesus, sorry. All right. Is it good? Has it mixed with that passion? Not great, Robert. But I'm going to keep drinking it. So that's a little bit of science for you listeners at home. Do not mix passion fruit LaCroix with orange Bubbly. No. Not a good idea. All right,

speaking of bad ideas, let's talk about Soparmaratniyazov, the lunatic god king of Turkmenistan. I'm so psyched. So today we're talking about a guy who was at one point probably the most powerful crazy person on planet Earth. He was the absolute ruler of a nation of five million people. Soparmaratniyazov was the dictator of Turkmenistan and I think you're going to enjoy him, Dave, although Turkmenistan did not. Okay. I am extremely ignorant of the world. So where is Turkmenistan? It's near Afghanistan and in the old Soviet Union. It's one of those little chunks of the country. It was like when Genghis Khan started doing his thing, when he left China and started conquering his way towards the Middle East, they were like the first empire he ran into on his way

out of China. Okay. Yeah. And he fucked them up pretty bad. So Turkmenistan, the actual country, did not exist as a political entity until 1924. It wasn't a thing anyone had ever thought about as an area. It was just a place where it had been a bunch of different kingdoms, but no one had called them Turkmenistan or whatever. They wound up under Russian control during the era of the Zars and not much was done with them. They were a little bit of a backwater. So they pretty much just stuck to themselves and did Turkmen stuff, which mainly meant outdoor picnics, fantastic wine, and horseback riding. Oh, good for them. Yeah, they seemed to have their shit together. Yeah, there was just like no one's noticing us. Let's just have a great time.

Let's just chill out. They like falcons, big falcon people who doesn't love a good falcon. They got great horses and they're one of those pieces of the Muslim world where everybody drinks still because they became Muslim, but they'd been growing wine since before they were Muslim. So they were like, well, let's just ignore that part. We've been drunk earlier than we've been Muslim. So it's got grandfathered into the religion. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, fair enough. In 1924, the brand new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics decided this chunk of the world and its people needed an official designation and borders. The Turkmen SSR was considered to be the backwateriest backwater in the entire Soviet Union. Save maybe some of those chunks of Russia

that were too cold for anything but gulags. An American diplomat told New Yorker author Paul Thoreau that quote, it was the sleepiest, most remote, least favorite of the USSR's republics. So they don't get much love. Yeah, but I mean, I want to live there. Yeah, if you're going to live in the Soviet Union, you want to live in the place that Stalin doesn't think about ever. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And they were basically the Soviet Union's gas station. They had like either the third or the fifth largest natural gas reserves in the world. And so the Soviet Union just kind of took all of their fuel and didn't really give them money for it. And that was kind of what happened for like 70 years or so. So they were doing fine.

Soparmorat Nizov was born into this quiet region of the world in 1940. His father was Ataya Nizov, a farmer, and his mother was Gurben Sultan Ege. They lived in the town of Gipchak, a small village six miles from the capital, Ashgabat. If you know much history, you're probably aware that 1940 was not a great time to be born in the Soviet Union. The Nazis invaded before Soparmorat was one. And in 1942, his father died in battle fighting the Wehrmacht. So not the best start so far. No, bit of a bummer. Bit of a bummer. The Nazis really ruin it. The Nazis really fucked things up for this kid. And 20 million other people. Yeah. Yeah. This prompted Soparmorat's mom to move them into the capital where they all lived together until 1948,

when a massive earthquake struck the city and killed 110,000 people, including Soparmorat's entire family. Okay. So he's just having none of the luck. None of the luck. Yeah. Really, really bad first eight years of his life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rough, rough start. Yeah. Fair to say. So young Soparmorat grew up in a Soviet orphanage until the government found a family member he'd never met for him to go live with. In spite of the rough start, he did pretty well, winning a place in Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and graduating with a degree in power engineering in 1966. He got a job at a power plant near the capital, and it seemed like he was just going to be a normal Soviet dude. So far, so good. Yeah. So far, so good. Rough start,

but he's getting his life on track. Getting his life on track, working as an engineer. If I know anything about engineers, it's that they never turn into power crazed maniacs. Right. Yeah. That's for sure something about engineers that we know. Soparmorat joined the Communist Party back in 1962 and his ambitions immediately extended beyond just working at a power plant. Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, he steadily rose the ranks in local politics due largely to the fact that he was a member of the largest Turkmen tribe in the region, the techie. Now, Soparmorat Nizov was named the first secretary of the Communist Party of Turkmen by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. He was put in power because his predecessor, a guy named Gapasov, had been incredibly corrupt and stealing

huge amounts of money from the Republic. Right. So that's his predecessor. Now, the good thing about Gapasov is that he'd almost completed construction of the world's longest aqueduct during his term. So it was like a couple of weeks away from being finished when he got shit-canned and then Nizov comes to power and he immediately takes credit for building the aqueduct, which, yeah. Oh, nice. Good move. Solid. Yeah. So Gorbachev promised that Nizov's promotion meant the dawning of a new age of corruption-free governance in Turkmenistan. This would prove to be about as wrong as a statement can be. That feels like how a lot of monsters start. Yeah. Of like the guy before them was terrible and corrupt and they come up and they're like,

no more corruption. No more corruption. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good pitch. That's basically how this starts. Yeah. Yeah. And he probably would have gotten busted by Gorbachev eventually because he was really corrupt too. But about five years after he comes to power, the USSR starts to fall apart. And so when the Soviet Union collapses, he's the guy in charge of Turkmenistan. So in like 1990, the Turkmen parliament declares its independence during a couple of different votes. And on October 26, 1990, the state of Turkmenistan was officially born. It held its first presidential election immediately afterwards. Nizov was the only candidate and he received 98.3% of the vote. Okay. So yeah, as everything collapsed around him, it's like being the manager

