The Timeless Comedy of Baking Dwarves Into Pies | Peter The Great

Warning, the rabbits in this series have not been cooked properly. The Great Northern War (Part One) This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at https://surfshark.com/fvh The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.  For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon ⁠⁠patreon.com/fintaylor⁠ Chapters: 00:00 - Truss Is Britain 03:33 - It’s A Whole Team 07:18 - Russia Is Russia-ing 10:56 - No He’s Fine! 14:44 - Post Stamp Clarity 18:03 - She’s The Box 20:50 - Give Dwarfs The Roles 23:52 - Beavo’s Front Line 27:35 - The Graceful Retirement 30:09 - Horatio’s Entourage 34:46 - Exposure Therapy 39:28 - The Beard Tax 41:21 - Charlie’s Crime 46:56 - Bibs! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, kayak thinks you won't remember that. So kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Kayak. Search and compare travel deals with kayak. Kayak. Got that right.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  If you've got an insurance question, you could talk to the butcher at your local grocery store. He'd probably talk about trimming the fat, but it'd be about your brisket, not your insurance policies. Or you could talk to your local GEICO agent. They offer personalised assistance in finding the choicest cuts of coverage for all your insurance needs, which means more money for filet mignon, or if you're a vegetarian, tofu le mignon. To find a GEICO agent near you, visit geico.com slash local. The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Welcome back to Finland's History. Joining me is a ratio called.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Ayo.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  And today we are discussing Peter the Great.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  We are in Russia, a phenomenal figure. Uh, not one I really knew much about.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  No, not at all. I don't think we learned about Peter the Great or the Great Northern War, but complete bangers, back to front bangers.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Awesome stuff.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  There's probably the most amount of dwarves there's ever been in an episode. I'll say that now.

• 1:41Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  Most dwarves, dwarves throne.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Most dwarves throne.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Uh, and also I didn't realise how basically he makes modern Russia. I didn't, I sort of assumed Russia had always been like this.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  Cause Russia's not as old as people think in many ways.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  It's just like a mad, it was like a Viking slaver state that sort of, he turns it from that.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Minute silence for the white, the white slave victims, please. Victims of white slave. This one, this episode is to raise awareness of white slavery, as all our episodes are.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Every episode is.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  This podcast is a anti white slavery.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Donation link in the bio below.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Click the link to help fund my reparations, which I will be paying myself as dividends.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Um, which I believe, I believe one of Andy Burnham's first policies, should he come in, is to.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  If he had any sense.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  If he had any sense.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  If sense has not completely left this country.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  That it would make white reparations not taxable.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. This is the Finn Taylor's article in The Telegraph with a, with a picture of him like that.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Euro reparations and the government is taxing them.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  White reparations now.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Burnham, get your mitts of my reparations. Okay. Uh, we are not.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  There's might be coming out in Burnham's Britain. We don't know.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  We don't know yet.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  We, we.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Are people gonna still be saying Burnham, Starmas?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Burnham, Ministan.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is that, is that, is.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Burnham's Britain.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  Cause Starmas Britain caught on more than any, people weren't saying that Sunak's Britain or anything like that. So I don't know. Is it, is it a new slate's clean or is it just gonna go straight to Burnham's Britain?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I think if you're a Labour Prime Minister.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  You're always gonna get.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  You always get Britain, cause it's not Britain in the minds of the press. Blair's Britain.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Um, you know, truss is Britain.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Truss is Britain.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Truss is Britain.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Okay. So there's no point saying truss is Britain. That's a double.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  You're just double saying the same thing twice.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Exactly. Tortology.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  It's a tortology, but Burnham's Britain, you know, that shouldn't be a.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Britain shouldn't be under Burnham.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Now you've just got Burma up Charlie and you just left it there and leant back in your chair.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  We may turn, we may turn into Burma.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. If we carry on the way that we're going.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  If he does not sort out HMRC's policy on white reparations.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Genocide in the jungle, I reckon.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Hmm. A hundred percent. Uh, but anyway, we are in seventeenth century Russia.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  It's a time period we don't spend much time in as well, but it's a fascinating one. The end of the seventeenth century.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  I don't know why, cause I guess for British history, you have the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 1800s. And you've got the English Civil War, Glorious Revolution.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  It's a bit of a dead zone, isn't it? It was a karma zone, I guess. It's, it's science.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  So I kind of tune out.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Is it like Newton?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And the other, the other fucking, oh, the other one.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  You've got Samuel, writers like Samuel Johnson.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Samuel peeps.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that's.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  He's like the British Anne Frank. Is that right?

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yes, but I guess it's a.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Boring.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Even sadder story.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Even sadder, even more boring.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  No, we get great fire of London. So I guess it's just that, this little bit here.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  But the, the year seven, so what year is this happening? What year is he born?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Well, Peter the Great's born in, I think, 1680 something.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then shit really kicks off at like 1700.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  And nothing seems to happen at 1700. I can't place anything at 1700.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Shall we try and place it? Peter the Great is born in 16, 1670. So it is just after the Restoration in England.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Um, and it is before.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Uh, Rupert Low.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Rupert Low's Restoration. Yeah, exactly. Which is, uh, TBC, still TBC.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  So it's after the Restoration.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  When the only true patriot in this country defected from reform and.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  To restore. You know they're a patriot if they've started their own political party.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  So.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Cause we, we covered some of the sweep of Russian history on the Russian Revolution episode. We like did a very brief rundown, but yeah, it's, it's incredibly wild place that is completely landlocked at this time. It's not even called Russia when he's born. It's called.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Muscovy.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Muscovy around Moscow. It's all linked to some rivers which had just fur trappers and slavers. And it's just a mad, wild place basically at this point.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Polish to Lithuanian Commonwealth.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  One of the biggest empires.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  There's ever been.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  I can't really get my head around that.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean Sweden are a power.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's upside down land.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  It is. What's going on?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  But Russia is backward and it's Peter the Great who basically through sheer force of will.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Modernises them into the, makes them a modern country. And when we're talking about, you know, why is Russia so fucked in the heads?

