Latest / Beheaded / Espionage and the Electric Chair | Ethel & Julius Rosenberg

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Espionage and the Electric Chair | Ethel & Julius Rosenberg · Beheaded

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Beheaded.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to season six, episode 12.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Megan Moore.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Elizabeth Black.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you just missed out on a solid 55 minutes of us discussing a brunch menu.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Easter brunch to be very specific.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: An important brunch.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was funny because we were testing out all of our equipment and our audio visual, and we just left the recording on, like the visual recording for an knowing hour.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I turned it off.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I've mentioned this before on the show, but like Robbie was talking to us, and Robbie's very into food, and he loves hosting and prepping food for days.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was in this conversation, just very passionate about certain things that he wanted to make.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so each of us, between me, Megan, and Robbie, it was like we were all kind of arguing for different things.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, there needs to be more savory on the menu.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, Easter bread is gonna satisfy this.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we were just we were gone.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth is like, we have to have sausages.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: The sausages go with you know the quiche.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole time I'm just like, there will be pickles, right?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: We will have pickles on the table at some point.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Megan was willing to die on the pickle hill.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, we had no idea the entire 55-minute debate over the menu was being recorded.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, hey, buy us a coffee and maybe you will have access to us arguing over sausages and biscuits.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Megan was like, should we start a Patreon and this could be in it?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is the worst Patreon content ever.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am completely kidding.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is not gonna be our secret content that you get access to.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Unless you're really into it.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you too want to know what you're making for your Easter brunch.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that could be like a like an ambiance, you know, like ASMR of just people in the background, normal, everyday conversation.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I bet people would actually like that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like if you're like alone at home doing chores or something, and maybe you grew up in a big family and you're used to people like yelling and going back and forth and whatever, it's just like audio in the background.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just talking and just us rambling in the background.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: We could record that all day.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: All day.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would be funny to save that video though, and maybe when we're old, go back and and watch it and be like, wow, these are the things that mattered.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing to like watch, it's just us yelling in the back.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's the the video is just of an empty room with us talking behind it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of funny.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: We could do, remember that YouTube video?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like of a chameleon, and he's like, it was like one of the first YouTube videos that really like went viral.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, and I don't know the backstory, but I think the audio is like some guy who's like on drugs, I want to say in a closet, but someone like overlaid it with this funny visual of a chameleon just talking.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, we'll have to watch it later.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's just sitting there, like uh with his arms crossed, and he just keeps bringing up random stuff.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't even remember the parts of it, so I'm not gonna do it justice, but it's hilarious, you gotta watch it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I'll take your word for it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Google Google chameleon talking about nothing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I will say, I think YouTube videos in the early 2000s piece of a unique a unique brand.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did we talk about this last time?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because we we watched a bunch before our last recording.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We might have, which is embarrassing.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: We watched the what was it, Candy Mountain.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Good good times.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you know, you know.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you know, you know, if you're in your 30s like us or older.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are you up to besides planning a I mean, I guess that's a pretty big one, planning Easter brunch.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have quite a few people coming over tomorrow.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So our main focus today is we're gonna do like an adult Easter egg hunt.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like stuffing a bunch of plastic eggs with like cash and expired coupons and like fortune re things.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you either get money or you get like expired Venezia's pizza coupon.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're doing that, we're making a ton of food today.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like the whole focus this whole last week has just been like prep for the party.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which I'm excited.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna be a good one.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: We only host like twice a year and we try to make it special.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this will be fun.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you do hear some noise in the background, Jake is responsible for sanding and painting the patio furniture.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that we decided to do so last minute.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, shit, we need these painted before.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth is like, I think these should be black.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: We these turquoise ugly chairs, and I've been meaning to like turn them black for a year, and then I was like, well, nothing like a good Easter brunch that you're putting on for a lot of people to get it in high gear and to make sure this happens.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Paint everything right before so everyone sits down on wet furniture.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, perfect.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have a sign that says wet furniture, so sit at your own risk.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: What's better?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Having turquoise furniture that they can sit on or beautiful furniture that they cannot sit on.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all about the aesthetic.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So they have to stand, but it'll look nice.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're not here to sit.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're here to look for eggs and hang out.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so that's uh that's been my life.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also, this was fun.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I tried an adult dance jazz class.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't tell me this.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just did it on Monday.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was it fun?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was really fun.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I like I've never really been a dancer per se.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've always done cheerleading growing up, like high school, college.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I've like, you know, I did like ballroom dance in college, but I I wouldn't say I'm like a dancer.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't like your sister growing up, like dancing, or my sister too.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're both dancers.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But like I've dabbled, and so when my sister was in town, we went to like adult ballet classes together, and I thought that was so fun.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like a fun way to get out there and move.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like even if you're not great at it, it's just like fun camaraderie with the other people, and they're all different ages, it's like 18 through you know, 70.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's kind of cool.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I was talking to like my hairstylist the other day, and she was like, I go to this like adult jazz class next door sometimes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, You should come.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Okay, so I dropped in and it was a good time.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to picture jazz dancing because I did jazz as a kid, but like 90s dance class jazz was very specific, yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a thing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was an era.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: The costumes, the sequins, the jazz hands.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what it is now, or what is adult jazz class?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what does that entail?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't do jazz hands.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: No jazz hands, no jazz hands.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is the point?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is it even a jazz class?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we like started off doing it was like a stretch workout to like the new Lady Gaga tracks, and I was really into it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: The the whole stretching, I was like, this is dope.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were doing like you know, fun, dynamic stretches.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We did like Pilates style workout stuff.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then she taught us a routine, and it was just broken down by eight counts, you know, and it was to like some country song.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was just kind of modern dance.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: You did jazz to a country song.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I thought it was like, I don't know if that's I haven't been to really a jazz class.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like I expected it to be more, I guess, technique and jazzy, and this was like, let's all dance to a country song, and here's a routine.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it got you out of the house, it got you moving.