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

0:29Welcome back to Finbar's History. Back to front bangers. Awesome stuff. There's probably the most amount of dwarves there's ever been in an episode. I'll say that now. Probably. Most dwarves thrown. Most dwarves thrown. Yeah. 100%. And also, I didn't realise how basically he makes modern Russia. I sort of assumed Russia had always been like this. Because Russia's not as old as people think in many ways. No. It's just like a mad... It was like a Viking slave estate that sort of... He turns it from that. Minute silence for the white slave victims, please. Victims of white slaves. This episode is to raise awareness of white slavery, as all our episodes are.

1:02Every episode is. This podcast is an anti-white slavery podcast. There's a donation link in the bio below. Click the link to help fund my reparations, which I will be paying myself as dividends. Yes. I believe one of Andy Burnham's first policies, should he come in, is to make... If he had any sense. If he had any sense. Yeah. If sense has not completely left this country, that it would make white reparations not taxable. Yeah, this is the Finn Taylor's article in the Telegraph with a picture of him like that. Euro reparations and the government is taxing them. White reparations now. Burnham, get your mitts off my reparations, okay?

1:44This might be coming out in Burnham's Britain. We don't know. We don't know yet. Are people going to still be saying Burnham's... Burnham's Britain. Yeah, is that... Burnham's Britain. Is Starmer's Britain caught on more than any... People weren't saying that soon, X Britain or anything like that. So I don't know. Is it a new slate's clean or is it just going to go straight to Burnham's Britain? I think if you're a Labour Prime Minister, you always get Britain. It's not Britain in the minds of the press. Blair's Britain. You know, trust is Britain. Trust is Britain. Trust is Britain. So there's no point saying trust is Britain.

2:18That's a double. Right, right. You're saying the same thing twice. Exactly. Tautology. It's a tautology. But Burnham's Britain, you know, that shouldn't be a... Britain shouldn't be under Burnham. Now, you just got Burma up, Charlie, and you just left it there and leant back in your chair. Well, we may turn into Burma. Yeah, if we carry on the way that we're going. If he does not sort out HMRC's policy on white reparations. Yeah, genocide in the jungle, I reckon. 100%. But anyway, we are in 17th century Russia. It's a time period we don't spend much time in as well, but it's a fascinating one, the end of the 17th century.

2:55I don't know why, because I guess for British here, history you're the napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 1800s and you've got the english civil war glorious revolution it's a bit of a dead zone yeah it was a karma zone i guess it's it's science yes so i kind of tune out because is it like newton yeah yeah and the other the other fucking yeah oh the other one they got samuel writers like samuel johnson samuel peeps yeah but that's he's like the british and frank is that right yes but i guess it's a boring even sadder story even sad even more boring um no we get great great fire london so i guess it's just that this little bit here yeah but the year seven so what year is this happening what year is he born well peter the great's born in i think 1680 something yeah and then shit really kicks off at like 1700 yes nothing seems to happen at 1700 i can't place anything at 1700 should we try and place it peter the great is born in 16 okay so it is just after the restoration in england yeah and it is before Rupert Lowe's restoration yeah exactly which is TBC so it's after the restoration when the only true patriot in this country defected from reform you know they're a patriot if they've started their own political party we covered some of the sweep of Russian history on the Russian Revolution episode we did a very brief rundown but yeah it's it's an incredibly wild place that is completely landlocked at this time it's not even called russia when he's born it's called 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 polish lithuanian commonwealth yeah one of the biggest empires yes there's ever been I can't really get my head around that.

4:47I mean, Sweden are a parallel? Yeah, it's upside down land. It is. I mean, what's going on? Yeah. But Russia is backward, and it's Peter the Great who basically, through sheer force of will, modernizes them into the – makes them a modern country. And when we're talking about, you know, why is Russia so fucked in the head, which was part of our discussion in the revolution, part of it is how Peter – like his childhood. no one has probably a worse childhood yeah well he had the best childhood in russia but yes sorry that's what i mean no one's had a better childhood in russia yes but we have to reiterate the russian standards of good parenting yeah it's a massacre yeah um because it's his grand great granddad's well there's either the terrible who's the first romanov right or after him the romanov star right because of what he did right romanov line is only basically just started and entered the russian revolution uh but yeah he has a tough start to life so his dad has 16 children and peter's the 14th right and basically and they're all uh russian orthodox how does that make you feel yeah 14 of 16 you know people often say the third child is he gets left out if you're the 14th of 16th you're getting lost in the middle yeah yeah um but also i imagine scrum really yeah well it's a whole team it's a flash mob it's a whole team 15 rugby rugby is 15 aside isn't it um they're all russian orthodox which as we discussed is it's got a different flavor yeah because moscow see themselves as the third rome it's the first rome which is rome second rome which is contendinople and moscow so it's got it's already defining itself as distinct from both catholic and also the protestant world and russian orthodox basically is much more about having a terrible life it seems well or rather that's fine suffering what's interesting is in britain we're quite miserable and we seem to celebrate terrible things happening but it has a very distinctly different feeling well there's a stoicism to britain right bad things will happen we'll get through them russia bad things are happening brilliant i'm fucking loving it i'm hard for the bad things that are happening and also i think this because britain's a much smaller country everything's less dramatic here so what we glorify is everything anything being a bit shit yes well i thought i'd enjoy my birthday but it was disappointing and it rained yes and russia it's like i thought i enjoyed my birthday and then my entire family was killed by bears and people like brilliant it's like a fucking great birthday yeah um so he's the 14th of 16th and basically he's born into a uh a family with a political sorry struggle going on 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.

7:34Bloody Moscow. Moscow. Moscow. Moscow. Moscow. Moscow. Look at that. I have no idea. Did you know that? I did not know that. But then Chechens are Muslim, aren't they? Yeah, I guess so. But who knows? But also Russia's just the entire world. Yeah. It shouldn't be one country. Why is it one country? How does one country border? It's Koreans. It's Muslims. Like, pick one. Yeah. How is one country bordering Finland and North Korea? Yeah. It's not a country. Yeah, but they've taken all the space that God didn't finish. Yeah. It was just like auto-generated. Yeah. Fill that in. You got bored. How is one country...

8:10The whole of Siberia is copy and paste. Yeah. If you're developing a video game, it's just... But how is... Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. How is it like... My wife! How is that one... I think you went a bit Vietnamese there. Well, that's probably a close part, isn't it? Probably. Is it about as big as America? Way bigger. No, way bigger. America could fit in. America and Australia can fit in Russia, and you still have about 2 million square miles change. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. I think mainland Europe fits in it about five times, six times. I kind of understand why they want to be the king then, because they are massive.

8:51Yes. And they have been squashed. Sorry? They've been squashed, but they are massive, right? They haven't been squashed. They have been a bit squashed. Are you... What forums are you on? Are you spitting some pro-Pugin stuff right here? Yes. Right, okay. Do you think... Would you say he was backed into a corner, Putin? I'd say so, yeah. Right, okay. Well, this is the long road to the Ukraine war as well. This is fascinating stuff. 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.

9:20But this is the first time Russia starts bothering itself in Eastern Europe. Yes. It's kind of the first time Russia starts rushering in many ways. Our understanding of Russia is Peter the Great, really. It's time for race rankings. We've ranked Pakistanis high recently, but let me tell you about Karoolean Indians. Oh, they're performing well at the moment. Listen, they are hot, sexy Indians. They are some hot property. And they are top of my list of my favourite races of people right now. Wow. I mean, this is big news. I mean, you're finding out here that this is the Screen Rock podcast. This is a regular feature we do.

9:51We do a bit of race rankings. It's kind of like woke racism whilst talking about social media, really. that's our vibe exactly we pretend that we want to talk about social media really we want to talk about whether we prefer people from Pakistan or Brazil and right now Pakistan are winning baby so listen to the Screen Rock podcast if that's the kind of thing we'll see you there 25 years ago this week Al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center the Pentagon and a United Airlines flight killed almost 3 ,000 people and set in train events that would kill literally millions more in war the destruction of countries and the spread of preventable disease I'm Andrew Harrison And this week, in a special miniseries from The Bunker, I ask experts and eyewitnesses how the consequences of the 9-11 attacks and the war on terror that followed still shape our world.