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Which was part of our discussion in the revolution. Part of it is, uh, how Peter, like his childhood.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  No one has probably a worse childhood.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, he had the best childhood in Russia, but.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry. Exactly. That's what I mean.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  No one's had a better childhood than Russia.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yes, but we have to reiterate that Russian standards of good parenting.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  It's a massacre.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause is his grand, great granddad's Ivan, well, there's Ivan the Terrible.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Who's the first Romanov, right?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Or after him, the Romanov star.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Because of what he did.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Uh, the Romanov line is only basically just started and ended the Russian Revolution. Uh, but yeah, he has a tough start to life.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  So his dad has 16 children and Peter's the 14th.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  And basically, and they're all Russian Orthodox.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  And how does that make you feel?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Fourteenth of sixteenth. You know, people often say the third child is the guest left out. If you're the fourteenth of sixteenth, you're getting lost in the middle, really.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Um, but also I imagine.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  It's a scrum, really.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's a whole team, actually.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  It's a flash mob.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  It's a whole team. Fifteen, rugby is fifteen aside, isn't it? They're all Russian Orthodox, which as we discussed is.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  It's got a different flavour.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Cause Moscow see themselves as the third Rome.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  It's the first Rome, which is Rome, second Rome, which is Constantinople and Moscow. So it's, it's already defining itself as distinct from both Catholic and also the Protestant world.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  And Russian Orthodox basically is much more about having a terrible life, it seems.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Well.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Or rather that's fine. Suffering.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  What's interesting is in Britain, we're quite miserable and we seem to celebrate terrible things happening.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  But it has a very distinctly different feeling to Russia.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  There's a stoicism to Britain.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Bad things will happen. We'll get through them. Russia, bad things are happening.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Brilliant.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  And I'm fucking loving it. I'm hard for the bad things that are happening.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  And also I think this, cause Britain's a much smaller country. Everything's less dramatic here.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  So what we glorify is everything, anything being a bit shit.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Well, I thought I'd enjoy my birthday, but it was disappointing and it rained.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  And Russia, it's like, I thought I'd enjoy my birthday and then my entire family was killed by bears.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And people are like, brilliant. It's like a fucking great birthday.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Um, so he's the fourteenth of sixteenth and basically he's born into a, a family with a political.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Struggle going on.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  And Charlie's actually brought up something quite interesting. Estimates of Moscow's Muslim population range between two to three million, establishing it as the city with the largest Muslim population in Europe.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Bloody Moscow.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Moscow.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Moscow, Instan, Moscowistan.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Look at that. I have no idea. Did you know that?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  I did not know that. But then Chechens are Muslim, aren't they?

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess so, but you, who had thought?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Also Russia's, Russia's, Russia's just the entire world.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  It shouldn't be one country. Why is it one country? How does one country?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  It's Borat, it's Koreans, it's Muslims.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Like, pick one.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  How is one country bordering Finland and North Korea?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  It's not a country.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's, but they, they've taken all the space that God didn't finish.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  It was just like auto-generated.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Fill that in. He got bored. How, how is one country?

• 9:15Speaker 03

  It was copy, the whole, the whole of Siberia is copy and paste.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Like if you're developing a video game, it's just.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  But how is.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  How is it like, my wife, how is that one?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  I think you went a bit Vietnamese there.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Well, that's probably close by, isn't it? Probably.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Is it about as big as America?

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Way bigger.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  No, way bigger. America could fit in. America and Australia can fit in Russia. And you still have about two million square miles change.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Crazy.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think, I think, I think, uh, mainland Europe fits in it about five times, six times.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  I can kind of understand why, um.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Go on.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  They wanna be the king then, cause they are massive.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  And they have been squashed.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Sorry?

• 9:59Speaker 04

  They've been squashed, but they are massive, right?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  They haven't been squashed.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  They have been a bit squashed.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Are you, are you?

• 10:06Speaker 03

  What forums do you want? Are you?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Are you spitting some pro Putin stuff right here?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Do you think, would you say he was backed into a corner, Putin?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  I'd say so, yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Right, okay. Well, this is the long road to the Ukraine war as well. This is fascinating stuff.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  And they constantly evoke, this is such a big part of, they have such a sense of history in Russia. They're constantly evoking Stalin evokes Peter the Great, Putin evokes Peter the Great.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  But this is the first time Russia starts bothering itself in Eastern Europe.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  It's the first time.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  It's kind of the first time Russia starts Russiaering in many ways.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Our understanding of Russia is, is Peter the Great, really.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites. But unless I repeat the word kayak, kayak thinks you won't remember that. So kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Kayak. Search and compare travel deals with kayak. Got that right.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  So his early years are marked by this extraordinary instability because there are two, his dad has two marriages, so there's two branches of the family. So when he dies-

• 11:19Speaker 03

  My dad's marrying a Russian woman tomorrow. So I guess I'm, it's quite similar, two marriages.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yes, who's going to inherit it?

• 11:26Speaker 03

  We'll see.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Do you think they'll have, do you think they'll have stepchildren, stepbrothers and sisters?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  He promised us he wouldn't, and I think he's, he's gonna still do it anyway.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  So.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  How old's his, how old's your stepmom?

• 11:37Speaker 03

  My sister's pretty terrified.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  How old's your stepmom?

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Thirty-six, thirty-five.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Oh!

• 11:48Speaker 02

  So you're, yeah, it's nice that your podcast partner's the same age as your stepmom. That's normal.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  It's all right.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  It's my age, yeah. I've got a long common with her. I also get stuck in washing machines.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess finally.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I'm always rooting around the back of washing machines. All the stuff my kids fucking toys get stuck in it, dummies in the back of it.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  I guess it's, yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  It's a different story.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  It doesn't really work when you do it.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  We've said before that the unpopular sequel-

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Stepdad Gets Raped in Tumble Dryer is not, is a-

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Not as good a film, not as good a film. A disappointing sequel.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Anyway, so yeah, there's two branches of the Peter the Great family, right? There's the Narishkins and the Miloslavskis. So when his dad dies, suddenly there's kind of political instability. The first person who succeeds Alexei Romanov is Peter's half-brother, Feodor, who is pretty much disabled, horribly disfigured.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Down syndrome.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Is that what they thought he had?

