Trinity Test: The Three Loves of Oppenheimer’s Life Pt.1

J. Robert Oppenheimer is getting kilotons of attention right now, but the women in his life didn’t get a lot of screen time in Nolan’s new film. So we’re looking at the explosive force that Jean Tatlock, Kitty Puening, and Ruth Tolman had on his life, and how the atom bomb might not exist without the laws of attraction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello my Baby was a joke song a little.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Bit because Hello was the telephone was new. When it
was written, Hello was a new slang word.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello was slang.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello was slang hello. Alexander Graham Bell thought we should
answer the phone a hoy, right, And that's why Robert
that's why Burns, mister burn burn says, because of that.
But I guess people settled on hello, which was literally
a slang word. It was like lol of its time
what and so they were like that that song is

(00:30):
basically like llol, chat room baby or what. I like,
that's what that song is essentially, and it's time so
like writing chat room lover or something.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wow. Okay, So at the time people were like, Wow,
the kids these days, they're all saying hello to each.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Other, Hello, my baby, Hello, my honey, Hello, my ragtime gal.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
That song, I guess is about a guy who met
someone on the telephone, like he doesn't know her in
real life.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, and which at the time I guess was like,
remember when online dating was new and it was embarrassing
to say that you met someone online, And now it's
literally the only way to do it as far as
I know. That's oh man, I didn't know the phone
was like that. That's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I know, you know this was a little internet post
should probably.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
No no if hey, if you read it, you know,
I'm sure it was like was it a tweet or
a graphic somewhere?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
It was it graphic?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Then I don't know. If we can't trust those, then
what are we doing here? If we can't trust graphics
we read on the internet with information presented as fact,
then I feel like the world might be in.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Trouble, big problems.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, fortunately, we can trust that fact. So look, I'm
fascinated by it. I'm taking it as true. I will
spread it far and wide, including on this podcast, which
is about history. Yeah, and y'all can take that from us.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
It's facts facts in that it's a facsimile of a fact.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Oh that's a clever twist, the fact simile of the truth.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
It's a facts online fact, your honor.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I did not say it was a fact. When I
said it was a fact as in fac simile simile unbelieva.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
You think that'll hold up.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
I think it'll hold up well. Speaking of the court
of public opinion, of court in general, the legal system.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I love that way to tight end it's you.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Know, we've got to find these places to make a
smooth transition. Speaking of smooth transitions, speaking of explosive new information.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
We've got a hot one today. We do, truly, I mean,
right on the pulse of whatever American is talking about
after they finished talking about Barbie, right.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Which is worth a lot of discussion.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
We saw both.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
We did see both both, And we did.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Not do a double feature of Barbenheimer. No, but we
saw Barbie first, largely when it came the day it
came out.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, we saw Thursday. Yeah, largely because I could not
get tickets to Imax Opheimer until the Monday after its
opening weekend because it was just sold out. So we
went to Oppenheimer Monday, and I say, let's actually let's
reserve our review for the end, just in case people
don't want to hear if they haven't seen it yet.
You know, for either movie, I would say thumbs up

(03:16):
for both.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Agreed, Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, we can talk more about it at the end
to maybe both.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Great times in the theater with very different moods. But yeah,
we did see Oppenheimer. Yeah, we did enjoy it. Two
thumbs up from both of us. But I did find
myself a little frustrated, and I certainly was not the
only one. There's a million million articles that you can
read about this from film critics, But I did find
myself a little frustrated by the lack of development from
the women's characters, the women in the movie who were

(03:43):
very important to Robert Oppenheimer.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Right right, And I'll just jump in and say, you
know this, this goes a little long. We definitely had
to split it into two parts. But surprise, yeah, but
it actually works out really well, I think because part
one of this episode it's very much like the biography
of his life, and the movie is very much a
biopic of Robert Oppenheimer. So for the most part, I

(04:05):
don't personally feel like anything here is spoiler heavy in
terms of anything from the movie being like, oh shit,
whoa surprise, I'm so glad I didn't know that. Like,
this is very much just kind of we're doing his
life much the same way Nolan did. There is one
major character death in his life that is a big impact,

(04:25):
and we do say that in this episode, so I
guess that's a little more spoilery, but it's also like
its history so it's like, you know, heads up, the
Titanic sinks, but.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Spoiler alert, but it's not around but it's okay. So
I also think that in that particular case, it's maybe
more interesting to know some of the history while you're
watching it than the other way around. So and then
enjoy looking it.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Up after them. Yeah, exactly as I did.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
So.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, we definitely will be referencing the movie throughout. Of course,
if you haven't seen it and you don't want to
be spoiled at all anyway, you feel free to save
this until after you've seen the f.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
If you're like me and like I don't want to
know his wife's name, be or I see it, I
don't want anything in my brain.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yes, ELI does not like any information.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
I can't stop thinking slate style. I can't. It's a problem.
I'd recognize it's a problem, but it's how I enjoy things.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
I do see that I you see that.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
In part two of this episode of ours is just
the tail end of his story, and it has a
little bit more of like those oh shit moments from
the movie where I would have rather not known that
stuff going in. So I think you're basically I'm saying
I think you're safe with part one and part two
of this episode may be save until after you've seen

(05:39):
the movie if you care about that kind of thing.
And we'll also get into our sort of response to
the movie and the Barbie movie in part two as well.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Obviously, because it's a double feature of the Millennium.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Definitely, so that's pretty exciting.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
So at any rate, all that to say, little frustrated
about the lack of development for these women's characters. I
wanted to know more about who they were, why they
matter to Oppenheimer, or you know, what part they played
in this whole scenario. And you know, I know a
movie can't do everything. So not trying to talk shit
about Christopher Nolan whatever, whatever, but I just just wanted
to know more about him. I was really curious. So

(06:15):
we figured that we would take this time on this
episode to dive in tell you a little bit more
about Oppenheimer's personal trinity, the three most important women in
his life, Jean Tatlock, Ruth Tolman, and his wife Katherine Oppenheimer.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Right, I want to know bombs away.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Okay, hey, their friends come listen.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell there's
no matchmaking, a romantic tips.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
It's just about ridiculous relations ships, a love. There might
be any type of.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Person at all, and abstract concept on't a concrete wall.
But if there's a story we were the second glance,
we'll put it in a show Ridiculous Romance.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
All right, we're gonna start with Gene Tatlock, who Robert
Oppenheimer met at a Berkeley house party in nineteen thirty six. Now,
her father was an acclaimed English scholar. He was an
expert on Jeffrey Chaucer, and he was already friends with Oppenheimer.
He was very impressed by Oppenheimer's literary knowledge. I guess
we're a scientific guy. It's a big reader. So he

(07:17):
was like, I like you. We can chat about books.
And Jeane was no Slauch herself all right in the
brain department. She spent time with Youngian psychoanalysts in Switzerland,
and then she attended Vassar College to study English.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Can you imagine hanging out with a bunch of Jungian psychoanalysts.
I just it feels like an exhausting time it day.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I feel every word I say you're going to go,
oh my god, here we go again.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Get into it. No, don't analyze me. I just wanted
to get a couple.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Of analyze this, Analyze that movie with Philly Kristal.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
What a reference.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
I would love to see young, Youngian psychoanalysts watch analyze
this and tell me how they feel about their field
of science in.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
The nineteen thirties.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Exactly. Yeah, it'd be like, this is what's coming, this
is what you have wrought. Katie Rich, who wrote a
Vanity Fair article called Jean Tatlock, The Tragic Story of
j Robert Oppenheimer's Truest Love, writes that one of Jean's
classmates once said that Jean Tatlock was quote the most

(08:18):
promising girl I ever knew, the only one out of
all I saw around me in college that even then
seemed touched with greatness.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Wow, high praise from our classmates. I know, right, I
like this classmate might have had a little crush.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Maybe maybe Jane was also super hot and I loved
her handwriting.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Is she going to read this? I thought she was
the most promising person I ever met, the only one
of us touched with greatness. And I could get a
touch of that greatness.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
I love to touch that greatness myself. She graduated faster.
She went to Berkeley to complete prerequisite courses that were
required to enroll at Stanford Medical School. And this is
when she also attended a fundraiser thrown by her landlady
for the Communist backed Spanish Republicans fighting the Spanish Civil War.

