Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Rosenbergs About this episode Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953. Whether or not they were both guilty remains unclear, though most historians believe that at least Ethel was innocent. Learn all about this historical stain in today's episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 10,059 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:04 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums.
0:45 Josh Clark? He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com slash bank guy. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.
1:04 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:14 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.
1:20 Speaker 02 That's right. The We Didn't Start the Fire edition.
1:26 Speaker 02 It's funny because I, that may have been the first time I've heard about the Rosenbergs.
1:32 Speaker 02 Rosenberg's H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom.
1:36 Josh Clark? What was that last part? I've never known what the heck he was saying.
1:40 Speaker 02 P A N M U N J O M, one word, Panmunjom. Brando the King and I and the catcher in the ring.
1:47 Josh Clark? Right, back up. What is Panmu Jam?
1:49 Speaker 02 Well, I don't know, buddy. You'll have to listen to the We Didn't Start the Fire history podcast because I was like, earlier today, I was like, oh, man, what a great basis for a history podcast.
2:00 Josh Clark? No.
2:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course it was a thing. But you know, it's got a shelf life because they, I guess, went through all of them. From twenty one, twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three?
2:11 Josh Clark? So was each, each lyric its own episode?
2:14 Speaker 02 I don't know. I mean, I, I would, I mean, that's how I would do it because you can get a lot of mileage out of that song.
2:20 Josh Clark? For sure. That's really cool. Hats off.
2:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, I didn't check it out. Uh, but yeah, I mean.
2:25 Josh Clark? I didn't check it out.
2:27 Speaker 02 There's a, ah, man, there, surely they didn't do one each because there are so many references and they only ran for two years unless it was a daily show.
2:34 Josh Clark? Maybe they just got bored after like halfway through. They're like, forget this.
2:38 Speaker 02 Anyway, this is a, that's Billy Joel's worst song probably. And this is a, this is a podcast about the Rosenbergs.
2:47 Josh Clark? Well, what was his best song? And if you don't say Uptown Girl, you're wrong.
2:53 Speaker 02 Probably Miami twenty seventeen.
2:57 Josh Clark? I don't even know what that is.
2:59 Speaker 02 I've seen the lights go out on Broadway. That's a great song. But I'm a Billy Joel, like, super, I'm a stan, so.
3:05 Josh Clark? Are you really?
3:06 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. You didn't know that?
3:08 Josh Clark? No, I had no idea.
3:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, Glass Houses was the first record I ever bought. Then I've seen him live like a dozen times.
3:13 Josh Clark? I had no idea.
3:15 Speaker 02 I, like, it's kind of cool to listen to Billy Joel now, but I, I suffered many decades of people making fun of me. Because I would like go see a pavement show and then put on Billy Joel the next day.
3:26 Josh Clark? Man, people just stink sometimes.
3:29 Speaker 02 Hey, man, you got, I have a variety of tastes, as do you.
3:33 Josh Clark? For sure. And people should be left alone and not have their tastes made fun of.
3:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel any day of the week, my friend.
3:42 Josh Clark? Um, I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone, and that's Ethel Rosenberg.
3:47 Speaker 02 Yeah. I guess we should give a sort of an overview of this before we dig in.
3:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, fair enough.
3:53 Speaker 02 So the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were a married couple. Uh, they lived in New York City, were from New York City. And they were convicted. Of committing espionage in 1951 and executed and put to death. Which was, this is a very big deal for a few reasons. One is because a lot of historians basically say like, I don't think Ethel did this and she was probably innocent. Even though Julius did. And a lot of people say, and even if he did, and she might have known about it, like executing these two people with two young sons. When no one else was getting executed for this at the time was a travesty of justice.
4:33 Josh Clark? Yeah. And as we'll see, they got caught up in Cold War communist hysteria. And were basically put into a deadly game of chicken. Essentially is what it amounts to.
4:46 Speaker 02 Totally.
4:47 Josh Clark? It's one of those blemishes on the Department of Justice that's never really going to go away that they did this. We'll see. We'll explain. But it's just a sad story all around. We want to say Julius Rosenberg definitely was a spy for the Soviet Union. An enthusiastic one whose spy career spanned more than a decade.
5:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:10 Josh Clark? Ethel probably was in some way, shape or form, at least abetting it. If not some way minorly supporting it. She may have also played an even bigger role. But I personally do not think that both of them were innocent. Some people say that. Just based on the research I've done, it just seems clear as day that they weren't both innocent. But to put them both to death, they were the, not the only spies who were caught and convicted during the Cold War. They were the only spies caught and convicted during the Cold War who were executed. And that's what makes the whole thing so significant.
5:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. So let's go back and talk a little bit about their early life. We can kind of breeze through this first part. But I mentioned they were both born in New York. Ethel was born there in 1915. Had a few brothers, went to Seward Park High School. She was big into theater and this would come up because she loved to sing and dance. And later on, when she started to get a little political and was going to union events, she would like perform sometimes. I guess to, you know, just make it a little more fun. Like, hey, here's, we're at the union meeting and now here's a song from Ethel, I guess at the time, Greengrass.
6:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. The Communist Blues with the nice little communist tap dance.
6:27 Speaker 02 Julius was also born in New York. He's a few years younger, born in 1918 to Polish immigrants. And he also went to Seward Park High School, but I don't think they knew each other there. It seemed like they met when he was at City College and she was working as a secretary.
6:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, and by this time when they met, they had both, their interests in communism had definitely blossomed.
6:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:53 Josh Clark? I think Julius is even more than Ethel's by then, but Ethel, I think, had participated in a strike and was fired from her workplace for participating in a strike. And she was like, hmm, I think I'm into workers' rights now.
7:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:06 Josh Clark? So when they met, it was at a charity benefit for the International Siemens Union, S E A M E N. And so they were both like, I'm a communist, you're a communist, let's get together and make little communist babies.
7:23 Speaker 02 And do the communist shuffle?
