Who was Robert Maxwell?l

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Who Was Robert Maxwell?

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: August 13, 2026
Episode Description: An exploration into the scandalous and complex life of Robert Maxwell, British media mogul, spy, fraudster, and father of Ghislaine Maxwell. Josh and Chuck break down his rise, immense influence in publishing, infamous rivalries, family dynamics, criminal legacy, and mysterious death.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the complicated life and legacy of Robert Maxwell. Far from a one-note villain, Maxwell was a war hero, ruthless tycoon, manipulative family man, a possible spy, and notorious swindler, ultimately dying under circumstances still shrouded in mystery. The hosts dissect myths, facts and the far-reaching impact he had on publishing, politics, and even global espionage, offering listeners a nuanced portrait of one of the 20th century’s most controversial "great men".

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Brief Biography and Context ([02:08–06:01])

• Birth and Childhood: Born Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923, Solotvino (then Czechoslovakia, now Ukraine), to a large, poor Jewish family. Suffered under an abusive father, later affecting his personality.
  • Quote: “Behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two.” – Josh Clark (04:02)
• Escape from Nazis: Survived the Holocaust by fleeing and hiding his identity. Later, he downplayed his Jewish heritage, changing his name multiple times.

2. War Hero and Shadows of Ruthlessness ([06:01–10:49])

• Resistance and Military Service: Joined the Hungarian underground, was captured, tortured, but managed a daring escape (possibly embellished).
• British Army: Fought bravely, saw action at Normandy, awarded Military Cross for valor. However, he was also "ruthless"—possibly committed war crimes, although unproven.
  • Quote: “He had a real knack for going undercover and doing special ops and stuff. But also, like you said, disobeying orders and being pretty ruthless.” – Josh Clark (08:40)
• Work with MI6: Postwar, became a valued asset for British intelligence due to his language skills and ability to adapt identities.

3. Tycoon and Scientific Publishing Kingpin ([10:49–15:23], [18:29–21:28])

• Postwar Business Moves: Used postwar chaos to buy up undervalued academic assets, exploiting desperate sellers.
• Pergamon Press: Built an empire with MI6 financing, essentially inventing modern scientific publishing as big business. Cultivated a landscape where journals, not scientists, directed research focus.
  • Quote: "The way that he changed the [publishing] industry... actually came from Robert Maxwell." – Chuck Bryant (15:03)
  • Resource Mentioned: Guardian article, "Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?" (15:04)
• Business Tactics: Iconic example of "proto-private equity": bought companies, raided their assets, left them bankrupt.
  • Quote: “He had borrowed a ton of money against the company's credit and then sold off all the assets and kept the money for himself.” – Chuck Bryant (19:48)
• Notorious Reputation: Nicknamed "the Bouncing Check" by satirical outlet Private Eye for his unreliable dealings (20:49).

4. Fierce Rivalry with Rupert Murdoch ([21:28–26:27])

• Competing Empires: Relentlessly tried (and failed) to outdo Murdoch, buying left-leaning papers to counter Murdoch's conservative acquisitions.
  • Quote: "It was one of those rivalries... it meant everything to Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch was like, who?" – Chuck Bryant (22:44)
• Major Acquisitions: Daily Mirror (1984), London Daily News (1987), European (1990), Macmillan US (1988), New York Daily News (1991)—often overextending his finances in the process.

5. Political Career and Personality ([27:14–34:47])

• Labour MP (1964–1970): Self-fashioned "socialist," disliked by peers, accused of shady dealings, more opportunist than principled.
  • Quote: “They called him the biggest gas bag in the Commons.” – Josh Clark (28:14)
• Public vs. Private Persona: Cultivated an English gentleman image, but privately a bully—hostile to employees, abusive at home, notorious for firing subordinates in humiliating ways.
  • Memorable Anecdote: Regularly swept cutlery off tables to berate staff, urinated from buildings, held fake phone calls to seem important.

6. Family Life and Ghislaine ([34:47–38:11])

• Parenting: Harsh, manipulative, and as Chuck says, “set the bar pretty low.” Major favorite: daughter Ghislaine, whom he named his yacht after.
• Will and Inheritance: Left everything to his sons—excluding wife and Ghislaine, adhering to sexist traditions, but also saddling sons with the debt-laden empire.