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't leave enough of it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: The marathon training isn't enough for Elizabeth.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was the cool thing I liked was like at the very end, they like shut off all the lights, and these like kind of weird stagey lights came on, and you just perform for yourself.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're not like, but I was like kind of liking it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: You should come with me to one.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: What do you wear?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you wear sequence?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, workout attire.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but maybe I'll get a little bit of a while.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can put more glitter on next time, and we could wear little sequence skirts.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have to show me a little sneak preview of what this routine looked like.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I was in and out of dance growing up, but yeah, I think I've talked about this.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: My sister was very heavy into dance.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, same thing.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: She won like Miss Title.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: What Miss isn't a thing that's for pageants, but she won.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: She won like the title for New Hampshire for dancing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: She is still dancing, and she's older than me.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: She's 37.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think she just turned 37.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: She still dances.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: She was doing performances all through over Christmas time as a part of a dance company, like professionally paid.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So she's still dances.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And she teaches dance and she does a lot.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I just I think because of that, I was against it as a kid.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's her thing.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that happens when you're a kid and you're in any kind of performing art.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It like you have to choose which one you're a part of.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you a gymnast?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a dancer?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a cheerleader?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And like soccer.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Softball.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, it's like if you're, I don't know, you just it's weirdly a thing where like you can't cross over.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So like I was always in the cheer camp and you're not supposed to like be able to get it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see what you're saying.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, cheer and dance were.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like now that I'm an older, I'm like, it's basically the same bullshit.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it was about the groups you were in.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like the ballet girls were very different from the modern girls.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, even within dance, there's like, you know, and even within cheer, there's like competitive cheer or just like high school cheer or whatever.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like it's so weird that you make all these dumb groups up.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say, at the dance studio I went to, this adult one, the tap class looked electric.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to tap dance.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've never fun.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've never tap danced in my life.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I did tap dancing.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It looked so fun.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me of like Irish river dancing.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is fun.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: These people, all again, all ages, all experience levels.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it says on the website, it's like just come, like low pressure, you don't have to know anything, just bring tap shoes.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, that's not a sound spot.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how much tap shoes costs.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just look into it.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I bet on Amazon you'd get them for like 15 bucks.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know who's a really good tap dancer?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is Richard Gere.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I well, he did that movie with JLo.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Shall we Dance?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a remake of a I think Asian film.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll we'll we'll get through our banter in a minute here and get to the episode.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: But can I say a quick story about Richard Gere?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so is this a good story?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is a good story.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom's best friend growing up in the 90s.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: She was one of the dance moms.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So going back to like picture of the 90s, and my sister was very heavy into the dance studio.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: Dance moms.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Every single day we were at the dance studio, and my sister was best friends with another girl.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then her mom was best friends with my mom.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a whole little like we spent lots of weekends with them and their family and whatever.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: So this was back in the 90s when I remember my mom would just spend a lot of time on the phone with her friends.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was a thing.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you were on the house phone, the house line, she'd be doing dishes and just be talking to the long little swirly cord, and you're walking around the town.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or the cordless with the big oh yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the big white cordless phone.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were best friends.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sitting at the kitchen counter, I think I was doing my homework.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I heard this whole thing.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was maybe like eight or so.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And my mom's friend was like, Oh, hold on, I have another call.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then a long time later, like came back.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, Oh, I'm so sorry.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was People Magazine.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: They won't leave me alone.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And mom's like, What?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mind you, we lived in New Hampshire.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Casual.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Very small town.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You were not like in LA.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this, yeah, and this lady was, she wore overalls every day.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she had a bob, I remember, with Bangs.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's her name, Susan?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was Diane.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Diane.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Yeah, they're trying to do this article on Richard Gere.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I have all of his old like high school photos and love letters.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they're trying to get them from me to do like a exposure on him.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Expose.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they were best friends, but I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I never told you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I dated Richard Gere all through, well, Dick.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: His name is Dick.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, I dated Dick all through high school.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ew.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: He went by Dick.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I dated him all through high school and then most of college.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then we split up in college because he wanted to go be a big actor.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Which he did.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which he did.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And but he was really into musical theater and dancing and singing.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, I wasn't too sure about him.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: But she's like, we were about to get married.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then we split up.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: But and then she showed it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, Yeah, I still have all of his old love letters and pictures of them.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's very handsome.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's so handsome.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she was a hippie.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like she had long hair, okay.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like flower child type 60s.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Cute major.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's so handsome.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Him and pretty woman.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Him and officer and a gentleman is my favorite Richard Gere.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, him in Mr.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: T and the Women.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he plays a gynecologist, and it's like the most successful gyneo office in the city.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's handsome.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is that why you go to a male gyno hoping Richard Gere walk into Richard Gere?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, God.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's hilarious.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a funny movie.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen First Night?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: On the topic of what we usually discuss.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen First Night?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where he's like, Yes.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's Lancelot.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And King Arthur's Court.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I showed that to Robbie, expecting him to like love this movie.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, that's okay.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's Richard Gere.