at the final blockbuster. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And just being like, we're going to do things differently around here and there. I'm in charge of blockbuster now. Yeah. He is that guy. So as the autocratic ruler of a new nation, Nizov's immediate goal was to be as neutral as possible and make a shitload of money. So not a bad plan at the start. He started selling gas, oil and electricity to Iran, but also sweet talked Saudi Arabia and flew to Mecca to do his pilgrimage. So he's kind of trying to play both sides of every angle. He's trying to be nice to Russia, be nice to the US. He just doesn't want anybody to fuck with Turkmenistan. So reasonable. Yeah, that's fair. He's protecting his people. Protecting his people. Now, when he came to

power, most Turkmen were still dirt poor because the Soviet Union had basically just been stealing their gas, like paying them, but paying them and Soviet money that wasn't worth anything and being like, yeah, you guys are getting a fair market value for this fuel. It was a free gas station for the Soviet Union. But now that they were an independent nation, these guys had like a shitload of money at like something like five billion dollars a year coming in and in fuel money. And there's only five million people. So in a fair and equitable system, everyone in Turkmenistan could be really rich. Yeah, like like they are in Kuwait or something. Of course, I assume that's what's going to happen. Yeah, they all get taken care of really well. Yeah. And then we're done with

the episode. Yep. That's it. Well, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at Bastard's Pod, Dave. No. So that was what a lot of people hoped for, that like the economy would be reformed and they'd all get some of this sweet, sweet gas money. But Niazov was worried about what might happen if he reformed the economy too much. He thought it might be too much change for people in too short a period of time. Right. You got to protect the people from progress. For money. And change. You don't want those people to have... Who knows what they'll spend it on. Exactly. Houses? Food? Yeah, you don't want to risk that. So he promised that he would eventually add in some free market stuff. But in the short term, he decided that he really needed absolute power

to get stuff started on a good foot, you know? Sure. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. It's understandable. I just need a little absolute power. Just a couple of years of absolute power. Yeah. I swear, I'll give it up. Yeah. Like all the times people have given up absolute power in the past. So he got his wish when Turkmenistan's new constitution was drafted in 1992. It declared that power is held by the president who was elected by the people, which seems reasonable until you realize that once elected, the president's power was essentially infinite and then included the power to determine how elections were held in the future. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Now under the constitution, citizens did have the right to form political parties. As long as they could get a

thousand other people together, that was like the minimum threshold, you could make a political party. So several citizens did this. They created political parties. They kept in line, scrupulously followed the law. They avoided any calls for violence. They filled out all the required forms of petitions and their parties were immediately banned. Since the state controlled all media, no political parties were allowed any airtime. So yeah, that's how Niazov sort of starts off. Tagin Jumakov, a journalist working for a state paper that was essentially owned by Niazov, explained, quote, at this time, there is no need for a multi-party system. Many problems have to be solved, social problems, and we must raise living standards. When our living standards are

high and we are economically independent, then we can have a multi-party system. But if this happens now, there will be anarchy. It feels like there's a lot of putting it off. It's a lot of like, you know, no, it's great. It's great. We'll do that at some point. But right now, we really can't. Yeah. I'll clean up my room after I finish stealing all this natural gas. Yeah. I'll clean my room, but first I gotta do this cocaine. And that'll help me clean up. I can't make my bed with all this cocaine on the table. Exactly. What have I knocked the cocaine off the table? Exactly. Yes. Yeah. That logic is exactly how Niazov justifies what he does. Yeah. So at a People's Council in December 1992,

Niazov estimated it would take 10 years for Turkmenistan to achieve the prosperity it needed for people to be allowed to vote. After the Constitution was ratified, Niazov ran for president again, winning 99.5%. Oh. Yeah. He's very popular. Very popular. Good for him. Very popular. Also, the only candidate. Yeah. He was the only Central Asian head of state to continue to govern after the USSR's fall. So of the guys who are in charge when like the Soviet Union falls apart, he's the only one who manages to hang on to power. Okay. Now Turkmenistan had never been a country before, not in the modern sense of the world. And Niazov knew he had to do something to bind all of his people together. So he held conferences using sketchy history to claim that all Turkmen were

part of the same ethnic group, the Tehran, which was essentially just an ancient Persian word for the region. He also announced to great fanfare that his name was now Turkmenbashi, which means first among Turkmens. He created an ethnic group? Yeah, kind of. Okay. He just said, we're all this thing. That's bold. Yeah. He didn't want the tribalism to get in the way. So he said, we're all part of the same thing now. All right. Yeah, you got to invent stuff if you're going to create a country. His full title was Serdar Turkmenbashi, great leader of all Turkmen. Now, as natural gas money started to flow into the country, Turkmenistan found itself with money for the first time in ever, really. Turkmenbashi, a man who had promised his people prosperity,

knew what he had to spend his windfall on. What do you think it was? Oh, God. I don't know. What do you think he spent the billions of dollars that is the first money his country's ever gotten on? I mean, this could go in so many ways. It could be like war, but I feel like it's like a clown party or something. That's not super far off. I've listened to enough of this show and did not make too many predictions. He spent it all on statues. Hey. Oh, of course. Of course. Of course. Why do I think of that? Of course it's statues. Oh, man. I think there's something in our DNA where we want to, it's just a natural thing we want to do is make statues. It makes tons of statues. If you gave me a million dollars, I'd be like, okay, well,

the statue, and then I'll get a nice apartment. I guess a second Robocop statue in Detroit would make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that first. And then another Rocky statue in Philadelphia. Oh, yeah. All slightly bigger. All slightly larger. She like, drive the statue by homeless people in the street. Yeah, it was expensive, but guys, it's gonna be worth it. Newarker writer Paul Thoreau visited Turkmenistan near the end of Turkmenbashi's reign. Here's how he described the capital city. Quote, Ashgabat was filled with gold statues of Turkmenbashi in these statues, which had an ecclesiastical aura. Bashi was El Dorado, the man of gold, all powerful and all-knowing. Statues show him sitting, striding, waving, saluting, and smiling a 24 carat smile.

