August 13, 2026 • 46 mins
Robert Maxwell was a lot of things, publisher, mogul, spy, politician, crook. But was he murdered when he fell from his yacht?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know, the great Man version of History edition.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, great Man, Except this is an interesting episode because
Robert Maxwell was kind of a horrible person in a
lot of ways. He achieved a lot of things, he
also did a lot of terrible things, so it was interesting.
I didn't know much about this guy at all, and
I can't remember if I heard about him because he's
(00:46):
the father of Glaine.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Maxwell, but which makes him even worse.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, yeah, I mean yeah, I'm not sure where this
came from though, because this one was like a year
and a half ago. That we wreck was the article,
and it had just been gathering dust, and so we
dusted it off and now we're going to talk about
this jerk.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, great Man. History, by the way, is it's a
way of interpreting history through the leader's political and social
military Leaders like the people who make history happen, rather
than society or individual people. The problem is is that
those great men usually are not great people, like personally speaking,
(01:31):
And this is a really good example He was revered
because he was super rich, but he was also, I
have to say, a very interesting person. I think he
was a big liar in a lot of ways, but
stuff that he claimed that could be proven was still
pretty nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, for sure. I mean he was just the broadest overview.
He was a tycoon, he was a bully, he escaped
Nazi German and he's rath. He was a decorated British soldier.
He was a member of parliament. He was also a
crook who stole from the pensions of companies he started,
(02:10):
and a lot of like terrible business dealings. It sounds
like it was a pretty awful husband and father at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well there's the episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well let's talk about him. He was born Jan Ludwig
Hoch in nineteen twenty three and Slatvignon, which was Czechoslovaki
at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from
a you know, he was very poor, He was raised
very poors from a big family. His father seems like
(02:39):
it was a pretty awful guy too, So you know,
behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know, it's intergenerational.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that's the way it generally works.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah. So, and that's why I never had kids.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Oh no, so yeah, he said at.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
One point, I was never young. I never had that privilege.
And it was basically because his family was so poverty
stricken and his father was such a jerk that he
wasn't He didn't have much of a childhood, but he
did remember that he loved his mother like his whole
life from childhood on, and he would use her as
an example of what his children needed to aspire to.
(03:21):
You know, this woman who could handle raising all these
kids in these terrible conditions and still you know, be beloved.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sure, I mean suffered from hunger as a child and
had some disordered eating as an adult and that sort
of gorging himself on food. And his wife, his later wife, Betty,
would say that, you know, she thinks that all came
back from the hunger that he had as a child. Yeah.
He was Jewish. He was from a Jewish family, and
like I mentioned earlier, he managed to escape the god
(03:53):
I think kind of the only member of his family
to escape the Nazis in March of nineteen thirty nine
when they invaded Czechoslovakia, cutting off his sidelocks and like
getting the heck out of there, and for a lot
of his adult life, like I don't know if he
denied it, but never came forward as being Jewish, like
(04:14):
changing his name and everything.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, he was low key Jewish for a lot of
his life until later on when he was talked into
I guess coming out. I don't know what you would
call it in that sense. Yeah, but you said that
he escaped the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he definitely did,
but very quickly he turned right around and went back
to join the Hungarian underground in Budapest, and he was
(04:41):
essentially trying to move, like people escaping like him, further
on to safety because Hungary still wasn't you know, safety,
It was better than being in Czechoslovakia, but he still
needed to keep moving and he was going to help people.
And almost immediately he was captured and and tortured as
a member of the Czech resistance, which is not what
(05:03):
you wanted the Nazis to consider you.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
No, apparently there was going to be no trial at all,
and then the French embassy stepped in and because he
had a planned execution and arrange what seems to be
like a sham of a trial and he ended up escaping,
escaping like on the way to prison. So you know, again,
a lot of this stuff is from his authorized biography
(05:29):
and stories he told, some of which was no doubt
like embellished. Probably, so he seems like one of those
guys that would like kind of pump up a story
about himself.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, yeah, no, agreed, He's definitely that type for sure. Yeah,
but he escaped, like you said, literally with his life.
He escaped with his life because he would almost certainly
have been executed, and he joined the Foreign Legion in
France and they sent him to England because France was
(06:02):
overtaken by the Nazis as well, and in England he
basically found a new home. He signed up for the
British Army. He was there when Normandy was stormed, and
he also displayed like real actual valor, both valor and ruthlessness.
Kyle helped us with this, and Kyle really loved to
(06:23):
focus on ruthlessness, which in these cases is a synonym
for war crimes. Cut and dried war crimes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, for sure, he really tried to remake himself as
a British guy like pretty successfully, Like I said, he
changed his name a couple of times, eventually landing on
Ian Robert Maxwell, and like taught himself English, apparently would
listen to churchill speeches, so he would get that sort
of that grand English accent that Churchill had. Sure, but yeah,
(06:55):
he you know, flat out admitted to he had a
real knack for like going undercover and doing like special
ops and stuff, but also, like you said, disobeying orders
and being pretty ruthless. Like he like admitted to his
wife in a letter that he like executed more than
one like unarmed German person, including a mayor in Germany.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, civilian even Yeah. Yeah, and again that's a war crime,
and he would later be investigated for it, but they
were not able to find anyone who could corroborate that
any witness said yes I saw him shoot that mayor,
or yes I saw him shoot those unarmed troops who surrendered,
So they had to close the case. So is that
(07:37):
a case of him just pumping up his own legend again?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, you know, but again the stuff that can be
verified is kind of amazing. Like he did work for
the British intelligence after the war. He ended up being
recruited by six it's six, right, yeah. Six. He could
speak English, German, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian by
(08:04):
the end of the war, so he was extremely valuable
post war while Europe was being divvied up and being
rebuilt and people were having to interact with all these
other countries. And he'd also changed his identity four times
before then too.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, but like you said, he legit achieved in the
armed forces. He worked his way up eventually to become
a second lieutenant in the Queen's Royal Regiment and had
a very apparently daring rescue for a trapped Allied platoon
in the Netherlands and received a military cross, like a
Distinguished Service Military Cross. So again, it's sort of a
(08:43):
conundrum with this guy because he did learn all those languages,
and he was a very valuable person for I six
and did some spy work. But there was also rumors
over the years that he was and we'll get into
this a little bit more, but like he spiled he spied
for the Soviet Union, or that he spied for Israel's.
I don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
No, but it is the more you know about him,
the easier it is to believe that that's quite possible,
you know, for sure. So he made it through the
war quite successfully. He was stationed in Berlin, I think
at the end of it he was interviewing German prisoners
of war to get as much intelligence out of them
as possible. And so while there he was also in
(09:28):
the chaos of all of this, of Europe being devastated
and just beginning to rebuild. There's a lot of money
to be made. It's like in that Spike Lee movie
The Inside Man.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yea, that and that's like one of the better later
Spike Lee is I know.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, it's one of the better, like just suspense movies too.
It's really well done. Great movie, please see it. But anyway,
in one part, Christopher Plumber says, when there's blood on
the street, by real estate, and that was essentially what
Europe was like at this time. And Robert Maxwell was
exactly the kind of person to buy real estate when
(10:06):
there was blood on the street. So he was making
all sorts of money on the side, just taking advantage
of the desperation of the people who he was interacting with.
And in addition, like other business opportunities came up and
improbably if you ask me, he ended up in the
scientific publishing world, Yeah, and became essentially like a scientific
publishing magnate in the coming decades.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah. So while he was in Berlin, he was working
with dere Telegraph and that paper was owned by Springer
Verlog to two words with a dash in the middle.
I think Verlog was a big academic publisher, which is
kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this.
He met the publisher Ferdinand Springer, and he learned that
(10:51):
there were like, you know, more than sixty thousand books
and journals like stockpiled in a warehouse and they had
been you know, like away from public view since nineteen
thirty nine, like pre war. And so his wheels started
turning on how he can make some money. And then,
along with his eventual business partner, this guy named Paul
(11:11):
Rosebaud started a company I guess bought his way into
a company called Butterworth Springer, which was rebranded Pergamon Press,
and they got a deal with Springer Verlog to get
these books, like these scientific textbooks out into the world.
And he got six to finance this deal.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah. Yeah, they basically paid for three hundred tons. Yeah,
three hundred tons of books and journals to be shipped
to London so that they could be translated and then
published for money, like you said. And they also he said,
I want to buy some shares in the company too,
So they gave him twenty five thousand pounds and I
did some back of the envelope work.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh boy, you're not gonna call it maths, are you?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
No? I wouldn't even dare. But that is about eight
hundred and eighty five thousand US dollars today.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, well, how did he
get I six? Like why would they invest secretly invest
in something like this, I think he well, you know
everything we're about to say, the guy take a base value.
