Who was Robert Maxwell?l

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or wherever you get your podcasts. - Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. (upbeat music) - 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. - Yeah, great man, except these, 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 the father of Galane Maxwell, but, which makes him even worse. - Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. I'm not sure where this came from though,

'cause this one was like a year and a half ago that we requisitioned the article, and it had just been gathering dust. And so we'd dust it off, and now we're gonna talk about this jerk.

- Yeah, great man history, by the way, is it's a way of interpreting history through the leaders, 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 at like, personally speaking, and this is a really good example. He was revered, 'cause 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. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was just the broadest overview. He was a tycoon, he was a bully, he escaped

Nazi Germany's rash. 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, and a lot of like terrible business

dealings, it sounds like it was a pretty awful husband and father at the same time. - Well, there's the episode. - Well, let's talk about him. He was born, John Ludwig Hook in 1923 in Salat Vigno,

which was Czechoslovakia at the time. It's now Ukraine, but he was from a, you know, he's very poor, he was raised very poor as from a big family, his father seems like was a pretty awful guy too.

So, you know, behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two, you know? - It's intergenerational. - Yeah, that's the way it generally works.

“- Yeah, so, and that's why I'd never had kids.”

- Oh, no. So, yeah, he said at 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,

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, you know, this woman who could handle raising all these kids

in these terrible conditions and still, you know, be beloved. - 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

in his wife as 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, I think kind of the only members family”

to escape the Nazis in March of 1939 when they invaded Czechoslovakia by cutting off his sidewalks and 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 changing his name and everything. - Yeah, he was low key Jewish for a lot of his life until later on, and 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 turned right around and went back to join the Hungarian Underground

in Budapest, and he was essentially trying to move people escaping like him further on to safety, because Hungary still wasn't, you know, safety. It was better than being in Czechoslovakia, but you still needed to keep moving,

and he was going to help people, and almost immediately he was captured

“and held in torture does a member of the Czech resistance,”

which is not what you wanted the Nazis to consider you. - No, apparently there was gonna be no trial at all and then the French embassy stepped in, and because he had a planned execution, and arranged what seems to be like a sham of a trial,

and he ended up escaping like on the way to prison. So, again, a lot of the stuff is from his authorized biography and stories he told some of which was no doubt like, embellished probably, so he seems like one of those guys that would kind of pump up a story about himself.

- Yeah, yeah, no, agreed. He's definitely that type, for sure. 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 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. Cow helped us with this,

and Cow really loved to focus on ruthlessness, which in these cases is a synonym for war crimes, cut and dried war crimes. - 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, 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 admitted to his wife and a letter that he, like executed more than one, like unarmed German person,

including a mayor in Germany. - 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. And he witnessed, 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 a case of him just pumping up his own legend again?”

- Right. - So good. - 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 MI6, it's six, right? - Yeah, MI6. - He could speak English German French, Yiddish Hungarian Czech and Romanian, by the end of the war,

so he was extremely valuable post-war, while Europe was being dived up

with all these other countries, and he'd also changed his identity four times before then, too. - 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 conundrum with this guy 'cause he did learn all those languages and he was a very valuable person for MI6 and did some like 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 smiled, he smiled for the Soviet Union or that he's spied for Israel's and I don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind that stuff.

- 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. - Yeah. - And so while there he was also in the chaos of all of this of Europe being devastated

and just beginning to rebuild. There's a lot of money to meet made. It's like in that, Spike Lee movie, the inside man. - Yeah. - Where they say that.

- Oh, my goodness. - And that's like one of the better later Spike Lee as I know. - 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 Plummer 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 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 magnet in the coming decades. - Yeah, so while he was in Berlin,

he was working with their telegraph. And that paper was owned by Springer Verlag two words with a dash in the middle.

“I think Verlag was a big academic publisher,”

which is kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this. He met the publisher for an end springa. And he learned that there were like, you know, more than 60,000 books and journals like stockpiled

in a warehouse. And they had been, you know, like away from public view since 1939, like free war. And so his wheel started turning on how he could make some money. And then along with his eventual business partner,

it's got a Paul Rosebod started a company, I guess, bought his way into a company called Butterworth Springer, which was rebranded pergum on press. And they got a deal with Springer Verlag to get these books like these scientific textbooks

out into the world. And he got M.I.6 to finance this deal.

- Yeah, yeah, they basically paid for 300 tons.

Yeah, 300 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 25,000 pounds. And I did some back of the envelope work. - Oh, boy. - Oh, boy. - You're not gonna call it maths, are you?

