Stuff You Should Know - The Rosenbergs

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953. Whether or not they were both guilty remains unclear, though most historians believe that at least Ethel was innocent. Learn all about this historical stain in today's episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

you're listening to an iHeart podcast. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar. I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans that combines behavioral science and storytelling to help us navigate the big changes in our lives. I get so choked up because I feel like your show and the conversations are what the world needs, encouraging, empowering counter-programming that acts like a lighthouse when the world feels dark. Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. We didn't start the Fire edition. It's funny because that may have been the first time I've heard about the Rosenbergs. Rosenbergs, H-bomb, sugar, ray, panmunjom. What was that last part? I've never known what the heck he was saying.

P-A-N-M-U-N-J-O-M, one word, panmunjom. Brando the king and I and the catcher and the... Right, right, right, back up. What is Panmunjam? Well, I don't know, buddy. You'll have to listen to the We Didn't Start the Fire History podcast because I was like, earlier today, I was like, oh man, what a great basis for a history podcast.

No. Yeah, of course it was a thing. That's awesome. But you know, it's got a shelf life because they, I guess, went through all of them. From 2021 to 2023. So was each lyric its own episode? I don't know, I mean, I would,

I mean, that's how I would do it because you can get a lot of mileage out of that song. For sure. That's really cool, hats off. Yeah, I didn't check it out. But yeah, I mean. I didn't check it out. Uh, but yeah, I mean... I didn't check it out. There's a... Man, surely they didn't do one each,

because there's so many references, and it only ran for two years, unless it was a daily show. Maybe they just got bored after, like, halfway through. They're like, forget this. Anyway, this is, uh, that's Billy Joel's worst song, probably, and this is, uh... This is a podcast about the Rosenbergs. Well, what was his best song? And if you don't say Uptown Girl, you're wrong.

Probably Miami 2017. I don't even know what that is. I've seen the lights go out on Broadway. That's a great song. But I'm a Billy Joel, like super, I'm a stan, so. Are you really? Oh yeah, you didn't know that? No, I had no idea.

Yeah, Glass House, this was the first record I ever bought, then I've seen him live like a dozen times. I had no idea. I like, it's kinda cool to listen to Billy Joel now, but I suffered many decades of people making fun of me, cause I would like go see a pavement show and then put on Billy Joel the next day. Man, people just stink sometimes.

Hey man, you got, I have a variety of tastes. As do you. Yeah, for sure. And people should be left alone and not have their tastes made fun of. Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel any day of the week, my friend. I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone,

and that's Ethel Rosenberg. Yeah. I guess we should give us sort of an overview of this before we dig in. Yeah, fair enough. So the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were a married couple. They lived in New York City, were from New York City,

and they were convicted of committing espionage in 1951 and executed and put to death, which was, this is a very big deal for a few reasons. One is because a lot of historians basically say like, I don't think Ethel did this and she was probably innocent, even though Julius did. And a lot of people say, and even if he did, and she might've known about it, like executing these two people with two young sons

when no one else was getting executed for this at the time was a travesty of justice. Yeah, and as we'll see, they got caught up in Cold War communist hysteria, and were basically put into a deadly game of chicken, essentially is what it amounts to. And it's one of those blemishes on the Department of Justice that's never really gonna go away that they did this.

We'll see, we'll explain. But it's just a sad story all around. We wanna say Julius Rosenberg definitely was a spy for the Soviet Union, an enthusiastic one whose spy career spanned more than a decade. Yeah. Ethel probably was in some way, shape, or form at least abetting it, if not some way minorly supporting it. She may have also played an even bigger role.

But I personally do not think that both of them were innocent. Some people say that. Just based on the research I've done, it just seems clear as day that they weren't both innocent. But to put them both to death, they were not the only spies who were caught and convicted during the Cold War. They were the only spies caught and convicted

during the Cold War who were executed. And that's what makes the whole thing so significant. Yeah, for sure. So let's go back and talk a little bit about their early life. We can kind of breeze through this first part. But I mentioned they were both born in New York. Ethel was born there in 1915, had a few brothers, went to Seward Park High School.

She was big into theater. And this would come up because she loved to sing and dance and later on when she started to get a little political and was going to Union events she would like perform sometimes I guess to you know just make it a little more fun like hey here's we're at the Union meeting and now here's a song from Ethel I guess at the time Greengrass. Yeah the communist blues with a nice little communist tap dance. Julius was also born in New York.

He's a few years younger, born in 1918 to Polish immigrants and he also went to Seward Park High School, but I don't think they knew each other there. It seemed like they met when he was at City College and she was working as a secretary. Yeah, and by this time when they met when he was at City College and she was working as a secretary. Yeah, and by this time when they met, they had both, their interests in communism had definitely blossomed.

I think Julius is even more than Ethel's by then, but Ethel, I think, had participated in a strike and was fired from her workplace for participating in a strike, and she was like, hmm, I think I'm into workers' rights now. So when they met, it was at a charity benefit for the International Siemens Union, S-E-A-M-E-N.

And so they were both like, I'm a communist, you're a communist, let's get together and make little communist babies. And do the communist shuffle? Yeah. Yeah, he was definitely more into it. He joined a group called the Steinmetz Society, who was an affiliate of the Young Communist League.

And he had a couple of friends that are gonna come up later in a sort of a smallish way, but just put pins, and the names Morton Sobel and Max Elichter, who were buddies he made while he was sort of in this affiliated with the Young Communist League group society. Yeah yeah yeah and they have very similar ideas to his and in 1940 did you say that he trained as an electrical engineer that's what he studied? No but that's you're right. Yeah he he was hired as an electrical engineer, or that's what he studied? No, but that's, you're right.

Yeah. He was hired as an engineer for the US Army Signal Corps. And when he was hired, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together and said, what can I steal and pass along as secrets to the Soviet Union, essentially? Yeah, basically. He had one minor brush with the FBI in 1941. He was called into what's

called a loyalty meeting, I guess, to sort of sniff people off the case and see how loyal they were to the United States because they found a couple of mentions of Ethel in the FBI files, one that she had signed a petition for a communist city council candidate and another that was just someone who gave a tip that accused her of having communist leanings. But he was like, I'm not even into politics that much, which is a lie. Right. Let alone communism, which is also a lie. And so they pretty much dropped the case. And in 1942, they moved to the Lower East Side to the Knickerbocker Village and started having those baby communists, like you said.

Is the Knickerbocker Village still around? Is that like a neighborhood in the Lower East Side? I don't hear it referenced. I mean, I'm sure you could tell where it was, but I don't know if there are any modern references or signage or anything like that. Or I might be wrong, but I've never seen it. Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in New York talk about. What is that?

Knickerbocker Village. Oh, gotcha. Okay, so we've laid the foundation. There's Julius, there's Ethel, their kids have come along. They're both very loyal communists, especially as we'll see, and Julius is big time into spying and he became a spy. Um, it's not actually clear how that happened to tell you the truth.

Um, there's many different accounts. One is Julius's account, which is that he never spied and he was framed by the government. Yeah. That's demonstrably untrue. Uh, his brother-in-law David's account, which we'll get into more later, but he basically said that Julius would like, he actually went so far as to go to the Soviet embassy

in New York and said, hey, can I do some spying for you guys? I'm a big fan. Like he would basically just, he wanted to spy, he was putting himself out there. And then there were a couple of others that are probably likelier than either of the other two. Yeah. One Soviet agent named Alexander Fekseloff said he was just introduced to another Soviet agent

at a Labor Day rally in Central Park. His name was Semyon Semyonov. And then other people said, no, it was another intelligence person. So we don't know how we got into it. But to set the stage of why he might have done this, it was a time in the 1940s when the US and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis. And there are historians that say like, Julius didn't think he was betraying the US. He thought he was fighting fascism when he sort of started getting into spying for the Soviets. I don't know about that, but that's what some people say. Yeah, I think that's the most polite way you could put it. Another way to say it is maybe...

betraying the United States was just an incidental part of it. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. But I saw that one of the things he was well known for, it's like he hated fascism so much that he would like, like be seen walking down the street and be like, I hate you fascism. And he'd be punching the air. Yeah, he hated fascism. So that was one of his big motives for sure. Yeah. And in 1942, so he was hired in 1940. I guess he laid a little bit of groundwork for people trusting him. In 1942, he started passing weapons information to the Soviets and

some pretty big ones too. One of the ones I saw was a proximity fuse and that is a tiny radio that is used in anti-aircraft guns that basically tells the anti-aircraft gun, okay that plane is now in range to do maximum damage to it, fire. Yeah. That's definitely something you want to have on your anti-aircraft gun. And he passed that along to the Soviets. That was just one example. And he was first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier.

He got handed off then to Alexander Feklasov, who you also mentioned earlier. And so those two's account of how he got into spying are probably the likeliest because they were his spymasters when he was a spy. Yeah, agreed. Also during this time, and this is pretty key, he was trying to recruit other people who had that sort of same political leanings as him and recruit them. And one of those people was the aforementioned brother-in-law. So this is David Greenglass, and this is Ethel's brother. So in March 1945, he was fired from the Signal Corps. The FBI said, wait a minute, you've got a Communist Party membership card, and it's

got your name on it. And he was like, oh, okay, so I don't work there anymore. I'm going to start my own business with Ethel's Brothers, David, who I just mentioned, and Bernie, and it's called Pit Machine Products and that did not go well. I guess that it just wasn't a good business. I think David accused Julius of being a bad business person. He accused David of being a bad foreman and by 1948 the company was

Almost not a company anymore. No, it was just down to the original Investors, I just made scare quotes who were Julius and Ethel's two brothers David and Bernie, right? So Another big part of this problem. I Guess we should say what we're describing now is animosity that kind of grew up between David and Julius specifically. There was just some tension, even though they still remained in one another's lives, highly involved in one another's lives. Some historians point to this specific instance of them going into business together, which

is always a bad idea to go into business with family. Across the board. Okay? Again, we'll go back to my original motto, never trust family. Never trust family. Man, he's been saying that for years. Yeah, well, Julius Rosenberg would agree with me.