But one thing he was really good at was like
he could be very charming. He was kind of a
jekyline hide from what I saw, So as awful as
he could be, he could also be super charming and
(12:29):
like work his way into a room or work his
way into a deal. And I think that's what he
did with I six, when he basically was like, hey,
having all these German scientific research books is good. It's
like an asset to US an intelligence asset, maybe a
propaganda tool, and m I six bought it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, so we'll put his role in academic publishing to
the side, but just suffice to say that the current
state of affairs where journals determine what science has conducted,
and the scientific community as a whole has kind of
shied away or moved away from doing its job the
way it should be and instead conducting experiments and studies
(13:11):
that will get published. Their eye popping that actually came
from Robert Maxwell and the way that he changed the industry.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There's a really good long form Guardian article from twenty
seventeen called is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing
Bad for science? And you can guess that the answer
is yes. But it talks a lot about this and
other stuff too. But it's a good article. I'd say
go read that if you're interested.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
All right, we'll check it out. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, I'll go read the article right now. We'll
be back in what twenty minutes or so?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
All right, be right back.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So one of the things about Maxwell was he when
he got into scientific publishing, he really went like full
bore into it, and his whole jam with business was
like buy one thing and then use it to buy buy,
buy another thing, start another thing. Like basically get into
one industry and just mushroom everywhere. You can't because the
(14:28):
more stuff you have, the more money you can soak
up in that industry or that sector. Right. So he
bought another publisher, Simpkin Marshall, And this is a really
good demonstration of his business techniques. He bought it with
the loan from a business partner. The business partner came
back and was like, Hey, how's Simpkin Marshall doing? And
(14:50):
Maxwell was like, no, I'm not, I'm not at liberty
to say. The guy found out that the company was
severely in debt and he had borrowed. Maxwell had borrowed
a ton of money against the company's credit. Yeah, and
then sold off all the assets and kept the money
for himself. And this publishing house, which had been around
(15:12):
for more than a century went under thanks to Robert
Maxwell raiding it. And it was essentially proto private equity
like move that he did. That's what private equity does, Chuck.
Have you been to Dunkin Donuts lately?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Uh? No, I don't go there.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, I don't normally either, but I went and got
a coffee and I walked in and I was like, God,
this place is just it's like the like a death
march in here. This is awful, like every like the
employees hated their life, Like stuff was broken, like a
serve your self machine was there next to the cash register.
It was just terrible. And I was like, I'll bet
(15:50):
private equity owns this now, and sure enough two years
ago private equity brow Yep. They do it like anytime
you are in like you work with a business or
you like a store or something like that, and it
suddenly goes downhill. Go online and search that business in
private equity, and I guarantee you private equity got involved,
and it's just running it into the ground because they
(16:11):
don't care.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So he was doing something like this in the nineteen fifties,
which is crazy, and it seemed like, you know, a
lot of time. He was definitely not afraid to burn
bridges because apparently he didn't even repay that loan to
the guy who loaned him the money. For Simpkin Marshall right,
there was a rag called the Private Eye, or called
(16:32):
Private Eye that called him the bouncing check as in Czechoslovakian.
So he definitely had a reputation of you know, just
doing what he could by hooker crook to get something
done and then like walking away and leaving people penniless
behind him. That Springer ver Loog who got him that
first deal. They ended up severing contact with him in
nineteen fifty eight Pergamon Press he lost control of would
(16:56):
eventually take it back, but during a seventy one Board
of Trade inquiry they said he was They declared he
was unfit to run a public company. So, like his
reputation was well known even back then.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, I mean that's a big deal when the government
says you you can't be a CEO. Sorry they Yeah,
like the board says you can. We're saying you cannot
because you are that untrustworthy.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And later in life, well not that much later, he
would find an enemy, a grave enemy, in the nineteen
sixties with a guy, an Australian named Rupert Murdoch. So
we talked about Murdoch in our episode on the on
News on the news.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Cycle twenty four hour cable news.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, twenty four hour cable news. So everyone knows who
Rupert Murdoch is if Fox News. He and Maxwell were
grave enemies, and it seems like Maxwell was pretty much
obsessed with trying to outdo him, Like anytime he would
go to buy a newspaper, Murdock seemed to be right
there in front of him buying it, and he ended
up buying the left wing. Maxwell did the left wing
(18:02):
Daily Mirror just to counter Murdoch's right wing buys. Like
by all accounts, Maxwell was never even though he would
eventually be in Parliament as the Labor Party, like he
said that he was conservative, but he wasn't part of
the Conservative establishment, so he would just be like, all right,
part of the Labor Party, or I'll buy this left
wing newspaper.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean it just made sense financially, so you know,
he could be whatever whatever he needed to be. I
guess in that sense, it kind of demonstrates that to me,
I was reading about Rupert Murdoch in him their rivalry,
and apparently it was one of those rivalries like where
(18:45):
it meant everything to Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch was
like who oh, yeah, I remember him whatever, like and
that just drove Robert Maxwell crazier and crazier and just
made him want to, you know, compete with Rupert Murdoch.
Like Rupert Murdoch was really competing and he would just
buy paper after paper, like they would be directly competing
(19:06):
trying to buy a newspaper. But Murdoch most of the
time won. And he said later on that his impression
of Robert Maxwell is that he was a total buffoon, really,
like he was just this boastful guy who wanted to
win but would get in his own way in the
process of winning. That was kind of what his personality
(19:29):
was like.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And by kind of, I mean yeah Murdoch. They talked
about the Max factor, a play on the Uh. Was
that like a makeup or something.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Uh, yeah, I think there's like a makeup line.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, max factor, But they would use that as not
a compliment, Like the max factor wasn't like, hey, this
guy's great, he can go in and close deals. It
was more like he loses out on deals because of
the Max factor because no one wants to deal with
this guy exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah. I mean like people got in bed with him
be because they had no choice. He had just bought
their company. He was now their boss. People didn't get
into bed or business. I guess I should probably say
with him because they liked him or they wanted to
they they were usually they just found themselves in the
unfortunate situation of having to work closely with him.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, for sure. But he bought the Daily Mirror in
eighty four, he started the London Daily News in eighty seven.
He started another paper that was sort of what I
understand is like a European USA today, called European in
nineteen ninety. So he's, you know, he's launching all these
newspapers and then eventually he says, all right, I need
(20:39):
to look toward the States and ends up buying McMillan
US and nineteen eighty eight for two point six billion
dollars money in nineteen eighty eight, oh totally, and something
called the Official Aviation Guide in for seven hundred and
fifty million.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Dollars, which again that's a crazy amount of money in
nineteen eighty eight. So he was this spending spree, especially
in the US where he's trying to take on Murdoch again.
I think Murdoch had already bought The New York Post
by this time. It was a lot like the USSR
being driven to extinction by spending, the US spending having
(21:19):
to keep up with spending. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch would go
do something, and now he was in the United States,
so now Robert Maxwell had to do it, and Robert
Maxwell had to outdo him. So he started spending money
he didn't have and was expanding his empire, and his
empire started to lose its foundation, it started to crumble
financially because of him trying to keep up.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Essentially, Yeah, that's a great analogy. Actually, in February ninety one,
he bought the New York Daily News, and that's one
where Murdoch kind of rubbed it in his face because
as soon as Maxwell bought it, he was like, all right,
the publisher needs to call Rupert Murdoch and tell him
that Robert Maxwell just bought the New York Daily News.
And apparently Murdoch like laughed at this and said, yeah,
(22:01):
thank Bob for the courtesy of that, like basically like
I didn't want that ate like failing paper anyway.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Sure, there's one other thing that he very famously lost
out on, and we must have talked about him in
our episode on Tetris. The Wild History of Tetris. Oh yeah,
two twenty twenty four. I think it's how weird people
put it. He owned Mirrorsoft at the time, and mirror
Soft had Tetris in their hands and just through a
(22:29):
series of miscommunications and bad deals, lost it. And had
they had Tetris, who knows what that would be because
they were already a powerhouse in video games, especially in
the UK, And if they had continued owning Tetris, they
might have they might still be around. But because they
lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye
(22:52):
on his reputation as a businessman.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned politics early on in
parliament and that he was a conservative of human in
his heart, but because he wasn't part of that establishment,
he was like, all right, I'll go to the labor
parties and that's what he did. He became a Labor
Party member of Parliament from sixty four to seventy and
he was like, you know, he's one of these politicians
(23:17):
kind of say whatever just to get in there. And
he was like, you know what, I came from a
farm laborer's background and I had no money, so like,
I'm basically a socialist. Even though he was the farthest
thing from that in reality, and was just they called
him the biggest gas bag in the Commons. Like he
was not well liked within the House, the walls of Parliament.