10:36From the rise of the security state, to the tensions that still inflame the Middle East, to the rise of an isolationist America First President who treats his allies with contempt. That's Terror Century, a three-part miniseries from The Bunker, tracing the road from 9-11 to Donald Trump. Follow The Bunker now on your favourite app. You won't want to miss it. Do you struggle to keep up with the news every week? The Bunker has got you covered. Every Monday, we release Start Your Week, where we go over the big stories to follow in the coming days. And then on Fridays, we have our weekly wrap-up, where we give you the context and the meaning behind the biggest and the weirdest stories of recent days.

11:15Search for The Bunker wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you never miss an episode. so his early years are marked by this extraordinary instability because there are two um uh his dad has two marriages so there's two branches of the family so when he dies my dad's marrying a russian woman tomorrow so i guess i'm it's quite similar two marriages yes who's going to inherit we'll see do you think they'll have do you think they'll have step brothers he promised us he wouldn't uh and i think he's he's gonna still do it anyway yeah so how old is how old is you my sister's pretty terrified how old is you stepman uh 36 35 oh um so you're yeah it's nice that your podcast partner's the same age as a stepman yeah that's normal she's your age it's my age yeah I've got a long common with her I also get stuck in washing machines yeah I guess finally um I'm always rooting around the back of washing machines.

12:18Stuff my kids fucking toys get stuck in it. Dubbies in the back of it. I guess it's a different story. It doesn't really work when you do it. We've said before that the unpopular sequel. Step back against rapes and tumble dryer is not as good a film. Not as good a film. The disappointing sequel. Anyway. So yeah, there's two branches of the Peter the Great family, right? There's the Narishkins and the Milislavskys. so when his dad dies suddenly there's kind of political instability the first person who succeeds Alexei Romanov is Peter's half-brother Theodore who is pretty much disabled horribly disfigured Down syndrome is that what they thought he had?

12:59I think he had Down syndrome but we're getting that a lot in a lot of the history we're doing people are saying they might have Down so we really don't know but I think Down syndrome has been a broad category throughout history and then it's gotten narrower as our understanding has increased. So we really can't know. But this is sort of, this story, you know, we're going to end up with the Great Northern War. This really is from Down syndrome to Stockholm syndrome. But it says he has keen intellectual abilities. Interesting. Maybe he's like a Hawkins more than a Harvey Price. Yes, we can't know really.

13:26But Theodore dies in 1682. From Hawkins to Harvey. The spectrum of red light disabilities. Ivan V, they thought I'd Down syndrome. Oh, sorry. My Russian was a bit Down syndrome mixed up. Theodore may have been more Hawking. Even the Fifth is another... He's the one that Peter the Great ends up sharing a throne with, I think. Anyway, so when Theodore dies, there is a Moscow uprising in 1682. And this is set on satellite by the Streltsi, who are the Praetorian guards. Praetorian guards, yeah. And in some ways, they're kind of like the secret police as well. It's that lineage. But they wear caftans.

14:06and they look like women who in the 70s like my aunt would go on like the sort of hippie trail with right yeah big baggy print stuff big bug boots yeah but then they have like spikes yeah they're women who have found themselves with pikes and so the streltsy are left without a clear successor and they so they then storm the Kremlin and start massacring Peter's family the royal family backs into a corner so Peter the Great is nine years old and he's hiding in a cupboard in the Kremlin. And these sort of women in caftans... 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 one of their leaders came out and said, right, now the mutiny's over, you guys need to fuck off and go away.

15:01And 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. Oh yeah, a lot of people were getting impaled. A guy gets tossed from a balcony. They've all got their pikes like orcs. Yes. And then they got one of the guys, what started this bloodbath, they just chucked him onto it. And he got sheesh kebabed. Through the rectum, I think. Yeah. Russian sheesh kebab, through the rectum and heads mounted on pikes. And then they just killed the whole family. And there's a lot of them though.

15:31So it's nice to cull. But also this is, you know. Because also as much as was traumatized Peter the Great he's got like 15 brothers in the so it's good to like it's like rabbits it's like you've got to cull it for the quieter Christmas next year yeah 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 yeah and they're loving it and they're loving it it's bar weekend yeah great weekend for us this weekend we got massacred in the basement yeah to the kids down Siberia and got a basket in a basement.