One even showed him as a precocious golden child sitting in the lap of his bronze mother. He once said to a journalist, I admit it, there are too many portraits, pictures, and monuments of me. I don't find any pleasure in it, but the people demand it because of their mentality. Yeah, guys, just give me a few more years. Everything will be fine. We'll get a few more statues up, and then that's it. A couple of more statues and love democracy, I promise. I swear you're gonna vote at some point. I do love that he makes his mom bronze, but he's gold. A little bit of mom shade there. It's just more aesthetically pleasing. Yeah, you want the baby to really pop in your statue of yourself as a baby.

Now, we don't know what the people actually demand it because they weren't allowed to vote, or form political parties, or speak freely. Several of them were eventually allowed to operate political parties, but these were just for show, and most did not meet the minimum number of members required in the Constitution, just so that Turkmenpashi could be like, no, we're not a one party state. Look at all these other parties. There's like nine guys in that one. Whenever Turkmenpashi got in hot water with the democratic world, he'd sponsor a party or two, and let his people have the illusion of a tiny amount of choice, or to be more accurate, let the world have the illusion that his people had a tiny amount of choice.

Now, Nizov immediately started renaming parts of the country after himself. It started not crazily, at least, changing the name of a major street in the capital from Lenin to Turkmenpashi. That's fair. That's fair. You know, the Soviet Union's gone. You don't want a name after Lenin? Okay, we named streets after presidents all the time. He renamed a collective farm in the Lenin Canal with his own name also. When people compared what he was doing to Stalin's personality cult, he said, quote, Stalin achieved his personality cult through repressive measures, whereas I achieved my popularity without conflicts. So overall, I'm just sorry, I'm thinking about his childhood and stuff. There's nothing like that messed up that happened

to him. I mean, there's both died before he was a and the earthquake. I'm saying that there's not anything like horrible things happen to a lot of people. Yeah, this feels like a story of like, this is just like you give someone too much power. This feels like this could be anybody. It's just like, let's give them a lot of power. And then next thing you know, they're a golden baby statue. That's possible. We'll see how you feel at the end of this. Okay, I feel like I mean, yeah, so so far, I'm not saying what he did is understandable so far. It's just that it's I find it remarkable that his childhood isn't that over the top. Well, we just don't know that much about like what happened to the orphanage or whatever. That's fucking Soviet orphanage in the late 40s.

That probably wasn't the best place to probably mess you up. Probably some bad stuff. But I really don't know because there's just not like Turkmenistan is still a very close society. So there's not a whole lot of information. I can't imagine this guy keeping good records. No, what's going on. Not a big fan of that. Now, Turkmenistan launched its own currency, the Monat in the late or in the early 1990s. It's great wealth meant that the money launched at parity with the US dollar. So at the start, the Turkmenistan Monat is worth one US dollar, which is great. You know, yeah, a new country, your dollars, a pretty good thing to be worth in the early 1990s. Yeah. Niazov's face was of course prominently printed on each and every bill.

Sure. Now, it's not true that his popularity was without conflict. Dissidents were punished brutally. Although he was pretty popular at first because the Turkmen had been treated like shit by the Soviet Union and now that they were independent, there was enough money for both ridiculous statues and social programs. So Turkmenbashi tripled the salaries of public employees. He heavily subsidized food and he offered free gas, electricity and water to all citizens. Hey. He also spent $130 million turning his presidential 767 into an airborne palace. A little bit for you, a little bit for me. A little bit for you. Lot, lot for me. Yeah, yeah. It's just gold statues for me. Right. Gasoline's basically free. So, you know.

I mean, as a citizen at this point. It's not the worst case scenario. It's not the worst so far. It's not the worst case scenario. It's just like, okay, well, there's a bunch of just terrible statues of this guy. Really bad statues. But you know what? I'm not paying for gas. I'm not paying for gas. Who am I to complain? We will see where this story goes. But speaking of not complaining, you know what makes me not complain? I want to say ads? Yes, ads for the ad product, a couple of services. Oh, okay.

Maybe, maybe even an ad for bubbly sparkling water, the only sparkling water that tastes terrible when mixed with a cray. Is that going to get us any money, Sovi? All right, ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver.

At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the good and bad ass way, nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

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I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on

the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. We're talking about Turkmenbashi, a dictator of Turkmenistan. And at this point, not doing terrible. A lot of statues, way too much money on the plane. Gold baby. I'm really thinking about that gold baby thing because I think what it is is that making a statue of yourself as an adult. Like, yeah, that's messed up, but it's celebrating your big birth as this special event. There's really only the one person that we do that with. Yeah, if someone else is doing it, it's a bold statement. It's a bold statement. And I gotta say, Dave, you're really on the right track.

Oh, delightful. So, at this point, Niyazov does not seem like the worst case scenario for a dictator. The Turkmen people were at least getting something while he robbed the country blind. But Niyazov's corruption quickly took its toll on the national economy. After bribing former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig to lobby on Turkmenistan's behalf, he almost succeeded in glitting the Clinton administration to open the country up to American investment. The deal got derailed because Niyazov demanded 33% of all invested money go to him personally. Oh, I can see that I'm whipping that out on the negotiation table.