7:25 Josh Clark? Yeah.
7:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, he was definitely more into it. He joined a group called the Steinmet Society. He was an affiliate of the Young Communist League. And he had a couple of friends that are gonna come up later in a sort of a small-ish way, but just put pins. And the names Morton Sobel and Max Elickter, who were buddies he made while he was sort of in this affiliated with the Young Communist League group society.
7:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they had very similar ideas to his. And in 1940, did you say that he trained as an electrical engineer? That's what he studied?
8:03 Speaker 02 No, but that's, you're right.
8:04 Josh Clark? Yeah. He was hired as an engineer for the US Army Signal Corps. And when he was hired, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together and said, what can I steal? And pass along his secrets to the Soviet Union, essentially.
8:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, basically. He had one minor brush with the FBI in 1941. He was called into what's called a loyalty meeting, I guess, to sort of sniff people off the case and see how loyal they were to the United States. Because they found a couple of mentions of Ethel in the FBI files. One that she had signed a petition for a communist city council candidate, and another that was just someone who gave a tip that accused her of having communist leanings. But he was like, "I'm not even into politics that much," which is a lie.
8:53 Josh Clark? Right.
8:53 Speaker 02 Let alone communism, which was also a lie. And so they pretty much dropped the case. And in 1942, they moved to the Lower East Side, to the Knickerbocker Village, and started having those baby communists, like you said.
9:06 Josh Clark? Is the Knickerbocker Village still around? Is that like a neighborhood in the Lower East Side?
9:11 Speaker 02 I don't hear it referenced. I mean, I'm sure you could tell where it was, but I don't know if there are any modern references or signage or anything like that. Or I might be wrong, but I've never seen it.
9:22 Josh Clark? Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in New York talk about.
9:26 Speaker 02 What is that?
9:27 Josh Clark? Knickerbocker Village?
9:29 Speaker 02 Oh, gotcha.
9:31 Josh Clark? Okay, so we've laid the foundation. There's Julius, there's Ethel, their kids have come along. They're both very loyal communists, especially as we'll see. And Julius is big time into spying. And he became a spy. It's not actually clear how that happened, to tell you the truth. There's many different accounts. One is Julius's account, which is that he never spied and that he was framed by the government.
9:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:57 Josh Clark? That's demonstrably untrue. His brother-in-law David's account, which we'll get into more later, but he basically said that Julius would like, he actually went so far as to go to the Soviet Embassy in New York and said, "Hey, can I do some spying for you guys? I'm a big fan." Like, he would basically just, he wanted to spy. He was putting himself out there. And then there were a couple of others that are probably likelier than either of the other two.
10:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, um, one Soviet agent named Alexander Fekhslav said he was just introduced to another Soviet agent at a Labor Day rally in Central Park. His name was Semyon Semyonov. And then other people said, no, it was another intelligence person. So we don't know how he got into it. But to set the stage of why he might have done this, it was a time in the 1940s when the US and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis. And there are historians that say like Julius didn't think he was betraying the US. He thought he was fighting fascism when he sort of started getting into spying for the Soviets. I don't know about that, but that's what some people say.
11:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think that's the most polite way you could put it. Another way to say it is maybe betraying the United States was just an incidental part of it.
11:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a good way to say it.
11:19 Josh Clark? But I saw that one of the things he was well known for, it's like he hated fascism so much that he would like, like be seen walking down the street and be like, I hate you fascism. And he'd be punching the air.
11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:29 Josh Clark? He hated fascism. So that was one of his big motives for sure.
11:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:33 Josh Clark? And in 1942, so he was hired in 1940. I guess he laid a little bit of groundwork for people trusting him. In 1942, he started passing weapons information to the Soviets. And some pretty big ones, too. One of the ones I saw was a proximity fuse. And that is a tiny radio that is used in anti-aircraft guns that basically tells the anti-aircraft gun, okay, that plane is now in range to do maximum damage to it, fire.
12:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:06 Josh Clark? That's definitely something you want to have on your anti-aircraft gun. And he passed that along to the Soviets. That was just one example. And he was, he was first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier.
12:20 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
12:21 Josh Clark? He got handed off then to Alexander Fekhlasov, who you also mentioned earlier. And so those two's account of how he got into spying are probably the likeliest because they were his spymasters when he was a spy.
12:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, agreed. Also. During this time, and this is pretty key, he was trying to recruit other people who had that sort of same political leanings as him and recruit them. And one of those people was the aforementioned brother in law. So this is David Green Glass, and this is Ethel's brother.
12:51 Speaker 02 So in March 1945, he was fired from the Signal Corps. The FBI said, wait a minute, you've got a Communist Party membership card. And it's got your name on it. And he was like, oh, okay. So I don't work there anymore. I'm going to start my own business with Ethel's brothers, David, who I just mentioned, and Bernie. And it's called Pit Machine Products. And that did not go well. I guess that it just wasn't a good business. I think David accused Julius of being a bad business person. He accused David of being a bad foreman. And by 1948, the company was almost not a company anymore.
13:28 Josh Clark? No, it was just down to the original investors. I just made scare quotes. Who were Julius and Ethel's two brothers, David and Bernie, right? So another big part of this problem, I guess we should say what we're describing now is animosity that kind of grew up.
13:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:46 Josh Clark? Between David and Julius specifically. There was just some tension, even though they still remained in one another's lives, highly involved in one another's lives. Some historians point to this specific instance of them going into business together, which is
14:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:02 Josh Clark? always a bad idea to go into business with family across the board. Okay. Again, we'll go back to my original motto, never trust family.
14:13 Speaker 02 Never trust family. Man, you've been saying that for years.
14:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, well Julius Rosenberg would agree with me. So would Ethel. But so David started to become resentful, and there was animosity.
14:25 Josh Clark? Throughout this, this period, and some people point to that as, as the basis of what came later.
14:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. David had borrowed a lot of money from Julius without returning it. So the animosity is building. His wife, David's wife, Ruth, so their sister-in-law, the Rosenberg sister-in-law, she in February of 1950 was lit a fire when her nightgown brushed up against a heater of her apartment. She had a lot of hospitalization and severe burns and high medical bills and gave birth to a daughter while she was recovering from this. So all this is just to basically set up, like you said, that David is, he's, he's in a pretty bad place in his life at this time.
15:08 Josh Clark? Yeah, he's going through a rough patch.
15:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:11 Josh Clark? So we'll talk a little bit more about what happened because there's different accounts depending on who you talk to. But what we do know that happened next was that they started to get caught. So the whole thing kicked off in February of 1950 when a guy named Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist, he was British, he was discovered by MI6 as being a Soviet spy. And he was a big time Soviet spy. Apparently, the spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets skip ahead an entire year in their development of the atomic bomb. Huge, huge damaging spy. And when he was caught, he implicated others,
15:56 Josh Clark? but he didn't know others' names. He only knew their code names. And he mentioned Raymond. Well, the FBI, the US government had what are now known as the Venona cables. The, the US had cracked secret cables that were encrypted that the USSR had sent during World War II.
16:16 Josh Clark? And in it, it talked about a lot of the spies working for them. And by having these Venona cables and knowing people's different code names, they were able to basically root out at least 100 spies using these cables. And Klaus Fuchs was first, and then after Klaus Fuchs was Harry Gold, who was the Raymond that Klaus Fuchs mentioned in his confession.
16:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. So he was his US contact, Fuchs's US contact. And then eventually that trickled down and Gold led them to David Greenglass, the Rosenberg's brother and brother-in-law.
16:52 Josh Clark? Yeah.
16:52 Speaker 02 So on June 15th, 1950, the feds got David Greenglass and they rounded him up, brought him to HQ to question him. And he was like, I'm not into espionage at all, like deny, deny, deny, which is, I guess, the sensible thing to do. But then they said, no, this guy Harry Gold identified a photo of you. And he went, okay, you got me. I am committing espionage. He was arrested and he said, I passed on this atomic information, and we'll get to how he knew this stuff in a minute. I passed it on to Harry Gold in June 1945. I was initially recruited to do this by my wife Ruth,
17:33 Speaker 02 and Ruth was recruited by my no-good brother-in-law Julius. Key to all this is that he never mentioned Ethel being involved at first.
17:42 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's a big one right there. Just put that in your pipe and stick it in your hat, right?
17:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:48 Josh Clark? Should we take a break now and talk about what came next?
17:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a good cliffhanger.
17:53 Josh Clark? Okay, we'll be right back.
18:13 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
18:15 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
18:18 Speaker 02 That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fans' experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
18:34 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
18:42 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
18:48 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
18:54 Speaker 02 And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
18:57 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
19:02 Speaker 03 What the fans' experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
19:05 Josh Clark? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
19:09 Speaker 05 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
19:15 Speaker 02 Hey, everybody. The holidays are coming up, so let us throw this out there. Are you prepared to host friends or family? Like, really prepared? Because there's a difference between having people stay at your house and properly hosting them.
19:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's what we thought. So maybe it's time for a little refresh. Well, we have a tip. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home, so you can host and celebrate without the stress.
19:40 Speaker 02 That's right. Whether you're just swapping out a busted appliance or going all-in on a top-to-bottom home makeover for the holidays, Wayfair has you covered. Thousands of products, every style, every budget.
19:49 Josh Clark? And it's all built for real life. Every item is hand-vetted by specialists with a 10-point quality inspection. And on top of that, with over 20 million verified five-star reviews, you can have total confidence in all the picks you make.
20:01 Speaker 02 So remember, when refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Just head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.
20:18 Josh Clark? Hey everybody. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on. Whether you're heading to work, or going out, or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where you want to shop for yourself and everyone on your list.
20:35 Speaker 02 That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.
20:50 Josh Clark? Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.
21:03 Speaker 02 So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com, where you can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was stuff you should know. It's the best way to support the show.
21:34 Josh Clark? So the feds have David Greenglass now, who is one degree removed from the Rosenbergs. And he's already implicated Julius, but not Ethel. So the FBI goes to start talking to Julius. They questioned him in June of 1950. And I guess basically the day after they started talking to David Greenglass's brother-in-law.
21:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, they moved pretty quick.
21:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, and they didn't have enough on Julius to bust him yet. They knew enough, because again, remember, they had the Venona cables, and all of these people are mentioned in the Venona cables. They had basically figured out who is who, but the Venona cables were so sensitive and so highly classified. The FBI, the Department of Justice, could not use them in court.
22:20 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
22:21 Josh Clark? So they could only use them as a background information. And then they had to extract these confessions and piece together like, as if those things didn't exist. So they knew everything, but they had to basically get David Greenglass, and then later, his wife Ruth, to talk.
22:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, which they did over the course of a month or so. They started talking to Ruth, kept talking to David and about, yeah, like one month later, July 17th, they said, all right, we got enough, we're gonna arrest Julius. And then a little less than a month later, on August 11th, after Ethel participated in the grand jury hearing for her husband, she was also arrested. And they were both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, and that was under the Espionage Act of 1917.
23:04 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah. For some reason, going and being just a part of a grand jury trial and then getting arrested right after, I can't compare it to anything, but it just seems almost mean. Like, there should be a break in between. Like, you think you're going in and you're gonna be fine, and then bam, you get arrested on the, like, as you're walking out. It's just, just mean.
23:26 Speaker 02 It's like the, when they invited everyone to the football game, the criminals.
23:30 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was a good one.
23:31 Speaker 02 Operation, what was that?
23:33 Josh Clark? Uh...
23:34 Speaker 02 Was it?
23:35 Josh Clark? Mint's Meat. No, that wasn't, that was the one where they created the corpse that they threw overboard in World War II to fool the Nazis?
23:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, that inspired a Broadway show, but I think maybe a Broadway show should be inspired by the Redskins football game.
23:49 Josh Clark? I agree, and I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
23:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, or at least a Simpsons episode.
23:53 Josh Clark? I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. No, it did, remember? We talked about it, where they had the free boat giveaway?
23:59 Speaker 02 That's why I said wink wink.
24:00 Josh Clark? Oh, gotcha. I didn't know you were winking at me.
24:04 Speaker 02 You're like, I thought you were just flirting.
24:07 Speaker 02 All right, so we should tell the story, and this is the official story, according to the Department of Justice, on how this all went down. So we're just gonna kinda tell it that way, to begin with.
24:16 Josh Clark? Yeah.
24:16 Speaker 02 I mentioned David Greenglass had atomic secrets, and how he got those was, he was in the Army in 1943, and he was transferred to Los Alamos in August of 1944, and was around the work of the Manhattan Project all of a sudden.
24:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer.
24:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:36 Josh Clark? So that was August of 1944, when he started working on the atomic bomb project. A few months later, Ruth came to visit David.
24:44 Speaker 02 His wife.
24:45 Josh Clark? Yes, his wife Ruth. So by this time, when she came to visit her husband in Albuquerque, she had actually been recruited as a spy by at least Julius Rosenberg. And she essentially went to Albuquerque to convince her husband to become a spy. All of these, like both couples were very much into the Soviet Union, very much into communism. So they have very similar views. This wasn't like, didn't take a lot of persuading, from what I understand. And she basically said, hey, Julius figured out, probably his Soviet handlers told him, that you're working on the atomic bomb project. So he wants you to tell me everything you know about it, and then I'm going to take it back to him.
25:29 Josh Clark? Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR and our glorious leader, Joseph Stalin.
25:34 Speaker 02 That's right. January of 1945, David went back to New York on furlough. And just a couple of days after he got back, Julius came around, knocked on the door of his apartment, and he said, hey, what else you got for me on this atomic bomb? He said, write it all down, anything you can think of that's useful, I'll pick it up tomorrow. His wife, David's wife Ruth, was like, his handwriting is terrible. You're not going to be able to read this. And Julius said, according to the DOJ, said, not a problem. Ethel, did I mention to you he was a secretary? She can type like the wind. She'll type everything up, so it's nice and neat and orderly. And we'll all be a working family together in this espionage project.
26:14 Josh Clark? All attention will dissolve after we start spying together.
26:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:19 Josh Clark? In that same furlough visit in January 1945, David and Ruth have dinner with the Rosenbergs, and they're actually introduced to a Soviet operative named An Sidorovich. And a really interesting plan is hatched here that ultimately leads to the downfall of David Greenglass. Julia says, hey, Anne is going to be your contact. Now, she's going to come visit you in Albuquerque. By the way, Ruth, why don't you move to Albuquerque to be with your husband and you guys can spy more effectively together?
26:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:52 Josh Clark? But when Anne comes to visit, you just give her all the information and she will give it to me. We should say there were people like Anne, like Harry Gold. Their entire job was to act as couriers. And the reason why is because the Soviets rightly assumed that the feds were following all of their operatives in the United States, so they couldn't possibly use an operative to connect two spies. They had to use a third spy to work as a courier. That's what Anne was doing. But somebody said, what if Anne is indisposed? What if she gets a stomach bug and is just pooping everywhere? Or what if she falls in love and runs off and gets married and forgets all about the USSR?
27:37 Josh Clark? And Julia said, I've got a great idea, a Plan B, if you will. And that is where the phrase Plan B was coined.
27:44 Speaker 02 Are you messing with me?
27:46 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
27:47 Speaker 02 Okay. Yeah, so one small detail here is that Anne was in Denver, so Ruth would get the information from David in Albuquerque, then visit Anne in Denver to pass this along.
27:56 Josh Clark? Right.
27:57 Speaker 02 And if Anne had that stomach bug, this was the brilliant plan that Julius came up with. He said, hand me that Jell-O box over there.
28:03 Josh Clark? Raspberry.
28:04 Speaker 02 And they were like, we've already had dessert. Why do you want this Jell-O box? He ripped the Jell-O box open and took one of the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed Ruth one, and said, I'm going to give this other half to someone with a secret identity that you don't know yet. That's our Plan B person. So if you show up to Denver, Anne is not there, and somebody shows up with this Jell-O box half that I'm holding and showing you, remember. It's gonna match. You can put it together like a locket.
28:38 Josh Clark? Yeah.
28:39 Speaker 02 That that will be the confirmation of their identity, which is so lo-fi, it's actually kind of brilliant.
28:44 Josh Clark? It is brilliant. And I think that Jell-O box, those two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere.
28:49 Speaker 02 They got it.
28:50 Josh Clark? And rightfully so. But it actually came into play because Ann did get indisposed in some way that I hadn't figured out. And Harry Gold, who, again, one of his, his only job was as serving as a courier. He showed up in New Mexico on David and Ruth's doorstep and said, hey, Julia sent me, I'm a spy. And they said, you got the password, you got the code, you got the, I don't know, what would you call an object that serves as a password? Passkey?
29:22 Speaker 02 They probably said, do you have the ripped piece of Jell-O box?
29:26 Josh Clark? Right. Or, or they said, I am the key master, are you the gatekeeper?
29:31 Speaker 02 Gozer, sure.
29:32 Josh Clark? So he said, yes, I am the key master. Check this out. And he produced the half of the Jell-O box and Ruth.
29:38 Speaker 02 What a moment.
29:39 Josh Clark? Yeah, Ruth or I think it was one of the other, Ruth or David produced the other half and they put it together. And they said, let's, let's rap, brother.