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I think they think he had Down syndrome. But we're getting that a lot. In a lot of the history we've been doing, people are saying they might have Down. So we really don't know.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  But I think, I think Down syndrome has been a broad category throughout history, and then it's gotten narrower as our understanding has increased.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  So we really can't know.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  But this is sort of, this story, you know, we're gonna end up with the Great Northern War. This really is from Down syndrome to Sjokkem syndrome.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  But it says he has keen intellectual abilities. Interesting. Maybe he's like a Hawking's more than a Harvey Price.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yes, we can't, we can't know really. But Feodor dies in 1682.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  From Hawking's to Harvey, the spectrum of, of red, red light disabilities.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  So Ozzy, Ivan the Fifth, they thought had Down syndrome.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  My Russian was a bit Down syndrome mixed up.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Feodor may have been more Hawking. Even the Fifth is another, he's the one that he, Peter the Great ends up sharing the throne with, I think. Anyway. So there's a, so when Feodor dies, there is a Moscow uprising in 1682. And this is set on, set alight by the Streltsi, who are the Praetorian Guards.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Praetorian Guards, yeah. And in some ways, they're, they're kind of like the secret police as well. They're kind of, it's that lineage.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  They wear kaftans. They look like women who in the seventies, like my aunt would go on like the sort of hippie trail with-

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Big, baggy, print stuff, big bug boots. But then they have like spikes.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're women who found themselves with pikes.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And so the Streltsi are left without a clear successor and they, so they then storm the Kremlin and start massacring Peter's fam, the royal family.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Backs into a corner.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  So Peter the Great is nine years old and he's hiding in a cupboard in the Kremlin. And these sort of women in kaftans-

• 14:29Speaker 03

  I think the actual moment, I believe, I don't know if it was a different time, but on the red stairs behind, in the cathedral square in Moscow, this like famous staircase, I believe that they were upset about something. And then that one of their leaders came out and said, "Right, now the mutiny's over. You guys need to fuck off and go away." And they were ready to go home. But because he said it was such a bad, too much stank on it, and was too fucking shitty about it, one of them grabbed him and threw him onto their pikes.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, a lot of people are getting impaled. A guy gets tossed from a balcony.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  They've all got their pikes like orcs.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  And then they, they got one of the guy, what started this bloodbath, they just chucked him onto it. And he got shish kebabed.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Through the rectum, I think. Russian shish kebab, through the rectum and heads mounted on pikes.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  And then they just killed the whole family. And there's a lot of them though. So it's nice to cull.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  But also this is, you know-

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Because also as much as it traumatizes Peter the Great, he's got like 15 brothers and sisters. So it's good to like, it's like rabbits. It's like, you gotta cull it for the-

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Quite a Christmas next year.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  But also, this is the, you know, the Romanovs, as we learned in the end of the Russian Revolution series, they get fucking gunned down in the basement and it takes fucking ages. It's brutal.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. And they're loving it.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And they're loving it. They're like, "More please."

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Great weekend for us this weekend. We got massacred in the basement.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, took the kids down Siberia. We got massacred in the basement. It was lovely.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. They loved, they loved it. We loved it. But this, again, the Romanovs, quite early doors are getting massacred. So Peter the Great is eventually found like trembling in a cupboard and they, and they've been searching for like days. And the only way they, he'd hidden is that they'd, they'd left the door of the cupboard slightly ajar so that they, it looked like he'd already been searched, that cupboard. But he was fine.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Well, he wasn't fine.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  No, he was fine.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, he's fine. Oh, right. Okay. You're done. Fine. I'll just get out now. But this, you know, when you, when we're looking at, if Peter the Great kind of is the personification of modern Russia, we're looking at why they're so fucked in the head. You know, his Diary of a CEO episode is, to be fair, he's got ammo.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's got a lot of stuff.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  He's got a lot. Freud would have a field day.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  That, that like choppy intro would go fucking mental.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  And that's when they butchered my entire family.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  What? And Bartlett's there, "Oh, that, that reminds me of when I had two glasses of wine." Nomts, nomts. Two glasses of wine. They ruined three days of my, your podcast ruined three days of my life. Christ. Anyway, so to stop the bloodshed, the Streltsi basically get tired, I think, from impaling people.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Which is their episode of Diary of a CEO, which is on next week. And it was just, I've, I've never felt more exhausted.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, honestly.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Because this is what people don't talk about. It's how exhausted chopping heads off. It's not like a clean cut. Because it blunts the blade. So when you're onto like the 12th child, it like takes ages.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  And they're chopping, yeah. Isn't there something how they were chopping up boys and then they were just stamping on, on the, on the, like the limbs, like making fucking wine out of them?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I am, yeah. I imagine it got a little bit out of control.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  I think everyone was doing things that maybe they regretted.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Was I stamp on the boy? Like, I think in the morning, it's like, because you get, you must get like a mad bloodlust.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Because it's different from being drunk. I think you just do things that, you know, it's not you, you're not you when you're killing children.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  No, you're not.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  So that's a sick sad one.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  No, but then it must, they must, you know, they must stop pant, like stamping on people and then be like, huh, huh.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. What, post-stamp clarity?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Post-stamp clarity, but oh, I feel a bit, I feel a bit ashamed now.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So Peter, understandably, doesn't like Moscow very much.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  He has a lifelong hatred of Moscow.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yes. And he's also develops kind of facial tics.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  Yes, from stress.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Twitching.

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  But there's a compromise and the Streltsi are quite tired. Nine-year-old Peter and his mentally disabled half-brother Ivan are crowned as co-sars.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Are they the only ones who survived then?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  I think they are. And Ivan had a form of Down syndrome. And so again, that's another, is that a bit of a hit to Peter's self-esteem? You know, you're not good enough to do it yourself. You can do it with him. And you're like, really?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  I feel like I'm gonna be carrying this administration.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I feel like fucking kids.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  It's like at school when you do, you're asked to do a group task.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  And you get, you get picked with this guy. And it's like, well, yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Fuck. It's like Starmer looking at Reeves. Oh, fuck it all. You're gonna have to do everything, aren't I?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  So now both boys are too young and one of them has Down syndrome. So their older sister, Sophia, runs the country as a region. But it's a phenomenally misogynist time, this 17th century Russia. This is a time period where when a woman gets married off, her father hands the new husband a whip. And says, "She's yours now." And that's not a kinky thing.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  That's a, that's practical. That whip is being utilized. Heya! So that's Sophia, is it? That's the, my God, that's a pretty chewy rabbit for us dogs to look at. She was accused of being, she was being accused of being a man in the dress. Fuck me! Switch the video. My God. People saying Bridget McCron's a man.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  God, that severe, severe woman coming home after she stayed for more than one drink at the pub, to that face.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  I was thinking about this.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Who's that little fellow in the back?

• 20:00Speaker 04

  That must be him. That's Peter, isn't it?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  So this is Peter's older sister. You know, I was thinking about this, thinking about kind of beauty standards. And I was like, obviously, you know, it goes from skinny to kind of curvy and skinny to curvy. You never get like fridge.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 20:17Speaker 03

  What throughout history is

• 20:18Speaker 02

  boxy. When is the era of the boxy, like sturdy?