16:06It was lovely. Absolutely brilliant. They loved it. Really loved it. But this, again, the Romanovs quite early doors are getting masquered. Yeah. So Peter the Great is eventually found like trembling in a cupboard and they've been searching for like days and the only way he'd hidden is that 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. Well, he wasn't fine. Well, yeah. No, he was fine. No, he was fine. all 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 yes we're looking at why they're so fucked in the head yeah you know his diary of a ceo episode yeah is to be fair he's got ammo yeah he's got a lot he's got a lot for all you would have a field day that that like choppy intro yeah go fucking mental yes and that's when uh they butchered my entire family what and bartlett's oh that reminds me when I had two glasses of wine noms noms two glasses of wine they ruined three days of my life your podcast ruined three days of my life Christ anyway so to stop the bloodshed the straight-up to basically get tired I think from impaling people which is their episode of Diaries CEO which is on next week I've never felt more exhausted yeah honestly because that's what people don't talk about I was so worn down it's how exhausted chopping heads off it's not like a clean cut because it blunts the blade.

17:31So when you're onto the 12th child, it takes ages. And they're chopping... Isn't there something how they were chopping up boys and then they were just stamping on the limbs, like making fucking wine out of them? Yeah, I imagine it got a little bit out of control. Yeah. I think everyone was doing things that maybe they regretted. Yeah. It's like, I stamp on the boy. I think in the morning it's like... Because you must get like a mad bloodlust. Yes. 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 no you're not so that's a sad one no but then it must they must you know they must stop pant like stamping on people and be like yeah uh what post stamp clarity yeah post stamp clarity like oh i feel a bit i feel a bit ashamed now yeah maybe so uh peter um understandably doesn't like moscow yes very much he's a lifelong h for the moscow yes and he's also um develops kind of facial tics yes um twitching yeah but as a compromise and the strategy quite tired nine-year-old peter and his mentally disabled half-brother ivan are crowned as cosas they're the only ones who survived then i think they are and ivan had a form of down syndrome right uh and so again that's another is that a bit of a hit to peter's um self-esteem you know you're not good enough to do it yourself you can do it with him right you're like really yeah i feel like i'm gonna be carrying this administration it's like at school when you do you're asked to a group task yeah and you get you get picked with this guy and it's like well yeah fuck it's like starmer looking at reeves oh fucking hell you have to do everything aren't i um so uh 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 uh misogynist time yes 17th century russia this is a time period where when a woman gets married off her father hands the husband a whip and says she's yours now and that's not a kinky thing no that's a that's practical that whip is being utilized yeah yeah um so that's Sophia, is it?

19:49That'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. Right. Switch to video. My God, people say Bridget McCron's a man. God, that severe, severe woman coming home after stayed for more than one drink at the pub. I was thinking, to that face. I was thinking about this. Who's that little fella in the back? Is that, um. That must be him. That's Peter, isn't it? Is it? So this is Peter's older sister. You know, I was thinking about this. I was thinking about kind of beauty standards. And I was like, because obviously, you know, it goes from skinny to kind of curvy and skinny to curvy.

20:24You never get like fridge. Do you know what I mean? Like throughout history. When is the era of the boxy, like sturdy? I guess when we've all got beauty standards, the woke thing now is saying that it's like, this is just modern heroin chic. You know, back in the day, they used to think big was beautiful. But it's nearly always like pear shade. That's what I mean. It's never like, yeah. you can still see an outline of bums and boobs. Yeah. It's not just box. Solid mass has never been in. That looks like a woman is being delivered in a box. And there's an actual woman inside that. Right. And you have to get rid of the box.