But I get a third of everything. No, you don't. Now, this turned out to be a bad idea because most of Turkmenistan's regional trading partners, the former Soviet states, suffered economic collapses after their first few years of capitalism. They stopped being able to buy Turkmenistan's fuel, production fell by two-thirds, and all that sweet plain and statue money stopped coming in. Niyazov responded to this with an effort to boost the country's internal economy. He did this by modernizing the capital, Ashgabat. According to the book, Inside Central Asia, by Dilip Hiru, quote, modernizing Ashgabat meant raising many central neighborhoods to create a network of boulevards

with lavish palaces of white marble and green-tinted glass, dotted with massive fountains and statues of Niyazov and his parents as well as historical Turkmen personalities, guarded by uniformed security men standing to attention. The city would become the site of the largest fountain in the world, a multi-storied shopping mall with water gushing out of the roof and pouring down in a ring of waterfalls. Its main avenue would end up with 22 five-star hotels, where foreign guests would be accommodated only in the rooms that were bugged. Many of the displaced families did not get alternative accommodation or compensation as they could not prove the ownership of their homes. How modern! That fucking fountain is the shit! That is what the future is. And how can we fill

a city with enough gold fountains that we need to have permanent security guards stationed to stop people from stealing the gold? Now, building a shitload of hotels and additional statues during an economic downturn may not seem like a great idea, but that's just because you and I are an economic geniuses. To keep the economy afloat, Turkmenistan's central banks started printing money like it was going out of style. Inflation hit 3000% and the Menat went from being at one-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar to being at 5,200-to-one parity with the U.S. dollar. Turns out that's not a great strategy. Nobody could have predicted that. It's like predicting that offering people a lot of ballooning interest rate mortgages on their houses and loans and stuff

would eventually lead to a massive foreclosure crisis. Who could have seen that coming? No, they did all the right things. They got the statues. They got the gold fountains. And what is it Warren Buffett always says, when the economy's bad, build more fountains. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, that's basic economics, 102 at least. Now, as his entire nation suffered, so did Turkmen Boschie. His doctors told him that his arteries had hardened probably because of his massive chronic alcoholism and constant cigarette smoking. He would need major heart surgery, which he received in a German clinic. He survived the surgery, but it seems to have wrought a change in him.

Up to this point, he had been the absolute ruler of Turkmenistan, but he was more or less normal for like an absolute ruler, banning political parties, building tons of statues, secret police, nothing super wild. Like some fun stuff, but like dictator stuff. Yeah, as far as like ruthless dictators go, this is pretty by the book. Pretty by the book. After his heart surgery, Niazov began to treat his nation as an extension of himself. His doctor told him he had to stop smoking, so he ordered all cabinet ministers to stop smoking too. He banned smoking in public places and even smoking out in the street. That sucks. Yeah, it really sucks. Why can't we smoke outside anymore? The president's heart's bad.

You turned my house into a gold fountain. Let me smoke. My house is a statue of you as a baby. While he was rebuilding his capital in the Muslim Las Vegas and dealing with heart issues and being a nut, Turkmenbashi managed to maintain his policy of careful, stringent neutrality. He joined the non-aligned movement in 1995 and commemorated the event with a 170 foot tall neutrality arch in downtown Ashgabat. It is described as an amalgam of a Trifid Eiffel tower and a marble covered space rocket. Sophie, I'll finish describing this first, but can you look up the neutrality arch so I can show Dave? Now a few years later, after his heart surgery, Turkmenbashi added another statue to the top

of the neutrality arch. A 22 foot tall golden plated statue of himself, wearing Superman's cape with his arms extended into the air. The statue rotates 360 degrees every day, so his face is always facing the sun. Turkmenbashi required that the statue be visible from the international airport, many miles away from the city. Also, the airport was named after him. Now this is reminding me of that Futurama episode where Bender builds the giant statue. Remember me? Did it shoot fire out of it? No, but it's pretty close to that. Sophie, we'll have a picture up on the website. Look at that fucking thing. Oh yeah, when I think of the word neutral. That's what I think of when I

think of neutral. Holy shit, I love that he saw that. He was like, needs another statue. Needs another statue of me made out of gold, wearing a cape. Oh my god. So Turkmenbashi took his neutrality as seriously as he took his absurd statues and monuments. He renamed the official newspaper from Turkmenistan to neutral Turkmenistan. He replaced the national anthem Turkmenistan with independent neutral Turkmenistan state anthem. He wrote both the words and the music for this song. Oh no. I'm just going to read the words. I'm just going to read the first verse because I find it funny. I don't know how to sing this. I am ready to give life for our native hearth. The spirit of ancestors descendants are famous for my land is sacred. My flag plays in

the world. A symbol of the great neutral country flies. This is why you gotta outsource your song writing. You really gotta outsource your song writing. Dictators of tomorrow don't think you can do anything. It's also of the ways to inspire a people. The word neutral is not one of them. No. Like the swiss or neutral. It is the least passionate word. It's again another Futurama reference. Oh. In 1998, post-surgery Turkmenbashi succeeded in getting a second chance to dance with Uncle Sam. He made some deals that included Unokal, an American corporation, helping Turkmenistan to build a gigantic pipeline. The fact that an American company won the contract looked very good to the White House. There was talk of okaying more investment in Turkmenistan. But in January

of that year, those pesky state department bastards released their yearly report on human rights. They noted that Turkmenistan had made basically no progress towards democracy since leaving the Soviet Union. The Clinton administration asked Niazov to give them what Hero's Book calls a gesture towards democratization. In return, Turkmenbashi would be invited to the White House. He'd visited the US once before, shortly after taking power, but he'd been ignored by everybody. And this was something Turkmenbashi very badly wanted, for reasons I don't understand, but probably boiled down to ego. He wanted pictures with the American president. So that February, Niazov got up in front of Turkmenistan's high officials and promised to amend

the constitution, giving more power to parliament and less to himself. True to his word, Bill Clinton invited him to the White House. Turkmenbashi immediately reneged on his promises now that he had the invitation, and said that any constitutional amendments would have to wait until the parliamentary elections in December of 1999. What a shocker. What a shocker. You can't just be like, look, you have to say you'll do this. And then you can take pictures with me. You have to make sure they actually follow through, right?

