Speaker 1: Hello my Baby was a joke song a little.
Speaker 2: Bit because Hello was the telephone was new. When it
Speaker 2: was written, Hello was a new slang word.
Speaker 1: Hello was slang.
Speaker 2: Hello was slang hello. Alexander Graham Bell thought we should
Speaker 2: answer the phone a hoy, right, And that's why Robert
Speaker 2: that's why Burns, mister burn burn says, because of that.
Speaker 2: But I guess people settled on hello, which was literally
Speaker 2: a slang word. It was like lol of its time
Speaker 2: what and so they were like that that song is
Speaker 2: basically like llol, chat room baby or what. I like,
Speaker 2: that's what that song is essentially, and it's time so
Speaker 2: like writing chat room lover or something.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So at the time people were like, Wow,
Speaker 1: the kids these days, they're all saying hello to each.
Speaker 2: Other, Hello, my baby, Hello, my honey, Hello, my ragtime gal.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: That song, I guess is about a guy who met
Speaker 2: someone on the telephone, like he doesn't know her in
Speaker 2: real life.
Speaker 1: Well, and which at the time I guess was like,
Speaker 1: remember when online dating was new and it was embarrassing
Speaker 1: to say that you met someone online, And now it's
Speaker 1: literally the only way to do it as far as
Speaker 1: I know. That's oh man, I didn't know the phone
Speaker 1: was like that. That's funny.
Speaker 2: I know, you know this was a little internet post
Speaker 2: should probably.
Speaker 1: No no if hey, if you read it, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was like was it a tweet or
Speaker 1: a graphic somewhere?
Speaker 3: It was it graphic?
Speaker 1: Then I don't know. If we can't trust those, then
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? If we can't trust graphics
Speaker 1: we read on the internet with information presented as fact,
Speaker 1: then I feel like the world might be in.
Speaker 2: Trouble, big problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fortunately, we can trust that fact. So look, I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by it. I'm taking it as true. I will
Speaker 1: spread it far and wide, including on this podcast, which
Speaker 1: is about history. Yeah, and y'all can take that from us.
Speaker 2: It's facts facts in that it's a facsimile of a fact.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a clever twist, the fact simile of the truth.
Speaker 2: It's a facts online fact, your honor.
Speaker 1: I did not say it was a fact. When I
Speaker 1: said it was a fact as in fac simile simile unbelieva.
Speaker 3: You think that'll hold up.
Speaker 1: I think it'll hold up well. Speaking of the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion, of court in general, the legal system.
Speaker 2: I love that way to tight end it's you.
Speaker 1: Know, we've got to find these places to make a
Speaker 1: smooth transition. Speaking of smooth transitions, speaking of explosive new information.
Speaker 3: Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1: We've got a hot one today. We do, truly, I mean,
Speaker 1: right on the pulse of whatever American is talking about
Speaker 1: after they finished talking about Barbie, right.
Speaker 2: Which is worth a lot of discussion.
Speaker 1: We saw both.
Speaker 3: We did see both both, And we did.
Speaker 2: Not do a double feature of Barbenheimer. No, but we
Speaker 2: saw Barbie first, largely when it came the day it
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we saw Thursday. Yeah, largely because I could not
Speaker 1: get tickets to Imax Opheimer until the Monday after its
Speaker 1: opening weekend because it was just sold out. So we
Speaker 1: went to Oppenheimer Monday, and I say, let's actually let's
Speaker 1: reserve our review for the end, just in case people
Speaker 1: don't want to hear if they haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 1: You know, for either movie, I would say thumbs up
Speaker 1: for both.
Speaker 2: Agreed, Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can talk more about it at the end
Speaker 1: to maybe both.
Speaker 2: Great times in the theater with very different moods. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we did see Oppenheimer. Yeah, we did enjoy it. Two
Speaker 2: thumbs up from both of us. But I did find
Speaker 2: myself a little frustrated, and I certainly was not the
Speaker 2: only one. There's a million million articles that you can
Speaker 2: read about this from film critics, But I did find
Speaker 2: myself a little frustrated by the lack of development from
Speaker 2: the women's characters, the women in the movie who were
Speaker 2: very important to Robert Oppenheimer.
Speaker 1: Right right, And I'll just jump in and say, you
Speaker 1: know this, this goes a little long. We definitely had
Speaker 1: to split it into two parts. But surprise, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it actually works out really well, I think because part
Speaker 1: one of this episode it's very much like the biography
Speaker 1: of his life, and the movie is very much a
Speaker 1: biopic of Robert Oppenheimer. So for the most part, I
Speaker 1: don't personally feel like anything here is spoiler heavy in
Speaker 1: terms of anything from the movie being like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: whoa surprise, I'm so glad I didn't know that. Like,
Speaker 1: this is very much just kind of we're doing his
Speaker 1: life much the same way Nolan did. There is one
Speaker 1: major character death in his life that is a big impact,
Speaker 1: and we do say that in this episode, so I
Speaker 1: guess that's a little more spoilery, but it's also like
Speaker 1: its history so it's like, you know, heads up, the
Speaker 1: Titanic sinks, but.
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert, but it's not around but it's okay. So
Speaker 2: I also think that in that particular case, it's maybe
Speaker 2: more interesting to know some of the history while you're
Speaker 2: watching it than the other way around. So and then
Speaker 2: enjoy looking it.
Speaker 3: Up after them. Yeah, exactly as I did.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we definitely will be referencing the movie throughout. Of course,
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it and you don't want to
Speaker 2: be spoiled at all anyway, you feel free to save
Speaker 2: this until after you've seen the f.
Speaker 1: If you're like me and like I don't want to
Speaker 1: know his wife's name, be or I see it, I
Speaker 1: don't want anything in my brain.
Speaker 2: Yes, ELI does not like any information.
Speaker 1: I can't stop thinking slate style. I can't. It's a problem.
Speaker 1: I'd recognize it's a problem, but it's how I enjoy things.
Speaker 2: I do see that I you see that.
Speaker 1: In part two of this episode of ours is just
Speaker 1: the tail end of his story, and it has a
Speaker 1: little bit more of like those oh shit moments from
Speaker 1: the movie where I would have rather not known that
Speaker 1: stuff going in. So I think you're basically I'm saying
Speaker 1: I think you're safe with part one and part two
Speaker 1: of this episode may be save until after you've seen
Speaker 1: the movie if you care about that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And we'll also get into our sort of response to
Speaker 1: the movie and the Barbie movie in part two as well.
Speaker 2: Obviously, because it's a double feature of the Millennium.
Speaker 1: Definitely, so that's pretty exciting.
Speaker 2: So at any rate, all that to say, little frustrated
Speaker 2: about the lack of development for these women's characters. I
Speaker 2: wanted to know more about who they were, why they
Speaker 2: matter to Oppenheimer, or you know, what part they played
Speaker 2: in this whole scenario. And you know, I know a
Speaker 2: movie can't do everything. So not trying to talk shit
Speaker 2: about Christopher Nolan whatever, whatever, but I just just wanted
Speaker 2: to know more about him. I was really curious. So
Speaker 2: we figured that we would take this time on this
Speaker 2: episode to dive in tell you a little bit more
Speaker 2: about Oppenheimer's personal trinity, the three most important women in
Speaker 2: his life, Jean Tatlock, Ruth Tolman, and his wife Katherine Oppenheimer.
Speaker 1: Right, I want to know bombs away.
Speaker 3: Okay, hey, their friends come listen.
Speaker 4: Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell there's
Speaker 4: no matchmaking, a romantic tips.
Speaker 2: It's just about ridiculous relations ships, a love. There might
Speaker 2: be any type of.
Speaker 4: Person at all, and abstract concept on't a concrete wall.
Speaker 4: But if there's a story we were the second glance,
Speaker 4: we'll put it in a show Ridiculous Romance.
Speaker 1: A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna start with Gene Tatlock, who Robert
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer met at a Berkeley house party in nineteen thirty six. Now,
Speaker 2: her father was an acclaimed English scholar. He was an
Speaker 2: expert on Jeffrey Chaucer, and he was already friends with Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: He was very impressed by Oppenheimer's literary knowledge. I guess
Speaker 2: we're a scientific guy. It's a big reader. So he
Speaker 2: was like, I like you. We can chat about books.
Speaker 2: And Jeane was no Slauch herself all right in the
Speaker 2: brain department. She spent time with Youngian psychoanalysts in Switzerland,
Speaker 2: and then she attended Vassar College to study English.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine hanging out with a bunch of Jungian psychoanalysts.
Speaker 1: I just it feels like an exhausting time it day.
Speaker 2: I feel every word I say you're going to go,
Speaker 2: oh my god, here we go again.
Speaker 1: Get into it. No, don't analyze me. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get a couple.
Speaker 2: Of analyze this, Analyze that movie with Philly Kristal.
Speaker 3: What a reference.
Speaker 2: I would love to see young, Youngian psychoanalysts watch analyze
Speaker 2: this and tell me how they feel about their field
Speaker 2: of science in.
Speaker 1: The nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, it'd be like, this is what's coming, this
Speaker 2: is what you have wrought. Katie Rich, who wrote a
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair article called Jean Tatlock, The Tragic Story of
Speaker 2: j Robert Oppenheimer's Truest Love, writes that one of Jean's
Speaker 2: classmates once said that Jean Tatlock was quote the most
Speaker 2: promising girl I ever knew, the only one out of
Speaker 2: all I saw around me in college that even then
Speaker 2: seemed touched with greatness.
Speaker 1: Wow, high praise from our classmates. I know, right, I
Speaker 1: like this classmate might have had a little crush.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe Jane was also super hot and I loved
Speaker 2: her handwriting.
Speaker 1: Is she going to read this? I thought she was
Speaker 1: the most promising person I ever met, the only one
Speaker 1: of us touched with greatness. And I could get a
Speaker 1: touch of that greatness.
Speaker 2: I love to touch that greatness myself. She graduated faster.
Speaker 2: She went to Berkeley to complete prerequisite courses that were
Speaker 2: required to enroll at Stanford Medical School. And this is
Speaker 2: when she also attended a fundraiser thrown by her landlady
Speaker 2: for the Communist backed Spanish Republicans fighting the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: At this point, Jean was already a dues paying member
Speaker 2: of the Communist Party, so she was already fully into
Speaker 2: all this stuff. She once told a friend quote, I
Speaker 2: just wouldn't want to go on living if I didn't
Speaker 2: believe that in Russia everything is better.
Speaker 3: Oh my yay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our perspective of Russia is not great in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three acts. So it seems like a very naive quote.
Speaker 2: But I suppose at the time you were like, revolution
Speaker 2: is happening, some really exciting things in russ right.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, the probably proganda machine is strong across the
Speaker 1: world in the US included very true. Now. Another guest
Speaker 1: at this party was a man named a tall, skinny
Speaker 1: guy named Jay Robert Oppenheimer. He was ten years older
Speaker 1: than Jean, and she inspired him in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: She got him into the poetry of John du and
Speaker 1: then we'll circle back to that later. But she also
Speaker 1: introduced him to her friends and the causes that she
Speaker 1: felt passionate about, like the Spanish Civil War and the
Speaker 1: plight of migrant workers. Probably turned to him and was like,
Speaker 1: you know, in Russia, everything's night. You know in Russia.
Speaker 1: She kindly shut up about it. Yeah, we get it.
Speaker 1: You did your study I brought in Russia.
Speaker 2: Like, come on, workers in Russia, unite now it's time
Speaker 2: for the world workers.
Speaker 1: It's like me now, like, well, you know, uh, the
Speaker 1: wine in Italy doesn't have the sugar in it. The
Speaker 1: French wine does. So if you ever get a chance,
Speaker 1: everything's better. And who.
Speaker 5: Want to learn?
Speaker 1: But despite her introducing him too all this ideology, Annabelle
Speaker 1: Nugent in the Independent article Oppenheimer's Women, points out that
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer likely would have looked into communist ideology all by himself.
Speaker 1: He didn't need Gene's help necessarily, because his brother Frank
Speaker 1: and a lot of his colleagues at Berkeley were already
Speaker 1: members of the Communist Party. They were already outspoken critics
Speaker 1: of Franco's war in Spain, so it was all around
Speaker 1: him already. The Patricia Klaus and Shirley Strashyinsky, who wrote
Speaker 1: this book in twenty thirteen called an Atomic love Story.
Speaker 1: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer's Life also point out
Speaker 1: that even Gene Tatlock's conservative father gave money to the
Speaker 1: Ambulance Corp. They write, quote, I think that for Gene
Speaker 1: and Oppenheimer, their shared interest in psychology was a stronger bond.
Speaker 1: And from Gene, one of their friends would later say,
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer learned to be compassionate. So they're not having Pillow
Speaker 1: talk about communism every night, right, Yeah, he's kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I already know Femnism's cool. Whatever, sure, whatever, And they
Speaker 1: had a lot of other stuff to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, and to point out that like communism as
Speaker 2: a whole was a very trendy thing. Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: was a lot of people were very interested in it,
Speaker 2: whether they joined the party or not, right, you know,
Speaker 2: they were very interested in a lot of what it
Speaker 2: had to say, a lot of the philosophy of it
Speaker 2: and so on. Of course, the practice, the way it
Speaker 2: was a naturally we know, you know, with hindsights it
Speaker 2: all went down, But at the time it was very exciting,
Speaker 2: very different way to think about things. A lot of
Speaker 2: people really really into it.
Speaker 1: Well, and that her father, who was conservative and probably
Speaker 1: you know, leaned fairly against communism, was more more pro
Speaker 1: American capitalism, that kind of thing. Even people like that,
Speaker 1: we're looking at the ambulance core, they're looking at the
Speaker 1: Spanish Civil War, and they're like, yeah, I don't like
Speaker 1: what's going on over there. I might not be a communist,
Speaker 1: but what the fascists are doing is real bad exactly, which,
Speaker 1: of course would have been an ideology that permeated throughout
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties exactly. People were like, you
Speaker 1: know what today, fascism's worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, let's think it through.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also like just the workers, the unionizing and the
Speaker 2: labor stuff was all wrapped up with the communist stuff,
Speaker 2: but it was a very it was kind of its
Speaker 2: own thing. A lot of people were like, workers should
Speaker 2: really get paid normal money, or shouldn't be working a
Speaker 2: thousand hours and so on and so forth. So even
Speaker 2: if you were a conservative, you were like, yeah, y'all
Speaker 2: should unionize the ambulance workers. I should really get this going.
Speaker 1: So because people getting paid fair wages for their work
Speaker 1: is not inherently communist ideology, right right, no matter how
Speaker 1: much they try to convince you. Huh oh, if you
Speaker 1: think people should be paid for their work, they must
Speaker 1: be coming.
Speaker 2: It's a socialist. You're a communist exactly. Yeah, we've seen
Speaker 2: it now, so okay. In the movie, Gene is often
Speaker 2: shown pretty mad at Oppenheimer forgetting her flowers. She'll take
Speaker 2: a bouquet and throw it immediately in the trash. Apparently
Speaker 2: that is true. She did tell him to stop getting
Speaker 2: her flowers all the time. He also proposed to Jeene
Speaker 2: Tatlock two times, but she turned him down both times.
Speaker 1: ThReD times of charm, buddy.
Speaker 2: I know right, He was like, all you a way
Speaker 2: to ask her again, but for whatever reason, she doesn't
Speaker 2: want to marry him. But then Oppenheimer met Kitty Puning
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty nine. I think I'm saying that right,
Speaker 2: and that kind of spelled the end of his affair
Speaker 2: with Jean, but they still met twice. A year after
Speaker 2: he married Kitty, Oppenheimer explained during his security hearing in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five or quote, we had been very much
Speaker 2: involved with one another and there was still a very
Speaker 2: deep feeling when we saw each other. They met up
Speaker 2: for the last time when Oppenheimer was in Berkeley in
Speaker 2: June nineteen forty three. At this point he was the
Speaker 2: director of the Manhattan Project. The FBI was basically tailing
Speaker 2: him everywhere. They were paying attention to every little thing
Speaker 2: he did. Jean was a pediatric psychiatrist at Mount Zion.
Speaker 2: She was doing some very important work with troubled youth,
Speaker 2: so really great psychiatrist. They don't talk about that in
Speaker 2: the film, but that's what she was up to. And
Speaker 2: so the FBI tailed Robert Oppenheimer and Jean to dinner
Speaker 2: and then to a hotel. They wrote in their official report, quote,
Speaker 2: the relationship of Oppenheimer and Tatlock appears to be very
Speaker 2: affectionate and intimate. I don't know why he talks like that,
Speaker 2: but that's what he sounds like.
Speaker 1: The FBI agent is quite the cool dude. Yes, he's
Speaker 1: a morning radio DJ. And well, you're driving out the
Speaker 1: five o five and finding out that Robert A and
Speaker 1: Jean Tatlock at a very it's a mid that effects
Speaker 1: relationship to you.
Speaker 2: Joe Jaggar Hoover liked to be entertained by his FBI.
Speaker 2: So you had to put on a little fun character.
Speaker 1: Give me all the information you have on Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: but make it silly.
Speaker 3: I make it fun.
Speaker 1: Do it in a funny voice that does kind of
Speaker 1: sound like that.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you would? He'd be like, now,
Speaker 2: do it like you just sucked in a lot of helium.
Speaker 3: I didn't go.
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer explained in his security hearing that she that Jean
Speaker 2: called him to visit her because quote, she was still
Speaker 2: in love with me. But this is when Oppenheimer ended
Speaker 2: their affair once and for all, and seven months later,
Speaker 2: on January fourth, nineteen forty four, Jean Tatlock died by suicide.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting with them their continued sort
Speaker 1: of deep relationship. I think just shows what an intellectual
Speaker 1: companionship they had, right, because that's someone who, yeah, they
Speaker 1: had a physical relationship, but I think it was the
Speaker 1: fact that they were on a similar level, that they
Speaker 1: had all these conversations about when ideology or science or
Speaker 1: you know, these things that they were both interested in,
Speaker 1: and that became yeah, literature and poetry, and so of
Speaker 1: course they still maintained that bond even after they separated.
Speaker 1: That is I don't know that. That's just intellectually intimate
Speaker 1: right like that. That often, I think never really goes
Speaker 1: away when you have that kind of connection with someone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that goes beyond physical. So whether or not they continued
Speaker 1: their intimate, affectionate physical relationship or not, they were always
Speaker 1: going to be connected like that.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I see that. I see that. I think
Speaker 2: they were still having a physical yeah yeah, yeah, affair
Speaker 2: at this time. But I totally agree. It's one of
Speaker 2: those things. I don't know. Robert Oppenheimer is one of
Speaker 2: the smartest people in the world at this time. How
Speaker 2: many people can he talk to?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 2: I mean, he's surrounded by a lot of very smart people.
Speaker 2: So he's fine. We're not worried about him his social
Speaker 2: but you know, I just think it must have been
Speaker 2: very special to meet, especially a woman at that time.
Speaker 2: So it's just limited education opportunity, So many women would
Speaker 2: leave school to have children or start a family or whatever.
Speaker 1: Discouraged from being there in the first place exactly.
Speaker 2: So you know, it just might have been hard to
Speaker 2: find a woman that he felt like he could really
Speaker 2: have that kind of hold that level of conversation with. Yah,
Speaker 2: So it'd be hard to let go of a person
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At the time of Jane's suicide, she had already
Speaker 1: been undergoing treatment for depression. Klaus and Strashinsky in The
Speaker 1: Atomic Love Story suggest that she probably would have been
Speaker 1: diagnosed with bipolar disorder today, but losing her connection to
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer was a real blow. Kay Bird and Martin J.