21:00You're trying to open the box, but there's no box to open. No. She's the box. While she's running it, he gets sent to the royal retreat in Priyabazh Nishgoye. Yeah, of course. 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 so he makes like a regiment of local peasant boys and servants to form like play regiments but with live ammunition and makes these massive sort of mock battles with toy soldiers and he also he's like Alec Baldwin he is like Alec Baldwin but as a teenager he's because obviously he's had this insane trauma which he loves he loves it he sees Moscow and the kind of Orthodox conservatives as a yoke yes he's looking west yeah you know he's he's looking at um moscow had a german quarter yeah which is funny that like it you know in paris there's the latin cartier yeah right and that's like the zhuzhi bit yeah but moscow's so fucked that the zhuzhi bit is german yeah you know and at this point the germany is lutheran but russia and germany you forget that they've their culture has 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 to that they're the people who on the frontier with russia seemingly well there's poland and all that but seemingly i think as they're the first great civilization that russia seems to connect with yeah yeah yeah i mean everyone here and in russia just sees that bit in between german and russia as like that yeah exactly yeah poland belarus so in the German quarter in Moscow is where he met all his lifelong friends and they're all they're doing smoking hash drinking pints and it should be said that Peter the Great himself is like six foot eight he's a massive guy which is terrifying big bloke yeah small hands small heads yes beautiful yeah and he has a beautiful man it's said that he has a sort of jarring gait yes where he sort of he sort of moves like Kramer seemingly yes yeah lurches forward he's recognizable some of the teenage shenanigans he gets up to with his partner in crime a man called Franz Lefort, a Swiss man they built a massive extension to the mansion for parties and then he also, they keep this like he organizes a sort of menagerie of freaks his words which is a lifelong love of his actually yeah, dwarves, giants and people with severe physical deformities so it's similar to He's kinging right.

23:38You know, a lot of people don't use kingship for the right reasons. If you've got privilege, use it. Exactly. They're similar to Moctezuma in the Aztecs when he had a disabled zoo. Yeah. He was asking for, he wanted 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. So they had like six legs and stuff. If you don't have social media, this stuff, because now you see that shit all the time. Yeah, boring. Imagine being brought that. It'd be amazing. so major state banquets hosted by these two their favourite 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 that is funny I mean that's good stuff because people say that comedy doesn't age well that's terrific you look back at stuff in the 80s it doesn't really age well but that's fucking 300 years ago timeless but I think physical comedy is timeless yes you know I think puns and stuff like that that doesn't really work over over time but i guess if you're if you're a dwarf are you you know are you always physical comedy what do you mean well as in what if the dwarf wants to say something like meaningful and sincere well he's a dwarf so it's funny he's a dwarf in 17th century russia yeah so he's not no yeah you're going to be oiled up and slithering out of a cake brother yeah like what do you expect then interestingly because obviously everyone goes that's very unfashionable nowadays yeah is to use dwarves are sort of fun mini humans you can play with um which is a controversial thing because there's a lot of dwarf actors who are upset i was gonna say it's a huge industry yeah and really they should be getting dwarf roles i think personally what do you mean i mean you know there's this whole debate about actors you know should disabled actors play disabled roles yeah gay actors play gay roles because they're the same apparently should dwarves be played by dwarves or tall guys with shoes on their knees i i yeah i don't think that should happen i think give dwarves the roles yeah i think if if fucking eddie redmayne is putting his shoes on his knees and being head dwarf and snow white i think that's a disgrace anyway so uh peter in 1689 is 17 year old uh 17 years old and he marries a russian aristocrat called eudoxia who's 19 sounds gorgeous um she's not she's uh a munter i think yes in uh the modern parlance um and she's boring and she's very conservative yeah and she likes the kind of uh orthodox moscow yeah heritage uh but then one night right a um yeah no it's not it's not good stuff she looks this she looks like you know calvin robertson you know the um oh yeah with the you know the gb news the the right wing black guy yeah i know you mean yeah it's got the same hair as calvin robertson i think is that his I think for fans of Dog Seeing Rabbits, this is quite a tough series.

26:28Yes. It should be sweet. We're not yet at Russian... Hard times make hard women. Yes, yeah. I think if you were looking down on her, if you were just right next to her face, I think you could be like, you're quite gorgeous, maybe, with candlelight. Yes, but your celebrity crush is Miriam Margulies, who you said, and I quote, I want to kiss her boobs for hours. You find anything sexy, Charlie, that's what's kind of endearing about you, in a way. until it gets to children. Yes. I don't think children are sexy. You used to think that you thought that. Maybe I would, but it's a harm OCD. If for anyone struggling, call the doctor and seek some help.