29:49 Speaker 02 So he's now the guy, David writes up as much as he knows at that point, you know, the extra stuff about the bomb that he, you know, since the last meeting. And also like here's some other people that, you know, they're always trying to recruit people within Los Alamos and elsewhere. And Gold said, great, thanks a lot. Here's 500 bucks. Which is interesting because they, I mean, they weren't doing it for money, right? Was this just a bit of a bonus for being a good soldier?
30:17 Josh Clark? I think so. I don't, I don't know.
30:20 Speaker 02 Not chump change back then, nor now.
30:22 Josh Clark? No, I mean, they were definitely true, true believers in communism and fighting fascism. So maybe it was just a little, a land yap.
30:30 Speaker 02 All right, so they gave him 500 bucks. September of 1945, he went back to New York, David did, on another furlough. And here, he provided information right to Julius's face. Said, "Here's some more notes. I even drew a sketch of the atomic bomb." Julius was like, "This isn't very good." And he said, "No, trust me. It looks basically like that." And he claims that Ethel typed up the notes, and then Julius burned those notes in a frying pan, gave David 200 bucks for his troubles. And that's where we find ourselves.
31:03 Josh Clark? Yeah, when I saw that frying pan detail, I was like, "God, how long did they have to heat those up to get them to catch fire?" And then I realized that they were using the frying pan as like, basically a fireplace. Yeah. I got it now, but it took me a couple of days.
31:18 Speaker 02 That'd be very funny in the movie, though. It's just like, just another 45 minutes. What's the flashpoint for Jell-O boxes?
31:24 Josh Clark? Right. So are we at another stopping point?
31:29 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, let's do it.
31:31 Josh Clark? Okay, we're gonna stop, everybody, if we just hatched out.
31:52 Josh Clark? Hey, everybody, the best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on. Whether you're heading to work, or going out, or keeping things casual, and this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where you want to shop for yourself and everyone on your list.
32:10 Speaker 02 That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.
32:25 Josh Clark? Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.
32:37 Speaker 02 So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com, where you can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was stuff you should know. It's the best way to support the show.
33:01 Speaker 02 Hey everybody, specifically you dudes. We want to talk to you about Dude Wipes.
33:05 Josh Clark? Dude's fragrance-free wipes are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients.
33:10 Speaker 02 And they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but tough enough for even the hottest messes.
33:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, you got that right. Wetter, cleans better. Dude Wipes flushable wet wipes deliver textbook freshness and the ultimate clean.
33:21 Speaker 02 Just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water and also plastic-free, plant-based materials.
33:28 Josh Clark? So you can feel good while you wipe.
33:30 Speaker 02 That's right. And unlike baby wipes, Dude Wipes are flushable, and they're designed to begin breakdown when flushed. They come in a range of at-home and travel-friendly formats: individually wrapped singles, eight-count pocket packs, and 48-count big daddies.
33:43 Josh Clark? Dude Wipes is the best clean pants down. Available at major retailers nationwide.
34:02 Speaker 02 All right, we're back to the contemporaneous present, when everyone had been arrested, basically. Right out of the gate, David and Ruth, the husband-and-wife team, the Green Glasses, hired an attorney named O. John Rogge, or Rogge, or Rogge. I don't know how you pronounce that, R-O-G-G-E. And so they had a pretty good attorney, and he said, hey, here's what you gotta do. Let me ask you this question first. How much do you like your sister and her husband? He said, because what we should really do, if you want to get out of this, is we should blame the Rosenbergs. And if you can make a case against them, then they're probably gonna let you off pretty light. And he was right on the money with that line of thinking.
34:42 Josh Clark? Yeah. And the Green Glasses said, sure, why not? I have a pet theory that if David and Ethel had been closer in age, she was seven years older than him. We may not have betrayed her quite as easily, but seven years is a pretty decent amount of distance between you and an older sister. And I think that makes the betrayal all the easier.
35:05 Speaker 02 My sister's six years older, and I would totally sell her out.
35:08 Josh Clark? There you go. So my pet theory is correct.
35:12 Speaker 02 That's right. So they, this led to basically a different account. Some people may say it was an account that shifted. Other people might say, no, David just basically lied about Ethel's involvement.
35:25 Josh Clark? Yeah.
35:25 Speaker 02 And you might be wondering like, well, what's, what's the rumpus here? Like, they had Julius dead to rights. Like, why did they need to get Ethel involved? This is because they were living in a time of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors like Roy Cohn, who basically were like, hey, if you want to get Julius, you got to get his wife involved and, and use her as, as leverage, basically.
35:49 Josh Clark? Yeah. And the other thing too, is even though they had Julius dead to rights, he was not cooperating in any way, shape or form. He maintained his innocence until the very end. And they wanted more spots. They wanted to flip him and get more and more and more people.
36:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:04 Josh Clark? So they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage. And they ended up picking her up based on the Green Glass's testimony. Remember when David Green Glass's first, first question, he does not mention Ethel. He mentions Ruth, his own wife. He mentions his brother-in-law, Julius. He does not say Ethel was part of the spy ring. Now, all of a sudden, he is saying she definitely was. And then even more damning, before like the Department of Justice came and said like, hey, why don't you just so touch a perjury to help our case out? He gave the grand jury testimony, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested right after,
36:46 Josh Clark? rather unfairly. And he said point blank, Ethel was not involved in this.
36:52 Speaker 02 Yeah. And we know all this is true because in 2001, David Green Glass said, yeah, I lied about my sister because I wanted to save my own wife.
36:59 Josh Clark? Yeah. He lied during the trial. He perjured himself. He admitted it. So not only did he perjure himself, he perjured himself to implicate his sister, which a lot of people think she was basically innocent, if not fully innocent. So that's a really hard thing to swallow, but we're still not done with the DOJ and what they did here.
37:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Julius and Ethel were tried together along with Julius's college classmate that I mentioned at the beginning that I said to put a pin in, Morton Sobel. You can take that pin out now. So the three of them are being tried. And if David and Ruth hired, you know, an attorney that had a pretty great idea to blame it on the Rosenbergs, they did not hire well because they hired Emmanuel Manny Block. And I think that was Julius's attorney. They had separate attorneys. And Ethels was his father, Alexander. And neither one of these people were criminal attorneys at all.