• 20:22Speaker 03

  I guess when we've talked about beauty standards, the woke thing now is saying that it's like, this is just modern heroin chic. In the back of the day, they used to think big was beautiful, but it's nearly always like pear shaped.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  That's what I mean.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  It's never like, yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  You can still see an outline of bums and boobs.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  It's not just box.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Solid mass has never been.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  That looks like a woman is being delivered in a box. And there's an actual woman inside that.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  And you have to like get rid of the box.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  You're trying to open the box, but there's no box to open.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  No, she's the box.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  While she's running it, he gets sent to his, the royal retreat in Priebasnechgorje.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  And it's here where his personality really starts to come out. He basically gets given, he's obsessed with playing model soldiers, but with actual soldiers.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  So he makes like a regiment of local peasant boys and servants to form like play regiments.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  And but with live ammunition.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  And makes these massive sort of mock battles with toy soldiers. And he also.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Is that Alec Baldwin?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  He is like Alec Baldwin, but as a teenager, he's, because obviously he's had this insane trauma, which he loves.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Loves it.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  He sees Moscow and the kind of orthodox conservatism as a yoke.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  And he's looking west.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  You know, he's, he's looking at, Moscow had a German quarter.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Which is funny that like, you know, in Paris, there's the Latin Cartier.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Right. And that's like the Jujibit.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  But Moscow's so fucked that the Jujibit is German.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  You know, and at this point, Germany is Lutheran.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  But Russia and Germany, you forget that they've, their culture's been interlinked because Germany is sort of Russia's link into Europe. Throughout their whole history, there's been like a, a lot of tension between them and Germany. Because that, they're the people who are on the frontier with Russia seemingly.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Well, there's Poland and all that stuff.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  But seemingly, I think as they're the first great civilization that Russia seems to connect with.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Recognize, yeah. Yeah, I mean, everyone here and in Russia just sees that bit in between Germany and Russia as like.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Poland, Belarus.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  So in the German quarter in Moscow is where he met all his lifelong friends. And they're all, they're doing, smoking hash and drinking pints. And it should be said that Peter the Great himself is like six foot eight.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Yes, which is terrifying.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Big bloke.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Small hands, small head.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Beautiful.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And he has a.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Beautiful man.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  It's said that he has a sort of jarring gait.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  Where he sort of.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  He sort of moves like Kramer seemingly.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Lurches forwards.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  He's, he's recognizable. Some of the teenage shenanigans he gets up to with his partner in crime, a man called Franz La Fort, Swissman. They built a massive extension to the mansion to, for parties. And then he also, they keep this like, he organizes a sort of menagerie of freaks.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  His words.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Which is.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Which is a lifelong love of his, actually.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Dwarves, giants and people with severe physical deformities. So it's similar to.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  He's kinging, right? You know, a lot of people don't use kingship for the right reasons.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  If you've got privilege, use it.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  They're similar to Moctezuma in the Aztecs, when he had a disabled zoo.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  He, he was asking for, he wanted people to like, people to be brought freaks. And then, I mean, the sources say that he gets brought like babies whose eyes are beneath, underneath their noses and eyes on, so they had like six legs and stuff.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  If you don't have social media, this stuff, because now you see that shit all the time.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, boring.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Imagine being brought that, I mean, it'd be amazing.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  So major state banquets hosted by these two, their favorite party piece was to serve guests a massively oversized pastry pie. And when the crust was cut open, an oiled up naked dwarf would slither out.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  That is funny.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Let me add, it's good stuff.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Because people say that comedy doesn't age well.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  That's terrific.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  When you look back at the stuff in the eighties, it doesn't really age well, but that's fucking 300 years ago.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Timeless.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  But I think physical comedy is timeless.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  You know, I think puns and stuff like that, that doesn't really work over, over time.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  But I guess if you're, if you're a dwarf, are you, you know, are you always physical comedy?

• 24:34Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Well, as in, what if the dwarf wants to say something like meaningful and sincere?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Well, he's a dwarf.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  So it's funny.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  He's a dwarf in 17th century Russia.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he's not, no.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. You're going to be oiled up and slithering out of a cake, brother.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Like, what'd you expect?

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Then interestingly, because obviously everyone goes, that's very unfashionable nowadays.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Is to use dwarfs to sort of fund many humans you can play with.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Which is a controversial thing because there's a lot of dwarf actors who are upset.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  It's a huge industry.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And really, they should be getting dwarf roles, I think, personally.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, there's this whole debate about actors, you know, should disabled actors play disabled roles?

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Gay actors play gay roles because they're the same, apparently.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Should dwarfs be played by dwarves or tall guys with shoes on their knees?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I, I, yeah, I don't think that that should happen. I think give dwarves the roles.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  I think if, if fucking Eddie Redmayne is putting his shoes on his knees and being head dwarf in Snow White, I think that's a disgrace. Anyway, so Peter in 1689, a 17 year old, 17 years old, and he marries a Russian aristocrat called Eudoxia, who's 19.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Sounds gorgeous.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  She's not, she's a munter, I think.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  The modern parlance. And she's boring and she's very conservative.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  And she likes the kind of Orthodox Moscow.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Heritage. But then one night, right, a, yeah, no, it's not, it's not good stuff.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  She looks, she looks like, you know, Calvin Robinson, you know, the.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, with the mad hair.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  GB News, the, the right wing black guy.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  He's got the same hair as Calvin Robinson, I think. Is that his name?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I think for fans, for fans of dog seeing rabbits, this is quite a tough series.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  She looks sweet.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  We're not yet at Russian.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Hard times make hard women.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  But I think if you're looking down on her, like if you were just right next to her face, I mean, you could be like, you're quite gorgeous, maybe with candlelight.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Yes, but your celebrity crush is Miriam Margulies.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And you also find, you find anything sexy.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Kiss her boobs for hours.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  You find anything sexy, Charlie? That's what's, that's what's kind of endearing about you.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  In a way, until it gets to children.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:43Speaker 04

  Hey, I don't, I don't think children are sexy.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  You used to think that you thought that.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Maybe I would, but it's harm OCD. If anyone's struggling, call the doctor and seek some help.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  And say, I'm a paedophile. See what happens.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Hang up.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Anyway, one night, a frantic messenger rides into Peter's village and the Peter says that Sophia had dispatched a Streltsi to assassinate him in his bed.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Right. And Peter, to be fair, has a sort of lingering paranoia from when his entire family were butchered at his tent.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Fair enough. Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So he gets out of bed naked and runs to the stables on horseback.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  He's got a bit like RFK Junior, you know how he's a bit fucked in the head?

