This is an iHeart Podcast. Let's talk about moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity.
Doesn't sound familiar?
Think about how you've been sleeping lately.
If you've had nights where you've been told you snore loudly or choke or gasp for air and then wake up feeling tired, it may be due to OSA.
In the U .S., moderate to severe OSA affects around 24 million adults.
Many are adults with obesity and most cases remain undiagnosed and untreated.
Don't sleep on the symptoms. Learn more at DontSleepOnOSA .com This information is provided by Lilly USA, LLC.
You know, Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding.
That's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase.
Plus shop weekly member deals and get access to free standard shipping.
So what are you waiting for?
Join my Lowe's Rewards for free today.
Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions.
Details at Lowes .com slash terms. Subject to change.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast!
I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right, uh, The We Didn't Start the Fire edition.
It's funny because I, that may have been the first time I've heard about the Rosenbergs.
Rosenbergs H -bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom.
What was that last part?
I've never known what the heck he was saying.
P a n m u n j o m. One word, Panmunjom.
Brando the king and I and the catcher.
Right. Back up. What is Panmunjom?
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 no uh 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 uh from 2021 to 2023.
So was each each lyric its own episode?
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.
For sure. That's really cool.
Hats off. Yeah, I didn't check it out but yeah.
I didn't check it out.
Man, surely they didn't do one each because there are so many references and it only ran for two years unless it was a daily show.
Maybe they just got bored after like halfway through it.
They're like forget this.
Anyway, this is, uh, that's Billy Joel's worst song probably and this is, uh, this is a podcast about the Rosenbergs.
Well, what was his best song?
And if you don't say Eptown Girl, you're wrong.
Probably Miami 2017.
I don't even know what that is.
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.
Are you really? Oh yeah.
You didn't know that?
No. I had no idea. Yeah.
Glass House. This was the first record ever bought then I've seen him live like a dozen times.
I had no idea. it's kinda cool to listen to Billy Joel now, but I've 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.
Man, people just stink sometimes.
Hey man, you got, I have a variety of tastes.
As do you. Yeah. For sure.
And people should be left alone and not have their tastes made fun of.
Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel in the day of the week my friend.
I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone and that's Ethel Rosenberg.
Yeah. I guess we should give a sort of an overview of this before we dig in.
Yeah, fair enough. So the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were a married couple.
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.
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 and totally it's one of those blemishes on the Department of Justice that's never really gonna 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.
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.
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.
Yeah the communist blues with the nice little communist tap dance.
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.
Yeah and by this time when they met they had both their interest in communism it definitely blossomed.
Yeah. I think Julius is even more than Ethel's by them but Ethel I think had participated in a strike and was fired from her workplace for participating in a strike, and she was like, mm, I think I'm into workers' rights now.
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.
And do the communist shuffle?
Yeah. Yeah, he was definitely more into it.
He joined a group called The Steinmetz Society who 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 smallish way, but just put pins in the names Morton Sobell and Max Eilichter who were buddies he made while he was sort of in this affiliated with the Young Communist League group society.
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?
No, but that's - you're right.
Yeah, he - 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 as secrets to the Soviet Union, essentially?
Yeah, basically, he had a 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 ethyl 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 right let alone communism which is 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 Is the Knickerbocker Village still around?
Is that like a neighborhood in the Lower East Side?
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.
Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in New York talk about.
What is that? Knickerbocker village.
Oh, gotcha. 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 he is framed by the government yeah 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.
Yeah, one Soviet agent named Alexander Feksalov 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 U .S. and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis.
And there are historians that say, like, Julius didn't think he was betraying the U .S. 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.
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.
Yeah, that's a good way to say it.
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 be seen walking down the stream being like, I hate you fascism, and he'd be punching the air.
He hated fascism. So that was one of his big motives for sure.
Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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 a first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier.
He got handed off then to Alexander Feklasov, 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.
Yeah, agreed. Also during this time, 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 Greenglass and this is Ethel's brother.
So, in March 1945, he was fired from the Signal Corp.
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 up 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 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.
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 the animosity that kind of grew up 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 always a bad idea to go into business with family across the board. Again, we'll go back to my original motto.
Never trust family.
Never trust family.
Man, you've been saying that for years.
Yeah, well, Julius Rosenberg would agree with me, so would Ethel.
But, so David started to become resentful, and there was animosity throughout this period.
And some people point to that as the basis of what came later.
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, Rosenberg's sister -in -law, She, in February of 1950, was lit afire when her nightgown brushed up against the 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 in a pretty bad place in his life at this time.
Yeah, he's going through a rough patch. Yeah.
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.
But he didn't know others' names.
He only knew their code names.
And he mentioned Raymond.
Well, the FBI, the U .S. government, had what are now known as the Venona cables, the US had cracked secret cables that were encrypted, that the USSR had sent during World War II.
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 a hundred 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.
Yeah, that's right.
So he was his U .S. contact, Fuchs' U .S. contact, and then eventually that trickled down and gold led them to David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs' brother and brother -in -law.
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 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. Yeah that's a big one right there just put that in your pipe and stick it in your hat right?
Yeah. Should we take a break now and talk about what came next?
Yeah that's a good cliffhanger.
Okay we'll be right back.
Hey everybody, we want to talk to you about Squarespace, and in particular, if you have a great idea that you want to sell on the web, well Squarespace makes it easy to sell access to content on your websites.
That's right. You can do online courses, you can do blogs, videos, memberships.
You can even earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall.
Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one -time fee or a subscription for access.
That's right, and you can get your content discovered fast with integrated SEO tools.
Every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto -generated sitemap and more so you show more often to more people in global search engine results.
Just go to squarespace .com slash stuff and you can get a free trial and when you're to launch, use our offer code STUFF to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
You know that feeling, that gut instinct telling you something isn't right?
Your job. Draining, not inspiring.
Your goal is always just out of reach. Instead of taking action you tell yourself, I'll figure it out later.
But later turns into never.
That's right. And the only difference between where you are now and where you want to be is taking action.
It's time to start making moves with today's sponsor, Strawberry .me Career Coaching.
Yeah. Strawberry .me is like therapy, but for your career, a game plan for your future that helps you set clear goals, build a road map and most importantly, execute.
Yeah. With Strawberry .me, you'll be matched with a professional coach who helps you navigate career changes, motivation slumps, work -life balance and major life decisions.
And the best part? It fits into your life.
Your future is waiting.
Go to strawberry .me and claim a $50 credit.
It's strawberry .me.
Because in three months you'll either be exactly where you are now or you'll be ahead of where you ever thought possible.
The power of Dell AI with Intel Inside is transforming the world of pro sports, helping discover all the little things that add up to big wins.
Teams can see curveballs coming with predictive analytics.
Coaches can use AI insights to help players improve their shots in real -time and fine -tune their technique with live data.
And fans can get more out of every winning moment with smarter stadiums and AI -enhanced replays, so they can get a closer look at the action no matter where they sit.
Dell Technologies and Intel are creating the most advanced technology for the businesses behind the teams, for the players on the field, and for the fans who are there for every game.
see how Dell Technologies with Intel® inside can help find your advantage and power your wins at Dell .com slash win.
So the feds have David Greenglass now who is 1 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 his brother -in -law.
yeah pretty quick. yeah and they didn't have enough on Julius to bust him yet they 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 was who but the Venona cables were so sensitive and so highly classified.
The FBI, the Department of Justice, could not use them in court.
So they could only use them as a background information.
And then they had to extract these confessions and piece together 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.
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.
Yeah, yeah, and 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 like as you're walking out it's just, just mean.
It's like when they invited everyone to the football game The Criminals.
Yeah, that was a good one.
Operation, what was that?
Oh, was it Mincemeat?
No, that was the one where they created the corpse that they threw overboard in World War II to fool the Nazis.
That inspired a Broadway show.
But I think maybe a Broadway show should be inspired by The Redskins football game.
I agree and I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Yeah, or at least the Simpsons episode.
I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet.
No, it did, remember, we talked about it, where they had the free boat giveaway.
That's why I said wink -wink.
Oh, gotcha. I didn't know you were winking at me.
You're like, I thought you were just flirting.
Right. 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.
Yeah. 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.
Yeah he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer.
So that was August of 1944 when he started working on the atomic bomb project.
A few months later Ruth came to visit David and – His wife.
Yes, Ruth, 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 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 it 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.
Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR and our glorious leader Joseph Stalin.
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?
What else you got for me on this atomic bomb?
And 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 gonna be able to read this.
And Julia said, according to the DOJ, said, not a problem.
Ethel, did I mention she 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.
All attention will dissolve after we start spying together.
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 Ann Sidorovich. And a really interesting plan has 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.
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 what if Anne like is indisposed what if she you know gets a stomach bug and it's just poopin everywhere or what if what if she falls in love and runs off and gets married and forgets all about the USSR. And Julius said, I've got a great idea.
A plan B if you will.
And that is where the phrase plan B was coined.
Are you messing with me?
Okay. Yeah, so one small detail here is that Anne was in Denver.
So Ruth would get the information from David and Albuquerque, then visit Anne in Denver to pass this along.
Right. And if Anne had that stomach bug, this was the brilliant plan that Julius came up with.
He said, hand me that jello box over there.
Raspberry. And they were like, we've already had dessert.
Why do you want this jello box?
He ripped the jello box open and took one of the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed Ruth one, and said, I'm gonna 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, Anna's not there, and somebody shows up with this jello box half that I'm holding and showing you, remember it's gonna match. You can put it together like a locket.
Yeah. That will be the confirmation of their identity, which is so lo -fi, it's actually kind of brilliant.
It is brilliant, and I think that Jell -O boxes, two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere.
They got it. And rightfully so, but it actually came into play because Anne did get indisposed in some way that I hadn't figured out.
and Harry Gold, who again, his only job was as serving as a courier, he showed up in New Mexico on David and Ruth's doorstep and said, Hey, Julius 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? They probably said, do you have the Ripp Piece of Jello Box?
Or they said, I am the key master, are you the gatekeeper?
Gozer, sure. So he said, yes, I am the key master, check this out, and he produced the half of the Jell -O Box, and Ruth or David produced the other half and they put it together.
And they said, let's wrap, brother.
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, 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?
I think so, I don't know.
It's, you know. Not chump change back then, nor now.
No, I mean, they were definitely true, true believers in communism and fighting fascism, so maybe it was just a little, a lagniappe.
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.
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 is like basically a fireplace.
I got it now but it took me a couple days.
That'd be very funny in the movie though.
It's just like just another 45 minutes.
What's the flash point for jello boxes?
So, are we are we at another stopping point?
Yeah. Let's do it. OK.
We're going to stop everybody if we just hash down.
The power of Dell AI with Intel Insight is transforming the world of pro sports, helping discover all the little things that add up to big wins.
Teams can see curve balls coming with predictive analytics.
Coaches can use AI Insights to help players improve their shots in real -time, and fine -tune their technique with live data.
And fans can get more out of every winning moment with smarter stadiums and AI -enhanced replays so they can get a closer look at the action no matter where they sit.
Dell Technologies and Intel are creating the most advanced technology for the businesses behind the teams, for the players on the field, and for the fans who are there for every game.
See how Dell Technologies with Intel inside can help find your advantage and power your at dell .com slash win.
You know, people talk a lot about spring cleaning, but here's what we should really be talking about.
Bomba's spring socks.
You heard it right.
It's a busy time of the year, and the right socks can make or break your spring.
Yeah, Bombas has the best no -show socks.
They're the only no -show socks I've ever worn that don't just immediately slide down under my heel.
That's right. And Bombas even makes the ultimate errand socks from actually spring cleaning, to walking the dog, to everything in between.
Bombas took their socks arch hugging stay up cuff ultra -cushion design very seriously so you can take a load off.
Nice. And Bombas now offers international shipping.
In addition to the U .S., they now ship to over 200 countries.
Bombas started making socks when they learned that they're the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters.
So thank you for shopping with Bombas.
You helped donate over 150 million essential items. Now, that's a lot of socks and a lot of kindness!
Head over to Bombas .com slash S -Y -S -K and use our code, S -Y -S -K, for 20 % off your first purchase.
That's B -O -M -B -A -S dot com slash S -Y -S -K, with code S -Y -S -K, at checkout.
Let's talk about a small thing that can make a big difference if you have diabetes.
The Freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor.
It's amazing how the sensor gives you real -time glucose readings, so you can see the impact of every meal and activity to make better choices.
The Freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor can help you live life with diabetes on your terms. This is progress.
You can try the sensor at freestylelibre .us.
Terms and conditions apply.
For prescription only, safety info found at freestylelibre .us.
Christ. 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 Rog or Roggie, I don't know how you pronounce that, ROGGE.
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 wanna 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.
Yeah, and the Greenglass has 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 who 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.
My sister's six years older and I would totally sell her out.
There you go. So my pet theory is correct.
That's right. So 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 Ethyl's involvement.
Yeah. And you might be wondering, like, well, what's the rumpus here?
Like, they had Julius dead to rights.
Like, why did they need to get Ethyl involved?
This is because they were living in a time of the J.
Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors There was like Roy Cohn who basically were like, hey, if you wanna get Julius, you gotta get his wife involved and use her as leverage basically.
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.
So they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage And they ended up picking her up based on the Greenglass's testimony.
