WEBVTT - Who was Robert Maxwell?l 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.079 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:21.960 should Know, the great Man version of History edition. 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:29.320 Yeah, great Man, Except this is an interesting episode because 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.440 Robert Maxwell was kind of a horrible person in a 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.720 lot of ways. He achieved a lot of things, he 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.320 also did a lot of terrible things, so it was interesting. 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:41.839 I didn't know much about this guy at all, and 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.360 I can't remember if I heard about him because he's 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.000 the father of Glaine. 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.280 Maxwell, but which makes him even worse. 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:56.440 Well, yeah, I mean yeah, I'm not sure where this 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:57.920 came from though, because this one was like a year 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.800 and a half ago. That we wreck was the article, 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.840 and it had just been gathering dust, and so we 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:05.479 dusted it off and now we're going to talk about 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:06.680 this jerk. 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:11.400 Yeah, great Man. History, by the way, is it's a 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:16.880 way of interpreting history through the leader's political and social 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:21.119 military Leaders like the people who make history happen, rather 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.160 than society or individual people. The problem is is that 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:31.440 those great men usually are not great people, like personally speaking, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:33.959 And this is a really good example He was revered 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.399 because he was super rich, but he was also, I 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.760 have to say, a very interesting person. I think he 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:41.480 was a big liar in a lot of ways, but 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:47.240 stuff that he claimed that could be proven was still 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:48.520 pretty nuts. 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:52.400 Yeah, for sure. I mean he was just the broadest overview. 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:58.520 He was a tycoon, he was a bully, he escaped 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.400 Nazi German and he's rath. He was a decorated British soldier. 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.440 He was a member of parliament. He was also a 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.000 crook who stole from the pensions of companies he started, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.640 and a lot of like terrible business dealings. It sounds 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:15.720 like it was a pretty awful husband and father at 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:16.320 the same time. 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:18.360 Well there's the episode. 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.320 Well let's talk about him. He was born Jan Ludwig 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:31.519 Hoch in nineteen twenty three and Slatvignon, which was Czechoslovaki 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:34.400 at the time. It's now Ukraine. But he was from 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:36.280 a you know, he was very poor, He was raised 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.840 very poors from a big family. His father seems like 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.200 it was a pretty awful guy too, So you know, 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:47.000 behind every awful person is usually an awful parent or two. 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.120 You know, it's intergenerational. 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:51.160 Yeah, that's the way it generally works. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:54.600 Yeah. So, and that's why I never had kids. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.680 Oh no, so yeah, he said at. 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.400 One point, I was never young. I never had that privilege. 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.399 And it was basically because his family was so poverty 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.720 stricken and his father was such a jerk that he 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:10.799 wasn't He didn't have much of a childhood, but he 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:13.840 did remember that he loved his mother like his whole 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.240 life from childhood on, and he would use her as 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.960 an example of what his children needed to aspire to. 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.560 You know, this woman who could handle raising all these 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:28.519 kids in these terrible conditions and still you know, be beloved. 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:31.760 Sure, I mean suffered from hunger as a child and 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.400 had some disordered eating as an adult and that sort 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.160 of gorging himself on food. And his wife, his later wife, Betty, 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.360 would say that, you know, she thinks that all came 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.960 back from the hunger that he had as a child. Yeah. 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.600 He was Jewish. He was from a Jewish family, and 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:53.280 like I mentioned earlier, he managed to escape the god 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:54.840 I think kind of the only member of his family 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.080 to escape the Nazis in March of nineteen thirty nine 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:03.840 when they invaded Czechoslovakia, cutting off his sidelocks and like 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:06.520 getting the heck out of there, and for a lot 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.880 of his adult life, like I don't know if he 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.240 denied it, but never came forward as being Jewish, like 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:15.520 changing his name and everything. 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.560 Yeah, he was low key Jewish for a lot of 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.719 his life until later on when he was talked into 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.160 I guess coming out. I don't know what you would 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.039 call it in that sense. Yeah, but you said that 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.279 he escaped the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he definitely did, 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.159 but very quickly he turned right around and went back 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.720 to join the Hungarian underground in Budapest, and he was 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:47.559 essentially trying to move, like people escaping like him, further 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.719 on to safety because Hungary still wasn't you know, safety, 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:52.960 It was better than being in Czechoslovakia, but he still 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.120 needed to keep moving and he was going to help people. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:05:00.960 And almost immediately he was captured and and tortured as 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.920 a member of the Czech resistance, which is not what 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.560 you wanted the Nazis to consider you. 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:10.120 No, apparently there was going to be no trial at all, 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.520 and then the French embassy stepped in and because he 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:17.599 had a planned execution and arrange what seems to be 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.080 like a sham of a trial and he ended up escaping, 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.360 escaping like on the way to prison. So you know, again, 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.200 a lot of this stuff is from his authorized biography 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.559 and stories he told, some of which was no doubt 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:38.240 like embellished. Probably, so he seems like one of those 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:40.200 guys that would like kind of pump up a story 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:40.840 about himself. 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:47.360 Yeah, yeah, no, agreed, He's definitely that type for sure. Yeah, 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.600 but he escaped, like you said, literally with his life. 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.320 He escaped with his life because he would almost certainly 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.599 have been executed, and he joined the Foreign Legion in 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.719 France and they sent him to England because France was 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.360 overtaken by the Nazis as well, and in England he 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.640 basically found a new home. He signed up for the 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:14.919 British Army. He was there when Normandy was stormed, and 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:20.919 he also displayed like real actual valor, both valor and ruthlessness. 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.039 Kyle helped us with this, and Kyle really loved to 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:29.040 focus on ruthlessness, which in these cases is a synonym 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:32.400 for war crimes. Cut and dried war crimes. 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.040 Yeah, for sure, he really tried to remake himself as 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:39.800 a British guy like pretty successfully, Like I said, he 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:42.520 changed his name a couple of times, eventually landing on 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:47.520 Ian Robert Maxwell, and like taught himself English, apparently would 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.640 listen to churchill speeches, so he would get that sort 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:55.320 of that grand English accent that Churchill had. Sure, but yeah, 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.680 he you know, flat out admitted to he had a 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.040 real knack for like going undercover and doing like special 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.000 ops and stuff, but also, like you said, disobeying orders 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.040 and being pretty ruthless. Like he like admitted to his 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.320 wife in a letter that he like executed more than 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:14.800 one like unarmed German person, including a mayor in Germany. 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:20.120 Yeah, civilian even Yeah. Yeah, and again that's a war crime, 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:23.800 and he would later be investigated for it, but they 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.760 were not able to find anyone who could corroborate that 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.280 any witness said yes I saw him shoot that mayor, 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.560 or yes I saw him shoot those unarmed troops who surrendered, 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:36.720 So they had to close the case. So is that 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.080 a case of him just pumping up his own legend again? 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:40.440 Right? 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.640 Yeah, you know, but again the stuff that can be 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:49.560 verified is kind of amazing. Like he did work for 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.080 the British intelligence after the war. He ended up being 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:59.440 recruited by six it's six, right, yeah. Six. He could 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:04.880 speak English, German, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian by 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:08.240 the end of the war, so he was extremely valuable 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.160 post war while Europe was being divvied up and being 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.640 rebuilt and people were having to interact with all these 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.840 other countries. And he'd also changed his identity four times 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:19.760 before then too. 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.520 Yeah, but like you said, he legit achieved in the 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.360 armed forces. He worked his way up eventually to become 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.880 a second lieutenant in the Queen's Royal Regiment and had 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:34.840 a very apparently daring rescue for a trapped Allied platoon 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:39.320 in the Netherlands and received a military cross, like a 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.440 Distinguished Service Military Cross. So again, it's sort of a 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.600 conundrum with this guy because he did learn all those languages, 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.160 and he was a very valuable person for I six 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.520 and did some spy work. But there was also rumors 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:54.240 over the years that he was and we'll get into 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.680 this a little bit more, but like he spiled he spied 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.760 for the Soviet Union, or that he spied for Israel's. 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.640 I don't think that anyone knows the real truth behind 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:03.400 that stuff. 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.360 No, but it is the more you know about him, 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.760 the easier it is to believe that that's quite possible, 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.080 you know, for sure. So he made it through the 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.520 war quite successfully. He was stationed in Berlin, I think 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.439 at the end of it he was interviewing German prisoners 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.120 of war to get as much intelligence out of them 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:28.520 as possible. And so while there he was also in 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.679 the chaos of all of this, of Europe being devastated 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.280 and just beginning to rebuild. There's a lot of money 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.160 to be made. It's like in that Spike Lee movie 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:39.720 The Inside Man. 