I mean, if we cared about democracy. That's a good point. Yes, that's a good thing. I don't know if we cared. You're like, look, you have to at least pretend just so we can all look good for at least a moment. For at least a second. Yeah. Let us pretend that we care about freedom around the world.

Which he did. He gave Americans the ability to feel like the good guys for one last time before 9-11. That's true. That's true. So thank you, Turkmenbashi. So Niazov spent a fun week in the United States hanging out with Bill Clinton and Al Gore and talking about democracy and all the democracy that he was totaling and bringing to his people. There were, of course, questions from the press and outrage from people who didn't like dictators.

I'm going to quote from the book Inside Central Asia here. Quote, In his press briefing, the White House spokesman explained that just as in the case of China, the U.S. national economic interest outweighed the administration's concern over Niazov's dismal record on post-Soviet reform. When questioned on the issues of civil liberties and multi-party democracy at such forums as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Niazov repeated the argument that political liberalization would follow only after independence and stability had been consolidated.

His statement that no one had been arrested in Turkmenistan for political reasons flew in the face of the recent State Department report on Turkmenistan. The opposition was repressed, with leading dissidents either imprisoned or committed to psychiatric hospitals. The reality is that roughly 20,000 people had been imprisoned. Right. So it's frustratingly hard to find many stories of the victims of Turkmenbashi's regime, because again, it's still a pretty close society.

The imprisoned were generally tracked by secret police after being freed to keep them from talking. I did find one telegraph article that interviewed a former enemy of the state. Here's what he said about his time in a Turkmenistan prison. Quote, I had read about the beatings and electric shock therapy which I experienced in prison, but it was the unexpected techniques that really damaged me. I was fitted with a gas mask and the air vent was closed. They played tapes of my relatives being beaten after they were arrested.

Their suffering was mine. It was terrible. Wow. Yeah, he did not mass execute people. He did have some people killed, but he didn't do mass executions. His thing seems to be if you stepped out of line, he'd arrest your whole family and beat the shit out of them. Yeah, that is... And then tape them and beat them up.

And that is a creative way to be a fucking villain. Yeah, yeah. Jesus. Yeah, it is one of those dictator strategies that I hadn't run into yet, which is like, obviously people's families being threatened. Oh yeah. Like that specific way. It's like, okay, well, at least you're an innovator.

Oof. Yeah. Yeah. He also tortured shitloads of people, although he did avoid the mass murder that like Gallic Bashar al-Assad is famous for. Turkmenbashi was smart enough to avoid doing anything too obviously horrible, like bombing a dissident chunk of the city or whatever. And so he never really provoked mass outrage from the United States or any of its allies. Since he only tortured and imprisoned people, our government was happy to take his money,

or to be more accurate, let major U.S. corporations take his money. Right, he's staying under the radar here. Staying right under the radar. Yeah. Smart guy. Smart guy. 1999's elections came. 98.9% of the country showed up to choose between 104 candidates for 50 seats in the parliament.

So he kept his promise. People got to vote. Oh, wow. Yeah, they got to vote for parliament. Now, all of the candidates were members of the same party, which he headed, but it's something. But it's a, yeah, you got to press a button or like write a name. You got to, yeah, absolutely. Pull that crank.

You got to write a name. It's democracy. It's rolling. You had twice as many choices as there were seats. Yeah. And even though they were all from the, it's something. The organization for security and cooperation in Europe did not send out election observers, which they normally do, in situations like this, because the elections were seen as too much of

a sham to be worth observing. After the election, the delegates who had been voted in unanimously declared that Niazov was president for life. Oh, wow. Democracy. So lucky for him. He really nailed it. Yeah, he must really like him there.

He must be very popular. Yeah. Now, president for life Niazov introduced a new set of civil rights for his citizens. So this is seeming like he's making his promise. I mean, he didn't, he didn't choose to be president. No, he, the people demanded. Exactly. That he be president for life.

And now he's going to help them out. And he gave them new civil rights. He did not, however, have a great grasp on what civil rights are. What a surprise. So his first new civil right was to cancel all internet licenses except the state owned telecom, telecom company, continuing to prove that he really didn't have a good handle on the concept of civil rights. Niazov next banned ballet and opera calling them, calling them alien detergmen culture.

Somewhere there's like a smoking ballet dancer. Just like, I can't have a cigarette. I can't do ballet. Just staring at that golden baby. Yeah. Oh, yeah, he ordered the country's few movie theaters shut down, but he did replace the movie theaters with a single enormous puppet theater in the capital. What is wrong with him?

Okay, don't you like puppets? What happened at that orphanage? That's the real question with this guy. Did you have a friend to puppet? Like a bowl of cellulose fell out of a movie theater and crushed his favorite puppeteer. Yeah, this is starting to feel like he's he's trolling his country on purpose. Like, I'm going to get rid of the movie theaters and give them puppet shows. Give them puppet shows.