(09:09):
At this point, Jean was already a dues paying member
of the Communist Party, so she was already fully into
all this stuff. She once told a friend quote, I
just wouldn't want to go on living if I didn't
believe that in Russia everything is better.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
Oh my yay.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, our perspective of Russia is not great in twenty
twenty three acts. So it seems like a very naive quote.
But I suppose at the time you were like, revolution
is happening, some really exciting things in russ right.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Right, Well, the probably proganda machine is strong across the
world in the US included very true. Now. Another guest
at this party was a man named a tall, skinny
guy named Jay Robert Oppenheimer. He was ten years older
than Jean, and she inspired him in more ways than one.
She got him into the poetry of John du and

(10:00):
then we'll circle back to that later. But she also
introduced him to her friends and the causes that she
felt passionate about, like the Spanish Civil War and the
plight of migrant workers. Probably turned to him and was like,
you know, in Russia, everything's night. You know in Russia.
She kindly shut up about it. Yeah, we get it.
You did your study I brought in Russia.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Like, come on, workers in Russia, unite now it's time
for the world workers.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's like me now, like, well, you know, uh, the
wine in Italy doesn't have the sugar in it. The
French wine does. So if you ever get a chance,
everything's better. And who.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
Want to learn?

Speaker 1 (10:38):
But despite her introducing him too all this ideology, Annabelle
Nugent in the Independent article Oppenheimer's Women, points out that
Oppenheimer likely would have looked into communist ideology all by himself.
He didn't need Gene's help necessarily, because his brother Frank
and a lot of his colleagues at Berkeley were already
members of the Communist Party. They were already outspoken critics

(10:58):
of Franco's war in Spain, so it was all around
him already. The Patricia Klaus and Shirley Strashyinsky, who wrote
this book in twenty thirteen called an Atomic love Story.
The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer's Life also point out
that even Gene Tatlock's conservative father gave money to the
Ambulance Corp. They write, quote, I think that for Gene

(11:20):
and Oppenheimer, their shared interest in psychology was a stronger bond.
And from Gene, one of their friends would later say,
Oppenheimer learned to be compassionate. So they're not having Pillow
talk about communism every night, right, Yeah, he's kind of like, yeah,
I already know Femnism's cool. Whatever, sure, whatever, And they
had a lot of other stuff to talk about.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, Well, and to point out that like communism as
a whole was a very trendy thing. Yeah, and it
was a lot of people were very interested in it,
whether they joined the party or not, right, you know,
they were very interested in a lot of what it
had to say, a lot of the philosophy of it
and so on. Of course, the practice, the way it
was a naturally we know, you know, with hindsights it

(12:03):
all went down, But at the time it was very exciting,
very different way to think about things. A lot of
people really really into it.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Well, and that her father, who was conservative and probably
you know, leaned fairly against communism, was more more pro
American capitalism, that kind of thing. Even people like that,
we're looking at the ambulance core, they're looking at the
Spanish Civil War, and they're like, yeah, I don't like
what's going on over there. I might not be a communist,
but what the fascists are doing is real bad exactly, which,
of course would have been an ideology that permeated throughout

(12:31):
the nineteen thirties and forties exactly. People were like, you
know what today, fascism's worse.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah right, let's think it through.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
But also like just the workers, the unionizing and the
labor stuff was all wrapped up with the communist stuff,
but it was a very it was kind of its
own thing. A lot of people were like, workers should
really get paid normal money, or shouldn't be working a
thousand hours and so on and so forth. So even
if you were a conservative, you were like, yeah, y'all
should unionize the ambulance workers. I should really get this going.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
So because people getting paid fair wages for their work
is not inherently communist ideology, right right, no matter how
much they try to convince you. Huh oh, if you
think people should be paid for their work, they must
be coming.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
It's a socialist. You're a communist exactly. Yeah, we've seen
it now, so okay. In the movie, Gene is often
shown pretty mad at Oppenheimer forgetting her flowers. She'll take
a bouquet and throw it immediately in the trash. Apparently
that is true. She did tell him to stop getting
her flowers all the time. He also proposed to Jeene
Tatlock two times, but she turned him down both times.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
ThReD times of charm, buddy.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
I know right, He was like, all you a way
to ask her again, but for whatever reason, she doesn't
want to marry him. But then Oppenheimer met Kitty Puning
in nineteen thirty nine. I think I'm saying that right,
and that kind of spelled the end of his affair
with Jean, but they still met twice. A year after
he married Kitty, Oppenheimer explained during his security hearing in

(13:59):
nineteen fifty five or quote, we had been very much
involved with one another and there was still a very
deep feeling when we saw each other. They met up
for the last time when Oppenheimer was in Berkeley in
June nineteen forty three. At this point he was the
director of the Manhattan Project. The FBI was basically tailing
him everywhere. They were paying attention to every little thing

(14:19):
he did. Jean was a pediatric psychiatrist at Mount Zion.
She was doing some very important work with troubled youth,
so really great psychiatrist. They don't talk about that in
the film, but that's what she was up to. And
so the FBI tailed Robert Oppenheimer and Jean to dinner
and then to a hotel. They wrote in their official report, quote,

(14:40):
the relationship of Oppenheimer and Tatlock appears to be very
affectionate and intimate. I don't know why he talks like that,
but that's what he sounds like.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
The FBI agent is quite the cool dude. Yes, he's
a morning radio DJ. And well, you're driving out the
five o five and finding out that Robert A and
Jean Tatlock at a very it's a mid that effects
relationship to you.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Joe Jaggar Hoover liked to be entertained by his FBI.
So you had to put on a little fun character.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Give me all the information you have on Martin Luther King,
but make it silly.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
I make it fun.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Do it in a funny voice that does kind of
sound like that.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Do you feel like you would? He'd be like, now,
do it like you just sucked in a lot of helium.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
I didn't go.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Oppenheimer explained in his security hearing that she that Jean
called him to visit her because quote, she was still
in love with me. But this is when Oppenheimer ended
their affair once and for all, and seven months later,
on January fourth, nineteen forty four, Jean Tatlock died by suicide.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think it's really interesting with them their continued sort
of deep relationship. I think just shows what an intellectual
companionship they had, right, because that's someone who, yeah, they
had a physical relationship, but I think it was the
fact that they were on a similar level, that they
had all these conversations about when ideology or science or

(16:10):
you know, these things that they were both interested in,
and that became yeah, literature and poetry, and so of
course they still maintained that bond even after they separated.
That is I don't know that. That's just intellectually intimate
right like that. That often, I think never really goes
away when you have that kind of connection with someone. Yeah,
that goes beyond physical. So whether or not they continued

(16:31):
their intimate, affectionate physical relationship or not, they were always
going to be connected like that.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
I think.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, yeah, I see that. I see that. I think
they were still having a physical yeah yeah, yeah, affair
at this time. But I totally agree. It's one of
those things. I don't know. Robert Oppenheimer is one of
the smartest people in the world at this time. How
many people can he talk to?

Speaker 4 (16:53):
You?