(23:41):
Apparently no one liked working with him. There were a
lot of rumors floating around about various improprieties. There was
one rumor that he sold part of the Palace of
Westminster's wine cellar to an anonymous buyer for like way
less than what it was worth. I didn't see if
that was really true. But the point is no.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
One liked him in Parliament apparently no, And it's believable,
like you could, you wouldn't put it past him.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
That's just his reputation, right, Yeah, but I mean he
won election and re election.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah. Apparently right before his election he was he was
arrested shaving the day before while he was driving ninety miles.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
An hour, shaving while driving. Yeah, an s UI or no,
I guess it would be DUS no, no DWS driving
while shaving.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Goo. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
God, it took me a while.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Should we take a break and then come back and
talk about that max factor?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Okay, we're going to do that guys.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
All right, more promise of talking about the max factor,
which was not a compliment for this guy. I mentioned
early on that he was a bit of a bully.
Apparently he was well known for just sort of his
atrocious behavior. There was a Daily Mirror editor named Roy
Greensdale who said when they were first met at this restaurant,
he walked in Maxwell and like just like swept everything
(25:27):
off the table, all the cutlery, saying like it wasn't
laid out correctly. And apparently he had done that more
than once. He would bring his kids into work and
like belittle and lecture the staff, like to impress his kids.
He would file fire people while they were on vacation.
He would leave the door to this bathroom open. Apparently
(25:49):
he would urinate off the top of the building. Just
real boorish behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah. At the same time, though, he's like cultivating this
English gentleman persona, which was very much encapsulated by his accent.
He didn't sound anything like someone who was born and
raised in Czechoslovakia, not at all. No, he was like,
I mean, being elected as a member of parliament, it's
(26:16):
pretty good for your reputation. So like we know, so
much about him now and like what he did throughout
his life, his image now is not what his image
was when he was, you know, alive and working and
working in Parliament and doing all that stuff. I think
(26:37):
people who worked closely with them knew what he was like,
but I think in general he was just kind of
this viewed as this larger than life personality by the
public who knew about him.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, I think so. But yeah, he was a blowhart.
He would do things like if someone walked into his office,
he would say, like, give me the White House on
the phone, and then apparently just have like a fake
conversation on the telephone to the White House.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That's like, that's what insane people do.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, I mean I only do that if I'm trying
to avoid somebody in public.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Sure, did you even make the dialing sound like pee
poop poop poop?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Py? I do? I got a call? Sorry. He was
not a good father and husband. Like I mentioned earlier.
He lived in this huge mansion called Headington Hill Hall,
which was at least from the Oxford City Council and
apparently was like he would at dinner time he would
assign his children topics that they had to like impress
(27:35):
him with and he would judge them. Apparently there was
physical abuse. He cheated on his wife like time and
time again. His wife described him as as bullying, but
would also take up for him at times.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You know, yeah, she said the bar pretty low. She
said he was he was no degenerate monster, right. He
was also famous for he gave her six rules for
basically getting along in a lasting partnership. And it depends
on how you look at it. And you could look
(28:11):
at it like he is a domineering bully, who was
you know making his wife adhere to these rules that
he was laying down. But if you if you read
all the rules, it's actually these are actually pretty good
sensible rules for for maintaining a partnership that if both
people honor it, then then you've got something good. If
(28:31):
you if it's just one person, then you've got a problem.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, I got the impression it was, here are your
six rules that you need to do to stay married
to me.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it past him.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean, we'll go over them real quick. But
in the context of this is what you need to
do and not this is what I pledged to do
for you, right. Number one, don't nag because I love
that's his number one. Number two, don't criticize unduly. Number three,
give honest appreciation. Number four paid little attentions. Sweet to
(29:06):
me is what he was saying. Number five, be courteous
to me. And then number six had the utmost confidence
in yourself in me.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, I mean, really, if two people come at a
relationship like that, look observing those six I guess rules
or guidelines or whatever. I think that's kind of good.
But yes, I'm quite sure you're right that. He was like,
here's what you need to do for me.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And he used it against her too. He said, like,
don't nag me about me doing these rules. That's rule
number one.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's right, that's right. You don't talk about fight club.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He got her with the legal mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
He had, you know, quite a few kids. He lost,
very sadly a couple of them. He lost a daughter, Karein,
of leukemia at age three, and they had a son
named Michael that died at age twenty one after being
in a coma after a car crash. Like the little
apple of his eye was young Gallaine. He named his
(30:05):
yacht after her Lady Gallaine. And even though she had
a hard time impressing him at times, it seems like.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, supposedly she put herself on his radar at age
three when she went and presented herself in front of
her mom and said, Mommy, I exist, Yeah, as a
three year old, And I guess that really captured Robert
Maxwell's attention, and from that point on he was She
was very clearly his favorite. Yeah. But yeah, even still
(30:34):
I don't think like it seems like he was. He
would still berate her at the drop of a hat
or something like that. He just maybe did it slightly
less than he did to others, or maybe he didn't
beat her. I'm not sure, but everyone knew that she
was the favorite. Although when it came to business, it
was his two sons that he brought into business with him,
not his daughter, not his wife. And when he died,
(30:58):
his philosophy was that you didn't leave your estate to
a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Gallen, he
didn't leave anything to his wife. He left it all
to his sons. In this case, that turned out to
be quite yeah, quite a bit of baggage. Not not
anything good.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, we'll get to that. So he died under shady circumstances.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about his death
and then sort of everything that was happening to him
at that time, which leads people to speculate like was
it suicide, was it murder, or was it an accident?
But was on November well, he did have the max factor.
(31:39):
On November fifth, nineteen ninety one, when he was sixty eight,
he fell to his death from his yacht, his fifteen
million pound Lady Gallaine. And he had earlier that year
he had sailed into Manhattan to buy the New York
Daily News. That's what I mentioned was nineteen ninety one,
and then in the fall he sort of splur the
moment trip to the Canary Islands, where looking back, crew
(32:03):
members were like, it was weird and that he showed
it by himself, which was unusual, didn't have like his
butler or his like people like his caretakers. And they
said he also seemed like in really good spirits, which
was sort of unusual. And he didn't work while he
was on board, which was super unusual.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, and so he was essentially getting away from his world,
collapsing in on him. Yeah, like he said that he
needed to go do something, I think, but there was
no one who was fooled. Like he was just trying
to get away from things. That's especially kind of signaled
by the fact that he didn't work. Apparently there was
no line between his private life and his business life,
(32:42):
so he was always working.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Right, Yeah. And you know when you were talking about
business collapsing, like you know, financial failures, but also sort
of his his schemes, like you know, the walls closing
in on his schemes. Like you mentioned, he was basically
raiding his companies for profit a lot of the times
from the pension funds. I think it ended up being
close to close to five hundred million pounds from pension funds.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You do not do that, man, No.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
And he was at the same time he was selling pergamon,
he was secretly buying shares in his companies to prop
up stock prices, like while he was trying to rid
himself of these things.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, he was. He was in a really bad spot
because a bunch of factors basically came together to have
all of his creditors basically call in all his debts
at once, right, Yeah, And he had used those pension
funds as collateral, which is that's on Lehman Brothers, that's
on Goldman Sachs, like, you should not take pension funds
(33:46):
as collateral, even if and he was fully legally in
charge of those pension funds, so he legally could do that,
but just being a banker like that and knowing the
look that the optics of being like, yep, give us
those pension fund because we're calling in a debt you
can't repay. Of course, that's just a terrible collateral to take.
That's neither here nor there as far as Robert Maxwell's concerned.
(34:09):
The other bankers though that held shares in his companies.
They were threatening to basically say, we're gonna sell these
shares that you gave us as collateral. We're gonna dump
them on the market all at once, and that's gonna
drive your stock prices down even further, which is gonna
mean you have even less money to repay us. Yeah,
so he's getting it from every which way. And then
(34:30):
not to mention, they didn't know about the pension rating
until after he was debt, so there was it was
not like people were beating the drum that anticipation was
hanging over him as well.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, for sure, he you know, seemed to be in
a pretty paranoid state. He had his his offices and
businesses bugged. Apparently he had his own house bugged, so
you could hear what his family was saying about him nuts.
And then there was this other sort of wall closing
in on him, and that there were allegations that he
was a spy for Israel. He had invested at one point,
(35:05):
I think about two hundred and fifty million pounds in
just various Israeli companies. And in nineteen ninety one there
was a guy claiming to be a former intelligence officer
for Israel name Ari Ben Minashi who told the News
that Maxwell and one of his editors that was working
(35:27):
with him at one of his papers were Israeli agents.
