RedHanded - Episode 283 - Rasputin: Russia’s Greatest Love Machine

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

The much-told legend of Rasputin – the giant, wild-eyed, well-hung, wandering Siberian monk who seduced the Tsarina herself – is mostly a bunch of absolute borscht. But the real story is just as wild.  H&S look at the life of a peasant who infiltrated Russian nobility, embodying the tensions of a nation – a charismatic zealot who mysteriously healed the Romanovs’ sickly heir.  So join us to find out how Russia went from Romanovs to Revolution; the possible MI6 ties to Rasputin’s death; and a classic, quick-fire RedHanded rundown of…the entire First World War.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. Maybe we're in January, maybe we're in February. I don't know. Doesn't matter. Let's keep going. Exactly. So before we get going, we, of course, have to remind you all, because you've all forgotten because you don't listen, North America.

We are coming, but most of them have gone. Most of them have gone, so I've got the list in front of me. OK, nice, nice, nice. Seattle, gone. Portland, gone. Dallas, gone. Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington and Philadelphia, all gone. If you are listening to this, probably on the day of release, there may still be tickets for San Francisco, Houston, Denver and Boston. But I cannot promise anything. If you are in Los Angeles, Toronto, Royal Oak, Michigan or New York, please go buy tickets. We're getting towards like the 70% full in those places. But guys, it's the first time we are coming to North America.

We want to see all of your beautiful faces, especially you LA, New York, and Toronton faces. So get your tickets. Head over right now to redhandedpodcast.com and there will be all of the links you need for your viewing pleasure. Yes, please buy them. We want to see you and we think, we can't confirm this, so if it doesn't happen, you never heard this. We think we may be securing an extremely special guest. Extremely special guest.

We can't quite believe it and we won't until it happens, but it might be happening. It might be happening. And if you were not there at the show, then you won't be able to believe it either because seeing is believing. And to see, you've got to buy tickets. So go do that. Exactly. Doubting Thomas is the lot of you. Right. That is over and done with. Let's get on with today's show. Russia's greatest love machine? I mean, yes. Yes, absolutely. So I've been wanting to do this for a while because there are a lot of myths about this person.

He's a very well-known figure. I don't think anyone doesn't know who he is. But basically no one knows anything that's true about him, which is what I discovered reading the three enormous books I read. You did, and I am incredibly excited. I read the script this morning and I was like, yes, let's do it. Good, because it's taken me months. Okay, here we go.

Get ready to learn about the 1900s. Before the Great War, at the beginning of the 20th century, the matriarch of all the European monarchies had died. Her father was German, she was half German, and she married a German. When Queen Victoria died, Europe would never be the same. Not the West, not the East, neither. Territorial empire-building whispers in multiple nations were building into deafening roars. Imperial Russia,

a country so vast it spans two continents, home to 125.6 million people, was on the brink of revolution. But inside the walls of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Tsarina Alexandra, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, had her own problems. And because she was a Tsarina, with absolutely no idea what real life was or what her people were really suffering through, she thought that her woes were the end of the world. And this was incredibly short-sighted. And also just the classic of this time. It's so like, let them eat cake. Like, that's very much the vibe in

the Winter Palace. Of course. And before anybody says it, I know Marie Antoinette never actually said that. It was a mistranslation. But that is the vibe. She said let them eat croissant. So Alexandra's second cousin and her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, was not doing a great job of ruling his vast empire. Yeah. I actually don't think he was ever doing a great job of ruling his vast empire. Yeah. I actually don't think he was ever meant to rule. I think his brother died or something happened. He was not meant to be king, as far as I remember.

Yes. And he actually had a breakdown when his father died because he knew that he wasn't up to the job. He had no skills to lead. And even worse than that, he was a firm believer in the divine right of kings. Meaning that he wasn't a very good listener when it came to what his advisors, you know, people that actually knew what they were talking about, had to say. There's like a, I don't even know if idiom is the right word, and I'm not sure if it was ever

actually said in court, but there's like a saying that's like, oh, the most influential person in Russia is the last person who spoke to Nicholas II. Because he had no, he had nothing to hang any of this advice on. He was just like, yeah, sure. And then the next person. What I will say though is Zarina Alexandra and he definitely loved each other. And she did have enormous influence over him.

He didn't listen to his advisors, but he did listen to his wife. The problem was that his wife knew less than nothing about anything. And everyone knew it. Inside the palace and out. And she was a German. Yeah, just racking up the problem, bingo. So the dynasty of Imperial Russia, once the powerhouse of the East,

was hanging on by a thread. Oblivious as Alexandra and Nicholas may have been to the hardships of the common man, they did have an inkling that something was slightly off. And to get their inkling to stop inkling, there was an obvious solution, at least to the imperialist Russian mindset. All the Romanovs had to do was to prove to the imperial court and the serfs alike that they were strong enough as a family to lead the nation.

And to do that, they needed an obvious heir for the country to get behind. But Alexandra and Nicholas only had daughters. More problems, more uh-ohs. Big uh-ohs, because after Catherine the Great gazumped her husband to rule herself with her level, the monarch top spot was a boys-only club. Like Catherine before her, Alexandra was unpopular with the populace for a number of reasons. Firstly, like we said, like Queen Victoria, she was a German. And she had been raised there and she actually barely spoke any Russian.

And though I do, like, we do have to point out that obviously back in the day that the European monarchies were a lot more intertwined. Oh yeah, it's like a fucking swingers party. They just chuck their keys in the bowl. Exactly. And you might have had the wife of a monarch coming to your country not being able to speak the language, but

it's not to say that it would have made the public okay with it totally and it's also exactly what happened to Catherine the Great yeah she showed up to Russia not being able to speak Russian not knowing anything absolutely and I think that maybe if the general understanding wasn't that Tsar Nicholas just listened to his wife about everything and she had not a fucking clue about this country she didn't even speak the language and she knew nothing about anything anyway then maybe it wouldn't have been such a problem if people saw her as just like this wife who sits in the bedroom and like has multiple sons they probably would have had less of a problem with her so alexandra and czar nicholas her husband and second cousin actually spoke english to each other, which, as a Russian, is going to rub you the wrong way.

And as Alexandra had four daughters in a row, she was perceived by many as the end of the Romanov line, the collapse of an empire, which is quite a heavy burden to place on a womb. Yes, there is one thing about this particular story. Everyone loves a scapegoat. Throughout the whole story, they're like the collapse of Russia is Tsarina Alexandra's fault

and then it becomes Rasputin's fault and then later down the line, it becomes Gorbachev's fault. Of course, of course. A few hundred years down the line, it's Gorbachev's fault. I think that if you are seeing your position as like divined by God

and then your empire, therefore, is a gift to you from God. And then those things start to fall apart. You need an explanation. And it comes down to this person is evil and this person is whatever. And I think that the seeds were sown early on with Alexandra, particularly with her not even being Russian. So they don't like her womb. They think it's going to lead to the collapse of the Russian empire. And you know what? Her not giving them a male heir, that would have caused a lot of instability. There's no doubt about that. So Tsarina Alexandra entirely blamed herself for the inability to produce a boy. She was convinced that she was filled with sin and needed to get

closer to God so her Lord Almighty would bless her with a son. And when I said just then that her not giving Nicholas a son could cause instability, I'm not blaming her, obviously, but that's not how they would have seen it. So this divine desire by Alexandra spurred her on a quest to spiritual cleanliness, to cure herself so that she might be given a son that could go on to rule Russia and save the Romanov line. A lot of pressure, a lot of pressure on Alex here. And this pursuit of spiritual cleanliness was not unusual at the time. We are in the 1900s, let's remember. And by this stage, people were pretty sick of religion and posh people were so bored of it that they were turning to the occult

and various spiritual practices all over the world. Russia was no different. Conmen had a pretty easy path into the winter palace of St. Petersburg as long as they promised the Tsarina a son. The most prominent of these scammers was a man we will call Monsieur Philippe because that was his name. Philippe had studied to be a physician as a younger man, but left it all behind to pursue occult medicine instead. Presumably that's much easier. I mean, maybe not because he doesn't really pull it off. Easier to become the master of. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you invent something, you can be like, I'm the best at this, like Aaron Hubbard.