Oh, Christ. Yeah, his exact justification was something along the lines of like all these movies made by foreign people are going to make people not like the way we talk here in Turkey stands. Well, yeah, if he's trying to control the internet and movies, yeah, he's definitely trying to make people in his country not realize just how screwed they are at the moment. Yeah, how how not not great it is to not be able to banning ballet. Like what's subversive about ballet?

Even Stalin had ballets. So you could make your own movie. Yeah, he must have like dated a ballet dancer or something. Got his heart broken. Yeah, it all feels so personal. Yeah, it really does. Like that's the thing. That's the thing that's weird about this guy is that every decision he makes feels like

like a guy who got pissed at something and like then banned it for the entire country. Right, but like cigarettes fucked up my heart. Nobody gets to smoke. Yeah, as someone who loves movies, I'm real I'm real peeved about the movie thing. Because if you're going to ban movies and then make better movies or something, don't replace it with puppets because your people are going to see that and be like, I know there's something better than this out there. I know it gets better than puppets.

I know this is the best we could do. Yeah. So in 2001, President for Life and Puppet Lover Turkmenbashi embarked on the next great chapter of his career as a dictator and as a luminary. He wrote a book. Oh, good. Not just any book. His opus, the Run Nama, was billed by him as the most important book since the Koran.

Part history text, part guide to life, part religious book and all crazy. The Run Nama was the pinnacle of everything insane dictator literature can be. Here's how Turkmenbashi described the book in his own introduction. Run Nama is a visit to this land. Run Nama is a visit to the past of this territory and a visit to the future of this territory. Run Nama is the visit made to the heart of the Turkmen. Run Nama is a sweet spiritual fruit grown in this territory. No human being who has not experienced what I have lived through can understand me.

Oh, wow. Yes, a little bit of emo there at the end. He's a real special. He's a real special boy. He's a real special boy. Yeah. Now, the book is partly fictional, jumping between modern day and the middle ages and focused around a character, Soparmaratniyazov, whose birth was ordained by God himself.

There it is. Yeah, a character with his name who is God's prophet on earth. I wonder if it's based on anyone. If you're going to write a book like this, at least do it under a different name or something, because you can't say you're God. Well, God's prophet on earth. God's prophet on earth. He's not saying he's better than Muhammad, just that he's newer than Muhammad,

and so should be taken more seriously than the prophet of the Muslim faith. Right, he's the new hip Muhammad. He's the new cool Muhammad. Yeah, okay. He'll let you drink, but you can't smoke. Right. Which, I mean, I guess actually, that is a help. Well, this is kind of a wash, actually.

Oh, so we are going to talk about the runama, and I'm going to read you some of its timeless wisdom. But first, you know what else is timelessly wise. Oh, God. I want to say ads again. You nailed it. Ah, two for two. All right, products.

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Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! All right, so, uh, we're talking about the Runama, a book in which Soparmorot Niazov writes about himself as God's prophet. He goes on a quest to discover the history of the Turkmens, and during that quest, he learns that he is God's son, essentially.

Oh, good for him! Good for him! Yeah, he was a child ordained by God, and probably his mom was impregnated by divine will. In other words, Soparmorot Niazov wrote an explicitly Turkmen-themed Bible with himself as Jesus, and mixed it with a self-help book in like one of those history books below Riley writes. Like, that's kind of the Runama in a nutshell.

It's all these red flags just smushed together. It's a lot. Yeah. Now, I'm gonna level with you all. I did not have time this week to read the entirety of the Runama. I may get back to it someday, because apparently reading it three times guarantees you entry into heaven. Yeah, I think next vacation or something just read it on the beach.

Yeah, just read it on the beach. Uh, I did learn, uh, reading Paul Thoreau's New Yorker article, that apparently you, you are guaranteed a trip to heaven if you read it three times. So, you know, people out there, if you're sinning, if you're, if you're doing anything terrible, uh, maybe read the Runama three times in a row. I also feel like more books should use that for marketing. Yeah.

Because it's like, well, I mean, they're probably wrong, but what if they're right? What if they're right? It's just three times reading a book. Yeah, you buy the book once. Yeah. And then you just gotta read it three times. You gotta read it three times.

Does it, sorry, does it count if you do like the thing where like Kindle, like where it reads the book for you? You can do it on double speed. I don't know if that would trick God, Dave. Yeah. Let me, let me read to you where Paul Thoreau learned that this was apparently what Sopar Marat was saying. Okay.

Uh, he apparently was told this by a cab driver during a visit to Turkmenistan. So I'm going to quote from that conversation. He was on TV last night, my driver said. Well, he's on almost every night. Turkmen almost never said Turkmenbashi's name allowed. He said, if you read my book three times, you will go to heaven. How does he know this? He said, I asked Allah to arrange it.

So, yeah. So he told Allah to do this. So he told God that if you read his book three times, anyone, he told God. It's like a promo code. Yeah, exactly. He's doing like a podcast or two. Look, God, can we work something out here? Yeah, this is the heavenly equivalent of offering a discount code on a mattress.

How? Good for him working with God. Yeah, working with God. Now, Paul Thoreau, being a better journalist than me, read the entirety of the runama. He described it as a confused mixture of mim wire, Turkmen lore, potted history, dietary suggestions, Soviet bashing, boasting, wild promises, and Turkmenbashi's poems. He seemed to regard it as both a sort of Koran and as a how-to guide for the Turkmen people, a jingoistic pep talk.