- No, not, not, I wouldn't even dare. But that is about $885,000 US dollars today. - Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, well, how did he get M.I.6? Like, why would they invest secretly invest

in something like this? I think he, well, you know, everything we were about to say the guy take it face value, but one thing he was really good at was like,

he could be very charming. He was kind of a jekyll and hide from what I saw. So as awful as he could be, he could also be super charming and like work his way into a room

or where he's way into a deal.

“And I think that's what he did with M.I.6,”

when he basically was like,

hey, having all these German scientific research books is like an asset to us and intelligence asset, maybe a propaganda tool and M.I.6 bought it. - Yeah, so what role put his role in academic publishing to the side,

but just suffice to say that the current state of affairs were journals determine what science is conducted and the scientific community as a whole has kind of shy away or moved away from doing its job, the way it should be.

And instead conducting experiments and studies

- Right, that actually came from Robert Maxwell

“in the way that he changed the industry.”

- Oh, interesting. - There's a really good long-form guardian article from 2017 called is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science.

And you can guess that the answer is yes.

And 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. - 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 20 minutes or so. - Sure, all right, be right back. (upbeat music)

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“and I travel by myself because it's a rare space”

where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. - Every time I try to be alone, I kept meaning people, and they were like, you smile that that's not a lot of people smile around here.

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at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) - So one of the things about Maxwell was when he got into scientific publishing, he really went full bore into it.

And his whole jam with business was by one thing and then use it to buy, buy another thing, start another thing. Like basically get into one industry and just mushroom. Everywhere you can't, 'cause the more stuff you have,

the more money you can soak up in that industry or that sector, right? So he bought another publisher, Simkin 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 Simkin Marshall doing?"

I'm not at liberty to say.

“And the guy found out that the company was severely in debt”

and he had borrowed Maxwell and borrowed it. Tuna money against the company's credit and then sold off all the assets and kept the money for himself. And this publishing house which had been around for more than a century went under,

thanks to Robert Maxwell, raining it. And it was essentially proto-private equity, like he did. That's what private equity does. Chuck, have you been to Dunkin' Donuts lately?

No, I don't, I don't go there. Yeah, I don't normally either, but I went and got a coffee and I walked in and I was like, 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 yourself machine was there. Next to the cash register.

It was just terrible.

“And I was like, I'll bet private equity owns this now”

and sure enough. Oh man. Two years ago, private equity rally. Yep, they do it. Like any time 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 business and private equity. And I guarantee you private equity got involved and it's just running it into the ground

'cause they don't care. So he was doing something like this in the 1950s. Yep. 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 in the money for symptom martial. Right. Uh, there was a rag called the private eye

or called 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 hook or crook to get something done and then like walking away

and leaving people penniless behind him.

That springer Verlock, who got him that first deal,

they ended up severing contact with him in 1958. Program on press. He lost control of, would eventually take it back. But during a 71 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. Yeah. I mean, that's a big deal when the government says, you, you can't be a CEO, sorry. They like, the board says you can't,

we're saying you cannot, because you are that untrustworthy. Yeah, for sure. And later in life, well, not that much later, he would find an enemy, a grave enemy in the 1960s with a guy in Australia named Rupert and Murdoch.

So we talked about Murdoch in our episode on the news on the news cycle. 24 cable news. Yeah, 24 hour cable news. So everyone knows who Rupert and 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 any time he would go to buy a newspaper Murdoch seemed to be right there in front of him buying it.

And he ended up buying the left wing Maxwell did. The left wing 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. Yeah, I mean, it just made sense financially. So you know, he could be whatever he needed to be, I guess, in that sense, it kind of demonstrates that to me. I was reading about Rupert Murdoch and their rivalry.

And apparently it was one of those rivalries like where it meant everything to Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch was like, who, oh yeah, I remember him, whatever. Like in that, just drove Robert Maxwell crazier and crazier and just made him want to compete with Rupert Murdoch.

Like Rupert Murdoch wasn't really competing. And he would just buy paper after paper. Like they would be directly competing, trying to buy a newspaper, but Murdoch most of the time won.

And he said later on that his impression of Robert Maxwell was 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 was like.

And by the end of, I mean, a hundred percent. Yeah, Murdoch, they talked about the Max Factor

“a play on the, was that it like a makeup or something?”

Yeah, I think there's like a makeup line, yeah, Max Factor. But they would use that as not a compliment. Like the Max Factor wasn't like,

It was more like he loses out on deals

“because of the Max Factor, because no one wants to deal with this guy.”