Oh, of course. Not easy in the sense that it works because it's definitely not real and mrs philip wiggled his way into the imperial court via the ominously named crow sisters these two were from montenegro and married into the russian royal family they were also known as the black peril i kind of rate them oh yeah i mean they're just like there's a lot of people in this story that are just completely as mark horrigan would put it mental posho yeah like if i was a princess of montenegro living in the imperial court of russia in the 1900s damn right i'm buying fucking tarot cards like i've got out my fucking ass of course i'm gonna call myself the black peril and like jump headfirst into the occult of course that's what i'm going to call myself the Black Peril and like jump headfirst into the occult. Of course that's what I'm going to do.

These two fucking just OG spooky bitches all the fucking way. They really are. Should we start calling ourselves the Crow Sisters? Oh, yes. And sometimes the Black Peril. The Black Peril on Fridays. So these two were both feared and ridiculed by the other aristocracy for their fascination with the unknown and unknowable. And when the crows heard, then Monsieur Philippe was kicking around,

seeing through the veil, speaking to the dead, and most importantly, changing the sex of fetuses in the womb, they sent him straight to Tsarina Alexandra. And initially, Philippe was a hit, so much so that Tsar Nicholas II awarded him that medical degree that he never managed to get, just for fun. Dr Philippe was around for quite a while, but when Alexandra gave birth to yet another girl, he was banished from court in disgrace. You do have to think, if you are him, I'm like,

OK, she's pregnant again. 50-50. Either I am going to get a fucking little crown that I can wear around in a womb shape. In a womb shape with a little male fetus on it. Or I'm going to get banished. I'm just going to get given a penis hat that I get to wear for the rest of my life.

Absolutely. And I would take that chance. And he did and he lost. He is banished and the Tsarina sank further into her spiritual despair. But before he left for good, a cult doctor,

real Dr. Monsieur Philippe, made a prediction that another wise man slash healer would appear to take his place at court. And my little sausages, I think you can guess who he was!

But before we meet our monk man from the East, something else happens first. Tsarina Alexandra finally got her wish. She gave birth to a baby boy on the 12th of August, 1904. She called him Alexei, and he was hailed as the future of imperialist Russia. And Alexei means defender, so there's little doubt that the Romanovs thought that this is exactly what he would turn out to be. But there was a hitch. Thanks to Queen Victoria and all of the inbreeding among the royal families of Europe, little Alexei was born with haemophilia.

Queen Victoria was the one to bring it in. It wasn't in before her. Interesting. So haemophilia, for those of you who don't know, is a genetic blood condition that makes internal bleeding much more likely. And it's harder for the body to form blood clots. Now, obviously not everyone with haemophilia is a big old inbred. Obviously not. All we're saying here is that genetic conditions like this, like haemophilia, are obviously going to be more likely in a royal family like this, where they are keeping the gene pool incredibly shallow, shall we say. More of a puddle.

And haemophilia is serious business. It can be life-threatening because a person with haemophilia, like a slightest knock, could lead to unstoppable internal bleeding. It's such a difficult thing because if they're bleeding internally, the last thing you want to do is cut them open, they'll be bleeding more. So what do you do? You just have to wait for it to stop. And this was a problem. This was a big problem. The Romanovs could not tell anyone. A genetic condition within the royal family and a sickly heir to the throne would only weaken their hold on a nation that was already slipping away. So the little prince's disease was top secret.

But being family, the Crow sisters knew about the little secret, the big secret, the big problem secret, and they thought that they had a solution. A Siberian peasant with a talent for predicting the future, calming horses and healing ailments. Ra Ra Rasputin, of Boney M. Fame. The towering, glassy-eyed, lecherous, unkempt Siberian wandering man of God that would go down in history as the man who changed the course of Russia forever. Or did he? We are going to find out. By the time the Crow sisters caught wind of him, Rasputin had been doing the rounds in St. Petersburg for quite some time, gradually impressing more and more important members of the church and the gentry,

many of whom would go on to become his most dedicated followers. Rasputin couldn't have infiltrated the imperial court at a more opportune moment. The Romanovs needed a lot of help. Tsar Nicholas II had inherited the reign from hell. He was constantly bouncing from disaster to crisis to catastrophe. One of Nicholas's particularly major fuck-ups was sending basically all of the Russian troops to fight in Manchuria in the First Sino-Japanese War. Russia was just as desperate then for warm water ports as it is now. Never happens, Russia, sorry. The elusive warm water port is a hard one for them. Yeah, they're so sick of Vladivostok. Anyway, all of the Russian army being in Manchuria meant that there were very few military men around in actual Russia to put down any rebellions, which you will be unsurprised to hear

were happening quite a lot. So much so that in 1905, Tsar Nicholas ordered what few troops he had in Russia to open fire on protesters, which led to one of the many revolutions the Romanovs would see. On the scale of things, this is kind of a baby rev when you consider what's to come. We're not going to go into the whole thing, but essentially the upshot of this relatively small revolution was that immature, unfit to rule Nicholas II conceded to what's essentially a

constitutional monarchy like the one we have in the UK. I'm hesitant to call it a parliament because I don't think the members of the Duma were elected. I think they were appointed. So it's not like our elected democratic officials. Basically, they enforced upon him more advisors than he already had. But the problem with that, even though he agreed to it, was that Nicholas so truly believed that he had been chosen to rule by God, he didn't think he could do anything wrong. So he didn't listen to the Duma, like at all. So the parliament, if you can call them that, didn't get to do anything, which meant that any politically able allies that Nicholas had in court, who were few and far between, but did exist, evaporated quite quickly. Yeah. And this is when Rasputin was invited to the

Imperial Palace to have tea with the Tsar and Tsarina. And this initial meeting lasted for three hours. Tsar Nicholas was initially pretty disinterested in this peasant, barely literate, robed figure who spoke endlessly about loving everyone all the time. Because yes, Rasputin was not often a prophet of doom. He actually spent most of his time talking about the life-changing magic of tidying up. Joke. His whole vibe was extremely love thy neighbor, even if that neighbor is Jewish. So,

you know, he's a pretty revolutionary character. Oh yeah, that's radical. In imperialist Russia. So you can imagine that somebody like Tsar Nicholas, who thinks that he has been appointed by God to be the Tsar of this enormous empire, then has this man who, obviously you guys know what Rasputin looks like, but a man who looks like a haggard shepherd man walking into the winter palace at St. Petersburg and talking about loving your neighbour? At the time, of course, Tsar Nicholas II was like, who the fuck is this person? He's not listening to politicians. It's only when his wife is like, eh? Yeah.