Speaker 2 (16:54):
I mean, he's surrounded by a lot of very smart people.
So he's fine. We're not worried about him his social
but you know, I just think it must have been
very special to meet, especially a woman at that time.
So it's just limited education opportunity, So many women would
leave school to have children or start a family or whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Discouraged from being there in the first place exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
So you know, it just might have been hard to
find a woman that he felt like he could really
have that kind of hold that level of conversation with. Yah,
So it'd be hard to let go of a person
like that.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah. At the time of Jane's suicide, she had already
been undergoing treatment for depression. Klaus and Strashinsky in The
Atomic Love Story suggest that she probably would have been
diagnosed with bipolar disorder today, but losing her connection to
Oppenheimer was a real blow. Kay Bird and Martin J.
Sherwin in their two thousand and five book American Prometheus,

(17:46):
which is the book that Nolan based the movie Oppenheimer on,
mostly they wrote quote for reasons of love and compassion,
he had become a key member of Jane's psychological support structure,
and then he vanished mysteriously. In Jean's eyes, it may
have seemed as if ambition had trumped love.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
He chose the bomb over me. Yeah, kind of thing.
Not that she knew what he was working on, right, right?

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Or like he's his drive for I mean, Mary, do
his job, you know, like his relentless drive to succeed,
and what his he feels like is his chosen his
predetermined path, right is I guess more important than his
time with me for somebody who's already depressed, that can sting,

(18:29):
I'm sure really badly well.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
He might have felt just like a buttress. Just even
seeing him twice a year was tough. And then when
he was like I can't see you anymore, it was like, oh, well,
now that one string that's tying me down is gone,
and so I'm just you know, out here alone in
the fucking cosmos, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
And you know, in sort of I don't know if
it's defense of his character, but just sort of for clarification,
you know, having seen the movie, he was he couldn't
really go see her anymore. It was very difficult for
him to get out of Los Alamos. He wasn't allowed
to talk to anyone, right, I mean yeah, So it's
not so much that he was like, yes, screw you important,

(19:11):
I'm more interested in work now. He might have been
able to make a little more effort, but it was
very difficult for him to get to see her. I
mean there was people that he was working for who
were actively saying, don't you dare go see her? She's
a communist. Oh yeah, and you're not allowed to go
see anybody while you're working on this project.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Yeah, pretty much. And I mean Annie's married.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
I mean he had a wife obviously.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, if he's going to spend time with somebody and
give his heart to somebody, it should probably be her.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
That little factor too. Yeah, but an additional factor in
Gene's suicide might have been that she was also struggling
with her sexuality. In an Atomic Love Story, they share
a letter from her to a friend where she wrote, quote,
there was a period when I thought I was homosexual.
I still am, in a way forced to believe it,
but really, logically, I'm sure that I can't be because

(20:01):
of my unmasculinity. And in American Prometheus, she tells a
friend that she tried to overcome her same sex attraction
by quote sleeping with every bull she could find. So
doesn't that go right back into our very early stereotypical
beliefs of what a homosexual person looks and behaves, Like, oh.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, she didn't know about lipstick lesbians.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Right right, or that she couldn't or that if she
slept with the manliest men she could find, that would
you know, undo her attraction to women.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Well, and she's a psychologist in an early part of
this field, and that's that is what they believed very
long time. So she's she's feeling like she has the
best information there is to have, and this is how
shitty it's making her feel.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, you know what I'm saying exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Anyway, Tragically, it was Jean's father who found her the
day after her suicide, and I just find that so.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Upsetting, really heartbreaking out.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
He actually knocked on her door and did not get
an answer, so he had to climb in through the window,
and he found her on a pile of cushions by
the bathtub, with her head submerged in water.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
She had left an unsigned suicide note which read quote,
I am disgusted with everything to those who loved me
and helped me all love and courage. I wanted to
live and to give, and I got paralyzed somehow. I
tried like hell to understand and couldn't. I think I
would have been a liability all my life. At least

(21:32):
I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul
from a fighting world. This is such an interesting headspace.
Disgusted with everything to those who loved me and helped
me all love and courage. I wanted to live and
to give, and I got paralyzed. I tried like hell
to understand and couldn't. I've been a liability. Who is
she talking about? A liability to whom? What is she

(21:53):
trying to understand? Has that got to do with her sexuality?
Is that got to do with communism?

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Is that got you know, right things in there that
it could apply to?

Speaker 2 (22:03):
And it might be all those things, it might be everything.
She's like, everything in my life has been so confusing.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
And hard and challenging, and I'm done.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I'm done, and it's a challenge to the people that
I bring into my life. Like she feels like she's
I wonder if she's taking part of that with Oppenheimer,
for example, or she's like, he's got government agents watching
him all the time because he likes me, and I'm
a communist. Yeah, you know, so I'm such a I'm
such a challenge for the people that I care about.

(22:32):
That's a really difficult feeling.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, her father lay her body on her bed, and
then he went through all her correspondence. He burned some
letters and photographs, and then he called the police, trying
to maintain her privacy. I imagine because of Oppenheimer's nineteen
forty three visit to Jean, her phone had been wiretapped
by the FBI. They decided she needed to be under surveillance.
So actually, j Edgar Hoover was one of the first

(22:56):
people to learn that she was dead.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Wow, that guy was the first person to learn a
water show.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Okay, he had his fucking fingers and wagh, too many pies.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
Ooom pie pie. But do it in a silly costume.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
And then I'll eat it as silly cussin.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah. Now, okay, speaking to j Edgar Hoover. There is
a conspiracy theory because there always is around this guy,
because he certainly invited them.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
He wanted it, and he got it.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
There's a theory that Jane did not commit suicide but
possibly was killed by the FBI. Now, among other reasons,
it's because one of the drugs found in her system
was chloral hydrate, which is a chemical that you combined
with alcohol to make a Mickey Finn or a concoction
that will knock someone out cold.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
That's some al capone.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, give him the all Mickey Finn.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Mickey Finn, and drop him in the ocean.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Now. One doctor told the authors of American Prometheus quote,
if you were clever and wanted to kill someone, this
is the way to do it. But a number of
things here don't really line up in terms of this
conspiracy theory, because Jane herself would have had easy access
to chlorohydrate on her own, since she worked as a
psychiatrist in a hospital, and and Mickey Finn requires chloral

(24:12):
hydrate to be mixed with alcohol, but there was no
alcohol in Jane's system.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
They definitely saw, by like her state of her organs,
that she was a heavy drinker, but at that time
she had no alcohol in her right right, so therefore.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
The chloral hydrate wouldn't have knocked her out.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Not necessarily, which which still is like so weird that
she would take it at all for the water exactly.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
It's still weird exactly.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
But apparently that's not how a Mickey Finn works.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Now. The prime suspect, according to Katie Rich in Vanity Fair,
is supposedly Boris Pash, who, if you have seen the movie,
is Casey Affleck's character, and I won't say much if
you haven't seen the movie, but talk about shuddering, talk
about chills.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Very small part, but he really was a real creet.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Real creep. So he's the prime suspect here. But Boris
Pash had actually been reassigned to London. By the time she.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Died, he was nowhere near her.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
It's hard to say. Again, this conspiracy does kind of
start to fall apart, but no one could put anything
past jad Garhover and all his conspiracies seemed to fall
apart after a little while. And isn't that exactly how
he would have designed them? So suspicions still linger today
about whether or not she really killed herself. And I
would say, from what we've learned and the way that's

(25:25):
presented the movie, which obviously is a movie, it's got
its own ideas about how it wants to make you
feel at certain times and stuff, but it's pretty suspect
to me.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Honestly, they're both equally plausible because Jane was not happy person, right,
But yeah, I wouldn't if you if it came out
today that they've proved that the FBI or the CIA
or whatever killed Jean Tatlock, I would be like, will,
I'm not surprised that now. Oppenheimer was devastated, truly truly

(25:57):
devastated by Jane's death. His close friend and Robert Server,
says an American Prometheus quote. Jane was Robert's truest love.
He loved her the most, he was devoted to her.
When he was asked about what to name the atomic
bomb test, he suggested Trinity as a tribute to Jane.