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what do you mean it's okay?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is Sean Connery.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Richard Gere.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can you not love this movie?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: He looks so old now.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever, man.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that crazy?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird to see celebrities getting older.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't Sean Connery dead?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: But when you when all of a sudden you're like, oh, what are they up to now?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh my goodness, they age.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: They age.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens with time, especially with like celebrities or people you see on TV.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: You just assume they stay that age because that's how you know them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you can always see these old movies, and you're like, oh yeah, they're humans.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna age.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what's his name?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ackroyd.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Jim Jim Aykroyd?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Ackroyd.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Dan Air, thank you.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: What about him?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was thinking of him because I was watching some show with him, like, what is he up to now?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I pulled it up, like, oh, he's an old man.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's 80.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens to all of us.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is weird.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Age is beautiful.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is weird when you don't expect it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: People, you're like, oh, that happened quickly in your eyes.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always weird when you compare yourself of like they were my age when they did that.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's a dangerous game.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was watching the the movie about uh called Saturday Night, about the first night of Saturday Night Live.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the creator of Saturday Night Live was 30 years old.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: When they made it on the first night of filming and he was putting it together, he was 30.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings us to our story, which we were doing that tonight today.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: When they passed on.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because we do that a lot with our our people that we talk about who are executed, and so many of them.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like yesterday was Good Friday.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus was 35 when he was executed.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: I thought he was 33.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, baby.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus was 33 when he was executed.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: In his 30s.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is only a few years older.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Younger.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is why.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Younger.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: How old am I?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're only 21, so I don't know what you're talking about.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Anywho, that was my transition trying to tie it back.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is a great story.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And like, um, I I actually listened to a lot of stuff because there were these long documentaries online, and I actually had some time at work this week to kind of just play them in the back.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I should preface I learned a lot.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing Jesus.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of made it sound like we were doing Jesus for Good Friday.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't worry.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: They already read the title of the episode and probably just the descriptions.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I almost feel like it's a surprise, but I guess you're right.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: We always position it like it's a surprise.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's now in the title.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised like no one's ever said that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it's in the title and the description, and you guys always act like it's this big like, who are we gonna do tonight?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Take a guess.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, we were told we're not allowed to do Jesus.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I like it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I told I told us that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband said I'm not allowed to.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry guys, Jesus will probably never happen because we would get so canceled.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we're not already.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But we love Jesus.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we did John the Baptist, and I thought that was quite good.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but tonight we are talking actually about we got a twofer for the evening, twofer for the people tonight.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: We love the twofer ones.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode is about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is probably next to our like Ruth Ellis episode, one of the more modern episodes we've ever done.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, typically we focus on things hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: This one's very modern, circa World War II, Cold War era.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is well, I shouldn't say that.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is probably the most modern one we'll ever have, but that's not necessarily.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: She was in the 50s.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was also in the 50s.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have her in my notes?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: You might.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's not in mine because that's my old notebook.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I only have the two.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I do.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: But, anyways, this is Cold War era.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: What we'll be talking about tonight.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're gonna tag team early life.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually gonna go and talk about Julius and Megan's gonna talk about Ethel.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So Julius Rosenberg was born uh May 12th, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants who came to America from the Russian Empire.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Ethel was born Ethel Greenglass, and she was born September 28th, 1915.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: So she was three years older.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, I'm really off with my it's okay.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Timeline.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, and she was born in Manhattan and and raised and grew up there.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she did have a brother, David, who we'll bring up later.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And she wanted to be an actress and a singer, and she had a lot of ambition to become a famous, which is is really cute actually in 1915 because that's I kind of think of like vaud at that time, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not there's no like talkies yet, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like before movie stars became movie stars.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm assuming a live performer is what she wanted to do.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but unfortunately that wasn't quite her path.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: While that was her passion, she ended up being a sec a secretary and kind of living more of a your normal, um, very um housewifey type life.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Julius, on the other hand, uh he because he was a man was able to Because he was a man.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is a emphasize this is an era where the men were encouraged to like go off to college and get educated and get good jobs.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's the 1930s when they're a little bit older.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so he graduated in 1939 from City College of New York with a degree in electrical engineering.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Again, Ethel, even though it was like well known that she was very smart, like aside from her singing and her acting and all of that, she was a very smart person.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but her family was like, no, like you're gonna marry a Jewish man and you're gonna be a mother.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So her like clerical secretary job was really the only work she had because again, the main responsibility was like, nope, you're just gonna become a mom.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um, Julius joined the Young Communist League uh in the 1930s, and that's actually where they met the first time because she also, Ethel, had very strong communist beliefs, and it was said that when she was a secretary, she worked for the shipping company where all of the um employees went on strike, and she was one of the front runners of the strike.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um it said that she even laid down like in her raincoat in front of a vehicle that was trying to like break up the protest and all of that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So both of them really fell in love fast because it was like, you know, they were from very similar families in the same area, like very both very smart, um, and at the end of the day, both like felt pretty strong about their communist beliefs.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it should be noted here, like we'll get a little bit into communism and things like that in this episode.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in this time in the 30s, um, communism wasn't seen as quote unquote like bad as it was later, because uh if you were a communist, you almost believed in like an anti-dictatorship, which confuses me a little because I don't, you know, I always thought communism kind of came with that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Stalin was a little bit on the dictator-y side.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't understand that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: But at this time in the 30s, I think they used it mostly to separate, like, okay, you have Nazi Germany with this dictator, you know, Hitler, and they believe in a very certain way of life.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they believed communism was different than that.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like communism is actually this very ideal way to live where everyone's equal and has access to the same things and yeah, you know, equal wages, equal.