Stuff You Should Know - Who was Robert Maxwell?

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Robert Maxwell was a lot of things, publisher, mogul, spy, politician, crook. But was he murdered when he fell from his yacht?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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One of my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with HOTA Kodhap on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. 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... This is an interesting episode because Robert Maxwell was kind of a horrible person. In a lot of ways, he achieved a lot of things. He also did a lot of terrible things. So it was interesting. I didn't know much about this guy at all,

and I can't remember... if I heard about him because he's the father of Galane Maxwell, but... Which makes him even worse. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. I'm not sure where this came from, though, 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. The problem 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 it was a pretty awful husband and father at the same time.

Well, there's the episode. Well, let's talk about him. He was born Jan Ludwig Hoke in 1923 and Salat Vigno, which was Czechoslovakia at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from a, you know, he's very poor. He was raised very poor from a big family. His father seems like was a pretty awful guy too.

So, you know, behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two, you know? It's intergenerational. Yeah, that's the way it generally works. Yeah. So, and that's why I'd never had kids. Oh, no. So, yeah, he said at one point, I was never young. I never had that privilege.

And it was basically because his family was so poverty-stricken and his father was such a jerk that he 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 sort of gorging himself on food and his wife, his later wife, Betty, would say that, you know, she thinks that all came back from the hunger that he had as a child. Yeah. He was Jewish. He was from a Jewish family.

And like I mentioned earlier, he managed to escape the, I think kind of the only member of his family to escape the Nazis in March of 1939 when they invaded Czechoslovakia by cutting off his sidelocks and like getting the heck out of there. and for a lot of his adult life, like, I don't know if he denied it, but never came forward as being Jewish, like changing his name and everything. Yeah, he was low-key Jewish for a lot of his life until later on when he was talked into, I guess, coming out. I don't know what you would call it in that sense.

Yeah. But you said that he escaped the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he definitely did, but very quickly he turned right around. and went back to join the Hungarian underground in Budapest. And he was essentially trying to move people escaping like him further on to safety because Hungary still wasn't, you know, safety. It was better than being in Czechoslovakia, but you still needed to keep moving.

And he was going to help people. And almost immediately he was captured and held and tortured as a member of the Czech resistance, which is not what you wanted the Nazis to consider you. No. Apparently there was going to be no trial at all, and then the French embassy stepped in because he had a planned execution

and arranged what seems to be like a sham of a trial. Sure. And he ended up escaping, escaping, like, on the way to prison. So, you know, again, a lot of this stuff is from his authorized biography and stories he told, some of which was no doubt like embellished probably. So he seems like one of those guys that would like kind of pump up a story about himself. Yeah.

Yeah. No, agreed. He's definitely that type for sure. Yeah. But he escaped, like you said, literally with his life. He escaped with his life because he would almost certainly have been executed. And he joined the Foreign Legion in France and they sent him to. England because France was overtaken by the Nazis as well.

And in England, he basically found a new home. He signed up for the British Army. He was there when Normandy was stormed. And he also displayed like real actual valor, both valor and ruthlessness. Kyle helped us with this. And Kyle really loved to focus on ruthlessness, which in these cases is a synonym for war crime. Cut and Dried War Crimes. Yeah, for sure.

He really tried to remake himself as a British guy, like pretty successfully. Like I said, he changed his name a couple of times, eventually landing on Ian Robert Maxwell and, like, taught himself English, apparently would listen to Churchill speeches. So he would get that sort of, that grand English accent that Churchill had. Sure. But yeah, he, you know, flat out admitted to, he had a real knack for, like, going undercover and doing like special ops and stuff, but also, like you said,

disobeying orders and being pretty ruthless. Like he, like, admitted to his wife in a letter that he, like, executed more than one, like, unarmed German person, including a mayor in Germany. Yeah, civilian even. Yeah. Yeah, and again, that's a war crime. And he would later be investigated for it.

But they were not able to find anyone who could corroborate that. Any witness said, yes, I saw him shoot that mayor. Or, yes, I saw him shoot those unarmed troops who surrendered. So they had to close the case. So is that 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 did work for the British intelligence after the war. He ended up being recruited by MI6. It's six, right? Yeah, MI6. he could speak English, German, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian by the end of the war. So he was extremely valuable post-war while Europe was being divvied up and being rebuilt

and people were having to interact with all these other countries. And he'd also changed his identity four times before then, too. Yeah, but like you said, he legit achieved in the armed forces. He worked his way up eventually to become a second lieutenant. in the Queen's Royal Regiment, and had a very apparently daring rescue for a trapped Allied platoon in the Netherlands and received a military cross, like a distinguished service military cross. So, again, it's sort of a conundrum with this guy 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 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 it is the more you know about them, the easier it is to believe that that's quite possible, you know? For sure.

So he made it through the war quite successfully. He was stationed in Berlin, I think, at the end of it. He was interviewing German prisoners of war to get as much intelligence out of them as possible. Yeah. And so while there, he was also in the chaos of all of this, of Europe being devastated and just beginning to rebuild. There was a lot of money to be made. It's like in that Spike Lee movie, The Inside Man.

Yeah, I didn't see that. Oh, my goodness. And that's like one of the better later Spike Lee's, I know. Yeah, it's one of the better, like, just suspense movies, too. It's really well done. Great movie. Please see it. But anyway, in one part, Christopher Plummer.

says when there's blood on the street buy real estate. And that was essentially what Europe was like at this time. And Robert Maxwell was exactly the kind of person to buy real estate when there was blood on the street. So he was making all sorts of money on the side, just taking advantage of the desperation of the people who he was

interacting with. And in addition, like other business opportunities came up. And improbably, if you ask me, he ended up in the scientific publishing world and became essentially like a scientific publishing magnate in the coming decades. Yeah, so while he was in Berlin,

he was working with Derrtelegraph and that paper was owned by Springer Verlag, two words with a dash in the middle. I think Verlag was a big academic publisher, which is kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this. He met the publisher, Ferdinand Springer, and he learned that there were like,

you know, more than 60,000 books in journals like stockpiled 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 eventual business partner, this guy named Paul Rosebaud, started a company, I guess bought his way into a company called Butterworth Springer,

which was rebranded Pergamon Press. And they got a deal with Springer Verlog to get, get these books like these scientific textbooks out into the world, and he got MI6 to finance this deal. Yeah, yeah. They basically paid for 300 tons. Yeah, 300 tons of books and journals to be shipped to London so that they could be translated and then published for money, like you said.

And they also, he said, I want to buy some shares in the company, too. So they gave them 25,000 pounds. And I did some back-of-the-envelope work. Oh, boy. You're not going to call it maths, are you? No, not. I wouldn't even dare. But that is about $885,000 U.S. 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 it at face value. but one thing he was really good at was like he could be very charming he was kind of a jekyll and hide from what i saw 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 m i 6 when he basically was like

hey having all these german scientific research books uh is it's like an asset to us an intelligence asset maybe a propaganda tool and my 6 bought it yeah so uh we'll put his role in academic publishing to the side, but just suffice to say that the current state of affairs where journals determine what science is 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, their eye-popping. That actually came from Robert Maxwell in the way that he changed the industry. Oh, interesting. There's a really good long-form guardian article from 2017 called

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? And you can guess that the answer is yes. But it talks a lot about this and other stuff too. But it's a good article. I'd say go read that if you're interested. All right. I'll check it out. Should we take a break?

Yeah. All right. I'll go read the article right now. We'll be back in, what, 20 minutes or so? Sure. All right. Be right back. There's no shortcut for saving time.

But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia.

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Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in. opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no.

I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here.

I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So one of the things about Maxwell was when he got into scientific publishing, he really went like full bore into it. And his whole jam with business was like buy one thing and then use it to buy, buy, buy another thing.

start another thing. Like basically get into one industry and just mushroom everywhere you can because the more stuff you have, the more money you can soak up in that industry or that sector, right? So he bought another publisher, Simkin Marshall, and this is a really good demonstration

of his business techniques. He bought it with a loan from a business partner. The business partner came back and was like, hey, how's Simkin Marshall doing? And Maxwell was like, 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

and then sold off all the assets and kept the money for himself. And this publishing house, which had been around for more than a century, went under, thanks to Robert Maxwell, rating it. And it was essentially proto-private equity, like moving. that he did. That's what private equity does. Chuck, have you been to Dunkin' Donuts lately? 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. Really? Yep. They do it. Like, any time you are in, like, you work with a business or you like a store or something like that and it suddenly goes downhill, go online and search that business in private equity. And I guarantee you, private equity got involved in 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 Simkin 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 a reputation of, you know, just doing what he could by Hooker Crook to get something done and then like walking away and

leaving people penniless behind him. That Springer Verlog, 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.

Yeah. 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 upset, 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 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 100%. 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 is like a European USA Today called European in 1990. So he's launching all these newspapers. And then eventually he says, all right, I need to look toward the states and ends up buying McMillan, US in 1988 for $2.6 billion. dollars. So much money in 1988. Oh, totally.

And something called the official aviation guide in for $750 million. Which, again, that's a crazy amount of money in 1988. So he was this spending spree, especially in the U.S., where he's trying to take on Murdoch again. I think Murdoch had already bought the New York Post by this time. It was a lot like the USSR being driven to extinction. by spending, the U.S. spending, and having to keep up with spending, Rupert Murdoch would go do something

and now he was in the United States. So now Robert Maxwell had to do it and Robert Maxwell had to outdo him so he started spending money he didn't have and was expanding his empire and his empire started to lose its foundation. It started to crumble financially because of him trying to keep up, 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.

Like, basically, like, 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. 2004, I think is how weird people put it. He owned MirroSoft at the time.

And Mirroft had Tetris in their hands. And just through a series of miscommunications and bad deals, lost it. And had they had Tetris, who knows what that would be? Because they were already a powerhouse in video games, especially in the UK. And if they had continued owning Tetris, they might have, they might still be around. But because they lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye 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 Labor Party member of parliament from 64 to 70. and he was like, you know, he's one of these politicians kind of say whatever just to get in there. And he was like, you know what? I came from a farm laborer's background and I had no money. So like I'm basically a socialist,

even though he was the farthest thing from that in reality. 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 them. There were a lot of rumors floating around about various improprieties. There was one rumor that he sold part of the Palace of Westminster's wine 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 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 S-U-I? Yep. Or no, I guess it would be a D-U-S? I guess. No, D-W-S, driving while shaving. 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. There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com.

Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal?

A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull. They're not just opposing what. It's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration.

Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinheiro. and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility.

Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world. as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 cutleries saying, like,

it wasn't laid out correctly. And apparently he had done that more than once. He would bring his kids into work and, like, belittle and lecture the staff, like, to impress his kids. He would file fire people while they were on vacation. he would leave the door to this bathroom open. Apparently he would urinate off the top of the building. Just real boorish behavior. Yeah, at the same time, though, he's like cultivating this English gentleman persona. Yeah.

Which was very much encapsulated by his accent. He didn't sound anything like someone who was born and raised in Czechoslovakia. Not at all. No, he was like, I mean, being elected as a member of parliament, it's pretty good for your reputation. So, like, we know so much about him now and, like, what he did throughout his life. Yeah. His image now is not what his image was when he was, you know, alive and working and working in parliament and doing all that stuff. I think people who worked closely with him knew what he was like.

But I think in general he was just kind of this viewed as this larger-than-life personality by the public who knew about him. Yeah, I think so. But yeah, he was a blowhard. He would do things like if someone walked into his office, he would say, like, give me the White House on the phone. And then apparently just have like a fake conversation on the telephone to the White House. That's like, that's what 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, peepoo, pooh, bo, bo, beep. I do. I got a call. Sorry. He was not a good father and husband, like I mentioned earlier.

He lived in this huge mansion called Heddington Hill Hall, which was leased from the Oxford City Council. And apparently it was like he would, at dinner time, he would assign his children topics that they had to, like, impress him with, and he would judge them. Apparently, there was physical abuse. He cheated on his wife, like, time and time again. His wife described him as bullying,

but would also take up for him at times, you know? Yeah, she set the bar pretty low. She said he was no degenerate monster. Right. Right. He was also famous for, he gave her six rules for basically getting along in a lasting partnership. And it depends on how you look at.

at it. You could look at it like he's a domineering bully who was, you know, making his wife adhere to these rules that he was laying down. But if you read all the rules, it's actually, these are actually pretty good sensible rules for maintaining a partnership that if both people honor it, then you've got something good. If it's just one person, then you've got a problem. Yeah, I got the impression it was, here are your six rules that you need to do to stay married to me. I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past them. Yeah, I mean, we'll go over them real quick, but in the context of this is what you need to do and not this is what I pledged to do for you. Right. Number one, don't nag. Because who, I love that's his number one.

Number two, don't criticize unduly. Number three, give honest appreciation. Number four, pay little attentions. That's sweet. To me is what he was saying. Number five, be courteous to me. And then number six, have the utmost confidence in yourself and me. Yeah. I mean, really, if two people come at a relationship like that, observing those six, I guess, rules or guidelines or whatever, I think that's kind of good. But yes, I'm quite sure you're right that he was like, here's what you need to do for me. Yeah, for sure.

And he used it against her, too. He said, 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. He had 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 being in a coma after a car crash. It seemed like the little apple of his eye was young Galane. He named his yacht after her, Lady Galane. and even though she had a hard time 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, she was very clearly his favorite. But yeah, even still, I don't think like, it seems like he would still be. berate her at the drop of a hat or something like that. He just maybe did it slightly less than he did to others, or maybe he didn't beat her. I'm not sure, but everyone knew that she was the favorite. Although, when it came to business, it was his two sons that he brought into business

with him, not his daughter, not his wife. And when he died, his philosophy was that you didn't leave your estate to a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Galane. He didn't leave anything to his wife. He left it all to his sons. In this case, it turned out to be quite a bit of baggage, not anything good. Yeah, we'll get to that. So he died under shady circumstances. So we're going to talk a little bit about his death and then sort of everything that was happening to him at that time, which leads people to speculate, like was it suicide, was it murder, or was it an accident?

But on November... 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 Galane. 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 splur the moment trip to the Canary Islands where looking back, crew members were like, it was weird, and that he showed up by himself. which was unusual, didn't have like his Butler or his 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 signal 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 were talking about business collapsing, like, you know, financial failures,

but also sort of his schemes, like, you know, the walls closing in on his schemes. Like you mentioned, he was basically raiding his companies for profit. A lot of the times from the pension funds, I think it ended up being close to, close to 500 million pounds from pension funds. You do not do that, man. No. And he was at the same time, he was selling Pergamon. He was secretly buying shares in his companies to prop up stock prices,

like while he was trying to rid himself of these things. Yeah, he was in a really bad spot because a bunch of factors basically came together to have all of his creditors, basically, 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, 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 concern. 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 he could hear what his family was saying about him. That's nuts.

And then there was this other sort of wall closing in on him, and that there were allegations that he was a spy, for Israel. He had invested at one point, 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 Manashi who told the news that Maxwell and one of his editors that was working with him at one of his papers were Israeli agents. And apparently in 1986,

there was a nuclear scientist named 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. He ends up sending that information to Israel as supposedly, like, to fact-check it and confirm it. but he ended up stiffing Van Nuu for the money and never ran the story.

Yeah, that's a technique that billionaire tyrants who own news organs do. It's like 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, I mean, that's what happened in this country, remember? Happens a lot.

It's really messed up. And as far as Vanunu, 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 Hirsch flew in with a book. And in the book, it wasn't just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book. And Seymour Hirsch was like, yeah, that's all true.

Seymour Hersh is one of the most indisputable journalists of all time. if he said something is true, he has done so much research on it that he'll stand behind it every time. And most of the time, if not every time, it's quite true. So he said that, yes, 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. So the papers tend to kind of stay in line about even talking about rumors like that. But once it was brought up in Parliament, now the papers could report on Parliament mentioning it and dig into it and they could report on it

without any fear of liable. So this is going on at the same time too. All right. So, yeah, walls are closing in, you know, financially, professionally, politically, I guess, in this, you know, whole spy allegation business. So he falls off this yacht, supposedly. His last words at 4.45 a.m. were complaining to the bridge crew about how the temperature in his cabin. And apparently, this guy like peeing off the things, because apparently he went to pee off the back of the boat, which they said was like a normal thing for him to do, and then fell over a low rail. And this, you know, this was a not the yacht where you're falling from like six stories up. It's like a, you know, it was a yacht, but it wasn't like he was falling from 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 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 drowned

was because the ship was cruising at the time. So without anyone knowing that he'd fallen over, he was in the middle of nowhere by the time that ship realized that he was gone hours later, right? Yeah. So let's start with these, Chuck. 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 him. His reputation was about to be completely ruined. Financially, he was about to be completely ruined. So, yeah, suicide makes sense, but again, that torn arm muscles basically

say, no, that that's just not what this was. Yeah. And, 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 with facing all of this stuff. He would still like try and fight his way or buy his way or get loans to get out of this stuff. Most of his family, I think, in closest people were convinced it was just an accident. There was one pathologist who argued against suicide because of the arm thing for sure

or the fact that he was naked. That seemed a little strange, I think, to them as well. Mm-hmm. So accident seems pretty prominent, right? Yeah. There's also assassination. Remember, Israel was supposedly being outed as having used him as a spy for years and years and years. That wasn't enough to fuel that rumor of Israel killing him.

What the rumor was is that he had asked Israel for a loan, and Israel said no. And he said, well, you know what? to go tell everybody about me being a spy for you, and they were like, no, you're 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 speculation about murder. But apparently the crew of the Lady Galane was like, no one was on board. it wasn't authorized. No one could have climbed aboard that we wouldn't have known about. Ken Lennox was a guy who knew him, said he, like, saw the corpse, and it wasn't, you know, it didn't have, like, any markings of struggle or gunshot or throat cut or anything like that. Right. There's also a theory that he faked his death, which is quite possible, but he was pretty

recognizable. So it would have been difficult for him to start a new life somewhere without. you know, completely changing his face at least in his voice. Yeah, and I think that's one of those things where, like, they said, well, he had mentioned it before. Right. I think he was one 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? Yeah. What am I thinking of then?

Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Oh, man, that was a long time. There was the worst way to die. That's probably what you're thinking of. Well, maybe so. Either way, you mentioned earlier that he sort of did his wife and daughter a favor by not leaving them the business because the business was, I think it was the largest, may still be the largest bankruptcy in Britain's history. Yeah. Deats of like well over 400 million pounds that they were initially on the hook for they were, I think, probably.

prosecuted for fraud as well in 1996, but they both successfully 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? That means everybody in Great Britain chipped in so those people wouldn't just completely lose their pension.

neat. Yeah. So, yeah, before Galane Maxwell came along and tarnished her family's reputation, it had already been well tarnished by the time that rolled around. Like, her father's death was like, this is, like, his reputation just completely went downhill. How about that? Yeah, totally. Yeah, Galane Maxwell, that's a whole other episode, if you ask me.

Ooh, man. Are we going to do that one day? Someday. Okay. Okay. If you want to know more about Robert Maxwell, in the meantime, there's all sorts of interesting articles about him, too. There's documentaries. The House of Maxwell, I think, was a good BBC one from a few years ago.

And since I ended this like an old school How Stuff Works episode, it's time for listener mail. 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 tobacco use. Josh, you were asking about how the settlements worked with regard to tobacco companies paying in perpetuity while also having a specific settlement amount. For background, Minnesota agreed to about $6.5 billion in settlement funds. We were not part of the master settlement. It's actually pretty simple.

That $6.5 billion number was an estimate of the settlement's value at the time. of the settlement, not a cap on how much companies would pay. Oh, cool. So Minnesota received a series of one-time payments targeted at specific tobacco cessation and public health uses, but we also 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 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. I 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 actually know the stuff. And 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. 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 IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Tatourl, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing, my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo.

It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free high heart radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tuttle. And listen now. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.

You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hurt. Hoda Cotabby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, A.O. Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode

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