(26:17):
It's taken from a devotional poem by John Dunn, the
poet that she had introduced him to. So let's go
down to poetry corner, and here batter my heart three
person to God by John Dunn.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Batter my heart three person to God for you as yet,
but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend that I
may rise and stand, or throw me and bend your
force to break, blow burn and make me new. I
like an usurped town to another, do labor to admit you,

(26:53):
but oh to no end reason your viceroy and me
me should defend but as captain and proves weak or unstrue.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yet, dearly, I love you and would be loved fame,
but m betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me, untie, or
break that not again. Take me to you, imprison me,
for I except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
nor ever chased except you ravish me.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
This is one of those like historical moments where I'm
like did John Done say, I got to write a
poem for the guy who's going to invent the nuclear
bomb one day. This just lines up so perfectly.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Kind of does like your force to break blow burn
and make me new is like exactly what the atomic
bomb did. It's it's so it's perfect. I can totally
see why it came to his mind in relation to
the h.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
And also, oh, I'm kind of in love with this
communist lady, but I'm betrothed unto your enemy. I'm literally
part of the American government right now. I'm set up
with this destructive force that very much dislikes you. So
divorce me, untie, or break that not again? You know?

(28:13):
Can I get a break here? Well?

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I also see it in terms of bigger the bomb itself.
You know he is he loves the science. Yeah, sure,
but he's betrothed to the enemy of the science, which
is all science is to make weapons, right, Like, wasn't
that sort of the problem?

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Was it?

Speaker 2 (28:32):
With all the scientists They were like, I want to
learn this, I want to understand the universe in this way.
I want to see if this works. But I don't
want all our thought and all our theories and all
our practice and all our math and everything else to
lead up to a weapon of mass destruction. I don't
think that should be the culmination of my life's work.
And so it's very funny to just read it with

(28:53):
that kind of in your mind, thinking about Oppenheimer, thinking
I love this, this, This is exactly what I want
to be doing with my time, making and breaking and
learning and discovering and changing and doing and theorizing and whatever.
But the person I am betrothed to, the person I
am beholden to, needs me to do something with you

(29:14):
I don't like, and I'm really upset about that, and
I wish that I didn't have to, right, you know,
I don't know. Well, I read a lot of different ways,
but it works.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
It works, which is the sign of a great poem. Right,
very true.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Great job John. It's almost like John Done.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
She's kind of good. I think he's going somewhere. Keep
an eye on that kid as a poet, because I
feel like the bell's gonna toll for him?

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Is that John Dune?

Speaker 1 (29:42):
The bell tolls tolls for the John Done. Excuse me, dun.
That's how you remembers John Done. Because his name is
like a belt. Oh smart But okay, all that being said,
we've got a couple more ladies to get to. We
mentioned earlier that his affair with Jene was ended by
his relationship with Kitty, who would later become his wife.

(30:04):
So let's take a quick break and we will tell
you all about missus Oppenheimer right after these words.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Welcome back everyone.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
So, Catherine Puning was an only child. She was born
in Germany, but after her father Franz invented a new
kind of blast furnace, her family emigrated to America in
nineteen thirteen to make their fortune. That Kitty spoke both
German and English fluently. She spoke English without any German accent,
and she apparently claimed that her father was a prince

(30:42):
and her mother was related to Queen Victoria, who who
she actually She believed this this was information given to
her about her family and their past, but it wasn't true.
In fact, her mother's most famous relative was not Queen Victoria,
but a cousin named Wilhelm I Tell, who was Germany's
war minister during World War Two, who was hated even

(31:06):
by his own military colleagues for being too much of
a yes man to Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Damn other Nazis. Yeah, too much of it, too much
of a daddy's boy.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
When the Nazis are like, whoa calm down, bro with
the Hitler talk.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
You're a real fear bro, and I don't care for it.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yikes. Even Hitler himself said that kay Tell quote had
the brains of a movie usher out.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Even Hitler's like, what a dumb ass. Wow, it's true, though.
He said he was as loyal as a dog, though,
so he would always let him do all kinds of
crazy shit.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Although kind of rude to movie ushers Hitler. I guess
another group that Hitler wasn't too fun. Yeah another groom,
oh nut. Fans of Hitler on this show tell your friends.
So Catherine, who was better as Kitty, went to Europe
to study after high school, and it's not likely that

(32:04):
she took many classes, but she did meet her first husband,
Frank Ramsire, a Harvard grad studying music in Paris now
crossover alert. Ramsaire's teacher was Nadia Boulangire, whose career was
helped along quite a bit by our old friend Winneretta
singer Boom.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Patronized A small world. A small world, it is so anyway,
Kitty and Frank. They got married on Christmas Eve in
nineteen thirty two, but it did not last long. Kitty
got an annulment only a year later. On December twentieth,
nineteen thirty three, she told friends that she had found
and read Frank's diary and discovered that he was both

(32:45):
gay and a drug addict. Oh, so she's like, let
me get the fuck out of here. I was like,
I have so many problems that. The first of all,
she's reading his diary. That seems wrong. You got a
problem with personal property or something. But also like maybe
she had to read it because she was like, there's
something not right about Frank. He's run around doing crazy shit.
And she's like, let me look at the diary and

(33:05):
finds out he's taken crazy drugs, yeah, and seeing men
on the side or whatever. At any rate, she said,
let me get out of here. So at a New
Year's party only a few days later, Kitty met Joseph
Dalitt Junior. He was a dartmouth dropout, card carry communist,
and she moved in with him. Never married him officially,
but she became his common law wife. So they lived

(33:29):
together long enough basically that they had legal protection. She
joined the Communist Party after proving her loyalty by distributing
copies of The Daily Worker on the streets. But they
lived in like a dilapidated boarding house. They collected unemployment
to get by. It was just kind of a real
proletariat way living that the blue butted Kitty kind of

(33:49):
got fed up with. She said, I can't take it anymore.
She moved back in with her parents. Months went by
and she heard nothing from Joe, which kind of pissed
her off because she's like, I might not be living
with you, we're still together, so what's going on? And
then she discovered that her mother, Cath, had been intercepting
Joe's letters to her. And we won't get too much

(34:11):
into Cath, but Anne Wilson, one of Oppenheimer's secretaries, said
this about Kitty's mother, quote, she was a real dragon,
a hard, repressive woman. She disappeared one day over the
side of a transatlantic ship and nobody missed her.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
That says it all, Jam.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Damn Anne, Anne is Wow.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
She fell off a ship and drowned, and we were like, bye,
big deal. See who Kath? Who Kath?

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Who?

Speaker 1 (34:41):
I mean?

Speaker 2 (34:42):
It's that is a crazy thing to say about.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Somebody, That is, you got to really do something. I
don't know what she did to Anne, but she pretty personal.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
But it was a huge drift between Kitty and her mom.
Of course when she discovered.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
There and the last letter from Joe to Kitty said
that but he was going to join a volunteer regiment
in Spain to fight against Franco. So she finally gets
hold of these letters, finds out that this is going on.
She traveled to Paris to meet up with him, and
he went across the border into Spain and he joined
the Mackenzie Papino Battalion. Joe would write Kitty letters from

(35:17):
the front. One read quote each time up in the
lines that I see a fascist. I am sure that
I'll be more effective if I say to myself that
bastard is trying to keep you away from Kitty. So
I'll say it and do my job right. So Kitty
finally got permission to join him in Spain, but before
she could arrange her travel, she had to be hospitalized

(35:39):
for ovarian cysts and she was sent back to England
to recover. Then she was all set to leave for
Spain when she found out that Joe had been killed
in action on October seventeenth of nineteen thirty seven. His
letters to her were published into a book the next
year called Letters from Spain by Joe Dallitt, American Volunteer
to his wife. It might be that Joe Dallitt was

(36:02):
Kitty's gen Tatlock in a way because in a book
by Jenet Konnant called One oh nine East Palace, Robert
Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Kitty's friend
Shirley Barnett says that Dalitt was quote the great love
of her life whose death she never really got over.
So that's why she might be his gene tatlock and
sort of that like he's she went on, you know,