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.760 Yea, that and that's like one of the better later 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:45.679 Spike Lee is I know. 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.400 Yeah, it's one of the better, like just suspense movies too. 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.800 It's really well done. Great movie, please see it. But anyway, 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.720 in one part, Christopher Plumber says, when there's blood on 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.280 the street, by real estate, and that was essentially what 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.680 Europe was like at this time. And Robert Maxwell was 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.240 exactly the kind of person to buy real estate when 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.400 there was blood on the street. So he was making 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.760 all sorts of money on the side, just taking advantage 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:14.160 of the desperation of the people who he was interacting with. 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.800 And in addition, like other business opportunities came up and 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.520 improbably if you ask me, he ended up in the 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:26.160 scientific publishing world, Yeah, and became essentially like a scientific 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.520 publishing magnate in the coming decades. 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.760 Yeah. So while he was in Berlin, he was working 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:36.480 with dere Telegraph and that paper was owned by Springer 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.439 Verlog to two words with a dash in the middle. 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:43.280 I think Verlog was a big academic publisher, which is 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:45.200 kind of like you mentioned where we were headed with this. 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:51.079 He met the publisher Ferdinand Springer, and he learned that 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.240 there were like, you know, more than sixty thousand books 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:59.040 and journals like stockpiled in a warehouse and they had 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.360 been you know, like away from public view since nineteen 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.800 thirty nine, like pre war. And so his wheels started 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.320 turning on how he can make some money. And then, 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.600 along with his eventual business partner, this guy named Paul 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:16.520 Rosebaud started a company I guess bought his way into 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:21.280 a company called Butterworth Springer, which was rebranded Pergamon Press, 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.040 and they got a deal with Springer Verlog to get 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:28.880 these books, like these scientific textbooks out into the world. 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.560 And he got six to finance this deal. 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:38.640 Yeah. Yeah, they basically paid for three hundred tons. Yeah, 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:40.880 three hundred tons of books and journals to be shipped 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.240 to London so that they could be translated and then 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.800 published for money, like you said. And they also he said, 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:48.760 I want to buy some shares in the company too, 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.840 So they gave him twenty five thousand pounds and I 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.200 did some back of the envelope work. 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.480 Oh boy, you're not gonna call it maths, are you? 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:04.320 No? I wouldn't even dare. But that is about eight 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.520 hundred and eighty five thousand US dollars today. 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:10.800 Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, well, how did he 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.880 get I six? Like why would they invest secretly invest 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.079 in something like this, I think he well, you know 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:19.800 everything we're about to say, the guy take a base value. 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:21.600 But one thing he was really good at was like 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.280 he could be very charming. He was kind of a 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.000 jekyline hide from what I saw, So as awful as 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:29.880 he could be, he could also be super charming and 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:31.560 like work his way into a room or work his 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:33.880 way into a deal. And I think that's what he 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:35.920 did with I six, when he basically was like, hey, 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:41.400 having all these German scientific research books is good. It's 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:44.160 like an asset to US an intelligence asset, maybe a 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.560 propaganda tool, and m I six bought it. 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:52.160 Yeah, so we'll put his role in academic publishing to 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.520 the side, but just suffice to say that the current 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.880 state of affairs where journals determine what science has conducted, 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:03.080 and the scientific community as a whole has kind of 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.880 shied away or moved away from doing its job the 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:11.080 way it should be and instead conducting experiments and studies 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.440 that will get published. Their eye popping that actually came 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.000 from Robert Maxwell and the way that he changed the industry. 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:18.840 Oh interesting. 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:22.520 There's a really good long form Guardian article from twenty 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:27.360 seventeen called is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:30.640 Bad for science? And you can guess that the answer 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.400 is yes. But it talks a lot about this and 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.040 other stuff too. But it's a good article. I'd say 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:37.400 go read that if you're interested. 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.880 All right, we'll check it out. Should we take a break, Yeah, 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:42.679 all right, I'll go read the article right now. We'll 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:44.559 be back in what twenty minutes or so? 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:44.880 Sure? 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:46.000 All right, be right back. 