So would Ethel. But, so David started to become resentful, and there was animosity throughout this period. And some people point to that as the basis of what came later. Yeah, for sure. David had borrowed a lot of money from Julius without returning it.

So the animosity is building his wife, David's wife Ruth, so their sister-in-law, the Rosenberg sister-in-law. She, in February of 1950, was lit afire when her nightgown brushed up against the heater of her apartment. She had a lot of hospitalization and severe burns and high medical bills and gave birth to a daughter while she was recovering from this.

So all this is just to basically set up, like you said, that David is, he's in a pretty bad place in his life at this time. Yeah, he's going through a rough patch. Yeah. So we'll talk a little bit more about what happened because there's different accounts depending on who you talk to. But what we do know that happened next

was that they started to get caught. So the whole thing kicked off in February of 1950 when a guy named Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist, he was British, he was discovered by MI6 as being a Soviet spy. And he was a big time Soviet spy. Apparently, the spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets the spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets skip ahead an entire year in the development of the atomic bomb. Huge, huge damaging spy. And when he was caught, he implicated others, but he didn't know others' names. He only knew their code names.

And he mentioned Raymond. Well, the FBI, the US government, had what are now known as the Venona cables. The US had cracked secret cables that were encrypted that the USSR had sent during World War II. And in it, it talked about a lot of the spies working for them. And by having these Venona cables and knowing people's different code names,

they were able to basically root out at least 100 spies using these cables. And Klaus Fuchs was first, and then after Klaus Fuchs was Harry Gold, who was the raiment that Klaus Fuchs mentioned in his confession. Yeah, that's right. So he was his US contact, Fuchs' US contact.

And then eventually that trickled down and gold led them to David Greenglass, the Rosenberg's brother and brother-in-law. So on June 15th, 1950, the feds got David Greenglass and they rounded him up, brought him to HQ to question him. And he was like, I'm not into espionage at all, like deny, deny, deny, which is, I guess, the sensible thing to do. But then they said, no, this guy, Harry Gold,

identified a photo of you, and he went, okay, you got me, I am committing espionage. He was arrested, and he said, I passed on this atomic information, and we'll get to how he knew this stuff in a minute. I passed it on to Harry Gold in June 1945. I was initially recruited to do this by my wife, Ruth. And Ruth was recruited by my no-good brother-in-law, Julius.

Right. Key to all this is that he never mentioned Ethel being involved at first. Yeah, that's a big one right there. Just put that in your pipe and stick it in your hat, right? Yeah. Should we take a break now and talk about what came next? Yeah, that's a good cliffhanger.

Okay. We'll be right back. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal, it's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party

right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published and he was unlike any first time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. He spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity.

He was an adrenaline junkie, and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my screen, break my ribs. true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my screen, break my ribs. I had my guts all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started. Rodger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rodger.

From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, who is one degree removed from the Rosenbergs. And he's already implicated Julius, but not Ethel. So the FBI goes to start talking to Julius. They questioned him in June of 1950. And I guess basically the day after they started talking to David Greenglass's brother-in-law. Yeah, they moved pretty quick. Yeah, and they didn't have enough on Julius to bust him yet. They knew enough because again, remember, they had the Venona cables,

and all of these people are mentioned in the Venona cables. They had basically figured out who is who, but the Venona cables were so sensitive and so highly classified, the FBI, the Department of Justice, could not use them in court. Oh yeah. So they could only use them as a background information and then they had to extract these confessions

and piece together as if those things didn't exist. So they knew everything, but they had to basically get David Greenglass and then later his wife Ruth to talk. Yeah, which they did over the course of a month or so. They started talking to Ruth, kept talking to David and about, yeah, like one month later, July 17th, they said, all right, we got enough. We're going to arrest Julius. And then a little less than a month later on August 11th, after Ethel participated

in the grand jury hearing for her husband, she was also arrested and they were both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage and that was under the Espionage Act of 1917. Yeah, yeah. For some reason, going and being just a part of a grand jury trial and then getting arrested right after, I can't compare it to anything

but it just seems almost mean. Like there should be a break in between. Like you think you're going in and you're gonna be fine, and then bam, you get arrested on the, like as you're walking out, it's just mean. That's like when they invited everyone to the football game, the criminals. Yeah, that was a good one.