And apparently in nineteen eighty six there was a nuclear
scientist named Mordecai Venunu who went to London, as I
guess is like a whistleblower saying that, like, there's a
dangerous nuclear arms program happening in Israel, and he was
going to blow the lid off of it and sell
(35:47):
it to the Sunday Times, and Maxwell convinced him to
sell it to him instead to the Mirror. He ends
up sending that information to Israel as supposedly like to
fact check it and confirm it, but he ended up
stiffing Venunu for the money and never ran the story.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, that's a technique that billionaire tyrants who own news
organs too. They'll it's like catch and catch and kill,
catch and kill. Yeah, or you buy the story, you
buy the exclusive rights to the story, and then you
don't publish it. You just sit on it to keep
the public from knowing about it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, I mean, that's what happened in this country. Remember,
happens a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's really messed up.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
And as far as Venunu, he was later drugged and
kidnapped and jailed for eighteen years in Israel.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Right, So Maxwell was like, I'm not an Israeli spy.
This is all just bs. And then Seymour Hirsch flew
in with a book and in the book it wasn't
just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book, and
Seymour Hirsch was like, yeah, that's all true. Seymour Hirsch
is one of the most indisputable journalists of all time.
(36:57):
If he says something is true, he has done so
much research on it that he's he'll stand behind it
every time, and most of the time it is, if
not every time, it's quite true. So he said that, yes,
this this guy was in Israeli spy all this time,
that he was a businessman too, and it got brought
up in parliament. In Great Britain, their libel laws are
(37:20):
very heavy against the papers, and for good reason, so
the papers tend to kind of stay in line about
even talking about rumors like that. But once it was
brought up in parliament, now the papers could report on parliament,
mentioning it and dig into it, and they could report
on it without any fear of libel. So this is
going on at the same time too.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
All right, So yeah, walls are closing in and you know, financially, professionally, politically,
I guess, and this you know, whole spy allegation business.
So he falls off this yacht. Supposedly his last words
at four forty five am were complaining to the bridge
crew of out how the temperature in his cabin and
(38:03):
apparently this guy like peeing off the things, because apparently
he went to pee off the back of the boat,
which they said was like a normal thing for him
to do, and then fell over a low rail and this,
you know, this was a not the yacht where you're
falling from like six stories up. It's like a you know,
it was a yacht, but it wasn't like he was
falling from one hundred feet or something like that, so
(38:26):
it was like a low fall. And pathologists, like, no
one's ever agreed on what happened to him. Pathologists failed
to agree on anything besides he drowned. Some people said
he had a heart attack first. Some said that no,
he actually tore his arm muscles, so he was clearly
trying to hold on, so it wasn't suicide. They ended
(38:47):
up finding his naked body floating about fifteen miles away,
I think maybe the next in the next day or two,
and the whole thing was like, did he fall, did
he jump? Or is it possible he was murdered? Has
been sort of the question since then.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, And I think the reason why he was he
drowned was because the ship was cruising at the time,
so without anyone knowing that he'd fallen over, he was
in the middle of nowhere by the time that that
ship realized that he was gone hours later. Right, Yeah,
so let's start with these, Chuck, there's let's start with suicide.
(39:23):
You said, I think what kind of convinces most people
is he clearly on his way down, tried to grab
onto the rail and pulled his his tore the muscles
on his side. I can barely say it. It just
sounds so painful. So he wanted to live, right, And
also it wasn't a high jump in the first place,
so suicide probably wasn't it. Some people who who some
(39:46):
of his biographies even were like, he would not have
done well with all the public attention that was about
to be unleashed on him. His reputation was about to
be completely ruined. Financially, he was about to be completely ruined.
So yes, suicide makes sense. But again, that torn arm
muscles basically say now that that's just not what this was.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, his family has always said
it was an accident. Just I think beyond the arm muscles,
just I think they're knowing him. I think his wife
said it just wasn't in his character. They thought he
was just the kind of guy that would never give up,
even facing all of this stuff. He would still like
try and fight his way or buy his way or
(40:28):
get loans to get out of this stuff. Most of
his family, I think, in closest people, were convinced it
was just an accident. There was one pathologist who argued
against suicide because of the arm thing for sure, or
the fact that he was naked. That seemed a little
strange I think to them as well.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So accident seems pretty pretty prominent, right, Yeah, there's also assassination.
Remember Israel was supposedly being outed as having used him
as a spy for years and years and years. That
wasn't enough to fuel that rumor of Israel killing him.
(41:11):
What the rumor was is that he had asked Israel
for a loan and Israel said no, and he said, well,
you know what, I'm going to go tell everybody about
me being a spy for you. And they were like, no, not,
We're going to rub you out. That's basically what when
people say he was murdered, that's usually what they point to.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, and there was some the initial pathologists I think
had speculated that his body was dead longer than it
was in the water, So that kind of spurred a
little bit of speculation about murder, but apparently the crew
of the Lady Glaine was like, no one was on board,
that wasn't authorized. No one could have climbed aboard that
(41:52):
we wouldn't have known about. Ken Lennox was a guy
who knew him, said he like saw the corpse and
it wasn't you know, it didn't have like any markings
of struggle or gunshot or throat cut or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Right. There's also a theory that he faked his death,
which is quite possible, but he was pretty recognizable, so
it would have been difficult for him to start a
new life somewhere without you know, completely changing his face
at least in his voice.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, And I think that's one of those things where,
like they said, well he had mentioned it before. I
think he was one of those guys that would just
like muse about something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah. And if you listener were just like fake your death,
I'd love to hear more about that. Well, we did
an episode on faking your death. You can go look
up too.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Oh. God, that was early on, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
No, that was like a year or two ago.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh, wasn't what am I thinking of? Then?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Oh man, that was a long time.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
There was the worst way to die. That's probably what
you're thinking of.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Oh maybe. So either way, you mentioned earlier that he
sort of did his wife and daughter of favor by
not leaving them the business because the business was I
think it was the largest may still be the largest
bankruptcy in Britain's history. Yeah, debts of like well over
four hundred million pounds that they were initially on the
(43:16):
hook for. They were I think prosecuted for fraud as
well in nineteen ninety six, but they both successfully defended
themselves and the pensioneers were eventually bailed out by public
funds apparently. Yeah, they got their money back.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
They got like half, like basically fifty cents on the dollar.
So they still lost out, but at least they weren't
just completely screwed, which is cool the UK to swoop
in and do that, you know, it was that means
everybody in Great Britain chipped in, so those people wouldn't
just completely lose their pension. That's pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So yeah, before before Gallaine Maxwell came along and tarnished
her family's reputation, it had already been well tarnished by
the time that rolled around, Like her father's death was
like this is like his reputation just completely went downhill?
How about that? Yeah, totally, Yeah, Gallaine Maxwell, that's a
(44:13):
whole other episode if you.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Ask me, oh, man, are we gonna do that one
day someday?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Okay, okay, if you want to know more about Robert Maxwell.
In the meantime, there's all sorts of interesting articles about
him too. There's documentaries. The House of Maxwell I think
was a good BBC one from a few years ago.
And since I ended this like an old school how
stuff works episode, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
This is about the tobacco settlements episode. Hey, guys, I
wanted to provide some more info about one of the
points of confusion you had. I worked for years doing
health policy work for the Minnesota House, and this source
of funds was a hot topic as we were discussing
other policies to target the rise in youth tobacco use. Josh,
you were asked about how the settlements worked with regard
to tobacco companies paying in perpetuity while also having a
(45:04):
specific settlement amount. For background, Minnesota agreed to about six
point five billion in settlement funds. We were not part
of the Master settlement. It's actually pretty simple. That six
point five billion dollar number was an estimate of the
settlement's value at the time of the settlement, not a
cap on how much companies would pay.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
So Minnesota received a series of one time payments targeted
at specific tobacco cestation in public health uses, but we
also receive an annual payment each year that can be
used for basically whatever the state wants. These annual payments
are the ongoing payments that are based on a formula
around tobacco sales and profitability that you touched on in
the episode. In Minnesota, these annual payments are about one
(45:43):
hundred and fifty million dollars each year, and when counting
everything the state has gotten from the tobacco company so far,
we've received something like five point seven billions so far.
Hope it provides some clarity. And that is from Jeremiah
wingstet Man.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
That's so awesome. I love hearing from pepeople who are there.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, you know, and who actually know the stuff. Yeah,
and we can always count on that all.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, that's so cool. And also big ups to Minnesota
because they were the ones who, as part of the settlement,
required the tobacco companies to make their documents public.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thanks a lot, Jeremiah. If you were there, no matter
what we were talking about, we want to hear from you.