37:53 Josh Clark? No, Alexander specialized in facilitating the sale of bakeries. I don't get it. I don't understand why they hired them. I didn't see.
38:03 Speaker 02 I don't know. There had to be some connection. I doubt if they just yellow paged that, you know?
38:08 Josh Clark? Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers. I don't know. But it was.
38:11 Speaker 02 Somebody probably knows. I bet someone will let us know.
38:13 Josh Clark? Yeah. So the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors led by Irving Sapol, who time called the nation's number one legal hunter of top communists. Not who you want prosecuting you if you are a spy for the Soviets. And then the judge was also not the judge you wanted to draw. His name was Irving Kaufman, and he was known for hating communists. And he used his bench to essentially punish them as harshly as he possibly could. He was the kind of judge who would actually add 10 years onto whatever sentence the DOJ was asking for in trials of communist spies. He was that kind of judge, and that's who they drew.
38:55 Speaker 02 You know, it'd be funny, as if who let us know about the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel. What if he sent us an email, said, I know this guy. And attached, you'll find an additional verse that I cooked up for you.
39:11 Josh Clark? Oh, my God.
39:12 Speaker 02 To We Didn't Start the Fire, where I explain about the bakery guy.
39:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, and he'd be like, PS, what's this with my worst song crap, Chuck?
39:18 Speaker 02 Right. Oh, man. I can't believe I said that out loud. We might have to edit that out. What I meant to say was, there is no bad Billy Joel song.
39:26 Josh Clark? That was perfect. There you go. We'll just clip that out and put it over what you said originally.
39:31 Speaker 02 No, I'm gonna leave it in. I'm gonna stand by it. Hey, listen, it was a big hit. Billy, if you're listening, I love almost everything you ever did, but you can't win them all.
39:40 Josh Clark? That's a great lesson to learn, Billy Joel.
39:43 Speaker 02 Really is.
39:46 Speaker 02 Okay, so, one thing we should point out, getting back on track here about this trial and the prosecution which hated communists. The jury of 12 had one black man, one white woman, and no Jewish members on the jury. The other were 10 white Christian men who all were in favor of the death penalty.
40:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, which, you know, in their defense, like, you can't be on a Capitol jury if you are in favor of the death penalty, but still, it was not the kind of position that you would want to find yourself in. Like, this is a-
40:21 Speaker 02 I never thought about that. I guess that's true, huh?
40:23 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think we talked about it in the jury episode. I'm pretty sure. That's where I got it from, which means it could be wrong, but, um, yeah.
40:31 Speaker 02 If you were against the death penalty, you'd just gum up the works. They don't want you in there.
40:34 Josh Clark? Exactly, exactly.
40:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:37 Josh Clark? So, they're in a pickle, I guess is what you want to call it, and they're still like, "This is all wrong. We're just, we're maintaining our innocence." And the prosecution said, "Oh, yeah? We'll sit there while we trot out a bunch of witnesses against you guys." They brought Max Elickter, who was a classmate with Morton Sobel and Julius, remember?
40:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:58 Josh Clark? Ruth's brother-in-law, Louis Abel, and I guess that was from, I guess she had a sister. I didn't see that anywhere. George Bernhardt, who was Julius's doctor, Harry Gold, the courier for the Soviets, and Elizabeth Bentley, who was also a former spy, and each one had quite a story to tell.
41:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, and if you're wondering, like, why did they get Julius's doctor in there? It's because he testified that Julius had inquired about going to Mexico and like, "What inoculations do I need to get if I go to Mexico?" Like, very suddenly. And the prosecution was like, hey, and I just made up the very suddenly part, but the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey, this is evidence. He was gonna, he was gonna flee, he was gonna go to Mexico, get that doctor in here.
41:42 Josh Clark? Right. So let's see, Elizabeth Bentley, the former spy, she said, I saw him, or somebody who looked like him, once talking to Jacob Golos, who was a known Soviet operative and the head of the Communist Party of the USA, in Knickerbocker Village, the KBV, no less, in 1942. That's a little thin. Some of the other ones were a little more damning, too.
42:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. By the way, I know I sounded very dumb earlier when you said KBV right after Knickerbocker Village and I didn't pick up on that. In my defense, I thought it would have been KV because Knickerbocker is one word. That's what confused me.
42:18 Josh Clark? Yes, but people like to, like-
42:21 Speaker 02 No, I agree. I'm just letting everyone know. I'm not a, not a 100% moron. I'm just 50% moron.
42:27 Josh Clark? No one thinks you're a moron, or even 50% of a moron.
42:31 Speaker 02 You should read the internet.
42:35 Josh Clark? People, there's plenty of people who don't like me either.
42:38 Speaker 02 Oh, no.
42:38 Josh Clark? You can't take that personally.
42:40 Speaker 02 There are people that hate us. No, I don't. I don't read that stuff.
42:42 Josh Clark? Good. Again, they can soak their heads.
42:45 Speaker 02 That's right. Kick sand, touch grass, all those things.
42:49 Josh Clark? So like, so like I said, touch grass?
42:52 Speaker 02 You haven't heard that?
42:53 Josh Clark? No. Is that, like, they've been knocked down?
42:56 Speaker 02 No, I think touch grass is a more modern thing, like when people are just social media fighting, someone will say, touch grass, like, you know, get off the computer, go outside.
43:04 Josh Clark? Yes, yes, yeah, okay.
43:05 Speaker 02 I think that's what that means.
43:06 Josh Clark? Weirdly, I came across it for the first time within the last couple of weeks and I promptly forgot it.
43:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, you know what they should say? Smoke grass. Quit internet fighting. Go smoke some weed.
43:18 Josh Clark? So what about Max Elickter?