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what I what I thought was kind of an interesting concept when we were reading about communism, which by the way, I will not hashtag any of our posts.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Communists, hashtag communists, I don't want to get cancelled on Instagram, but they it was also meant to be like a non-racial, a non-gender, a non or equal, I should say.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't matter.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's no um race doesn't matter.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um whether you're gay or straight, you're like none of that matters.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, whether you're a man or a woman, that doesn't matter.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that part of it is like, okay, I can get on board with that, but then you hear about everything else.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, uh, it just never it it it it it tried.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It tried itself.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like when yeah, especially like when I was learning about communism in school, like it does sound nice.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, it does sound like a very like idealistic, you know, society.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the big thing is it just can't be executed that well.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't found a way to sound great in theory, everyone's equal.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: As humans, we haven't quite figured it out.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I think people are attracted to the theory and the idea of communism, but not so much like how it plays out in real life.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, so didn't didn't didn't work out, yeah.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um to Ethel and Julius, though, when they were young and they were in this young communist league, again, I think to them it was seen as just this like, hey, like this is ultimate paradise, let's work to to you know, instill that in the American rhetoric or whatever.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and again, it wasn't even seen as that bad politically then.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was more like, okay, great, you're you know, uh, you know, you're a left leaning person.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, it was extremely left to be on the communist side.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway, so they fell in love, got married, and uh I think it it was right after 1939.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: 1939.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, 1939.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: That was the year um Whisper of Oz came out.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Was it Snow White?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was Snow White.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Um, gone with the Wind.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Great, great era for movies.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Damn.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope they enjoyed the time.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was 1929.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was 30s.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was definitely late 30s.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was 39.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: 32?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: 37.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say it was 37.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: 37.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because Dumbo came out in 1940, which was the third animated classic.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I should know this.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I used to know the dates.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're so embarrassing.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I used to know the dates, and I've been slacking.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was late 30s.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that's relevant to understand what's happening.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: You should really know that.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually really distraught that I timeline of Disney forgot these dates.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anyway, so they they finally settle down.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they have two boys.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: They have Michael, who was born in 1943, and Robert, who was born in 1947.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Nice American family.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: A nice little American family settling down.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nice little American communist family settling down.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and Julius had taken a job at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories, which was in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he worked there.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he uh he predated the kids being born, but he worked there from 1940 to 1945, and in 45 is when they discovered that he's in fact a communist, and they were like, Oh, he probably shouldn't work for the army if you have these communist tendencies.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: During World War II.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is yeah, when communism started to become uh something that you didn't necessarily want to be, because again, in World War II, we did get very close to the USSR, they were considered an ally, but as soon as like World War II was ending, and then we got nervous about the power that the USSR had, that's when you have the start of the Cold War and us saying, actually, if you're communist, it's bad.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a huge shift then.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this laboratory he was working at, they were primarily working on electronics and communication, but also radar-guided missile controls.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like there were things, it wasn't necessarily that they were working on atomic bombs or anything like that.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it was definitely high technology that could have that was used during World War II.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think they were designing like the first fighter jet there, too.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, you know, proprietary information, not atomic bomb, but it was obviously stuff that you don't necessarily want other countries learning about.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1945, he loses his job due to due to his relations to the Communist Party.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and at this point, he starts getting recruited by a spy.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: The spy master.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Spy master, I love that word.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Of the NKVD, which is associated with the Soviet Union.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where things start getting a little saucy.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: So in 1942, the former spy master, his name was Semyon Semyonov.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I love that name.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Semyon Semyonov.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Very Icelandic.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but he was he was the previous spy master, and then it moves on.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I you do you have his name?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: The new guy, the new guy, I haven't.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if names matter at this point, but I mean I hope I say it correctly, but it was Alexander Feklazov.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Feklisov.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're recruiting, they're adding people, and so they get Julius involved, and Julius has access to thousands of classified reports.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Again, of things like the what do they call it?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: The proximity fuse, which is a type of missile.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the first fighter jet, like you said, and the production designs and how to build these things.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So he's starting to collect these reports and sharing them with the Soviet Union, and that is not good.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is not being a good American.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like whether or not you have communist tendencies, sure, but once you start sharing them with the Soviet Union, probably better.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not a great idea.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're starting to use Julius as a recruiter himself, and he helps recruit David Greenglass.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Remember him?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is Ethel's brother, his wife's brother, his brother-in-law.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: He starts working because David Greenglass has a great role at the Manhattan Project's top secret project under American confidentiality.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you don't know what the Manhattan Project is, it's a lab, it's a national lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's literally where the atomic bomb was being tested.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's like Oppenheimer.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's Oppenheimer stuff.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, Oppenheimer was the one running this like team, I suppose.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: This secret atomic bomb project.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: So great, let's get the guy working there.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get your brother-in-law who's working on that secret project.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get him recruited into the NKVD.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now things are getting very serious.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: He also recruits a guy named Russell McNutt, another engineer, and he's getting paid for this.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: He made a hundred bucks off of recruiting him.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he is now sharing secrets about manufacturing weapon-grade uranium.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this is being used in how the Soviets are creating Joe One.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Am I saying that?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it Joe I or Joe One.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's Joe One.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Joe One, um which is an atomic bomb.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, atomic bombs.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they're um they're passing along these secrets on how to make things, which is helping the Soviets reach their goals faster.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, that that's right.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the West was pretty shocked how quickly it took the Soviets to develop their atomic bomb because they developed theirs in 1949.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's still to this day scholars debate of like how much of this information was actually progressing them as quickly.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe they just progressed because they already had the knowledge, and you know, I think their biggest hang-up was like it was more dependent on the uranium they had access to versus the actual like knowledge of constructing the atomic bomb.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so there's some debate on like, okay, was this the tipping point where all this information passed on to the Soviets really helped them on their timeline, or did it not necessarily matter because they already kind of knew the path and uh you know it was just kind of validating, like, okay, that's how the Americans are doing it.