Operation, what was that? Was it? I meant to meet. No, that was that? Oh. Was it Mincemeat? No, that was the one where they created the corpse that they threw overboard in World War II to fool the Nazis. Yeah, that inspired a Broadway show, but I think maybe a Broadway show should be inspired

by the Redskins football game. I agree, and I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, or at least the Simpsons episode. I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. No, it did, remember? We talked about it, where they had the free boat giveaway. That's why I said wink wink. Oh, gotcha.

I didn't know you were winking at me. You're like, I thought you were just flirting. Right. All right, so we should tell the story, and this is the official story, according to the Department of Justice, on how this all went down. So we're just gonna tell it tell it that way to begin with.

Yeah. I mentioned David Greenglass had atomic secrets and how he got those was he was in the army in 1943 and he was transferred to Los Alamos in August of 1944 and was around the work of the Manhattan Project all of a sudden. Yeah, he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer. Yeah. So that was August with Oppenheimer. Yeah.

So that was August of 1944 when he started working on the atomic bomb project. A few months later, Ruth came to visit David. And his wife. Yes. Ruth, his wife, Ruth. So, um, by this time, when she came to visit her husband, um, in Albuquerque, she had actually been recruited as a spy by at least Julius Rosenberg. And she essentially went to Albuquerque to convince her husband to become a spy. All these, like both couples were very much into the Soviet Union, very much into communism.

So they have very similar views. This wasn't like, didn't take a lot of persuading from what I understand. And she basically said, hey, Julius figured out, probably as Soviet handlers told him, that you're working on the atomic bomb project. So he wants you to tell me everything you know about it and then I'm going to take it back to him. Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR and our glorious leader, Joseph Stalin. That's right. January of 1945, David went back to New York on furlough, and just a couple of days after he got back, Julius came around, knocked on the door of his apartment, and he said, Hey, what else you got for me on this atomic bomb?

He said, Write it all down. Anything you can think of that's useful, I'll pick it up tomorrow. His wife, David's wife Ruth was like, his handwriting is terrible. You're not gonna be able to read this. And Julia said, according to the DOJ, said not a problem. Ethel, did I mention to you, is the secretary. She can type like the wind.

She'll type everything up so it's nice and neat and orderly and we'll all be a working family together in this espionage project. All attention will dissolve after we start spying together. Yeah. And that same furlough visit in January of 1945, David and Ruth have dinner with the Rosenbergs and they're actually introduced to a Soviet operative

named Ann Sidorovich. And a really interesting plan is hatched here that ultimately leads to the downfall of David Greenglass. Julia says, hey, Anne is going to be your contact now. She's gonna come visit you in Albuquerque. By the way, Ruth, why don't you move to Albuquerque to be with your husband, and you guys can spy more effectively together.

Yeah. But when Anne comes to visit, you just give her all the information, and she will give it to me We should say there were people like Anne like Harry Gold their entire job was to act as couriers And the reason why is because the Soviets rightly assumed That the the feds were following all of their operatives in the United States So they couldn't possibly use an operative to connect two spies.

They had to use a third spy to work as a courier. That's what Anne was doing. But somebody said, what if Anne is indisposed? What if she gets a stomach bug and is just pooping everywhere? Or what if she falls in love and runs off and gets married and forgets all about the USSR? And Julius said, I've got a great idea,

a plan B, if you will. And that is where the phrase plan B was coined. Are you messing with me? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, so one small detail here is that Anne was in Denver, so Ruth would get the information from David and Albert Gerke, then visit Anne in Denver

to pass this along. And if Anne had that stomach bug, this was the brilliant plan that Julius came up with. He said, hey, man, that Jell-O box over there. Raspberry. And they were like, we've already had dessert. Why do you want this Jell-O box? He ripped the Jell-O box open and took one of the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed Ruth one and said I'm gonna give this other half to someone with a secret

identity that you don't know yet. That's our plan B person so if you show up to Denver, Ann is not there and somebody shows up with this jello box half that I'm holding and showing you, remember, it's gonna match. You can put it together like a locket. Yeah. That will be the confirmation of their identity, which is so lo-fi, it's actually kind of brilliant. It is brilliant.

And I think that Jell-O-Box, those two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere. They got it. And rightfully so. But it actually came into play because Anne did get indisposed in some way that I hadn't figured out. And Harry Gold, who again, one of his only job was serving as a courier, he showed up in New Mexico on David and a spy. And they said, you got the password, you got the code, you got the, I don't know, what would you call an object that serves as a password?

Passkey? They probably said, do you have the ripped piece of Jell-O-Box? Right. Or they said, I am the key master, are you the gatekeeper? Gozer, sure. So he said, yes, I am the key master, check this out. And he produced the half of the Jello box and Ruth.

What a moment. Yeah, Ruth, I think it was one of the other, Ruth or David produced the other half and they put it together and they said, let's wrap, brother. So he's now the guy, David writes up, as much as he knows at that point, the extra stuff about the bomb that he, since the last meeting.