7. Maxwell’s Death and Legacy ([38:11–51:07])

The Mysterious Death ([38:11–49:49])

• Circumstances: Fell off his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, near the Canary Islands (November 5, 1991). Alone, acting uncharacteristically relaxed. Recovered nude, miles from the ship.
  • Quote: "Apparently this guy liked peeing off of things. Cause apparently he went to pee off the back of the boat... and then fell over a low rail." – Josh Clark (44:36)
• Possible Causes:
  • Accident: Family and close associates say it fits his personality, and torn shoulder muscles indicate he tried to save himself. Pathologists agreed only on drowning as cause of death.
  • Suicide: Some speculated mental collapse under mounting financial and criminal exposure.
  • Murder: Rumors swirled about Mossad involvement (due to spy allegations), or due to mobbed-up business deals, but evidence is very thin.
  • Faked His Own Death: The theory exists but is widely dismissed as implausible given his fame.

Scandal Unleashed After Death

• Massive Pension Fraud: Raided company pension funds—close to £500 million—leaving retirees imperiled until government bailout.
  • Quote: “You do not do that, man.” – Chuck Bryant (40:02)
• Criminal Cases: Sons prosecuted for fraud but acquitted in 1996. Reputation for both Maxwell and family irreparably ruined.
• Wider Impact: The bankruptcy was one of the largest in UK history. Pensioners recovered about half their losses, thanks to public intervention.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He was a tycoon, he was a bully. He escaped Nazi Germany’s wrath... He was also a crook who stole from the pensions of companies he started and a lot of, like, terrible business dealings.”
  – Josh Clark (03:34)
• "He could be very charming... He could be super charming and like work his way into a room or work his way into a deal."
  – Josh Clark (13:53)
• “It was [as if] the USSR being driven to extinction by spending. Murdoch would do something, and now Robert Maxwell had to do it...”
  – Chuck Bryant (25:17)
• “His wife described him as bullying, but would also take up for him at times. You know... She set the bar pretty low. She said he was no degenerate monster.”
  – Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant (34:47–34:52)
• “Before Ghislaine Maxwell came along and tarnished her family’s reputation, it had already been well-tarnished...”
  – Chuck Bryant (50:46)

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Timeline: Key Segments with Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |------------------------------------- |------------:| | Introduction to "Great Man" history | 02:08 | | Maxwell’s early life and WWII escape | 04:04–07:26 | | Wartime exploits and MI6 career | 07:26–10:49 | | Pergamon Press and publishing empire | 12:14–15:23 | | Business raiding: Simpkin Marshall | 18:29–20:47 | | Rivalry with Murdoch | 21:39–26:27 | | Maxwell’s brief and corrupt parliament stint | 27:14–28:49 | | The “Max Factor” and toxic management| 31:58–34:47 | | Family life and Ghislaine | 34:47–38:11 | | The yacht and mysterious death | 38:11–49:49 | | Pension scandal aftermath | 49:50–51:07 |

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Additional Resources

• Documentary Mentioned: The House of Maxwell (BBC)
• Further Reading:
  • Guardian 2017 article: "Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?"
  • Look up Faking Your Death episode for more on death fakery.

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Conclusion

This episode paints a vivid, detailed portrait of Robert Maxwell as an exceptionally driven but deeply flawed figure whose ambition, charm, and ruthlessness built (and destroyed) huge industries and legacies—leaving immeasurable impact on publishing, journalism, and his own family. His mysterious death, sprawling scandals, and larger-than-life persona ensure he remains a complex cautionary tale in modern history.

“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 from a few years ago.”
– Chuck Bryant (51:16)

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Great man. Except he's. This is a 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 Ghislaine Maxwell, but which makes him even worse. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. I'm not sure where this came from though. Cause this one was like a year and a half ago that we requisitioned the article and it had just been gathering dust and so we dusted it off, and now we're gonna talk about this jerk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Great man. History, by the way, is. It's a. It's a way of interpreting history through the leaders, political and social military leaders, like the. The people who make history happen rather than society or individual people. The problem is, is that those great men usually are not great people, like, personally speaking. And he. This is a really good example. He was revered because he was super rich, but he was also, I have to say, a very. 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.

[Josh Clark]

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. Was a pretty awful husband and father at the same time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, there's the episode.

[Josh Clark]

Well, let's talk about him. He was born Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923 in Solatvino, which was Czechoslovakia at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from a. You know, he was very poor. He was raised very poor. He was from a big family. His father seems like, was a pretty awful guy too. So, you know, behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, it's intergenerational.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's the way it generally works.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So. And that's why I never had kids.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. He wasn't. He didn't have much of a childhood, but he. 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.