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a subjective debate, yeah, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's not it's not a definite definitive answer to say I used this information and created this because I was copying it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: It may have helped support them.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: They said potentially what should have taken five years took them four years because of this information that they were passing along.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so at most it it expedited their timeline by like a year.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so by 1950, that's when there's a series of arrests that are going down.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the first man arrested wasn't actually uh Greenglass or Rosenberg, it was um this person named Klaus Fuchs.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Klaus Fuchs is actually a German refugee who's working on behalf of the British in the Manhattan Project as well.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if he's necessarily working alongside Greenglass, but he was involved in the Manhattan Project.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so he gets caught.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's the first like thread they start to pull.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so he immediately starts talking.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's not about to go, you know, go to the gallows for anyone.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, yes, I am giving information to the Soviets, but I'm using this man named Harry Gold to be my courier.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one who's actually delivering all the information to the USSR.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm simply providing him with the information.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Klaus real innocent.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Klaus immediately throws this man, Harry Gold, under the bus.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then Harry Gold says, Well, you know who else is giving me information?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just Klaus, and it's not just me giving this to the Soviets.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: This guy, David Greenglass, is coming to me and giving me all the secret information.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So Greenglass is David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, and Greenglass immediately is like, crap, who can I now pin this on?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it goes from Klaus to Gold to Greenglass, and Greenglass says, you know what?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: This Julius guy is actually the one who recruited me.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: They call him the king, the kingpin, right?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Kingpin of the spy ring.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he now claims, uh, he being David, David says, Yeah, actually, Julius was just in New Mexico in 1944.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was visiting me, visiting the Manhattan Project.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: He got all this information, and he's now making me and my wife Ruth look really bad.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he's essentially saying, I didn't do it, I was recruited, he's the one, he got me and my wife involved in this.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're just we're just victims of the situation.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because his wife Ruth was also getting dragged into this whole debacle as well.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: This piece is really important because we're gonna come back to it.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: But in his original testament, he is saying, Well, I did pass information along to Julius, but it was outside in the streets of New York.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was just between me and him.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that later that's that is going to change.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's part of his of his of his testimony.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then all of a sudden, he is now bringing in his sister, Ethel, and he says, Well, not only was it Julius, but Ethel was a part of the ring as well.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the arrests take place.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they were separate between Julius and Ethel.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Julius was originally arrested on July 17th, 1950, and then Ethel was like a month later in August 11th.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: How stressful.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine, imagine everyone's getting arrested around you.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Your husband's now in jail for a month over this, and you just are waiting.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're just waiting, and you know it could either happen to you two or something terrible could happen to your husband.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: She has kids.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she has two kids, these two young boys.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the FBI director, J.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Edgar Hoover, who became Oh, I mentioned, I've heard of him.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know him, I've heard of him.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: He came, yeah, he became our president a little bit later, but at the time he's the FBI director.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, and I quote, proceeding against the wife will serve as lever.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so he's basically saying, like, we're going to use Ethel to make Julius confess.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: He'll he'll name names, he's gonna tell us all this information he passed on.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they're now using Ethel as more so as a negotiating tool.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then not only that, but to Ethel, they're making her out to this, like, to be this bad mother.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're saying, Why won't you just give up names?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you have these two young sons.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a bad mother?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are you an unfit mother because you're not protecting your sons and your family?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're so concerned about your husband and your communist causes that you're just gonna let your family go to, you know, go down the drain.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's really harsh.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have another quote here, too, from Gordon Dean, who was the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: But he was part of the grand jury during all of this of hearing the testimonies and what's happening.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, it looks as though Rosenberg, as in Julius Rosenberg, it looks as though Rosenberg is the kingpin of a very large ring.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if there is any breaking him by having the shadow of death penalty over him, we want to do it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: So they threaten this guy with the death penalty.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, I'm like, okay, yes, Julius was passing on information.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: He maybe he was a leader, you know, in terms of running this whole operation.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: But like, dude, David Greenglass is the one that was working on the atomic bomb project.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one getting the information.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why can't you get down to the person who is the closest to the one who's pulling the information?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it weren't for David, no one would have known anything.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's well, Julia's recruited David.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to be fair.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: But David was the one with the top secret information.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: He was the one who had access to the information and was blab in his mouth.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Rosenberg's like, here's a you know, jet a fighter jet.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's just passing it along.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and recruiting and organizing.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he definitely wasn't interested.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying the man was innocent.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And communism is bad.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: To our standards today.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: To our standards.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: It could change tomorrow.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do we want that on the record?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying it's just, it's always funny what's in political favor and out of political favor.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, right now it's not.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do it now.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Skinny jeans will may come back in the future.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, are your high heels supposed to be thick or thin?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: We just go along with it.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is your shirt supposed to be extra long or is it cropped?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: We just don't want to be canceled.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to talk about communism anymore.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's so that's our the end of our discussion with communism.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was our show.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, but but just to uh to make the point here, the the whole death penalty um scare threat was just to get them to talk.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: All they wanted was more names and more information.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um both Rosenberg's Julius and Ethel both refused.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, we're not about to just tell you everything that we know.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they claimed they were innocent, they were very tight-lipped about everything, no matter what like public accusations were thrown their way.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um do you do you think they actually thought that they could get the death penalty?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you think that they knew that it was just a farce, it was just a threat?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Based on what I've read about their interactions with their children and how hopeful they were, I truly think they assumed, like, okay, like we didn't do anything that bad, you know, like we're just passing information along to the Soviet Union, but I mean who hasn't.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: But again, no one else had died because of this.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like no one else was who had you know had been given the death penalty because they uh had aided the USSR in any way.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I think they thought, well, this hasn't happened before.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're just trying to make an example out of us, and you know, big shame on you, like public thing, but I think they genuinely thought they would have maybe some prison time and then that would be it.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Loose lips sink ships all the damn time.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: The as many say, as well as my girl Taylor says.
• 35:46
  unknown: Oh my god.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: The the fish with their mouth open gets caught.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's a cute one.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: They were convinced that Ethel was guilty.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: They said her case was quote, too strong to not consider her as being part of the guilty of the of this whole spiring.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the part that really damaged the Rosenbergs.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Remember how he said in his first testimony, David Greenglass said, Well, I gave the information to Julius just outside on the streets.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: He then goes back and changes it and he changes his testimony.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: The second time he's interviewed, he says, Well, I was in the Rosenberg's living room when I was giving the information.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Ethel Rosenberg was sitting at the table typing it all out.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she was the one who put ink to paper about the atomic bomb, about the yeah, how to build it and the inside information on how what the Americans are doing to in the Manhattan Project.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was what really like nailed the coffin.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's that phrase?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Put the nail in the coffin.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Put the nail in the coffin for her.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um originally they had thought David's wife, Ruth, was the one who was writing it down.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um completely throwing his sister under the bus to save his wife.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's so terrible.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and Ethel, the entire time when they were bringing this up in her trial, like, well, he said this, he said that, what do you think?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And like what Elizabeth said, I plead the fifth.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: She refused to talk about anything.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's a good strategy, or did that I mean, no?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: We know the outcome.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's smart to do in the initial like if you're accused of something right away, I think it's smart to do because you just don't know what information's gonna be used against you.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: But once you're this far along, I think yeah, your lawyer should advise you to say something.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, otherwise you look extremely guilty because you're just not saying anything.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's just funny because the Fifth Amendment is a little bit backhanded.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's like what you can say.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like they're saying technically it's your right to not say anything.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: But by not saying something is has almost says more than not saying anything than saying something.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it depends on the situation, right?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like this specific situation, she probably should have said something.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Defend yourself just a little bit.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also feel like she also just didn't want to be a liar either, like a his you know, historical liar and go down saying something that wasn't true.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she might have just been like, you know what?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really have anything to say that's gonna help me, so I'm just not gonna say anything.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I don't I don't know what I would have done in that situation.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do have a quote about this as well from Ethel.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because, well, from both of them.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: It said that the Rosenbergs did make one public statement because they were really trying to get them to name other people too.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what they were like, my lips are sealed.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: They would not say any other names, and they said in their public statement, by asking us to repudiate the truth of our innocence, the government admits its own doubts concerning our guilt.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: We will not be coerced, even under pain of death, to bear false witness.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Damn.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: So no matter what, they talk about uh sticking to their guns.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the loyalty that she didn't wanna everyone else is calling them out.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's surprising that they wouldn't do the same and be like, You're gonna call me out.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm gonna do the same, and it's almost like um like a witch trial scare scary total and eventually someone's just like I'll take the blame.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I'm not gonna say anything.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, it went through this series of people that all just blamed others and they just refused to do that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so by March 29th, 1951, the Rosenbergs were both convict convicted of espionage.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And on April 5th, they were both sentenced to death under section two of the Espionage Act of 1917.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, I think the public starts to freak out, more so than the Rosenbergs.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the Rosenbergs still held on to this faith of like, nope, we're not saying anything, and you know, our sentence is gonna be reduced and we're just gonna stay in prison for a while.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: But there were so many protests, like there was all these people coming forward saying, you're just being like anti-Semitic, like you're just trying to, you know, make an example out of these Jewish communists.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of people believed they were both innocent, and then the people that even said, like, well, even if they're not innocent, this is a crazy harsh sentence.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like what about Klaus?
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: What about gold?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: What about you know, Greenglass, like all these other people, and you're just gonna pin these two, break up this family and orphan these children?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: The Jewish community wasn't supportive of them, no, because obviously the Rosenbergs were Jewish and they didn't even have it, it was kind of like this mixed Modge Podge of yeah, some people were very Team Rosenberg, some people were not, but yeah, right.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: It came down to but do we actually need to end their lives over this?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Is this the American way to do it?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or is this very archaic of us and a little bit harsh?