Remember when David Greenglass's 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 the Department of Justice came and said, like, hey, why don't you just touch a perjury to help our case out.
He gave the grand jury testimony, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested right after, rather unfairly.
And he said, point blank, Ethel was not involved in this.
And we know all this is true because, in 2001, David Greenglass said, yeah, I lied about my sister because I wanted to save my own wife.
Yeah, he lied during the trial.
He perjured himself.
He admitted it. So not only did he perjured 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.
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 Sobell, you can take that pin out now.
So the three of them were 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 Manie Block, 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.
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. I don't know, there had to be some connection, I doubt if they just yellow -paged that, you know?
Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers, I don't know, but it was - Somebody probably knows, I bet someone'll let us know.
Yeah, so the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors led by Irving Seypol, who at the 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.
You know what would be funny, as if he let us know about the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel?
What if he sent us an email said, I know this guys, and attached you'll find an additional verse that I cooked up for you.
Oh my God. We didn't start the fire where I explained about the Bakery guy.
Yeah, and he'd be like, P .S., what's this with my worst song crap, Chuck?
Oh, man, I can't believe I said that out loud.
I have to edit that out.
What I meant to say was there is no bad Billy Joel song.
That was perfect, there you go.
We'll just clip that out and put it over what you said originally.
No, I'm gonna leave it in and 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.
That's a great lesson to learn, Billy Joel.
It really is. 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.
Yeah, which, you know, in their defense like you can't be on a capital 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.
I I never thought about that.
I guess that's true, huh?
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.
Well, if you were against a death penalty, you'd just gum up your works.
They don't want you in there.
Exactly, exactly. 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 Euchter, who was, um, a classmate with Morton Sowell and Julius, remember?
Uh, Ruth's brother -in -law, um, Lewis Abel.
And I guess that was from—I guess she had a sister, I didn't see that anywhere.
Uh, George Bernhardt, who was Julius' 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.
Yeah, and if you were wondering like why did they get Julius's doctor in there it's because he testified that Julius had inquired about um 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's gonna go to Mexico get that doctor in here.
Right um 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.
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.
Yes but people like to like...
No I agree. I'm just letting everyone know I'm not a 100 % moron, I'm just 50 % moron.
No one thinks you're a moron.
Or even 50 % of a moron.
You should read the Internet.
There's plenty of people who don't like me either.
Oh no. You can't take that personally.
There are people that hate us, no I don't, I don't read that stuff.
Again, they can soak their heads.
That's right, kick sand, touch grass, All those things.
So like I said, Touch Grass ...
You haven't heard that?
No. Is that like they've been knocked down?
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.
Yes, yes. Yeah, okay.
I think that's what that means.
Weirdly, I came across it for the first time within the last couple of weeks, and I promptly forgot it.
Yeah, well you know what they should say.
Smoke grass. Right.
Quit internet fighting, go smoke some weed.
Yeah. So what about Max Ellichter?
Who was that? Oh, he was the former roommate, I think.
And he came out in testimony against him too, right?
Yeah. He said, Julius tried to recruit me as a spy.
Yeah, that's right.
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 first spying and in many blocks it opposite objection and the judge did overruled to come me You come e lover.
Yeah, it's dad's over there rolling some biscuits out.
Oh I'm glad you said that cuz I have to get this out there.
I don't know where it came from But it will not leave my head.
Oh, yeah sir mix a lot buttermilk biscuit song It's just parts of it.
Are you don't know?
And I love sir mix a lot It's a weird like novelty song that he had like very early on surely from that like the rest of his serious work It's even more novel than his later stuff.
Yeah. Oh man, Seattle zone.
What a legend. I didn't know he's from Seattle yeah, yeah, cuz when They did the do you remember the judgment night movie and that amazing soundtrack?
I remember the movie Well, the movie wasn't great but the soundtrack was great because they paired rock bands with the hip -hop artists because that was a big thing at the time.
Oh yeah. And Mix -A -Lot and Mudhoney were paired because they were Seattleites and their song was awesome.
Nice. Remember Body Count with Ice -T?
Oh yeah, I saw them at the first La La Palooza.
Nice. That was when Ice -T was still making music and he was on that cop show forever now, right?
Yeah, I mean this is a rapper who had a song called Cop Killer.
Yeah. And he plays a cop and apparently he's gone for some like metamorphosis in the eyes of police and people who support police 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 No, I remember the time boy.
He was persona non grata for law enforcement for sure and I see didn't care He's like just watch I'll be back in the most surprising way you can possibly imagine You know as literal ice tea.
He's like well not that surprising.
Right, the second most surprising thing.