Speaker 1: Sherwin in their two thousand and five book American Prometheus,
Speaker 1: which is the book that Nolan based the movie Oppenheimer on,
Speaker 1: mostly they wrote quote for reasons of love and compassion,
Speaker 1: he had become a key member of Jane's psychological support structure,
Speaker 1: and then he vanished mysteriously. In Jean's eyes, it may
Speaker 1: have seemed as if ambition had trumped love.
Speaker 2: He chose the bomb over me. Yeah, kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Not that she knew what he was working on, right, right?
Speaker 1: Or like he's his drive for I mean, Mary, do
Speaker 1: his job, you know, like his relentless drive to succeed,
Speaker 1: and what his he feels like is his chosen his
Speaker 1: predetermined path, right is I guess more important than his
Speaker 1: time with me for somebody who's already depressed, that can sting,
Speaker 1: I'm sure really badly well.
Speaker 2: He might have felt just like a buttress. Just even
Speaker 2: seeing him twice a year was tough. And then when
Speaker 2: he was like I can't see you anymore, it was like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: now that one string that's tying me down is gone,
Speaker 2: and so I'm just you know, out here alone in
Speaker 2: the fucking cosmos, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, in sort of I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's defense of his character, but just sort of for clarification,
Speaker 1: you know, having seen the movie, he was he couldn't
Speaker 1: really go see her anymore. It was very difficult for
Speaker 1: him to get out of Los Alamos. He wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone, right, I mean yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: not so much that he was like, yes, screw you important,
Speaker 1: I'm more interested in work now. He might have been
Speaker 1: able to make a little more effort, but it was
Speaker 1: very difficult for him to get to see her. I
Speaker 1: mean there was people that he was working for who
Speaker 1: were actively saying, don't you dare go see her? She's
Speaker 1: a communist. Oh yeah, and you're not allowed to go
Speaker 1: see anybody while you're working on this project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. And I mean Annie's married.
Speaker 3: I mean he had a wife obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if he's going to spend time with somebody and
Speaker 2: give his heart to somebody, it should probably be her.
Speaker 1: That little factor too. Yeah, but an additional factor in
Speaker 1: Gene's suicide might have been that she was also struggling
Speaker 1: with her sexuality. In an Atomic Love Story, they share
Speaker 1: a letter from her to a friend where she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: there was a period when I thought I was homosexual.
Speaker 1: I still am, in a way forced to believe it,
Speaker 1: but really, logically, I'm sure that I can't be because
Speaker 1: of my unmasculinity. And in American Prometheus, she tells a
Speaker 1: friend that she tried to overcome her same sex attraction
Speaker 1: by quote sleeping with every bull she could find. So
Speaker 1: doesn't that go right back into our very early stereotypical
Speaker 1: beliefs of what a homosexual person looks and behaves, Like, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she didn't know about lipstick lesbians.
Speaker 1: Right right, or that she couldn't or that if she
Speaker 1: slept with the manliest men she could find, that would
Speaker 1: you know, undo her attraction to women.
Speaker 2: Well, and she's a psychologist in an early part of
Speaker 2: this field, and that's that is what they believed very
Speaker 2: long time. So she's she's feeling like she has the
Speaker 2: best information there is to have, and this is how
Speaker 2: shitty it's making her feel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I'm saying exactly.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Tragically, it was Jean's father who found her the
Speaker 2: day after her suicide, and I just find that so.
Speaker 1: Upsetting, really heartbreaking out.
Speaker 2: He actually knocked on her door and did not get
Speaker 2: an answer, so he had to climb in through the window,
Speaker 2: and he found her on a pile of cushions by
Speaker 2: the bathtub, with her head submerged in water.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: She had left an unsigned suicide note which read quote,
Speaker 2: I am disgusted with everything to those who loved me
Speaker 2: and helped me all love and courage. I wanted to
Speaker 2: live and to give, and I got paralyzed somehow. I
Speaker 2: tried like hell to understand and couldn't. I think I
Speaker 2: would have been a liability all my life. At least
Speaker 2: I could take away the burden of a paralyzed soul
Speaker 2: from a fighting world. This is such an interesting headspace.
Speaker 2: Disgusted with everything to those who loved me and helped
Speaker 2: me all love and courage. I wanted to live and
Speaker 2: to give, and I got paralyzed. I tried like hell
Speaker 2: to understand and couldn't. I've been a liability. Who is
Speaker 2: she talking about? A liability to whom? What is she
Speaker 2: trying to understand? Has that got to do with her sexuality?
Speaker 2: Is that got to do with communism?
Speaker 1: Is that got you know, right things in there that
Speaker 1: it could apply to?
Speaker 2: And it might be all those things, it might be everything.
Speaker 2: She's like, everything in my life has been so confusing.
Speaker 3: And hard and challenging, and I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm done, and it's a challenge to the people that
Speaker 1: I bring into my life. Like she feels like she's
Speaker 1: I wonder if she's taking part of that with Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: for example, or she's like, he's got government agents watching
Speaker 1: him all the time because he likes me, and I'm
Speaker 1: a communist. Yeah, you know, so I'm such a I'm
Speaker 1: such a challenge for the people that I care about.
Speaker 1: That's a really difficult feeling.
Speaker 2: Well, her father lay her body on her bed, and
Speaker 2: then he went through all her correspondence. He burned some
Speaker 2: letters and photographs, and then he called the police, trying
Speaker 2: to maintain her privacy. I imagine because of Oppenheimer's nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three visit to Jean, her phone had been wiretapped
Speaker 2: by the FBI. They decided she needed to be under surveillance.
Speaker 2: So actually, j Edgar Hoover was one of the first
Speaker 2: people to learn that she was dead.
Speaker 1: Wow, that guy was the first person to learn a
Speaker 1: water show.
Speaker 2: Okay, he had his fucking fingers and wagh, too many pies.
Speaker 1: Ooom pie pie. But do it in a silly costume.
Speaker 2: And then I'll eat it as silly cussin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, okay, speaking to j Edgar Hoover. There is
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory because there always is around this guy,
Speaker 1: because he certainly invited them.
Speaker 2: He wanted it, and he got it.
Speaker 1: There's a theory that Jane did not commit suicide but
Speaker 1: possibly was killed by the FBI. Now, among other reasons,
Speaker 1: it's because one of the drugs found in her system
Speaker 1: was chloral hydrate, which is a chemical that you combined
Speaker 1: with alcohol to make a Mickey Finn or a concoction
Speaker 1: that will knock someone out cold.
Speaker 2: That's some al capone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give him the all Mickey Finn.
Speaker 2: Mickey Finn, and drop him in the ocean.
Speaker 1: Now. One doctor told the authors of American Prometheus quote,
Speaker 1: if you were clever and wanted to kill someone, this
Speaker 1: is the way to do it. But a number of
Speaker 1: things here don't really line up in terms of this
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, because Jane herself would have had easy access
Speaker 1: to chlorohydrate on her own, since she worked as a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist in a hospital, and and Mickey Finn requires chloral
Speaker 1: hydrate to be mixed with alcohol, but there was no
Speaker 1: alcohol in Jane's system.
Speaker 2: They definitely saw, by like her state of her organs,
Speaker 2: that she was a heavy drinker, but at that time
Speaker 2: she had no alcohol in her right right, so therefore.
Speaker 1: The chloral hydrate wouldn't have knocked her out.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, which which still is like so weird that
Speaker 2: she would take it at all for the water exactly.
Speaker 3: It's still weird exactly.
Speaker 2: But apparently that's not how a Mickey Finn works.
Speaker 1: Now. The prime suspect, according to Katie Rich in Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: is supposedly Boris Pash, who, if you have seen the movie,
Speaker 1: is Casey Affleck's character, and I won't say much if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen the movie, but talk about shuddering, talk
Speaker 1: about chills.
Speaker 2: Very small part, but he really was a real creet.
Speaker 1: Real creep. So he's the prime suspect here. But Boris
Speaker 1: Pash had actually been reassigned to London. By the time she.
Speaker 3: Died, he was nowhere near her.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say. Again, this conspiracy does kind of
Speaker 1: start to fall apart, but no one could put anything
Speaker 1: past jad Garhover and all his conspiracies seemed to fall
Speaker 1: apart after a little while. And isn't that exactly how
Speaker 1: he would have designed them? So suspicions still linger today
Speaker 1: about whether or not she really killed herself. And I
Speaker 1: would say, from what we've learned and the way that's
Speaker 1: presented the movie, which obviously is a movie, it's got
Speaker 1: its own ideas about how it wants to make you
Speaker 1: feel at certain times and stuff, but it's pretty suspect
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Honestly, they're both equally plausible because Jane was not happy person, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, I wouldn't if you if it came out
Speaker 2: today that they've proved that the FBI or the CIA
Speaker 2: or whatever killed Jean Tatlock, I would be like, will,
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised that now. Oppenheimer was devastated, truly truly
Speaker 2: devastated by Jane's death. His close friend and Robert Server,
Speaker 2: says an American Prometheus quote. Jane was Robert's truest love.
Speaker 2: He loved her the most, he was devoted to her.
Speaker 2: When he was asked about what to name the atomic
Speaker 2: bomb test, he suggested Trinity as a tribute to Jane.
Speaker 2: It's taken from a devotional poem by John Dunn, the
Speaker 2: poet that she had introduced him to. So let's go
Speaker 2: down to poetry corner, and here batter my heart three
Speaker 2: person to God by John Dunn.
Speaker 1: Batter my heart three person to God for you as yet,
Speaker 1: but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend that I
Speaker 1: may rise and stand, or throw me and bend your
Speaker 1: force to break, blow burn and make me new. I
Speaker 1: like an usurped town to another, do labor to admit you,
Speaker 1: but oh to no end reason your viceroy and me
Speaker 1: me should defend but as captain and proves weak or unstrue.
Speaker 2: Yet, dearly, I love you and would be loved fame,
Speaker 2: but m betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me, untie, or
Speaker 2: break that not again. Take me to you, imprison me,
Speaker 2: for I except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Speaker 2: nor ever chased except you ravish me.
Speaker 1: This is one of those like historical moments where I'm
Speaker 1: like did John Done say, I got to write a
Speaker 1: poem for the guy who's going to invent the nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb one day. This just lines up so perfectly.
Speaker 2: Kind of does like your force to break blow burn
Speaker 2: and make me new is like exactly what the atomic
Speaker 2: bomb did. It's it's so it's perfect. I can totally
Speaker 2: see why it came to his mind in relation to
Speaker 2: the h.
Speaker 1: And also, oh, I'm kind of in love with this
Speaker 1: communist lady, but I'm betrothed unto your enemy. I'm literally
Speaker 1: part of the American government right now. I'm set up
Speaker 1: with this destructive force that very much dislikes you. So
Speaker 1: divorce me, untie, or break that not again? You know?
Speaker 1: Can I get a break here? Well?
Speaker 2: I also see it in terms of bigger the bomb itself.
Speaker 2: You know he is he loves the science. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: but he's betrothed to the enemy of the science, which
Speaker 2: is all science is to make weapons, right, Like, wasn't
Speaker 2: that sort of the problem?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 2: With all the scientists They were like, I want to
Speaker 2: learn this, I want to understand the universe in this way.
Speaker 2: I want to see if this works. But I don't
Speaker 2: want all our thought and all our theories and all
Speaker 2: our practice and all our math and everything else to
Speaker 2: lead up to a weapon of mass destruction. I don't
Speaker 2: think that should be the culmination of my life's work.
Speaker 2: And so it's very funny to just read it with
Speaker 2: that kind of in your mind, thinking about Oppenheimer, thinking
Speaker 2: I love this, this, This is exactly what I want
Speaker 2: to be doing with my time, making and breaking and
Speaker 2: learning and discovering and changing and doing and theorizing and whatever.
Speaker 2: But the person I am betrothed to, the person I
Speaker 2: am beholden to, needs me to do something with you
Speaker 2: I don't like, and I'm really upset about that, and
Speaker 2: I wish that I didn't have to, right, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Well, I read a lot of different ways,
Speaker 2: but it works.
Speaker 1: It works, which is the sign of a great poem. Right,
Speaker 1: very true.
Speaker 2: Great job John. It's almost like John Done.
Speaker 1: She's kind of good. I think he's going somewhere. Keep
Speaker 1: an eye on that kid as a poet, because I
Speaker 1: feel like the bell's gonna toll for him?
Speaker 2: Is that John Dune?
Speaker 1: The bell tolls tolls for the John Done. Excuse me, dun.
Speaker 1: That's how you remembers John Done. Because his name is
Speaker 1: like a belt. Oh smart But okay, all that being said,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple more ladies to get to. We
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that his affair with Jene was ended by
Speaker 1: his relationship with Kitty, who would later become his wife.
Speaker 1: So let's take a quick break and we will tell
Speaker 1: you all about missus Oppenheimer right after these words.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone.
Speaker 1: So, Catherine Puning was an only child. She was born
Speaker 1: in Germany, but after her father Franz invented a new
Speaker 1: kind of blast furnace, her family emigrated to America in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen to make their fortune. That Kitty spoke both
Speaker 1: German and English fluently. She spoke English without any German accent,
Speaker 1: and she apparently claimed that her father was a prince
Speaker 1: and her mother was related to Queen Victoria, who who
Speaker 1: she actually She believed this this was information given to
Speaker 1: her about her family and their past, but it wasn't true.
Speaker 1: In fact, her mother's most famous relative was not Queen Victoria,
Speaker 1: but a cousin named Wilhelm I Tell, who was Germany's
Speaker 1: war minister during World War Two, who was hated even
Speaker 1: by his own military colleagues for being too much of
Speaker 1: a yes man to Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 2: Damn other Nazis. Yeah, too much of it, too much
Speaker 2: of a daddy's boy.
Speaker 1: When the Nazis are like, whoa calm down, bro with
Speaker 1: the Hitler talk.
Speaker 2: You're a real fear bro, and I don't care for it.
Speaker 1: Yikes. Even Hitler himself said that kay Tell quote had
Speaker 1: the brains of a movie usher out.
Speaker 2: Even Hitler's like, what a dumb ass. Wow, it's true, though.
Speaker 2: He said he was as loyal as a dog, though,
Speaker 2: so he would always let him do all kinds of
Speaker 2: crazy shit.
Speaker 1: Although kind of rude to movie ushers Hitler. I guess
Speaker 1: another group that Hitler wasn't too fun. Yeah another groom,
Speaker 1: oh nut. Fans of Hitler on this show tell your friends.
Speaker 1: So Catherine, who was better as Kitty, went to Europe
Speaker 1: to study after high school, and it's not likely that
Speaker 1: she took many classes, but she did meet her first husband,
Speaker 1: Frank Ramsire, a Harvard grad studying music in Paris now
Speaker 1: crossover alert. Ramsaire's teacher was Nadia Boulangire, whose career was
Speaker 1: helped along quite a bit by our old friend Winneretta
Speaker 1: singer Boom.
Speaker 2: Patronized A small world. A small world, it is so anyway,
Speaker 2: Kitty and Frank. They got married on Christmas Eve in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two, but it did not last long. Kitty
Speaker 2: got an annulment only a year later. On December twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, she told friends that she had found
Speaker 2: and read Frank's diary and discovered that he was both
Speaker 2: gay and a drug addict. Oh, so she's like, let
Speaker 2: me get the fuck out of here. I was like,
Speaker 2: I have so many problems that. The first of all,
Speaker 2: she's reading his diary. That seems wrong. You got a
Speaker 2: problem with personal property or something. But also like maybe
Speaker 2: she had to read it because she was like, there's
Speaker 2: something not right about Frank. He's run around doing crazy shit.
Speaker 2: And she's like, let me look at the diary and
Speaker 2: finds out he's taken crazy drugs, yeah, and seeing men
Speaker 2: on the side or whatever. At any rate, she said,
Speaker 2: let me get out of here. So at a New
Speaker 2: Year's party only a few days later, Kitty met Joseph
Speaker 2: Dalitt Junior. He was a dartmouth dropout, card carry communist,
Speaker 2: and she moved in with him. Never married him officially,
Speaker 2: but she became his common law wife. So they lived
Speaker 2: together long enough basically that they had legal protection. She
Speaker 2: joined the Communist Party after proving her loyalty by distributing
Speaker 2: copies of The Daily Worker on the streets. But they
Speaker 2: lived in like a dilapidated boarding house. They collected unemployment
Speaker 2: to get by. It was just kind of a real
Speaker 2: proletariat way living that the blue butted Kitty kind of
Speaker 2: got fed up with. She said, I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 2: She moved back in with her parents. Months went by
Speaker 2: and she heard nothing from Joe, which kind of pissed
Speaker 2: her off because she's like, I might not be living
Speaker 2: with you, we're still together, so what's going on? And
Speaker 2: then she discovered that her mother, Cath, had been intercepting
Speaker 2: Joe's letters to her. And we won't get too much
Speaker 2: into Cath, but Anne Wilson, one of Oppenheimer's secretaries, said
Speaker 2: this about Kitty's mother, quote, she was a real dragon,
Speaker 2: a hard, repressive woman. She disappeared one day over the
Speaker 2: side of a transatlantic ship and nobody missed her.
Speaker 3: That says it all, Jam.
Speaker 2: Damn Anne, Anne is Wow.
Speaker 1: She fell off a ship and drowned, and we were like, bye,
Speaker 1: big deal. See who Kath? Who Kath?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: It's that is a crazy thing to say about.
Speaker 1: Somebody, That is, you got to really do something. I
Speaker 1: don't know what she did to Anne, but she pretty personal.
Speaker 2: But it was a huge drift between Kitty and her mom.
Speaker 2: Of course when she discovered.
Speaker 1: There and the last letter from Joe to Kitty said
Speaker 1: that but he was going to join a volunteer regiment
Speaker 1: in Spain to fight against Franco. So she finally gets
Speaker 1: hold of these letters, finds out that this is going on.
Speaker 1: She traveled to Paris to meet up with him, and
Speaker 1: he went across the border into Spain and he joined
Speaker 1: the Mackenzie Papino Battalion. Joe would write Kitty letters from
Speaker 1: the front. One read quote each time up in the
Speaker 1: lines that I see a fascist. I am sure that
Speaker 1: I'll be more effective if I say to myself that
Speaker 1: bastard is trying to keep you away from Kitty. So
Speaker 1: I'll say it and do my job right. So Kitty
Speaker 1: finally got permission to join him in Spain, but before
Speaker 1: she could arrange her travel, she had to be hospitalized
Speaker 1: for ovarian cysts and she was sent back to England
Speaker 1: to recover. Then she was all set to leave for
Speaker 1: Spain when she found out that Joe had been killed
Speaker 1: in action on October seventeenth of nineteen thirty seven. His
Speaker 1: letters to her were published into a book the next
Speaker 1: year called Letters from Spain by Joe Dallitt, American Volunteer
Speaker 1: to his wife. It might be that Joe Dallitt was
Speaker 1: Kitty's gen Tatlock in a way because in a book
Speaker 1: by Jenet Konnant called One oh nine East Palace, Robert
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Kitty's friend
Speaker 1: Shirley Barnett says that Dalitt was quote the great love
Speaker 1: of her life whose death she never really got over.
Speaker 1: So that's why she might be his gene tatlock and
Speaker 1: sort of that like he's she went on, you know,
Speaker 1: to have a long lasting marriage with someone else, but
Speaker 1: this was the one.
Speaker 2: This was the one that mattered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really got to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that might have been a point of I don't know,
Speaker 2: of bonding between her and Robert. I wonder, you know,
Speaker 2: if they talked about anything like that and they both
Speaker 2: understood one another about having this person in their past
Speaker 2: who still was in their heart and was very important
Speaker 2: to them or whatever. Kitty came back to the US,
Speaker 2: she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to complete her
Speaker 2: undergraduate degree in botany. Finally, that's what she was supposed
Speaker 2: to be doing all this for all this time, but
Speaker 2: she had but she was kind of having a good time,
Speaker 2: so she didn't do that. So she's finally trying to
Speaker 2: get her botany degree, and that's where she met Richard
Speaker 2: Stuart Harrison, a doctor with Oxford credentials. He proposed to her.
Speaker 2: She accepted, but only on the condition that he let
Speaker 2: her stay in Pennsylvania to complete her degree and then
Speaker 2: also allow her to pursue a postdoctorate to get her
Speaker 2: PHP which was probably important to mention ahead of time
Speaker 2: at that time because a lot of men in this
Speaker 2: time period would have expected her to leave school and
Speaker 2: start keeping his house and having the babies and stuff.
Speaker 2: So she probably was like, look, let me just let
Speaker 2: you know at the outset, I want a career as
Speaker 2: a botanist. Yeah, and he's like, cool, no problem. They
Speaker 2: were married in November nineteen thirty eight, and not long after,
Speaker 2: Richard left for his residency at Caltech, so they lived
Speaker 2: apart for six months. He's in California, she's in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Then Katie graduated with honors from UPenn. She's a smart lady.
Speaker 2: She was offered a research fellowship at Caltech. She was
Speaker 2: working with a physicist named Charles Lawrenson, So she finally
Speaker 2: moved to California, and she and Richard are like living
Speaker 2: in the same house.
Speaker 3: Like husband and wife.
Speaker 2: In August nineteen thirty nine, her boss, Charles Lauritson and
Speaker 2: his wife through a garden party Richard and Kitty Harrison attended,
Speaker 2: and that is where she met the tall, slim, brilliant
Speaker 2: Robert Oppenheimer. She was immediately enamored by him, and they
Speaker 2: started an affair pretty soon after. I think this is
Speaker 2: kind of ridiculous because she's been married to Richard for
Speaker 2: like less than a year, right, they've barely been married
Speaker 2: because he has not been in the same state as
Speaker 2: her for six months, and then she immediately starts sleeping
Speaker 2: with somebody else.
Speaker 1: Well, it's tough to get a picture of Kitty's personality
Speaker 1: simply because everybody kind of seems to have their own
Speaker 1: opinion about her. Yeah, the cat meds in her article
Speaker 1: for a Decade Review, which is called Plastercast Martini Glass,
Speaker 1: Potted Orchid. The Life of Kitty Oppenheimer she lays out
Speaker 1: all the various things that people said against Kitty. First,
Speaker 1: you know, she was volatile, She was snooty, selfish, drunk.
Speaker 1: She was a bad mother. She was a bad daughter.
Speaker 1: She had a scathing tongue. She was an abusive friend
Speaker 1: or cruel. She could never be without a man like
Speaker 1: all these really nasty things. And her sister in law,
Speaker 1: Jackie Oppenheimer, said quote, Kitty was a schemer. She was
Speaker 1: a phony. All her political convictions were phony, all her
Speaker 1: ideas were borrowed. She was one of the few really
Speaker 1: evil people that I've known in my life.
Speaker 2: I love your Jackie Oppenheimer so fun.
Speaker 1: But Kitty's friends said that she was vivacious and quick witted,
Speaker 1: She was intelligent. She was actually really fun to be around.
Speaker 1: Her neighbor, who at first didn't like her but later
Speaker 1: became her friends, said quote. At her worst, she was
Speaker 1: absolutely without guile, brave, was a little lion, and fiercely
Speaker 1: loyal to her own team. And her friend Verna Hobson,
Speaker 1: who was one of Oppenheimer's secretaries, said quote, she was
Speaker 1: Robert's greatest confidant and advisor. He told her everything he
Speaker 1: leaned on. Huch tremendously. I don't know what's FK right?
Speaker 3: Was that?
Speaker 1: Like JFK has been living in New Jersey for a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: I want you to play every woman in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forties and fifties project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll go over well, it'll.
Speaker 2: Work out great.
Speaker 1: We felt like the women didn't get enough screen time
Speaker 1: in Oppenheimer. So Eli's gonna play a man playing all
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I'm part of the problem, all right. So
Speaker 2: Kitty and Oppenheimer started having an affair and it was
Speaker 2: like hot and heavy from the get go. At one
Speaker 2: point she went to see Oppenheimer at Christmas without her husband,
Speaker 2: just going to see Oppenheimer. Another time, Oppenheimer invited both
Speaker 2: Richard and Kitty to his ranch in New Mexico, Pero
Speaker 2: Calli and Tay. Robert at some point had developed a
Speaker 2: weak case of tuberculosis. He was told go to a
Speaker 2: warm climate, you know, to recover, kind of like Doc Holliday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: So he went to a ranch in New Mexico, and
Speaker 2: he fell in love with the desert, absolutely loved it there.
Speaker 2: He found out that the ranch was available for lease,
Speaker 2: and he said.
Speaker 1: Hot dog.
Speaker 2: So then he named it hot Dog.
Speaker 3: That's that's funny.
Speaker 2: That's the story of the ranch. So anyway, he's like, come,
Speaker 2: you know, come on down to Percalliante, you guys, and
Speaker 2: like hang out on my ranch. Well, Richard said, oh
Speaker 2: darn it, I can't go. I just got too much work.
Speaker 2: Whoop at the hospital. So Kitty was like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't have any work, and she went alone for two months.
Speaker 2: She stayed for two months with Robert Oppenheimer at his ranch,
Speaker 2: along with his friend Robert Serber and Robert's wife Charlotte.
Speaker 2: And thanks to her wealthy upbringing, Kitty was an expert horsewoman.
Speaker 2: She very much impressed people with her equestrian skills. So
Speaker 2: she and Oppenheimer wrote horses together all the time. And
Speaker 2: there's this fun story about how one time they rode
Speaker 2: out to stay overnight with a friend of Robert's name Katie.
Speaker 2: But the next day Katie turned up at Perocalliente because
Speaker 2: she had to return Kitty's nightgown which had been left
Speaker 2: under Robert Oppenheimer's pillow. She had to take that off
Speaker 2: and like tuck it up under the bill. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of like, girl, you left this in a
Speaker 2: very obvious place. I know exactly what y'all were doing.
Speaker 1: Can I say, side note, we saw Oppenheimer the seventy
Speaker 1: millimeter Imax aupat Mala, Georgia, one of the few theaters
Speaker 1: in the world to have that print.
Speaker 3: Lucky.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I'll say, actually, oddly it was almost too big.
Speaker 1: Like I was having a hard time focusing on all
Speaker 1: the dialogue because I'm like turning my head left and
Speaker 1: right to listen to it. But the scenes where Robert
Speaker 1: and Kitty are on horseback in the New Mexico Desert
Speaker 1: are some of the most beautiful shots. Yes, I've seen
Speaker 1: on a you know, three hundred foot tall screen whatever.
Speaker 1: It was just stunning. I mean, you know, y'all know
Speaker 1: if you listen to the show that we love the
Speaker 1: desert out there.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: But the beautiful scenery of them on this enormous Imax
Speaker 1: screen riding horses across the New Mexico Desert is unlike anything.
Speaker 2: Gorgeous, unparalleled.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, with all these desert shenanigans, maybe it's no
Speaker 1: surprise that Kitty got pregnant while she was out there.
Speaker 2: Whoops, common side of that constant Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And also I gotta say Richard. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was just oblivious or didn't care or what. But
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, you're the guy that you love that
Speaker 1: you spent Christmas with alone last year, invited us both
Speaker 1: out to the desert. Well I can't go. Why didn't
Speaker 1: you go yourself, honey for a couple of months? Is
Speaker 1: you know? Don't again? I don't know if it's just
Speaker 1: if he's just dumb or didn't care too.
Speaker 3: I wonder that too.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of making me think of our a
Speaker 2: lot of our Parisian counterparts and even similar time frames
Speaker 2: right where they're like oh or British or whatever, where
Speaker 2: they're wealthy and they're like, I'm married, but whatever. We
Speaker 2: all have our little, you know, our little side relationships,
Speaker 2: and it's very accepted in those circles. So maybe he
Speaker 2: was like, all right, whatever, as long as she's entertained,
Speaker 2: I'm busy, so fine.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: She was so allegedly a volatile person. She probably didn't
Speaker 1: hold back at all, so maybe he knew that. It
Speaker 1: was like I'm like, no, you shouldn't go by yourself.
Speaker 1: That all I'm going to get is an earfull that's true,
Speaker 1: and I don't feel like invoking the wrath of Kitty.
Speaker 1: So like, if you want to go spend a couple
Speaker 1: months Robert, go.
Speaker 2: For it, okay, right, or he maybe did get an
Speaker 2: earfull and she just went and did what she wanted anyway, regardless,
Speaker 2: who knows. Okay, Well, let's take a quick break and
Speaker 2: then we'll come back and we'll hear a lot more
Speaker 2: about this presidency, what kind of parents the Oppenheimer's were,
Speaker 2: and lots lots more.
Speaker 1: So we'll see you.
Speaker 2: And welcome back everybody. Last we left, Kitty and Robert
Speaker 2: were in the desert together and they had gotten pregnant,
Speaker 2: and Kitty had gotten her divorce and got Robert to
Speaker 2: marry her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the more damning things that people had
Speaker 1: to say against Kitty was that she sort of maybe
Speaker 1: forced Robert's hand on this one. She admitted to his
Speaker 1: secretary Ann Wilson, that she got him to marry her,
Speaker 1: quote the old fashioned way, So she got pregnant on
Speaker 1: purpose with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean again, when you're sleeping with someone for two months,
Speaker 1: it's hard not to like to be like, oh it
Speaker 1: was on purpose, Like yeah, I mean, she didn't try
Speaker 1: to not do it exactly, Yeah, and it worked. Robert
Speaker 1: called Richard Harrison to break the news, and he convinced
Speaker 1: Richard to give Kitty a divorce so that he could
Speaker 1: marry her instead. Bird and Sherman in American Prometheus wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: it was all very civilized.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that's preferable.
Speaker 5: Oh, mister Richard Sherman, Robert Abenheimer here, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm here with.
Speaker 1: Your I'm Kitty.
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry to send you this uncomfortable news. But
Speaker 5: by jove, I did to have gotten your wife.
Speaker 2: Pregnant by Joe.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the funniest thing.
Speaker 5: I don't know how it happens, but I thought maybe
Speaker 5: I ought to marry her instead of you.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that, sir?
Speaker 2: Oh well, everything you say sounds sound good. I mean,
Speaker 2: you got to make her an honest woman out of her.
Speaker 5: I certainly couldn't.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, speculation station. Richard was like, oh, thank god.
Speaker 2: I maybe, I mean, I don't know, go for it.
Speaker 2: He might have been, because I think the main argument
Speaker 2: he had against it was that getting a divorce would
Speaker 2: harm his like reputation or something, you know, because it
Speaker 2: still was not great to get a divorce, right right, right,
Speaker 2: So he was kind of like, I'm worried about my
Speaker 2: professional gin of my career or whatever if I get
Speaker 2: a divorce. So it wasn't so much like but I
Speaker 2: love her.
Speaker 1: You know. So Kitty moved to Reno, Nevada for six
Speaker 1: weeks and got her divorce, which we have mentioned in
Speaker 1: previous episode that Nevada for the longest time maybe still
Speaker 1: was like the place to get a quick divorce, that's right.
Speaker 1: They specifically crafted their laws to promote divorce tourism basically.
Speaker 1: So she got her divorce there and she married Robert
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer the very next day, on November two of nineteen forty.
Speaker 1: In May of nineteen forty one, Kitty gave birth to
Speaker 1: their son, Peter Oppenheimer, but, as cat Meads writes, quote,
Speaker 1: he would not be the focus of either of his parents' lives.
Speaker 1: In fact, Robert and Kitty left Peter with their friends,
Speaker 1: the Chevaliers for two months while they took a vacation
Speaker 1: to Perocalliente. Now, at this point, Robert started seeing Gene
Speaker 1: Tatlock again. Right, so this is this is before her suicide.
Speaker 1: This was with Kitty's knowledge, although maybe not her approval.
Speaker 1: He might have been real similar to her in terms
Speaker 1: of just like, look, I'm gonna do what I might do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although it makes me one knowing about Joe dallit, yeah,
Speaker 2: and thinking did they ever you know, get close in
Speaker 2: that way where they said, this is the person I
Speaker 2: really loved, right, you know, of course I love you
Speaker 2: and we're good, but like, this is my love, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? And so she was maybe more
Speaker 2: able to understand about Gene than it would seem.
Speaker 1: From You have old loves in our lives that are
Speaker 1: forever part of us, right, So yeah, she might have
Speaker 1: understood that better than better than most.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe she might have been like, if I had
Speaker 2: broken up with Joe, I think I might still be
Speaker 2: wanting to see him too. You know, I get it.
Speaker 2: You know, she might have gotten it even if she
Speaker 2: didn't like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, simultaneous that might even make it worse for her too,
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, you're going to go hang out
Speaker 1: with the one that got away, the true love of
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 2: Cute?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then everything really changed because Japan bombed Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor and the US entered World War Two. At this point,
Speaker 1: Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 2: Originally Kitty was like sort of excited about this whole
Speaker 2: Manhattan Project, loves Alamos thing. She's like, cool, we like
Speaker 2: to camp and stuff like this. We'll be fine. But
Speaker 2: in Los Alamos was really hard on the scientists wives.
Speaker 2: It was harder than anyone could have predicted. Again, if
Speaker 2: you haven't seen the movie or you don't know much
Speaker 2: about this period time period, just a quick debrief on
Speaker 2: Los Alamos. In order to test this bomb, they had
Speaker 2: to be somewhere in the country where there wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of residents, you know, around to be affected or
Speaker 2: to see what they were up to. And they built
Speaker 2: a city in the middle of basically middle of nowhere
Speaker 2: in Mexico and they called it Los Alamos. So that's
Speaker 2: that's what this is. There was hastily erected cities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was so much paranoia about even though we
Speaker 1: were allied with them, about Russian spies trying to learn
Speaker 1: about what we were doing, and obviously the Germans as well,
Speaker 1: but in particular, in particular the American government was worried
Speaker 1: about Communist spies also you know, copying what we had.
Speaker 1: Because everyone was working on nuclear science at this point,
Speaker 1: and how to split the atom and how to turn
Speaker 1: that into a weapon, so incredibly secretive. That's why Robert,
Speaker 1: you know, among the reasons Robert wasn't allowed to leave
Speaker 1: Los Alamos really or go see Gene or you know,
Speaker 1: even speak candidly with any of his colleagues or his
Speaker 1: family or anything like that. None of them living there were.
Speaker 2: Very top secret situation. So Los Alamos kind of a
Speaker 2: hard place to live. Yes, out you know, they're in
Speaker 2: the desert, water electrical power, both very scarce, fruits and
Speaker 2: veggies not fresh. They're having to truck them in from wherever.
Speaker 2: Their husbands could not talk to them freely about their
Speaker 2: work as they had before. There's this whole new strain
Speaker 2: on their marriages.
Speaker 1: Even within Los Alamos. You couldn't go home and talk
Speaker 1: to your partner about what you did at work today.
Speaker 2: Everybody in the city had different security appearances, so you
Speaker 2: literally couldn't. You had to lie. I mean you had to,
Speaker 2: you know, you had to.
Speaker 3: Couldn't.
Speaker 2: Even if you're not lying, it's still there's a strain,
Speaker 2: right if you can't talk openly with your spouse. So
Speaker 2: there was a strain in these marriages.
Speaker 1: It'd be like me coming to you if I've still
Speaker 1: worked in movies and television and saying, hey, we're moving
Speaker 1: to the middle of desert because I got a gig
Speaker 1: on a show, and you're like, cool, what's the show?
Speaker 1: I sign an nda, I can't tell you you're coming
Speaker 1: with me. You're gonna live in a ramshackle apartment with
Speaker 1: no air conditioning, and I'm going to be working for
Speaker 1: sixteen hours a day. And when I come home and
Speaker 1: you say, how is work, I'm going to say, what work?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, I mean sounds.
Speaker 2: Fun kind of I know.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Of course, these women could not reveal to their relatives
Speaker 2: where they were right, so they couldn't have any visitors.
Speaker 2: They couldn't they couldn't live and shit up with any
Speaker 2: kind of anything like that. Mail was censored going in
Speaker 2: and out, No visitors were allowed, you know, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. This was a really difficult place to live.
Speaker 2: In the book Standing By and Making Do Women of
Speaker 2: Wartime Los Alamos, a woman named Jane Wilson writes, quote
Speaker 2: in the Mountains of New Mexico, the women aged, we
Speaker 2: aged from day to day. Living at Los Alamos was
Speaker 2: something like living in jail.
Speaker 1: I bet quite literally too, because I mean they didn't
Speaker 1: have the moist technology that we have today.
Speaker 2: Literally raging in the sand. A very true kitty worked
Speaker 2: briefly as a lab tech, so she actually did work
Speaker 2: on the project to an extent. She was examining blood
Speaker 2: to see the effects of radiation poisoning. But she then
Speaker 2: got pregnant. We stopped working, and she was far from
Speaker 2: the only one to get pregnant. Okay, we just talked
Speaker 2: about how boring Los Alamos is. What else is there
Speaker 2: to do? And the Atlantic says that the Los Alamos
Speaker 2: baby boom was so big that General Leslie Groves started
Speaker 2: being like, the US Army shouldn't have to pay all
Speaker 2: these maternity bills.
Speaker 1: But well, excuse me, mister Groves, but it's your fault
Speaker 1: we got all these maternity bills to begin with.
Speaker 2: I was like, bitch, you're just spending billions of dollars
Speaker 2: on this project, Like, what's a few baby deliveries. Calm
Speaker 2: the fuck down. But that's probably why he was like
Speaker 2: going through trying a penny pinch whatever. I think that's
Speaker 2: just funny thinking about Leslie Groves being like true money briberies.
Speaker 2: So anyway, she got pregnant, and in December nineteen forty
Speaker 2: four they welcomed Catherine and Tony Oppenheimer to the world, and,
Speaker 2: like every other baby born at Los Alamos, the birthplace
Speaker 2: was recorded as PO Box sixteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: They couldn't because when you turn that upside down, it's
Speaker 1: yes E nine nine I, which is the formula for
Speaker 1: nuclear things. Sick for you, like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: circle and find it.
Speaker 3: Find it.
Speaker 1: There's something it's been up po Box sixteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: You rearrange that and you get three x O six
Speaker 1: B P P T pepe pee. Look.
Speaker 2: Oh god.
Speaker 1: Well, after Tony was born, Kitty had some serious depression.
Speaker 1: Now partly obviously this was from just being isolated at
Speaker 1: Los Alamos, right, probably one of the most depressing towns
Speaker 1: in America at the time, built out of plywood in
Speaker 1: a day, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and government guys running around gross to each other.
Speaker 1: You go out and try to have a drink with friends. Oh,
Speaker 1: what you've been up to? You know, I can't talk
Speaker 1: about that. What have you been up to? Oh? You know,
Speaker 1: I can't talk about that.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: Cool, read a book or something, he got a book
Speaker 2: club or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, the loss Alma's book club. But her depression
Speaker 1: also probably came partly due to some postpartum depression, right, so.