And also, like, here's some other people that, you know, they're always trying to recruit people within Los Alamos and elsewhere. And Gold said, great, thanks a lot. Here's 500 bucks. Which is interesting because they, I mean, they weren't doing it for money, right? Was this just a bit of a bonus for being a good soldier? I think so. I don't know.

Not chump change back then, nor now. No, I mean, they were definitely true believers in communism and fighting fascism, so maybe it was just a little, a land yap. All right, so they gave him 500 bucks. September of 1945, he went back to New York, David did, on another furlough, So they gave him 500 bucks. September of 1945, he went back to New York. David did on another furlough.

And here he provided information right to Julius' face. Said, here's some more notes. I even drew a sketch of the atomic bomb. Julius was like, this isn't very good. And he said, no, trust me, it looks basically like that. And he claims that Ethel typed up the notes, and then Julius burned those notes in a frying pan, gave David 200 bucks for his troubles,

and that's where we find ourselves. Yeah, when I saw that frying pan detail, I was like, God, how long did they have to heat those up to get them to catch fire? And then I realized they were using the frying pan as like basically a fireplace. Yeah, I got it now, but it took me a couple days. That'd be very funny in the movie though.

It's just like another 45 minutes. What's the flashpoint for Jell-O boxes? Right. So are we at another stopping point? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, we're going to stop as we just hanched out. ["Sweet Homework"] Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Just listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about

on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms,

the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary.

He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my screen, break my ribs, I had my feps all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started. Rodger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself.

And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rob. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GoBoy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back to the contemporaneous present when everyone had been arrested basically. Right out of the gate, David and Ruth, the husband and wife team, the Green Glasses, hired an attorney named O. John Rogge, or Rog, or Roggie, I don't know how you pronounce that, R-O-G-G-E. And so they had a pretty good attorney.

And he said, hey, here's what you got to do. Let me ask you this question first. How much do you like your sister and her husband? He said, because what we should really do if you want to get out of this is we should blame the Rosenbergs. And if you can make a case against them, then they're probably gonna let you off pretty light. And he was right on the money with that line of thinking. Yeah, and the green glass has said, sure, why not?

I have a pet theory that if David and Ethel had been closer in age, she was seven years older than him. You may not have betrayed her quite as easily, but seven years is a pretty decent amount of distance between you and an older sister. I think that makes the betrayal all the easier. My sister's six years older, and I would totally sell her out.

There you go. So my pet theory is correct. That's right. So this led to basically a different account. Some people may say it was an account that shifted. Other people might say, no, David just basically lied about Ethel's involvement. And you might be wondering, well, what's the rumpus here?

They had Julius dead to rights. Why did they need to get Ethel involved? This is because they were living in a time of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors like Roy Cohn who basically were like, hey, if you want to get Julius, you got to get his wife involved and use her as leverage basically. Yeah. And the other thing too is even though they had Julius Dutton writes, he was not cooperating

in any way, shape or form. He maintained his innocence until the very end. And they wanted more spies. They wanted to flip him and get more and more and more people. So they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage, and they ended up picking her up based on the Green Glasses testimony.

Remember when David Green Glass's first question, he does not mention Ethel. He mentions Ruth, his own wife. He mentions his brother-in-law Julius. He does not say Ethel was part of the spy ring. Now all of a sudden he is saying she definitely was. And then even more damning, before the Department of Justice came and said like,

hey, why don't you just touch a perjury to help our case out? He gave the grand jury testimony, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested right after, rather unfairly. And he said point blank, Ethel was not involved in this. Yeah, and we know all this is true, because in 2001, David Greenglass said, yeah, I lied about my sister

because I wanted to save my own wife. Yeah, he lied during the trial. He perjured himself, he admitted it. So not only did he perjure himself, he perjured himself to implicate his sister, which a lot of people think she was basically innocent, if not fully innocent. So that's a really hard thing to swallow,

but we're still not done with the DOJ and what they did here. Yeah, for sure. Julius and Ethel were tried together along with Julius's college classmate that I mentioned at the beginning, that I said to put a pin in, Morton Sobell, you can take that pin out now. So the three of them were being tried, and if David and Ruth hired an attorney that had a pretty great idea to blame it on the Rosenbergs. They did not hire well because they hired Emanuel Manny Block. I think that was Julius' attorney. They had separate attorneys.

And Ethels was his father, Alexander, and neither one of these people were criminal attorneys at all. No, Alexander specialized in facilitating the sale of bakeries. I don't get it. I don't understand why they hired them. I didn't see. I don't know. There had to be some connection.

