Episode 81: Palace of the Parliament

Well There's Your Problem | Episode 81: Palace of the Parliament - YouTube

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haitch dubya ei zed you you dubya

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[sub note: at some point in the episode, there was a problem with Zencastr which meant that for the large part of the episode, the other hosts couldn't hear Liam. if you hear at points Liam getting totally interrupted and ignored, that would be why]

JUSTIN: Listen, you gotta get your bombs delivered somehow. And,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I trust the US Postal Service to do that.

LIAM: [laughs]

LIAM: Not the... not the scabs(?) over at FedEx!

[laughter]

JUSTIN: Welcome to, Well There's Your Problem.

JUSTIN: It's a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides!

JUSTIN: I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person who's talking right now,

JUSTIN: and my pronouns are he and him! Okay go.

NOVA: I am [November Kelly].

NOVA: Please do not ban me from entering the United States, so we can do a live show in person at some point.

NOVA: My pronouns, she and her.

LIAM: Hi! I'm Liam Anderson!

LIAM: Uh, returned from my mystery location.

NOVA: Hmm!

LIAM: Uh...

NOVA: How you feeling, Liam?

LIAM: Uh, you know? I actually feel alright. Uh,

LIAM: Last night was hell,

LIAM: uh, I worked today,

LIAM: and... I was uh, coming pretty close to taking a nap on the clock.

LIAM: Uh, but I feel alright!

LIAM: Uh...

LIAM: Also, uh, we have a guest!

LIAM and JUSTIN: We have a guest.

ADAM: Indeed we do!

ADAM: So, hello everyone! I am Adam,

ADAM: uh, also known as Adam Something on YouTube,

ADAM: uh, pronouns he/him,

ADAM: and I'm glad to be here!

LIAM: Why are you here, Adam?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: [snorts]

ADAM: I wish I knew!

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: You asked us, motherfucker!

[laughter]

NOVA: No, no! We're going-Adam, Adam is going to explain,

NOVA: uh, Romania, to us. Seen here, in two pictures, a flag with a hole cut out of it,

NOVA: and a big ugly building.

LIAM: That's not ug-I like it.

JUSTIN: Alright.

JUSTIN: No, it is not a good(?) building.

ADAM: I will, I will attempt!

ADAM: I will attempt to give an explanation if such a thing is possible, wel-

ADAM: 'cause it's, it's Romania.

LIAM: No, I like it.

ADAM: It's a nice building! To some extent.

JUSTIN: I-

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: (?)! It's nice!

JUSTIN: I, I am the only person here who has,

JUSTIN: training in architecture, and I can tell you, this is an ugly building. [laughs]

LIAM: Ugly, ugly can still be good, though.

[crosstalk]

NOVA: I practice that, I live by those words,

NOVA: everyday of my life, Liam.

JUSTIN: No, this isn't the good kind of ugly.

LIAM: No, you know what, Rocz? Fuck you. How's that?

JUSTIN: Okay.

JUSTIN: W-we're gonna talk about,

JUSTIN: um, the, the People's Palace, of Romania.

NOVA: Yeah, and how the hole came to get in this flag.

ADAM: Not original, it was edited later.

LIAM: Oh, was the hole not in the building?

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Not original, it was edited later.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Uh, well, any hole's a goal, I suppose.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: But first, we have to do, the God Damn News.

♪[news jingle]♪

JUSTIN: Alright, so I just wanna tell all of the Philadelphia urbanist,

JUSTIN: that I was right and you were wrong.

LIAM: (?)

NOVA: Once again, Justin is vindicated by history.

JUSTIN: Yes!

JUSTIN: Um, Toll Brothers just ap-uh, applied for a permit to keep the Jewelers' Row,

JUSTIN: uh, "whole".

LIAM: Yeah, (?)

JUSTIN: A "whole".

LIAM: The Toll Hole! (?)

JUSTIN: For the next three years.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah, the Toll Hole.

NOVA: The Toll pussy, the Tussy.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: I wish you wouldn't have said that! But yes!

JUSTIN: They demolished, several years ago, a full quarter of one of Philadelphia's most historic streets,

JUSTIN: for(?) to build, uh-uh, Toll Residential Tower there.

LIAM: And then what happened, Rocz?

JUSTIN: And then what happened?

JUSTIN: Oh, well, they just decided to sit on it. They're not gonna actually build the building.

ADAM: America!

LIAM: Oh that's crazy!

NOVA: Mmh.

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: Wow, I can't have-I couldn't foresee this happening!

JUSTIN: The (?) building's not...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: It's, it's, it's so, it's so dumb. I-I hate all the people who were like,

JUSTIN: shilling for this when it was like,

JUSTIN: "Oh no, this is gonna be good for Center City,

LIAM: "We need density, actually!"

JUSTIN: "it's good for density!"

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: No! They're not actually gonna build the building! Then they're not gonna build the building!

LIAM: Nope.

JUSTIN: The building's not gonna happen! It's not real!

NOVA: It's just a, it's just a land scam.

JUSTIN: Yes!

JUSTIN: It's gonna be, it-it will probably be a vacant lot for like,

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: until I'm middle-aged!

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, but on the plus side, they have this cool, like, uh,

NOVA: sort of retro-looking logo, with the, like, diamond around the date?

NOVA: Uh, who doesn't love that? You know?

LIAM: You know what I would prefer, [Nova]?

NOVA: Mmh.

LIAM: Jewelers' Row to be intact.

NOVA: Uhh, well, it's a-it's open for business! What do you want for me?

JUSTIN: Yes.

[crosstalk]

NOVA: For it not to be open for business?

ADAM: (?) sure it's going to be a nice building (?) like, um, like 3k per month for rent?

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Oh. Yeah. Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: Yea. I mean, 'cause they, they tore down like five buildings and they were gonna put one building in their place. Um, and you know that's, uh...

ADAM: Ah, okay.

JUSTIN: that's great for like, uh, you know, storefronts and stuff like that.

LIAM: Yup!

JUSTIN: Um...

ADAM: Oow, okay.

LIAM: Which also would benefit from density, which we already had! But it's fine!

JUSTIN: This is fuckin' stu-so fuckin' stupid.

LIAM: It is fucking s-

JUSTIN: They just tore down all those buildings for no reason.

NOVA: Important point to pull out of this is that Justin is the man...

NOVA: who has never been wrong about anything in his life.

LIAM: [groans]

JUSTIN: That's true.

NOVA: (?) start now.

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: I dispute that!

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I'm right. All the time.

JUSTIN: You should listen to me, because of that.

NOVA: That's right.

LIAM: And then you get mad at me, when I'm just like, "Hey, you wanna do a shot of whiskey," and you're like,

LIAM: "Sure!",

LIAM: and then you go to bed, and you feel bad, and then you blame me, even though it's not my fault.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I was right at the time.

LIAM: And then-and then, it's-"I told you I didn't wanna do the shot," and it was like,

NOVA: Justin...

LIAM: and it's like, "No you didn't!",

NOVA: No, Justin, Justin is, Justin is like capitalism. He cannot fail, only be failed.

LIAM: so you want(?) to do the shot!

JUSTIN: Yes!

NOVA: On(?) you, Liam!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: [angrish] Okay. Alright.

[laughter]

LIAM: Yeah, that's, that's how this goes, by and large.

ADAM: Although as I note, regarding this, this image in front of us, uh,

ADAM: for me, uh, like, as in me, uh, mostly, uh, being from the European perspective,

ADAM: including [Nova] of course,

ADAM: it's so strange to see Americans tearing down historic buildings to build some kind of like,

ADAM: shiny five-over-one glass and steel bullshit in-in place for it.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: Like, in Europe it's usually, like in Ger-in Deutschland, where I live right now,

ADAM: uh, it's usually, there's an empty plot,

ADAM: on which we build something we nice because the Americas bombed it, so it's empty.

NOVA: Yeah! Yeah, yeah.

LIAM: And to be fair, did you deserve it? Probably.

[beer can snap]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Just like, yeah, just-just sort of, calmly asking the German town planner,

NOVA: "How did you get this beautiful blank canvas to redesign?"

NOVA: it's like, "Well, you did explode most of it."

ADAM: Mmm, well, you know it's-

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: ...Like, well, did you have it coming? Yes, you did.

[laughter]

LIAM: I uh-no that's, that's a fun Philly trend,

JUSTIN: Those are supposed to be, uh...

LIAM: Adam, is uh, ruining our UNESCO-designated world heritage city, uh, to build schlock.

[laughter]

JUSTIN: I think, I think we have the weakest historic preservation, uh, laws...

LIAM: Uhh, yeah.

JUSTIN: in the country.

LIAM: I'd second that.

JUSTIN: Um...

ADAM: Wow, okay.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

LIAM: T-they're awful. G-genuinely awful.

JUSTIN: They, they don't work. I mean, maybe we should've talked about that in the historic preservation episode.

LIAM: Well, we don't have anything-yeah.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: We uh, this was supposed to be a thirty-story building they were gonna put up here and, um,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: now they're just not gonna put a building here.

JUSTIN: Just not gonna do it.

JUSTIN: Just not building, (?).

NOVA: I-it's more, it's more about...

NOVA: the vibes. It's abo-it's like jazz, it's about the buildings you don't build.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So that was, that was the news, I only did one news today.

♪[news jingle]♪

NOVA: Nothing else happened! It's very cool.

JUSTIN: Did I switch--yes.

LIAM: No.

JUSTIN: Yeah, nothing else happened.

LIAM: Nothing else happened.

JUSTIN: We talked about all the important news last week.

LIAM: Yeah, we already-we... Listen, we're already sad(?) about Afghanistan.

NOVA: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: Alright. So we have to talk about something called the Warsaw Pact.

NOVA: Yeah, the Good Guys.

JUSTIN: Yes.

[laughter]

ADAM: And so we have to ask, "What is the Warsaw Pact?"

JUSTIN: What is the Warsaw Pact? Yeah.

NOVA: It's-it's a g-

LIAM: What is "good", actually?

NOVA: It's a group of superfriends.

NOVA: Who got together,

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: after the second World War,

NOVA: uh, to try and contain NATO aggression,

NOVA: by means of a multi-lateral defensive pact.

JUSTIN: 's true.

JUSTIN: There's no kind of coercion there at all.

[crosstalk]

LIAM: Uhhhhh...

[laughter]

ADAM: S-so uh... [laughs]

ADAM: So according to the defi-the official definition, it's a collective defensive treaty signed in Warsaw...

ADAM: Poland, between the Soviet Union and 7 other Eastern European, uh, Eastern Bloc socialist...

ADAM: ...republics, of Central and Eastern Europe, in May 1955. So,

ADAM: basically, this is, as you've mentioned, it is a counterweight to NATO.

ADAM: And, in theory, it's an organization for "mutual protection".

ADAM: Uh, however, uh, in practice,

ADAM: it's... just an easier way for Moscow to roll tanks into those countries should there be any attempts, uh, to establishing a democracy.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: Wow! It's crazy how that works!

[laughter]

NOVA: Are you-are you suggesting that this is just like,

NOVA: [valley girl voice] red colonialism? 'Cause like, I don't think that the Soviet Union would act imperialistically...

ADAM: Oh! They would-they would never do that.

NOVA: Nooo!

LIAM: That would not be [valley girl voice] praxis.

NOVA: No...

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Uh, and this, uh,

NOVA: I-I've put in the notes here that the Warsaw Pact is also a cool way of making vary--various(?) decks in Wargame: European Escalation.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: If you want some like, cool Polish infantry, you can, you can do that. Thanks to the Warsaw Pact.

ADAM: Ooh.

JUSTIN: Many, many cool tanks, which would not have existed otherwise.

NOVA: Oh, that's true.

ADAM: Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: So this is, uh, this is something I wanted to maybe introduce, I mean, I think, a lot of our...

JUSTIN: Like, ourselves and a lot of our listeners...

JUSTIN: have, you know, radical politics, right?

NOVA: Yes. L-Liam's excused from this slide because he's an anarchist, but those of us who have real politics would wanna talk about-

LIAM: Wooo!

JUSTIN: Right. Yes. T-those of us who-

LIAM: OH SHUT THE FUCK UP!

[laughter]

JUSTIN: Yeah. Liam-Liam not included. Most of us have radical politics.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: We have to like, look...

JUSTIN: look back on this thing called the Soviet Union, right.

NOVA: H-hold on, hold on, I have a drop for this, lemme just, uh, scroll down here, uh...

♪[State Anthem of the USSR]♪

LIAM: This is gonna be great(?), when I do the bonus episode on Communism!

[laughter]

LIAM: I will go full-on PragerU! I will be unstoppable!

[laughter]

[crosstalk]

NOVA: Sorry, sorry Liam, what's that? I can't hear you over the-

♪[State Anthem of the USSR]♪

[laughter]

JUSTIN: So, you, you...

JUSTIN: You may, you may have radical politics...

JUSTIN: you have to strike some kind of balance, on what I call "the Spectrum of Communism".

LIAM: Oh, I think communists are famously good at striking a balance!

♪[State Anthem of the USSR]♪

[laughter]

JUSTIN: Right, which is some of the bad stuff about Soviet communism, is Western propaganda, but also some of it is true.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: Mm.

NOVA: Well, like, people, people don't get that sometimes the best propaganda is stuff that is true!

JUSTIN: Mmhmm?

ADAM: Mmhmm? [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: It's, it's very-in fact, it's best thing you can do, is to be like,

NOVA: "Ah, you're doing this fucked up shit?", and...

NOVA: if they actually are,

NOVA: you know, what are you supposed to say to that? Th-"this is a lie"?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Okay, that works for a while, but like, if you can prove it, then hngg?

JUSTIN: Right, so, I-I...

JUSTIN: My definition of the Spectrum of Communism, is you know, at the one hand,

JUSTIN: you're super tankie, you say,

JUSTIN: "North Korea is a secret worker's paradise over there," right.

NOVA: Yeah, me.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Sure.

JUSTIN: And at the other end, you're super anti-communist, you say,

JUSTIN: "Ukrainian Waffen-SS guys were freedom fighters actually," right?

NOVA: Yeah, yeah...

NOVA: Like, every, every single landlord who had their feelings hurt is in the big book of Victims of Communism...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Uh...

[laughter]

JUSTIN: I, I put myself around here, which I defined as, "Kulaks deserved it".

[laughter]

NOVA: I'm...

NOVA: I don't know, I-I'm like, slightly, slightly tankier than Justin is, I think? But, you know...

[crosstalk]

NOVA: I've mellowed a bit in-in my sort of, middle age...

NOVA: In my youth, I was much more in the like, "Yeah, no! The good guys!"

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

ADAM: Hmm. [laughs]

ADAM: But the thing is-the thing about the Soviet Union was that, um...

ADAM: Well, um...

ADAM: Having grown up in Hungary, and me being a Hungarian,

ADAM: so, I sort of grew up on the ruins of the Soviet Empire, so to speak.

NOVA: Hmm.

ADAM: It wa-it was like, you know, the country...

ADAM: went through like, varying degrees of success, now it's like a far-right hell,

ADAM: with Orban, but, you know, oh well.

ADAM: But, during the Soviet times, I hear, the...

ADAM: rule of thumb, was that,

ADAM: "whatever they said, the opposite was true".

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: So for ex-yeah.

ADAM: So for example, the-the, when, uh...

ADAM: this, like, Hungarian comedian who, is kinda-

ADAM: old guy who grew up during the uh, you know, Soviet times.

ADAM: He said,

ADAM: "and so, when we heard on TV, announced by Comrade xyz, that in the Soviet Union,

ADAM: "there is no antisemitism,

ADAM: "we knew that our friends were already packing at home."

[laughter]

ADAM: And there's, there's other sort of, uh,

ADAM: just-just for you to get the feel of the era,

ADAM: really, uh, I've prepared two... jokes!

NOVA: Hmm!

LIAM: Oh, good(?)! [laughs]

ADAM: From, from the era, which, which sort of depicted the... actually three.

ADAM: Uh, but I think they're shorties(?), so...

ADAM: "Ivan is asked what he would do if the Soviet borders were opened.

ADAM: "'I would climb the highest tree,' he replies,

ADAM: "Asked why, he responds.

ADAM: "'So I wouldn't get trampled in the stampede out.'

[laughter]

ADAM: "Then-"

ADAM: "Then-then he's asked what he would do if the US bor-if the US border is opened.

ADAM: "'I would climb the highest tree,' he says, 'so I can see the first person crazy enough to come here.'"

[laughter]

ADAM: So...

ADAM: And uh, yeah, the other classic is the, uh,

ADAM: y'know, "Someone happened to call the KGB headquarters just after a major fire.

ADAM: "'We-we cannot do anything! The KGB has just burned down!', he was told.

ADAM: "Five minutes later, he called back, and was told again that the KGB had burned.

ADAM: "When he called a third time, the telephone operator recognized his voice and asked,

ADAM: "'Why do you keep calling back? I just told you the KGB has burned down!'

ADAM: "'I know,' the man said. 'I just like hearing it.'"

[laughter]

NOVA: You wanna hear my favorite Soviet joke?

ADAM: Go ahead!

NOVA: Okay, so...

NOVA: Ah... A new guy arrives in the Gulag, right?