Speaker 2: Which they think she probably had after Peter as well.
Speaker 1: So all this being said, she left Tony with another
Speaker 1: scientist family and moved back to her parents' house for
Speaker 1: three months, and she took their son Peter with her.
Speaker 1: So obviously like Robert's too busy to be single dad
Speaker 1: because he's heading up the nuclear bomb project, and she
Speaker 1: needed to get out of town. So while kitties out
Speaker 1: of town, let's turn our attention to the third woman
Speaker 1: in this Oppenheimer trinity, which also brings us to this
Speaker 1: episode sy to Peace, Great Mind saik Ake. Doctor Ruth
Speaker 1: Sherman Tolman was a powerhouse smarty pants, that's an official term.
Speaker 1: That was her degreem. She was a clinical psychologist. She's
Speaker 1: a university professor. She's the author of six books, and
Speaker 1: she created some of the first treatments for post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress disorder and was the first woman elected to the
Speaker 1: Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. So just
Speaker 1: a lot of boxes checked for doctor Ruth Sherman Tolman here.
Speaker 1: Her husband was Richard Tolman and his brother created this
Speaker 1: panel with the psychological study of social issues. So there
Speaker 1: was some controversy about her being elected to the panel,
Speaker 1: like maybe mepotism going on here, and Ruth said, hell no,
Speaker 1: straight up, like I worked hard. I'm damn good. I
Speaker 1: got this on my own merit. It doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: my brother in law is. I deserve this position.
Speaker 2: So she, instead of being in the Oppenheimer movie, was
Speaker 2: in the Barbie movie saying I worked hard and I.
Speaker 1: Deserve that right, Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: Hi Barbie.
Speaker 1: So during the war, she was recruited to several government
Speaker 1: agencies who were hiring psychologists, and she worked to address
Speaker 1: the discrimination that women's psychologists were experiencing. Women's psychologists weren't
Speaker 1: being informed about new scholarly findings, for instance, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: just like an active campaign to keep women out of
Speaker 1: the right field.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just like I feel disrespected by my mail coach.
Speaker 2: It was like, literally, they're not telling me information I
Speaker 2: need to know about my field of study.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she walks into a room and is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize there was a meeting today, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just ending. Sorry forgot to tell you they wrote.
Speaker 2: It on the men's bathroom walls. Oh bad, he didn't
Speaker 2: see it. You know that type of shit.
Speaker 1: Now. Her final wartime assignment was developing psychological stability tests
Speaker 1: for field agent assessments for the Office of Strategic Services,
Speaker 1: which is now known as the ci A. So she
Speaker 1: came in was like, can you handle it? Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the answer these ten questions. We're going to find out
Speaker 1: which the bear character are you, and that'll tell me
Speaker 1: whether or not she's the original buzzbeed quich.
Speaker 2: And she moved on to making buzzby quizes which kind
Speaker 2: of onion you are? I just think that's so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she had to figure out I guess probably A can
Speaker 2: you handle it? And b are you a psychopath? And
Speaker 2: you will make horrible decisions you know, in the field
Speaker 2: and stuff. So so she's she's doing.
Speaker 1: Some serious because you might be like, oh, this guy,
Speaker 1: he's brilliant and he can totally handle the pressure. He
Speaker 1: can can he's a sociopath who doesn't care about human life,
Speaker 1: So maybe we shouldn't have him in charge of the
Speaker 1: A bomb you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, right exactly. There's a different place for him
Speaker 2: right in or something. But there either I know r Actually,
Speaker 2: don't put him in the CIA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he's just Coldstone Creamery or something. It's better
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: Well, I tried to work at the CIA, but I'm
Speaker 2: applying today a Coldstone Creamery because they said I was
Speaker 2: too much. I was psychopathy.
Speaker 1: I didn't value human life enough. So anyway for a
Speaker 1: cold star? Is that? Butter pecan? You said? All right?
Speaker 2: All right, so Ruth total boss bitch. She's also about
Speaker 2: ten years older than Robert Oppenheimer, so just so you
Speaker 2: have her.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, correct the flip between him and.
Speaker 2: Exactly she's older.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: And Richard and Ruth had been friends with Robert Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: for years. Sure, Richard Tolman actually literally wrote the book
Speaker 2: on statistical mechanics, literally wrote that book, and Oppenheimer used
Speaker 2: his work to prove his theories about stars collapsing into
Speaker 2: black holes. It's called the Tolman Oppenheimer Volkoff limit.
Speaker 1: I love that. And this is something that I learned
Speaker 1: from the movie too, in the opening scenes, is that
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer was like basically came up with the idea that
Speaker 1: stars collapsed into black holes. I did not know that
Speaker 1: he was involved in astrophysics like that. That's so cool.
Speaker 2: It's funny how much of this quantum mechanics and stuff
Speaker 2: I thought was older than it was. And of course
Speaker 2: at this time it was brand new field study. So
Speaker 2: it's really interesting. I'm not smart enough to understand any
Speaker 2: of it, but I love it. I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: So Richard Tolman also badass brain guy, and he worked
Speaker 2: as one of General Leslie Groves scientific advisors during the war.
Speaker 2: So he and Ruth both high level government work government
Speaker 2: service during the war. So they bought a house in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. And Oppenheimer usually stayed with them when he
Speaker 2: had to travel to the capitol for meetings.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You see, he didn't leave Los Alamos very much, but
Speaker 2: when he did, it was to meet with politicians, tell
Speaker 2: him how it was going, get you know, new deadlines
Speaker 2: or whatever. So he would usually stay there. And most
Speaker 2: scholars say that Ruth and Robert Oppenheimer had an affair,
Speaker 2: usually starting around the time of her CIA service of
Speaker 2: this oss assessment tests. Atomic Love Story authors Klaus and
Speaker 2: Stracshinsky told The Independent quote, Ruth and Robert were deep
Speaker 2: and close friends for decades. He may have loved Kitty,
Speaker 2: but on some level he did not respect her. Ruth
Speaker 2: he respected and admired. He relied on her for advice
Speaker 2: and the sort of comfort only a good friend can provide.
Speaker 2: One of Oppenheimer's secretaries said he always kept one of
Speaker 2: Ruth's letters in his pocket, and Megan George, writing for
Speaker 2: Feminist Voices dot Com, says quote friends would often drop
Speaker 2: into the Tolman residence to find the couple alone in
Speaker 2: their dressing gowns, and says the affair went on after
Speaker 2: Richard Tolman died as well, so it was kind of
Speaker 2: a long standing thing.
Speaker 1: But Klaus and Stratshinsky also decided after all their research
Speaker 1: that there was no evidence of a physical affair between
Speaker 1: these two. At most, this was just like a very
Speaker 1: close emotional bond, right. Two people found something they can
Speaker 1: connect to. That probably again, as with many of the
Speaker 1: people in our Spenheimer's life, how many people can he
Speaker 1: actually talk to on a certain level. There's not many
Speaker 1: out there, so he got very close to people like this.
Speaker 1: Klausen Stratschinski told The Independent that Ernest Lawrence, who's the
Speaker 1: character that Josh Hartnett plays in the movie, was likely
Speaker 1: responsible for all the rumors that were flying around about
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer and Ruth because he had quote a long list
Speaker 1: of grievances personal and professional against Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 3: So he was.
Speaker 1: Just stirring the shit shit talking shit. But they also
Speaker 1: point out that Kitty, who was known as quote a
Speaker 1: jealous person, never showed any signs of being suspicious of
Speaker 1: her husband and his friend Ruth, although clearly she would
Speaker 1: have had plenty of reason to he's spending so much
Speaker 1: time with her, but maybe she was quite clear and
Speaker 1: knew that there wasn't an affair going on between them.
Speaker 2: It's also like he doesn't seem to be very secretive
Speaker 2: about his affairs, Like he kind of tells them listen,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go see Genes. Yeah, and she's I don't
Speaker 2: care if you like it or not, That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: So I don't know why he would lie about Ruth
Speaker 2: to her, why would he cover that up?
Speaker 1: But anyway, so all that to say, it's not really
Speaker 1: clear how sexual this relationship might have been, whatever that's worth,
Speaker 1: but it's presented more or less this fact in the
Speaker 1: movie that they had a sexual relationship, and it seems
Speaker 1: to be mostly accepted by a lot of Oppenheimer and
Speaker 1: Ruth biographers. Some even say that Richard Tolman, her husband,
Speaker 1: died of a broken heart when he discovered their affair,
Speaker 1: because he died of a heart attack in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: And I'll say, based on what we've heard here, husbands
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties and forties, maybe stop making Robert
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer you and your wife's best single friend, because he
Speaker 1: keeps coming in and falling in love.
Speaker 2: They will steal your wis with your.
Speaker 1: Wife, and she loves him too. So maybe and hide
Speaker 1: your wives from Robert Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: Fellows, you're fucking wife. And I will say, these are
Speaker 2: only three of the women that he was with. Robert
Speaker 2: Oppenheimer was with many other women, and some of them
Speaker 2: were married. He very frequently had affairs with married women.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about Oppenheimer. He seems very towering and
Speaker 1: and he's got this really like just kind of impressive presence.
Speaker 1: He seems like he's so smart. He's kind of intimidating.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons that they picked him for
Speaker 1: leading the Manhattan Project is that he was so dang personable.