That he's like, oh, okay, darling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yes, so like we said, in pre-revolution Russia, where pogroms were state-sponsored, this idea of loving everybody regardless of their religion or ethnicity was pretty radical. It was also a view that would cause Rasputin some major problems later on in our story. Yeah, he has this, obviously in pop culture, this sort of like prophet of doom kind of person. And it's easy to think that when you look at him yeah but that's not what he said no no no he was just like be nice to everyone all the time maybe i'm not saying he was a good person we will go on to detail just quite what piece of

shit he was but um a prophet of doom not so much after this first royal meeting rasputin continued to spread the gospel heal important people and make scarily accurate predictions for a few years. And so he climbed ever higher in the estimations of both church and state, which in imperial Russia are the same thing. And June 1907 brought to Rasputin's real moment to shine. He was called upon by the Tsarina to the bedside of her son. Alexei was gravely ill and this, as we already know, was a huge deal because nobody knew about Alexei's haemophilia and the Romanals were terrified about anyone finding out how fragile their lineage really was. Rasputin obediently went to Alexei's side, prayed over his body

and the next day the prince was miraculously cured. And this happened again and again. Nobody knows how he was doing it, but we do know that Rasputin did help the delicate prince somehow over and over again. So where did this magical, miracle, mad monk man come from? Short answer, Siberia. Long answer, Pokrovskaya. A 36-hour drive in today-time's car movements from St. Petersburg. Or, you know, just a casual 22-day walk. Assuming that you don't stop at all, ever. And almost all of the things that you might believe about Rasputin just aren't really

true. First off, he was never a monk. He wasn't even a priest. And his name wasn't Rasputin. He came by that name later in life. But he began as a son of a peasant farmer with the name Grigori or Grishka to his mates. And Grishka was a bit of a shit growing up. He stole fences, he stole horses, all sorts. Rasputin was particularly good with horses, but he was even better with women. He got in fights quite a lot and one time he got in a fight so bad that it actually left a permanent lump on his forehead. Which he covers with his hair for the rest of his life. So he is vain to a certain extent. I think there is this image of him of being completely disinterested in looks and all of that.

And he, you know, does go on to do some gross stuff. But, like, I don't believe he didn't care what he looked like. No, I think he knew the effect of his appearance. Because he was, maybe I'm incorrect, but he does seem to be taller than the average person at that time he has a very big beard he has long hair he's got this very like big broad presence to him and I think that and the eyes it's the eyes I had to once I had finished reading one of the many books I read for this I had to move the book into the other office because I didn't want to look at them anymore and that's just a photograph that's like a hundred bajillion years old, but I didn't want to look. I can't imagine what they would do

to you in person. Yeah. I think he knows exactly how his appearance backs up the claims that he's making and makes him a very imposing figure when he enters a room. And I think the lump on his forehead, he probably hit that because A, vanity, but also B, because he was like, that probably makes me look like a bit of a ruffian. yeah and i think this is something that maybe a lot of people don't know i certainly didn't and that he actually did get married and even had a few children although only a few survived the bitter hardship of a siberian childhood back in the 1900s and perhaps it was the fact that four of his children died of very preventable diseases that Rasputin got a reputation for being quite a vicious drunk. He would like to get pretty

twatted and then ride around in his horse and cart insulting people around the town. He was also very lecherous and gropey and that is probably what earned him the name Rasputin, which means the debauched one. There's some things that you will see where people like, oh no, it means like a crossroads or like, but like two of the books I read were written in Russian and then translated into English. And in one of the four words, the like the author's like, it's very sweet when English speakers try and like decode it, but it does not mean that at all. But one day, after riding around on his cart and calling people names and groping women, the debauched one had a vision of the Virgin Mary and he decided to turn

it all around. The mother of God came to him and told him, Grigory, I am weeping for the sins of mankind. Go wander and cleanse the people of their sins. So he decided to go a-wandering, which was a fairly common practice for holy men at the time because they didn't have, like, TV and stuff. And Rasputin a-wandered pretty far, 325 miles, in fact, to a monastery. And it was there, at 28 years old, that Rasputin found God.

He stood in swamps for days, he got bitten half to death by midges, he mingled with self-flagellating monks, and then returned to Pokrovska, a changed man. He stopped drinking, stopped womanising, and started throwing his arms about and wouldn't shut up about how he'd seen the light. I think he has, obviously, the images we have of him are still,

because it's the olden days, but he was a really energetic person. Like he's never still, he's like flinging his arms around, like he has a really funny walk. Like he's a very energetic and physical person. And this conversion to becoming a more religious person wasn't that odd at the time. Siberia is 50 times the size of the UK, with half the population of the UK. Distrust in the Orthodox Church has deep roots in Russia, and pagan practices there often wear Christian disguises. The God of Thunder, for example, just became St. Elijah,

and the festivals surrounding him remained. In that sense, Siberia was a lot freer, religiously speaking, than some of the more industrialised areas of Russia and the geographical distance from the centre powers of the church meant that there were a lot of sects that played by their own rules entirely. One of these denominations were called the Kleisties, which is similar to the Russian word for whip, because the Kleisties would wear white robes and descend into the crypts of churches to chant strange hymns whilst whipping themselves. Then they would spin around and around and around until they were sweating, like Jesus had, in the Garden of Gethsemane.

So the Garden of Gethsemane reference is, it's the day before Jesus is crucified and he's in the garden and he's sweating so much he starts to bleed. And it's the, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's that moment that's in the Garden of Gethsemane. So sweating blood in Christian traditions, traditional like Orthodox Christian traditions is quite like, it's very symbolic. And these clistys, when they were spinning, they would reach this sort of sweaty, ecstatic climax,

at which point they would fall on the ground and all have a big old orgy. Yeah. I think it is really difficult to quantify just how big Siberia is. Nobody is policing this. Yeah. I mean, the fact that it is so big and so sparsely populated and the climate and the terrain, who is going to go out there and be like, no, you must practice the orthodox way. They're obviously not. So this is the sort of prime breeding ground for, like you said, these sects to pop up, these very, very different and diverse forms of Christianity to propagate. And Rasputin is right in the middle of it. And the idea behind these big orgies that the Cleistis would have was to sin oneself free of sin.

So you do everything until you can sin no more. And Rasputin did attend some of these ceremonies. He is associated with the Cleistis, but it's very much by his enemies. And they're Rasputin did attend some of these ceremonies. He is associated with the Ecclesiastes, but it's very much by his enemies and they're like, he's having all of these. And that's the thing about Rasputin, that A, why there are so many things about him that everyone believes that are not true,

and B, why it's quite difficult to know what was true is because people hated him. So they were saying things to discredit him all the time. However, it's likely he attended these ceremonies, but we don't think he was involved in the orgies like his enemies would have you believe. And we think that because, had Rasputin officially joined the Clisti sect,

his progression through the echelons of the Orthodox Church would have just been impossible. But the rumours followed him nevertheless, and they still do. Unperturbed and possibly unaware, Rasputin continued pilgriming around. On one occasion, he made a particularly impressive journey to the centre of the Orthodox world, Mount Athos in Greece, just a cheeky 3,000 miles from his home. He didn't like it very much because

all of the monks were gay there, he said, and he immediately, once he got there, turned around and went home and went back to Siberia to be his own version of a frontiersman in priest's clothing. I think frontiersman is, it's the best description of him I have come across because he completely embodies the wild. Yeah. But is going towards something more modern, if that makes sense. Sure. So Rasputin didn't do any drinking on his travels, but he certainly did quite a lot of womanising.