NOVA: And... Uh, th-you know,

NOVA: a guy sidles up to him and was like, "How long you in for?"

NOVA: Uh... "Five years."

NOVA: Um... "What are you in for?"

NOVA: "Well, I was-I was a plumber, I was an engineer."

NOVA: And the old guy says, "Well, they don't give you five years for being a plumber, what happened?"

NOVA: And he says, "Well, I got this job, uh, where I had to like,

NOVA: "inspect the boiler, in the KGB offices.

NOVA: "So I got down there, and I looked at them, I looked at the boiler,

NOVA: "and I put my hands on my hips and I said, 'This whole system needs replacing.'"

[laughter]

ADAM: Oohooh.

JUSTIN: There was a...

JUSTIN: There was a joke that uh, Stalin used to tell, about himself.

LIAM: Oh boy! [laughs]

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Stalin was giving a speech...

JUSTIN: to, um, you know, the uh, the Politburo or something,

JUSTIN: everyone filed in,

JUSTIN: you know, the last row fills in first, and then the second-to-last row fills in next,

JUSTIN: so on and so forth.

JUSTIN: Um, Stalin is giving this great speech, right?

JUSTIN: Um, and uh,

JUSTIN: so, during this speech, someone sneezes.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Stalin says, "Who was it? Who did that? Who was it?"

JUSTIN: And no one speaks up. And Stalin orders the first row executed.

JUSTIN: No one speaks up, no one speaks up still,

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: so he orders the second row executed.

JUSTIN: Then, finally,

JUSTIN: he's about to order the third row executed, one guy stands up.

JUSTIN: Says, "It was me, comrade Stalin."

JUSTIN: And Stalin says, "Bless you!"

[laughter]

JUSTIN: (?) speech.

NOVA: I-I...

NOVA: We can't get too bogged down in telling communist jokes but I do have my favorite Stalin one.

NOVA: Which is uh, Stalin goes to a theater.

NOVA: It's a comedy, um...

NOVA: and, they asked him afterwards, "Comrade, what did you, what did you think of the play?"

NOVA: He said, "It was excellent. But the, uh...

NOVA: "The clown, he has a mustache, like mine. Kill him."

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: And one of his aides,

NOVA: sort of thinks about it and he goes, "Well, Comrade Stalin, perhaps you could shave the mustache."

NOVA: And Stalin says, "Excellent idea. Shave, then shoot."

[laughter]

JUSTIN: So anyway,

JUSTIN: if you're on the Spectrum of Communism...

NOVA: Oh! We're all on the spectrum, baby!

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: If you're on the Spectrum of Communism, I think we all need to...

JUSTIN: acknowledge that there is actually a very, very bad man in communism,

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: uh, and that guy was Nicolae Ceaușescu.

NOVA: Oh yeah! One of, one of... let's say, many.

LIAM: (?)

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Very, very bad man.

NOVA: Hmm.

LIAM: Oh, this comment-this comment section is gonna be a hoot.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: I wanna just go on record as(?) once again stating that I am an anarchist!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: (?)

NOVA: It's gonna be fun watching them all try and spell "Ceaușescu".

ADAM: Mmhmm!

JUSTIN: No, that's a fun thing. I can't spell "Ceaușescu", but I can say it.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: How, how do you do in spelling "Enver Hoxha"?

JUSTIN: I... don't think about it. I don't think about anything.

NOVA: Oh, En-Enver Hoxha, the like, uh, leader of Albania for many years...

NOVA: the other, great, like, uh, sort of like, weird Stalinist of the, like-

LIAM: Is he the bunker guy?

NOVA: Yes! The bunker-Yes, he was the bunker guy!

LIAM: He's the bunk-yeah, yes.

ADAM: Oh, yeah! Enver Hoxha, yeah, okay, I, I gotchu.

ADAM: [alternative pronunciation] "Hoxha". [phonetically] "Hoxha".

NOVA: En-En... Enver Hoxha.

ADAM: Enver Hoxha. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh, Hoxha... Hoxha is, uh, he's... it's an easier to-easier to spell, harder...

JUSTIN: ...harder to pronounce.

LIAM: I did like, his, his never ending beef with Tito.

LIAM: That's admirable.

JUSTIN: Despite the fact that the Warsaw Pact was, you know, an entirely organic Communist Revolution,

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Uh huh.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: which had no influence from outside forces,

LIAM: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: There were some attempts to liberalize the Eastern Bloc, right?

NOVA: Yeah, it's called the Central Intelligence Agency.

JUSTIN: Exactly. This is all...

LIAM: With their partners, Coca-Cola and Pepsi!

NOVA: That's right!

JUSTIN: You know, the, the first, and I think the most famous one, was in Hungary in 1956,

JUSTIN: where after weeks of student protest,

JUSTIN: uh, [wrong pronunciation] Imre Nagy became prime minister.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Yeah, No... "Nɒɟ", "nɒɟ".

ADAM: It's pronounced "Imre nɒɟ".

JUSTIN: Is it "Noij"?

ADAM: "nɒɟ".

JUSTIN: I didn't-I did not know that.

ADAM: It's like, try to pronounce "g" and "y" together, like, "gyh", "ɟ".

JUSTIN: Um.

ADAM: Makes sense.

JUSTIN: Uhhhhhh. Okay, yeah. I-

ADAM: A-anyway...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I understand...

[crosstalk]

[laughter]

JUSTIN: He, he became prime minister, sorta for the purpose of withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, and then,

LIAM: And then what happened?

JUSTIN: I think it was Khrushchev at that point, sending the tanks to, you know, stop that-

NOVA: Y-Under, under everyone's favorite general, uh, Marshal Zhukov,

LIAM: Oh, that's crazy!

NOVA: was, was the commander of that operation.

ADAM: Fuck yeah, dude.

NOVA: [Nova agreement noise]

JUSTIN: Yeah. This is, this is where get the term "tankie" from, right?

ADAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah. 'cuz most of... A lot of the European communist parties,

JUSTIN: broke from the Soviet Union, because, you know...

NOVA: Oh yeah.

NOVA: Was a, was a real, sort of like, crisis of faith for a lot of leftist in, uh...

NOVA: in the west, especially for like older leftist who have been like,

NOVA: and you have to understand that like,

NOVA: the, the thing about, like, the-the common, like,

NOVA: uh, line about the Soviet Union was that it was just funding every like,

NOVA: leftist movement and every leftist party,

NOVA: and everybody, sort of left of liberal,

NOVA: in, in Western Europe and the United States for its entire existence.

NOVA: That was also, uh, true.

NOVA: Um... and so consequently, when, uh,

NOVA: these people who had been,

NOVA: you know, taking, taking the money, which is not necessarily good money, but had been...

NOVA: uh, you know, taking the money from the Soviets, uh on-

ADAM: It's practical.

NOVA: Yeah! On, on the recognizance that this is like,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: "this is our last best hope for socialism," and like, some of them believing this,

NOVA: entirely idealistically,

NOVA: like, having seen a, a world war and having believed that like,

NOVA: "Oh yes, this Stalin guy is like, the last hope of like, uh, civilization against fascism," or whatever.

NOVA: Um...

ADAM: And then, oops.

NOVA: And then, oops!

LIAM: And then oops! Yeah.

JUSTIN: Whoops.

NOVA: Either depending on how like, how, how far gone you are at this point, either...

NOVA: uh, Revisionism has like, won, to the extent that it has to be like,

NOVA: brutally crushed back down, and you're gonna become like, uh, a sort of a Soviet loyalist, or,

NOVA: you see, oh, the Soviet Union that I thought was this,

NOVA: uh, you know, beacon for socialism and progress and, uh, human rights, even,

NOVA: is, acting a lot like uh, America, or acting a lot like Britain. And...

LIAM: Just as bad, as it turns out.

LIAM: And that's how my mother became an anarchist.

NOVA: ...y'know... what now?

ADAM: Yeah, and I mean, the, the fundamental problem I see with, with the Soviet Union was that, uh,

ADAM: and, and just like Russia in general, because I mean, let's, let's not kid ourselves like,

ADAM: the Soviet Union and everything that entailed came out of Moscow, essentially,

NOVA: Hmm.

ADAM: like, from, from these, sort of established Moscow elite.

ADAM: Um, that-the problem that I see, is that the...

ADAM: enlightenment kinda stops halfway to Russia?

ADAM: Like, it kinda stopped...

ADAM: halfway between Kiev and Kharkiv, in Ukraine, and then never went further?

ADAM: And so, uh, and so of course,

ADAM: as people say, Vladimir Putin nowadays is himself a Tsar,

ADAM: uh, and nothing else, like the-

ADAM: he-his style of, of governance, and just the way he runs the country is...

ADAM: fully that, of a Tsar.

ADAM: ...Not fully, but you know... if you get the idea, it's similar.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: And so, this Soviet Union bore the imprints, sort of, um...

ADAM: of Tsarist Russia, obviously,

ADAM: and, well, I guess that was, a big part of the reason, and of course the lack of enlightenment...

ADAM: thought, that the, uh,

ADAM: as soon as, like as soon as the Tsarist, sort of oligarchal elite ended,

ADAM: then came the, the red-coated oligarchal elites, a.k.a. the Soviet Union, where...

ADAM: basically party officials became the new, uh, rich owner class through the state apparatus.

NOVA: Yeah. And it's... it's a tragedy, is the thing. It's a, it's a popular tragedy, and what's interesting is,

NOVA: the thing that occasionally makes me, as a communist, go, "Oh, we just live in the bad timeline,"

NOVA: is that like, when you look back, uh,

NOVA: you know, any of the original, any of the old Bolsheviks, including Lenin,

NOVA: uh, if you had said, "Okay, there's gonna be one European country that becomes like, the bulwark of Socialism.

NOVA: "And then there's gonna be, like, a-another one that's gonna fall into Fascism," you would never in a million years have picked,

NOVA: uh, "Russia" and "Germany", in that order.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Yeeah.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Every, like, every communist thinker of consequence thought the revolution would start in Germany.

LIAM: Yes.

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: And it, it got crushed instead, and as a consequence, all of these guys were left to sort of like,

NOVA: make do to try and like, modernize, uh, what had been a sort of, very decrepit empire.

NOVA: And the result was...????????

ADAM: But, hey, hey.

ADAM: I disagree, hey, look, elections are coming up, the (?) was down, the social democrats are coming up, we got this. Enjoy it.

[laughter]

NOVA: Yeah, schaffen wir das!

ADAM: Yeah, schaffen (?)...

ADAM: But, um... although...

ADAM: One, one further bit of proof like...

ADAM: I-I disagree with you that we are living in the bad timeline,

ADAM: we are not living in the "bad" timeline, because, like, imagine the sort of the...

ADAM: sort of bad, parallel universe for example, when Rocz is like,

ADAM: [Rocz impression] "So, in conclusion, car good, train bad...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: [laughs]

ADAM: "I'm, I'm Justin Roczniak for Prager University."

LIAM: Oh, I'd watch that. I will watch, I will watch Rocz...

NOVA: Yeah, we're all...

NOVA: We're, we're running the like, most popular engineering podcast in the Sixth Reich.

LIAM: PragerU-PragerU Rocz (?)...

NOVA: ...don't like that idea.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Oh, yeah. It's, uh, that would be my, uh, that would be my show on um,

JUSTIN: Nazi YouTube, which is just YouTube.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: ...just say(?) PragerU.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Yes, I know Dennis Prager is Jewish, but uh, the word you're looking for is, uh...

NOVA: Yeah. So, so Nagy tried to like,

NOVA: do, moderate liberal reforms, while still being, still being a socialist,

NOVA: which is also very fun. Not even like, necessarily, like, we would think of as, as like, uh,

JUSTIN: Oh yeah. I mean-

NOVA: a democratic socialist or a social democrat, he was still a communist, but like...

JUSTIN: Yeah...

JUSTIN: All of these like, um, revolutions and revolts, and like, political changes,

JUSTIN: in the Eastern Bloc, they were led by communists,

JUSTIN: the people who supported them were communists,

NOVA: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: they just wanted out from under the boot of the Soviet Union, which, you know, it...

LIAM: Understandable!

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

NOVA: The like, the most reactionary tendency you can identify in these easily, is just nationalism, and that's...

NOVA: ...I think, pretty reasonable? When...

LIAM: Nationa--Nationalism? In Eastern Europe?

JUSTIN: No--no nationalism in the Soviet Union, let me tell you that much.

[laughter]

LIAM: Whaaat? Whaaaat?

NOVA: You know, we're like... thinking like, in terms of like,

NOVA: uh, you know, I'm a member of a, a fraternal socialist brotherhood, thinking of myself as like,

NOVA: uh, you know, a Hungarian, or a Czechoslovak, um, it's like...

LIAM: Right, because the USSR hasn't existed for, more than 40 years at this point, yeah, exactly.

NOVA: ...it makes a lot more sense when you consider there are a lot of guys with guns and tanks who are trying to get you to not do that.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: I mean, damn. It's almost like the Soviet Union is just like a...

ADAM: fascist oligarchy, masquerading as...

ADAM: you know, like, with the paint of red.

LIAM: Wow! It is almost like that! Yes, yes! [laughs]

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: Almost, almost.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Alright, alright. So, 'bout a decade after the Hungarian revolution, we had the Prague Spring.

LIAM: I thought (?) course of empire bad, no matter what color it is.

ADAM: And what a, what a party that was.

NOVA: Yeah, (?) in few days.

JUSTIN: This was in the, uh,

JUSTIN: this was in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, right, um...

JUSTIN: the Prime Minister was, uh, "Alexander Dubček"? I don't know how to pronounce that.

ADAM: Uh, "Dubček", yeah, it's generally... it's alright. Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah!

JUSTIN: He was, he was trying to implement some liberalizing reforms, you know,

JUSTIN: "Socialism with a human face", right?

NOVA: Yeah, you, you don't want to do that, otherwise you might find that, uh,

NOVA: "Socialism without a human face" is "landing a lot of paratroopers at your capital city's airport".

LIAM: Oh, I was gonna say, "without a human face" like some sort of a, horrific, uh, Lovecraftian monster?

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: I'm, I'm kinda bummed you didn't get a horrific Lovecraftian monster (?).

NOVA: That was like the one thing the Soviet Airborne Forces got to do inbetween World War II and Afghanistan,

NOVA: was, uh... drop into Prague, which is,

NOVA: huh, you know, it's nice to for them to get the exercise, I suppose.

JUSTIN: I guess so, yeah...I mean... So, there's some liberalizing reforms here, where you have like,

JUSTIN: a multi-party democracy, you know, stuff like that.

NOVA: Yeah, you know, revisionism.

JUSTIN: Um.

JUSTIN: Revisionism, exactly.

ADAM: That was a...

ADAM: Also, also (?), the press was relatively free, up until, the uh, Prague spring, of course.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: So, things were allowed which normally would not have been allowed, so the...

ADAM: Czechoslovakia was sort of a, slight uh, you know, exception,

ADAM: in the Warsaw Pact countries, 'cause, you know, there... things were still allowed there,

ADAM: or at least some things.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Uh... And-yeah.

NOVA: Yeah. And like, having, having this capacity for,

NOVA: some autonomy in the Warsaw Pact, which was then very rapidly judged to be too dangerous.

JUSTIN: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Yeah. So, "Socialism with a human face", uh, also crushed, very quickly.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: Oo-oops, oops number two.

JUSTIN: And this was, um, you know, supported by,

JUSTIN: a lot of Warsaw Pact countries but not all of them, right?

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: including in Romania.

JUSTIN: by a man named, Nicolae Ceaușescu, right?

LIAM: Or, if you're my parents' cat, Nicolae Meowșescu.

[sub note: think Liam's Zencastr troubles might have already started by this point]

ADAM: What a man he was.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So Ceaușescu had risen to power in Romania, he'd made a...

[sub note: "Nicolae Meowșescu" is a solid one after all]

JUSTIN: a speech, a famous speech on August 21st, 1968,

JUSTIN: condeming the Warsaw Pact invasion of the Czechoslovak...

JUSTIN: Soviet Republic--Socialist Republic, not Soviet Republic.

JUSTIN: Um, and this, this guy...

JUSTIN: Okay, so Ceaușescu was actually like, a guy who would, you know,

JUSTIN: he was-he was a communist, he'd...

JUSTIN: he'd been thrown in prison multiple times for organizing,

JUSTIN: communist, uh, parties in Hungary before, um,

JUSTIN: you know, before the Warsaw Pact existed, right?

JUSTIN: Um, and he, you know, because he condemned,

JUSTIN: this, uh, revolution, or because he condemned the suppression of this revolution in...

JUSTIN: Czechoslovakia, he-he became very very popular, right?

JUSTIN: Uh, but the thing is, he used this, he used this popularity to sort of...

JUSTIN: build a government that turned itself into...

JUSTIN: uh, Stalinism but more.

LIAM: Yyyeah.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: It's as, as um, a great communist, George W. Bush once said,

NOVA: "Dictatorship sounds pretty good so long as I get to be the dictator."

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yeah. Ceaușescu heard that, and basically had it tattooed on himself.

NOVA: And uh, Nic-Nicolae Ceaușescu, a man who looks the way...

NOVA: Gary Larson drew people in The Far Side,

LIAM: Yep. Yep.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: This, this cow toons(?)-looking motherfucker,

NOVA: is now, uh, like, the sole authority in your country of several million people.