[Martha Stewart]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 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 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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, no, agreed, he's definitely that type, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 crimes. Cut and dried war crimes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. He really tried to remake himself as a British guy 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, he flat out admitted to. He had a real knack for going undercover and doing special ops and stuff. But also, like you said, disobeying orders and being pretty ruthless. Like, he admitted to his wife in a letter that he, like, executed more than one, like, unarmed German person, including a mayor in Germany.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. A 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. Um, so they had to close the case. So is that a case of him just pumping up his own legend again?

[Josh Clark]

Right, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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, like, he spied for the Soviet Union or that he spied for Israel. And I don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind that stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but it is. The more you know about him, the easier it is to believe that that's quite possible, you know, for sure. So he made it through the war quite successfully. He was stationed in Berlin, I think at the end of it, he was interviewing German prisoners of war to get as much intelligence out of them as possible.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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. Where they say that. Oh, my goodness.

[Josh Clark]

And that's like, one of the better later Spike Lee's. I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

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, 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, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so while he was in Berlin, he was working with Der Telegraaf and that paper was owned by Springer Verlag. Two words with a dash in the middle. I think Verlog was a big academic publisher, which is kind of like you mentioned, where we were headed with this. He met the publisher, Ferdinand Springer, and he learned that there were like, you know, more than 60,000 books and journals, like stockpiled in a warehouse. And they had been, you know, like away from public view since 1939, like 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 these books, like these scientific textbooks out into the world. And he got MI6 to finance this deal?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, they basically paid for 300 tons. Yeah, 300 tons of books and journals to be shipped to London so that they could be translated and then published for money, like you said. And they also, he said, I want to buy some shares in the company too. So they gave him £25,000. And I did some back of the envelope work.

[Josh Clark]

Oh boy. You're not going to call it maths, are you?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I wouldn't even dare. But that is about US$885,000 today.

[Josh Clark]

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 face value. But one thing he was really good at was like, he could be very charming. He was kind of a Jekyll and Hyde from what I saw. So as awful as he could be, he could also be super charming and like work his way into a room or work his way into a deal. And I think that's what he did with MI6 when he basically was like, hey, having all these German scientific research books is like an asset to us, an intelligence asset, maybe a propaganda tool. And MI6 bought it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So we'll put his role in academic publishing to the side. But just suffice to say that the current state of affairs where journals determine what science 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 that are eye popping. That actually came from Robert Maxwell and the way that he changed the industry.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

All right, I'll check it out. Should we take a break?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

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[Josh Clark]

I'll go read the article right now. We'll be back in what, 20 minutes or so.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

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All right.

[Josh Clark]

Be right back.

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[Chuck Bryant]

So one of the things about Maxwell was he, when he got into scientific publishing, he really went like full bore into it. And his, his whole jam with 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, Simpkin Marshall, and this is a really good demonstration of his business techniques. He, he bought it with the loan from a business partner. The business partner came back and was like, hey, how's, how's Simkin Marshall doing? And Maxwell was like I'm not, I'm not at liberty to say. And the guy found out that the, 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 raiding it. And it was essentially proto private equity like move that he did. That's what private equity does. Chuck, have you been to Dunkin Donuts lately?

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't go there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I don't normally either. But I went and got a coffee and I walked in and I was like God, this place is just, it's like the, like a death march in here. This is awful. Like every, like the employees hated their life. Like stuff was broken. Like a serve 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, two years ago. Private equity, really? Yep. They do it like anytime you are in, like you work with a business or you like a store or something like that, and it suddenly goes downhill. Go online and search that business in private equity and I guarantee you private equity got involved and it's just running it into the ground because they don't care.

[Josh Clark]

So he was doing something like this in the 1950s?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Which is crazy. And it seemed like, you know, a lot of times he was definitely not afraid to burn bridges because apparently he didn't even repay that loan to the guy who loaned him the money for Simpkin Marshall.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

There was a rag called the Private Eye or called Private Eye that called him the Bouncing Check, as in Czechoslovakian. So he definitely had a reputation of, you know, just doing what he could by hook or crook to get something done and then like walking away and leaving people penniless behind him. That Springer 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 they declared he was unfit to run a public company. So his reputation was well known even back then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, that's a big deal. When the government says you can't be a CEO. Sorry. The board says you can. We're saying you cannot because you are that untrustworthy.

[Josh Clark]

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 on news, on the news cycle.