And his wife back home, well, she just had to deal with it. But maybe she was quite glad that he left her alone. He was quite arm-wavy and starey at this point in his life and also looked quite dirty. I'd feel like not the cleanliest man is probably going to give you a touch of the BVs. I also wonder, though, I've been thinking this a lot because obviously the thing you hear about him the most is that he was grubby and, like, stank.

Isn't that everyone in Siberia in the 1900s, do you know? Very true, very true. So an odd and eccentric character he certainly was but somehow simultaneously magnetic and irresistible maybe the og peacock maybe the original pickup artist so rasputin's wife said that his cross to bear in life was needing to shag all the time she's not bothered man this is the thing when people try and expose him as this womanising, he's like, I know. And everyone's like, we know.

It's not a secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And crucially, like we said, Rasputin was never a monk or even a priest, so he wasn't technically breaking any holy vows by shagging all these women. Just maybe a little silly commandment or two because he did have a wife.

Yeah, he does have a wife, so he'd be adultering and he'd be coveting. Yeah. Eventually, Rasputin's wanderings took him to the big city. And it would be easy to say that he was on an ego trip to take over Russia, all of the ladies and the world. But I just don't think that's true. I think he wanted to fuck bitches, get money and drink Madeira is what I think. And he does get back on the booze in a big way after years of sobriety. He had no interest in taking over the world or, as the animated film would have you believe, kill all of the Romanovs. He just wanted to

live his debauched life and talk about Jesus. Anyway, more analysis to come. For now, let's focus on the St. Petersburg section of Rasputin's life. He made it to St. Petersburg to talk to more and more influential people. And I don't think he seeks it out. I think he's sort of, he's like referred, referred, referred, referred because they're like, oh my God, there's this man. And he like cured my butt hemorrhoid and predicted my mother's death. Do you know what I mean?

And then he just gets passed to the next level of person because he was charismatic. His eyes were enchanting. And just like he was definitely healing the prince in some way, he had this enigmatic persona that sucked people in. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off,

fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton

Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today

that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts,

or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. So let's get back to little Prince Alexei. It's a matter of historical fact that Rasputin did make Alexei better. Somehow, someway, he was able to stop the little prince from bleeding, internally or otherwise. So how was he doing it? Well, we really don't know. No one does. But the world and the internet have got some theories. Theory number one, Rasputin used his magical green eyes and dazzling personality to hypnotise the young prince into such a calm state that he just stopped bleeding. Which, sure, is not rocket science. If you are stressed, your blood pressure is higher and you will bleed more.

So if you're hypnotised into a state of calm, your blood pressure will be lower and you will bleed less. Would it magically stop a haemophiliac from internally bleeding? I don't know. Yeah. It's not like it's just like, oh, put your whole body above your heart. Yeah. Put the bit that's internally bleeding above your heart and you'll be fine. Like, maybe.

It's not like little Alexi just had like a bit of anxiety and they were like, let me just calm you down. Yes, yeah. He was a haemophiliac. Yeah, it's serious business. It's not like his mother just has the vapors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really bad stuff. But interestingly, this hypnotic theory has its basis in Rasputin's reputation as a horse whisperer.

There's not much information out there on this that I was able to find. So fellow horse girls, please get in touch if you know more. But apparently another term for horse whisperer is blood stiller. The idea is that someone who is good with horses, like Rasputin, calms them down so their blood pumps slower and then they become good little ponies. It could make some sense. A calm prince would bleed slower. But the problem with that theory is that Rasputin managed to reverse Alexei's internal bleeding when he wasn't even in the same room as him. So it can't have been hypnotism.

He even managed to do it when he wasn't in the same province. The most notable instance of this was when Alexei was in a terrible way after some sort of hunting accident in Poland. Who is letting him hunt? Yeah. Just tell people that he loves hunting, but maybe just like don't let him do that. Like the paparazzi aren't following him around. Yeah, exactly. And when this happened, when this accident happened, the Tsarina telegrammed Rasputin begging for help. Rasputin got back to her pretty quickly and told her that God had

heard her tears and that her son would survive. She just needed to make sure that the doctors didn't bother him too much. And he was right. Alexei was once again magically better overnight. So I had to ask my mum how telegrams work because I don't know. I said, how quick are they? Because it seems mad to me that the Tsarina can be in St Petersburg and Rasputin can be in Siberia and they manage to communicate in the same day. But apparently telegrams were the same day or the

day after. And mum was like, well, if you're the Tsarina, you could probably just clear the deck. And then a little boy on a bike brings it to your house. And then you have to go to the telegraph station to reply. Well, you know what? If I was a Tsarina of imperialist Russia, the least I would expect, especially when my son is on fucking death door because I let him go hunting. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would want same day delivery. So yes, Alexei was once again magically made better overnight. Which brings us on to theory number two.

Aspirin. Aspirin was somewhat of a like miracle drug back in the 1900s and doctors prescribed it for basically everything what those pasto doctors didn't know though about aspirin is that it dramatically thins the blood of humans so my dad has thicker than average blood. Treacly. Very treacly. And so he takes an aspirin a day, but like a specially prescribed one that is weaker than the ones that you buy over the counter. Right, right. So yeah, it works. It thins your blood.

Yeah. And even for people who are not particularly treacly, as you get older, it's advised that you take half an aspirin a day. Just in case. Just in case. So therefore, knowing what we know about aspirin, it's likely that Prince Alexei would have been prescribed aspirin for his pain, which would have thinned out his already very thin blood and made his condition much, much worse. Could Rasputin somehow have known this? Maybe.

He does say to the Tsarina, just like, make sure the doctors don't bother him and then he gets better magically, right? Maybe keeping Alexei away from the doctors and therefore the favourite blood thinning drug of the age was just a happy coincidence. None of these theories are amazing and a lot of people have punted different ones over the years.

None of them are particularly convincing, but the point is Rasputin was doing something and that something was invaluable to the royal family. He earned the trust of the Tsarina and thereby the ear of the Tsar and the attention of all of St Petersburg basically overnight. Everyone knew who Rasputin was. He was around the Tsarina almost constantly. And only an extremely select few at court

knew about little Prince Alexei's life- and empire-threatening disease. So nobody understood why the stinky peasant monk man was around all the time. Nobody could understand it. So, of course, the rumour mill started to turn. Everyone thought that Rasputin, the renowned drunken womaniser, was having it off with the Tsarina. Which I get why.

Of course, of course. Now, if you don't know the Rasputin song, then you might just be American. But it might be a shock to learn that West German manufactured band Boniem are not the most reliable of historians. Do you want to give us a little song? No, I do not. Do you? No. But I did, I listened to the time suck on Rasputin, which is great, by the way, go listen

to it. And Dan Cummings, the host, plays Ra Ra Rasputin by Boney M. And he sounds so shocked and amazed that it exists. But like for British people, like that was on top of the pops. I sang that growing up. yeah yeah and there's actually um richard herring the comedian wrote a tv series about rasputin as if everything in the boney m song was true my dad was like playing it over christmas and everything i don't know why but yeah no go listen to it if you've never listened to it i'm certainly not going to sing it for you, but it is out there and it is fun.

But yes, not the most reliable historical song of fact, because Rasputin was almost definitely not the lover of the Russian queen. But he was kind of a zeitgeist in and of himself. Pre-Bolshevik Russia was an expanse occupied by the super-rich and the super-poor. Rasputin, so poor he was born with no last name, had infiltrated the super of super-est rich. So he was quite the Cinderella story. This sort of social ladder climbing had never really happened before him.