ADAM: Yeah. He's also a former, I think, shoemaker assistant?

NOVA: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: That's his... Those are his credentials.

ADAM: But... do you know how he called himself, by the way?

NOVA: No.

ADAM: "The Genius of the Carpathians"

NOVA: Dudes rock. I mean...

JUSTIN: Dudes rock. [laughs]

NOVA: Just, yeah!

ADAM: Sigma, sigma male energy.

NOVA: That's right. It's grindset, you know?

LIAM: That's, that's honestly tight.

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

JUSTIN: (?)

LIAM: They're not even bad at that(?), you know?

NOVA: So he's gonna do, he's gonna do Chad Shit on Romania.

JUSTIN: He, he does do...

NOVA: He's gonna do muscle confusion.

JUSTIN: Immediately starts doing Chad Shit, yeah, um...

ADAM: Oh, God, yeah.

JUSTIN: So, um, you know, one of the things he did when he came to power as he was, he's sorta, sorta trying to do,

JUSTIN: some liberalization, right?

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, and, and then when it doesn't...

LIAM: As a treat.

JUSTIN: work, he sort of goes the opposite way completely.

LIAM: Oh boy.

JUSTIN: Um, so he, you know, there's a little bit of liberalization of the press when he comes to power, this is 19, 1966,

JUSTIN: little bit earlier than that, maybe.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: It's just-it's classic, like, apparatchik brain, right... you...

JUSTIN: One of his-

NOVA: you think, "Ah, maybe we can, we can do some things that are good," and then,

NOVA: it like, erodes your grip on power very slightly, and you're like, "Oh shit! No, fuck, fuck!

LIAM: "Nevermind. Go back! Go back! Go back!"

NOVA: "uh, uh, tanks! Tanks! What if we, what if we made the entire country out of the cops?"

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: One of the things... It was like, really difficult for me to like, figure out a narrative on this guy.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: You know, 'cause he, he's like-

NOVA: Well, he was, he was a weird dude! As w-that's why I bring up Hoxha too,

LIAM: He's a weird dude.

NOVA: is because he was like, a very weird, very idiosyncratic dude, because that's kinda what happens, when you have...

NOVA: uh, like, this situation, where you have absolute power, and there's like...

NOVA: due to the way the Soviet Union worked, like, Khrushchev never had absolute power, Brezhnev certainly didn't,

NOVA: There were always networks of like, within the military, or within the party, that could act as like,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: like, credible threats to their power, in ways that made them, sort of, act in different ways, for better and worse.

LIAM: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Uh, whereas, if you're in a small enough country and you, you like,

NOVA: lock it down hard enough, whether you're like, Hoxha,

NOVA: or whether you're like, Georgi Dimitrov, or whether you're Todor Zhivkov, or whether you're Ceaușescu,

NOVA: it's much, much easier for you to just be like, "Oh the, the like, nexus of opposition to me within the government is...

NOVA: "one guy. Kill him." And then you just do whatever you want!

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Right. We... talked about, uh-

ADAM: Yeah, it's like, it's like Tropico 4.

NOVA: Yeah! Yeah.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: We talked, we talked about that, uh, on my episode of Lions, about the Central... African Republic--

ADAM: Yeah, but I, I've, I have heard rumours that, that he was actually like, like a mentally sort of, uh,

ADAM: hindered, so to speak, like, he was, he was not completely sort of, there.

NOVA: Mmh.

ADAM: Which, which as we move on I believe we will see evidence of, but that's under spoiler, I think?

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs] Anyway.

ADAM: So, there's this decr-Decree 770, in 1966.

JUSTIN: I-(?), this is the most defining moment, of,

JUSTIN: of like, the Ceaușescu, um, regime, was Decree 770, um...

JUSTIN: So, he sort of wants to, he wants to make Romania into a world power,

JUSTIN: and part of that is increasing the population, right?

ADAM: G-good luck, yeah.

JUSTIN: Which um...

JUSTIN: Yeah. Well, the urbanists should listen up right now.

NOVA: The, the Genius of the Carpathians is telling you to get fucking.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yes! One billion Romanians!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So, you know, i-increase the population, but it's not...

JUSTIN: ...wouldn't do that through, like, immigration, which would be the rational way to do it.

NOVA: No, because that, that hinders your, like, nationalism thing. You can't, you can't-

JUSTIN: Uh, you need to-

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly.

NOVA: very difficult to balance that thing of like,

NOVA: "I want a strong country X," but also, "I want to like, uh, have a bunch of people immigrate to country X."

NOVA: Very difficult.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Maybe he just wanna see some people fuck!

JUSTIN: Yeah-so, so what he, what he did was, you know, the idea is, "We're gonna increase the native-born population and the way we're gonna do that is, um..."

JUSTIN: Romania had very good access to contraception and abortion.

JUSTIN: Prior to Ceaușescu.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: One of, one of the good things of communism.

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes! Yes! There, there-of the good things about communism, that is one of them, right.

JUSTIN: Uh, but Ceaușescu decided, well, you know, actually, no. Fuck.

JUSTIN: If, if you're gonna go, if you're gonna go fuck, you're gonna have a baby.

JUSTIN: Um, so he made contraception illegal, he made abortion illegal.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Uh, he made state benefits available to women who had more than 5 children, um...

NOVA: Just trying to like, spread, spread around the sort of like, powerfully erotic vibes of that face.

NOVA: Uh, you kind of like, lose yourself from the like, waves of his hair.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: The dude, the dude is like...

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Yo, this, this guy is telling you you need to have more sex.

JUSTIN: ...weird, weird (?) face.

JUSTIN: You need-

NOVA: It's like, "Oh yeah."

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: You need to have more sex, and it needs to not be protected.

[laughter]

ADAM: Oh he, he's a sigma, what can you do?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, you need to bareback there, dog(?), I'm just, I'm sorry, but you have to, for communism.

[laughter]

JUSTIN: So uh, it did, it did rapidly, the, the population increased very quickly, but, uh, it turned out that the, um,

JUSTIN: you know, they didn't quite have the capacity to deal with all the kids.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Um, which resulted in an orphan crisis, which remains to this day in Romania.

JUSTIN: Um...

ADAM: Oops.

NOVA: A-again, because of this one dude, which is not something like, as we sort of,

NOVA: move more and more away from this sort of like, Great Man era of history and stuff,

NOVA: you think... there are way fewer, like, demographic changes that you can trace, like, one dude. Like,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: you go back far enough and it's stuff like, oh, you know, Genghis Khan killed an appreciable percentage of Earth's population or whatever,

NOVA: but like, uh... no, this is one of them, there's just...

NOVA: lot of, lot of kids who grow up in Romania 'cause of like, one Gary Larson-looking motherfucker.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah, Ceaușescu like, uh, sort of uh... it's strange, but it was effective, because, you know, he was, um,

JUSTIN: he, he was trying to move Romania away from Soviet influence, right.

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: But he did that, as opposed to being more liberal, he did that by being more Stalinist.

LIAM: A wackadoodle, yes.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: And, and curiously, again, this is one of things where, you have a couple of guys who tried to do this, and...

NOVA: I'm coming back to Hoxha again, but, because they're all so weird, none of them actually like,

NOVA: get on with each other.

NOVA: and so, you end up with a bunch of like, hyper-Stalinist microstates, rather than...

LIAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: what could have been... you start to suspect, a sort of like, uh, credible,

NOVA: uh, right opposition to the Soviet Union, um...

LIAM: Tito and Hox-Hox, how do you say it?

ADAM: F.

NOVA: F.

JUSTIN: F.

LIAM: F.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: F, Mr. Bond.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Well, Tito-Tito was the only man who could unite the Balkans.

NOVA: Mmm...

JUSTIN: Um... [laughs]

ADAM: And look what there... what that's-where that got us.

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: If the rule that you followed brought you to this... yeah.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So like, uh...

JUSTIN: but, you know.

JUSTIN: Uh, Romania was, far enough outside the Soviet sphere of influence that,

JUSTIN: um, it was the first, uh, country that, um, a US President visited, which was Nixon in, 1969.

NOVA: Whatever?

LIAM: Yeah. We-

ADAM: Communism.

LIAM: We're scared to leave our, our tiny island, no.

JUSTIN: Yes.

[laughter]

ADAM: I-I'm trying to, I'm trying to, to follow the mindset of, of the, of your average American.

NOVA: Don't try and do that, that's a horrible mistake, I tried to do it once and it made me so weird, I started a podcast.

LIAM: Yeah, don't do that, that's how you (?).

JUSTIN: Bad idea, yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Sounds good to me.

JUSTIN: Adam, you wrote the rest of the slide, go.

ADAM: Oh, oh yes. So, do-oh yeah, yeah, finally.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: So, uh, do you, do you see the picture on the right? What do you see there? Can you tell me?

JUSTIN: I see, uh...

JUSTIN: a ballasted subway station, that's interesting. That, wooden ties...

JUSTIN: on ballast, underground...

ADAM: Yeah, don't-don't pay attention, pay attention to (?), it must have been...

JUSTIN: Incredible, I love it.

ADAM: like yeah, I'm sure it was like, personal design by the Genius of the Carpathians, which...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: which, ac-which is... unironically might be true. So,

ADAM: do you notice anything else peculiar about this metro stuff?

NOVA: Mmm.

JUSTIN: Well, the platforms are very narrow.

ADAM: Right! And do you know why that is?

JUSTIN: Because...

ADAM: Alright! Let, let me... let me tell you!

JUSTIN: I watched your video, Adam.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: Ev-every, every one, everyone on the planet did.

ADAM: You're not special.

[laughter]

ADAM: No, yeah, so,

ADAM: so basically what happened here, in case you didn't...

ADAM: watch my video in, you know, whatever, but... [laughs]

ADAM: But, um, so here, what happened was, the...

ADAM: Uh, so Nicolae Ceaușescu, back in the day, commissioned a metro system for, uh, Bucharest, because of course,

ADAM: the city was growing, people were getting, uh, moved in,

ADAM: and, uh, you know, the, the (?) a high-speed, sort of great separate public transit system, so...

ADAM: The engineers sat down and designed a whole system for Bucharest, which actually made sense.

ADAM: And then, Ceaușescu was like, "Okay, no, you know what? Fuck that. Sigma male grindset, I'm gonna do the whole thing myself."

NOVA: [laughs] If you want something done right...

JUSTIN: Yes... yes.

ADAM: Yeah. Right in... in you know, in... Hah hah hah, whatever.

ADAM: Yeah, right. So, he, he...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: His idea of right was, to, take the metro line,

ADAM: and lead it under the river,

ADAM: but like, along the river.

ADAM: So the metro line doesn't, like, cross the river underneath, it goes along the river, underneath the river,

ADAM: which actually wasn't even a real river, like, the original going through, the uh, the city center is like,

ADAM: there was this, it was this artificial canal,

ADAM: filled with like, tap water,

ADAM: under which there was the real river which was basically, a stream of like,

ADAM: toxic shit,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: in a, in a sewer. Like...

ADAM: And underneath was the metro! And, um,

ADAM: Ceaușescu actually, you know, drew it up, everyone thought it was stupid, but of course if you say that it is, then you...

ADAM: you know, get executed, so whatever.

ADAM: "Yeah, let's do it! The Genius of the Carpathians, you're, you're smart."

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: And so, and so they did it.

ADAM: And the thing was, that, um,

ADAM: there was, when the eng-so when the engineers were like,

ADAM: "Okay, uh, do we have a choice? No, okay, fi-fuck it."

ADAM: So, they, they, uh, presented the station layout to the Ceaușescu couple,

ADAM: because Ceaușescu's wife was also, uh,

ADAM: for some, godawful reason, involved in this.

NOVA: It's called "feminism", Adam.

ADAM: Y-yeah...

JUSTIN: I was about to say, yeah.

LIAM: That's what it's called.

ADAM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[laughter]

ADAM: Yeah, g-girlboss, Elena Ceaușescu.

NOVA: That's right.

ADAM: Ugh...

ADAM: And so, so, they... so they put up this plan in front of the couple and be...

ADAM: and so, and then Ceaușescu, who used to be, I think a...

ADAM: a worker at a clothes factory or something? I don't recall...

ADAM: Anyway, also like, very well-versed in city planning, as you can tell,

ADAM: so they presented the plans, and Elena Ceaușescu looked at the map, looked at the station layout, and asked,

ADAM: "Okay, why is there a station at Piața Romană?" which is the central square, like,

ADAM: W-"what factory is there?"

ADAM: Which is a very, sort of, you know, Eastern Bloc question to ask.

ADAM: And the engineers were like, "No! Th-there are no factories, but there is the Bucharest University of Tech--of, of Economics, and there's a ton of students,"

ADAM: and, okay, to which she responded,

ADAM: um, and I'm quoting, I translated this, I translated this from Romanian,

ADAM: she said, "Students? They've gotten fat. They grew a belly. They should walk. No station at Piața, let them walk."

LIAM: That's bad disability(?) access.

NOVA: Sounds (?)

ADAM: Yeah, so Elena Ceaușescu decided that the students were, too fat apparently,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: and, uh, then she forbade the engineers from building that station.

ADAM: and so, Nicolae Ceaușescu said nothing to that, and so nobody else there to say no to his wife, obviously,

ADAM: because of course you get the firing squad if you do,

ADAM: so... but, the engineers were sort of, one step ahead of these two,

ADAM: well, Geniuses of the Carpathian, and...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: and they thought, "OK,"

ADAM: ...so they thought, OK, so this is a, this is a, an obviously stupid idea,

ADAM: that you're not building a station at the, at one of the central, very important, hubs of the city.

ADAM: So what they did was, OK,

ADAM: they assumed that public pressure will force the Ceaușescu couple, the power couple,

ADAM: uh, to, um,

ADAM: to build, to have the station build in retrospect, right.

ADAM: So what they did was, they secretly excavated a station area, disguised as tunnel boring,

ADAM: and because of that, since-since they had to disguise it as like, normal works,

ADAM: they couldn't, they couldn't like, excavate a normal, sort of station, uh, cavern,

ADAM: and that's why you have these, like, narrow-ass dangerous platforms that you see on the, on the picture on the right,

NOVA: Huh!

ADAM: because, this is what they could get away with, essentially,

ADAM: because of course, if-if this shit turns out, like, if it turns out that someone opposed, the, the missus,

ADAM: then you get the... firing squad, you know.

ADAM: But in the end, as the engineers predicted, there was a public backlash, and um,

ADAM: a public pressure, and then the engineers were like, "Huh, would you look at that! There's actually enough space to build a station here, must be magic! Cool!"

ADAM: So now we have a station.

ADAM: An idiotic-looking, dangerous, narrow station. But...

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: at, at least, they did it, you know.

NOVA: That's, that's compromise. That's how the sausage gets made.

JUSTIN: Whoever decided to actually excavate this thing, I-I wanna to retroactively award them,

JUSTIN: a, uh, Hero of socialist labor, award.

[laughter]

ADAM: Yeah, some alpha energy right there.

ADAM: But then this, but then from here, kind of like, as Ceaușescu was popular in the beginning, but...

ADAM: as time went on, he started sort of, sort of, things went downhill,

ADAM: sort of, faster than expected, so to speak?

JUSTIN and NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Romanians, sort of going, "Hey, your vibes kind of off."

JUSTIN: "Your vibes are off."

ADAM: Yyyyeah... So,

ADAM: just to, just to, uh, foreshadow what is going to happen, in 1981...

ADAM: Ceaușescu, you know, began this austerity program, to "eliminate Romania's national debt".

LIAM: Oh boy.

ADAM: Now, this was, because he was enamored with this...

ADAM: people and I also would assume that this was because he was influenced by the Juche ideology,

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: eh, of... of North Korea, where he was prior, like a decade... Or it's not, maybe-

ADAM: -but a few years before,

ADAM: and so...

ADAM: he said, "OK. We're gonna do this austerity program, and we're going to eliminate Romania's national debt," which was just, some like,

ADAM: $10 billion or something back in the day, which nowadays would be like,

ADAM: 30 or 40 or something, it's not--nothing terrible, but still,

ADAM: his austerity program; I mean, you know, compared to the US or something...

ADAM: Compared to the US...

ADAM: I'm sorry, uh...

ADAM: So, however, in Romania, this actually caused severe shortages of even the basic goods, like, you know, foods and gas.

ADAM: And, um, as in like, you know, fuel for the car.

ADAM: And, the support kinda started dwindling behind him?

ADAM: Uh, but, but the problem itself was actually successful, in terms of paying back the debt, like he actually did manage to pay back the debt,

ADAM: and, um,

ADAM: but it was less successful in terms of him staying alive, more on that later.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: A lesson to every deficit hawk out there.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: He also had this, um, he also had this, uh,

JUSTIN: deep Queens-ass mansion.

ADAM: Yeah, a McMansion Hell.

NOVA: Uh...

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: I, I think this looks cool, actually.

ADAM: Yeah, especially that, that like, cheeseboard ceiling over the pseudo-Indian... pool?

NOVA: Oh yeah...

JUSTIN: [stammers]

JUSTIN: ...you know, I'd, I would probably live here, if it, it will...

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Hhhh.

JUSTIN: ...if the option were given to me.

NOVA: All of these look like one of those AI-generated pictures, that are like, "name one thing in this image".

ADAM: Yeah.

ADAM: Yeah, click on, "horseshit"--Oh, there we go.

NOVA: Yeah, yeah yeah.

ADAM: Uhh...

ADAM: And, but the, the... so, the four pictures you can see here? Can you see--yes.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Or, the mansion from outside, which is, which looks kind of unassuming,

ADAM: uh, but it was, it was fucking enormous.

JUSTIN: 's uh... very Italianette.

ADAM: Uh, so-

ADAM: Yes, yeah!

JUSTIN: 's vag--vaguely Italianette, I guess you would call it, but...

ADAM: Y-yeah, I mean, 's also...

JUSTIN: The cornice is huge.

ADAM: Yeah. Well, you know.

JUSTIN: Which uh...

ADAM: Yeah, I mean, that's... that might be the nice thing about this house, the rest is like kind of eh,

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: you know? 'Cuz um... I mean...

ADAM: So this mansion right here, it looks small. It looks like, you know,

ADAM: looks like it's... it's slightly bigger than like, Groverhaus, right?

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: But this building actually has, like this-this just continues on.

ADAM: This thing has eighty rooms.

ADAM: That's eight-zero.

JUSTIN: Eighty rooms.

ADAM: Eighty rooms, it's an eighty-room, uh, building.

NOVA: Each one, uniquely terrible-looking.

ADAM: So then-

ADAM: Yyyeah, I mean-

JUSTIN: Man, I wish I had eight rooms.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs] I know, right.

ADAM: And this, and this thing has like... and by the way, the culprit, uh,

ADAM: the person responsible for this interior design was Elena Ceaușescu.

ADAM: You know, who was inspired, I guess, by, by her foreign trips.

ADAM: So this, this is basically like,

ADAM: the Pinterest influence before Pinterest, but worse.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: And so, this... monstrosity has multiple salons, multiple study rooms and bedrooms, obviously, with Louis XIV/XV-era furniture...

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: in it, 'cause, 'cause why the fuck not.

ADAM: And, uh, it's got children's luxury suits--suites, uh, an indoor swimming pool...

NOVA: Yea--children's luxury suits is more of a Lukashenko vibe.

ADAM: Yeaah, but like, you know.

ADAM: This, this-

JUSTIN: Welcome to the Nathan J. Robinson mansion.

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: And it also had a--has an indoor swimming pool, as you can see. It looks ugly as sin, but whatever, at least they have it.

ADAM: Also a cinema!

JUSTIN: It has a drop ceiling!

ADAM: Y-yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: There's a drop ceiling with the indoor swimming pool.

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: It's like, man, have you ever thought about what "humidity" is?

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: You ever considered, like...

JUSTIN: You have like, small, moist chunks of asbestos dropping down on you when you're swimming.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Oh God. Yeah.

ADAM: Well, all expenses are borne by the taxpayers anyway, so who gives a shit.

JUSTIN: 's true!

ADAM and NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: And so, it... the house also had a private cinema, where, according to reports, uh...

ADAM: Nicolae Ceaușescu watched, like, liked watching, uh...

ADAM: like, uh, old, like, Gangster films, and uh, Westerns, and especially Kojak.

ADAM: The, uh, this old, sort of detective/cop series.

NOVA: "Who loves ya, baby?"

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Hh!

ADAM: And-

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Dudes rock.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: I mean, this is-this is the, this is the weird thing with dictators, they love this shit, um, like...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: uh, Hitler loved a Western, also loved, like, uh, Disney?

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: I think Stalin was big into his cartoons, as well?

ADAM: Mm.

NOVA: So, yeah!

ADAM: But, this being said though, Elena's favorite was Dallas, actually.

ADAM: So, Elena Ceaușescu was watching Dallas in that private cinema(?).

NOVA: Huh!

NOVA: She did a horrible job of imitating it.

ADAM: Ehhh... Yeah, well-as far as the shooting goes, you know.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: And the house also had a wine cellar,

ADAM: uh, an indoor winter garden with statues, a fountain, and exotic plants, Elena was really into exotic plants,

ADAM: she also wanted to put exotic plants in the Bucharest metro, the way I heard,

NOVA: Mm!

ADAM: you know, like, underground, plants, which needs a lot of sunlight, but, you know. [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah! To liven your commute. You can just see, like a rare orchid or something. Cool.

ADAM: Yyeaah, underground, yeah...

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: I believe the plan was abandoned, like, uh, I just heard these rumours from like,

ADAM: Hungarian, sort of, metro enthusiast circles.

ADAM: (?)

JUSTIN: (?) some songbirds in there everyday.

ADAM: Oh, yeah.

ADAM: And, the house also had, by the way, a nuclear shelter. Which was accessible from the wine cellar.

NOVA: I mean, yeah, just grab a couple of bottles as you're going in?

ADAM: Yeah, exactly! [laughs]

ADAM: And also, something very...

ADAM: interesting trivia about this house, is that it had, inside of this house,

ADAM: was the, first, and for a long time, only,

ADAM: color TV in Romania.

JUSTIN: Hell yeah.

NOVA: We couldn't watch Dallas in black-and-white! Good God!

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

ADAM: I know right. [laughs]

ADAM: Yeah, so, this...

ADAM: ...this is a little, little appetizer before we get into the, the big,

ADAM: the main course... Exactly, exactly.

NOVA: The main event.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: So, Ceaușescu took a trip, in 1971, to,

ADAM: [laughs] (?)

JUSTIN: North Korea.

NOVA: Or as I like to call it, "Korea".

JUSTIN: Korea, yes, exactly.

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: The People's Republic of Korea.

NOVA: That's right.

JUSTIN: Um, so, in 1971, Ceaușescu visited China, Mongolia, North Korea, and North Vietnam, but crucilally, North...

JUSTIN: North Korea, right? And he was introduced to a,

JUSTIN: communist philosophy known as, Juche.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Which, in English-

NOVA: Yeah, it's Korean for "you do whatever the fuck you want".

JUSTIN: Yes, it's Kore-it's, it's Korean for "dudes rock".

ADAM: [laughs]

[laughter]

JUSTIN: No, it's uh, it's...

JUSTIN: "self-reliance", right.

JUSTIN: He'd met, uh, Kim Il-Sung, right.

JUSTIN: Um, and, North Korea in the 1970s, I mean...

JUSTIN: there was this weird period, after, the Korean War, that extended for a long time, where actually,

JUSTIN: North Korea, by our current...

JUSTIN: standards of, you know, GDP, so on and so forth, um...

JUSTIN: North Korea was actually, you know, doing better than South Korea for a long time.

NOVA: Yeah! Well like, people talk about the Marshall Plan, but the Soviet Union, in another, like,

NOVA: broadly, good move, did pour a lot of money into like, improving the living standards of people in like, its allies, like North Korea and Cuba.

NOVA: The downside of that was making them just--talk of self-reliance aside, in-incredibly dependent on those things, um... Also-

JUSTIN: Oh, yeah. I mean, J-Juche has always been fake.

NOVA: Yeah. Also, at this point, South Korea was like, on its like, 4th consecutive fascist dictatorship? Um...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Because that's like...

NOVA: That was like, the 60s and 70s, CIAs bread and butter, is like, "Okay, we need a reliable guy in here,

NOVA: "let's the find the weirdest general in this country's army, have him kill his predecessor,

NOVA: "and now he's the boss."

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: But, Ceaușescu was sort of inspired by the fact that North Korea could,

JUSTIN: sustain itself outside of the Soviet sphere of influence,

JUSTIN: and outside the... China sphere of influence, even, right?

NOVA: Spoiler alert: it could not.

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: It did a slightly better job there, yeah?

JUSTIN: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um, so, you know, this sort of, uh, philosophy of Juche,

JUSTIN: clearly this is the way we make Romania a world power, right?

ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Obviously.

JUSTIN: Have we done, have we done a lot of, other dumb stuff so far? Um...

ADAM: Mm.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: First, the metro, tomorrow, the world.

JUSTIN: Ceaușescu came back, delivered a speech now we call the July Theses,

JUSTIN: which is sort of a, indication of a return to Stalinism.

LIAM: More like the "July Feces", am I right?

ADAM: And nothing went wrong.

JUSTIN: Nothing went wrong, no.

JUSTIN: I mean, that's why we all live today, under a uh, glorious,

LIAM: Glorious worker's paradise, yeah.

JUSTIN: United States Socialist Republic, yes, yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: That's right.

NOVA: God, it's so funny that... to think about a time when, uh, Juche was still being justified, even by the Kims, as a Stalinist philosophy.

NOVA: They don't bother with that, now! Is the main thing.

JUSTIN: ...Care about it!

NOVA: No.

JUSTIN: ...They don't care ab--None of these communist countries care about communism.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Hhmm...

JUSTIN: This is, this is the unfortunate situation.

JUSTIN: It's like, well, you know, maybe you should just do some communism, guys.

NOVA: Cuba. Maaybe.

JUSTIN: Cuba maybe, yes.

LIAM: Crazy how that works, Rocz.

JUSTIN: So the July Theses involved, um, a return to a sort of Stalinism,

JUSTIN: right, but Stal-more Stalinism than Stalin did, right. Um...

NOVA: Mm. 'Cuz the thing about Stalin is he was a pussy, and a cuck, and a beta.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Mmhmm.

ADAM: And so far it sounds like PragerU to me, you know? The problem is, the problem is that we're not doing capitalism hard enough, you see?

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: But, one-one of the fun ones, was, um, you know, uh, is part of this, uh, this July Theses, um...

JUSTIN: There were 17 of them, and I don't know what they are, except that one of them was that, "students are going to volunteer on...

JUSTIN: construction projects".

ADAM: Oh, yeah. I know the sound of that. That happens to this day in Hungary, you know, where they-actually, it happened the other day, like,

ADAM: they "asked" a bunch of students to "volunteer" to, I don't know, do, be, I don't know, some kinda helper, at some kinda fucking conference that Orban likes?

ADAM: So this is actually, very, uh...

ADAM: this is a long, and, well, somewhat beautiful tradition, in the Eastern Bloc.

NOVA: Ahhh, fuck me. I love to be getting a fucking, like,

NOVA: engineering degree in Hungary, and then be told that I have to go and suck off Tucker Carlson,

NOVA: because the president likes him, you know?

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: Yeah, yeah.

ADAM: Yeah, so, so, we are like, "volunteering" now, because the students, "so enthusiastic" about, you know,

ADAM: helping Ceaușescu's cause!

NOVA: Securing a future for Hungarian children, et cetera, et cetera.

JUSTIN: Yes. Yes.

ADAM: Exactly.

NOVA: Well, the thing, the thing is, having, having identified all of the things that, uh, the country needed to do in order to become,

NOVA: a world power, the third Rome, independent of uh, of both Moscow and Beijing,

NOVA: is, uh, Nicolae needed to turn on the big earthquake machine?

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Which he did, as soon as he got back.

JUSTIN: Immediately.

JUSTIN: Well, no, actually. Six years afterwards, it was 1977.

NOVA: Well, it takes a long time to warm up, all right? It's got nixie tubes in there.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: 's a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, um, gave him, uh, gave Ceaușescu a nice pretext to start...

JUSTIN: demolishing a huge amount of Bucharest,

JUSTIN: you know, for the sake of, uh, rebuilding it in a sort of,

JUSTIN: socialist, realist, uh...

JUSTIN: fashion, right? Um, w-

NOVA: Mm. Emphasis on the "fash", I guess.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs] Exactly.

ADAM: And, what Ceaușescu did is (?) called the so-called "systematization",

ADAM: uh, which, well, uh, the... according to the definition,

ADAM: it's the demolition and reconstruction of existing hamlets, villages, towns, and cities,

ADAM: in whole or in part, with the stated goal of turning Romania into a "multilaterally developed socialist society".

ADAM: And, soon we will see how that worked out.

ADAM: And...

JUSTIN: Yeah...

ADAM: Uh, that-

ADAM: Go ahead?

JUSTIN: Oh! I-I... you know, like, "multilaterally developed" sounds like,

JUSTIN: some kind of, um...

ADAM: Corporate speak.

JUSTIN: Corporate speak! Yes. Exactly.

NOVA: You know, we're gonna, we're gonna synergize Romania.

ADAM: Corporate speak, but your manager shoots you, or something, uhh, like...

NOVA: I think that's just regular corporate speak.

ADAM: [laughs] And that monstrosity, we see in the background, getting build,

ADAM: that unholy, uh, Ozymandian, uh, monument,

ADAM: is what we'll be very soon talking about. It's coming, people, winter's coming! Whoooh.

JUSTIN: Yeah, a lot of...

ADAM: And, and other things with it, in the December of 1989.

NOVA: Yeah, but first, we're gonna talk about two, distinct,

NOVA: artistic movements.

ADAM: [laughs] O-oh, I've heard "autistic movements".

NOVA: Yeah, we gotta talk about two distinct autistic movements, socialism, and communism. Uh...

JUSTIN: Yes, as I said, as I said earlier, the spectrum of communism. Yes.

[laughter]

NOVA: "Well, [Nova]..."

JUSTIN: Alright.

JUSTIN: So, we need to talk about this concept of "socialist realism", right?

NOVA: Mmhm.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: One of the, one of the things about Soviet communism in particular,

JUSTIN: which, you know...

JUSTIN: ...is, the "conservatism" of it, right.

NOVA: Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: ...Soviet communism was very conservative, I guess culturally, right.

JUSTIN: Um, and this was-

NOVA: Well, this is the thing, you, you had this sort of, moment of opening...

NOVA: sort of like, in the f-the early years of Bolshevik government, and then...

NOVA: Lenin, sort of is a kind of ambiguous figure, uh...

NOVA: sort of like, repressed some of this, sort of tolerated others, encouraged others,

NOVA: uh, but then the door firmly got shut in everyone's face when Stalin took over.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Absolutely! Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um-

NOVA: No more weird shit! And Lenin had to like, allow, allowed some weird shit, like uh, for instance,

JUSTIN: No more weird shit!

NOVA: uh, tolerating Arseny Avraamov, the guy who said we should destroy every piano in Russia.

NOVA: Uh, like, a bunch of weird, futurist art, that was all wedges and shapes,

NOVA: and like, more prosaically, things like, uh, you know, educating women, giving women access to contraceptives, legalizing homosexuality...

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Just regular, Cool Stuff, uh, that was then immediately shut back down in 1924.

ADAM: Oops.

JUSTIN: Yeah, u-um...

JUSTIN: ...it was just, you know, it was, it was an incredible period of art and architecture, stuff like that, you know, you-

NOVA: Just imagine the optimism of that.

JUSTIN: ...exciting new forms, you had, you know, constructivism, right?

JUSTIN: You had futurism, you had suprematism, which is, you know, Kazimir Malevich, put--putting a square on a canvas, um...

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Some, some really, truly, unironically, for once, "dudes rock" shit.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Mm.

JUSTIN: You know, this is where I, uh--

JUSTIN: there's some people out there who say, like, "the CIA is responsible for modern art and architecture,"

JUSTIN: um...

JUSTIN: Which, I think is very strange because like the--

JUSTIN: all the good stuff was in the early years of the USSR.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: And you read, like, you read like oral histories of this period, there was a genuine air of like,

NOVA: because it was so unexpected and it was so unprepared,

NOVA: but it was fully the case that like, the uh, you know...

NOVA: the central government would send you to...

NOVA: you know, the fucking, up the banks of the Yenisey or whatever, and be like,

NOVA: "Okay, here are two pencils, start a school for 5,000 people."

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Uh, a-and...

NOVA: ...and they did it! People did the stuff, and it...

NOVA: sort of like, it, it worked and it didn't and it was chaos and it was order but it was, like, a whole rich human tapestry...

NOVA: uh, and then, uh, not so much...

JUSTIN: The... the art was good! The art was so good. [laughs]

ADAM: And also, one, one factor which plays into this, like the art flourishing, is that in many cases, there was--like, the artists...

ADAM: uh, were allowed to flourish and they could sort of, uh,

ADAM: really explore their creativity, because they were not necessarily tied to the profit motive, meaning that, you know,

ADAM: you, you're not at risk of creating something that, that cannot sell and so you die of hunger, so.

NOVA: Yeah. And like, even, even at its most decrepit, right, the...

NOVA: the empire still had enough of a grip on the reins of power, that it could implement artistic censorship very easily and very effectively,

NOVA: not so necessarily of the early days of, of the Bolsheviks, like,

NOVA: yeah, okay, it was still possible for them to kill you, right, but like, in terms of implementing a sort of like,

NOVA: national policy of, uh, "This is a guy who's gonna watch you work, make sure you don't get any weird ideas with it,"

NOVA: that was a few years off yet.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and, and this flourishing of art, sort of, it comes to a stop when Stalin comes to power, right.

NOVA: Yeah, when he poisons Lenin, allegedly.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Uh...

JUSTIN: Uh...

NOVA: Destroys and buries the, the testament that Lenin writes, that says, "Don't let Stalin take power, under any circumstances."

NOVA: Allegedly.

JUSTIN: Listen, I will not tolerate Trotskyism on this podcast.

[laughter]

JUSTIN: We...

JUSTIN: ...I'm fine with being against Stalin, but, no Trotskyism, please.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Alright, so!