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, like people got in bed with them because they had no choice. He had just bought their company. He was now their boss.

People didn't get in bed or business, I guess I should probably say, with him, because they liked him or they wanted to. They were usually, they just found themselves in the unfortunate situation of having to work closely with him.

Yeah, for sure. But he bought the daily mirror in '84. He started the London Daily News in '87. He started another paper that was sort of what I understand is like a European USA today called European in 1990.

So he's launching all these newspapers. And then eventually he says, all right, I need to look toward the states. And ends up buying McMillan, US, and 1988 for $2.6 billion.

So what money in '98? Oh, totally. And something called the official Aviation Guide in for $750 million. Which again, that's a crazy amount of money in 1988.

So he was this spending spree, especially in the US, where he's trying to take out 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 to keep up with spending. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Murdoch would go do something.

And now he's 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's started to crumble financially because of him trying to keep up, essentially. Yeah, that's a great analogy, actually.

In February '91, he bought the New York Daily News. And that's one where Murdoch kind of rubbed 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 laughed at this. And he said, yeah, I think Bob for the courtesy of that.

Basically, I didn't want that failing paper anyway.

I'm 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.

“To 2024, I think so, weird people put it.”

He owned Murr soft at the time. And Murr soft had Tetris in their hands. And just through a 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 continued owning Tetris, they might still be around, but because they lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye

on his reputation as a businessman. Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned politics early on in parliament and that he was a conservative human in his heart. But because he wasn't part of that establishment,

he was like, all right, I'll go to the Labor Party. So that's what he did. He became a Labor Party member of parliament from 64 to 70. And he was like, you know,

he's one of these politicians kind of say whatever, just to get in there. And he was like, you know what? I came from a farm, laborers, background, and I had no money.

So I'm basically a socialist, even though he was the part

of this thing from that in reality. And they called him the biggest gas bag in the comments. Like he was not well-liked within the house, the walls of parliament. Apparently no one liked working with them.

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 celler to an anonymous buyer for like way less than what it was worth.

I didn't see if that was really true. But point is no one liked him in parliament, apparently. No, and it's believable. Like you could, you wouldn't put it past him. That's just his reputation, right?

Yeah, but I mean, he won election and reelection. Yeah, apparently right before his election, he was arrested shaving the day before while he was driving 90 miles an hour. Shaving while driving?

Yeah. And S-U-I, or no, I guess it would be S-W-D-U-S. No, no, D-W-S, driving while shaving. Good boy. Yeah, there you go.

God, it took me a while. Should we take a break and then come back and talk about that Max Factor? Yeah, we'll do it. OK, we're going to do that, guys.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Carry Brown seen in front of our mission here.

“You know what, so rather, you know them.”

Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up other cells to tell you about Podlandia, AO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia

from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the back stories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made?

Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped to bring it all to life. guest stars, collaborators, and friends,

including director Jonathan Chrysel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician, Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. Are you fully improvised?

Not just words, but a song about it. I thought he was going to write-- I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to podlandia.

“A-yo, rewatch on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts,”

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers

by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super-accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes

with Ben Stiller, the definition of what is a movie is kind of changed anywhere, too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken captured by some sort of technology.

Danny McBride who I'm talking about. Oh, that's fantastic. Can you make it on-- you make your own. That's great. I call 'Matero Read' [LAUGHTER]

It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah, I call it, I don't.

I never looked up if she was in this,

but I call them leechy-soby-asky.

“Yeah, I don't think she was in American Pie,”

but I still haven't looked it up. She's prominent in her limit. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergen. Why are you guys talking to me?

I'm worried. Did you understand the movie? So down to me, that you think I don't understand your little play play game. I just really--

I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman.

Your dual-lingo is not going to come back to you. When a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Bignetto, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes

without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I try to be alone, I kept meaning people, and they were like, you smile that that's not a lot of people smile around here.

I can wait for hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. So whether you're a solo travel veteran

or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music)

All right, more promise of talking about the Max Factor, which is not a compliment for this guy. I mentioned early on that he was a bit of a bully. Apparently he wasn't well known for just sort of his atrocious behavior.

There was a Daily Mirror editor named Roy Greenstale.

He said when they were first met at this restaurant,

he walked in Maxwell and just swept everything off the table, all the cutlery saying it wasn't laid out correctly. And apparently he had done that more than once. He would bring his kids into work and 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 he would urinate off the top of the building. Just real borish behavior. - Yeah, at the same time though,

he's like cultivating this English gentleman persona stick, 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 pretty good for your reputation. So like, we know so much about him now and like what he did throughout his life.