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Are we just using them as an example?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like ending lives, ending a family.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of uh very public figures came out and spoke out against it.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like I want to say Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, I love that Diego Rivera.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: They were coming forward saying like I love the communist sympathizers.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because they were um a lot of the artists and the there was like playwrights who were speaking out and authors and different Nobel Prize winners.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: They were very vocal about this protest of stopping the execution.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: They called it a legal lynching.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's um again, like a witch hunt, it feels like.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like whether or not you thought they were innocent, again, the sentence, they were just like, this is ridiculous.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you're gonna, even if one person has to die, why do both have to die?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like Ethel, Ethel's case was starting to kind of diminish by the day.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like the there, other than her brother's testimony, there wasn't a ton of evidence that she was involved at all.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they're just like guilt by association.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I I love the the grandness of this, of how public it became.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: It became this national debate.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: International debate.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: International debate.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Pablo Picasso made a statement for a paper.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: He said, the hours count, the minutes count.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do not let this crime against humanity take place, referring to don't let the execution move forward.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then even Pope Pius XII got involved.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: The freaking Pope got involved.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So at the time, Eisenhower's in office.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the Pope is even asking Eisenhower to reconsider, like, please just pardon them, put them in jail if you need to, but you don't need to make a public a public spectacle of executing them.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, we've got Einstein, we've got Frida, we've got Picasso, we've got the Pope.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: All of these big nations during Cold War era history is all speaking out in favor of the Rosenbergs.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that wasn't enough to save them, unfortunately.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh their their kids did visit them in prison, like pretty much up until the day where they were actually gonna be executed.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they were young, they were young.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to say the kids were about six and ten when the execution took place.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: What formative years, too.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were arrested in 1950.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: At this point, we're in 1953.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the younger brother, um, I believe it was Robert, was younger.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Three to six.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was only three years old.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he didn't he says, and he's still alive to this day, but he says his only memories of his parents were when they were in prison.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't have any memories of them at home being a family, he only remembers visiting them in prison.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were held in Sing Sing Prison in New York on death row.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if this is true, but I did uh listen to a podcast where they were saying um that Ethel was singing occasionally because she had this beautiful voice, you know, she was an aspiring singer, so she would sing opera arias to cheer herself up.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes Julius would join in to like support her and cheer her up and make her feel better.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: Catherine of Alexandria, wasn't she singing in prison too?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: They were yeah, singing in her in her mind and you know.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Who else was singing was Elizabeth of Hessen by Ryan that we just did.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: She was singing in her yes grave.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: In our last time.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, how sad.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we better come up with songs rather than that.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be singing Taylor Swift.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you will.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll sing some Disney rendition.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Fever dream high in the quiet of the night.
• 44:18
  unknown: Oh my god.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I kill Megan.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so the original execution was scheduled for June 18th, 1953, but it was delayed one day.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there was actually a little bit of controversy as to when they should be executed in terms of times of day.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you have some more information on that.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not only that, there was what they called a stay of execution, which means that like executions were had had to be paused or something.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: There was a stay of execution.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that means.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: That they weren't allowed to execute for a period of time.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then they removed that stay to execute them.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't read that.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say it with confidence.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure I read something about that.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, rely on me.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I got you.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, but yes, so their execution was then scheduled for June 19th at 11 p.m.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of a late execution.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a weird time.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's in the morning.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's after your bedtime.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like cozy time.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it was gonna take place during the Sabbath.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sabbath being um a Jewish um recognition happens at sunset.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's summer, it's it could start later.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they said that this was so offensive to their their Jewish um heritage, and how can you execute them on the Sabbath?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they agreed, they said, fine, it starts at sunset, the Sabbath, so we'll move it from 11 p.m.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: to 8 p.m.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: right before sunset, and now it's not the Sabbath.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like so they actually got their execution pushed up a few hours.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, you can't do it today.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, great, we'll do it a few hours earlier.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, does three hours make a difference?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and their sons visited them right before, right?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: They visited on the 16th, so three days before the actual execution.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the way the execution took place, Julius was electrocuted first.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know how this works in modern times because electrocution is still technically a method that we use in this day and age.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but really yeah I think they just gave I don't it was a public thing where they just gave someone the option of electrocution or lethal injection and they chose electrocution.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Was it you and I?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were and they also had the option of firing squad.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: What era are we living in?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And to have your choice, I don't even want to think about that.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we I don't think we need to.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: This gets really controversial as we're getting into modern death penalty, but right you do kind of have to put yourself in the those shoes of what would you choose.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, firing squad.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd want to be in the chair of the guy who was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that'd be quick.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's a special request.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'll let them know.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: I want I want that chair that he sat in that has the blown out part on the back of the chair where it happened.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you said hit the same part.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's crazy because the part where it's blown out is right where his heart would have been, too.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cause anyway, uh Julius and Ethel didn't get it.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I digress.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about but they didn't they didn't get a choice.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was you're gonna die by electrocution.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And at least in this day and age, the way they did it was they had to have three pulses of electrical current to kill you.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Which I guess, you know, thinking of like Frankenstein, it's like the lever, right?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: They do that three times.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so Julius died first, then Ethel was next, but she got the three uh electric shocks, and then her heart was still beating.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: So she wasn't really coherent, but the doctor came over to verify her death, and he's like, Oh crap, like she's still alive.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty much a botched execution, yeah, exactly.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to give her two additional electrical shocks, um, and then she officially was marked dead at that point.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: They said by the end of it her head was smoking.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which who is not thinking of the Green Mile right now?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also didn't read this for this episode, but don't they like typically remove all your body hair so they don't have any dry?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they have to put the wet sponge on top.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you've seen that scene in the Green Mile, which is traumatizing, right?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh spoil spoiler alert, if you ever plan on watching it and you haven't seen The Green Mile with Tom Hanks.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you're 25 years late to this.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they one of the jerk guards had intentionally botched the execution because he hated the prisoner by not wetting the sponge, and basically you're just fried, you're just set on fire.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's scary.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Which sounds like kind of happened, like they over they overcooked.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: They overcooked her a little.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's very distasteful.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know how we get on a show.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to be.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is pretty messed up of us.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: All good.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they were the only Americans to be executed for espionage during the Cold War.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, I think that's why they probably had so much hope that this wouldn't actually happen, because this hadn't happened before.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: This didn't happen after.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: They were clearly just like, okay, we need someone to blame for all this information being passed to the USSR.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to be swift and act very aggressively, you know, towards this, which they did.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the two young boys were orphaned.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: They eventually were um adopted by, I think they were also a communist family that like adopted the young boys.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they changed their last name to Mirpole.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but uh and we'll talk a little bit about some of the aftermath.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: But right after the execution, there was a big funeral that took place in Brooklyn um for both Julius and Ethel.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it was said that there were 500 people that attended the actual funeral, but there were 10,000 people outside of the funeral procession.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: So many sympathizers.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and you cannot say all of those people were communist sympathizers either.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it was the fact that it was a husband and wife with kids, right?