[Chuck Bryant]

24 hour cable news.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 24 hour cable news. So everyone knows who Rupert Murdoch is at Fox News. He and Maxwell were grave enemies. And it seems like Maxwell was pretty much obsessed with trying to outdo him. Like anytime he would go to buy a newspaper, Murdoch seemed to be right there in front of him buying it. And he ended up buying the left wing. Maxwell did the left wing Daily Mirror just to counter Murdoch's right wing buys. Like, by all accounts, Maxwell was never. Even though he would eventually be in parliament as the Labor Party. Like, he said that he was conservative, but he wasn't part of the conservative establishment. So he would just be like, all right, I'm part of the Labor Party or I'll buy this left wing newspaper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, it just made sense. Financially, so, you know, he could be whatever. Whatever he needed to be. I guess in that sense, it kind of demonstrates that to me. I was reading about Rupert Murdoch 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%.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Murdoch, they talked about the max factor play on the. What was that? Like a makeup or something?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think there's, like, a makeup line. Yeah, Max factor.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 into 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.

[Josh Clark]

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 Macmillan US in 1988 for $2.6 billion.

[Chuck Bryant]

So much money in 1988.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, totally. In something called the Official Aviation guide, and for $750 million, which, again, that's

[Chuck Bryant]

a crazy amount of money in 1988. So he was this spending spree, especially in the US where he's trying to take on Murdoch again. I think Murdoch had already bought the New York Post by this time. It was a lot like the USSR being driven to extinction by spending. The US Spending and having to keep up with spending.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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, like, laughed at this and said, yeah, thank Bob for the courtesy of that. Basically, I didn't want that failing paper anyway.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

2024, I think is how weird people put it. He owned mirrorsoft at the time, and mirrorsoft had Tetris in their hands and just through a series of miscommunications and bad deals, lost it. And had they had Tetris, who knows what. 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 still be around. But because they lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye on his reputation as a businessman.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned politics early on in Parliament and that he was a conservative human in his heart, but because he wasn't part of that establishment, he was like, all right, I'll go to the Labor Party. And that's what he did. He became a Labour 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 I'm basically a socialist. Even though he was the farthest thing from that in reality, and was just. They called him the biggest gas bag in the Commons. Like, he was not well liked within the House, the walls of Parliament. Apparently no one liked working with him. There were a lot of rumors floating around about various improprieties. There was one rumor that he sold part of the palace of Westminster's wine cellar to an anonymous buyer for, like, way less than what it was worth. I didn't see if that was really true, but point is, no one liked him in parliament, apparently.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. And it's believable. Like you could. You wouldn't put it past him. That's just his reputation, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but I mean, he won election and reelection.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Apparently right before his election, he was arrested shaving the day before while he was driving 90 miles an hour.

[Josh Clark]

Shaving while driving.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

An SUI.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Or no. I guess it would be DUS.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess.

[Josh Clark]

No, no. DWS. Driving while shaving.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good luck. Yeah. There you go.

[Josh Clark]

God, took me a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we take a break and then come back and talk about that max factor?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, we're gonna do that. Guys,

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[Josh Clark]

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 first met at this restaurant, he walked in Maxwell and just swept everything off the table, all the cutlery, saying it wasn't laid out correctly. And apparently he had done that more than once. He would bring his kids into work and like belittle and lecture the staff. Like to impress his kids, he would 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. At the same time though, he's like cultivating this English gentleman Persona.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which was very much encapsulated by his, his accent. He didn't sound anything like someone who was born and raised in Czechoslovakia.

[Josh Clark]

No, not at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's like, that's what insane people do.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, I only do that if I'm trying to avoid somebody in public.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. You even make the dialing sound like beep, boop, boop, beep, beep. I do.

[Josh Clark]

I got A call. Sorry. He was not a good father and husband, like I mentioned earlier. He lived in this huge mansion called Headington Hill hall, which was leased from the Oxford City Council and apparently was, like, at dinner time, he would assign his children topics that they had to impress him with and he would judge them. Apparently there was physical abuse. He cheated on his wife time and time again. His wife described him as bullying, but would also take up for him at times. You know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, she set the bar pretty low. She said he was no degenerate monster.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was also famous for he. He gave her six rules for basically getting along in a lasting partnership. And it depends on how you look at it. You could look at it like he's a domineering bully who was, you know, making his. His wife adhere to these rules that he was laying down. But if you, if you read all the rules, it's actually. These are actually pretty good, sensible rules for. For maintaining a partnership that if both people honor it, then. Then you've got something good.

[Josh Clark]

If you.

[Chuck Bryant]

If it's just one person, then you got a problem.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I got the impression it was, here are your six rules that you need to do to stay married to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wouldn't. I wouldn't put it past him.