- Yeah. - His image now is not what his image was

and working in Parliament and doing all that stuff.

I think people who worked closely with him knew what he was like. But I think in general, he was just kind of this viewed as his larger than life personality by the public who knew about him.

- Yeah, I think so. But yeah, he was he was a blowhard. 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.

“- That's like, that's what in thing people do.”

- Yeah, I mean, I only do that if I'm trying to avoid somebody in public. - Sure. - You even make the dialing sound like, people, people, people.

- I do, I got a call, it's all right. He was not a good father and husband like I mentioned earlier. He lived in this huge mansion called Heddington Hill Hall, which was least from the Oxford City Council.

And apparently he would, at dinner time, he would assign his children topics that they had to like impress him with and then he would judge them. Apparently there was physical abuse.

He cheated on his wife like time and time again. His wife described him as bullying, but would also take up for him at times, you know. - Yeah, she said the bar pretty low. She said he was, he was no degenerate monster.

- Right. - 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. You could look 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 read all the rules, it's actually, these are actually pretty good sensible rules for maintaining a partnership that if both people honor it, then you've got something good.

If it's just one person, then you've got a problem. - Yeah, I got the impression.

“It was, here are your six rules that you need to do”

just a merry to me. - I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past them. - 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. 'Cause who, 'cause I love that's his number one. Number two, don't criticize unduly. Number three, give honest appreciation.

Number four, pay little attentions. Wait, to me is what are you saying? - Great. - Number five, be courteous to me. And then number six, have the utmost confidence

in yourself and me. (laughs) - 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.

- Yeah, for sure. - And he used it against her too.

“He said, don't nag me about me doing these rules.”

That's rule number one. - That's right, that's right. You don't talk about bike club. - He got her with the legal mumbo jumbo. - He had quite a few kids.

He lost, it's very sadly, a couple of them. He lost a daughter, a Korean of leukemia. It aged three, and they had a son named Michael that died at age 21, after being in a coma, after a car crash, it seemed like the little apple

of his eye was young galane. He named his yacht after her lady galane. And even though she had a hard time in pressing him at times, it seems like. - Yeah, supposedly she put herself on his radar at age three

when she went and presented herself in front of her mom and said, "Mummy, 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 very clearly his favorite. - Yeah. - But yeah, even still I don't think like, it seems like 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, his philosophy was that you didn't leave your estate to a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Galine, he didn't leave anything to his wife.

He left it all to his sons. In this case, that turned out to be quite a big baggage, not anything good. - 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

Was it murder or wasn't an accident? - Was it a number? - Was it a number? (laughing) - Well, you did have the Max Spectre. On November 5th, 1991, when he was 68,

he fell to his death from his yacht,

his 15 million pound lady Galine.

And he had earlier that year, he had sailed into Manhattan to buy the New York Daily News. That's what I mentioned was 1991. And then in the fall, he sort of splurred the moment trip to the Canary Islands where looking back crew members

were like it was weird, and then he showed up 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. - 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. And 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, so he was always working, right?

- Yeah, and when you're talking about business collapsing, like financial failures, but also sort of his schemes, like the walls closing in on his schemes. Like you mentioned, he was basically rating his companies for profit,

a lot of the times from the pension funds, I think it ended up being close to 500 million pounds from pension funds. - You do not do that, man. - No, 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. - Yeah, he was in a really bad spot

because a bunch of factors basically came together to have all of his creditors, basically calling all his debts at once, right? 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 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 funds

'cause 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 concern. But 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 not to mention, they didn't know about the pension rating until after he was dead. So there was, it was not like people were beating the drum, that anticipation was hanging over him as well.

- Yeah, for sure. He seemed to be in a pretty paranoid state. He had his offices and businesses bugged, apparently he had his own house bugged, so we could hear what his family was saying about him.

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, I think, about 250 million pounds

and just various Israeli companies. And in 1991, there was a guy claiming to be a former intelligence officer for Israel name, Ari Ben Manashi, who told the news that Maxwell and one of his editors that was working with him at one of his papers

were Israeli agents. And apparently in 1986, there was a nuclear scientist named Mordekai Benunu, who went to London as, I guess, is like a whistleblower saying that there's a dangerous nuclear arms program happening in Israel

and he was going to blow the lid off of it and sell 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 it's like to fact check it and confirm it.

But he ended up stiffing Benunu for the money and never ran the story. Yeah, that's a technique that billionaire tyrant to own news organs do though. So it's like catch and catch and kill.