JUSTIN: Stalin is, Stalin comes to power, he's basically, he's...

JUSTIN: you know, he's, he's a communist, but he's also like, a nationalist, right.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: And-

NOVA: He's a terrible communist, if you've ever actually like--

NOVA: one of the funniest interactions I've had with tankies online was being told to read Stalin's theory, right, because I have.

NOVA: And, uh, let me tell you, [laughs] this was, this was not a theoretical communist.

JUSTIN: Yeah, he's, well, he's the worst kind of nationalist, he's a convert, because he's from Georgia, not Russia.

NOVA: Hmm. Converts, man, I'm telling you.

JUSTIN: ...Zealotry of converts, yeah.

ADAM: (?) we knew.

NOVA: Being, being sort of on the borderline, uh...

NOVA: like, borderlands of like, acceptability,

NOVA: uh, you know, fucking destroying Osip Mandelstam for writing a sort of, Russian chauvinist poem about him,

NOVA: calling him like, the uh, "the Kremlin Caucasian".

JUSTIN: Good Lord.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: So this is, this is sort of uh, a state-sanctioned style of art and architecture, the socialist realist style, right, it's...

JUSTIN: it's representational, uh, supposed to be understandable to the workers,

JUSTIN: it was, it was not, high art, it was not something that you, you had to think about, right, so you can sort of see...

NOVA: No, in, in some ways it approaches a sort of confluence with a lot of fascist art, where you end up with these sort of like, monumental classical forms on the one hand,

NOVA: uh, but on the other, you get this kind of like, um,

NOVA: really kitsch, nostalgic, uh, sentimental, uh, sort of art.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: So we see here, on the screen, we got a mosaic of Lenin,

JUSTIN: in one of the Moscow metro stations.

JUSTIN: We have a, uh, large classical building,

JUSTIN: I forget where this is.

JUSTIN: Um...

ADAM: St. Petersburg?

NOVA: ...(?) don't recognize it.

JUSTIN: Sounds about right.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Yeah, I don't recognize it.

JUSTIN: Uh.

JUSTIN: We see here-

NOVA: And then, and then, the one painting that was allowed.

JUSTIN: ...the one kind of painting that's allowed, which is the children giving Stalin some flowers.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

NOVA: Again, de--deeply, deeply sentimental, deeply kitsch, deeply annoying, deeply parochial,

NOVA: uh, and like, this is exactly the same kind of shit that the Nazis did, too, it's like,

NOVA: people, people remember the sort of like,

NOVA: uh, the revolutionary aspect of fascist art, which is, you know, that sort of like, giant Arno Breker bronzes and stuff, um...

NOVA: Less so the kitsch, but like,

NOVA: uh, if you look at things like,

NOVA: the service stations that they put on the Autobahn, it was like, oh, we're gonna make this like a chocolate box...

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: cottage, because that ref-that, like, reflects German values.

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: Um,

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: sa-same deal, same exact deal, not, not to do horseshoe theory here, but, yeah, same thing.

ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: ...and with that, I'll be right back, one second.

JUSTIN: Ooh.

ADAM: Feel free to go on, by the way. It's your podcast.

NOVA: I would j-I would just keep yelling about socialist realism.

JUSTIN: Yeah, we can just, uh, we can yell about socialist realism for a while, I mean,

JUSTIN: you know... one of the things which I, I think is very... you know...

JUSTIN: as someone who, kind of likes,

JUSTIN: you know, maybe what you would call "traditional architecture",

JUSTIN: ...I feel like, this is, this is,

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: um, not...

NOVA: Well, it...[sighs]

JUSTIN: it's just not executed properly, it's like--

NOVA: It has its moments!

JUSTIN: It has its moments, but there's not like, uh, a sort of, um,

JUSTIN: I don't know how you explain it. It's...

NOVA: ...When the execution goes that extra mile, it can be, it can be very good. I love the, the Moscow metro, for instance. Um...

NOVA: uh, there are, you know, the apartment buildings, the Stalinkas...

JUSTIN: We--

JUSTIN: The, the actual, the actual buildings that are build for the people are good,

NOVA: Mmhmm.

JUSTIN: like... the metro stations, like,

JUSTIN: um... I remember Milo talking on Trashfuture about the Stalinkas and just how,

JUSTIN: absurdly overbuilt they are...

NOVA: Oh yeah. Castles. Castles for the proletariat. Um...

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: But it's like, it's like, these are actually, these are buildings that are actually built for people to like,

JUSTIN: live in, and use, as opposed to like, you know, the buildings which are,

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: I don't know, some kind of... they're more monuments than buildings, right.

LIAM: Right.

JUSTIN: They're no-it's not like, this is not like a building for,

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: like, the people, this is a building for like, government.

NOVA: Well, we, we have a fantastic example of this, on the next slide.

JUSTIN: You know.

NOVA: Uh, which is-

JUSTIN: Uh... Yes!

NOVA: ...never built, um...

NOVA: The Palace of the Soviets.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: The, the like, the big passion project, because like...

NOVA: again, not to keep drawing the parallels, but like, uh...

NOVA: impractically large monumental buildings that are like, the new axis mundi,

NOVA: uh, like... Berlin was gonna have the Volkshalle,

ADAM: Mmhmm.

NOVA: uh... And, and this, you know, Moscow was gonna have the, the Palace of the Soviets, and the size of this isn't really...

LIAM: So big, (?) have it's own weather.

NOVA: conveyed properly by this drawing, but it was like,

NOVA: going to be... Gargantuan.

LIAM: Right.

NOVA: Like, impractically...

ADAM: Big dick energy.

LIAM: 14,000 feet tall or so? Yeah.

meaty can opening]

LIAM: I mean, there was a whole central plan for-

NOVA: That was a meaty can opening, I really appreciated that.

NOVA: Um, yeah, no, the pa-the Palace of the Soviets is like, the best example of sort of like,

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: impractical, boring even? Despite its size? Socialist realism, it was gonna have this gigantic...

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: statue of Lenin, on the top, it was gonna be like, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.

JUSTIN: So to conclude this slide, socialist realism was kinda goofy, it was dumb.

JUSTIN: It was an anachronism, right, and by the 50s, Khrushchev, with his sort of denunciation of Stalin,

JUSTIN: Khrushchev managed to, you know, get rid of, the...

JUSTIN: the sort of socialist realist style as the, um,

JUSTIN: official style of the Soviet Union, right.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Um...

NOVA: Witho-without really getting rid of the sort of conservatism, or the nostalgia, which is a fascinating trick he pulled.

JUSTIN: Yes! I... yeah, I mean...

JUSTIN: ...Soviet Union's weird. [laughs]

NOVA: Se-uh... a series, a series of tragedies.

JUSTIN: ...Series of tragedies, yes.

JUSTIN: We could've had socialism, if not for the Soviet Union.

[laughter]

JUSTIN: So, Ceaușescu decided that, you know, here, in the modern world of the 1980s by this point, it was time to bring back socialist realism, right.

NOVA: Hmm.

JUSTIN: Um, so,

JUSTIN: you know, and it's, it's um...

NOVA: ...that, that's the Palace of the Soviets that I was talking about earlier.

JUSTIN: That's the Palace of the Soviets, yeah.

NOVA: ...I have one real quick comparison to draw here, which is,

NOVA: this, this is what socialism re-socialist realism gets you...

NOVA: or, or doesn't, because it's like a swamp now, um...

NOVA: The, the original, the original plan for the side was, uh, the Tatlin Tower.

NOVA: Which was this insane, uh, sort of like,

NOVA: uh, "What if the Eiffel Tower was made by the dang Joker?" kind of futurist thing.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: With a bunch of like, really, twisted steel and really interesting forms, uh...

NOVA: that, that truly would have, "said a lot about our society," and then, instead of doing that, they, they tried to do this,

NOVA: they started laying the foundations for it, and then World War II happened, and...

NOVA: uh, they did not build...(?)

JUSTIN: Well, so many architects like, under the competition to build the Palace of the Soviets, right.

NOVA: Oh yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh... you know, Le Corbusier was involved, he had, um,

JUSTIN: that was the big one, um...

JUSTIN: I don't remember who else, uh--Tatlin's Tower, right, that was, uh,

JUSTIN: definitely the most interesting one because Tatlin's Tower involved like, this uh,

JUSTIN: this sort of, um,

JUSTIN: it was a mechanical sculpture as well as a government building.

JUSTIN: Um.. because, you know, you would have, uh,

NOVA: Mmm.

JUSTIN: the lower house at the bottom would be in a cube, and the cube would rotate once a day,

JUSTIN: and they have the upper house, which would be in a sphere, and the sphere rotated...

JUSTIN: once a, once a month, and then you have the, uh, the upper half,

JUSTIN: ...I think, uh, a pyramid, and the pyramid rotated,

JUSTIN: um, once a year.

NOVA: Yeah, it's like if, um... ironically, given who's, like, you know, opposed to, Corbusier,

NOVA: uh, if a house is a machine for living, this was like a machine for governing.

JUSTIN: Mmhmm.

ADAM: Hmm.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: And, and just to add a, a little something, uh, to this, uh,

ADAM: to this, uh, sort of, idea, and the slide,

ADAM: uh, you see, uh, throughout the Eastern Bloc, you sometimes see this gigantic, you know, monuments of shit,

ADAM: just like, Soviet things... the big dick energy stuff.

ADAM: Like here, the Palace of the Soviets. In Warsaw, the, the like, the Stalin's Skyscraper, and...

NOVA: Yes! Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: Exactly. And...

ADAM: ...funny enough, Hungary doesn't have something like that, thank God.

ADAM: Anyway, the... in Romania, as we will soon see, we have this... something, which we'll be discussing.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: But, uh, the strange thing about the Soviet Union is, is...

ADAM: ultimately, a big part of the reason why it fell apart is that, while...

ADAM: these huge, prestige projects, uh, went on,

ADAM: um...

ADAM: ...basic necessities, and just like, just like basic commodities were, uh, struggling, so to speak,

ADAM: or the state was struggling to provide them,

ADAM: uh, so,

ADAM: for example, uh... An example I wanna bring up is buying a car.

ADAM: So, during the second half--second half of the 20th century,

ADAM: uh, how do you buy a car in the US? Like, they basically like, threw it after you, right?

ADAM: So it wasn't particularly hard to get one.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: Whereas, in the Eastern Bloc, the way you got a car was,

ADAM: you first off, first off you signed up,

ADAM: uh, by paying the, paying parts of the, of the money, or the, or... or the whole thing.

ADAM: And then you waited. You are put on the waiting list,

ADAM: and, um, you waited for years.

ADAM: To get your car.

ADAM: And you look at the newspaper every week, to see the names of who will get their cars this week,

ADAM: and hopefully your name was among them, and--

NOVA: Reminds me of another Soviet joke, uh...

ADAM: Go ahead.

NOVA: Man puts in his order to buy uh, you know, say...

NOVA: Zaporozets or whatever. Um...

JUSTIN: I think I know this one.

NOVA: ...he buys a car, and, and the guy tells him,

NOVA: "Okay, it will be with you, in... ten years.

NOVA: Um... "Ten years exactly, to this date."

NOVA: And, and the guy says, "Oh, in the morning or the afternoon?"

NOVA: And the salesman looks at him, he says, "Why would you need to know that?"

NOVA: And the guy says, "Oh, the plumber is coming in the morning."

ADAM: [laughs] Yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes! That is the one I thought it was.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Yeah, yeah.

ADAM: It's also a very, very good and very indicative joke, actually, of how, of the state of the affairs.

ADAM: And, so-but the, but just waiting, waiting years for your car wasn't the only thing, actually.

ADAM: So, once you waited like, five, six years to get--to get your fucking Trabant, or, or Wartburg, or Zaporozets...

NOVA: Mmhmm.

ADAM: ...or, you know, Polski or something, once you got it,

ADAM: um... you had one more task in front of you.

ADAM: You had to take it to a friendly mechanic, that you knew and just--and you entrusted,

ADAM: and shell out a ton of money, like a month's salary or something,

ADAM: for the mechanic to reinstall everything that was stolen out of the car in the factory.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: So yeah. [laughs]

ADAM: And with that, next slide, please.

JUSTIN: Alright.

ADAM: So yes, it's, it's coming, it's coming at you full speed.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: ...it's People's Palace.

NOVA: So, the People's Palace.

NOVA: Uh, sp-spoiler alert, our, our boy Ceaușescu will not live to see this building completed.

ADAM: And-

JUSTIN: Yeah. [laughs]

ADAM: Oh, what a sh-what a shame.

JUSTIN: What a shame. [laughs]

ADAM: And uh...

ADAM: Let's see why, soon...

ADAM: So, Rocz wrote here that this is the biggest God damn thing ever, and I'm inclined to agree.

ADAM: And, this thing broke down...

ADAM: Broke ground, in-

JUSTIN: It's been broke down the whole time it's been up.

ADAM: ...yeah, just like the country. [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: So, this, this thing broke ground in 1984, you know, it's, it's the thing that...

NOVA: Oh, like the book. Yeah.

ADAM: Yeah, George... George Orlando's 1968, that conservatives like to quote.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: And uh, the thing was actually finished after the revolution in 1997.

ADAM: Now, can you guess the number of architects that worked on it? For, for those of you who don't have the notes in front of you.

ADAM: Well, there's one of them in the picture on the right, so... I'm gonna guess "one".

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: So that's one, and there were also 699 more.

NOVA: Huh.

ADAM: And-

NOVA: Like a, a little, a little battalion of architects.

ADAM: Exactly, exactly, who have to, who have to be at the beck and call of,

ADAM: the orders of the Genius of the Carpathians, so, you know.

NOVA: ...The nominal lead architect, Anca Petrescu, who is... on the, on the right picture there, uh, 28 years old,

NOVA: at the time when they started building this...

ADAM: Ahh yeah... (?)

JUSTIN: Well, 'cause uh, they, they support women in Romania.

ADAM: Yeah.

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Under(?) Ceaușescu, they really supported women.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Some girlboss energy right there.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: That's right.

ADAM: And, this whole thing, the whole building, by the way, costed about $4.7 billion, in today's course(?), I believe.

ADAM: So, it's, you know, it's a little, big chungus building, uh...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: It's a, it's a good-sized building. And it's, it has the same number of stories below ground as above ground if I recall correctly.

ADAM: Yeah, so the building is 12-floors high, and is 84, 84 meters tall.

ADAM: And... okay, wait a second, we have Americans here, so...

ADAM: "Meter to..."

NOVA: Yeah, what's that in, what's that in burgers?

ADAM: In hamburgers, that's 275 hamburgers.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: So, it's a pretty, it's a pretty tall building...

ADAM: Can you guess the floor space of this thing?

NOVA: I'm terrible at estimating floor space, I just like, whenever I, whenever I'm renting an apartment, I just let them...

ADAM: Yeah, me too, it's not fair, but, so the...

ADAM: The floor space, the floor space is 365,000 square meters.

ADAM: Or 3,930,000 square feet.

ADAM: The number of rooms in this thing is 1,100.

NOVA: Oh!

JUSTIN: Well...

JUSTIN: You know-

ADAM: So yeah, you know, just show-showing people around my... my, 4+1,096 apartment, you know.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Romania is a complex country, it needs a lot of administration.

NOVA: That's right.

JUSTIN: (?) requires that many rooms...

LIAM: It's just one dude(?), though.

ADAM: Yeah...

ADAM: ...Or that, or that high-quality governance needs a lot of... lots of room to, you know, function.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Needs to, needs to fit Ceaușescu's enormous brain inside it, so.

ADAM: [laughs] Exactly.

JUSTIN: I read something from a, uh,

JUSTIN: I forget, I forget who the journalist was, who...

JUSTIN: met Ceaușescu once, who said that,

JUSTIN: Ceaușescu, he sat down in front of 'em,

JUSTIN: and, most enormous...

JUSTIN: balls.

NOVA: Huh.

LIAM: (?) man.

JUSTIN: Gigantic, huge, visible through pants.

ADAM: That explains everything.

[laughter]

NOVA: Incredible.

ADAM: Oh God, the Stallion of the Carpathians.

NOVA: Mmm.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: And this was, this was gonna house every ministry of Romanian government... at the same time(?).

LIAM: No, just his balls, just his balls actually.

ADAM: ...and his balls.

JUSTIN: And his balls.

NOVA: And his massive,

NOVA: one wing for the left nut, one wing for the right nut.

NOVA: one wing for every other government ministry.

ADAM and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: And so, this building has some relevant titles, um...

ADAM: ...This building is, which is an absolute monstrosity, by the way, absolutely,

ADAM: this is the world's largest civilian building with an administrative function,

ADAM: it is the world's most expensive admin-administrative building,

ADAM: so you know, Andrew Cuomo can get some ideas,

ADAM: and it is also the world's heaviest building.

ADAM: And because of that, I hear that it's actually sinking,

ADAM: by around 5 or 6 millimeters per year.

NOVA: Oh, I identify with it now.

ADAM: Yeah, so...

ADAM: And it's also the dumbest fucking thing ever built in Romania--that's not official... I just wrote it there, because I think that, so.

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: I do love the, the sort of like, architectural model that they have of it here.

NOVA: It's very charming. Yeah.