(36:23):
to have a long lasting marriage with someone else, but
this was the one.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
This was the one that mattered.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Yeah, that really got to her.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, that might have been a point of I don't know,
of bonding between her and Robert. I wonder, you know,
if they talked about anything like that and they both
understood one another about having this person in their past
who still was in their heart and was very important
to them or whatever. Kitty came back to the US,
she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to complete her

(36:52):
undergraduate degree in botany. Finally, that's what she was supposed
to be doing all this for all this time, but
she had but she was kind of having a good time,
so she didn't do that. So she's finally trying to
get her botany degree, and that's where she met Richard
Stuart Harrison, a doctor with Oxford credentials. He proposed to her.
She accepted, but only on the condition that he let

(37:13):
her stay in Pennsylvania to complete her degree and then
also allow her to pursue a postdoctorate to get her
PHP which was probably important to mention ahead of time
at that time because a lot of men in this
time period would have expected her to leave school and
start keeping his house and having the babies and stuff.
So she probably was like, look, let me just let

(37:33):
you know at the outset, I want a career as
a botanist. Yeah, and he's like, cool, no problem. They
were married in November nineteen thirty eight, and not long after,
Richard left for his residency at Caltech, so they lived
apart for six months. He's in California, she's in Pennsylvania.
Then Katie graduated with honors from UPenn. She's a smart lady.

(37:54):
She was offered a research fellowship at Caltech. She was
working with a physicist named Charles Lawrenson, So she finally
moved to California, and she and Richard are like living
in the same house.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Like husband and wife.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
In August nineteen thirty nine, her boss, Charles Lauritson and
his wife through a garden party Richard and Kitty Harrison attended,
and that is where she met the tall, slim, brilliant
Robert Oppenheimer. She was immediately enamored by him, and they
started an affair pretty soon after. I think this is
kind of ridiculous because she's been married to Richard for

(38:27):
like less than a year, right, they've barely been married
because he has not been in the same state as
her for six months, and then she immediately starts sleeping
with somebody else.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Well, it's tough to get a picture of Kitty's personality
simply because everybody kind of seems to have their own
opinion about her. Yeah, the cat meds in her article
for a Decade Review, which is called Plastercast Martini Glass,
Potted Orchid. The Life of Kitty Oppenheimer she lays out
all the various things that people said against Kitty. First,
you know, she was volatile, She was snooty, selfish, drunk.

(39:00):
She was a bad mother. She was a bad daughter.
She had a scathing tongue. She was an abusive friend
or cruel. She could never be without a man like
all these really nasty things. And her sister in law,
Jackie Oppenheimer, said quote, Kitty was a schemer. She was
a phony. All her political convictions were phony, all her
ideas were borrowed. She was one of the few really

(39:22):
evil people that I've known in my life.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
I love your Jackie Oppenheimer so fun.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
But Kitty's friends said that she was vivacious and quick witted,
She was intelligent. She was actually really fun to be around.
Her neighbor, who at first didn't like her but later
became her friends, said quote. At her worst, she was
absolutely without guile, brave, was a little lion, and fiercely
loyal to her own team. And her friend Verna Hobson,

(39:52):
who was one of Oppenheimer's secretaries, said quote, she was
Robert's greatest confidant and advisor. He told her everything he
leaned on. Huch tremendously. I don't know what's FK right?

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Was that?

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Like JFK has been living in New Jersey for a
couple of years ago.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
I want you to play every woman in the nineteen
forties and fifties project.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, that'll go over well, it'll.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Work out great.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
We felt like the women didn't get enough screen time
in Oppenheimer. So Eli's gonna play a man playing all
of them.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Oh god, I'm part of the problem, all right. So
Kitty and Oppenheimer started having an affair and it was
like hot and heavy from the get go. At one
point she went to see Oppenheimer at Christmas without her husband,
just going to see Oppenheimer. Another time, Oppenheimer invited both
Richard and Kitty to his ranch in New Mexico, Pero

(40:48):
Calli and Tay. Robert at some point had developed a
weak case of tuberculosis. He was told go to a
warm climate, you know, to recover, kind of like Doc Holliday.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
So he went to a ranch in New Mexico, and
he fell in love with the desert, absolutely loved it there.
He found out that the ranch was available for lease,
and he said.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Hot dog.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
So then he named it hot Dog.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
That's that's funny.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
That's the story of the ranch. So anyway, he's like, come,
you know, come on down to Percalliante, you guys, and
like hang out on my ranch. Well, Richard said, oh
darn it, I can't go. I just got too much work.
Whoop at the hospital. So Kitty was like, well, I
don't have any work, and she went alone for two months.
She stayed for two months with Robert Oppenheimer at his ranch,

(41:39):
along with his friend Robert Serber and Robert's wife Charlotte.
And thanks to her wealthy upbringing, Kitty was an expert horsewoman.
She very much impressed people with her equestrian skills. So
she and Oppenheimer wrote horses together all the time. And
there's this fun story about how one time they rode
out to stay overnight with a friend of Robert's name Katie.

(42:00):
But the next day Katie turned up at Perocalliente because
she had to return Kitty's nightgown which had been left
under Robert Oppenheimer's pillow. She had to take that off
and like tuck it up under the bill. So it
was kind of like, girl, you left this in a
very obvious place. I know exactly what y'all were doing.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Can I say, side note, we saw Oppenheimer the seventy
millimeter Imax aupat Mala, Georgia, one of the few theaters
in the world to have that print.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Lucky.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yes, And I'll say, actually, oddly it was almost too big.
Like I was having a hard time focusing on all
the dialogue because I'm like turning my head left and
right to listen to it. But the scenes where Robert
and Kitty are on horseback in the New Mexico Desert
are some of the most beautiful shots. Yes, I've seen
on a you know, three hundred foot tall screen whatever.

(42:52):
It was just stunning. I mean, you know, y'all know
if you listen to the show that we love the
desert out there.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
But the beautiful scenery of them on this enormous Imax
screen riding horses across the New Mexico Desert is unlike anything.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Gorgeous, unparalleled.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah. Now, with all these desert shenanigans, maybe it's no
surprise that Kitty got pregnant while she was out there.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Whoops, common side of that constant Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
And also I gotta say Richard. I don't know if
he was just oblivious or didn't care or what. But
he's like, oh, you're the guy that you love that
you spent Christmas with alone last year, invited us both
out to the desert. Well I can't go. Why didn't
you go yourself, honey for a couple of months? Is
you know? Don't again? I don't know if it's just
if he's just dumb or didn't care too.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
I wonder that too.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
It's it's kind of making me think of our a
lot of our Parisian counterparts and even similar time frames
right where they're like oh or British or whatever, where
they're wealthy and they're like, I'm married, but whatever. We
all have our little, you know, our little side relationships,
and it's very accepted in those circles. So maybe he
was like, all right, whatever, as long as she's entertained,

(44:10):
I'm busy, so fine.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
I guess I don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
She was so allegedly a volatile person. She probably didn't
hold back at all, so maybe he knew that. It
was like I'm like, no, you shouldn't go by yourself.
That all I'm going to get is an earfull that's true,
and I don't feel like invoking the wrath of Kitty.
So like, if you want to go spend a couple
months Robert, go.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
For it, okay, right, or he maybe did get an
earfull and she just went and did what she wanted anyway, regardless,
who knows. Okay, Well, let's take a quick break and
then we'll come back and we'll hear a lot more
about this presidency, what kind of parents the Oppenheimer's were,
and lots lots more.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
So we'll see you.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
And welcome back everybody. Last we left, Kitty and Robert
were in the desert together and they had gotten pregnant,
and Kitty had gotten her divorce and got Robert to
marry her.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah. One of the more damning things that people had
to say against Kitty was that she sort of maybe
forced Robert's hand on this one. She admitted to his
secretary Ann Wilson, that she got him to marry her,
quote the old fashioned way, So she got pregnant on
purpose with him.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
I mean again, when you're sleeping with someone for two months,
it's hard not to like to be like, oh it
was on purpose, Like yeah, I mean, she didn't try
to not do it exactly, Yeah, and it worked. Robert
called Richard Harrison to break the news, and he convinced
Richard to give Kitty a divorce so that he could
marry her instead. Bird and Sherman in American Prometheus wrote, quote,

(45:48):
it was all very civilized.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
I mean, I guess that's preferable.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
Oh, mister Richard Sherman, Robert Abenheimer here, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm here with.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Your I'm Kitty.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
I'm so sorry to send you this uncomfortable news. But
by jove, I did to have gotten your wife.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
Pregnant by Joe.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
You know, it's the funniest thing.