And even if you weren't, that's fine too. We always
like to hear a hello from our listeners. You can
send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know, the great Man version of History edition.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, great Man, Except this is an interesting episode because
Robert Maxwell was kind of a horrible person in a
lot of ways. He achieved a lot of things, he
also did a lot of terrible things, so it was interesting.
I didn't know much about this guy at all, and
I can't remember if I heard about him because he's
(00:46):
the father of Glaine.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Maxwell, but which makes him even worse.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, yeah, I mean yeah, I'm not sure where this
came from though, because this one was like a year
and a half ago. That we wreck was the article,
and it had just been gathering dust, and so we
dusted it off and now we're going to talk about
this jerk.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, great Man. History, by the way, is it's a
way of interpreting history through the leader's political and social
military Leaders like the people who make history happen, rather
than society or individual people. The problem is is that
those great men usually are not great people, like personally speaking,
(01:31):
And this is a really good example He was revered
because he was super rich, but he was also, I
have to say, a very interesting person. I think he
was a big liar in a lot of ways, but
stuff that he claimed that could be proven was still
pretty nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, for sure. I mean he was just the broadest overview.
He was a tycoon, he was a bully, he escaped
Nazi German and he's rath. He was a decorated British soldier.
He was a member of parliament. He was also a
crook who stole from the pensions of companies he started,
(02:10):
and a lot of like terrible business dealings. It sounds
like it was a pretty awful husband and father at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well there's the episode.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well let's talk about him. He was born Jan Ludwig
Hoch in nineteen twenty three and Slatvignon, which was Czechoslovaki
at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from
a you know, he was very poor, He was raised
very poors from a big family. His father seems like
(02:39):
it was a pretty awful guy too, So you know,
behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know, it's intergenerational.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that's the way it generally works.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah. So, and that's why I never had kids.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Oh no, so yeah, he said at.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
One point, I was never young. I never had that privilege.
And it was basically because his family was so poverty
stricken and his father was such a jerk that he
wasn't He didn't have much of a childhood, but he
did remember that he loved his mother like his whole
life from childhood on, and he would use her as
an example of what his children needed to aspire to.
(03:21):
You know, this woman who could handle raising all these
kids in these terrible conditions and still you know, be beloved.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Sure, I mean suffered from hunger as a child and
had some disordered eating as an adult and that sort
of gorging himself on food. And his wife, his later wife, Betty,
would say that, you know, she thinks that all came
back from the hunger that he had as a child. Yeah.
He was Jewish. He was from a Jewish family, and
like I mentioned earlier, he managed to escape the god
(03:53):
I think kind of the only member of his family
to escape the Nazis in March of nineteen thirty nine
when they invaded Czechoslovakia, cutting off his sidelocks and like
getting the heck out of there, and for a lot
of his adult life, like I don't know if he
denied it, but never came forward as being Jewish, like
(04:14):
changing his name and everything.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, he was low key Jewish for a lot of
his life until later on when he was talked into
I guess coming out. I don't know what you would
call it in that sense. Yeah, but you said that
he escaped the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he definitely did,
but very quickly he turned right around and went back
to join the Hungarian underground in Budapest, and he was
(04:41):
essentially trying to move, like people escaping like him, further
on to safety because Hungary still wasn't you know, safety,
It was better than being in Czechoslovakia, but he still
needed to keep moving and he was going to help people.
And almost immediately he was captured and and tortured as
a member of the Czech resistance, which is not what
(05:03):
you wanted the Nazis to consider you.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
No, apparently there was going to be no trial at all,
and then the French embassy stepped in and because he
had a planned execution and arrange what seems to be
like a sham of a trial and he ended up escaping,
escaping like on the way to prison. So you know, again,
a lot of this stuff is from his authorized biography
(05:29):
and stories he told, some of which was no doubt
like embellished. Probably, so he seems like one of those
guys that would like kind of pump up a story
about himself.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, yeah, no, agreed, He's definitely that type for sure. Yeah,
but he escaped, like you said, literally with his life.
He escaped with his life because he would almost certainly
have been executed, and he joined the Foreign Legion in
France and they sent him to England because France was
(06:02):
overtaken by the Nazis as well, and in England he
basically found a new home. He signed up for the
British Army. He was there when Normandy was stormed, and
he also displayed like real actual valor, both valor and ruthlessness.
Kyle helped us with this, and Kyle really loved to
(06:23):
focus on ruthlessness, which in these cases is a synonym
for war crimes. Cut and dried war crimes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, for sure, he really tried to remake himself as
a British guy like pretty successfully, Like I said, he
changed his name a couple of times, eventually landing on
Ian Robert Maxwell, and like taught himself English, apparently would
listen to churchill speeches, so he would get that sort
of that grand English accent that Churchill had. Sure, but yeah,
(06:55):
he you know, flat out admitted to he had a
real knack for like going undercover and doing like special
ops and stuff, but also, like you said, disobeying orders
and being pretty ruthless. Like he like admitted to his
wife in a letter that he like executed more than
one like unarmed German person, including a mayor in Germany.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, civilian even Yeah. Yeah, and again that's a war crime,
and he would later be investigated for it, but they
were not able to find anyone who could corroborate that
any witness said yes I saw him shoot that mayor,
or yes I saw him shoot those unarmed troops who surrendered,
So they had to close the case. So is that
(07:37):
a case of him just pumping up his own legend again?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, you know, but again the stuff that can be
verified is kind of amazing. Like he did work for
the British intelligence after the war. He ended up being
recruited by six it's six, right, yeah. Six. He could
speak English, German, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian by
(08:04):
the end of the war, so he was extremely valuable
post war while Europe was being divvied up and being
rebuilt and people were having to interact with all these
other countries. And he'd also changed his identity four times
before then too.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, but like you said, he legit achieved in the
armed forces. He worked his way up eventually to become
a second lieutenant in the Queen's Royal Regiment and had
a very apparently daring rescue for a trapped Allied platoon
in the Netherlands and received a military cross, like a
Distinguished Service Military Cross. So again, it's sort of a
(08:43):
conundrum with this guy because he did learn all those languages,
and he was a very valuable person for I six
and did some spy work. But there was also rumors
over the years that he was and we'll get into
this a little bit more, but like he spiled he spied
for the Soviet Union, or that he spied for Israel's.
I don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
No, but it is the more you know about him,
the easier it is to believe that that's quite possible,
you know, for sure. So he made it through the
war quite successfully. He was stationed in Berlin, I think
at the end of it he was interviewing German prisoners
of war to get as much intelligence out of them
as possible. And so while there he was also in
(09:28):
the chaos of all of this, of Europe being devastated
and just beginning to rebuild. There's a lot of money
to be made. It's like in that Spike Lee movie
The Inside Man.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yea, that and that's like one of the better later
Spike Lee is I know.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, it's one of the better, like just suspense movies too.
It's really well done. Great movie, please see it. But anyway,
in one part, Christopher Plumber says, when there's blood on
the street, by real estate, and that was essentially what
Europe was like at this time. And Robert Maxwell was
exactly the kind of person to buy real estate when
(10:06):
there was blood on the street. So he was making
all sorts of money on the side, just taking advantage
of the desperation of the people who he was interacting with.
And in addition, like other business opportunities came up and
improbably if you ask me, he ended up in the
scientific publishing world, Yeah, and became essentially like a scientific
publishing magnate in the coming decades.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah. So while he was in Berlin, he was working
with dere Telegraph and that paper was owned by Springer
Verlog to two words with a dash in the middle.
I think Verlog was a big academic publisher, which is
kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this.
He met the publisher Ferdinand Springer, and he learned that
(10:51):
there were like, you know, more than sixty thousand books
and journals like stockpiled in a warehouse and they had
been you know, like away from public view since nineteen
thirty nine, like pre war. And so his wheels started
turning on how he can make some money. And then,
along with his eventual business partner, this guy named Paul
(11:11):
Rosebaud started a company I guess bought his way into
a company called Butterworth Springer, which was rebranded Pergamon Press,
and they got a deal with Springer Verlog to get
these books, like these scientific textbooks out into the world.
And he got six to finance this deal.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yeah. Yeah, they basically paid for three hundred tons. Yeah,
three hundred tons of books and journals to be shipped
to London so that they could be translated and then
published for money, like you said. And they also he said,
I want to buy some shares in the company too,
So they gave him twenty five thousand pounds and I
did some back of the envelope work.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh boy, you're not gonna call it maths, are you?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
No? I wouldn't even dare. But that is about eight
hundred and eighty five thousand US dollars today.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, well, how did he
get I six? Like why would they invest secretly invest
in something like this, I think he well, you know
everything we're about to say, the guy take a base value.