ADAM: It's cute.

ADAM: ...The little, Dracula Castle roofs did not make it into the final, uh, plans, but...

NOVA: Oooh.

JUSTIN: It would look a lot better with the, uh... the peaked roof, though.

ADAM: Even on that scale? I'm not sure, though.

JUSTIN: No, I mean--my biggest issue with this building is it looks like shit.

ADAM: Mmh.

JUSTIN: It looks fucking terrible.

NOVA: It i--it is an ugly building, we'll see-

JUSTIN: ...it's really bad.

ADAM: I mean...

ADAM: I mean it's... it's like, Romania, you know, it was, you know...

ADAM: What can you do?

NOVA: Well, on... on the plus side, uh, much like, um...

NOVA: uh, Guy de Maupassant, dining in the Eiffel Tower, 'cause it was the one place in Paris he didn't have to look at the Eiffel Tower,

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: the one place, you don't have to look at, uh, the People's Palace is from inside it.

JUSTIN: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Uh, but what you do have to look at is the interior.

JUSTIN: Oh my God.

ADAM: Oh, yeah, yeah yeah.

NOVA: Sort of a, sort of a communist Versailles but also like,

JUSTIN: It's depressing! It's, it's...

NOVA: It's like, it's like if Versailles was built as a train station, uhhhmm...

JUSTIN: It's not... It's...

JUSTIN: 'cause it's not like a, a building that like,

JUSTIN: has a public purpose, it's for government, right.

NOVA: No.

NOVA: Yes.

ADAM: Mmyeah.

JUSTIN: You know, it's not particularly attractive...

ADAM: Yeah, it's like, it's like a McMansion but on a, on a government level, essentially.

JUSTIN: Um, there's not enough color,

JUSTIN: um, 'cuz it's, it's white and gold.

JUSTIN: Um...

ADAM: Mm.

LIAM: That symbolizes opulence, Rocz!

JUSTIN: Listen, listen.

ADAM: Yeah...

NOVA: You're not, you're not correct about this, this is just a bad implement--much like the Soviet Union,

NOVA: the ideology isn't the problem, it's only the implementation.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: It's just, it's...

JUSTIN: ...it's bad, it's like, not, not interesting, it's not like,

NOVA: Sort of...

JUSTIN: there's nothing, there's nothing going on here that I, I like.

NOVA: S-sort of gives you a toothache to look at, it looks like a big wedding cake.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: Yeah, I mean, Ceaușescu came in, he's like, "Okay, I'm the Genius of the Carpathians, and here's what we're gonna build:

ADAM: "Louvre, but depressed."

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

LIAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Oh yeah.

NOVA: Got a, next slide here, just the, the main staircase here.

JUSTIN: (?) staircase, yeah.

ADAM: And, it has this, steri... it's like, it has this sort of classical, but sterile look, so it's, it's sterile, like this, like this, uh...

ADAM: this government office from the, 1970s rural Russia where like, all the employees are like, suicidal.

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: But it's also classical, and such a weird, sort of, disharmony.

ADAM: It's bizarre.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's um, it's, it's all, it's all white,

JUSTIN: right, so there's like, no, no sort of...

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: ...It's also made entirely from Romanian materials, as I understand, because again, we're trying to do Romanian Juche.

ADAM: Mm.

ADAM: Yeah yeah.

JUSTIN: Right.

JUSTIN: But there's also like, there's...

JUSTIN: ...I don't know, there's something, there's something wrong with it. [laughs]

NOVA: It's all, it's all out of proportion, it feels like sort of, like, dream logic, you know.

JUSTIN: No, the proportions are great! The proportions are all exactly right.

NOVA: You think so?

JUSTIN: That's the thing that I think is weird about it, because, you know, the proportions are correct.

JUSTIN: Everything is correct academically, but there's something wrong here. [laughs]

ADAM: I think, I think it's because they just, they just like piled the ornamentation on top of each other, like, it's just like,

ADAM: ornamentation on top of ornamentation... it's just, it's just goes on and it's...

ADAM: ...this, this uh, this style, never lets you catch a break.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Like, everywhere you look, it's always something, it's always like, it, it always has to,

ADAM: scream into your face how, how great it is, how...

ADAM: exceptional it is, and that's because it was designed by some dumbfucks, so, you know.

NOVA: It's, it's very overstimulating, isn't it.

ADAM: Exactly.

JUSTIN: There's an intent-

ADAM: ...Good, good int-

ADAM: Sorry, go ahead.

JUSTIN: There's an intent behind the architecture, is the thing.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: I-I--maybe. I, I don't know how you describe it, but like, there's, there's an intent here,

JUSTIN: and it was, um, you know, you're trying to do...

NOVA: Malicious.

JUSTIN: It is, it is malicious. It's the wrong intent, and it hasn't,

ADAM: ...the wrong intent.

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: it hasn't aged into its new purpose, either.

NOVA: No, see, see, people, people think "hostile architecture", and they think that means exclusively like, spikes over subway get--grates,

JUSTIN: Because, you know-

NOVA: which is, you know, one example,

NOVA: this is hostile architecture too.

ADAM: Mm.

ADAM: Yeah, but subtle.

NOVA: Hh!

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Yeah, so... I mean, this, this building would look nice, if not for the...

ADAM: ...the, uh, suffo-suffocating amount of ornamentation, plus,

ADAM: if you dare criticizing it, you know, like, behind that beautifully crafted...

ADAM: uh, you know, staircase, leading upwards, to, you know, the higher level of...

ADAM: higher level of existence or something, behind that are, are 5 Securitate officers who will just, fuckin'...

ADAM: you know, drag you off to the gulag if you dare to give him a dirty look, so.

NOVA: I have a, I have a view in the next slide, 'cause I wrote the next slide,

NOVA: of the, the aerial shot of this,

JUSTIN: [groans] Oh my God.

NOVA: which really, just, just take it in, just, just take it in.

JUSTIN: Just take it in.

ADAM: It's just this big, sort of, tumor, just like... stretching, into the fabric of the city.

LIAM: Oh, yeah.

NOVA: It looks like it's been like, anchored in, the corners, uh...

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: The, the building is like... The plan is not good.

NOVA: And--

JUSTIN: Like, starting from, starting from like...

JUSTIN: the beginning, like, the plan of the building is not good.

JUSTIN: Like, y-you (?)... you've taken-

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Don't hire 28-year olds!

JUSTIN: You've taken this whole, sort of,

JUSTIN: classical, architecture, like, you--

JUSTIN: you've applied all the right rules,

JUSTIN: to the wrong thing.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: Mmyeah.

NOVA: And, like, spoiler alert, 'cause we're gonna talk about it in a couple of slides time, but uh,

NOVA: ...Romania is no longer a communist country, it is...

NOVA: ...democratic... [mumbles]

[mumbles]

NOVA: Um, and...

NOVA: ...the current, the current governing ideology of Romania, is [intense mumbling]

NOVA: Yeah, anyway, so... Well,

JUSTIN: [mumbles]

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: After, after communism, or after Ceaușescuism, uh, the new guys go,

NOVA: "Well, okay, what are we, what are we gonna do with this thing? Do we like, leave it half done, do we demolish it?"

NOVA: And what they do, is they finished it.

NOVA: Um, they, they finished construction of this, because, you know, you're already most of the way there. Um...

JUSTIN: What else are you gonna do? [laughs]

LIAM: Yeah, exactly.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: ...and then, having, having like, capped it out, having finished it, they go,

NOVA: "Shit, what the fuck are we gonna do,

NOVA: "with the world's heaviest building?"

LIAM: Dracula play(?) place.

NOVA: ...It's an order of magnitude larger than like, even the most authoritarian Romanian government could've possibly used it for.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: I-I was reading about the, um, uh...

NOVA: ...was like, the speaker of the, the Chamber of Deputies, of Romania,

NOVA: talked about, his, his office,

NOVA: once he got into it, he had to order a smaller desk, because the size of his desk was upsetting him.

ADAM and JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: And, what he got, what he got was um, a desk that was, like, larger than the largest one you could get, like it had to be custom-made, and it was still...

NOVA: half the size of the one that the office came with.

ADAM: [laughs] Uh, so, oh God, yeah.

NOVA: So--Mm.

ADAM: ...With these megalomaniac buildings, like, uh...

ADAM: There's...

ADAM: ...oh God, I'm so sorry... something came into mind...

ADAM: Like, when, uh, in Berlin there used to be this Chancellor, Chanchellery building which was then blown up by the Soviets, ironically,

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: uh, but, uh, that was designed by this, by this...

ADAM: mad architect of, of Nazi Germany, was like, kind of like a genius, um...

ADAM: ...to some extent, and it was also this gargantuan building, but not like, not to this extent,

ADAM: but the way...

ADAM: I just remembered this, I-I think this is interesting trivia,

ADAM: uh, to, like, he had to build this enormous fucking building in like, one or two years, like...

ADAM: like, uh, super short time.

ADAM: So what he did was, he looked at the rooms, and said, "Okay,

ADAM: "how... W-what is the most time-consuming thing to be done here?"

ADAM: "The carpets, okay." So, he...

ADAM: uh, submitted the orders, for the carpets,

ADAM: uh, and then designed the room around the carpets, because back then the carpets need to be handmade, and it took a lot of time.

ADAM: So, this, I believe, this same energy,

ADAM: uh, was present here, during the building of this thing,

ADAM: in front of us, which looks like the microchip that Bill Gates will put on your, put on your brain with the COVID vaccination,

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: but like...

ADAM: ...I did not know about the, about the desk part, so that actually surprised me.

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: ...They go through a few iterations of things that maybe we can, we can do with this,

NOVA: ...in part because like, uh, the new, liberal democratic capitalist Romania is also quite strapped for cash,

NOVA: uh, so it, uh... Sort of a revenue seeking thing, they-they consider, uh, like, making it into a casino?

NOVA: That doesn't work.

ADAM: Well...

NOVA: ...They try making it into a mall, and that, that also doesn't work. Um...

NOVA: Rupert Murdoch offers to buy it for a billion dollars, uh and--

ADAM: Is he the Fox News guy?

NOVA: Yeah, yeah yeah. Uh, th-they turned him down, 'cause they think they can hold out for more. Um...

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: ...I have, I have this in, in good authority, I can cite my sources on this one, uh,

NOVA: that uh, it's seriously considered, at one point,

NOVA: to try and turn this into a Dracula theme park.

ADAM: Based.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yes.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: That, that was what I was rooting for.

JUSTIN: The horrible...

JUSTIN: You're hearing a horrible, um,

JUSTIN: The horrible, Dracula, um...

JUSTIN: What's(?)--

NOVA: Mm, "castle thunder" is playing the whole time.

JUSTIN: "Welcome to Pennsylvania."

[laughter]

NOVA: ...I saw the stats on this, uh, this building has only been, at most 30% occupied. Um...

NOVA: You could play a fantastic game of hide-and-seek here.

NOVA: ...There's, there's gonna be shit in this offices nobody knows about, too.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: ...Sounds like the World Trade Center so far...

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: It reminds me a lot of Philadelphia City Hall.

LIAM: Mmhmm.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Just, by being, way larger than it needs to be.

LIAM: Really fucking big? Yeah.

NOVA: Put a statue of John Hancock at the top.

JUSTIN: You know, you know, there are some uh...

JUSTIN: Statue of William Penn.

LIAM: Wrong city.

NOVA: Some parallels.

JUSTIN: Um, there was, there was a...

JUSTIN: ...there have been multiple instances of, uh, people being discovered living in abandoned offices in Philadelphia City Hall.

ADAM and JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: Well, there's, there's gotta be people living in this under the radar, yeah, um...

JUSTIN: Absolutely, yeah.

NOVA: Um, but, what ultimately happens is that inertia wins.

NOVA: Uh... it now houses both, uh, both chambers of Romania's parliament, um...

NOVA: And they, they have no use for it. It's just... they're stuck with it. They're the consumer of last resort ever since they turned down Rupert Murdoch.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yeah, one of the weird things is like, the big parliament hall, which I believe is this guy right here.

NOVA: Yea.

JUSTIN: Um...

JUSTIN: So they finished the exterior before they finished the interior.

JUSTIN: Um, it's been finished in a very postmodern style, um...

JUSTIN: I don't have a picture here, but it's, um,

JUSTIN: You know, you're trying to look at-

NOVA: One of these, sort of like, um,

NOVA: uh, like more, sort of collaborative, big curved benches kind of parliament, yeah.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Well, you know, taste and Eastern Europe, don--do not always go hand in hand.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Unfortunate.

JUSTIN: Uh...

NOVA: Those have good public transport links, as we'll see on the next slide.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: Hell yeah.

ADAM: So, this is, this picture is the bus stop next to the Palace, and the, if you look closely, the, uh,

ADAM: little, uh, the little sign over there says that it's, it is indeed the, um,

ADAM: Palatul Parlamentului,

ADAM: and, yes. So, ...I really--this picture illustrates the, sort of, land of contrasts, to borrow a phrase,

ADAM: um, ...there was Romania then...

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: ...and what is Romania to this day, to some extent at least.

ADAM: And, um,

ADAM: so, you, you have this big, bullshit projects,

ADAM: these little, well these "little", big sigma male whatever obelisks of shit,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: and next to it, the basic public services are just kinda like, struggling.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: And as, as a bonus, if you look in the, uh, top left corner, you can see these like, sort of,

ADAM: random balconies built in with these,

ADAM: sort of, haphazard, uh, glazing,

ADAM: on it, well, that's because, uh,

ADAM: that-that is, sort of... that is rather common in countries like Romania, Moldavia, Ukraine, Belarus,

ADAM: and that's because no meaningful reforms were done.

ADAM: In the housing sector, as in, you know, uh, it wasn't regulated, and people can just build whatever they fuck they want,

ADAM: out, uh, on these houses,

ADAM: sometimes they collapse because of it, sometimes they somehow don't,

ADAM: oh, well. But the thing is that, the...

ADAM: the focus of the governments, uh, in the Soviet era, before the revolutions, and sometimes even after it,

ADAM: was this sort of, inward-looking, uh, projecting our own glory,

ADAM: and, sort of not giving a shit about basic public services, which, you know, we should have done.

ADAM: So, this, this bus stop symbolizes, I think, that...

ADAM: truth.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: And with that, we're gonna get into the spicy stuff, so, you know, next slide, please.

NOVA: Yeah, I-I hear you ask, "But what happened to this Nicolae Ceaușescu guy?

NOVA: "W-what was his deal? W-what happened to Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu?"

ADAM: Gee shucks, am I excited to tell you.

JUSTIN: Listen.

JUSTIN and ADAM: [laughs]

[GTAV "wasted" sound effect]

ADAM: Uh, [Nova], could I get the drop, please?

[record scratch]

ADAM: "Hi! My name is Nicolae Ceaușescu, and you might be wondering how I ended up in this situation."

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: So, the question:

ADAM: "What happened here?"

ADAM: And the answer is,

ADAM: "A Hungarian pastor gave an interview."

NOVA: Never let them do that. Big mistake.

ADAM: Exactly, so...

ADAM: Um... here we see on this picture, we see the, the execution of the Ceaușescu couple by firing squad in 1989 December,

ADAM: and, so, this whole thing,

ADAM: uh, I-I'm going to run you through it, because it's super interesting. So!

ADAM: László Tőkés was a Hungarian,

ADAM: sort of Protestant pastor, who organized against systematization,

ADAM: which was, as we discussed, is this destructive, uh, urban planning practice of Ceaușescu,

ADAM: where he just like, leveled entire historic centers,

ADAM: to build out the supposed ideal socialist, um,

ADAM: little(?) town,

ADAM: and this pastor, László Tőkés, gave an interview to the Hungarian Television, so not the Romania, the Hungarian one,

ADAM: and, this happened in like, July 1989, but the thing was aired in like, December.

ADAM: Or October, I don't know... Fall/Winter.

ADAM: And, the Romanian, uh, government responded this,

ADAM: responded to this by accusing Tőkés, uh,

ADAM: of being anti-Romanian,

ADAM: and they, uh, deprived him of his pastor, pastoral, uh, title,

ADAM: and so, because of that, uh, legally he had to move out of his apartment, because his apartment was sort of, uh,

ADAM: assigned to him based on his work.

ADAM: So, he was about to be evicted, and there was a big support in front of, uh... like, uh, for him,

ADAM: in support of him, in front of his house, and in the area,

ADAM: so this was on the 16th of December, 1989.

ADAM: And, um, you know, because everyone is--at this point, everyone was kinda like, fed up with, with, uh, with Ceaușescu's austerity program,

ADAM: and, uh, they are also kind of fed up with the, uh, with the uh, systematization,

ADAM: and so, László Tőkés gave voice to something which everyone kinda like, felt?

ADAM: But he was the one to, to like, sort of, uh,

ADAM: uh, bring-bring those concerns to real life? So to speak?

ADAM: And so, on the 16th of December, there was this big protest in favor of him,

ADAM: and the Securitate, the Romanian sort of, uh,

ADAM: well, secret police, I guess,

ADAM: tries to crack down on it,

ADAM: but the whole, sort of, uh, the whole conflict spread rather quickly throughout...