You mean you play a cop on a TV show?
He said yeah bingo.
That's what he was known to say bingo.
Oh man we're getting really sidetracked this is a fun one.
Who knew the Rosenbergs are gonna bring this out.
Did not know. So it was a three -week trial in all like you said they till the end said they were not guilty and 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 in the Rosenbergs sentence.
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 right.
Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like, these people should not be executed.
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 ear and like, la la la la.
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 the he said, she said, or they said, they said in this case.
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 mention were 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 walk to the electric trayer 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.
Yeah. Yeah, so the execution was essentially leverage, just like they used Ethel, they railroaded Ethel into a conviction to use as leverage against Julius to get him to flip on other spies.
They used the death sentence in the exact same way and they expected one or both of them to be like, okay, we're here, 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.
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.
Yeah. And 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 had his fingers in his ear.
Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that Ethel in particular should not be executed.
That was the official stance of the FBI. And it still happened anyway.
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 two and they're like...
they've got two young kids.
You cannot execute this woman.
mm -hmm yeah and even more so Manny Block remember he was like an appeal machine.
He had one last Hail Mary appeal.
That was on his that was on the billboard on the highway.
Yeah, exactly. With somebody holding a check for a 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 is jewish himself said you know I hadn't really thought of that and Manny blocks like great so let's postpone this indefinitely and judge coffins I don't know we're just gonna move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts yeah they were put to death at 8 p .m. and that judge
was a real so be hmm they have a funeral in Brooklyn in June 21st 1953 where 10 ,000 people reportedly attended they were buried finally accepted after some closer cemetery said no at the well would Jewish Cemetery in And the boys … it's just still hard to believe.
They didn't … not … one of them didn't, you know, for the sake of being a parent to their kids didn't recant, but they did.
And those boys, Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol.
Little interesting side note here, Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
Which have you ever heard the Suzy & the Banshees version of that?
Ooh, no, but that's great.
Yeah, it's really good.
she's great. That's how I first heard that song.
Another reference to the first Lollapalooza, even who knew.
Wow, that's really something.
Wow. I know, right?
Did not expect that.
Billy Joel is spinning in his piano stool right now.
He's like, I know I should have accepted that offer.
I know. Michael got a PhD in economics and Robert Rosenberg became an attorney.
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.
And you said that they were criticized by some people 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 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 death penalty off the table.
That's his opinion on the whole thing Wow that's what I said too.
Yeah. 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.
Yeah. 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.
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.
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.
That's just crazy. 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, just try to, you know, kind of make jokes about stuff.
Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can you laugh at?
Nothing. Exactly. Actually I don't know if that's exactly true but still since Chuck said exactly.
That's not to examine that one.
Exactly. It's listener mail time.
That's right. We heard from a lot of our Canadian friends.
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.
A 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 was a legendary bookstore across Canada, and so every location had a stand of Cole's Notes booklets focused on books and plays 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.
That chapters slash indigo is the big Canadian book retailer now and they bought out the Kohl's locations, but they still print sell Kohl's notes today.
So that guy did all right in the Canadian market.
Thanks for making me a little smarter each week.
And that is from Natalie Guttermson, Guttermson, great name from Alberta, Canada.
Thanks a lot Natalie.
Thanks for making us a little smarter this week.
We appreciate it big time.
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 stuffpodcast .iheartradio .com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity?
They may be happening to you without your knowing.
If anyone's ever said you snore loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.
OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.
Learn more at DontSleepOnOSA .com.
This information is provided by Lilly USA, LLC.
Do you know what's at the root of most oral health problems, like cavities and gingivitis?
Ding, ding, ding! You're right!
It's bacteria. And the Colgate Total Active Prevention System is 15 times more effective at fighting that bacteria.
When used together, the system reduces bacteria buildup in 6 weeks, starting in week one, compared to a non -stannous fluoride toothpaste and flat trim toothbrush.
Take that, mouth bacteria, be dentist ready.
Shop the Colgate Total active prevention system by visiting shop .colgate .com slash total.
Introducing new caesar warm bowls, an exciting feeding experience for dogs and pet parents that only takes 10 seconds to prepare in the microwave. Warm bowls are made with fresh vegetables and real chicken as the number one and can be served as a complete and balanced meal or used to enhance kibble as a topper.
With culinary flavors and ingredients like slow cooked chicken, sweet potato, cranberry, and fresh vegetables, Warm Bowls are an exciting new way for pet parents to elevate everyday meals.
Shop new Caesar Warm Bowls online and in stores today.
This is an iHeart podcast.