But one thing he was really good at was like
he could be very charming. He was kind of a
jekyline hide from what I saw, So as awful as
he could be, he could also be super charming and
(12:29):
like work his way into a room or work his
way into a deal. And I think that's what he
did with I six, when he basically was like, hey,
having all these German scientific research books is good. It's
like an asset to US an intelligence asset, maybe a
propaganda tool, and m I six bought it.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, so we'll put his role in academic publishing to
the side, but just suffice to say that the current
state of affairs where journals determine what science has conducted,
and the scientific community as a whole has kind of
shied away or moved away from doing its job the
way it should be and instead conducting experiments and studies
(13:11):
that will get published. Their eye popping that actually came
from Robert Maxwell and the way that he changed the industry.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Oh interesting.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There's a really good long form Guardian article from twenty
seventeen called is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing
Bad for science? And you can guess that the answer
is yes. But it talks a lot about this and
other stuff too. But it's a good article. I'd say
go read that if you're interested.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
All right, we'll check it out. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, I'll go read the article right now. We'll
be back in what twenty minutes or so?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
All right, be right back.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So one of the things about Maxwell was he when
he got into scientific publishing, he really went like full
bore into it, and his whole jam with business was
like buy one thing and then use it to buy buy,
buy another thing, start another thing. Like basically get into
one industry and just mushroom everywhere. You can't because the
(14:28):
more stuff you have, the more money you can soak
up in that industry or that sector. Right. So he
bought another publisher, Simpkin Marshall, And this is a really
good demonstration of his business techniques. He bought it with
the loan from a business partner. The business partner came
back and was like, Hey, how's Simpkin Marshall doing? And
(14:50):
Maxwell was like, no, I'm not, I'm not at liberty
to say. The guy found out that the company was
severely in debt and he had borrowed. Maxwell had borrowed
a ton of money against the company's credit. Yeah, and
then sold off all the assets and kept the money
for himself. And this publishing house, which had been around
(15:12):
for more than a century went under thanks to Robert
Maxwell raiding it. And it was essentially proto private equity
like move that he did. That's what private equity does, Chuck.
Have you been to Dunkin Donuts lately?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Uh? No, I don't go there.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, I don't normally either, but I went and got
a coffee and I walked in and I was like, God,
this place is just it's like the like a death
march in here. This is awful, like every like the
employees hated their life, Like stuff was broken, like a
serve your self machine was there next to the cash register.
It was just terrible. And I was like, I'll bet
(15:50):
private equity owns this now, and sure enough two years
ago private equity brow Yep. They do it like anytime
you are in like you work with a business or
you like a store or something like that, and it
suddenly goes downhill. Go online and search that business in
private equity, and I guarantee you private equity got involved,
and it's just running it into the ground because they
(16:11):
don't care.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
So he was doing something like this in the nineteen fifties,
which is crazy, and it seemed like, you know, a
lot of time. He was definitely not afraid to burn
bridges because apparently he didn't even repay that loan to
the guy who loaned him the money. For Simpkin Marshall right,
there was a rag called the Private Eye, or called
(16:32):
Private Eye that called him the bouncing check as in Czechoslovakian.
So he definitely had a reputation of you know, just
doing what he could by hooker crook to get something
done and then like walking away and leaving people penniless
behind him. That Springer ver Loog who got him that
first deal. They ended up severing contact with him in
nineteen fifty eight Pergamon Press he lost control of would
(16:56):
eventually take it back, but during a seventy one Board
of Trade inquiry they said he was They declared he
was unfit to run a public company. So, like his
reputation was well known even back then.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, I mean that's a big deal when the government
says you you can't be a CEO. Sorry they Yeah,
like the board says you can. We're saying you cannot
because you are that untrustworthy.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And later in life, well not that much later, he
would find an enemy, a grave enemy, in the nineteen
sixties with a guy, an Australian named Rupert Murdoch. So
we talked about Murdoch in our episode on the on
News on the news.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Cycle twenty four hour cable news.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, twenty four hour cable news. So everyone knows who
Rupert Murdoch is if Fox News. He and Maxwell were
grave enemies, and it seems like Maxwell was pretty much
obsessed with trying to outdo him, Like anytime he would
go to buy a newspaper, Murdock seemed to be right
there in front of him buying it, and he ended
up buying the left wing. Maxwell did the left wing
(18:02):
Daily Mirror just to counter Murdoch's right wing buys. Like
by all accounts, Maxwell was never even though he would
eventually be in Parliament as the Labor Party, like he
said that he was conservative, but he wasn't part of
the Conservative establishment, so he would just be like, all right,
part of the Labor Party, or I'll buy this left
wing newspaper.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean it just made sense financially, so you know,
he could be whatever whatever he needed to be. I
guess in that sense, it kind of demonstrates that to me,
I was reading about Rupert Murdoch in him their rivalry,
and apparently it was one of those rivalries like where
(18:45):
it meant everything to Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch was
like who oh, yeah, I remember him whatever, like and
that just drove Robert Maxwell crazier and crazier and just
made him want to, you know, compete with Rupert Murdoch.
Like Rupert Murdoch was really competing and he would just
buy paper after paper, like they would be directly competing
(19:06):
trying to buy a newspaper. But Murdoch most of the
time won. And he said later on that his impression
of Robert Maxwell is that he was a total buffoon, really,
like he was just this boastful guy who wanted to
win but would get in his own way in the
process of winning. That was kind of what his personality
(19:29):
was like.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And by kind of, I mean yeah Murdoch. They talked
about the Max factor, a play on the Uh. Was
that like a makeup or something.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Uh, yeah, I think there's like a makeup line.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, max factor, But they would use that as not
a compliment, Like the max factor wasn't like, hey, this
guy's great, he can go in and close deals. It
was more like he loses out on deals because of
the Max factor because no one wants to deal with
this guy exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah. I mean like people got in bed with him
be because they had no choice. He had just bought
their company. He was now their boss. People didn't get
into bed or business. I guess I should probably say
with him because they liked him or they wanted to
they they were usually they just found themselves in the
unfortunate situation of having to work closely with him.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, for sure. But he bought the Daily Mirror in
eighty four, he started the London Daily News in eighty seven.
He started another paper that was sort of what I
understand is like a European USA today, called European in
nineteen ninety. So he's, you know, he's launching all these
newspapers and then eventually he says, all right, I need
(20:39):
to look toward the States and ends up buying McMillan
US and nineteen eighty eight for two point six billion
dollars money in nineteen eighty eight, oh totally, and something
called the Official Aviation Guide in for seven hundred and
fifty million.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Dollars, which again that's a crazy amount of money in
nineteen eighty eight. So he was this spending spree, especially
in the US where he's trying to take on Murdoch again.
I think Murdoch had already bought The New York Post
by this time. It was a lot like the USSR
being driven to extinction by spending, the US spending having
(21:19):
to keep up with spending. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch would go
do something, and now he was in the United States,
so now Robert Maxwell had to do it, and Robert
Maxwell had to outdo him. So he started spending money
he didn't have and was expanding his empire, and his
empire started to lose its foundation, it started to crumble
financially because of him trying to keep up.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Essentially, Yeah, that's a great analogy. Actually, in February ninety one,
he bought the New York Daily News, and that's one
where Murdoch kind of rubbed it in his face because
as soon as Maxwell bought it, he was like, all right,
the publisher needs to call Rupert Murdoch and tell him
that Robert Maxwell just bought the New York Daily News.
And apparently Murdoch like laughed at this and said, yeah,
(22:01):
thank Bob for the courtesy of that, like basically like
I didn't want that ate like failing paper anyway.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Sure, there's one other thing that he very famously lost
out on, and we must have talked about him in
our episode on Tetris. The Wild History of Tetris. Oh yeah,
two twenty twenty four. I think it's how weird people
put it. He owned Mirrorsoft at the time, and mirror
Soft had Tetris in their hands and just through a
(22:29):
series of miscommunications and bad deals, lost it. And had
they had Tetris, who knows what that would be because
they were already a powerhouse in video games, especially in
the UK, And if they had continued owning Tetris, they
might have they might still be around. But because they
lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye
(22:52):
on his reputation as a businessman.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned politics early on in
parliament and that he was a conservative of human in
his heart, but because he wasn't part of that establishment,
he was like, all right, I'll go to the labor
parties and that's what he did. He became a Labor
Party member of Parliament from sixty four to seventy and
he was like, you know, he's one of these politicians
(23:17):
kind of say whatever just to get in there. And
he was like, you know what, I came from a
farm laborer's background and I had no money, so like,
I'm basically a socialist. Even though he was the farthest
thing from that in reality, and was just they called
him the biggest gas bag in the Commons. Like he
was not well liked within the House, the walls of Parliament.