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  That's just because.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause his brother, his brother was really fucked in the head. Yeah, exactly. So he goes to a monastery and then he assembles his toy army, his kind of fake thing. It turns out they're kind of a real army.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  And then he basically charges on Moscow and Sophia's support completely crumbles.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  And now.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  And everyone sides with him because it's clear, they're just trying to see who's going to end up winning and it's clear that he's the one with the.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Is it just him and his mates?

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Yes, it's him and his mates, but he's built, somehow built a sophisticated army that's sort of a play army, but they're, they've got soldiers' uniforms and they've got real guns.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  And they're trained like an army.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  They're all mates.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  So they're basically armies and they're mates.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's like if you're on a stag do and then World War Three kicked off and you just went, well, we'll just be a platoon.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  And we'll just fucking carry on.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  We were saying with Pierre, weren't we, that, that we'll be in the platoon with like Bevo and Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White and stuff.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  What?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Marco Pierre White?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  And Bevo.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  Everybody's a celebrity now.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  If they do conscription, we're just gonna have to be hanging out with like Bevo and Marco Pierre White.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Would it be a celebrity vanguard?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Marco Pierre White's like an original celebrity and he's also like 50.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  I don't think he's gonna be conscripted.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  He could be a commander.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  He'd probably be, he'd probably be cooking, wouldn't he?

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  I mean, Bevo is frontline. He's first over the trench.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Bevo's cannon fodder. So many celebrities these days are just like, you're just, just sort of fucking.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Should be mowed down by a Gatling gun.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. No, you're right. Took the words out of my mouth. So many celebrities today, we should just throw in the bin of a Gatling gun, Bevo being one of them. That whole sphere, that whole TikTok sphere, who are too kind of thick and annoying to put on internet.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Cannon fodder.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, they need to be carved like rabbits.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  There just needs to be like a great, naturally, like wildfires are natural occurring.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Because sometimes it just, nature needs to reset.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yes, like a pandemic.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  So after this, Peter takes the throne.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  From his sister.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Peter now sets up essentially a sort of state-run stag do called the All Drunken, All Jestin Synod of Fools and Jesters.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Sort of like monster raving loony party sort of stuff? Is it kind of like satirical?

• 29:31Speaker 02

  No, I think it's more.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  It is satirical, right?

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but in a, in a kind of, I've got news for you where.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  It's trying to lampoon the church.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's Monty Python stuff.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  All drunking, all jesting, synod of fools and jesters.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Vote for us.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  That's what we should call our WhatsApp group.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yes. No, I mean, there's a lot of patrons will be in WhatsApp groups called this. We are the All Drunken, All Jestin Synod of Fools and Jesters. Did you catch the latest episode of Hymn vs. History? A very merry time was had by all.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  But I guess this is, we have, this is the 1600s, so I imagine it was less lame to say that. People hadn't started saying that yet. Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Huzzah.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of mads.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Christ, I would have hated to be alive at this time.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Ivan retired from politics, which is, it's interesting because I think retired from politics, you're thinking sort of.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Retarded from politics is what they meant. I think that's a typo in the script. I think that's a typo. Yeah, the graceful retirement, to be able to walk away.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Is it like a round, a standing ovation in the House of Commons after like an incredible tenure?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Mate, what a shift he did. How's he done that? Yeah. The country I love, ice cream.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  He's clapping, but that's, you know, he's always clapping.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  He's hugging everyone.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Whistling as he walks away from the lectern. So the members of the all drunken synod of fools and jesters would dress up in mock religious robes and ride through the streets on pigs, throwing day-long bacchanalian rages. And this is designed to mock the Orthodox Church, which has had a grip over Russia. So the Orthodox Church is, you know, as a

• 31:12Speaker 03

  They schismed in 1054.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  As you, as you will not stop bringing up the Great Schism 1054. And so this is

• 31:18Speaker 03

  To be honest, if we were going to place this, it was between the great, it's after the Great Schism and it's before the Great Stretching.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  It is before the Great Stretching.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Two great

• 31:27Speaker 02

  We'd say Great Stretching was probably about 2006, 2007.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. When Blair, Blair was sort of ousted.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Yes, that's when he started stretching.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It could have been actually just depression weight, to be honest, grief.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Or were you growing into a stature as a man to, to fill the, the power vacuum?

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I was going to take on Brown.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Kayak searches and compares hundreds of travel sites, but unless I repeat the word kayak, kayak thinks you won't remember that. So kayak asked me to say kayak as many times as possible. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak. Kayak, kayak. Kayak. Kai.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Ak. Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, kayak. Kayak, kayak, kayak. Search, compare and save on your trip. Kayak. Got that right.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  If you've got an insurance question, you could talk to your nana, but she'd probably just tell you how she insured her couch from stains by covering it with plastic. Or you could talk to your local Geico agent. They'll give you a different kind of warm and fuzzy with personalised assistance for all your insurance needs, like how you could be saving on your policies. So let your nana cover her couch in plastic and let a local Geico agent help cover you, but not in plastic. To find a Geico agent near you, visit geico.com slash local. The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is essentially, this is where his sort of colourful personality, a lot, they throw dwarves around a lot, I think.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  It's quite Wolf of Wall Street sort of stuff.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. And this kind of culminates in his gap year, where he basically just sort of fucks off and goes west.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Because he thinks that, he spends all his time in the German quarter. He hears all this stuff from Europe. He looks at how mad and backwards Russia is. And he's, he's obsessed with shipbuilding and all the modern technologies, all the mad stuff that's happening in the Netherlands and the UK, Newton, all this sort of stuff, and then decides to fucking go there in disguise, which is like never happened ever. It's completely insane.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  So in 1697, aged 25, he embarks on what he calls his Grand Embassy, which is 18 months where he, yeah, he's in disguise, except he still expects people to know who he is and he gets annoyed if they don't.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  But he also can't, can't point out who he is. He adopts the pseudonym Sergeant Peter Mikhailov.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Hello, my name's Sergeant Peter Mikhailov of the all singing, all dancing synod of fools and jesters. Reporting for attention. That's what they'd say when they come into the pub. Pint of mead, yes, sir.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  There he is.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  I'll get my round.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Here comes trouble.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Watch out. Sergeant Peter Mikhailov's about. Yeah, no, these guys are, they're, they're gaming with a Union Jack in the background.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  He travelled with a massive entourage of 250 people. That is a big entourage.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  And I do want to normalise massive entourages again.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  You like a monte

• 34:41Speaker 03

  I wouldn't mind like a huge, financially draining entourage.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  It is quite funny. I mean, that's a very, like, just to go back to when we had, uh, Bem and Andrew on, and we were talking about, uh, the different ways, like whites spend their money compared to black people. Entourage is a very black thing, aren't they?