Catch and kill, yeah, or you buy the story, you buy the exclusive rights of the story and then you don't publish it, you just sit on it to keep the public from knowing about it.

“Yeah, I mean, that's what happened in this country.”

Remember? It happens a lot, it's really messed up. And as far as Benunu, he was later drugged and kidnapped

Right.

“So Maxwell was like, I'm not an Israeli spy.”

This is all just BS. And then see more Hirsch flew in with the book. And in the book, it wasn't just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book and see more Hirsch was like, yeah, that's all true.

See more Hirsch is one of the most indisputable journalists of all time. If he said something is true, he has done so much research on it that he'll stay in behind it every time.

And most of the time, if not every time, it's quite true. So he said that, yes, this guy wasn't 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 very heavy against the papers.

And for good reason, so the papers tend to 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. All right, so yeah, walls are closing in, and, you know, financially, professionally, politically, I guess, and this whole spy allegation business.

So he falls off this yet, supposedly, his last words. At 445 AM, we're complaining to the bridge crew about how the temperature in his cabin. And apparently, this guy, like, being 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 was 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 a hundred feet or something like that. All right, so it was like a low fall in 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. Oh, man. So he was clearly trying to hold on. So it wasn't suicide. They ended up finding his naked body,

floating about 50 miles away. Think maybe 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.

“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 ship realized that he was gone hours later, right? Yeah.

So let's start with these Chuck. There's, let's start with suicide. You said, I think what kind of convinced his most people is he clearly on his way down tried to grab onto the rail and pulled his, his tore the muscles on the 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, or some 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. And financially he was about to be completely ruined.

So yeah, suicide makes sense. But again, that torn arm muscles basically say, now that it's just not what this was.

Yeah, and 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 the facing all of this stuff. He would still like try and fight his way or buy his way or 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.

So accident seems 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. 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, we're going to rub you out.

That's basically what people say he was murdered.

That's usually what they point to. Yeah, and there was some, the initial pathologist,

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 Galane was like, no one was on board that wasn't authorized. No one could have climbed a board that we wouldn't have known

about. Ken Lennox was a guy who knew him said he'd 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. Right.

There's also a theory that he faked his death, which is quite possible, but he was pretty recognizable. So he would have been difficult for him to start a new life somewhere without, you know, completely changing his face at least in his voice.

“Yeah, and I think that's one of the things where like,”

they said, well, he had mentioned it before. Right. I think he was one of those guys that would just like him use about something like that. 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. Oh, god, that was early on, wasn't it? No, that was like a year or two ago.

Oh, was it? Yeah, am I thinking of them? Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Oh, man, that was a long time. There was a worse way to die.

That's probably what you're thinking of. Oh, maybe so. Either way, you mentioned earlier that he sort of did his wife and daughter a 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.

Deaths of like well over 400 million pounds,

that they were initially on the hook for.

“They were, I think, prosecuted for fraud as well in 1996,”

but they both successfully defended themselves in the pensioners were eventually bailed out by public funds, apparently. Yeah, they got their money back. They got like half, like basically,

yeah, decent on the dollar. So they still lost out, but at least they weren't just completely screwed, which is cool. They really UKed us to swoop in and do that, you know? That means everybody in Great Britain chipped in,

so those people wouldn't just completely lose their pension. That's pretty neat. Yeah. So yeah, before Galane 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, Galane Maxwell, that's a whole other episode, if you ask me, oh man, are we going to do that one day? Someday. OK. OK.

If you wanted 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 a old school, how stuff works, episode, it's time for a listener mail. 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 you tobacco use.

Josh, you were asking about how the settlements worked with regard to tobacco companies paying in perpetuity, while also having a specific settlement amount

for background Minnesota agreed to about $6.5 billion

in settlement funds, we were not part of the master settlement. It's actually pretty simple. That $6.5 billion number was an estimate of the settlement's value at the time of the settlement, not a cap on how much companies would pay.

Oh cool. So Minnesota received a series of one-time payments targeted at specific tobacco cessation and public health uses, but we also received 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. Minnesota, these annual payments are about $150 million each year. And when counting everything the state has gotten

from the tobacco company so far, we've received something like 5.7 billion so far. Wow. I hope it provides some clarity. And that is from Jeremiah Wingstep.

Man, that's so awesome. I love hearing from people who are there. Yeah, you know, and who actually know the stuff.

Yeah, and we can always, we can always count on that.

Yeah, it's so cool. And also big ups to Minnesota because they are the ones who, as part of the settlement, be required the tobacco companies to make their documents public.

That's right. 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 [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio.

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