(23:41):
Apparently no one liked working with him. There were a
lot of rumors floating around about various improprieties. There was
one rumor that he sold part of the Palace of
Westminster's wine cellar to an anonymous buyer for like way
less than what it was worth. I didn't see if
that was really true. But the point is no.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
One liked him in Parliament apparently no, And it's believable,
like you could, you wouldn't put it past him.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
That's just his reputation, right, Yeah, but I mean he
won election and re election.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah. Apparently right before his election he was he was
arrested shaving the day before while he was driving ninety miles.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
An hour, shaving while driving. Yeah, an s UI or no,
I guess it would be DUS no, no DWS driving
while shaving.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Goo. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
God, it took me a while.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Should we take a break and then come back and
talk about that max factor?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Okay, we're going to do that guys.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
All right, more promise of talking about the max factor,
which was not a compliment for this guy. I mentioned
early on that he was a bit of a bully.
Apparently he was well known for just sort of his
atrocious behavior. There was a Daily Mirror editor named Roy
Greensdale who said when they were first met at this restaurant,
he walked in Maxwell and like just like swept everything
(25:27):
off the table, all the cutlery, saying like it wasn't
laid out correctly. And apparently he had done that more
than once. He would bring his kids into work and
like belittle and lecture the staff, like to impress his kids.
He would file fire people while they were on vacation.
He would leave the door to this bathroom open. Apparently
(25:49):
he would urinate off the top of the building. Just
real boorish behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah. At the same time, though, he's like cultivating this
English gentleman persona, which was very much encapsulated by his accent.
He didn't sound anything like someone who was born and
raised in Czechoslovakia, not at all. No, he was like,
I mean, being elected as a member of parliament, it's
(26:16):
pretty good for your reputation. So like we know, so
much about him now and like what he did throughout
his life, his image now is not what his image
was when he was, you know, alive and working and
working in Parliament and doing all that stuff. I think
(26:37):
people who worked closely with them knew what he was like,
but I think in general he was just kind of
this viewed as this larger than life personality by the
public who knew about him.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, I think so. But yeah, he was a blowhart.
He would do things like if someone walked into his office,
he would say, like, give me the White House on
the phone, and then apparently just have like a fake
conversation on the telephone to the White House.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That's like, that's what insane people do.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, I mean I only do that if I'm trying
to avoid somebody in public.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Sure, did you even make the dialing sound like pee
poop poop poop?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Py? I do? I got a call? Sorry. He was
not a good father and husband. Like I mentioned earlier.
He lived in this huge mansion called Headington Hill Hall,
which was at least from the Oxford City Council and
apparently was like he would at dinner time he would
assign his children topics that they had to like impress
(27:35):
him with and he would judge them. Apparently there was
physical abuse. He cheated on his wife like time and
time again. His wife described him as as bullying, but
would also take up for him at times.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You know, yeah, she said the bar pretty low. She
said he was he was no degenerate monster, right. He
was also famous for he gave her six rules for
basically getting along in a lasting partnership. And it depends
on how you look at it. And you could look
(28:11):
at it like he is a domineering bully, who was
you know making his wife adhere to these rules that
he was laying down. But if you if you read
all the rules, it's actually these are actually pretty good
sensible rules for for maintaining a partnership that if both
people honor it, then then you've got something good. If
(28:31):
you if it's just one person, then you've got a problem.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, I got the impression it was, here are your
six rules that you need to do to stay married
to me.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it past him.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean, we'll go over them real quick. But
in the context of this is what you need to
do and not this is what I pledged to do
for you, right. Number one, don't nag because I love
that's his number one. Number two, don't criticize unduly. Number three,
give honest appreciation. Number four paid little attentions. Sweet to
(29:06):
me is what he was saying. Number five, be courteous
to me. And then number six had the utmost confidence
in yourself in me.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, I mean, really, if two people come at a
relationship like that, look observing those six I guess rules
or guidelines or whatever. I think that's kind of good.
But yes, I'm quite sure you're right that. He was like,
here's what you need to do for me.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
And he used it against her too. He said, like,
don't nag me about me doing these rules. That's rule
number one.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's right, that's right. You don't talk about fight club.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He got her with the legal mumbo jumbo.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
He had, you know, quite a few kids. He lost,
very sadly a couple of them. He lost a daughter, Karein,
of leukemia at age three, and they had a son
named Michael that died at age twenty one after being
in a coma after a car crash. Like the little
apple of his eye was young Gallaine. He named his
(30:05):
yacht after her Lady Gallaine. And even though she had
a hard time impressing him at times, it seems like.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, supposedly she put herself on his radar at age
three when she went and presented herself in front of
her mom and said, Mommy, I exist, Yeah, as a
three year old, And I guess that really captured Robert
Maxwell's attention, and from that point on he was She
was very clearly his favorite. Yeah. But yeah, even still
(30:34):
I don't think like it seems like he was. He
would still berate her at the drop of a hat
or something like that. He just maybe did it slightly
less than he did to others, or maybe he didn't
beat her. I'm not sure, but everyone knew that she
was the favorite. Although when it came to business, it
was his two sons that he brought into business with him,
not his daughter, not his wife. And when he died,
(30:58):
his philosophy was that you didn't leave your estate to
a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Gallen, he
didn't leave anything to his wife. He left it all
to his sons. In this case, that turned out to
be quite yeah, quite a bit of baggage. Not not
anything good.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, we'll get to that. So he died under shady circumstances.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about his death
and then sort of everything that was happening to him
at that time, which leads people to speculate like was
it suicide, was it murder, or was it an accident?
But was on November well, he did have the max factor.
(31:39):
On November fifth, nineteen ninety one, when he was sixty eight,
he fell to his death from his yacht, his fifteen
million pound Lady Gallaine. And he had earlier that year
he had sailed into Manhattan to buy the New York
Daily News. That's what I mentioned was nineteen ninety one,
and then in the fall he sort of splur the
moment trip to the Canary Islands, where looking back, crew
(32:03):
members were like, it was weird and that he showed
it by himself, which was unusual, didn't have like his
butler or his like people like his caretakers. And they
said he also seemed like in really good spirits, which
was sort of unusual. And he didn't work while he
was on board, which was super unusual.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Yeah, and so he was essentially getting away from his world,
collapsing in on him. Yeah, like he said that he
needed to go do something, I think, but there was
no one who was fooled. Like he was just trying
to get away from things. That's especially kind of signaled
by the fact that he didn't work. Apparently there was
no line between his private life and his business life,
(32:42):
so he was always working.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Right, Yeah. And you know when you were talking about
business collapsing, like you know, financial failures, but also sort
of his his schemes, like you know, the walls closing
in on his schemes. Like you mentioned, he was basically
raiding his companies for profit a lot of the times
from the pension funds. I think it ended up being
close to close to five hundred million pounds from pension funds.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You do not do that, man, No.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
And he was at the same time he was selling pergamon,
he was secretly buying shares in his companies to prop
up stock prices, like while he was trying to rid
himself of these things.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, he was. He was in a really bad spot
because a bunch of factors basically came together to have
all of his creditors basically call in all his debts
at once, right, Yeah, And he had used those pension
funds as collateral, which is that's on Lehman Brothers, that's
on Goldman Sachs, like, you should not take pension funds
(33:46):
as collateral, even if and he was fully legally in
charge of those pension funds, so he legally could do that,
but just being a banker like that and knowing the
look that the optics of being like, yep, give us
those pension fund because we're calling in a debt you
can't repay. Of course, that's just a terrible collateral to take.
That's neither here nor there as far as Robert Maxwell's concerned.
(34:09):
The other bankers though that held shares in his companies.
They were threatening to basically say, we're gonna sell these
shares that you gave us as collateral. We're gonna dump
them on the market all at once, and that's gonna
drive your stock prices down even further, which is gonna
mean you have even less money to repay us. Yeah,
so he's getting it from every which way. And then
(34:30):
not to mention, they didn't know about the pension rating
until after he was debt, so there was it was
not like people were beating the drum that anticipation was
hanging over him as well.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, for sure, he you know, seemed to be in
a pretty paranoid state. He had his his offices and
businesses bugged. Apparently he had his own house bugged, so
you could hear what his family was saying about him nuts.
And then there was this other sort of wall closing
in on him, and that there were allegations that he
was a spy for Israel. He had invested at one point,
(35:05):
I think about two hundred and fifty million pounds in
just various Israeli companies. And in nineteen ninety one there
was a guy claiming to be a former intelligence officer
for Israel name Ari Ben Minashi who told the News
that Maxwell and one of his editors that was working
(35:27):
with him at one of his papers were Israeli agents.