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Well, you have to bring up everyone who you knew growing up has to come with you.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  But white people are just like, fuck it, why are you spending your money on that? It's their fault. It's their fault they didn't get, fuck them. You leave them behind.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Fucking pull the ladder up. What are you doing? You know?

• 35:10Speaker 03

  What they, what value are they adding to your, you know, your finances?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  You say that, yeah, they're draining your finances, but to be fair, for self-esteem, having a group of people just constantly, yeah, I mean, just constantly be like falling about.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Laughing.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  You've just got to feed them. That's why you, everyone has a giant spread.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  I just like moving as a huge entourage where it's just wherever you go, toilets are getting clogged up, you know, spreads are happening. It's just this great heaving.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  You're taking over like the carriage of a train and there's one poor old woman. You're like, ah, fuck off.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Fuck off.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  So he goes to the Netherlands. Well, first of all, he goes to Riga, which at this point is in the Swedish Empire. And he doesn't get, um, he doesn't get treated that well. And it's just worth putting a pin in that.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  But he goes to Netherlands, uh, who are at this point, uh,

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Dutch Golden Age, yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Dutch Golden Age. Uh, they're painting fruit.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  They're painting a sad Protestant man looking out a window.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Glorious. It's an art I can relate to. In disguise, he works as a common labourer at the Dutch East India Company shipyards. But he's also, I just forgot to say, he's a very practical man. Like he likes his lathe. He likes, um, doing stuff. He's clever with his hands, we would say nowadays. And he also gets fascinated with Western science. So he sees how, do you remember when we talked about feudal Japan? We talked about how a Dutch guy went over there and showed them how to like preserve bodies.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  This is about the same time.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  But also what he's doing now is similar to the Japanese before World War Two, where they just sent people out on fact finding missions.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And just copied all the Scottish whisky stuff. Yeah. So, um, he, he looks at all the like preserved bodies. And his passion was so intense, supposedly he kisses the face of a perfectly preserved dead infant.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  He's also, which we'll get to, is he builds a museum of like fucking dead babies in jars and stuff. He's obsessed with the human body and deformity. And like, he has, he has a skeleton of a giant that you can still see.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Is it sort of early phrenology in some ways?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Listen, you wouldn't call it phrenology. You wouldn't know what that word means.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  But if he discovered a phrenology book, he would read.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  This makes so much sense. I feel like this.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  He's got heads in jars, you know?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Phrenology is a vocabulary that were he alive now, he would understand.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  For sure. We certainly understand the instinct, the desire.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  The sort of psychological babblings of early phrenology.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  This is also interesting is that, uh, if, if any of his companions looked squeamish when he was having like some fucking dead corpse, whatever, he would then order them to, to take a bite. I guess it's sort of like exposure therapy.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  To try and show that there's nothing to be scared of.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  But it's also stag do stuff, isn't it? Go on, eat that corpse. There was a guy at our school who ate a, ate a fucking dead pigeon once.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Which is like a French thing.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  I don't know why he did it. We were just going over to the games, the

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Did he take a bite or did he?

• 38:08Speaker 02

  No, he like fucking, yeah, he like ate, he bit the head off and then chewed it a bit and spat it out of like a dead pigeon that he found on the, on the road.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  That's just standard stuff.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  And he was like, uh, we were like, that's, that's, why have you done that?

• 38:19Speaker 03

  If, if no one's enjoying it, then it's really sad.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  It's just mental.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  And if there's no peer pressure, that's really boring.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  That's true. Zero peer pressure. Hey, look at this. Oh, fucking hell. He goes to Netherlands, he goes to England.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  In early 1698, he stays in Greenwich, not far from here.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Which I believe, is it in the shipwright's house in Deptford, which I recently, because on TikTok I'm getting loads of like houses I can't afford. That's, it's one of my favourite things to do is just look at four million pound country houses or whatever.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  While we're on this, uh, have you seen the house for sale that's got all the Nazi memorabilia in it, in the listing? I've been tagged in this a lot.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Reich move. I mean, that's a great headline. Whoever's doing the headlines for the Sun, I just want to say you're still, you're nailing it.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Still killing it.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Still nailing it. Right? From like gotcha.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Reich move. You're nailing it.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  Up your yunta.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if you look at the, um, I, I can't imagine why you would put this in the listing. Look, he's got the amount of fucking Nazi swords he's got in there. And that's a gaming chair. I mean, this man surely

• 39:24Speaker 03

  That is literally an AI-generated patron. That's how people consume the patron is from there.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. We're looking into a patron's list. It feels quite intimate actually, to be looking at the inner workings of a patron.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  But you want it, you want it furnished.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  Does it come furnished?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  You'd pay that for the Nazi memorabilia.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, it comes with guns, statues and helmets.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Oh, brilliant. Okay. Terrific. Um, anyway, uh, the English become horrified by the Russian stag do living in Deptford. And the guy who run, who owns the house, uh, is this where they do like wheelbarrow racing and?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. They use like priceless paintings as dartboards.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  It's just standard stuff.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. All singing, all dancing.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Riot club sort of stuff.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  The bill that they get for property damage is in today's money about three million pounds, isn't it? That's a lot.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  That's a good night out.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  His gap year gets, uh, cut short because in 1698, the Streltsi, who had murdered his family, are back at it. Those women in kaftans, uh, kick off again, trying to restore the traditional rule.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Restore Russia.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Restore Russia. Rupert Lowikoff. And, um, so Peter has to cut his European tour short in order to deal with the Streltsi once and for all. He actively gets involved in the killing and over 1,200 guards are brutally executed in Moscow. He supposedly does it with like fucking an axe and he just goes berserk on them.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. He wails on that tang.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  He chops off heads. Uh, he then hangs all the corpses outside the convent windows where his half sister Sophia is staying.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  This sort of cements his complete authority over Russia.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  The reverse Taliban, right?

