P.S. We’re now breaking down the answers at the end of each edition, so you get a little more insight.

Throughout history there have been “final bosses,” figures so strange, stubborn, or unkillable they feel ripped out of a video game. Grigori Rasputin might be the greatest of them all. A peasant turned holy man who charmed his way into Russia’s royal court, Rasputin built his legacy not just by living large but by refusing to die when people very much wanted him gone.

Rasputin was born in 1869 in a small Siberian village, about as far from power as you could get. He grew up poor, barely literate, and carried a reputation as the kind of guy who might be touched by God or might just be insane. In his twenties he claimed to have visions of the Virgin Mary and started wandering as a self-styled holy man. Word spread that he had healing powers, though his methods were often less about medicine and more about soothing people into calm, praying endlessly, and convincing them to believe they were already getting better.

By the early 1900s, Rasputin’s reputation carried him all the way to St. Petersburg, where whispers of his mystical powers reached the ears of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Their son, Alexei, suffered from hemophilia, a condition where even the smallest cut could be deadly. Doctors offered little hope, so the desperate royals turned to Rasputin.

When Alexei suffered bleeding episodes, Rasputin would arrive, pray over him, and tell Alexandra to remain calm. Miraculously, the boy’s condition often improved. Some say Rasputin’s soothing presence and insistence on rest lowered Alexei’s stress and stopped the bleeding. Others believe it was pure coincidence. But to the tsarina, it was proof that Rasputin had been sent by God himself.

Rasputin’s influence over the royal family grew quickly, and so did the resentment. To the Russian elite, he was everything they despised. He was unkempt, he drank too much, he bragged about his affairs with noblewomen, and he strutted around the palace like he belonged there. Newspapers painted him as a sinister hypnotist who had bewitched the tsarina. Politicians whispered that he was steering government decisions while Russia bled out in World War I.

By 1916, the empire was crumbling and the royal court decided they had seen enough of the “mad monk.” A group of nobles quietly agreed on a solution. Rasputin had to go.

The plot began at the mansion of Prince Felix Yusupov. Rasputin was lured there late at night with the promise of meeting Yusupov’s wife. Instead, he was served cakes and wine laced with cyanide. Enough poison, the conspirators thought, to kill a horse.

Rasputin ate the cakes. He drank the wine. And nothing happened. He kept talking, laughing, even singing. According to Yusupov’s later account, Rasputin looked more like a man enjoying a lively dinner party than one seconds away from death.

Historians have debated this scene ever since. It’s possible the cyanide lost its potency when baked into the desserts. Some think the large amounts of wine he drank diluted the poison in his system. And it’s also possible Yusupov simply exaggerated the story afterward to make Rasputin seem even more unkillable.

Whatever the reason, the nobles were horrified. Their plan was failing, and the “mad monk” was still very much alive.

With poison failing to do its job, the conspirators moved on to something more direct. Yusupov grabbed a revolver and shot Rasputin in the chest at close range. Rasputin collapsed to the floor, finally still. The nobles breathed a sigh of relief.

They left his body in the basement and went upstairs to celebrate the end of their problem. For a few hours they drank and congratulated themselves, convinced the “mad monk” was gone for good. But Yusupov couldn’t resist one last look. When he crept back downstairs, Rasputin’s eyes snapped open.

He rose to his feet, bloodied and staggering, and lunged toward the prince. Yusupov panicked and screamed for help as Rasputin clawed his way through the basement and into the snowy courtyard, trying to escape. More conspirators rushed in with pistols and fired again, striking him in the back as he stumbled into the night.

Bleeding and barely standing, Rasputin still refused to die. The nobles, now in full panic, beat him with clubs until he collapsed again. They bound his arms and legs, wrapped him in heavy cloth, and dragged him to the banks of the icy Neva River. There, in the dead of night, they shoved his body through a hole in the ice and let the current take him.

When his corpse was recovered days later, the autopsy revealed something chilling. Rasputin’s lungs contained water, suggesting he had been alive when he hit the river and that drowning, not poison or bullets, had been the final blow. Even with three murder attempts stacked against him, he fought to breathe until the last moment.

Rasputin’s death became instant folklore. The nobles thought they had rid Russia of a parasite, but what they really did was create a myth. News of his “nine lives” spread fast. People told and retold the story of the monk who shrugged off poison, bullets, and beatings before finally drowning under a sheet of ice.

For ordinary Russians, it confirmed every suspicion that their empire was rotten at the core. Within months, the Russian Revolution erupted. The tsar abdicated, the royal family was executed, and Rasputin’s strange reign as court healer became part of the empire’s obituary.

Good friends of the newsletter The Dead Bolts just crossed a million plays on their song IDCIYDC. If it has not hit your ears yet, fix that. It is the kind of track that makes you want to shotgun a cheap beer, yell the chorus until your voice cracks, and maybe wrestle your buddy into a bush on the way out of the bar.

They have been grinding for years, and seeing that number roll over into seven digits feels like one of those moments we just have to celebrate. The Dead Bolts fucking rule.

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This absolutely ridiculous tree-cutting machine

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This Hawk With an Arrow Through It

I saw this with this caption: “Until death, all defeat is psychological. But death is not the end, so is defeat even real?”