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.000 So one of the things about Maxwell was he when 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.760 he got into scientific publishing, he really went like full 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:20.080 bore into it, and his whole jam with business was 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.920 like buy one thing and then use it to buy buy, 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:25.840 buy another thing, start another thing. Like basically get into 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:28.760 one industry and just mushroom everywhere. You can't because the 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.200 more stuff you have, the more money you can soak 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.560 up in that industry or that sector. Right. So he 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.840 bought another publisher, Simpkin Marshall, And this is a really 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.800 good demonstration of his business techniques. He bought it with 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.560 the loan from a business partner. The business partner came 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.920 back and was like, Hey, how's Simpkin Marshall doing? And 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.560 Maxwell was like, no, I'm not, I'm not at liberty 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.520 to say. The guy found out that the company was 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:02.240 severely in debt and he had borrowed. Maxwell had borrowed 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.520 a ton of money against the company's credit. Yeah, and 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:09.480 then sold off all the assets and kept the money 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.640 for himself. And this publishing house, which had been around 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.800 for more than a century went under thanks to Robert 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:20.560 Maxwell raiding it. And it was essentially proto private equity 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.920 like move that he did. That's what private equity does, Chuck. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:27.120 Have you been to Dunkin Donuts lately? 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:29.480 Uh? No, I don't go there. 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:31.680 Yeah, I don't normally either, but I went and got 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.840 a coffee and I walked in and I was like, God, 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:37.240 this place is just it's like the like a death 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:39.760 march in here. This is awful, like every like the 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.600 employees hated their life, Like stuff was broken, like a 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.320 serve your self machine was there next to the cash register. 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.120 It was just terrible. And I was like, I'll bet 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.640 private equity owns this now, and sure enough two years 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:57.360 ago private equity brow Yep. They do it like anytime 0:15:57.400 --> 0:15:59.680 you are in like you work with a business or 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:01.680 you like a store or something like that, and it 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:05.040 suddenly goes downhill. Go online and search that business in 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:08.880 private equity, and I guarantee you private equity got involved, 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:11.000 and it's just running it into the ground because they 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:11.440 don't care. 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:14.680 So he was doing something like this in the nineteen fifties, 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.840 which is crazy, and it seemed like, you know, a 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:21.720 lot of time. He was definitely not afraid to burn 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:24.400 bridges because apparently he didn't even repay that loan to 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:26.960 the guy who loaned him the money. For Simpkin Marshall right, 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.960 there was a rag called the Private Eye, or called 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:36.360 Private Eye that called him the bouncing check as in Czechoslovakian. 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.120 So he definitely had a reputation of you know, just 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:42.280 doing what he could by hooker crook to get something 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.119 done and then like walking away and leaving people penniless 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.320 behind him. That Springer ver Loog who got him that 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.880 first deal. They ended up severing contact with him in 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:56.800 nineteen fifty eight Pergamon Press he lost control of would 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.800 eventually take it back, but during a seventy one Board 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:03.080 of Trade inquiry they said he was They declared he 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.440 was unfit to run a public company. So, like his 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:07.800 reputation was well known even back then. 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:10.720 Yeah, I mean that's a big deal when the government 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:13.680 says you you can't be a CEO. Sorry they Yeah, 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.879 like the board says you can. We're saying you cannot 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:18.840 because you are that untrustworthy. 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:20.160 Yeah for sure. 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:20.600 Uh. 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.879 And later in life, well not that much later, he 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.959 would find an enemy, a grave enemy, in the nineteen 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.960 sixties with a guy, an Australian named Rupert Murdoch. So 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:36.840 we talked about Murdoch in our episode on the on 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:38.840 News on the news. 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:40.520 Cycle twenty four hour cable news. 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:43.440 Yeah, twenty four hour cable news. So everyone knows who 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.880 Rupert Murdoch is if Fox News. He and Maxwell were 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.720 grave enemies, and it seems like Maxwell was pretty much 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.640 obsessed with trying to outdo him, Like anytime he would 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:55.520 go to buy a newspaper, Murdock seemed to be right 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:59.240 there in front of him buying it, and he ended 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.640 up buying the left wing. Maxwell did the left wing 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:07.719 Daily Mirror just to counter Murdoch's right wing buys. Like 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.520 by all accounts, Maxwell was never even though he would 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.600 eventually be in Parliament as the Labor Party, like he 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:17.680 said that he was conservative, but he wasn't part of 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.320 the Conservative establishment, so he would just be like, all right, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.560 part of the Labor Party, or I'll buy this left 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:23.320 wing newspaper. 