• 41:01Speaker 02

  It is the reverse Taliban, in that he, everyone in Russia has a beard.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  And that's a huge part of their masculinity and status.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Because all the Orthodox priests have big beards. They all look like pepper grinders or soda streams. But he, you know, the German aesthetic is to, is to be clean shaven. And so he thinks beards are a symbol of Russian backwardness. And so he gets a large pair of shears and without warning just starts cutting off his noble's beards, which is a bit like those videos where you see people going up behind someone and shaving off their topknot, which I'm a big fan of.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  Or he's cutting off a woman's ponytail.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  I mean,

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Brilliant.

• 41:38Speaker 03

  Devastate.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  It's not a, it's, it's not a crime, but it's, it's, um,

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Is it not?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  It's too much than, it's more than a prank.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  I think it is a crime.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Cutting off a woman's ponytail is a crime? Fucking hell.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  The West has fallen. I can't cut off a woman's ponytail for a laugh.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  I mean, what is funny about the West is how quick it is. And it's the amount of damage. That's like three years worth of her.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  It's the most efficient. Is it? Yes. It's without her consent is a crime.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Battery. I'm going down for battery by cutting off a woman's ponytail. My god, pendulum's run too far.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've gone soft.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Pendulum's run too far the other way. We need an, it's, okay, Me Too was a necessary overcorrection, but we've got to find the middle ground.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  It's been a sense of humour failure.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Anyway, so all, he then says that all Russian men, except the clergy, have to shave their faces or pay a beard tax.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  I mean, you'd pay a beard tax probably.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I would be, well, I would bite it.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  You'd lose all your powers.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  I, I need a beard.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  So you complete your relate to this, because I guess if, if, if Peter wanted to humiliate you as a noble, he would just chop your beard because you would lose all authority.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  But my, you'd see my chin and I think I'd all power would drink.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Your voice would be like this.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Well, no, my voice wouldn't go up. The beard doesn't make my voice better, but my, you know, my weak chin. And I haven't seen my chin for some time.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  I'm hoping that maybe my sessions with Tyreek have.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  What, you'd come out with a Chad chin?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 43:01Speaker 03

  But it's a bit of a fucking, it's.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  It's a gamble.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Schrodinger's beard, right?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  It is.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  We don't, you could say that, but we don't know.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  I similarly, you know, at the same time, I have an incredibly masculine clavicular jawline and I'm a thumb. Gavin Plum. You don't know, you know, is it clavicular or Gavin Plum under there? We don't know. We don't, it's Schrodinger's beard.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  But I, yeah, I don't know. Is it body fat? I think I have to get my body fat percentage down, I think.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Right, because I always want to, yeah, I get a lot of fat around my face and my neck. That's where it goes first. It doesn't go to my batty.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You know, when we come to do Saddam, for example, I'd love to bring out my Saddam moustache.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  It's a, it's politically difficult at home.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  It is.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  But I also feel that like, if you can't have a fucking tash as a dad, then you're never going to have one.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Because I think everyone's dad at some point had a moustache.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  And so this is the time to do it.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  This is the time to do it, yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  So, uh, so meanwhile, so he's trying to modernise Russia. He's cutting off everyone's beards. Meanwhile, his wife, who he fucking hates, and fair enough, she's a munter. Why have you done that? Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, explain what you've done.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Just nice. Uh, it's, it's a picture of you guys kissing on the.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  That's inappropriate.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Before the record today. Before, um, Richard having the.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Can you look up the legality of doing that in the workplace?

• 44:20Speaker 02

  I feel like that's a crime. If cutting a woman's ponytail off is a crime.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Charlie, can you look up the legality of AIing two colleagues kissing?

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Battery, big battery. Big battery, guys.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  If you're listening, Charlie's just put an AI generated image of us.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Kissing.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Retro warmth and intimacy. You look really happy.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I genuinely think that's a crime, what you've done there.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Look up if that's a crime, Charlie.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  It's quite balanced as well. There's no clear top.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Charlie, get off the screen and look up if that's a crime.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's a crime.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  It's the perfect crime.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Because you're basically, you're basically deep faking us.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  If this is wrong, I don't want to be right.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  We must remember that behind this technology is often an abuser.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Who's sitting behind those fucking computer screens right now?

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Is it a crime to make your boss kiss?

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Uh, it's sexual harassment.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  I think you've just, you've just lied, sexually harassed us.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  Am I fired?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Hey?

• 45:08Speaker 04

  Am I, do I have to go?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I think we have to have a conversation.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  If you're desperate, you keep asking, would I get fired if I did it?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Get rid of it. Put it back on the screen.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  I'm saving that.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  That's my computer.

• 45:17Speaker 04

  This is for me.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  It's, it's going to.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  It's going to affect the chemistry of the podcast because now we can't talk about Peter the Great.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Without thinking like we should be kissing. Okay. Now we, now we've seen that's an option.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 45:41Speaker 03

  I didn't know, we didn't know that was an option.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  I didn't think that was where this podcast was going.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  I thought we were going to start talking about the Swedish Empire.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Well, once you run out of topics though, we've still got World War Two to get through.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  My mouth feels like it could be attached to his. You put that phantom image in my head.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Try it. It would be, it would actually do an amazing thing for the.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  I don't think it would.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  We've got a deeply conservative.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  What would happen? They have a, we have a very socially conservative fanbase, okay? Right? When I wore pink safari suit, many people threatened to cancel their Patreon.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah? Okay?

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  So, you know, AI images of us kissing, you've got to be careful with that.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  But sexual harassment in the workplace, I think you need to do a workshop.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  You need to do a course, I think. Yeah, definitely.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  So I don't think you understand. I think the women in this company, it's fine, but I think the way you treat men is unacceptable.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  It is unacceptable. So, um, in 1698, Peter, who it must be stressed, fucking hates his wife. Eudoxia.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  Like a, yeah, he's like a old Gandhi, basically.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yes, he is.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  And fair enough, because Eudoxia's a munter.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  She, he has her dragged to a.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Can we hate munters?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  If there's one thing this podcast stands for, it's that we're anti-munter, okay? Tough on munters, tough on the causes of munters, okay?