[Josh Clark]

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 pledge to do for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Number one, don't nag.

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I love.

[Josh Clark]

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, in. And me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, really, if you. If two people come at a relationship like that, look, observing those six, I guess, rules or guidelines or whatever, I think that's kind of good. But yes, I'm quite sure you're right that he was like, here's what you need to do for me.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he used it against her, too. He said, like, don't nag me about me doing these rules. That's rule number one.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. You don't talk about fight club.

[Chuck Bryant]

He got her with the legal mumbo jumbo.

[Josh Clark]

He had quite a few kids. He lost very sadly, a couple of them. He lost a daughter, Karine of leukemia at age 3, 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 Ghislaine. He named his yacht after her, Lady Ghislaine. And even though she had a hard time impressing him at times, it seems

[Chuck Bryant]

like, yeah, supposedly she put herself on his radar at age 3 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 was. He would still berate her at the drop of a hat or something like that. He just maybe did it slightly less than he did to others, or maybe he didn't beat her, I'm not sure. But everyone knew that she was the favorite. Although when it came to business, it was his two sons that he brought into business with him, not his daughter, not his wife. And when he died, his, his philosophy was that you didn't leave your estate to a woman. So he didn't leave anything to Ghislaine, he didn't leave anything to his wife, he left it all to his sons. In this case, that turned out to be quite, quite a bit of baggage. Not. Not anything good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we'll get to that. So he died under shady circumstances. So we're gonna talk a little bit about his death and then sort of everything that was happening to him at that time, which leads people to speculate like was it suicide, was it murder or was it an accident? But on November. Well, he did have the max factor. On November 5, 1991, when he was 68, he fell to his death from his yacht. His 15 million pound Lady Ghislaine. And he had. Earlier that year he had sailed into Manhattan to buy the New York Daily News. That's what I mentioned was 1991. And then in the fall, he sort of splur of the moment trip to the Canary Islands where looking back, crew members were like, it was weird in that he showed up by himself, which was unusual. Didn't have his butler or his people, like his caretakers. And they said he also seemed in really good spirits, which was sort of unusual. And he didn't work while he was on board, which was super unusual.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so he was essentially getting away from his world collapsing in on him. Yeah, like he, he said that he needed to go do something, I think, but there was no one who was fooled. Like he was just trying to get away from things. That's especially kind of Signaled by the fact that he didn't work, apparently his. There was no line between his private life and his business life. So he was always working. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you know, when you were talking about business collapsing, like, you know, financial failures, but also sort of his. His schemes, like, you know, the walls closing in on his schemes, like you mentioned, he was basically raiding his companies for profit a lot of the times from the pension funds. I think it ended up being close to. Close to £500 million from pension funds.

[Chuck Bryant]

You do not do that, man.

[Josh Clark]

No. And he was. At the same time he was. He was selling Pergamon, he was secretly buying shares in his companies to prop up stock prices. Like, while he was trying to rid himself of these things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was. He was in a really bad spot because a bunch of factors basically came together to have all of his creditors basically call in all his debts at once. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he had used those pension funds as collateral, which is. That's on Lehman Brothers, that's on Goldman Sachs. Like, you should not take pension funds as collateral, even if. And he was fully legally in charge of those pension funds, so he legally could do that. But just being a banker like that and knowing the look that the optics of being like, yep, give us those pension funds because we're calling in a debt you can't repay, of course, that's just a terrible collateral to take. That's neither here nor there, as far as Robert Maxwell is concerned. The other bankers, though, that held shares in his companies, they were threatening to basically say, we're going to sell these shares that you gave us as collateral. We're going to dump them on the market all at once. And that's going to drive your stock prices down even further, which is going to mean you have even less money to repay us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

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

[Chuck Bryant]

That's nuts.

[Josh Clark]

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 in just various Israeli companies. And in 1991, there was a guy claiming to be a former intelligence officer for Israel named Ari Ben Menashi, 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, saying that there's a dangerous nuclear arms program happening in Israel and he was gonna 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 to fact check it and confirm it, but he ended up stiffing Venunu for the money and never ran the story.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a technique that billionaire tyrants who own news organs do. It's like catch and catch and kill. Catch and kill? Yeah, where 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, that's what happened in this country, remember?

[Chuck Bryant]

Happens a lot. It's really messed up.