Speaker 5 (46:11):
I don't know how it happens, but I thought maybe
I ought to marry her instead of you.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
How do you feel about that, sir?

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh well, everything you say sounds sound good. I mean,
you got to make her an honest woman out of her.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
I certainly couldn't.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Oh, yes, speculation station. Richard was like, oh, thank god.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
I maybe, I mean, I don't know, go for it.
He might have been, because I think the main argument
he had against it was that getting a divorce would
harm his like reputation or something, you know, because it
still was not great to get a divorce, right right, right,
So he was kind of like, I'm worried about my
professional gin of my career or whatever if I get
a divorce. So it wasn't so much like but I

(46:51):
love her.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
You know. So Kitty moved to Reno, Nevada for six
weeks and got her divorce, which we have mentioned in
previous episode that Nevada for the longest time maybe still
was like the place to get a quick divorce, that's right.
They specifically crafted their laws to promote divorce tourism basically.
So she got her divorce there and she married Robert
Oppenheimer the very next day, on November two of nineteen forty.

(47:16):
In May of nineteen forty one, Kitty gave birth to
their son, Peter Oppenheimer, but, as cat Meads writes, quote,
he would not be the focus of either of his parents' lives.
In fact, Robert and Kitty left Peter with their friends,
the Chevaliers for two months while they took a vacation
to Perocalliente. Now, at this point, Robert started seeing Gene

(47:40):
Tatlock again. Right, so this is this is before her suicide.
This was with Kitty's knowledge, although maybe not her approval.
He might have been real similar to her in terms
of just like, look, I'm gonna do what I might do.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Yeah, although it makes me one knowing about Joe dallit, yeah,
and thinking did they ever you know, get close in
that way where they said, this is the person I
really loved, right, you know, of course I love you
and we're good, but like, this is my love, you
know what I mean? And so she was maybe more
able to understand about Gene than it would seem.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
From You have old loves in our lives that are
forever part of us, right, So yeah, she might have
understood that better than better than most.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, maybe she might have been like, if I had
broken up with Joe, I think I might still be
wanting to see him too. You know, I get it.
You know, she might have gotten it even if she
didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, simultaneous that might even make it worse for her too,
to be like, oh, you're going to go hang out
with the one that got away, the true love of
your life.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Cute?

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah, But then everything really changed because Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor and the US entered World War Two. At this point,
Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of the Manhattan Project.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Originally Kitty was like sort of excited about this whole
Manhattan Project, loves Alamos thing. She's like, cool, we like
to camp and stuff like this. We'll be fine. But
in Los Alamos was really hard on the scientists wives.
It was harder than anyone could have predicted. Again, if
you haven't seen the movie or you don't know much
about this period time period, just a quick debrief on

(49:12):
Los Alamos. In order to test this bomb, they had
to be somewhere in the country where there wasn't a
lot of residents, you know, around to be affected or
to see what they were up to. And they built
a city in the middle of basically middle of nowhere
in Mexico and they called it Los Alamos. So that's
that's what this is. There was hastily erected cities.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, there was so much paranoia about even though we
were allied with them, about Russian spies trying to learn
about what we were doing, and obviously the Germans as well,
but in particular, in particular the American government was worried
about Communist spies also you know, copying what we had.
Because everyone was working on nuclear science at this point,

(49:54):
and how to split the atom and how to turn
that into a weapon, so incredibly secretive. That's why Robert,
you know, among the reasons Robert wasn't allowed to leave
Los Alamos really or go see Gene or you know,
even speak candidly with any of his colleagues or his
family or anything like that. None of them living there were.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Very top secret situation. So Los Alamos kind of a
hard place to live. Yes, out you know, they're in
the desert, water electrical power, both very scarce, fruits and
veggies not fresh. They're having to truck them in from wherever.
Their husbands could not talk to them freely about their
work as they had before. There's this whole new strain
on their marriages.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Even within Los Alamos. You couldn't go home and talk
to your partner about what you did at work today.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Everybody in the city had different security appearances, so you
literally couldn't. You had to lie. I mean you had to,
you know, you had to.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Couldn't.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Even if you're not lying, it's still there's a strain,
right if you can't talk openly with your spouse. So
there was a strain in these marriages.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
It'd be like me coming to you if I've still
worked in movies and television and saying, hey, we're moving
to the middle of desert because I got a gig
on a show, and you're like, cool, what's the show?
I sign an nda, I can't tell you you're coming
with me. You're gonna live in a ramshackle apartment with
no air conditioning, and I'm going to be working for

(51:12):
sixteen hours a day. And when I come home and
you say, how is work, I'm going to say, what work?

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:17):
Right, I mean sounds.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Fun kind of I know.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Of course, these women could not reveal to their relatives
where they were right, so they couldn't have any visitors.
They couldn't they couldn't live and shit up with any
kind of anything like that. Mail was censored going in
and out, No visitors were allowed, you know, et cetera,
et cetera. This was a really difficult place to live.
In the book Standing By and Making Do Women of

(51:42):
Wartime Los Alamos, a woman named Jane Wilson writes, quote
in the Mountains of New Mexico, the women aged, we
aged from day to day. Living at Los Alamos was
something like living in jail.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
I bet quite literally too, because I mean they didn't
have the moist technology that we have today.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Literally raging in the sand. A very true kitty worked
briefly as a lab tech, so she actually did work
on the project to an extent. She was examining blood
to see the effects of radiation poisoning. But she then
got pregnant. We stopped working, and she was far from
the only one to get pregnant. Okay, we just talked
about how boring Los Alamos is. What else is there

(52:23):
to do? And the Atlantic says that the Los Alamos
baby boom was so big that General Leslie Groves started
being like, the US Army shouldn't have to pay all
these maternity bills.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
But well, excuse me, mister Groves, but it's your fault
we got all these maternity bills to begin with.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
I was like, bitch, you're just spending billions of dollars
on this project, Like, what's a few baby deliveries. Calm
the fuck down. But that's probably why he was like
going through trying a penny pinch whatever. I think that's
just funny thinking about Leslie Groves being like true money briberies.
So anyway, she got pregnant, and in December nineteen forty
four they welcomed Catherine and Tony Oppenheimer to the world, and,

(53:03):
like every other baby born at Los Alamos, the birthplace
was recorded as PO Box sixteen sixty three.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
They couldn't because when you turn that upside down, it's
yes E nine nine I, which is the formula for
nuclear things. Sick for you, like, I don't know, it's
circle and find it.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Find it.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
There's something it's been up po Box sixteen sixty three.
You rearrange that and you get three x O six
B P P T pepe pee. Look.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Oh god.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Well, after Tony was born, Kitty had some serious depression.
Now partly obviously this was from just being isolated at
Los Alamos, right, probably one of the most depressing towns
in America at the time, built out of plywood in
a day, you.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Know, and government guys running around gross to each other.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
You go out and try to have a drink with friends. Oh,
what you've been up to? You know, I can't talk
about that. What have you been up to? Oh? You know,
I can't talk about that.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Cool, read a book or something, he got a book
club or something.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Yeah, right, the loss Alma's book club. But her depression
also probably came partly due to some postpartum depression, right, so.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Which they think she probably had after Peter as well.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
So all this being said, she left Tony with another
scientist family and moved back to her parents' house for
three months, and she took their son Peter with her.
So obviously like Robert's too busy to be single dad
because he's heading up the nuclear bomb project, and she
needed to get out of town. So while kitties out
of town, let's turn our attention to the third woman