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Moral failing.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Which is munter's mums. It's their fault. It's not, never the dad. Anyway, so Eudoxia is basically sent to a nunnery. So he's effectively divorcing her, but he doesn't really, because he also has a mistress at this point, some German.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Many mistresses. I believe, uh, when you tot up at the end, he might have 360 illegitimate kids.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I think that's, that's, that's Augustus.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  The strong, yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Fair play.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Anna Mons. Dog rabbit, please, Charlie. Anna Mons.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  It's not been great rabbit so far.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  No, no, it's tough rabbit. It's chury stuff. This rabbit, the rabbits have not been cooked properly in this series.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Now, how long Charlie's taking, I know that he's planned something.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Better, still not great, still sore.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Hairline's an issue. Big nose, hairline's an issue.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  He looks like a posh uncle.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, looks like a feminine uncle.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Looks like me if, um, I shave my beard.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  You know, I am in danger of, uh, being.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is you. Your iron nose.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  A pre-Raphaelite nude, you know? It's why I'm never sending nudes because.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Is that why?

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, if we lived in a Renaissance time, my body would be accepted and I would be worshipped.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  You'd become a muse.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  I would be a muse.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  But we don't live, we live in a, in a time of steroids.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  And, you know, uh, six packs.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yes, they don't celebrate the soft edges.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  The soft bellies and the male curves.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  You know, where, where have the male curves gone?

• 48:21Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Where are the male curved influences?

• 48:23Speaker 03

  The juicy ma, male arse, the straight man's arse doesn't get celebrated.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  It really doesn't.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  My thick thighs, you know, they are, they are lusted after in the comments, sure. But I feel the society's telling me to lose weight on my thighs.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  I think culturally, a man who's got a fucking wagon on him, right? With a big batty man, straight man, there's nowhere for him to, it's wasted him having that thing because it's not getting used for any, there's no practical purpose.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  No, I'm not, I'm not whining pond to cocky.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  You're just fucking.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  I can't whine pond to mortgage.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  You're just shitting out that thing and it's a waste.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Well, I'm using my asshole as God intended.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Yes, I know, but then you could have.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  It's not a playground.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  It's not a fucking water slide like some people in this room.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  But Charlie doesn't have a big batty.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  You've got a tiny scrawny arse, so it's wasted. You should swap batties because you're just shitting out that thing.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Why do you keep saying it like that?

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Because I know that your, your approach to it is just.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  I'm going to shit on that thing. You know that when I go to the toilet, I turn into a southern black woman.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  No, you're sort of like muddy waters. They're sort of like.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I'm going to shit on that thing.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  You seen that video of the woman? Sitting on toilet, sitting on toilet. Yeah. Air flush. That's what I do when I. Yeah, that's sort of my, um, my poo alter ego. Anyway, look, we, we've got to get to, um, what's happening in Europe at this time.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Peter the Great, um, fucks his munter wife off. He's modernising Russia. He's cutting Orthodox priests' beards off, but meanwhile, over the, over the border, this is the age of Swedish supremacy.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  Yes. So this is post Thirty Years' War and one of the great winners of the age was the Swedes, which is one of the very rare times in human history, apart from the Vikings, where the Swedes are a terrifying military force. They're the most modern, most terrifying force in the whole of Europe.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Which you just never, you never learn about this.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  Because it was short-lived. Uh, they basically turned the Baltic into a Swedish lake because they've got, uh, Finland, Estonia, Livonia, which is modern day Latvia, uh, and Northern Germany. So they're basically, the Baltics is all theirs.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  And they're allied with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

• 50:44Speaker 03

  And Peter, who hates being stuck in Moscow, looks with great envy at the Baltics. Well, I mean, the Russians, for their whole history, have been looking for a, uh, all year port. So they've got Archangel, but that's only there for like six months a year.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  And they are essentially landlocked at this point. And, and Peter's always been.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Is their route out.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Peter's been on his gap year, looking at the shipyards, building ships.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  He's a boat botherer.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  He's a real boat botherer.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  And so he is looking across at the Swedish Empire thinking, I didn't realise, looking at a map, actually where Charlie just was in Finland, Finland and Russia share a lot of the same landmass. I didn't realise that. For some reason, I thought Finland was separate.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  But at this point, Sweden, uh, has a lot of what is now modern day northwestern Russia.

• 51:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Right? So, uh, in 1697, the, this Swedish Empire faces uncertainty when a 15-year-old, uh, king called Charles XII

• 51:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  becomes a prince of the throne. Now, as you say, in the Thirty Years' War, they had this guy Gustavus Adolphus.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Who's their greatest.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Who's like the great military leader.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  Oh, Charlie, Charlie.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  Charlie, that's so inappropriate.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  What did you?

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Charlie, Charlie, get off.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Charlie.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  I don't like, you'd sort of look more.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I look like I'm at a prank and you look like you're seriously. What did you type in for that prompt?

• 52:04Speaker 03

  And also, is that not, how, how's that not getting flagged? What?

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Make, um, the guy on the right be on all fours and the guy on the left be behind him, looking down at him, smiling.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  So he's managed to work his way through the.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Playful, playful retro scene.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, why, why is it?

• 52:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I look more like a Valdis, really. I don't know.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  I mean, to be fair, you, you're asking for it.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you're, you think it's a love. I'm, yeah, I'm deadly serious.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Serious.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Also throwing it back a lot.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  You're, you're acting like you've got my arse. You know, but I don't do this.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Christ, what on earth has this podcast become?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Charlie's just sat there. If you, you don't, you can't see him. He's wearing a fucking mesh vest. That it looks like you've stolen from a fucking.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  It's cropped and see-through. Completely pointless.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  One of the fucking Thai, Thai cave boys, football.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  Bibbs.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Bibbs. Right. We need to talk about, um, Charles XII.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Potentially the great figure of the age. We'll see.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Yes, and, uh, I'll say that this, what he goes on to do is the long road to Napoleon and Barbarossa. And he is, he is the start of ill-fated invasions of Russia.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  But it's a fascinating, we're going to get into the Great Northern War.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  An extraordinary, uh, story that I had no idea about.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  They should make a big film of it, I think. It's amazing.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Amazing stuff. That's in our next episode, which is already on the Patreon, where for £3 a month, you can join the all singing, all dancing community of 1000 history chisters. Uh, and you can order pints of mead.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Uh, and you can live in command centres with Nazi swords.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Dwarfs.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  You can throw dwarfs, um, all this stuff, uh, like-minded people like you.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  That episode's already there and on our Patreon, this bonus, we'll be talking about Stockholm Syndrome, which, uh, is an extraordinary story

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  of where that came from.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Uh, and the story of Patty Hearst, which I had no idea about. Anyway, that's all there. If not, we'll see you on Thursday for Peter the Great's Great Northern War. Goodbye for now.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  Goodbye.

• 54:25Speaker 01

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