And apparently in nineteen eighty six there was a nuclear
scientist named Mordecai Venunu who went to London, as I
guess is like a whistleblower saying that, like, there's a
dangerous nuclear arms program happening in Israel, and he was
going to blow the lid off of it and sell
(35:47):
it to the Sunday Times, and Maxwell convinced him to
sell it to him instead to the Mirror. He ends
up sending that information to Israel as supposedly like to
fact check it and confirm it, but he ended up
stiffing Venunu for the money and never ran the story.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, that's a technique that billionaire tyrants who own news
organs too. They'll it's like catch and catch and kill,
catch and kill. Yeah, or you buy the story, you
buy the exclusive rights to the story, and then you
don't publish it. You just sit on it to keep
the public from knowing about it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, I mean, that's what happened in this country. Remember,
happens a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's really messed up.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
And as far as Venunu, he was later drugged and
kidnapped and jailed for eighteen years in Israel.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Right, So Maxwell was like, I'm not an Israeli spy.
This is all just bs. And then Seymour Hirsch flew
in with a book and in the book it wasn't
just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book, and
Seymour Hirsch was like, yeah, that's all true. Seymour Hirsch
is one of the most indisputable journalists of all time.
(36:57):
If he says something is true, he has done so
much research on it that he's he'll stand behind it
every time, and most of the time it is, if
not every time, it's quite true. So he said that, yes,
this this guy was in Israeli spy all this time,
that he was a businessman too, and it got brought
up in parliament. In Great Britain, their libel laws are
(37:20):
very heavy against the papers, and for good reason, so
the papers tend to kind of stay in line about
even talking about rumors like that. But once it was
brought up in parliament, now the papers could report on parliament,
mentioning it and dig into it, and they could report
on it without any fear of libel. So this is
going on at the same time too.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
All right, So yeah, walls are closing in and you know, financially, professionally, politically,
I guess, and this you know, whole spy allegation business.
So he falls off this yacht. Supposedly his last words
at four forty five am were complaining to the bridge
crew of out how the temperature in his cabin and
(38:03):
apparently this guy like peeing off the things, because apparently
he went to pee off the back of the boat,
which they said was like a normal thing for him
to do, and then fell over a low rail and this,
you know, this was a not the yacht where you're
falling from like six stories up. It's like a you know,
it was a yacht, but it wasn't like he was
falling from one hundred feet or something like that, so
(38:26):
it was like a low fall. And pathologists, like, no
one's ever agreed on what happened to him. Pathologists failed
to agree on anything besides he drowned. Some people said
he had a heart attack first. Some said that no,
he actually tore his arm muscles, so he was clearly
trying to hold on, so it wasn't suicide. They ended
(38:47):
up finding his naked body floating about fifteen miles away,
I think maybe the next in the next day or two,
and the whole thing was like, did he fall, did
he jump? Or is it possible he was murdered? Has
been sort of the question since then.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, And I think the reason why he was he
drowned was because the ship was cruising at the time,
so without anyone knowing that he'd fallen over, he was
in the middle of nowhere by the time that that
ship realized that he was gone hours later. Right, Yeah,
so let's start with these, Chuck, there's let's start with suicide.
(39:23):
You said, I think what kind of convinces most people
is he clearly on his way down, tried to grab
onto the rail and pulled his his tore the muscles
on his side. I can barely say it. It just
sounds so painful. So he wanted to live, right, And
also it wasn't a high jump in the first place,
so suicide probably wasn't it. Some people who who some
(39:46):
of his biographies even were like, he would not have
done well with all the public attention that was about
to be unleashed on him. His reputation was about to
be completely ruined. Financially, he was about to be completely ruined.
So yes, suicide makes sense. But again, that torn arm
muscles basically say now that that's just not what this was.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, his family has always said
it was an accident. Just I think beyond the arm muscles,
just I think they're knowing him. I think his wife
said it just wasn't in his character. They thought he
was just the kind of guy that would never give up,
even facing all of this stuff. He would still like
try and fight his way or buy his way or
(40:28):
get loans to get out of this stuff. Most of
his family, I think, in closest people, were convinced it
was just an accident. There was one pathologist who argued
against suicide because of the arm thing for sure, or
the fact that he was naked. That seemed a little
strange I think to them as well.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So accident seems pretty pretty prominent, right, Yeah, there's also assassination.
Remember Israel was supposedly being outed as having used him
as a spy for years and years and years. That
wasn't enough to fuel that rumor of Israel killing him.
(41:11):
What the rumor was is that he had asked Israel
for a loan and Israel said no, and he said, well,
you know what, I'm going to go tell everybody about
me being a spy for you. And they were like, no, not,
We're going to rub you out. That's basically what when
people say he was murdered, that's usually what they point to.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, and there was some the initial pathologists I think
had speculated that his body was dead longer than it
was in the water, So that kind of spurred a
little bit of speculation about murder, but apparently the crew
of the Lady Glaine was like, no one was on board,
that wasn't authorized. No one could have climbed aboard that
(41:52):
we wouldn't have known about. Ken Lennox was a guy
who knew him, said he like saw the corpse and
it wasn't you know, it didn't have like any markings
of struggle or gunshot or throat cut or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Right. There's also a theory that he faked his death,
which is quite possible, but he was pretty recognizable, so
it would have been difficult for him to start a
new life somewhere without you know, completely changing his face
at least in his voice.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, And I think that's one of those things where,
like they said, well he had mentioned it before. I
think he was one of those guys that would just
like muse about something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah. And if you listener were just like fake your death,
I'd love to hear more about that. Well, we did
an episode on faking your death. You can go look
up too.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Oh. God, that was early on, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
No, that was like a year or two ago.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Oh, wasn't what am I thinking of? Then?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Oh man, that was a long time.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
There was the worst way to die. That's probably what
you're thinking of.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Oh maybe. So either way, you mentioned earlier that he
sort of did his wife and daughter of favor by
not leaving them the business because the business was I
think it was the largest may still be the largest
bankruptcy in Britain's history. Yeah, debts of like well over
four hundred million pounds that they were initially on the
(43:16):
hook for. They were I think prosecuted for fraud as
well in nineteen ninety six, but they both successfully defended
themselves and the pensioneers were eventually bailed out by public
funds apparently. Yeah, they got their money back.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
They got like half, like basically fifty cents on the dollar.
So they still lost out, but at least they weren't
just completely screwed, which is cool the UK to swoop
in and do that, you know, it was that means
everybody in Great Britain chipped in, so those people wouldn't
just completely lose their pension. That's pretty neat.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
So yeah, before before Gallaine Maxwell came along and tarnished
her family's reputation, it had already been well tarnished by
the time that rolled around, Like her father's death was
like this is like his reputation just completely went downhill?
How about that? Yeah, totally, Yeah, Gallaine Maxwell, that's a
(44:13):
whole other episode if you.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Ask me, oh, man, are we gonna do that one
day someday?
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Okay, okay, if you want to know more about Robert Maxwell.
In the meantime, there's all sorts of interesting articles about
him too. There's documentaries. The House of Maxwell I think
was a good BBC one from a few years ago.
And since I ended this like an old school how
stuff works episode, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
This is about the tobacco settlements episode. Hey, guys, I
wanted to provide some more info about one of the
points of confusion you had. I worked for years doing
health policy work for the Minnesota House, and this source
of funds was a hot topic as we were discussing
other policies to target the rise in youth tobacco use. Josh,
you were asked about how the settlements worked with regard
to tobacco companies paying in perpetuity while also having a
(45:04):
specific settlement amount. For background, Minnesota agreed to about six
point five billion in settlement funds. We were not part
of the Master settlement. It's actually pretty simple. That six
point five billion dollar number was an estimate of the
settlement's value at the time of the settlement, not a
cap on how much companies would pay.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
So Minnesota received a series of one time payments targeted
at specific tobacco cestation in public health uses, but we
also receive an annual payment each year that can be
used for basically whatever the state wants. These annual payments
are the ongoing payments that are based on a formula
around tobacco sales and profitability that you touched on in
the episode. In Minnesota, these annual payments are about one
(45:43):
hundred and fifty million dollars each year, and when counting
everything the state has gotten from the tobacco company so far,
we've received something like five point seven billions so far.
Hope it provides some clarity. And that is from Jeremiah
wingstet Man.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
That's so awesome. I love hearing from pepeople who are there.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, you know, and who actually know the stuff. Yeah,
and we can always count on that all.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, that's so cool. And also big ups to Minnesota
because they were the ones who, as part of the settlement,
required the tobacco companies to make their documents public.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thanks a lot, Jeremiah. If you were there, no matter
what we were talking about, we want to hear from you.
And even if you weren't, that's fine too. We always
like to hear a hello from our listeners. You can
send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Josh Clark
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