[Josh Clark]

And as far as Vanunu, he was later drugged and kidnapped and jailed for 18 years in Israel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? So Maxwell was like, I'm not an Israeli spy. This is all just bs. And then Seymour Hersh flew in with a book. And in the book, it wasn't just about Maxwell, but he's tangentially in the book. And Seymour Hersh was like, yeah, that's all true, Seymour. Seymour Hersh is one of the most indisputable journalists of all time. If he says something is true, he has done so much research on it that he'll stand behind it every time. And most of the time it is, if not every time, it's quite true. So he said that, yes, this 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 libel. So this is going on at the same time, too.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so, yeah, walls are closing in financially, professionally, politically, I guess. And this whole spy allegation business. So he falls off this yacht, supposedly. His Last words at 4:45am were complaining to the bridge crew about how the temperature in his cabin. And apparently this guy liked peeing off of things. Cause 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 100ft or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I think the reason why he drowned was because the ship was cruising at the time. So without anyone knowing that he'd fallen over, he was in the middle of nowhere by the time that that ship realized that he was gone hours later. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So let's start with these, Chuck. There's. Let's start with suicide, you said. I think what kind of convinces most people is he clearly, on his way down, tried to grab onto the rail and pulled his. His. Tore the muscles on the side. I can barely say it. It just sounds so painful. So he wanted to live. Right. And also, it wasn't a high jump in the first place. So suicide probably. Wasn't it? Some people who. Some of his biographies even, were like, he would not have done well with all the public attention that was about to be unleashed on 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's just not what this was.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, you know, his family has always said it was an accident. Just I think beyond the arm muscles, just. I think they're knowing him. I think his wife said it just wasn't in his character. They thought he was just the kind of guy that would never give up. Even facing all of this stuff. He would still, like, try and fight his way or buy his way or get loans to get out of this stuff. Most of his family, I think, and closest people were convinced it was just an accident. There was one pathologist who argued against suicide because of the arm thing, for sure, or the fact that he was naked. That seemed a little strange, I think, to them as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

So accident seems pretty prominent, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's also assassination. Remember, Israel was supposedly being outed as having used him as a spy for years and years and years. That wasn't enough to fuel that rumor of Israel killing him. What the rumor was is that he had asked Israel for a loan and Israel said no. And he said, well, you know what? I'm going to go tell everybody about me being a spy for you. And they were like, no, 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.

[Josh Clark]

And there was some. The initial pathologists, I think, had speculated that his body was dead longer than it was in the water. So that kind of spurred a little bit of speculation about murder. But apparently the crew of the Lady Ghislaine was like, no one was on board that 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. There's also a theory that he faked his death, which is quite possible, but he was pretty recognizable, so he would. 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I think that's one of those things where, like, they said. Well, he had mentioned it before. I think he was one of those guys that would just like, muse about something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 youg Death. You can go look up too.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, God, that was early on, wasn't it?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that was like a year or two ago.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, was it?

[Chuck Bryant]

What am I thinking of then, going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, that was a long time ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was the worst way to die. That's probably what you're thinking of.

[Martha Stewart]

Maybe.

[Josh Clark]

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. Debts of like, well over £400 million that they were initially on the hook for. They were, I think, prosecuted for fraud as well in 1996. But they both successfully defended themselves. And the pensioners were eventually bailed out by public funds. Apparently, like, they got their money back.

[Chuck Bryant]

They got like half, like basically 50 cents on the dollar. So they still lost out, but at least they weren't just completely screwed. Which is cool, the UK to swoop in and do that, you know, it was. That means everybody in Great Britain chipped in so those people wouldn't just completely lose their pension. That's pretty neat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, yeah, before, before Ghislaine 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?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, totally.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Ghislaine Maxwell. That's a whole other episode, if you ask me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh man, are we gonna do that one day someday? Okay, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 from a few years ago. And since I ended this like an old school How Stuff Works episode, it's time for listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

This is about the tobacco settlements episode. Hey guys. I wanted to provide some more info about one of the points of confusion you had. I worked for years doing health policy work for the Minnesota House and this source of funds was a hot topic as we were discussing other policies to target the rise in youth to 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, cool.

[Josh Clark]

So Minnesota received a series of one time payments targeted at specific tobacco societies 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 companies so far, we've received something like 5.7 billion. So far, far. Hope it provides some clarity. And that is from Jeremiah Wingstedt.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, that's so awesome. I love hearing from people who are there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know, and who, who actually know the stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And we can always, we can always count on that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Almost.

[Advertisement Voice]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thanks a lot, Jeremiah. If you were there, no matter what we were talking about, we want to hear from you. 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 podcastheartradio.com

[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

[Martha Stewart]

For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit

[Josh Clark]

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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