In fact, it is little more than a so-pufferic chloroforman print as Mark Twain described the Book of Mormon. I read it once. Turkmenbashi would have to promise more than heaven for me to read it two more times. Yeah, I think if you're not a dictator, we call this a manifesto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is just the ravings of a madman. And I do feel like in another society, Turkmenbashi is a guy who mails people bombs

and forces the New York Times to print his manifesto. Yeah. And it's those little things that's like hidden in there like recipes. Yeah, recipes, poems. And it's like, oh, you just want to be listened to. Yeah, you were just dictating this to somebody and stopped at some point. It's a string of consciousness. Now, I did skin the runama in search of some of the apparently ageless wisdom

that Turkmenbashi blessed the world with in his book. I can tell it's definitely the book of an old man who was worried about dying, because he writes about time a lot. But the way he writes about time makes no sense at all to me. Quote, The devil keeps a close eye over your time and faith, both of which are your precious belongings. Time is your life in this world, and faith is your life in the other world.

Wasting time means losing one's life or one's self. Teach your child how to save his time and life. All that you can save of time will belong to you. Time is a mace. Hit or be hit. Huh. I don't understand that. So you can hit time?

What does that mean? Like, I get saving time, it's valuable to have more time, obviously. Right. What does time as a mace mean? How do you hit someone with time? I'm trying. I mean, I want to know how to do that. I want to know how.

How do you get hit with time? Like jail? Yeah, I feel like maybe like Marty McFly had this experience. Marty McFly might be the only person who's taken Turkmenbashi's advice. Yeah, get hit by the DeLorean from back to the future. Did get hit by the DeLorean. Yeah. All right, well, we're finding some logic in this.

Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while. You know, he did come to power in the mid-80s, so it's possible he was a big back to the future. Yeah, DeLorean is, it's metallic. It's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that can make sense. Turkmenbashi also had a lot to say on the subject of laziness. He was not for it.

Quote, Laziness means being profligate and leaving oneself to be blown about by the winds of fate. Be hardworking and you will generate returns in cash. Be lazy and you will get into debt. The comfort that laziness provides is like the taste of a sour cucumber. Out of mercy for yourself, work. Joblessness, lack of wisdom and laziness will damage you more than your enemies ever could. Time is a wild predator, but if you train it, you may use it to your benefit.

Do not be subject to time. Let it be your subject. Live so that you regret nothing when you die. Living does not only mean passing time. It means reaching eternity after passing through time. I don't think you should train time by hitting it though. Yeah, that doesn't seem. That seems like time is going to grow up like abused and.

Yeah, I don't want time to turn on me. You do not want time to turn on you. Although that is the one thing time does to everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Also bold decision, speaking out against laziness. Yeah, really. Yeah.

Really, really a dagger. Really innovative. Yeah. Now, the runama also includes handy advice on how to obtain world peace. Quote, if everybody likes their own nation, then the nations will like each other. Feels like. I think that's not how that works. I think that's the opposite of how that works. Yeah, I think historically, the nation really likes itself.

It becomes a problem. That's the first step to other nations ceasing to exist. Yes. This one nation really liking itself. Likes itself so much that it's like, guys, you got to try this nation. You got to try being Germany. It's pretty sweet here in Germany. Oh, you don't want some?

No, come here. Come here. You're going to try this. You're going to take some Germany. Yeah. You'll love it. You'll love it. Turkmenistan, that's what the Soviet Union did to them.

We're just like. Right. This is going so well. We're just going to keep going. Now, the runama also includes handy advice. Oh, sorry, I already read that part. I didn't edit this, which is unusual for me because I'm a hack and a fraud.

So everyone should know that. No, this is raw. We're going. We're raw dogging it. This is punk rock. We are raw dogging it. We are raw dogging this. That passed me by for a second.

That's one of my favorite terms. It's just so visceral and gross. It really is. It's just the nastiest way to describe that. Oh, I love it. Okay. So are you wondering, Dave, how Niazov defined the concept of a nation? Oh, yes.

Yeah. Well, nation is the transformation of human groups in the context of certain spiritual foundations. A nation is shaped materially, according to these spiritual foundations. You get what he's. You need statues. You need statues.

Is that where he's going? Yeah. You got to have, like, you're not a nation unless you have, like, I don't know, 10 or more statues. Yeah. I mean, way more than 10 statues. Right. That's a minimum.

That's, is that the minimum? Yeah. So in the runama, Turkmenbashi credits the Turkmen people with many great historical innovations, including the invention of robots, the invention of white wheat, and the invention of the wheel. What?

Yeah. Robots and the wheel. How did robots get into that? I do not know, Dave. Yeah. I can see, like, anybody can kind of claim the wheel. Yeah. Because it's like, who's going to prove them wrong?

Who's going to prove you wrong? Yeah. Might have been Turkmen. I don't know. Yeah. For all we know. But robots, I feel like we have that written down where that came from. We're pretty clear on robots.

Yeah. So I cannot say that my limited reading of the runama has led me to any staggering revelations about my place in the universe. But Nyazov was adamant that his people needed to read this book. He required anyone entering a Moskora church to kiss a copy of the runama before going into worship. Excellent.

Yeah. In a different New Yorker article by Macy Halford, I found one possible explanation of Nyazov's motivation in writing the runama. The person who provided it is just described as a scholar, I think because they're a person from Turkmenistan who doesn't want to have their family tortured. Fair enough.

Yeah. Quote, Nyazov was somewhat illiterate. He couldn't read or write Turkmen or Russian properly. People who have disabilities, for example illiteracy, want to be seen as geniuses. That's probably what got him started. I don't know about that logic either. But it's funny that he can't read.

I mean, it's definitely most dictators are compensating for things, right? Yeah. That part seems accurate. Probably starts with a profound lack of confidence where it's like, you're fine, man, you're fine. You don't have to build this many statues and starve your people or bulldoze their houses or whatever. Yeah.