27:03And say, I'm a paedophile. See what happens. Hang up.

27:12Anyway, one night, a frantic messenger rides into Peter's village, and Peter says that Sophia had dispatched a streltsy to assassinate him in his bed, right? and Peter to be fair has a sort of lingering paranoia from when his entire family were butchered age 10 yeah fair enough yeah yeah so he gets out of bed naked and runs to the stables on horseback he's got a bit like RFK Jr you know how he's a bit fucked in the head yes that's just because his family 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 yeah and then he basically charges on Moscow and Sophia's support completely crumbles.

27:53Yeah. And now... And everyone sides with him. Yeah. 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... Is it just him and his mates? Yes. It's him and his mates, but he's somehow built a sophisticated army that's sort of a play army, but they've got soldiers' uniforms and they've got real guns and they're trained like an army. They're all mates. So they're basically armies and they're mates. Yeah. It's like if you're on a stag do and then World War III kicked off and you just went, well, we'll just be a platoon and we'll just fucking carry on.

28:19Yeah. We were saying with Pierre, weren't we, that we'll be in the platoon with Bevo and Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White and stuff. Yeah. What? Marco Pierre White? And Bevo? Everybody's a celebrity now. Yeah. If they do conscription, we're just going to have to be hanging out with Bevo and Marco Pierre White. I think Marco Pierre White's like an original celebrity. And he's also like 50. Yeah. I don't think he's going to be conscripted. He'll get him off. He could be a commander. Send Bevo. He'd probably be cooking, wouldn't he? Yeah. yeah i mean bevo is frontline he's first over the trench bevo's cannon fodder so many celebrities these days are just like you just just sort of fucking should be mowed down by a gatling gun yes yeah just yeah no you're right took the words out of my mouth so many celebrities today we just throw in the bin of a gatling gun bevo being one of them um that whole sphere that whole tiktok sphere who are too kind of thick and annoying to put on internet yeah cannon fodder yeah they need to be culled like rabbits.

29:16Yes. Yeah. There just needs to be like a great, naturally, like wildfires are natural occurring. Yes. Because sometimes nature needs a reset. Yes, like a pandemic. Yeah. So after this, Peter takes the throne from his sister. Yeah. Peter now sets up essentially a sort of state run stag do called the all drunken, all jesting synod of fools and jesters. So like monster raving loony party sort of stuff. Is it kind of like satirical? No, I think it's more... It is satirical, right? yeah but in a in a kind of i got it's for you yeah it's trying to lampoon the church yeah yeah yeah it's monty python stuff yeah all drunken all dressing synod of fools and jesters yeah vote for us that's what we should call our whatsapp group yes no i mean there's a lot of patrons will be in whatsapp groups called this we are the all drunken all dressing synod of fools and jesters did you catch the latest episode of thin versus history a very merry time was had by all but i guess this is we have this is the 1600 so i imagine it was less lame to say that people hadn't started saying that yet yeah yeah yeah christ i would have hate to be alive at this time ivan retired from politics which is it's interesting because i think retired from politics you're thinking sort of retarded from politics is what they meant i think that's a typo of the script i think that's a typo um yeah the graceful retire to be able to walk away is it like a round of standing ovation in the house of commons after like an incredible tenure what a shift he did how's he done that yeah the country i love ice cream he's clapping but that's you know he's always clapping he's hugging everyone um whistling as he walks away from the lectern yeah um so the members of the all drunken uh synod of fools and jesters yeah uh would dress up in mock religious robes and ride through the streets on pigs um throwing day-long bacchanalian rages and this is designed to mock the orthodox church which has had a grip over russia yeah so the orthodox church is you know as a but they schismed in 1054 as you as you will not stop bringing up the great schism 1054 uh and so this is this if we were going to place this is between the great it's after the great schism it's before the great stretching it is before the great stretching two great events say great stretching It was probably about 2006, 2007.

31:44Yeah. When Blair was sort of ousted. Yes, that's when he started stretching. It could have been actually just depression weight, to be honest. Grief. Or were you growing into a stature as a man to fill the power vacuum? Yeah. I was growing to take on Brown. Do you struggle to keep up with the news every week? The bunker has got you covered. Every Monday, we release Start Your Week, where we go over the big stories to follow in the coming days. And then on Fridays, we have our weekly wrap-up where we give you the context and the meaning behind the biggest and the weirdest stories of recent days.

32:19Search for The Bunker wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you never miss an episode. It's time for race rankings. We've ranked Pakistanis high recently, but let me tell you about Karoolean Indians. Oh, they're performing well at the moment. Listen, they are hot, sexy Indians. They are some hot property. And they are top of my list of my favourite races of people right now. Wow. I mean, this is big news. I mean, you're finding out here that this is the Screen Rock podcast. This is a regular feature we do. We do a bit of race rankings. It's kind of like woke racism whilst talking about social media, really.

32:51That's our vibe. Exactly. We pretend that we want to talk about social media. Really, we want to talk about whether we prefer people from Pakistan or Brazil. And right now, Pakistan are winning, baby. So listen to the Screen Rock podcast, if that's the kind of thing. We'll see you there. 25 years ago this week, Al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a United Airlines flight killed almost 3 ,000 people, and set in train events that would kill literally millions more in war, the destruction of countries, and the spread of preventable disease. I'm Andrew Harrison, and this week, in a special miniseries from The Bunker, I ask experts and eyewitnesses how the consequences of the 9-11 attacks and the war on terror that followed still shape our world.

33:32from the rise of the security state to the tensions that still inflame the Middle East to the rise of an isolationist America first president who treats his allies with contempt. That's Terror Century, a three-part miniseries from the bunker tracing the road from 9-11 to Donald Trump. Follow the bunker now on your favourite app. You won't want to miss it. Yeah, this is essentially, this is where his sort of colourful personality, they throw dwarves around a lot, I think. It's quite Wolf of Wall Street sort of stuff. Yeah, it is. And this kind of culminates in his gap year, where he basically just sort of fucks off and goes west.

34:13Because 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 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 has, like, never happened ever. It's completely insane. So in 1697, aged 25, he embarks on what he calls his Grand Embassy, which is 18 months where he's in disguise, except he still expects people to know who he is, and he gets annoyed if they don't.

34:51Right. But he also can't point out who he is. He adopts the pseudonym Sergeant Peter Mikhailov. Right. Hello, my name's Sergeant Peter Mikhailov of the old singing, old dancing cinema of the Fools and Jetsons. reporting for attention. That's what they'd say when they come into the pub. Pint of mead, yes, sir. There he is. I'll get my round. Here comes trouble. Watch out. Sergeant Peter McAuliffe's about. Yeah, no, these guys, they're gaming with the Union Jack in the background. He travelled with a massive entourage of 250 people. That is a big entourage. Yes. And I do want to normalise massive entourages again.

35:29You'd like them entourage? I wouldn't mind like a huge financially draining entourage. It is quite funny. I mean, that's a very, like just to go back to when we had Bemi and Andrew, and we were talking about the different ways like white spend their money compared to black people. Entourage is a very black thing, aren't they? Well, you have to bring up everyone who you knew growing up has to come with you. 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. Fucking pull the ladder up.

35:57What are you doing? What value are they adding to your, you know you say that yeah they're draining your finances but to be fair for self-esteem having a group of people just constant yeah i mean just constantly be like falling about yeah laughing you just got to feed them that's why you're everywhere has a giant spread yeah 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 you're taking over like the carriage of a train and there's one poor old woman you're like yeah fuck off fuck off uh so he He goes to the Netherlands.

36:31Well, first of all, he goes to Riga, which at this point is in the Swedish Empire. Yeah. And he doesn't get treated that well. Okay. And it's just worth putting a pin in that. Sure. But he goes to Netherlands, who are at this point... The Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch Golden Age. They're painting fruit. They're painting a sad Protestant man looking out a window. Glorious. The best painters. It's an art I can relate to. Yeah. In disguise, he works as a common labourer at the Dutch East India Company shipyards. Yeah. Because he's also, I just forgot to say, he's a very practical man. Like he likes his lathe.