ADAM: ...across the entire country, because turns out, not just the local Hungarians have had enough of the, or had had enough of the... Ceaușescu regime,

ADAM: and, within one day, the situation got so bad, that the Securitate basically could not handle it anymore, the army had to be involved.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: And, right! So...

ADAM: ...people were... rather fed up with Ceaușescu at this point,

ADAM: who built out a personal cult, uh,

ADAM: based on the North Korean one.

ADAM: Yeah, so...

ADAM: ...that will...

ADAM: that usually doesn't end well.

ADAM: And so, two days later,

ADAM: two days after the army got involved, and you know, things are kinda going to shit but, you know, still under control,

ADAM: the minister of defense dies under mysterious circumstances,

ADAM: after refusing Ceaușescu... Ceaușescu's orders,

ADAM: uh, personal orders, to open fire at the protesters with live ammunition, of course.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: And, uh,

ADAM: of course... and the guy dies, and as the joke goes, you know,

ADAM: ...the guy died, uh, of suicide, with like,

ADAM: 5 shots in the back, from 50 meters away, so you know.

ADAM: And uh, of course, and his death, he was actually a liked and respected member of the, of the establishment, by the soldiers, anyway,

ADAM: and his death actually caused mass defections in the army,

ADAM: so the whole system, uh,

ADAM: sort of, sort of started dissolving.

ADAM: And this, this accumulated in Ceaușescu's famous last speech,

ADAM: when, like... it was the first instance when the crowd actually turned against him, and he was just kinda like,

ADAM: he was like, he was like... a toddler who was just kinda lost in a supermarket.

ADAM: You know, just,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: have no idea what's going on, because, you know,

ADAM: he's been, he's been living in a bubble,

ADAM: and now, you know, it's just this... you know,

ADAM: earth-and-sky kinda difference?

ADAM: And so, after following... like, he tried to calm the crowd down, he had like, rallies, TV addresses, et cetera, didn't work.

ADAM: And, things were getting out of hand rather quickly.

ADAM: And so, we are at the, we are at the Palace.

ADAM: The big dumb building we've been talking about so far,

ADAM: and uh,

ADAM: well, he needs to be evacuated, because people are kinda like, people are seeping into the building, you know, the bodyguards cannot hold them back,

ADAM: and, um,

ADAM: around noon-ish, uh, Ceaușescu's personal, uh, helicopter pilot gets a message that he's to go immediately,

ADAM: to the, People's Palace.

ADAM: To pick up Ceaușescu.

ADAM: And, okay, he flew there, and he saw that he could not land on the square because it was full of people,

ADAM: and those people, climbing on the balcony, where, where Ceaușescu is holding speeches beforehand,

ADAM: and, uh, after that,

ADAM: so, the... the helicopter pilot saw someone,

ADAM: wave this, like,

ADAM: wide curtain out of one window, signaling where he should land,

ADAM: and, he landed, actually,

ADAM: and the bodyguard brought out the Ceaușescu couple who were, just like, petrified, with like, shock and fear at that point,

ADAM: 'cause you know... once the people catch up with them, they're like, you know, they're gonna end up on a lamppost at that point, and they knew that,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: and so, the, the Ceaușescus, together with like, two Securitate officers, were evacuated from the Palace by helicopter, to a safehouse near Bucharest, to the north by like, 50km or so.

ADAM: And, uh, there, the Ceaușescu, Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered his pilot to,

ADAM: uh, get in touch with his unit commander, and he did,

ADAM: and Ceaușescu ordered the unit commander to, order additional helicopters with armed guards to where he is,

ADAM: to, you know, be a presidential, sort of, uh, escort,

ADAM: and the unit commander responded with the following,

ADAM: "There has been a revolution. You are on your own. Good luck."

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: Okay.

ADAM: So things, things were going to shit pretty fast, and like, you know, faster than expected, as you can tell.

ADAM: Uh, and,

ADAM: so at this point, Ceaușescu ordered the pilot to take them even further away from the Capital,

ADAM: and, um, to, to, this, uh, specified place which was this safe zone or slash safe house,

ADAM: and, on the way, the-the pilot, the pilot was-was also kinda fed up with this whole thing, and,

ADAM: so, he, the pilot made the helicopter sort of dip, up and down,

ADAM: and he told Ceaușescu that he was doing it because,

ADAM: uh, he wants, he wanted to avoid the "incoming anti-air fire".

ADAM: Which, of course, no one was shooting at the helicopter, but... the pilot was just fucking with Ceaușescu at that point,

ADAM: but, this, this made Ceaușescu panic, actually,

ADAM: and ordered an immediate landing.

ADAM: And so the pilot landed, on an... on this agricultural field next to a road,

ADAM: and, and then told the Ceaușescus that,

ADAM: he could do nothing more. And...

ADAM: as far as he's concerned, that was it.

NOVA: "You must live amongst the people."

ADAM: Exactly, and they did, and...

JUSTIN: Terrifying for a communist leader.

NOVA: Exactly.

ADAM: Exactly.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: And so, to... to, uh, try... what it's like to live among the people, the Securitate officers who were still with them,

ADAM: flagged down... they actually managed to flag down two cars on the road,

ADAM: uh, one of which was a countryside doctor, in a red Dacia car, who,

ADAM: who actually... who wasn't particularly happy about having to drive the Ceaușescus,

ADAM: which he did, in the end,

ADAM: so, on the way, as he was driving them,

ADAM: uh, he faked an engine breakdown, and stopped on the roadside.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: Because, you know, "I-I'm just fucking done with this shit, whatever," and, um,

JUSTIN: Dudes rock.

ADAM: the Securitate of-- [laughs]

NOVA: Just, getting, getting this sense of an entire nation that is very much done with this guy's shit.

ADAM: You... you just wait. [laughs]

JUSTIN: Imagine if you had to pick up Barack Obama on the side of the road. [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Oh no... [laughs]

JUSTIN: And you're like, "No. Get out of my car."

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Um... "How will I get to the, um, nearest settlements?" Um...

ADAM: "...The free market will take care of it, don't worry."

JUSTIN and NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: Once again, the third amendment comes in at the end, as the hero we knew it would.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I will not quarter Barack Obama in my car.

NOVA: [laughs] Yeah, that's right!

[laughter]

ADAM: Uh, but... the Securitate officers actually managed to flag down a... a third car,

ADAM: This time it was a bicycle repairman,

ADAM: who, actually managed to--who actually agreed to drive them to a nearby town.

ADAM: Uh, and on the way, uh, as they were driving, the bicycle repairman managed to convince the Ceaușescu couple,

ADAM: uh, that they can hide at the local agricultural complex, because it was, because it was a safe spot.

ADAM: And so, upon arrival, the director of the agricultural complex, uh, let--welcomed the Ceaușescu couple, and led them into a room,

ADAM: and they locked them in.

[laughter]

LIAM: Uh oh!

LIAM: (?) [laughs]

ADAM: Shortly after, local police came, and picked, picked up the two and transported them to a nearby military compound,

ADAM: where they were tried in a few days, and, and, of course, put in front of the firing squad.

ADAM: And this was the end of the Ceaușescu couple, that reign, and you know, the...

NOVA: All this, because the man failed a speech check.

JUSTIN: Yes. [laughs]

ADAM: Exactly. [laughs]

NOVA: Like, y-you see, you see the footage of him, like, speaking from the balcony, and, like,

NOVA: you can see him lose control of it in real time, and you just like,

ADAM: Yeah.

NOVA: [mumbles]

ADAM: Yeah.

ADAM: And him going like, "Hallo! Hallo!", and people are just like, you know, whatever, fuck you. [laughs]

NOVA: I think, I think he offered them, like, uh... 5-10% pay rise.

ADAM: ...Yeah, tha--yeah, thank you, okay. [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: "I can't afford food, but..." [laughs]

NOVA: Yeah, he, he offered to raise worker's salaries by 200 leu per month.

ADAM: Mmh. Yeah...

NOVA: Uh, was about, uh... $19.

ADAM: Nice!

ADAM: And uh, fun fact though, the big part of the protesters were, were workers, who came to the capital to stri--to uh, protest after striking.

JUSTIN: Wow.

NOVA: Was miners, mostly, right? Uh...

ADAM: Yeah, yeah. Big, big part of it was miners, yes.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: So, dudes rock!

NOVA: Yeah.

NOVA: And uh, never, never got to see, his, his big, beautiful palace...

JUSTIN: Yeah.

ADAM: Uh, too bad.

NOVA: Yeah.

ADAM: Well, there, there's... But, [Nova], did you know, there's an even bigger, and even more beautiful palace next to it?

NOVA: Really?

JUSTIN: Yees!

ADAM: Which is getting built.

JUSTIN: Right now!

LIAM: Why?!

JUSTIN: Do you want, do you want a, uh, do you want a big, orthodox church?

NOVA: Ooo.

ADAM: Ohh yeahh.

JUSTIN: That's what you want.

ADAM: So thicc.

NOVA: It's 35 meters taller than the Palace is.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Um...

NOVA: And, this is, this is orthodoxy's revenge, more or less explicitly,

NOVA: for the five churches that Ceaușescu had uh, destroyed, in order to build his palace? Uh...

ADAM: Mmyeah.

NOVA: 'Cause ortho--orthodoxy gets pretty intense about martyrdom, you might be aware of this. So, they...

NOVA: The church in Romania considered these churches to have been, uh, metaphorically crucified.

NOVA: It's kind of a big deal to them, and so, as a consequence...

ADAM: (?)

NOVA: Yeah... [laughs] And so as a consequence, they have, uh, they have built this,

NOVA: or are building, this massive cathedral immediately next door, as an own.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: I'm sure this is the most immediate, urbanistic need of, of Bucharest.

NOVA: That's right. And, you know, there are absolutely no lessons about hubris and building massive structures here.

JUSTIN: Yes.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: (?) to that!

ADAM: "Oh yeah? Well, we can do it bigger, dumbass! Fuck you!"

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: That's the lesson.

ADAM: Our dick's bigger.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: America number one!

JUSTIN: 's the only thing that could defeat communism, religion.

LIAM: The last (?) fire?

NOVA: Yeah, the only thing that can defeat religion, communism.

NOVA: We gotta build an even bigger, even taller, even more communist thing, and then,

NOVA: when they kill our guy again, and they build a gigantic, even larger second cathedral next to that,

NOVA: we just gotta keep going,

NOVA: until eventually we have a kind of like, gradient upwards.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: ...The orthodox space elevator.

NOVA: [laughs] Yes!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Not to be confused with the Jewish space laser, 'course.

ADAM: By the way, is Liam here, is Liam still with us?

LIAM: Yes?

ADAM: I haven't heard him... that much.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yes.

ADAM: Uh, Liam?

LIAM: Yes.

JUSTIN: Liam.

ADAM: He's dead. Oh well.

LIAM: Can you not hear me? I've been talking this entire time.

NOVA: Oh well.

NOVA: It's very unfortunate.

JUSTIN: Well, Liam's gone.

NOVA: ...Liam has been martyred, in the course of this podcast. Um...

ADAM: [laughs]

NOVA: We will, we will commemorate--

JUSTIN: To reply(?), we shall build the Christian space laser.

[laughter]

LIAM: I have literally been talking this entire time.

NOVA: Oh my God, dude.

LIAM: And I haven't been on mute.

LIAM: So I've just been recording locally,

NOVA: Well.

LIAM: and I was wondering why I kept get talked over.

NOVA: Oh man.

JUSTIN: Oh!

NOVA: Oh buddy.

LIAM: And, and Zencastr was showing fine, and Audacity was showing fine.

NOVA: That's insane.

LIAM: That's really fucking annoying! Okay.

NOVA: That's, that's not so good! Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: I have my local, so if you can just, I guess, splice it together...

NOVA: Yeah, we'll just, we'll just edit in some Liam.

JUSTIN: Yeah, we'll just edit in Liam.

LIAM: Yeah, that's, uh, wow, that's annoying. Yeah, no, I've been with you the whole time.

ADAM: Or, we can, we can publish a second version of the podcast, with like, the, the Liam Anderson developer commentary.

NOVA: Release the Liam cut!

JUSTIN: The Liam cut!

LIAM: It's just... it's just me saying "Rocz sucks butt" for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Yeah, we were all sorts of drunks when we were, preparing this, you know, I don't, I...

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: ...backing the band, but it's just me.

NOVA: Well, this is gonna go into the history books as the episode where we, we lost the host for the entirety of the thing.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: This is the e-

LIAM: And the host didn't know it, and just thought his co-hosts were being very rude by talking over him.

NOVA: No.

NOVA: I-I Have No Mouth, and I Must Pod.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: This is the most antisemitic pod we've ever done.

LIAM: Yeah.

NOVA: That's true. This is, this is quite possibly the hardest we've fucked up, logistically, recording one of these,

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: since the time we had to record the same episode three times.

LIAM: I'm just glad that I wasn't being ignored!

NOVA: No! No, I was, I was wondering (?) like, oh, I don't wanna call attention to it, in case you fucking died!

JUSTIN: No! No! Liam, we like you.

LIAM: No, no no! I,

LIAM: and the second I refreshed Zenca--'cause I could hear all of you the entire time.

LIAM: And my Zencastr, like I said, showed totally normal, it was picking up on my sound,

LIAM: everything healthy, uh...

LIAM: Luckily, obviously, I was on Audacity, or we'd be totally fucked.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: There's some stuff I, I said about, now that uh, now that I'm back, I guess,

LIAM: there's some stuff I, I had said about,

LIAM: you guys were talking about sort of, power,

LIAM: um, re: absolute power, and like,

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: even if you don't start goofy, it makes you goofy by the end of it. We were talking about, on Lions, about the,

LIAM: guy whose name I shamefully can't remember, the Central African Republic, who decided he was Napoleon.

NOVA: Oh! Um... Uh, Bokassa, I wanna say?

LIAM: Bokassa, yeah, Bokassa.

ADAM: Mm.

LIAM: And, yeah, I--

NOVA: Just off the dome! How fucking smart am I?

LIAM: Yeah.

LIAM: Yeah, good job [Nova].

JUSTIN: Really nice.

NOVA: Thank you.

LIAM: Thank God, I am no longer(?) being ignored, my anxiety's returning to normal.

[laughter]

LIAM: Uh, I, you know, I'm like a dancing clown, and I need to be at the center of attention at all times, 'cause I'm an only child,

LIAM: and, my, uh... [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: You know, this is my whole life!

ADAM: [laughs]

LIAM: But uh, I, I do think it's funny that like,

LIAM: and I do think it's true, that absolute power, like,

LIAM: no mat--like, if one of us got absolute power, we'd be, we'd be fucking, just absolutely off-our-rockers insane.

LIAM: Rocz would be building--

NOVA: Yeah, 'cuz I was so normal now.

LIAM: Yeah. Rocz, Rocz would be building a GG1 out of solid gold.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Like, like real weird shit.

LIAM: Alright.

JUSTIN: I would build a nicer building than, um, the Palace of the People.

LIAM: I like it! See, there was the other thing is that, I, I unironically like this hunk of shit.

LIAM: I think it's kinda neat.

LIAM: Like obviously, it's horrible, but like,

JUSTIN: No, it's, it's a bad building, it's a bad building.

LIAM: s--you have said, you have said, to my face, that Philadelphia City Hall is ugly.

LIAM: But you like it.

JUSTIN: No, it is ugly, and I like it. Yes.

LIAM: You have--

LIAM: [mocking noises]

JUSTIN: This is different.

LIAM: The web of lies becomes untangled!

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: There's a way in which Second Empire is an objectively ugly style.

LIAM: Oh, I love Second Empire. Oh, put that shit right in my veins.

JUSTIN: No, Second Empire is ugly, and yet I like it.

LIAM: No, I want the last gasp of a dying republic,

NOVA: On this podcast...

LIAM: which is why I live in America!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: We have a segment, that we like to call, Safety Third.

LIAM: No, I'm making up for lost time, this is Liam's show now, motherfuckers!

NOVA: Safety, Safety Third!

ADAM: [laughs]

[record scratch]

LIAM: This is Liam's show now, motherfuckers!

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

LIAM: No! No! Shake hands with Liam! It's still going!

[laughter]

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

LIAM: Shake hands with Liam!

[laughter]

LIAM: Shake hands with Liam! Shake hands with Liam!

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

LIAM: I will derail this whole podcast! I am making up for lost time!

LIAM: Now, welcome back to, welcome back to--

NOVA: That's it, back to Winnipeg!

LIAM: Well There's Your Liam!

LIAM: A podcast about Liam, with slides!

LIAM: Hosted by me, Liam Anderson,

LIAM: and my cohost, [Nova] Liam-Caldwell-Kelly,

LIAM: and Justin Liamniak!

LIAM: our pronouns are Liam, Yay Liam!... (?) I'm good. I'm good.

[laughter]

LIAM: Go ahead.

ADAM: Yeah. I... I was actually, I was actually wondering if like, if... 's like part of some kind of like,

ADAM: so--like, smooth, let down of Liam, of like,

ADAM: yeah, Liam, we're... we're cutting you from the podcast, and there's the new Liam.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: We're downsizing you by like, cutting your mic five minutes more each episode...

NOVA: until he notices...

LIAM: Oh... that'd be (?), 'cause sometimes I don't,

LIAM: (?) the episodes Liam (?),

LIAM: and I would, I...

LIAM: that could, that could go on for a while.

NOVA: Oh yeah, we're... just like, as a means of gaslighting you, that's, that's powerful, yeah.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: The last thing you wanna do is listen to a podcast that you're on(?).

LIAM: I don't listen, dude.

LIAM: I just, you know, it's not a format I particularly enjoy,

JUSTIN: Exactly.

JUSTIN: Listen.

LIAM: the guy who makes his living recording this says.

NOVA and ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: There's a segment on this podcast called Safety Third!

JUSTIN: ♪[riff]♪ Anyway.

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

JUSTIN: "Hello, Well There's Your Problem.

NOVA: ♪[riff]♪

LIAM: Hello.

JUSTIN: "I've been enjoying your podcast on my afternoons off for a long time now.

NOVA: Well, you should (?) put it into that tonight.

LIAM: Yeah, sorry, buddy. [laughs]

JUSTIN: "You idiots go down well with few glasses of mint julep.

LIAM: Oh.

LIAM: Oh.

NOVA: Hey, fuck you too, man.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

LIAM: Yeah, alright.

[laughter]

LIAM: That's why they call me a cunning linguist, but that's not (?)

NOVA: I just, I just remembered the name of Emperor Bokassa I, just off the top of my fucking head.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "Well, today, I didn't have any Bullet, so I actually remembered-"

LIAM: Oh, Bullets?

NOVA: [groans]

LIAM: Ohhh...

[blowing raspberry]

LIAM: Come on, dude.

JUSTIN: "I have a great Safety Third for you.

LIAM: Have some respect for yourself.

JUSTIN: "I tried to simplify the chemistry involved,

JUSTIN: "so even the city planners listening,

JUSTIN: "will understand just how much stupid took place here."

LIAM: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: I don't know, man. You're the one not drinking, like, uh, Woodford Reserve.

LIAM: I like Woodford Reserve! I know it's just fancy...

NOVA: Buffalo Trace... No, I'm saying things I like.

LIAM: Uh... Wild Turkey 101, the only legitimate bourbon.

JUSTIN: Eagle Rare, Eagle Rare.

NOVA: Mm.

LIAM: I do like Eagle Rare, I just can't fucking find it anymore!

JUSTIN: Yeah, you can't get it anymore. Yeah, exactly, um...

LIAM: Uh, you can get it at the state store at 11th and Filbert, they keep 'em behind the counter, no one ever buys it.

JUSTIN: "Back when I was in college, I needed a way to make money for booze,

LIAM: Oh no. [laughs]

JUSTIN: "and the occasional textbook.

JUSTIN: "As I have a body made for radio and a voice made for text, prostitution and podcasting were out of the question. So I had to get--

LIAM: Hey, we can fucking do it, buddy. [laughs]

NOVA: ...Yeah, tell me about it.

JUSTIN: "I had to--"

ADAM: Sigma male energy.

NOVA and JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "So I had to get a job.

LIAM: Ooh. Sorry.

JUSTIN: "Luckily, the school I used to go to had a position open for an assistant lab tech, and I already had enough chemistry qualifications to apply.

JUSTIN: "Now, here's how things were meant to work.

JUSTIN: "A chemistry teacher, with qualifications in chemistry, plans a chemistry lesson well in advance of the day they need to teach it.

JUSTIN: "They then hand any plan demonstrations and associated paperwork,

JUSTIN: "to lab tech in the chemistry preparation room.

JUSTIN: "They would check that the planned reaction was safe, and modify the protocol as required."

NOVA: Justin, are y--are you doing like... a shot of Bullet in between sentences?

LIAM: Yeah, (?) there, bud?

[laughter]

JUSTIN: No.

NOVA: Do you want me to read this one, then?

JUSTIN: "Finally, an assistant lab tech would be (?)

LIAM: Ooh, Mr. Sassy Pants.

JUSTIN: "the glassware, the chemicals, et cetera, ready for the lesson.

JUSTIN: "Now, here's how things actually worked.

JUSTIN: "A biology teacher with qualifications in English literature, would remember that they had a chemistry lesson to teach the next day.

LIAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Mmm.

JUSTIN: "Storm into the prep room, with some crayon drawings, some poorly done maths, and expect the first person they find to be able to make it work.

JUSTIN: "The main lab tech always seemed to schedule his break at just the right time to miss this shitshow, so,

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "inevitably I would have to do all the work.

LIAM: I was gonna guess, our hero's not gonna be this lucky, is he(?)?

JUSTIN: "Luckily, for every poor child who was forced to sit within the spa--the splash zone, of these idiotic teachers, I was actually good at my job.

JUSTIN: "If a teacher, high and mighty upon their pecking order, would question my correcting their dangerous protocol into a safe one, or argue,

JUSTIN: "that they knew what they were doing, I would simply tell them,

JUSTIN: "'You know how Timmy's mother always makes your parent teacher's night a motherfucking nightmare?'"

JUSTIN: Uh, "'because you marked down poor Timmy a point for attendance?

JUSTIN: "'Well, imagine that bitch after you've blinded her poor sweet shitstain of a child.'

LIAM: Oh my God!

[laughter]

ADAM: Hell yeah.

JUSTIN: "This worked on all but one teacher.

JUSTIN: "She still knew better. We'll call her Miss Bromism.

JUSTIN: "Miss Bromism's lesson was on halogen displacement reactions.

JUSTIN: "Her demonstration was simple. Drop a few drops of dilute chloride solution, which is basically watered down bleach,

JUSTIN: "into dilute solutions of potassium chloride, potassium bromide, and potassium iodide.

JUSTIN: "The chloride ions will displace the bromide and iodine, turning the solutions red and brown, respectively, right.

JUSTIN: "Now, let me tell you a little bit about Bromine. This shit is corrosive and toxic.

JUSTIN: "In its pure form, it's a deep red, almost blood red." Uh,

JUSTIN: "it's a liquid in room temperature,

JUSTIN: "but it's extremely volatile, producing thick, red clouds of vapor,

JUSTIN: "that quickly fill any container, see attached picture for its full demonic glory."

JUSTIN: That's what we're lookin' at right here.

NOVA: Ooo.

ADAM: Thought it was a Doom Eternal screenshot.

NOVA: ...looks like a gummy.

JUSTIN: Yes.

LIAM: Gummi. Gummi.

NOVA: Like a Haribo. A gummi, a gummi!

JUSTIN: Gummi, gummi.

NOVA: ...gotta get Mia back on the pod.

JUSTIN: That'd be pretty fun, yeah.

JUSTIN: Uh,

JUSTIN: "this stuff can easily burn your lungs and eyes.

JUSTIN: "Bromide does however dissolve in water, so as long as the concentration of potassium",

JUSTIN: uh, "as long as the concentration of potassium bromide is kept well below 0.2 moles per liter,

LIAM: Uh oh.

JUSTIN: "then little to no bromide gas will be released.

JUSTIN: "The original protocol handed to me was for a solution of 1 mole per liter of potassium bromide,

JUSTIN: "which is more than enough to gas the entire school, let alone one class.

NOVA: Mm.

ADAM: Hmm.

ADAM: Hell yeah.

LIAM: (?) to do it.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "I revised this down to the much safer value of 0.05 moles per liter.

JUSTIN: "Miss Bromism did not like her authority, or competence, questioned, by a young, spotty college student with a part-time job.

JUSTIN: "But I did not like being party to the gassing of the younglings", uh... "After--"

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "So after about an hour of explaining on my part, and much screaming and wailing on her part,

JUSTIN: "we came to the most dangerous of agreements, which was a compromise."

NOVA: I've heard of these.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: This is why you need to go with the fullest of Stalinism.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

ADAM: ...That's a thing Democrats do, and it works so well,

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: (?) Republicans.

JUSTIN: "The protocol would be modified to include a fume hood, to safely deal with the incoming gas bomb,

JUSTIN: "and the solution of potassium bromide would also be lowered to a concentration 0.2 moles per liter.

JUSTIN: "This would still release the demonic great cloud of death, that Miss Bromism didn't believe existed,

JUSTIN: "but it would be small enough for the fume hood to deal with.

JUSTIN: "Miss Bromism signed all the required health and safety and liability forms,

JUSTIN: "before leaving with a shit-eating grin on her face.

JUSTIN: "Like magic, the head lab tech rematerialized just after she left.

JUSTIN: "I tried convincing him this teacher should be removed from teaching chemistry,

JUSTIN: "preferably removed from civilization altogether,

JUSTIN: "but, as a failed chemical engineer barely making a living in a school prep lab,

JUSTIN: "he had long ago stopped giving a shit.

JUSTIN: "I ensured the lazy bastard filled out all his paperwork, confirming that he agreed with the planned protocol",

JUSTIN: uh, "I put in an official complaint with the school office,

JUSTIN: "and I sent a detailed account to the Health and Safety executive,

JUSTIN: "stating the blatant disregard for safety from both the teacher and the main lab tech,

JUSTIN: "and handed in my resignation."

NOVA: Hell yeah.

LIAM: Dudes rock.

ADAM: Alright! Dudes, dudes rock, yeah.

JUSTIN: Dudes rock. [laughs]

JUSTIN: "The rest of this account was told to me by my friends'", uh, "little brother.

JUSTIN: "I had pre-warned him about this teacher, and this demonstration.

JUSTIN: "And he had warned his classmates.

JUSTIN: "They were ready to run if they saw Miss Bromism summon forth the big red demon clouds of death.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "I am...

JUSTIN: "I am particularly grateful that they had that warning, as Miss Bromism chose not to use the fume hood.

JUSTIN: "In front of the entire class, she applies several milliliters instead of a few drops,

JUSTIN: "of chlorine solution, to the flask containing 0.2 moles per liter of potassium bromide solution,

JUSTIN: "directly under her own face."

ADAM: Oh yeah! Autobots, roll out!

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: As, "as the big red demon clouds of corrosive hellfire engulfs Miss Bromism,

JUSTIN: "the class escaped before it could build up in the room.

JUSTIN: "But don't worry, audience. This tale has a happy ending.

JUSTIN: "Miss Bromism survived long enough to face charges of negligence.

JUSTIN: "The head lab tech was fired,

JUSTIN: "The kids got over 2 months off school,

NOVA: Hell yeah!

JUSTIN: "while all the corrosive damage that the bromide had caused was repaired.

ADAM: Kids rock.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "And yours truly used the extra time gained from not gassing the children,

JUSTIN: "to learn how to pirate textbooks,

JUSTIN: "to get into homebrewing,

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "and eventually get a degree in theoretical physics.

ADAM: Congratulations!

NOVA: Yeah!

JUSTIN: "And in there, the closest I get to replicating genocide is contemplating the vivisection of subatomic particles.

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: "Signed, Mixed Organic Solution containing Ethanol and Significant Left Chyrolites(?)."

ADAM: Sounds delicious.

NOVA: [laughs]

♪[guitar riff] Shake hands with danger♪

NOVA: Well, what have we learned, other than use a fume hood for everything, do not gas children, um...

JUSTIN: I would recommend if you're trying to do communism, you should actually try and do, you know,

JUSTIN: things that improve the quality of life of the workers.

ADAM: No, that's communism!

NOVA: That'd be cool.

JUSTIN: [laughs]

NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: [laughs]

JUSTIN: The next episode is on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, um...

NOVA: That's right.

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: We have a live show, in a matter of...

NOVA: days.

LIAM: Days.

JUSTIN: Days.

NOVA: 3 days.

LIAM: 3--however long it will be when this comes out.

LIAM: Uh, can everyone hear me this time?

JUSTIN: Yes.

NOVA: Yes.

ADAM: Yep.

LIAM: Aight. So...

LIAM: We do not have a--

LIAM: Shouldn't say that.

LIAM: Uh, we may have tickets available, I just got an email, a couple people needed refunds, but I wanted to do sort of, uh,

LIAM: we may, we may not, I don't know what the timeline is on that, so don't get mad at me,

LIAM: uh, have tickets available,

LIAM: Rocz, I will get one for, uh,

LIAM: uh, the other person, June's person whose name I can never remember.

NOVA: Yes. You, you can still get tickets to watch the live stream of the show, which will be at Caveat New York City,

NOVA: New York State, uh, on the 3rd of August, year of our Lord--

LIAM: What--September, 3rd of September! Baby girl.

NOVA: That's--Yeah, no, it happened, uh, over three weeks ago.

NOVA: Um... [laughs]

NOVA: The 3rd of September, in the year of our Lord 2021.

LIAM: I will say, you must show proof of vaccination to be allowed in,

NOVA: Mmhmm.

LIAM: that is per New York guidelines, that is not us.

LIAM: I'm REALLY hoping we won't have any anti-vaxxer listeners, but--

NOVA: Yeah, when, when the--

NOVA: When they say, "proof of vaccination", they mean proof, they do...

NOVA: they do not mean, you, like, yelling, and like, waving a fucking piece of paper that you downloaded from the internet that says that you don't have to take the vaccine,

NOVA: because of your fucking, like, uh...

NOVA: ivermectin horse paste or whatever, you have to have been vaccinated to get in the venue.

JUSTIN: I personally, uh, do have a religious exemption from getting the vaccine.

JUSTIN: So, um, unfortunately.

JUSTIN: Um, there will be at least one person there who is not vaccinated.

NOVA: Mm.

NOVA: Yeah, and you're gonna be breathing on everybody.

JUSTIN: Oh, absolutely.

LIAM: Rocz, you are vaccinated. Don't do that.

JUSTIN: It's a joke.

[laughter]

LIAM: Don't do that!

LIAM: Motherfucker, I will shoot you up with a needle.

NOVA: [laughs]

JUSTIN: [laughs]

JUSTIN: I'm gonna show up with like, a...

NOVA: Yeah.

JUSTIN: a dart gun, just...

JUSTIN: ...shooting vaccines into people.

NOVA: [laughs]

NOVA: What do you think the Havana Syndrome is?

NOVA: Uh...

JUSTIN: Adam, do you have any commercials before we go?

NOVA: Yeah, where can the people find you? The people want more Adam. What do they do?

ADAM: ...Yeah, just, just like, "Adam Dubai", put that and you'll find me.

[laughter]

ADAM: ...Otherwise, yeah, like, my YouTube channel is Adam Something,

ADAM: it has this like, nice, for now it has this nice, pink-ish, vaporwave avatar because why not,

ADAM: and, um, yeah, feel free to find me there, I dunk on Elon Musk, I do urban planning, I dunk on PragerU,

ADAM: I dabble in politics,

ADAM: and, I'm, essentially a left-tube channel which,

ADAM: uh, if, I can believe what I've heard,

ADAM: I am the fastest growing left-tube channel in the history of YouTube, so.

NOVA: Hell yeah.

ADAM: Very cool.

JUSTIN: Very nice.

ADAM: Yeah, like...

ADAM: It was pretty... pretty insane, like...

ADAM: ...the Dubai video really, sort of like, shot me out.

ADAM: I went from 50,000 subscribers...

ADAM: in two weeks, to 350,

ADAM: and in one more week, to 450, so it's pretty insane.

NOVA: Mm.

JUSTIN: Ow.

NOVA: I...

NOVA: At this point, I am simply asking you, the listener, to subscribe both to Adam and to us.

NOVA: Because I want that little fucking silver play button that they give you when you have, uh... like...

JUSTIN: Yeah, yes, we need, we need the little... b-button. We need the button.

NOVA: Yeah, I think it's like 100,000 subscribes, we're like almost halfway, I want the button. I want that button.

JUSTIN: Yes.

ADAM: [laughs]

ADAM: Oh yeah, I-I can put a preview of, of this episode on my channel and direct link it(?) to yours.

NOVA: Hell yeah.

ADAM: Yeah.

NOVA: Please do it, yeah.

ADAM: Yeah, tomorrow I'm gonna d--Well, today, it's 2AM here, but I'm gonna--I think I'm gonna do that, so.

JUSTIN: Alright.

NOVA: Thank you coming on, it's a pleasure.

JUSTIN: Yes, thank you for coming on, it's a pleasure.

ADAM: ...It's my pleasure. I mean, as I said, as I said, like, uh...

ADAM: donoteat, and, uh, consequently Well There's Your Problem was...

ADAM: one of the inspirations for me to start my channel, so it was pretty cool to, you know, talk to you guys.

ADAM: Like, I, I've been listening to for like,

ADAM: ...a rather long time before I even started my channel, which is like January this year.

ADAM: And now I'm here, it's like, it's pretty fucking cool.

ADAM: So thank you, thank you so much for having me on...

NOVA: The student has surpassed the master.

ADAM: Oh, yeah, yeah.

ADAM and NOVA: [laughs]

ADAM: Yeah, so. Yeah, so, once again thank you very much for having me on, and it was, it was uh,

ADAM: it was, it was fun. So.

NOVA: Thank you.

ADAM: If you ever need a cohost, let me know.

NOVA: [laughs]

LIAM: Fuck you buddy! I'm back!

[laughter]

JUSTIN: I'm not splitting the Patreon--

NOVA: Liam, we're gonna make you interview for your own job.

ADAM: Yeah.

JUSTIN: Alright.

LIAM: Aight.

JUSTIN: Think that was the podcast.

LIAM: Bye everybody.

NOVA: Bye.

ADAM: Peace out, bye bye.

JUSTIN: (?)