(54:54):
in this Oppenheimer trinity, which also brings us to this
episode sy to Peace, Great Mind saik Ake. Doctor Ruth
Sherman Tolman was a powerhouse smarty pants, that's an official term.
That was her degreem. She was a clinical psychologist. She's

(55:15):
a university professor. She's the author of six books, and
she created some of the first treatments for post traumatic
stress disorder and was the first woman elected to the
Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. So just
a lot of boxes checked for doctor Ruth Sherman Tolman here.
Her husband was Richard Tolman and his brother created this

(55:39):
panel with the psychological study of social issues. So there
was some controversy about her being elected to the panel,
like maybe mepotism going on here, and Ruth said, hell no,
straight up, like I worked hard. I'm damn good. I
got this on my own merit. It doesn't matter who
my brother in law is. I deserve this position.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
So she, instead of being in the Oppenheimer movie, was
in the Barbie movie saying I worked hard and I.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Deserve that right, Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Hi Barbie.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
So during the war, she was recruited to several government
agencies who were hiring psychologists, and she worked to address
the discrimination that women's psychologists were experiencing. Women's psychologists weren't
being informed about new scholarly findings, for instance, stuff like that,
just like an active campaign to keep women out of
the right field.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
It wasn't just like I feel disrespected by my mail coach.
It was like, literally, they're not telling me information I
need to know about my field of study.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, she walks into a room and is like, oh,
I didn't realize there was a meeting today, and they're like, oh, yeah,
we're just ending. Sorry forgot to tell you they wrote.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
It on the men's bathroom walls. Oh bad, he didn't
see it. You know that type of shit.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
Now. Her final wartime assignment was developing psychological stability tests
for field agent assessments for the Office of Strategic Services,
which is now known as the ci A. So she
came in was like, can you handle it? Yeah, here's
the answer these ten questions. We're going to find out

(57:10):
which the bear character are you, and that'll tell me
whether or not she's the original buzzbeed quich.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
And she moved on to making buzzby quizes which kind
of onion you are? I just think that's so cool. Yeah,
she had to figure out I guess probably A can
you handle it? And b are you a psychopath? And
you will make horrible decisions you know, in the field
and stuff. So so she's she's doing.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Some serious because you might be like, oh, this guy,
he's brilliant and he can totally handle the pressure. He
can can he's a sociopath who doesn't care about human life,
So maybe we shouldn't have him in charge of the
A bomb you.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Know, yeah, right exactly. There's a different place for him
right in or something. But there either I know r Actually,
don't put him in the CIA.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Yeah, maybe he's just Coldstone Creamery or something. It's better
for him.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Well, I tried to work at the CIA, but I'm
applying today a Coldstone Creamery because they said I was
too much. I was psychopathy.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
I didn't value human life enough. So anyway for a
cold star? Is that? Butter pecan? You said? All right?

Speaker 2 (58:14):
All right, so Ruth total boss bitch. She's also about
ten years older than Robert Oppenheimer, so just so you
have her.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Oh okay, correct the flip between him and.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Exactly she's older.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
And Richard and Ruth had been friends with Robert Oppenheimer
for years. Sure, Richard Tolman actually literally wrote the book
on statistical mechanics, literally wrote that book, and Oppenheimer used
his work to prove his theories about stars collapsing into
black holes. It's called the Tolman Oppenheimer Volkoff limit.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
I love that. And this is something that I learned
from the movie too, in the opening scenes, is that
Oppenheimer was like basically came up with the idea that
stars collapsed into black holes. I did not know that
he was involved in astrophysics like that. That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
It's funny how much of this quantum mechanics and stuff
I thought was older than it was. And of course
at this time it was brand new field study. So
it's really interesting. I'm not smart enough to understand any
of it, but I love it. I think it's fascinating.
So Richard Tolman also badass brain guy, and he worked
as one of General Leslie Groves scientific advisors during the war.

(59:25):
So he and Ruth both high level government work government
service during the war. So they bought a house in Washington,
d C. And Oppenheimer usually stayed with them when he
had to travel to the capitol for meetings.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
You know.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
You see, he didn't leave Los Alamos very much, but
when he did, it was to meet with politicians, tell
him how it was going, get you know, new deadlines
or whatever. So he would usually stay there. And most
scholars say that Ruth and Robert Oppenheimer had an affair,
usually starting around the time of her CIA service of
this oss assessment tests. Atomic Love Story authors Klaus and

(01:00:02):
Stracshinsky told The Independent quote, Ruth and Robert were deep
and close friends for decades. He may have loved Kitty,
but on some level he did not respect her. Ruth
he respected and admired. He relied on her for advice
and the sort of comfort only a good friend can provide.
One of Oppenheimer's secretaries said he always kept one of

(01:00:25):
Ruth's letters in his pocket, and Megan George, writing for
Feminist Voices dot Com, says quote friends would often drop
into the Tolman residence to find the couple alone in
their dressing gowns, and says the affair went on after
Richard Tolman died as well, so it was kind of
a long standing thing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
But Klaus and Stratshinsky also decided after all their research
that there was no evidence of a physical affair between
these two. At most, this was just like a very
close emotional bond, right. Two people found something they can
connect to. That probably again, as with many of the
people in our Spenheimer's life, how many people can he
actually talk to on a certain level. There's not many

(01:01:05):
out there, so he got very close to people like this.
Klausen Stratschinski told The Independent that Ernest Lawrence, who's the
character that Josh Hartnett plays in the movie, was likely
responsible for all the rumors that were flying around about
Oppenheimer and Ruth because he had quote a long list
of grievances personal and professional against Oppenheimer.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Damn.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
So he was.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Just stirring the shit shit talking shit. But they also
point out that Kitty, who was known as quote a
jealous person, never showed any signs of being suspicious of
her husband and his friend Ruth, although clearly she would
have had plenty of reason to he's spending so much
time with her, but maybe she was quite clear and

(01:01:47):
knew that there wasn't an affair going on between them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
It's also like he doesn't seem to be very secretive
about his affairs, Like he kind of tells them listen,
I'm gonna go see Genes. Yeah, and she's I don't
care if you like it or not, That's what I'm doing.
So I don't know why he would lie about Ruth
to her, why would he cover that up?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
But anyway, so all that to say, it's not really
clear how sexual this relationship might have been, whatever that's worth,
but it's presented more or less this fact in the
movie that they had a sexual relationship, and it seems
to be mostly accepted by a lot of Oppenheimer and
Ruth biographers. Some even say that Richard Tolman, her husband,
died of a broken heart when he discovered their affair,

(01:02:26):
because he died of a heart attack in nineteen forty eight.
And I'll say, based on what we've heard here, husbands
of the nineteen thirties and forties, maybe stop making Robert
Oppenheimer you and your wife's best single friend, because he
keeps coming in and falling in love.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
They will steal your wis with your.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Wife, and she loves him too. So maybe and hide
your wives from Robert Oppenheimer.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Fellows, you're fucking wife. And I will say, these are
only three of the women that he was with. Robert
Oppenheimer was with many other women, and some of them
were married. He very frequently had affairs with married women.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Here's the thing about Oppenheimer. He seems very towering and
and he's got this really like just kind of impressive presence.
He seems like he's so smart. He's kind of intimidating.
But one of the reasons that they picked him for
leading the Manhattan Project is that he was so dang personable.
People loved him. They liked hanging out with him. He

(01:03:24):
was really charming. He knew how to work with people,
and he knew how to talk to people, and he's
just very likable, which I did not expect to learn
about him as we were studying. I figured he would
have been one of these like cold scientists that's sort
of difficult to communicate with because he's he's just operating
on a different level. But he was actually kind of
a total just dude.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Yeah, like a guy, which I kind of love knowing. Like,
he's the type of intellectual person that just like he
was so curious about such a wide variety of subjects
that he was he was really interested in the people
he was talking to. I think, for the most part,
Carl Sagan and he could talk about a lot of things. Yeah, yeah,
Carl Sagan as a great example. People did say with
Robert Oppenheimer, he was just so magnetic that male or female,