43:21 Speaker 02 Uh, who was that? Oh, he was the former roommate, I think. And he came out in testimony against him too, right?
43:28 Josh Clark? Yeah, he said Julius tried to recruit me as a spy.
43:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
43:32 Josh Clark? Not good. Louis Abel, Ruth's brother-in-law, said, hey, I got some money from Ruth and David, and if you know David, that is weird. So I asked him where they got it, and he said Julius gave it to them, and I suspect for spying. And Manny Block stood up and said, objection. And the judge said, overruled. You caught me? You call me lover?
43:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, his dad's over there rolling some biscuits out.
43:58 Josh Clark? Oh, I'm glad you said that, because I have to get this out there. I don't know where it came from, but it will not leave my head.
44:06 Speaker 02 Oh, no.
44:06 Josh Clark? That Sir Mix-a-Lot buttermilk biscuits song? It's just-
44:10 Speaker 02 I don't know that song.
44:10 Josh Clark? Parts of it are, you don't?
44:12 Speaker 02 No, and I love Sir Mix-a-Lot, I just, I don't know the song.
44:15 Josh Clark? It's a weird, like, novelty song that he had, like, very early on, surely from his first album.
44:20 Speaker 02 Not like the rest of his serious work?
44:22 Josh Clark? Exactly. It's even more novel than his later stuff.
44:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, oh, man, Seattle's own, what a legend.
44:29 Josh Clark? I didn't know he was from Seattle.
44:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, because when they did the, do you remember the Judgment Night movie and that amazing soundtrack?
44:37 Josh Clark? I remember the movie.
44:38 Speaker 02 Well, the movie wasn't great, but the soundtrack was great because they paired rock bands with hip-hop artists, because that was a big thing at the time.
44:43 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
44:45 Speaker 02 And Sir Mix-a-Lot and Mud Honey were paired because they were Seattleites, and their song was awesome.
44:50 Josh Clark? Nice. Remember Body Count with Ice-T?
44:53 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, I saw them at the first Lollapalooza.
44:55 Josh Clark? Nice.
44:56 Speaker 02 That was when Ice-T was still making music and wasn't like, he's on that, he's on that cop show forever now, right?
45:02 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, this is a rapper who had a song called Cop Killer.
45:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:08 Josh Clark? And he plays a cop, and apparently he's gone through some, like, metamorphosis in the eyes of police and people who support police.
45:17 Speaker 02 I bet.
45:18 Josh Clark? From hating him to being like, hey, he's actually kind of a good guy, because he plays a cop on TV so well. It's really interesting.
45:25 Speaker 02 No, I remember at the time, boy, he was persona non grata for law enforcement.
45:29 Josh Clark? For sure, and Ice-T didn't care. He's like, just watch, I'll be back in the most surprising way you can possibly imagine.
45:36 Speaker 02 As literal Ice-T?
45:39 Josh Clark? He's like, well, not that surprising.
45:40 Speaker 02 Right, the second most surprising thing. You mean, you play a cop on a TV show?
45:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, he said, yep, bingo. That's what he was known to say, bingo.
45:48 Speaker 02 Oh, man. We're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one.
45:52 Speaker 02 Who knew the Rosenbergs were gonna bring this out?
45:53 Josh Clark? I did not know.
45:55 Speaker 02 So it was a three-week trial and all. Like you said, they till the end said they were not guilty. The trial concluded in March of 1951. Guilty, all three defendants. Sentenced the third guy, Morton Sobel, to 30 years in prison. Sentenced the Rosenbergs to death, saying their crime was worse than murder and that their work caused the communist aggression in Korea. So they were really taking the fall for a lot here. There were a lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company. Petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years. All of those failed. But he did launch a pretty successful media campaign that got a lot of people very interested
46:40 Speaker 02 in the Rosenbergs' sentence.
46:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, he finally got a newspaper to agree to look into the case. It was the National Guardian, a very left-wing paper. And they investigated it and produced a very sympathetic, what I take to be long-form article on the Rosenbergs' case. And that that article created a bunch of other press, which spread further and further, really drummed up public sympathy to the point where they were holding vigils where a thousand people would show up in cities around the world in support of them. And people thought like, this is not, this is not right. Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like, these people should not be executed.
47:25 Josh Clark? Certainly not Ethel should be executed. And the judge is like, I don't, I can't hear you. He had his fingers in his ears like, la, la, la.
47:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, and there are historians that say like, this all just sort of organically came about because of this press. The DOJ, of course, was like, no, no, no. The Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party overall launched a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Rosenbergs. So, you know, it's a bit of a he said, she said, or they said, they said in this case.
47:56 Josh Clark? Right.
47:56 Speaker 02 But here's the deal on the execution. You said it was a game of chicken early on, and I'm sure people that noticed that. That mention, we're like, what is Josh talking about? A game of chicken? And this is what you were talking about was the idea was even Herbert Hoover did not want to execute them. And it was all a ploy to try up until the last moment even, there were supposedly people on the, on the walk to the electric trailer that were like, still want to change your mind? Because you don't have to die right now if you want to give up some names.
48:26 Josh Clark? Yeah. Yeah, so the, the execution was essentially leverage, just like they used Ethel, they, they railroaded Ethel into a conviction to use as leverage against Julius to get him to flip on other spies. They used the, the death sentence in the exact same way. And they expected one or both of them to be like, okay, okay, that's fine. It's not, we got two young kids at home. Let's all just cool off. We'll give you some names and some information. And Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg did not do that. And in fact, there was the head, I think he was a deputy attorney general at the time, who said Ethel Rosenberg called our bluff.
49:06 Josh Clark? So rather than one party, the DOJ or the Rosenbergs veering off at the last second, they crashed head on and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were put to death, even though essentially no one thought that was the right thing to do. And that's how they went down.
49:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I mean, didn't you find too that Hoover even himself got in touch with the judge and was like, hey, listen, we don't want you to install the death penalty here. And the judge was, had his fingers in his ear.
49:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that, that Ethel in particular should not be executed. That was the official stance of the FBI and it still happened anyway.
49:47 Speaker 02 It wasn't a good look. I mean, they were worried about the optics for sure of, especially because they were Jewish and, you know, coming off the heels of World War II. And they were like, they've got two young kids. You cannot execute this woman.
49:59 Josh Clark? Yeah. And even more so, Manny Block, remember? He was like an appeal machine. He had one last hail Mary appeal.
50:07 Speaker 02 That was on his, that was on the billboard on the highway.
50:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, exactly. With somebody holding a check for a million dollars that he got for them, for their bakery. So he, he filed one last appeal and he basically said, dude. You're going to execute two Jewish people at the beginning of the Sabbath. Do you know how bad that's going to upset the Jewish community worldwide? And Judge Kaufman, who was Jewish himself, said, you know, I hadn't really thought of that. And Manny Block's like, great, so let's postpone this indefinitely. And Judge Kaufman said, no, no, we're just going to move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts.
50:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, they were put to death at 8:00 PM. And that judge was a real SOB. They had a funeral in Brooklyn on June 21st, 1953, where 10,000 people reportedly attended. They were buried, finally accepted after some closer cemetery said no at the Wellwood Jewish Cemetery in Long Island. And the boys, it's just still hard to believe they didn't, that not, that one of them didn't, you know, for the sake of being a parent to their kids, didn't recant, but they didn't.
51:17 Josh Clark? Yeah.
51:18 Speaker 02 And those boys, Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel Mirapole. Little interesting side note here, Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
51:29 Josh Clark? Which, have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees version of that?
51:32 Speaker 02 Ooh, no, but that's great.
51:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song.
51:37 Speaker 02 Another reference to the first Lollapalooza even, who knew?
51:40 Josh Clark? Wow, that's really something.
51:42 Speaker 02 Uh, I know, right? Did not expect that. Billy Joel is spinning in his piano stool right now.
51:49 Josh Clark? He's like, I know I should have accepted that offer.
51:52 Speaker 02 I know. Michael was, got a PhD in economics and Robert Rosenberg became an attorney.
51:58 Josh Clark? And both of them, they've dedicated their lives to trying to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years and years, they admitted like, okay, Dad was a spy, but not Mom.
52:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:08 Josh Clark? And you said that they were criticized by some people for, for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind. And David Greenglass, again, who lied to, and got his sister and brother-in-law killed. I said, they were stupid. He said, that was a really stupid thing for them to do, to not accept some sort of bargain to take the, the death penalty off the table. That's his opinion on the whole thing.
52:35 Speaker 02 Wow.
52:37 Josh Clark? That's what I said too.
52:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:39 Josh Clark? And, oh, I should say real quick, the reason that the brothers, the sons, finally were like, okay, Dad was a spy, was because those Venona cables we talked about earlier.
52:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:50 Josh Clark? They were finally released, starting in the 90s, and it showed quite clearly that Julius was a very enthusiastic spy for the Soviet Union. And probably Ethel definitely knew about it, but she may have been involved in recruiting Ruth. And if she did that, she was definitely a spy. But again, that doesn't change most people's thoughts that they probably should not have been executed.
53:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, totally. Because, I mean, that's a, that's a whole different argument, you know? It's like, maybe they were guilty, but you should not have put them to death. That's what a lot of people seem to think.
53:25 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, including people from their own spy ring, didn't even come close to the death sentence. It was just specifically leverage that just never got taken away. Because the government wasn't about to be like, oh, okay, you got us. All right, we won't kill you.
53:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't do that.
53:39 Josh Clark? It's just crazy.
53:42 Speaker 02 Boy, this is a fun one, and there was a lot of jokes. I hope it didn't come across as insensitive. I mean, that's kind of what we do here, so not be insensitive, but just try to, you know, kind of make jokes about stuff.
53:54 Josh Clark? Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can you laugh at?
53:59 Speaker 02 Nothing.
53:59 Josh Clark? Exactly.
54:02 Josh Clark? Actually, I don't know if that's exactly true, but still. Since Chuck said exactly.
54:06 Speaker 02 That's not to examine that one.
54:07 Josh Clark? Exactly. It's listener mail time.
54:13 Speaker 02 That's right. This is about, we heard from a lot of our Canadian friends.
54:19 Speaker 02 We love it when Canada points out something that they know that we don't. And in this case, it's about Cole's Notes. Great episode about the Cliffs Notes, guys. The name rings a bell to me, probably through American movies and TV. But as a millennial Canadian, I'm far more familiar with Cole's Notes. Cole has a legendary bookstore across Canada, and so every location had a stand of Cole's Notes booklets, focused on books and plays covering, covered in the Canadian school curriculum. I even remember reading them in school alongside Shakespeare plays. To understand them better, yes, they were often used to cram before a test without reading the material. They were also used as Cole intended. Chapters slash Indigo is the big Canadian book retailer now, and they bought out the Coles locations, but they still print and sell Coles notes today. So that guy did all right in the Canadian
55:04 Speaker 02 market. Thanks for making me a little smarter each week. And that is from Natalie Gudormson, Gudormson, great name, from Alberta, Canada.
55:15 Josh Clark? Thanks a lot, Natalie. Thanks for making us a little smarter this week. We appreciate it big time. Yeah. And if you want to be like Natalie and tell us something we didn't know, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to [email protected] .
55:32 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
55:48 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, F-Gart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab, and this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease.
56:29 Josh Clark? Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer Fragrance-free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Wetter, cleans better, and Dude Wipes flushable wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean.
57:11 Josh Clark? And just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water. Plus, they're plastic-free. Dude Wipes give the best clean pants down. Dude Wipes, available at major retailers nationwide.
57:22 Speaker 06 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous Short Stuff: Genetic Mutations Next Selects: Yeti: The Asian Bigfoot Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated