Who was Robert Maxwell?

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Listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there. Before this podcast continues, I need you to fill out 37 forms about your listening history. I'll wait. Just kidding. That'd be ridiculous. Yet, we do it every time we need healthcare. But new Amazon Health AI is different. It can connect your health history to offer personalized care. So you can get help fast. Amazon Health AI, healthcare just got less painful. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 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 he's. He's. He's. This is an interesting episode because Robert Maxwell was kind of a horrible person. Mm-hmm. 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 Ghislaine Maxwell, but. Which makes him even worse. 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 requisitioned 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. 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. Mm-hmm. The problem is, is that those great men, usually are not great people, like, personally speaking, 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. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was just the broadest overview. He was a tycoon. He was a bully. He escaped Nazi Germany's wrath. 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 he 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 Jan Ludwig Hoek in 1923, and he was born in 1923, and Salat Vinyo, which was Czechoslovakia at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from a, you know, he was very poor. He was raised very poor. He was 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. Um, 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, um, 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. 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, uh, 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. Uh, he was, uh, Jewish. He was from a Jewish family. And like I mentioned earlier, he managed to escape, um, the, I think kind of the only member of his family to escape the Nazis in March of 1990. In 1939, when they invaded Czechoslovakia, uh, by cutting off his side locks and, like, getting the heck out of there. And for a lot of his adult life, like, um, I don't know if he denied it, but never came forward as being Jewish. Like, changing his name and everything. Yeah. He, he, uh, was low-key Jewish for a lot of his life until later on when he was talked into, 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, um, went back to join the Hungarian underground in Budapest. And, um, he was essentially trying to move exile, or, 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 you still needed to keep moving. And he was going to help people. And almost, almost immediately he was captured. Yeah. Uh, and, and held and tortured as a member of the Czech resistance, which is not what you wanted the Nazis to consider you. No. Uh, apparently there was, um, going to be no trial at all. And then the French embassy stepped in. And because he had a planned execution and, uh, arranged what seems to be like a sham of a trial. Sure. Uh, and he ended up escaping, uh, escaping, like, on the way to prison. So, you know, again, a lot of this stuff is from his authorized biography and stories he told. Mm-hmm. Um, some of which was no doubt, like, um, embellished, probably. Mm-hmm. Uh, so he seems like one of those guys that would, like, kind of pump up a story about himself. Yeah. Yeah. No, agreed. Like, he's, he's definitely that type for sure. Yeah. Um, but he, uh, he, he escaped, like you said, literally with his life. He escaped with his life because he would almost certainly have been executed. Um, 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. Uh, he signed up for the British Army. He was there when Normandy was stormed. Um, and he also, uh, displayed, like, real actual valor. Both valor and ruthlessness. Kyle helped us with this. And Kyle really loved to focus on ruthlessness. Mm-hmm. Which in these cases, is a, um, a synonym for war crimes. Cut and dried war crimes. Yeah, for sure. Uh, he, he really tried to remake himself as a British guy, uh, 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. Uh, but yeah, he, he, you know, flat out admitted to, um, 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, uh, German person, including a, a mayor in Germany. Yeah, a civilian even. Yeah. Um, yeah, and again, that's a war crime, and he would later be investigated for it. Um, but they were not able to find anyone who was a German. 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. Um, so they had to close the case. So, is that a case of him just pumping up his own legend again? Right. Yeah. You know. But again, the stuff that can be verified is kind of amazing. Like, he, uh, did work for the British intelligence after the war. He ended up being recruited by MI6. It's six, right? Yeah, MI6. Um, he could speak, uh, 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 divvied up and being rebuilt, and people were, uh, having to interact with all these other countries. And he'd also changed his identity four times before then, too. Yeah, but like you said, he, he legit achieved in the armed forces. He, uh, worked his way up eventually to become a soldier. become a second lieutenant in the. queen's royal regiment and uh had a very apparently daring rescue for a trapped allied platoon in the netherlands and received a military cross um like a distinguished service military cross so uh again it's sort of a conundrum with this guy because 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 spied he spied for the soviet union or that he spied for israel's and i don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind that stuff no but uh it is the more you know about him the easier it is to to believe that that's quite possible you know for sure so he made it through the war quite successfully he was stationed in um 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 um and so while there he was also in the chaos of all of this of europe being devastated and just beginning to rebuild there was a lot of money to be made it's like in that uh spike lee movie uh the inside man yeah i haven't seen 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 plumber says when there's blood on the street by real estate and that was essentially what what um 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 um 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 world publishing magnate in the coming decades yeah so while he was in berlin uh he was working with their telegraph and that paper was owned by springer verlog uh two two words with a dash in the middle i think verlog was a big academic publisher uh which is kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this uh he met the publisher uh ferdinand springer and he learned that there were like you know more than sixty thousand books and journals like stockpiles in a warehouse and they had been you know like away from public view since 1939 like pre-war and so his wheels started turning on how he could make some money and then along with his uh eventual business partner this guy named paul rosebaud uh started a company uh 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 mi6 to finance this deal yeah yeah they um 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 yeah oh boy you're not gonna call it maths are you no not not i wouldn't even dare but um that is about 885 000 us dollars today yeah and if you're wondering like well how did he get mi6 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 at face value but one thing he was really good at was like he could be very charming he was kind of a a jekyll and hyde kind of a jekyll and hyde from what i saw um so as awful as he could be he could also be super charming and like work his way into a room or work his way into a deal right and i think that's what he did with mi6 when he basically was like hey having all these german scientific research books uh is good it's like an asset to us an intelligence asset maybe a propaganda tool and mi6 bought it yeah so uh what we'll put his role in academic publishing to the side but just suffice to say that the 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 that will get published that are eye-popping right that actually came from robert maxwell and 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 but it talks a lot about this and other stuff too but it's a it's a good article i'd say go read that if you're interested all right i'll check it out uh should we take a break yeah all right i'll go read the article right now we'll be back in what 20 minutes or so sure all right be right back you hey everybody if you've tried everything to lose weight and still feel stuck this summer can be different weight loss by hers is designed to support you in reaching your goals with access to an affordable range of fda-approved glp-1 medications including the wagovi pill and the wagovi pen yeah with wagovi at hers you can lose up to 20 of your body weight when you combine it with diet and exercise it helps you regulate your appetite and you can lose up to 20 percent of your weight eat less and keep weight off plus wagovi is the first ever glp-1 pill for weight loss so there are no needles needed that's right and everything is 100 online through hers you'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you and if prescribed your medication is delivered right to your door no insurance necessary so are you 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lunchbox favorites like organic produce or seedless grapes or baby carrots yeah and they have a great selection of allergen friendly options for the whole family and prime members shop at wfm.com and get your first order over 25 delivered free terms apply it's a great way to have easy breakfasts lunchbox grabs and delicious dinners brought right to your door like i said before terms apply 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 his whole jam with um 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 because the more stuff you have the more money you can soak up in that industry or that sector right so he bought uh another publisher simpkin marshall and this is a really good demonstration of his business techniques he he bought it with a loan from a business partner the business partner came back and was like hey how's how's simpkin marshall doing and uh maxwell was like no i'm not i'm not at liberty to say and 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 came back with a loan and he was like kept the money for himself. And this publishing house, which had been around 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? Uh, no, 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, God, this place is just, it's 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, like two years ago, private equity bought it. 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 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 times, 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 private eye that called him the bouncing check, as in Czechoslovakian. So he definitely had, he 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 Verlag who got him that first deal, they ended up severing contact with him in 1958. Pergamon 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 can't be a CEO, sorry. They, like, the board says you can, 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, an Australian named Rupert Murdoch. So we talked about Murdoch in our episode on the, news on the news cycle. 24-hour cable news. Yeah, 24-hour cable news. So everyone knows who Rupert Murdoch is at 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, 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, I'm 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, about Rupert Murdoch and him, 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, and that just drove Robert Maxwell crazier and crazier and just made him want to, you know, 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 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 was like. And by kind of, I mean a hundred percent. Yeah, Murdoch, they talked about the max factor, a play on the, what was that, 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, 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, yeah. I mean, like people got in bed with him 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 as like a European USA Today called European in 1990. So he's, you know, he's launching all these newspapers. And then eventually he says, all right, I need to look toward the states and ends up buying Macmillan US in 1988 for $2.6 billion. So much money in 1988. Oh, totally, and something called the Official Aviation Guidance 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 on Murdoch again. Yeah, I mean, 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. 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. And that's 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 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 laughed at this and said, yeah, thank Bob for the courtesy of that. Basically, I didn't want that failing paper anyway. 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. From 2024, I think is how weird people put it. He owned Mirrorsoft at the time, and Mirrorsoft 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 have been. Because they were already a powerhouse in video games, especially in the U.K., and if they had 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 parties. And that's what he did. He became a. He became a Labor Party member of Parliament from 64 to 70, and he was like, you know, he's one of these politicians who's going to 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 I'm basically a socialist, even though he was the farthest thing from that in reality. Yeah. 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. Apparently, no one liked working with him. There were a lot of rumors floating around about Barry's 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 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. That's his reputation, right? Yeah, but, I mean, he won election and re-election. 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. An SUI? Yep. Or, no, I guess it would be a DUS? I guess. No, no, DWS, 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, let's do it. Okay, we're going to do that, guys. Hey, everybody. If you've tried everything to lose weight and still feel stuck, this summer can be different. Weight Loss by HERS is designed to support you in reaching your goals with access to an affordable range of FDA-approved, GLP-1 medications, including the WayGo pill and the Wagovi pin. Yeah, with Wagovi at HRS, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight when you combine it with diet and exercise. It helps you regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep weight off. 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So head over to bombas.com slash S-Y-S-K and use our code S-Y-S-K for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash S-Y-S-K. Code S-Y-S-K at checkout. So 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 off the table, all the cutlery, saying like it wasn't laid out correctly. And apparently, he had done that more than once. Mm-hmm. Uh, 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. Uh, he would leave the, the, uh, door to this bathroom open. Apparently, he would urinate off the top of the building. Uh, just real boorish behavior. Uh, yeah. At the same time, though, he's like, um, cultivating this English gentleman, um, persona. Yeah. Um, which was very much encapsulated by his, his accent. He didn't sound anything like someone who was born and raised in Czechoslovakia. Yeah, not at all. No, he, he was like, I mean, being elected as a member of parliament, it's pretty good for your reputation. Um, 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 when he was, you know, alive. He was alive and, and working in, 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 this larger than life personality by the public who knew about him. Yeah, I think so. Uh, but yeah, he was, he was a blowhard. He would do things like, uh, 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 insane 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 beep, boop, boop, boop, boop. I do. I got a call. Sorry. Uh, he was not a good father and husband, like I mentioned earlier. Um, he lived in this huge mansion called Headington Hill Hall, uh, which was leased from the Oxford City Council. Uh, and apparently it was like he would at dinnertime, he would assign his children. Uh, topics that they had to like impress him with and then he would judge them. Um, apparently there was physical abuse. Uh, he cheated on his wife like time and time again. Uh, his wife described him as, as bullying, but would also take up for him at times, you know? Yeah. She set the bar pretty low. She said he was, he was no degenerate monster. Right. Right. Uh, he was also famous for, um, he, 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's a domineering bully who was, you know, making his, 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, um, honor it, then, then you've got something good. But if you, 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 to stay married to me. I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past him. Yeah. I mean, we'll go over them real quick, but, uh, 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, I love that's his number one. Mm-hmm. Uh, number two, don't criticize unduly. Uh, number three, give honest appreciation. Number four, pay little attentions. That's sweet. Mm-hmm. Uh, to me is what he was saying. Right. Uh, number five, be courteous to me. Mm-hmm. And then number six, have the utmost confidence in yourself in, uh, in me. Yeah. I mean, it really, if you, 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. Yeah, for sure. And, and he, he used it against her too. He said like, 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. Uh, he had, uh, you know, quite a few kids. He lost very sadly, a couple of them. He lost a daughter, Corrine of leukemia at age three. And they had a son named Michael that died at age 21 after, uh, being in a coma after a car crash. Uh, it seemed like the little apple of his eye. Was young, uh, Ghislaine, uh, he named his yacht after her lady Ghislaine and, um, even though she had a hard time impressing 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, mommy, I exist 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. Um, but yeah, even still, 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, uh, his, his philosophy was that you didn't leave. Um, your estate to a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Galene. He didn't leave anything to, uh, his wife. He left it all to his sons. In this case, that turned out to be quite, um, quite a bit of baggage, not, not, um, anything good. Yeah, we'll get to that. Uh, so he died under shady circumstances. So we're going to talk a little bit about his death and then, um, sort of everything that was, um, happening to him at that time, which leads people to speculate. Like, was it? Was it suicide, was it murder, or was it an accident? Well, he did have the Max Factor on November 5th, 1991, when he was 68, he fell to his death from his yacht, his 15 million pound Lady Ghislaine. 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 in that 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. 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, you know, when you're talking about business collapsing, like, you know, financial failures, but also sort of his schemes, like, you know, the walls closing in on his scheme. 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 500 million pounds from pension funds. You do not do that, man. No. And he was at the same time he was 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. 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 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 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. The other bankers, though, that held shares in his companies, they were threatening to basically say, we're going to sell these shares that you gave us as collateral. We're going to dump them on the market all at once. And that's going to drive your stock prices down even further. Which is going to 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, 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. 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 in just various Israeli companies. And in 1991, there was a guy claiming to be a former intelligence officer for Israel named Ari Ben Menashe, 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 Mordecai Benunu who went to London as I guess is like a whistleblower. Yeah. 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 it to the Sunday Times. And Maxwell convinced him to sell it to him instead to the Mirror. And he ended up sending that information to Israel as supposedly 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 that's a technique that billionaire tyrants who own news organs do. They'll 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. Yeah. And that's what happened in this country. Remember? Happens a lot. It's really messed up. And as far as Benunu, he was later drugged and kidnapped and jailed for 18 years in Israel. Right. So Maxwell was like, I'm not an Israeli spy. This is all just BS. And then Seymour Hersh flew in with a book. And in the book, it wasn't just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book. And Seymour Hersh was like, yeah, that's all true. Seymour Hersh is one of the most. Indisputable journalists of all time. 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 an 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. Yeah. And 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. All right. So, yeah, walls are closing in in, you know, financially, professionally, politically, I guess. And this, you know, whole spy allegation business. So he falls off. He falls off this yacht, supposedly. His last words at 445 a.m. were complaining to the bridge crew about how the temperature in his cabin. And apparently this guy like peeing off of 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. He was falling from 100 feet or something like that. Right. So 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. Oh, man. So he was clearly trying to hold on. So it wasn't suicide. They ended up finding his naked body floating about 15 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. Yeah. And I think the reason why he was he 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. 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 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 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. 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, no, that that's just not what this was. 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. Right. 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 by his way or get loans to get out of this stuff. Most of his family, I think, and closest people were convinced it was just an accident. There was one pathologist who argued against suicide because 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. 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 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. Yeah. And there was some the initial pathologist, 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 uh speculation about murder but uh apparently the the crew of the lady galane was like no one was on board that uh wasn't authorized no one could have climbed aboard that we wouldn't have known about um 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 right um there's also a theory that he faked his death which is quite possible but um he was pretty recognizable so he would uh 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 yeah and i think that's one of those things where like they said well he had mentioned it before right uh i think he was one of the people who said well he had mentioned it before right uh i think he was one of the people who said well he had mentioned it before right uh i think he was one of the people of those guys that would just like amuse 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 what am i thinking of then uh going over niagara falls in a barrel oh man that was a long time there was a worst way to die that's probably what you're thinking of oh maybe so uh either way uh you mentioned earlier that he sort of did his uh 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 uh debts of like well over 400 million pounds uh that they were initially on the hook for they were uh i think prosecuted for fraud as well in 1996 but they both successfully uh defended themselves and the pensioners were eventually bailed out by public funds apparently yeah they got their money back they got like half like basically 50 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 yeah so um yeah before before galane maxwell came along and tarnished her family's reputation it had already been well-tarnished and she was like well i'm gonna go back to my family and i'm gonna go back to by the time uh that rolled around like her father's death was like this is like his reputation just completely went downhill how about that yeah totally uh yeah galane maxwell that's a whole other episode if you ask me oh man are we gonna do that one day someday okay okay uh if you want to know more about robert maxwell in the meantime there's all sorts of interesting articles about him the house of maxwell i think was a good bbc one from a few years ago and uh since i ended this like an old school how stuff works episode uh it's time for listener mail uh 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 uh i think it's a good one i think it's a good one i think it's a good one uh josh you were asking about how the settlements worked with regard to tobacco companies paying in perpetuity while also having a specific settlement amount uh for background minnesota agreed to about 6.5 billion in settlement funds uh we were not part of the master settlement it's actually pretty simple that 6.5 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 oh cool so minnesota received a series of one-time payments targeted at specific tobacco cessation and public health uses 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 150 million dollars 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 uh hope it provides some clarity and that is from jeremiah wingstead man that's so awesome i love hearing from people who are there yeah you know and who who actually know the stuff yeah and we can always we can always count on that almost 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 that's right thanks a lot jeremiah uh 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.com stuff you should know is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows with no fees or minimums on checking accounts it's no wonder that capital one bank guy is so passionate about banking with capital one if he were here he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums he'd also tell you about how capital one cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs yep even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way what's in your wallet terms apply see 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