I doubt if they just yellow-paged that, you know. Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers. I don't know, but it was. Somebody probably knows. I bet someone will let us know. Yeah. So the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors led by Irving Saapoel, who time

called the nation's number one legal hunter of top communists. Not who you want prosecuting you if you are a spy for the Soviets. And then the judge was also not the judge you wanted to draw. His name was Irving Kaufman and he was known for hating communists and he used his bench to essentially punish them as harshly as he possibly could. He was the kind of judge who would actually add ten years under whatever sentence the DOJ was asking for in trials of communist spies. He was that kind of judge and that's who they drew. You know, it'd be funny as if who let us know about the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel.

What if he sent us an email? Said, I know this guy's and attached, you'll find an additional verse that I cooked up for you. Oh my God. To We Didn't Start the Fire where I explain about the bakery guy. Yeah and he'd be like, PS, what's this with my worst song crap Chuck?

Right? Oh man. I can and he'd be like, P.S. what's this with my worst song crap, Chuck? Right? Oh man. I can't believe I said that out loud. We have to edit that out. What I meant to say was there is no bad Billy Joel song. That was perfect. There you go. We'll just clip that out

and put it over what you said originally. No, I'm gonna leave it in. I'm gonna stand by it. Hey, listen. It was a big hit. Billy, if you're listening, I love almost everything you ever did, but you can't win them all

That's a great lesson to learn Billy Joel really is Okay, so One thing we should point out getting back on track here about this Trial and the prosecution which hated communists. The jury of 12 had one black man, one white woman, and no Jewish members on the jury. The other were 10 white Christian men who all were in favor of the death penalty.

Yeah, which, you know, in their defense, like, you can't be on a capital jury if you are in favor of the death penalty. But still, it was not the kind of position that you would want to find yourself in. Like this is a- I never thought about that. I guess that's true, huh? Yeah, I think we talked about it in the jury episode.

I'm pretty sure. That's where I got it from, which means it could be wrong, but yeah. Well, if you were against the death penalty, you'd just gum up the works. They don't want you in there. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

So they're in a pickle, I guess is what you wanna call it. And they're still like, this is all wrong. We're just, we're maintaining our innocence. And the prosecution said, oh yeah, we'll sit there while we trot out a bunch of witnesses against you guys. They brought Max Elekter, who was a classmate with Morton Sobel and Julius, remember? Ruth's brother-in-law, Louis Abel.

And I guess that was from, I guess she had a sister. I didn't see that anywhere. George Bernhardt, who was Julius' doctor. Harry Gold, the courier for the Soviets. And Elizabeth Bentley, who was also a former spy. And each one had quite a story to tell. Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, why did they get Julius' doctor in there, it's because he testified that Julius had inquired about going to Mexico and like, what inoculations

do I need to get if I go to Mexico, like, very suddenly. And the prosecution was like, hey, and I just made up the very suddenly part, but the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey, this is evidence. He for the very suddenly part, but the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey, this is evidence. He was gonna flee, he was gonna go to Mexico, get that doctor in here. Right. So let's see, Elizabeth Bentley, the former spy,

she said, I saw him, or somebody who looked like him, once talking to Jacob Golos, who was a known Soviet operative and the head of the Communist Party of the USA, in Knickerbocker Village, the KBV, no less, in 1942, it's a little thin. Some of the other ones were a little more damning too. Yeah, by the way, I know I sounded very dumb earlier when you said KBV right after Knickerbocker Village

and I didn't pick up on that. In my defense, I thought it would have been KBV because Knickerbocker is one word, that's what confused me. Yes, but people like to like- No, I thought it would have been KV because Knickerbucker is one word. That's what confused me. Yes, but people like to like... No, I agree. I'm just letting everyone know. I'm not a 100% moron.

I'm just 50% moron. No one thinks you're a moron. Or even 50% of a moron. You should read the internet. People, there's plenty of people who don't like me either. I don't know. You can't take that personally. There are people that hate us. No, I don't. I don't like me either. You can't take that personally. There are people that hate us. No, I don't.

I don't read that stuff. Good. Again, they can soak their heads. That's right. Kick sand, touch grass, all those things. So like I said, touch grass? You haven't heard that? No.

They've been knocked down? No. I think touch grass is a more modern thing. Like when people are just social media fighting, someone will say touch grass, like, you know, get off the computer, go outside. Yes, yes, yeah, okay. I think that's what that means.

Weirdly, I came across it for the first time within the last couple of weeks and I promptly forgot it. Yeah, well, you know what they should say, smoke grass. Quit internet fighting, go smoke some weed. Yeah. So what about Max Elekter? Who was that? Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass.

Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass.

Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass.

Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Stop eating grass. Lewis Abel, Ruth's brother-in-law, said, Hey, I got some money from Ruth and David. And if you know David, that is weird. So I asked him where they got it. And he said Julius gave it to them.

And I suspect for spying. And Manny Block stood up and said, objection. And the judge said, overruled. You call me? You call me lover? Yeah, his dad's over there rolling some biscuits out. Right. Oh, I'm glad you said that,

because I have to get this out there. I don't know where it came from, but it will not leave my head that Sir Mix-A-Lot buttermilk biscuits song. It's just... I don't know that song. Parts of it are... You don't? No, and I love Sir Mix-A-Lot.

I just don't know the song. It's a weird, like, novelty song that he had, like, very early on, surely, from his first album. I'm not like the rest. It's a weird novelty song that he had very early on. Surely from his first album. I'm not like the rest of his serious work. Exactly. It's even more novel than his later stuff. Yeah. Oh man.

Seattle Zone. What a legend. I didn't know he was from Seattle. Yeah, yeah. Because when they did the, do you remember the Judgment Night movie and that amazing soundtrack? I remember the movie.

Well, the movie wasn't great, that amazing soundtrack? I remember the movie. Well, the movie wasn't great, but the soundtrack was great because they paired rock bands with hip hop artists because that was a big thing at the time. Oh yeah. And Sir Mix-A-Lot and Mudhoney were paired because they were Seattleites and their song was awesome.

Nice. Remember Body Count with Ice-T? Oh yeah, I saw them at the first Lollapalooza. Nice. That was when Ice-T was still making music and he's on that cop show forever now, right? Yeah, I mean, this is a rapper who had a song called Cop Killer.

Yeah. And he plays a cop. And apparently he's gone through some like metamorphosis in the eyes of police and people who support police. I bet. From hating him to being like, hey, he's actually kind of a good guy because he plays a cop on TV so well.

It's really interesting. No, I remember the time, boy, he was persona non grata for law enforcement. For sure. And Ice-T didn't care. He's like, just watch. I'll be back in the most surprising way you can possibly imagine.

They went as literal Ice-T? He's like, well, not that surprising. Right. The second most surprising way you can possibly imagine. They went, as literal iced tea? He's like, well, not that surprising. Right, the second most surprising thing. You mean you play a cop on a TV show? He said, yep, bingo. That's what he was known to say, bingo. Oh man, we're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one.

Who knew the Rosenbergs were gonna bring this out? Did not know. So it was a three week trial in all. Like you said, they, till the end, said they were not know. So it was a three week trial in all. Like you said, they, till the end, said they were not guilty. The trial concluded in March of 1951, guilty, all three defendants, sentenced the third guy, Morton Sobel,

to 30 years in prison, sentenced the Rosenbergs to death, saying their crime was worse than murder and that their work caused the communist aggression in Korea. So they were really taking the fall for a lot here. There were a lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years.

All of those failed. But he did launch a pretty successful media campaign that got a lot of people very interested in the Rosenberg's sentence. Yeah, he finally got a newspaper to agree to look into the case. It was the National Guardian, a very left-wing paper, and they investigated it and produced a very sympathetic, what I take to be long form article on the Rosenberg case. And that article created a bunch of other press which spread further and further,

really drummed up public sympathy to the point where they were holding vigils where a thousand people would show up in cities around the world in support of them. And people thought like, this is not right. Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like, these people should not be executed. Certainly not Ethel should be executed.

And the judge is like, I can't hear you. He had his fingers in his ears like, la la la. Yeah, and there are historians that say like, this all just sort of organically came about because of this press. The DOJ of course was like, no, no, no. The Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party overall launched a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Rosenbergs.

So you know, it's a bit of a he said, she said, or they said, they said in this case. But here's the deal on the execution. You said it was a game of chicken early on, and I'm sure people that noticed that mention were like, what is Josh talking about, a game of chicken? And this is what you were talking about, was the idea was even Herbert Hoover did not want to execute them,

and it was all a ploy to try, up until the last moment even, there were supposedly people on the walk through the electric chair that were like, do you wanna change your mind? Because you don't have to die right now if you wanna give up some names. Yeah, yeah, so the execution was essentially leveraged,

just like they used Ethel, they railroaded Ethel into a conviction to use as leverage against Julius to get him to flip on other spies. They used the the death sentence in the exact same way and they expected one or both of them to be like, okay, okay, okay. That's fine. Let's not we got two young kids at home. Let's all just cool off. We'll give you some names and some information and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg did not do that. And in fact, there was the head, I think he was a deputy attorney general at the time, who said, Ethel Rosenberg called our bluff.

So rather than one party, the DOJ or the Rosenbergs, veering off at the last second, they crashed head on and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were put to death, even though essentially no one thought that was the right thing to do. And that's how they went down. Yeah, and I mean, didn't you find too that Hoover even himself got in touch with the judge and was like, hey, listen, we don't want you to install the death penalty here. And the judge had his fingers in his ear.

Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that Ethel in particular should not be executed. That was the official stance of the FBI and it still happened anyway. It wasn't a good look. I mean they were worried about the optics for sure of, especially because they were Jewish and you know coming off the heels of World War II and they're like they've got two young kids you cannot execute this woman. Yeah, and even more so, Manny Block, remember he was like an appeal machine.

He had one last Hail Mary appeal. That was on the billboard on the highway. Yeah, exactly, with somebody holding a check for a million dollars that he got for them, for their bakery. So he filed one last appeal and he basically said, dude, you're going to execute two Jewish people at the beginning of the Sabbath. Do you know how bad that's going to upset the Jewish community worldwide? And

Judge Kaufman, who was Jewish himself, said, you know, I hadn't really thought of that. And Manny Block's like, great. So let's postpone this indefinitely. And Judge Kaufman said, no, no, no. We're just going to move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts. Yeah. They were put to death at 8 PM.

And that judge was a real SOB. They held a funeral in Brooklyn on June 21, 1953, where 10,000 people reportedly attended. They were buried, finally accepted, after some closer cemetery said no at the Wellwood Jewish Cemetery in Long Island. And the boys, it's just still hard to believe they didn't, not that one of them didn't, you know,

for the sake of being a parent to their kids, didn't recant, but they didn't. Yeah. And those boys, Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel Miropol. A little interesting side note here. Abel wrote the song, Strange Fruit. Which, have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees version of that? Oh, no, but that's great. Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song. Another reference to the first Lollapalooza, even. Who knew? Wow. That's great. Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song. Another reference to the first Lollapalooza even, who knew? Wow, that's really something.

Wow. I know, right? Did not expect that. Billy Joel is spinning in his piano stool right now. He's like, I know I should have accepted that offer. I know. Michael got a PhD in economics and Robert Rosenberg became an attorney.

And both of them, they've dedicated their lives to trying to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years and years, they admitted like, okay, dad was a spy, but not mom. Yeah. And you said that they were criticized by some people for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind. And David Greenglass, again, who lied and got his sister and brother-in-law killed, I said they were stupid. He said that was a really stupid thing for them to do

to not accept some sort of bargain to take the death penalty off the table. That's his opinion on the whole thing. Wow. That's what I said too. Yeah. And oh what I said too. Yeah. And oh, I should say real quick, the reason

that the brothers, the sons, finally were like, OK, Dad, was a spy was because those Venona cables we talked about earlier, they were finally released starting in the 90s. And it showed quite clearly that Julius was a very enthusiastic spy for the Soviet Union and probably Ethel definitely knew about it but she may have been involved in recruiting Ruth and if she did that she was definitely a spy but again that

doesn't change most people's thoughts that they probably should not have been executed. Yeah yeah totally because I mean that's a that's a whole different argument you know it's like maybe they were guilty but you should not have been executed. Yeah, yeah, totally. Because I mean, that's a whole different argument. It's like maybe they were guilty, but you should not have put them to death. That's what a lot of people seem to think. Yeah, I mean, including people from their own spiring didn't even come close to the death sentence.

It was just specifically leverage that just never got taken away. Because the government wasn't about to be like, oh, okay, you got us, all right, we won't kill you. It's just crazy. Boy, this was a fun one, and there was a lot of jokes. I hope it didn't come across as insensitive. I mean, that's kind of what we do here, so not be insensitive, but just try to,

you know, kind of make jokes about stuff. Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can you laugh at? Nothing. Exactly. Actually I don't know if that's exactly true but still. Yeah. Since Chuck said exactly. That's not to examine that one. Exactly. It's listener mail time. That's right this is about we heard from a lot of our Canadian friends we love it when Canada points out something that they know that we don't That's right. This is about, we heard from a lot of our Canadian friends. We love it when Canada points out something that they know that we don't.

And in this case, it's about Cole's Notes. Great episode about the Cliff's Notes, guys. The name rings a bell to me, probably through American movies and TV. But as a millennial Canadian, I'm far more familiar with Cole's Notes. Cole is a legendary bookstore across Canada. And so every location had a stand of Coles Notes booklets focused on books and plays covering covered in the Canadian school curriculum. I even remember reading them in school alongside Shakespeare plays to understand them better. Yes, they were often used to cram before a test without reading the material. They were also used

as Coles intended. Chapters slash Indigo is the big Canadian book retailer now and they bought out the Kohl's locations But they still print and sell Kohl's notes today So that guy did all right in the Canadian market. Thanks for making me a little smarter each week and that is from Natalie Good arm son good Torham son great name from Alberta, Canada. Thanks a lot Natalie Thanks for making us a little smarter this week. We appreciate it big time. Yeah. And if you want to be like Natalie and tell us something we didn't know, we love that

kind of thing, you can send it off to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex

and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shankar. I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans

that combines behavioral science and storytelling to help us navigate the big changes in our lives. I get so choked up because I feel like your show and the conversations are what the world needs, encouraging, empowering, counter-programming that acts like a lighthouse when the world feels dark. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pitman, Chairman and CEO of iHeart Media. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby Bones. We're exploring the power of audio. Yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now because I talk to people that grew up like me,

have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to Math & Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.