Like, it's all right. You're fine. You're fine. Yeah. You're doing great, buddy. We were all impressed when you were an engineer. Yeah, that would have been a great career. Would have been a great career.

He would have done so much good things as an engineer. Keeping the lights on, not building golden baby statues. You think that's where it started as an engineer? He was like, you know what I really want to engineer is statues. Is statues. That's, yeah, closer than, yeah, it's comfortable. So once it was published, once the renama was published, Turkmenbashi did everything in his power

to make it a central part of Turkmenistan life. According to the book, Inside Central Asia, Nizov erected a commemorative complex in his home village of Gypjak, conceived as a symbol of the rebirth of the Turkmen nation, which included a mosque whose walls carry quotations from the Quran as well as the renama. The Turkmen government ordered a prominent display of the renama, not only in bookshops and official buildings, but also in mosques and churches,

sharing its place with the Quran or the Bible. The colossal pink statue of the renama in Ashgabat was too conspicuous to be missed. Another decree extended the book's presence to libraries and schools and made it a part of the curriculum. To be able to recite passages of the book became a badge of honor. Next, civil servants, teachers, and doctors were required to pass a test on its teachings. Then this requirement also became part of the driving test.

The renama was lauded in songs, and the state-run media regularly broadcast or printed excerpts from it. Criticizing the book, even in private, was tantamount to criticizing Nizov, an offense punishable with a five-year jail sentence. Nizov redesigned the educational system, reducing the compulsory schooling from two years to one, and higher education by three years down to a mere two.

Inexplicably, he reduced the college and university enrollments to 10% of the then-current figure. He banned the teaching of foreign languages and decreed that the exceptional history and culture of Turkmen must be stressed with his renama to act as the lodestar. The worst part is this book sounds terrible. It's a terrible book, and then he bans other languages, and cuts, like, reduces school by a half,

so that nobody has any education. So that presumably they'll find his book more compelling. Exactly, yeah. Like, you can't have these people reading other books. No, yeah, it's like if Neil Breen or Tommy Wiseau opened a theater and had, like, Citizen Kane posters next to the room, and it was just walled with that, and started a film school where they're like,

look, we're just gonna focus on the room. On the classics. Yeah, but gradually they phase out Citizen Kane for just... Exactly, he's trying to create... He's basically lowering the bar as much as he can to make his book the best thing around. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what's happening. That's infuriating.

Yeah, now, you may have noted from that passage I read, a little note about a statue of the runama that was put up in the Capitol. Oh. I have a video of that statue day. Oh! And it'll be up on our site, behindthebastards.com, but I've got to show it to you,

and I'd like you to describe it to our listeners, because most of them are probably jogging, or driving, or pooping at the moment, and can't look at the video. God, I hope they're pooping. I hope they're pooping, too. Okay, I'm not sure what I'm seeing right now. There's like cool, very cool music.

There's very cool music. I've seen a lot of colors. I feel like they should be high. Oh, wow. It's a book. It's a very colorful book. Is this a statue? This is a statue.

It's opening. Oh my God! It is a giant book. It opens every night in Ashkaban. It opens every night? This is like a Disney attraction. Like this should be like the story of Snow White opening. It is the new Korra, Niazo's spiritual guide for the people.

It's an interact. It's like a moving... Is that a project? There's fountains. Of course, there's fountains. Of course, there's fountains. Children are expected to learn past lessons. Wow.

He loves his book. I think so does anyone who wants to get a driver's license. What is the point of that? Yeah, he made you memorize bits of it to get a driver's license. Yeah, why? Okay. There's so much to unpack here.

Yeah. So first of all, he loves his book so much that he made a giant statue that just opens. Yeah, a statue of his book that opens. Yeah, just like celebrating the act of opening his book. Okay, so the driver's license. What in the book helps with driving? Well, you got to know how to use time as a maze, Dave.

Otherwise, you're going to get hit. So back to the DeLorean. Back to the DeLorean. Yeah, okay. See, it all ties together. The internal logic's consistent. I mean, I want to be honest. After writing a book, I'm pretty proud of it.

Right. But I don't think I would build a giant statue of my book, A Brief History of Ice. I would build a statue of your book, but... See, if you build it, it's fine. It is fine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I should note that reading my book will not help you pass a driver's test. You never know. You never know. Don't sell yourself short. Don't presume what people will take away from your book. I learned how to merge from you. But this is a running theme with, like,

Gaddafi with that astronaut thing. Yeah, with the death of the astronaut, the greatest short story of all time. Dictators are brutal and do all these things, and then they're like, but you got to read my stuff. You got to read my book. It's just like, why don't we start with that? Like, let's all read your book first,

and we'll praise you, and then you don't have to hurt everybody. You know what it is. And someone has a post go viral on Twitter unexpectedly, and they link their SoundCloud or something. It's the that, but if you're in charge of a country. Right, yeah. Oh, God, I'm in charge. Everybody look at this.

Oh, so many followers. Didn't expect this, guys. Didn't expect this, guys. Here's my PayPal. Oh, wait, I'm in charge of where all the oil and gas money goes, so it just goes right to my bank account. So that's all we're going to talk about in part one of this episode,

but when we come back, we're going to talk about Turkmenbashi's post-2001 career. And trust me, Dave, shit's going to go even further off the rails. Turns out all the craziness we've talked about so far was just a dress rehearsal. Yeah, yeah. So you got any plugables you want to plug before we head out?

I guess so. I have a podcast network. They're run with Tom Reiman called Gamefully Unemployed. You can check us out at patreon.com. Slash, Gamefully Unemployed. We have a new show called Fox Mulder is a maniac. It's exclusive. Yeah, it's R Behind the Bastards,

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powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason,

and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut

who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.