(01:04:05):
you just couldn't help but fall in love with him. Yeah,
on some level or an other. So, yeah, maybe hydro
wires around around Oppenheimer. So Robert Oppenheimer may or may
not have been having a biicoastal affair with his friend's
wife in DC. Dealing with his postpartum depressed wife Kitty,
and trying to get the atomic bomb completed successfully, all

(01:04:28):
at the same time. No pressure, No pressure, sir.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Maybe as much pressure on him as there was inside
the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, yeah, which we learned is all
about pressure.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
Rite, A lot of pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Going on in there. So you know, if he was
not actually sleeping with Ruth, whatever she did provide in
the way of making him feel better about his life,
I think he needed. They needed that letter or whatever
she was saying to him. Regardless of the security protocol
and stuff. On Los Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer did keep Kitty

(01:05:03):
in the loop about what he was up to. So
when the trinity test was successful, they did that on
a mesa miles and miles away from Los Alamos. So
the wives are on Los Alamos, they've no idea what's
going on. Their husbands have gone off to try this shit,
and they don't know what's happening. But of course, you know,
he wants to share with Kitty whether or not any
of this shit work. Yeah, worth it, right, So but

(01:05:24):
he can't, of course, can't call her and be like all.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Right, great job, babe, Like yeah, they're listening to every
phone call exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
So what he did was he called Kitty and told her, quote,
you can change the sheets, and that was their little code,
so he was still telling her what was up. Yeah,
And clearly, like you know, just through all three of
these women, you're seeing how much he needs their advice.
He likes to hear what they have to say. Like
he apparently caught it was a you know, Kitty was

(01:05:49):
his main confidant. He clearly get a vice from Ruth
before Jean died. He clearly needed to hear from her
and have her be a sounding board for him. So
I think even as differently as he loved or respected
or whatever these women, he clearly did have a lot
of respect for their brains, right, regardless of whow how

(01:06:09):
great they looked to us on outside.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
Well, and I do wonder if this is one of
those situations where, now this is true in the past,
it's still true today. I'm sure where because he's a
man and they are women. There's a degree to which
oh I like you, I'm friends with you, I respect you,
I consider my equal. I must be romantically in love

(01:06:33):
with you, you know, And he sort of can't differentiate
you know, and then if you're attractive on top of that,
and I'm you know, physically attracted to you, well, here
we go. The only solution is that we must want
to be doing it, you know, as opposed to just
just like another one of his guy friends, their equals.
They have brilliant conversations and that's it, Like we don't

(01:06:55):
have to sleep with each other. But I wonder if
that ties into it, if he's sort of misconstrued feelings
of companionship and respect and and just that sort of
mutuality that they had, intellectually confused that with feelings, intimate feelings.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
I could totally see that. I could completely see that
being a problem people today still really hard time. As
you said, got together.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
What wow? When it started, you know, it blossomed into
something different.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Good, I'm glad that blossom getting there. Oh my god,
I'm gonna kick you out of this room. All right.
So the Trinity test worked, and the atomic bomb was
dropped and so on and so forth. We know all
that part pretty well. Da YadA YadA. He changed the world.
But once the war was over, of course, Robert Oppenheimer

(01:07:51):
was a big shot, his giant celebrity. Everybody was like
the greatest, most respected mind in the entire country. He
had won the war, et cetera, et cetera. So he
took a job at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,
where Kitty raised orchids. She kind of got back to
her botany roots, and she had a greenhouse. She raised
orchids there, and Robert would have rare species shipped in

(01:08:12):
for her birthdays so she would have new species to
hang out with. But also by this time, Kitty, by
some estimations, had become a bad drunk, bad alcohol yo.
She had always drank pretty heavily but throughout her time
at Los Alamos, but it was really after that apparently
it got kind of uncontrollable. She often had broken bones

(01:08:34):
or bruises from drunken falls or car crashes. She would
fall asleep smoking cigarettes, so she burned holes into her
night clothes and her sheets. Once she even set the
house on fire. She was also a lot of pain
from pancreatitis, and she took a lot of painkillers for that.
So Oppenheimer's friend Robert Serber, actually says that all her

(01:08:57):
falls and other erratic behavior is is due to the pills. Oh,
he said, he insisted that she did not drink any
more than a normal person, which, let's just take that
with a grain of salt. Is the fifties, everybody's drinking
incredibly heavily.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Yeah, but she has like six drinks a day. Who normal?

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
She gets up, she has a martini? Who does this?

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
So just like me, a normal person?

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Right, So, you know, his idea of what was a
normal amount of drinking might not have my match hours today.
But he did think that a lot of her falling
asleep or all that stuff was more about the cankiller,
and a lot of their friends did say Robert Oppenheimer
is pretty ambivalent about Kitty's drinking. Didn't seem to find
it to be a problem. So, but every portrayal of

(01:09:41):
Kitty is as a drunk, so it was a big
part of her characteristic, at least on the outside for
most people, that she was drinking fit too much.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
Yeah, okay, so we're well over the hour mark at
this point. So we've been having a great time learning
about these women that Robert Oppenheimer got with. Definitely, I
think arguable that they also changed the course of history
through their involvement. Sure, I think so whole event that
really changed everything. So, but there's more to tell, and

(01:10:12):
it's too much. It's too much once at once, right,
it's too much. And also, as we said at the
beginning of the episode, I personally think that the rest
of the story, we're gonna be referencing stuff that does
kind of come as a surprise in the third act
of the movie because we're, you know, later into his
life here, and I was so just kind of shocked

(01:10:36):
by some of those moments in the movie that, you know,
I think it's better to see it first. Yeah, again,
if you're a person who cares about that kind of stuff.
I'm a sensitive spoiler boy, so that gets to me.
But there is definitely more to touch on. You've got
another twenty minutes or so worth of story for Oppenheimer
and then the rest of part two, and we're dropping

(01:10:57):
these both at the same time, so you can go
right into it if you want. We're going to give
our I don't I don't think review is the right word.
So much is just like our thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Yeah. On Oppenheimer and Barbie, that's right, right, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Yeah, of course, the two movies that every actor in
Hollywood was in.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Seriously, oh my god, everyone you've ever heard of in
these two movies or episode six of The.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
Bear Bears, the rest of them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
If you weren't on any one of those three projects,
somebody lost your numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
Like yeah, it's like how every British actor is in
either Harry Potter, Doctor Who, or Game of Thrones or
down Nabby oh sure, or downt Nabby, all of them really,
and that kept England's actors working for a long time.
And I think the rest of all actors were either
in Oppenheimer Barbie or episode six, season two of the
Bear at.

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
Least they're working.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
Yeah, well we're working too. We got a whole other
episode to bring you. I think it's really fun stuff.
Please stick around, listen up, and let us know what
you think of our little movie pseudo review too, because
we have a We have a great time talking about movies,
we sure do. Yeah, and we will talk your ear
off if you give us the space. So that's what
we did. So go ahead, hop on over to episode

(01:12:10):
two right now, finish up Oppenheimer's story and as always,
let us know what your thought.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Yeah, you know, we always love to hear from you, guys.
We love your suggestions. We love your random thoughts about
stupid things we said, or about the story overall, or whatever.
So reach out. Our email is redic Romance at gmail
dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
That's right. You can find us on Instagram. I'm at
o Grade, It's Eli.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
I'm at Dianamite Boom, and the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Show is at redict Romance.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
And you are awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
You sure are pop over for popover for episode two
and we'll catch it at that one.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
I love you, Bye, Solong friends, It's time to go.
Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends, nabors,
uncles to listen to a show Ridiculous Romance