He embodied the tensions of a nation. The peasant had made it to the palace. And the courtiers were not at all happy about it. And this is where all of the rumours come in that he stank like a goat. And he did do things like stand in lakes for days, but this is very much a time where Christianity lives in poverty, you know, and you have to deprive yourselves of all of these things. So a lot of people were doing that. And you do have to wonder whether the imperial court would have thought anyone from Siberia stank like a goat because they weren't landed gentry. And Rasputin actually, during his womanising, spent a lot of time in bathhouses. So it would

have been quite difficult for him to stay stinky all the time, whether he was pursuing or harassing women, probably a bit of both, to be honest, depending on who you believe. But despite his reputation, he impressed the church with his predictions and with his healing. Again, in this part of Russian history, the church and the state are the same thing. And ideologically speaking, true Christianity existed in great poverty. So he's kind of a poster child as well. He'd already wandered for years. He'd done his destitution time. And the church, also feeling like revolution is hanging thick, needed a bit of the common touch

as workers across the land demanded basic human rights. In a way, Rasputin was the people's princess, which could have been great. He could have bridged that enormous class gap that existed in imperial Russia if he had had any interest in being a politician, which he absolutely did not. He also made another crucial mistake. He openly told people that he loved everyone, which meant that he couldn't head any movement at all. He was

useless to the Duma. So they turned against him violently. He could have been this sort of common touch figure. They could have used him. But then as soon as he starts being like, hey, Jewish people aren't that bad. They're like, we can like, we can't have anything to do with you. So let's zoom out for a moment. It's not going to be a moment. It's going to be long and complicated. And have a look at what's happening in the rest of the world. The time has come.

We are all going to understand World War I together. No! If I've had to do it. Honestly, I don't understand. It's okay. I understand. I can tell you. It's okay. I understand. I can tell you. What is World War I? What is it?

Who is it? Why did it happen? Tell us, Anna. Let's start with what we all know. The summer of 1914, the Belle Epoque, Europe was at peace. Until the 28th of June, where a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry. Which is a Blackadder joke. And I implore you to go and watch all of Blackadder forever.

I used to have it on cassette tape. Okay, let's be for real. 18th of June, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, was shot in Sarajevo. That's all I know. Well, I know more. He was shot by a Serbian student, and just seven days later, the whole of Europe would be at war.

And the human cost was beyond what anyone at the time could have possibly imagined because it had never happened before. But how could an entire continent flash into bloodshed so quickly? Well, in news that will surprise absolutely nobody, World War I had been brewing for quite some time, like 400 years. It is red-handed rundown time. This has taken me a long time to understand, so forgive me. Pin back your ear holes. This is the most oversimplified version of the Great War that you will find anywhere on the airwaves, the internet, anywhere. If you really want to know, go and ask Dan Carlin.

He's a saint. But this is our version. We are not a history podcast, guys and ask Dan Carlin. He's a saint. But this is our version. We are not a history podcast, guys. No, this is World War I for dummies. The Belle Epoque managed to be quite so belle because of a series of alliances. The French and the Brits, big buddy, big pals. Unusual.

The only time in history. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the German Confederation, big buddy, big pals. It's kind of like when Mr Burns has so many diseases, they can't fit through the door. Sure, sure. So essentially, Europe was divided into two factions, all tied up in treaties to protect each other. Until there was trouble a-brewing in the Balkans. And the fact that we don't all know this today, me especially,

is truly shocking because this conflict quite literally is the cause of everything that we still probably deal with today. The instability in the Middle East, the Taliban, the Yugoslav war, why your mum is such a bitch, literally all of it has to do with Serbia. Yeah, man. I'm not saying it's all Serbia's fault. I will qualify that. But I was fascinated. Serbia is the Tsarina womb of countries. No, Serbian nationalism, I mean, it's just something we don't learn about because we don't learn about World War I.

World War II's got a better baddie. That's why. Well, this is it. And I think this is why people are so disinterested in World War I, is that like, it's just empire building. World War Two. This is not a hot take, but World War Two, there is a very clear villain. There's a baddie. It's like the axis of evil. I mean, that's later. But you know what I mean? It's like there's a baddie, there's the goodies and we're on the goodie side. So we can be like teachers in schools. Everyone has a great time.

There is a very long documentary made by the Serbian, some sort of Serbian cabinet for history or something that's called The Long Road to War. And that explains it very clearly, but it is very long. So good luck. Anyway, so before World War One, in the Belle Epoque, Bosnia and Herzegovina were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they weren't happy about it. They wanted liberation. A lot of the population were and still are ethnically Serbian and they wanted to be Serbian. So when the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, was shot in Sarajevo by Serbian nationalists, the Empire of Austria-Hungary took this as an act of war. And the Germans were right behind them with the common goal of crushing

Serbian nationalism once and for all. Britain didn't get involved until the Germans were making moves on France. If the German coalition took over France, that would mean us British would be sharing a border with Germany and we were not having that. So Britain were in, defending France against the Germans and their allies, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and by default, the Ottoman Empire too, because they're all friends. Which meant that Britain were fighting on the side of Serbia. And who was allied with both Britain and Serbia? SpongeBob SquarePants. No, Russia. So Britain had the ever-famous Western Front covered in France and Belgium. But they needed Russia's help. Not only because Tsar Nicholas and King George V

have the same fucking exact face. Look it up if you do believe me. They are the same person. They're twins. They are twins. But also because Russia could attack Germany from the other side. Dividing the central powers' fighting capacities between the two fronts gave the Allied forces a better chance of victory.

Yeah, so they're essentially surrounding the Axis. Yes. Cesar Nicholas II didn't know what to do, because he never really knew what to do. And he also had quite a lot of his own problems, both in his own kingdom, as we've been discussing, and also in Manchuria, where he sent basically all of his troops. It had been recorded in letters and telegrams that Rasputin advised the Tsar not to enter the war. Rasputin predicted that it didn't matter whether Russia was on the

winning or losing side of the war, so therefore not to get involved. He said if they entered at all in any way, shape or form, it would spell the end of imperial russia the romanov dynasty and all life as they knew it maybe this is what got him the sort of idea of being a prophet of two yeah yeah i think i mean it's the most famous one yes um but it i don't think he's saying it because he's that bothered about doom he's like i just want to stay doing what i'm doing and if you go to war i'm not gonna be able to do that yeah so basically rasputin predicts that if they go to war that it's going to lead to great ruin and grief without end and i think you could slice this in different ways could it be that rasputin is very much in it for himself and he's

like i've got a really great gig here if you go to war this is a whole load of more problems that i'm gonna have to like divine out of nowhere answers to, which I don't really have. And I don't want to go down that road. Let me just stay here, keep looking after the sick prince, and maybe the queen will get pregnant again. I can deal with that. So believe what you want about Rasputin's psychic powers, but Great Ruin and Grief Without End was a pretty accurate prediction. Not one that made Rasputin particularly popular, and he knew it. The Duma and most of the aristocracy were all for entering the First World War,

but Rasputin being the only one in the Imperial Palace who had lived a peasant life, knew that it would be the common man who would suffer. Russia already had a reputation for throwing hundreds of thousands of their citizens at any war effort, which did not go down particularly well with the ones who were being thrown. A reputation that has not changed.

I mean, you're talking about this war, you're then talking about the major fuck-ups they had in Crimea, the enormous fuck-up that they made in Afghanistan, and obviously now what we see in Ukraine. Underfunded, underskilled boys essentially being given guns and just pushed out onto the front lines. Yeah. He's double not popular

because he's nice to Jewish people. He's drunk all the time and he shags about and he spends quite a lot of time with Tsarina. Which if you don't know that he was literally keeping her son alive does look quite suspicious. And it makes him very scapegoatable.

But it is worth noting that although a lot of the correspondence between Rasputin and the Tsarina does sound a bit sexy, quite a lot of them don't surface until the 1920s. Yeah, quite a lot of them are made yuppie, I think. Yeah. Equally, there are records of the Romanov's children's nurses being extremely concerned that Rasputin was allowed into the children's bedrooms at night.

I am also like, that's probably not the best idea. There is also evidence to suggest that one of the nursemaids claimed to have been raped by Rasputin and after she threw allegations at him she was quickly dismissed from court. However years later a lady-in-waiting told a commission looking into the influence of Rasputin that she never saw anything of the sort and any rumours that were started were not started by her. Now, if the rape allegation really happened, it was brushed off pretty quickly by Tsarina and nothing came of it.

And the church liked him even less because he was making a mockery of them and of the monarchy. It's so difficult to know if any of it is true. I am not suggesting for a second that he wasn't sexually aggressive towards women because i think he was we don't know if this rape allegation is true we don't know if it came out years later because also what we have to remember is what happens almost immediately after rasputin dies is total state censorship and all of this stuff gets squirreled away by the bolshevik government and it's not seen for years.

So historically it's really difficult to piece it together. In a continued attempt to protect himself, Rasputin convinced the Tsar to replace his enemies with his allies. And this had a limited success for a while. But it also meant that nobody could get anything done. And Rasputin made himself an even bigger target, the clearest scapegoat that ever existed. It was so easy for the Duma to pin everything on him. The 13th of February 1913 brought with it the 300th anniversary of the Romanov reign over Russia. So the Winter Palace had a little party.

It's the same one that Anastasia remembers in Once Upon a December. And this is so pathetic. This is made so much of in all of the literature that this was the last straw that the Duma were like, we have to get rid of him. Basically, he shows up late, he sits in the place that they want to sit, and he's wearing a gold dress, basically. And they're like, this is unacceptable! And anyway, so they're very upset,

and eventually he leaves and he stares at everyone as he goes, and that's the last straw, apparently, for the Duma. It's now time to meet one of Rasputin's mortal enemies, Iliadur. The pair actually went way, way back. They'd been wandering holy men together years before. But Iliadur had had far too much of Rasputin's shit. Iliadur was the opposite of Rasputin. He was painfully

pious and a vocal anti-Semite. He hated the way Rasputin was maligning the royal family and talking about sex all the time. He did do that. He would talk about horse penises a lot. Kind of like Ghislaine Maxwell. Sure.

So Iliadur vowed before Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the tiny little donkey, to bring Rasputin down. He violently slagged him off in the press and even employed a Finnish ballerina to get Rasputin drunk and take indecent photographs of him. Very news of the world situations here by Iliadur. So these photos were meant to hurt the mad monk's reputation. But actually, everybody already knew that he was a drunk and a sex pest. So no one was really that bothered. Also, photos back then, are we talking like standstill for ages photos?

No, so I also had the same thought. No, by the 1900s, we are at flash photography. Got it. Under the little hood with the pfft. Sure, sure, sure. Iliador, defeated, scuttled off to his best friend, Bishop Hermogen, who's a real character. He had such a high voice that many suspected he'd castrated himself as a sign for his love for the baby Jesus. People are doing mental shit at this time of the history, do you know what I mean?

I mean, it was, yeah, a mental time. So they hatch a plan and these two want to throw a party for Rasputin. Never one to turn down a drink, Rasputin pulled up, seeing no problem with his arch nemesis inviting him over for tea. Surprise, it was a sneak attack. Iliadur and his noble buddy dragged Rasputin to a chapel, grabbed him by his legendary penis and made him swear never to speak to the imperial family ever again. But obviously, Rasputin ran off to the Tsar immediately and told him that the other children weren't playing nicely. With that, Hermogen was exiled and Iliadur threw a very public tantrum in which he called the Russian Orthodox Church an abomination, a desolation and a house of pigs. And he also claimed that Prince Alexei was Rasputin's son.

Oh, it's bad. And this rumour is quite the rumour, considering Rasputin hadn't actually met the Tsarina until years after Alexei was even born, would make impregnating her quite a feat, even for the mystical, mad, giant, penised monk. But Iliadur wasn't done. He renounced his faith on a parchment penned in his own blood,

this guy's so extra, and proclaimed himself a pagan deist, denouncing orthodoxy as nothing more than magic and superstition. And with that, he fucked off to the country. And years later, Iliadur died as a janitor in New York City in 1951. Isn't that nuts? That is nuts. That is maybe the most nuts part of this entire story,

that this guy fucking Iliadur, who, like, tried to kill Rasputin, maybe, like, cleaned your mum... If you grew up in New York, your mum's, like, school or something. You just imagine him just, like, muttering while mopping. Like, God damn it. God damn you, Rasputin. A house of pigs, I say. That's what he also yells at the kids he has to clean up after. This place is like a house of pigs, just like the Russian imperialist palace. So he's out of the picture, basically. He's living the country

life. But his public outbursts and years of railing against Rasputin very publicly had gained him some pretty zealous Rasputin-hating disciples. And one of them had no nose. Two weeks after Franz Ferdinand was shot,

Rasputin was leaving his lovely house in his not-so-lovely hometown to reply to a telegram from the Tsarina, when he noticed a veiled woman lurking outside. He assumed she was a beggar, so he approached her to talk about Jesus or horse sticks or whatever. But this woman was no beggar. She was an assassin. She pulled out a 15-inch knife on Rasputin

and stabbed him multiple times in the stomach. And there are loads of people around because a mob pulls this woman off Rasputin. They tear the veil from her face, revealing a hole where her nose should have been. Oh no. And her name was Kionia Guseva. And there are a lot of stories about how this fate of having no nose befell her face. Some say that her nose had rotted off from syphilis that she had contracted from Rasputin himself. Others say it had been chopped off by an abusive employer.

What's actually more likely is probably that her nose fell off due to an allergic reaction she had to the medication she was taking as a teen. But anyway, after he was stabbed, Rasputin carried his intestines in his hands and walked half a mile to get help. He stayed in hospital for 49 days and parts of his intestines had to be removed and he was left with chronic pain, which of course he drowned in Montmedera. Many assumed that noseless Keonea had been sent to kill Rasputin by his arch-rival, Iliadur. And Iliadur didn't help himself by shaving off his beard, dressing as a woman, and scarpering to Norway in the middle of the night. Yeah, he acts like a guilty man.

Yes. But it is much more likely that Keonea was just influenced by Iliadur's writings and took it upon herself to save Russia. Some sort of a, you know, self-radicalised situation. Totally, totally, yeah. She's just been inceling herself in her bedroom. Meanwhile, back in St Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas made a proclamation of war from the balcony of the Winter Palace, welcomed by cries of, God save the Tsar.

Phew, he thought. I've won back the people with my excellent military prowess. No one can say I'm weak now. As of the 28th of July 1914, a month after his intestines had been pulled out of his body, Russia was balls deep in World War I, whether Rasputin liked it or not. As Tsar Nicholas was busy with the Eastern Front,

he left Tsarina Alexandra in charge. A very unpopular move, as she was seen to be totally under the thumb of very unpopular Rasputin. Again, I really don't think Rasputin wanted to take over Russia, and he certainly didn't want to kill all the Romanovs. He wanted to stay living his Madeira drench life, so he replaced people trying to get rid of him. But even he started to smell something was off. And that smell was Prince Felix Yusupov. He was Tsar Nicholas's nephew-in-law. Boy, if you want to talk about breeding, Jesus fucking Christ. The Yusupovs were the richest family

in Russia and former rulers of Egypt. The Yusupovs are so rich. They had an enormous palace estate that they forgot about for 80 years. Brilliant. So Felix Yusupov lived a life of unimaginable luxury. He went to Oxford and was a member of the Bullington Club, where he probably fucked a pig. I can't remember.

There was a history podcast I was listening to, hosted by two Oxford alums, and they were talking about whether he's the only member of the Bullingdon Club to have committed a murder. And I'm like, get fucked, there's at least 100. Oh dear. So his lineage brought with it an intense desire to be a hero. So Yusupov decided that he was going to be the one to save Russia from falling into the clutches of the Bolsheviks, wailing about workers' rights or whatever. And he was going to do it by getting rid of the stinky knot monk that both the church and the Duma had decided was the cause of all of Russia's problems. And just like Ilyador before him, Felix Yusupov decided that he was

going to get rid of Rasputin with a combination of God and get downs. Plan number one to end Rasputin was to send him off on a pilgrimage and then throw him out of a moving train, just like in Anastasia. But Rasputin got the heebie-jeebies and cancelled the trip at the last minute. Maybe he knew that the jig was coming to an end. There is certainly a lot of folklore about Rasputin predicting his own death. Though you would, wouldn't you? Yeah. You're Rasputin. Of course death. Though you would, wouldn't you? Yeah. You're Rasputin.

Of course somebody's trying to kill you. And also, like, Yusupov's telling everyone. Like, it's not a secret. Yeah. So after the failed pilgrimage, Rasputin started to get letters from someone calling themselves the Avenger. Oh my God, kill me.

Kill me. And these letters told Rasputin that death would follow him wherever he went. And also, Yusupov and his Bullingdon Club buddies were telling literally everyone who would listen about how they were going to take out the shame of Russia. Sure. And so the Prince of Egypt invited Rasputin over to his house. Reportedly, Rasputin was so aware his end was extremely fucking nigh that he took to pacing around his house like a stalking wolf.

But he went to Yusupov's house anyway. Sense of impending doom or no sense of impending doom. And he went there on the 16th of December 1916, where he was met by Yusupov and four other conspirators. Now what follows, what we're about to tell you, is Yusupov's version of events. This is the famous story that everyone knows. He and his pals crushed up enough cyanide to fell a small horse and baked it into rose-flavoured sweet cakes and Rasputin's favourite,

Madeira. They left these treats downstairs with Yusufov and Rasputin and the rest of the conspirators sat upstairs listening to Yankee Doodle Dandy on a record player, awaiting Rasputin falling to the floor like a fouled horse. Do you want to sing Yankee Doodle Dandy for us? I don't think I know Yankee Doodle Dandy. I'm just a Yankee Doodle Dandy. You do know it. No, I don't think I do. Anyway, so obviously American influence had not been outlawed in Russia yet.

They're allowed to listen to Yankee Doodle Dandy anyway. Rasputin does not fall down like a horse. He drinks all of the wine. He eats all of the cakes and shows no sign of succumbing to a cyanide induced end. And Yusupov is running up and down the stairs the whole time being like, he's not dead yet. He's not dead yet. Oh my God. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

Eventually, the upstairs plotters convinced Yusupov that he was just going to have to shoot him. He just had to go downstairs like a big boy and shoot Rasputin. So Yusupov took a revolver downstairs, a British revolver, we'll come back to that. Once back downstairs, Yusupov shot Rasputin, who fell to the floor like, quote, a broken doll. And then Yusupov dressed up one of his mates as Rasputin and drove him back to Rasputin's house. I think what they were trying to do here is like, despite the fact that they've been telling everyone what they're about to do, they're trying to avoid suspicion being raised by Rasputin not coming home that night, basically. Anyway, after they pretend to be Rasputin for a bit, they like walk around the house in his hat and stuff.

Well, you know, you've got to have a cover story. Go big or go home. Absolutely. So after this, they head back to Yusupov's house where they were relieved to see the real Rasputin was still lying on the floor. For some reason, Yusupov shook the body and then terrifyingly, Rasputin opened his eyes and stared at Prince Yusupov

with a fiery greenish snake-like hatred. Then the mad, not actually monk, rose from the ground, foaming at the mouth and lunged at Yusupov and clawed at him so violently that he tore Yusupov's epaulette from his jacket. The poisoned and shot Rasputin then staggered out of Yusupov's house and walked through the courtyard, threatening to tell the Tsarina everything. Before the staggering saint could make it out of the probably massive courtyard, Yusupov shot him in the back and in the head. Rasputin was finally dead. But just to make sure, Yusupov bashed Rasputin in the face with a two-pound dumbbell that he

just happened to have lying around in his courtyard. He's such a little bitch. He is, honestly, he is such a little bitch. Shooting him in the back after a two pound dumbbell that he just happened to have lying around in his courtyard he's such a little bitch he is honestly he is such a little bitch shooting him in the back after you've poisoned him and then hitting him with a dumbbell though i would say all of this like shows you watch and you're just like oh you shot him kill him fucking end it don't just shoot him and then hope that he's dead and then leave so you know what in some ways i'm like good give it give it everything yeah so he's dead and then Yusupov and his co-conspirators, probably all Bullingdon Club boys to be honest, rolled the lifeless Rasputin in a curtain and drove to a bridge where they promptly threw the healer into a river. But in their haste, the assassins forgot to weigh the body down and so just a few days later

the frozen body of Rasputin emerged. Early in the morning of 19 December 1916, many gathered around the river to gawp at the frozen corpse of the supposed most influential man in Russia. Many of them brought jugs along to scoop up the river water in the hopes that this water had absorbed some of the great man's power and strength. His shirt was frozen solid and bullet wounds were clearly seen on Rasputin's body as he was heaved from the water onto a sled. Legend has it that Rasputin's body was burned on a public funeral pyre

and as the flames enveloped him, he sat upright, reached out to the crowd and spoke of unknowable things. It's a good story. In reality, Rasputin's corpse was hauled off for an autopsy. You might have heard that frozen river water was found in Rasputin's lungs, which means that he must have survived the poisoning, all three gunshots, and still have been alive when he was chucked into the river, which is a superhuman and supernatural feat.

I also, when I was a child, was told that when they buried him in a coffin they opened it up again for some reason he had wood under his fingernails he'd been scratching the coffin so why were you being told this as a child i mean we're catholics man like we talk about this stuff all the time so i was under the impression but the story i was told is that he survived the poisoning, he survived the shooting, he survived the drowning, was what I was told. It's not true. As much as we want to believe it,

the autopsy actually revealed that there was no water in Rasputin's lungs at all, which means he was dead as a doornail by the time he hit the water. The autopsy also showed no signs that Rasputin had been poisoned at all. The reason for the rumours that we all believe is that this autopsy transcript was squirrelled away until 1930. It was around for a little while before it disappeared again, that time, for good.

We don't know where it is. The funeral pyre that he sits up in is also a myth. Rasputin wasn't burned, he was buried in a zinc-lined coffin on the 21st of December 1916. And there are more holes in the assassination story. Like, for example, Rasputin's daughter, Maria. She claimed that her father hated cakes and never, ever would have eaten that many of them. And maybe he didn't eat the cakes because again there was no sign of poisoning in his autopsy either. Some people argue that Rasputin, knowing his days were numbered, had been microdosing cyanide in order to build up a tolerance to thought any assassination attempts. In reality it's much more likely that Yusupov shot Rasputin outright and Rasputin died like

a normal person would if they get shot and hit in the head with a two-pound dumbbell. And Prince Yusupov probably just made up the rest of it. Why? Simple. Prince Felix Yusupov fled Russia after the revolution. He had lost quite a lot of money and perhaps he just needed a story to sell. We also have to remember that all this happened at the dawn of horror and many have speculated that Yusupov's account of the assassination bore a lot of similarities to a short story by Dostoevsky called The Landlady that had just been published at the time. So it is possible, entirely possible, that he just made up the whole thing. Yeah, I tried to read The Landlady

but it made me want to kill myself because I hate Dostoevsky. So I didn't, but I believe that it is essentially the same story. Got it. And also like Nosferatu's happening at the time he's telling this story, like people are into it, man. Yeah. But there is one theory that's worth spending a bit of time on. And that's that the assassination of Rasputin, like most things, might have been our fault. Yusupov is rumoured to be a British secret service informant knocking on the Russians. He was an Oxford man. Britain had an invested interest in getting Rasputin out. The Tsarina was essentially in charge and Rasputin was very vocal about keeping Russia out of the war.

But Britain needed Russia to split the German and Austro-Hungarian forces fighting on the both Western and Eastern fronts. For the Eastern Front to be a thing, Russia needed to be all in. And there was another reason the British were not fans of the Tsarina, German. When people talk about this conspiracy, that it's essentially a British secret service set up to get Rasputin out, they're like, oh, but there's no evidence of it. There's no MI6 file. Why would there be? Why would they tell you that?

And the reason I like this theory is I just like it. And secondly, the revolver used to shoot Rasputin was a Weber revolver, which is a British forces gun. Is it true? Absolutely no idea. Is it nice? Yes. Back in Russia, the Royal Romanov family were devastated by their healer's death.

But you probably know that pretty soon Rasputin's murder would be the least of their worries. The Russian Imperial Army failed to break through the enemy lines on the Eastern Front. Loads of soldiers were dying in a reportedly futile war. The Russian economy was also in the toilet, there was no food anywhere and the Russian people had had more than enough of Tsarist rule. Revolution was in the air. The pressure cooker created by centuries of inequality exploded into the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and it brought with it the end of Romanov rule, and Russia reaching an armistice with the Central Powers and ending their engagement in World War I. That meant that the Central Forces only needed to focus on the Western Front,

which was the Allies' worst fear. But even without Russia to bolster them, the UK, France, Italy, Japan and the US came out on top in 1918. Tsar Nicholas was overthrown and his family were taken to the Urals by the Red Army, where they were kept under house arrest. Nicholas asked his cousin with the same face, King George V, to give his family asylum, but Big G5, not wanting to foot the bill and probably concerned about the message it would have sent,

turned his own family away. And they weren't just first cousins they were friends yeah basically what happens is george is like i mean you can come here but i don't want to pay for it and then the bolsheviks are like well we're not paying for it either so he just leaves them there and i think that like he could have put them somewhere in the commonwealth until it was you know all quiet on the western front but like he could have he could have put them in canada in the Commonwealth until it was, you know, all quiet on the Western Front. But, like, he could have. He could have put them in Canada in the mountains somewhere for a few years. He could have and he didn't. So Lenin had originally wanted to put the royal family on trial.

But when whisperings of a rescue mission turned into roars, the Bolsheviks made other plans. On the 17th of July 1918, the Red Army gathered the Tsar, the Tsarina, and all of their children in the cellar of their palace prison. There they were shot at. Which did not kill them, but they were then all stabbed with bayonets, an assault that lasted at least 20 minutes and definitely would have done the job. Then the Tsar's body, his wife's,

and that of his five children were taken into the forest where their remains were burned with acid and then with fire and then finally buried. Their bodies would not be discovered for years after this. There are, of course, many rumours that suggest although the Tsar did not survive, one daughter may be still alive. The Princess Anastasia, please do not repeat. But that, my little Russian term of endearments, is a story for another day. What we can tell you

is that the Romanov women and girls died with amulets containing pictures of Rasputin. So did Rasputin change the course of world history? I don't know. I don't think so. I think he was a walking zeitgeist, an embodiment of the two types of lives available in Imperial Russia. And I, you know, even though he was extremely vocal about staying out of the war, they did go to war, you know, like he didn't. I think it would be different if he'd been so vocal and then Tsar Nicholas was like, oh my God, you're right, we should stay out of World War I. That would make more sense to me. Yeah, I think what we can say is that the court of Imperial Russia wasn't ready for him

because they had no idea what real peasant lives were like. And here was this man throwing it in their faces on a daily basis. Also, Rasputin didn't want to rule. He never shagged the Tsarinaarina certainly not as far as we can tell he never sexually assaulted any of the Grand Duchesses as far as we can tell and he did not survive a poisoning and three bullets he was crass, he was a drunk

he was abusive towards women but a supernatural criminal mastermind with the world in his hands I'm afraid not you've also probably heard that his pickled penis is on display in a museum a supernatural criminal mastermind with the world in his hands? I'm afraid not. You've also probably heard that his pickled penis is on display in a museum. That is also sadly not true. Whatever gherkinised genitals are on display actually belong to a horse. And not a very well endowed one at that.

Oh well, that's a shame. So why do we believe all these things about Rasputin? Two reasons. Censorship and apocryphal publication. Rasputin's most famous prediction, besides the grief and ruin that World War I would bring, was that if he were to be murdered by a member of the royal family, then the Romanovs would not survive for more than two years after his death. Which, correct, but this prophecy was actually published years after the assassination of the royal family and bears absolutely no similarity to the way Rasputin actually wrote

or spoke. So again, madey-uppy, just like Prince Yusupov's assassination story. Maybe it was easier for people to square the assassination of the royal family and especially the children if they believed that they'd been under the spell of the devil himself. The worse you make Rasputin, the easier it is to say why all of the royal family had to go. So yes, hate to break it to you, Rasputin made famous by Boniem is nowhere near who we think he is. But that song was banned in the USSR for glamorising the Romanovs. We will leave you with this last fact. This is my favourite.

You know the warning at the beginning of some films that reads, the character and events depicted in this picture are fictitious? Any similarity to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental? Well, that was invented for a film entitled Rasputin and the Empress, produced by MGM. But we all believed it anyway. Isn't that cool? That is very cool.

So yeah, there you have it. That's Rasputin. I never ever want to read a book about him again. But there's a file of Rasputin's correspondence that somehow ended up at an auction at Sotheby's in New York in like the 60s. And it was bought by a French composer and then he gave it as a present to his friend who wrote the Rasputin file. So we just didn't have any source material for years. We only had rumour and that's why we all believe it.

Why believe the truth when the rumour is so much more interesting? Print the myth! Exactly. So that is it, guys. That is Redhander's take on Mr Rasputin. Hopefully you enjoyed that. If you haven't got your tour tickets yet, please go do that. RedHounderPodcast.com.

They are still available for some cities. And we will be back next week with some other things. Hooray, New York and LA especially. We need you. Don't make us look dumb. No, don't. We'll see you there. Bye.

Bye. Thank you. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment,

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