How I Survived Being Thrown In A Russian Prison

I'm bald and bankrupt, and as regular viewers of the channel will no doubt already know, I've been arrested, I've been interrogated, and forced to publicly [snorts] apologize quite a few times over the years whilst making YouTube videos. It's um all part of the job, you could say. Or

at least, it seems to be a part of my job. Anyway, today I'm going to break down three of my most infamous arrests, how I offended all of Chechnya, how I got arrested at a Russian cosmodrome, and finally, how I almost got a 7-year flipping sentence in a Siberian gulag.

Are you ready to hear the truth behind the international headlines? If you are, then join me.

>> [music] >> We might as well begin with my very first arrest and public apology that I had in my YouTube career. There's There's been quite a few of them since.

Too many, in fact, for my liking. This one took place in the beautiful and actually very friendly uh Republic of Chechnya, down in the Russian Caucuses, a mysterious land on the very distant edge of Europe that has had its share of violence and upheaval, you could say, over the years, which has definitely

bred a very, very tough population. Tough, but to be honest, also very hospitable. I like the Chechens, but we almost had a major falling out over something that seemed, well, to me at least, very, very trivial at the time. I was traveling through the region making videos that I hoped would show the

outside world that the Islamic part of Russia It was now totally safe and actually very welcoming and open to foreigners. The people in the North Caucasus, whether it be Chechens, Dagestanis, um Ingush, or the Christian Ossetians, are by and large great people in my experience. Probably my favorite of all

the Russian peoples, you could say. But on an overnight train ride to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, I was alone in my cozy little cabin watching the snowy peaks of the Caucasus pass by the window. When in a moment of Lermontov romanticism, I flippantly commented to the camera that what I felt would make

the the journey and the video extra special would be if there were Chechen girl in my cabin to share the overnight ride with. Well, I didn't actually say girl. That was the problem. I should have just stuck with girl, but instead I said Chechen chick.

A bit crass in a conservative region, I do agree, but hardly overly vulgar. I've said far worse, as you guys know, in other parts of the world. After delivering the line, I stopped recording, closed the camera, and went to sleep thinking absolutely no more of it. Hmm, it gets [clears throat]

interesting now. The next morning I reached Grozny in Chechnya, the capital. Checked into a cheap hostel and uploaded the video to YouTube with the chick comment in the video, and went about my day thinking no more of it. However, the following afternoon, I was somewhere in the mountains filming in a

a remote village, you could say, about, I don't know, 2 hours, something like that, from Grozny, when suddenly a very expensive black Mercedes pulled up. The driver told me that I was being invited to the capital to meet someone at a ministry building. Oh, a ministry building, I wonder what happens there, I