Speaker 1: People loved him. They liked hanging out with him. He
Speaker 1: was really charming. He knew how to work with people,
Speaker 1: and he knew how to talk to people, and he's
Speaker 1: just very likable, which I did not expect to learn
Speaker 1: about him as we were studying. I figured he would
Speaker 1: have been one of these like cold scientists that's sort
Speaker 1: of difficult to communicate with because he's he's just operating
Speaker 1: on a different level. But he was actually kind of
Speaker 1: a total just dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a guy, which I kind of love knowing. Like,
Speaker 2: he's the type of intellectual person that just like he
Speaker 2: was so curious about such a wide variety of subjects
Speaker 2: that he was he was really interested in the people
Speaker 2: he was talking to. I think, for the most part,
Speaker 2: Carl Sagan and he could talk about a lot of things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Carl Sagan as a great example. People did say with
Speaker 2: Robert Oppenheimer, he was just so magnetic that male or female,
Speaker 2: you just couldn't help but fall in love with him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: on some level or an other. So, yeah, maybe hydro
Speaker 2: wires around around Oppenheimer. So Robert Oppenheimer may or may
Speaker 2: not have been having a biicoastal affair with his friend's
Speaker 2: wife in DC. Dealing with his postpartum depressed wife Kitty,
Speaker 2: and trying to get the atomic bomb completed successfully, all
Speaker 2: at the same time. No pressure, No pressure, sir.
Speaker 1: Maybe as much pressure on him as there was inside
Speaker 1: the hydrogen bomb. Yeah, yeah, which we learned is all
Speaker 1: about pressure.
Speaker 3: Rite, A lot of pressure.
Speaker 2: Going on in there. So you know, if he was
Speaker 2: not actually sleeping with Ruth, whatever she did provide in
Speaker 2: the way of making him feel better about his life,
Speaker 2: I think he needed. They needed that letter or whatever
Speaker 2: she was saying to him. Regardless of the security protocol
Speaker 2: and stuff. On Los Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer did keep Kitty
Speaker 2: in the loop about what he was up to. So
Speaker 2: when the trinity test was successful, they did that on
Speaker 2: a mesa miles and miles away from Los Alamos. So
Speaker 2: the wives are on Los Alamos, they've no idea what's
Speaker 2: going on. Their husbands have gone off to try this shit,
Speaker 2: and they don't know what's happening. But of course, you know,
Speaker 2: he wants to share with Kitty whether or not any
Speaker 2: of this shit work. Yeah, worth it, right, So but
Speaker 2: he can't, of course, can't call her and be like all.
Speaker 3: Right, great job, babe, Like yeah, they're listening to every
Speaker 3: phone call exactly.
Speaker 2: So what he did was he called Kitty and told her, quote,
Speaker 2: you can change the sheets, and that was their little code,
Speaker 2: so he was still telling her what was up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And clearly, like you know, just through all three of
Speaker 2: these women, you're seeing how much he needs their advice.
Speaker 2: He likes to hear what they have to say. Like
Speaker 2: he apparently caught it was a you know, Kitty was
Speaker 2: his main confidant. He clearly get a vice from Ruth
Speaker 2: before Jean died. He clearly needed to hear from her
Speaker 2: and have her be a sounding board for him. So
Speaker 2: I think even as differently as he loved or respected
Speaker 2: or whatever these women, he clearly did have a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for their brains, right, regardless of whow how
Speaker 2: great they looked to us on outside.
Speaker 1: Well, and I do wonder if this is one of
Speaker 1: those situations where, now this is true in the past,
Speaker 1: it's still true today. I'm sure where because he's a
Speaker 1: man and they are women. There's a degree to which
Speaker 1: oh I like you, I'm friends with you, I respect you,
Speaker 1: I consider my equal. I must be romantically in love
Speaker 1: with you, you know, And he sort of can't differentiate
Speaker 1: you know, and then if you're attractive on top of that,
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, physically attracted to you, well, here
Speaker 1: we go. The only solution is that we must want
Speaker 1: to be doing it, you know, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: just like another one of his guy friends, their equals.
Speaker 1: They have brilliant conversations and that's it, Like we don't
Speaker 1: have to sleep with each other. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: that ties into it, if he's sort of misconstrued feelings
Speaker 1: of companionship and respect and and just that sort of
Speaker 1: mutuality that they had, intellectually confused that with feelings, intimate feelings.
Speaker 2: I could totally see that. I could completely see that
Speaker 2: being a problem people today still really hard time. As
Speaker 2: you said, got together.
Speaker 1: What wow? When it started, you know, it blossomed into
Speaker 1: something different.
Speaker 2: Good, I'm glad that blossom getting there. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna kick you out of this room. All right.
Speaker 2: So the Trinity test worked, and the atomic bomb was
Speaker 2: dropped and so on and so forth. We know all
Speaker 2: that part pretty well. Da YadA YadA. He changed the world.
Speaker 2: But once the war was over, of course, Robert Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: was a big shot, his giant celebrity. Everybody was like
Speaker 2: the greatest, most respected mind in the entire country. He
Speaker 2: had won the war, et cetera, et cetera. So he
Speaker 2: took a job at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,
Speaker 2: where Kitty raised orchids. She kind of got back to
Speaker 2: her botany roots, and she had a greenhouse. She raised
Speaker 2: orchids there, and Robert would have rare species shipped in
Speaker 2: for her birthdays so she would have new species to
Speaker 2: hang out with. But also by this time, Kitty, by
Speaker 2: some estimations, had become a bad drunk, bad alcohol yo.
Speaker 2: She had always drank pretty heavily but throughout her time
Speaker 2: at Los Alamos, but it was really after that apparently
Speaker 2: it got kind of uncontrollable. She often had broken bones
Speaker 2: or bruises from drunken falls or car crashes. She would
Speaker 2: fall asleep smoking cigarettes, so she burned holes into her
Speaker 2: night clothes and her sheets. Once she even set the
Speaker 2: house on fire. She was also a lot of pain
Speaker 2: from pancreatitis, and she took a lot of painkillers for that.
Speaker 2: So Oppenheimer's friend Robert Serber, actually says that all her
Speaker 2: falls and other erratic behavior is is due to the pills. Oh,
Speaker 2: he said, he insisted that she did not drink any
Speaker 2: more than a normal person, which, let's just take that
Speaker 2: with a grain of salt. Is the fifties, everybody's drinking
Speaker 2: incredibly heavily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she has like six drinks a day. Who normal?
Speaker 2: She gets up, she has a martini? Who does this?
Speaker 1: So just like me, a normal person?
Speaker 2: Right, So, you know, his idea of what was a
Speaker 2: normal amount of drinking might not have my match hours today.
Speaker 2: But he did think that a lot of her falling
Speaker 2: asleep or all that stuff was more about the cankiller,
Speaker 2: and a lot of their friends did say Robert Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: is pretty ambivalent about Kitty's drinking. Didn't seem to find
Speaker 2: it to be a problem. So, but every portrayal of
Speaker 2: Kitty is as a drunk, so it was a big
Speaker 2: part of her characteristic, at least on the outside for
Speaker 2: most people, that she was drinking fit too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so we're well over the hour mark at
Speaker 1: this point. So we've been having a great time learning
Speaker 1: about these women that Robert Oppenheimer got with. Definitely, I
Speaker 1: think arguable that they also changed the course of history
Speaker 1: through their involvement. Sure, I think so whole event that
Speaker 1: really changed everything. So, but there's more to tell, and
Speaker 1: it's too much. It's too much once at once, right,
Speaker 1: it's too much. And also, as we said at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the episode, I personally think that the rest
Speaker 1: of the story, we're gonna be referencing stuff that does
Speaker 1: kind of come as a surprise in the third act
Speaker 1: of the movie because we're, you know, later into his
Speaker 1: life here, and I was so just kind of shocked
Speaker 1: by some of those moments in the movie that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's better to see it first. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: if you're a person who cares about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm a sensitive spoiler boy, so that gets to me.
Speaker 1: But there is definitely more to touch on. You've got
Speaker 1: another twenty minutes or so worth of story for Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: and then the rest of part two, and we're dropping
Speaker 1: these both at the same time, so you can go
Speaker 1: right into it if you want. We're going to give
Speaker 1: our I don't I don't think review is the right word.
Speaker 1: So much is just like our thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah. On Oppenheimer and Barbie, that's right, right, of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, the two movies that every actor in
Speaker 2: Hollywood was in.
Speaker 1: Seriously, oh my god, everyone you've ever heard of in
Speaker 1: these two movies or episode six of The.
Speaker 3: Bear Bears, the rest of them.
Speaker 2: If you weren't on any one of those three projects,
Speaker 2: somebody lost your numbers.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it's like how every British actor is in
Speaker 1: either Harry Potter, Doctor Who, or Game of Thrones or
Speaker 1: down Nabby oh sure, or downt Nabby, all of them really,
Speaker 1: and that kept England's actors working for a long time.
Speaker 1: And I think the rest of all actors were either
Speaker 1: in Oppenheimer Barbie or episode six, season two of the
Speaker 1: Bear at.
Speaker 2: Least they're working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we're working too. We got a whole other
Speaker 1: episode to bring you. I think it's really fun stuff.
Speaker 1: Please stick around, listen up, and let us know what
Speaker 1: you think of our little movie pseudo review too, because
Speaker 1: we have a We have a great time talking about movies,
Speaker 1: we sure do. Yeah, and we will talk your ear
Speaker 1: off if you give us the space. So that's what
Speaker 1: we did. So go ahead, hop on over to episode
Speaker 1: two right now, finish up Oppenheimer's story and as always,
Speaker 1: let us know what your thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we always love to hear from you, guys.
Speaker 2: We love your suggestions. We love your random thoughts about
Speaker 2: stupid things we said, or about the story overall, or whatever.
Speaker 2: So reach out. Our email is redic Romance at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 1: That's right. You can find us on Instagram. I'm at
Speaker 1: o Grade, It's Eli.
Speaker 2: I'm at Dianamite Boom, and the.
Speaker 1: Show is at redict Romance.
Speaker 2: And you are awesome.
Speaker 1: You sure are pop over for popover for episode two
Speaker 1: and we'll catch it at that one.
Speaker 4: I love you, Bye, Solong friends, It's time to go.
Speaker 4: Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends, nabors,
Speaker 4: uncles to listen to a show Ridiculous Romance