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.919 Yeah, I mean it just made sense financially, so you know, 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:30.679 he could be whatever whatever he needed to be. I 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.159 guess in that sense, it kind of demonstrates that to me, 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:41.240 I was reading about Rupert Murdoch in him their rivalry, 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:45.080 and apparently it was one of those rivalries like where 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.239 it meant everything to Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch was 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.639 like who oh, yeah, I remember him whatever, like and 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.919 that just drove Robert Maxwell crazier and crazier and just 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.960 made him want to, you know, compete with Rupert Murdoch. 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.600 Like Rupert Murdoch was really competing and he would just 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.760 buy paper after paper, like they would be directly competing 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.240 trying to buy a newspaper. But Murdoch most of the 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:15.639 time won. And he said later on that his impression 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.600 of Robert Maxwell is that he was a total buffoon, really, 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.639 like he was just this boastful guy who wanted to 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.479 win but would get in his own way in the 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:29.440 process of winning. That was kind of what his personality 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:29.879 was like. 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:34.760 And by kind of, I mean yeah Murdoch. They talked 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.879 about the Max factor, a play on the Uh. Was 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:40.080 that like a makeup or something. 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:43.680 Uh, yeah, I think there's like a makeup line. 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:47.600 Yeah, max factor, But they would use that as not 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.720 a compliment, Like the max factor wasn't like, hey, this 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:52.480 guy's great, he can go in and close deals. It 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:54.600 was more like he loses out on deals because of 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:56.520 the Max factor because no one wants to deal with 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:57.440 this guy exactly. 0:19:57.760 --> 0:19:59.840 Yeah. I mean like people got in bed with him 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:02.720 be because they had no choice. He had just bought 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.040 their company. He was now their boss. People didn't get 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:08.760 into bed or business. I guess I should probably say 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.320 with him because they liked him or they wanted to 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.520 they they were usually they just found themselves in the 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.520 unfortunate situation of having to work closely with him. 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.159 Yeah, for sure. But he bought the Daily Mirror in 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:26.439 eighty four, he started the London Daily News in eighty seven. 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:29.960 He started another paper that was sort of what I 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.040 understand is like a European USA today, called European in 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.160 nineteen ninety. So he's, you know, he's launching all these 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:39.320 newspapers and then eventually he says, all right, I need 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.639 to look toward the States and ends up buying McMillan 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:46.880 US and nineteen eighty eight for two point six billion 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:51.120 dollars money in nineteen eighty eight, oh totally, and something 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.439 called the Official Aviation Guide in for seven hundred and 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:55.280 fifty million. 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:58.199 Dollars, which again that's a crazy amount of money in 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:02.439 nineteen eighty eight. So he was this spending spree, especially 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.600 in the US where he's trying to take on Murdoch again. 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:09.000 I think Murdoch had already bought The New York Post 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:14.680 by this time. It was a lot like the USSR 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:19.520 being driven to extinction by spending, the US spending having 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.280 to keep up with spending. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch would go 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:24.040 do something, and now he was in the United States, 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:25.920 so now Robert Maxwell had to do it, and Robert 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:28.200 Maxwell had to outdo him. So he started spending money 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.679 he didn't have and was expanding his empire, and his 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.800 empire started to lose its foundation, it started to crumble 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:39.560 financially because of him trying to keep up. 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:45.240 Essentially, Yeah, that's a great analogy. Actually, in February ninety one, 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.160 he bought the New York Daily News, and that's one 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:50.359 where Murdoch kind of rubbed it in his face because 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.080 as soon as Maxwell bought it, he was like, all right, 0:21:53.240 --> 0:21:55.800 the publisher needs to call Rupert Murdoch and tell him 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:58.160 that Robert Maxwell just bought the New York Daily News. 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.120 And apparently Murdoch like laughed at this and said, yeah, 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.119 thank Bob for the courtesy of that, like basically like 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:07.080 I didn't want that ate like failing paper anyway. 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.399 Sure, there's one other thing that he very famously lost 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:13.280 out on, and we must have talked about him in 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.840 our episode on Tetris. The Wild History of Tetris. Oh yeah, 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.600 two twenty twenty four. I think it's how weird people 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:25.720 put it. He owned Mirrorsoft at the time, and mirror 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.520 Soft had Tetris in their hands and just through a 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.640 series of miscommunications and bad deals, lost it. And had 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:37.400 they had Tetris, who knows what that would be because 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:40.960 they were already a powerhouse in video games, especially in 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:44.960 the UK, And if they had continued owning Tetris, they 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:47.399 might have they might still be around. But because they 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:52.000 lost it under Maxwell, it's just another huge black eye 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:53.639