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: A secretary.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, of course, he was working for the government, and I don't want to underplay his crimes because he absolutely was guilty of passing information.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think where the sympathy really lied was with Ethel.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she got dragged down with her husband.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they eventually were buried in Pine Town or sorry, Pine Lawn, New York, which is like a Jewish cemetery.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and after their death, I mean a lot of people still fought for their innocence, especially again, Ethel.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ethel was the big uh, I think, spotlight of like, well, let's at least say like that she was innocent.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: She was innocent.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: It it didn't go away up until 2008.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: David Greenglass, who got away, him and his little wife Ruth, got out.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: He admitted.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he came clean.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: He admitted that he did lie in the second testimony, and Ethel did not write the information on the typewriter like he said.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: He said it was his wife Ruth who wrote it out.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Ruth should have gone down instead of Ethel.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Messed up.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: And David Greenglass very openly admitted she's my wife, she's the mother of my children.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: I would choose her over my family, over my sister, over my mother, over my father.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: So and he was like, Yeah, I did lie about my sister saying that she was involved, and she really wasn't to that extent.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't completely clean hands off of the situation.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: She was aware.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: She obviously knew what was going on, but she that that was the again the the turning point when they said she's the one who typed out the information, and that was the piece of paper that had all the how do you the cook the recipe to an atomic of an atomic bomb.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, so that was 2008 he came clean and said that.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that insane?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: How old was he?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: He must have been pretty.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty must have been in his, I would guess, like, oh my gosh.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Probably his 90s.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: Finally came clean.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: And before 2008, um, Greenglass, David, and his wife Ruth actually had to like change their names.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they were, you know, because essentially they came forward for like immunity, right?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they threw everyone else under the bus.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: So they were allowed to like get off innocent.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say they were just kind of allowed to get off and live normal lives, but they did have to go and kind of like live in shame a little bit, change their names, like do all these things to kind of Mexico.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they moved to like Tahiti.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they did.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and even the the two boys, Michael and Robert, uh, you know, they they were speaking out to this day about ongoing.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we make sure at least Ethel gets her innocence?
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they did say too, because they were posed the question, like, would you have preferred your parents just gave up names and you know, change their names and then move to a different part of the country?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they both said Uncle David.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like Uncle David.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Cough cough.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they both said, actually, no, like they almost prefer to be uh orphaned, you know, and and have this life where they knew their parents died with a little bit of honor and integrity and basically Because they didn't name anyone, but they didn't admit guilt either.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't like take the blame.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry to mean to interrupt.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: I got I got excited because I do.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that that speaks volumes too, because I think, you know, had they just said, okay, we're gonna name names, we're gonna tell you everything that happened, just don't break up our family.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the kids might have lived to have some resentment and been like, now we're responsible for other deaths or other people's lives ruined.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, what's the right answer here, you know?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: They still would have been imprisoned.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: If they said, Yeah, I'm guilty, don't don't have me executed though, because here's other names, that doesn't get them off innocent.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: It just reduces their sentence.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the boys are still very vocal about exonerating Ethel.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: They went to President Obama.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Elizabeth Warren also went to Obama asking to exonerate.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this has been like a up, like a very modern thing.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they went to Joe Biden just to show how recent this has been.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think they expected him to do something before he left office, and he never did.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think he I don't know if he considered it or what the situation was.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think they just don't want to get involved in like uh sympathizing with communists.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: That, yeah.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think Obama had some sort of yeah, like Obama did speak about it, but it was very vague of like, you know, we like there's different people that are subjected to horrors because of politics and whatever.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he said something, but I but he didn't change it.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: The the two boys, I can't call them boys anymore, these two grown men now.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're literally old men.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: They um there's been books written about it.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: They put together a very I have I didn't watch it, but there's a documentary that they put together about it that is yeah kind of showing their version of everything.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then they also started a charity helping children who've been affected by political activism, um, kind of like, you know, the the true victims of a lot of this because they don't know anything about politics, they don't know what their parents are standing for, but yet their entire lives were rattled by this.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: They were orphaned afterwards, so they have a charity of taking in any children who who've been affected by political um, you know, radicals and activism and yeah um imprisonment and of their parents and things that were not the children's choice.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: Poor kids.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Think of the kids.
• 55:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder we should like have a little thing about that charity.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: I should look into it.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: A little plug.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Bob Dylan wrote a song about this.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: He did, yeah.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should like plug that in at the end.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that could be our little sign-off.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so good story.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Again, probably like definitely between this and the Ruth Ellis episode, one of the more modern ones we've had.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting to talk about something where people to this day are living and can still speak about it.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, 1953 wasn't that long ago.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: It really wasn't.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: If Ethel gets pardoned, we will do a follow-up and let you know.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: Keep a little Google alert on for that.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: That'd be interesting.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: It really would be.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: She was 35, going back to my original of what we were saying of them being he was 35.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he, yeah, Julius was 35, she was 37.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's basically you and me.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say I turned 37 short.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: You are gonna be 37 soon.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like two months.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: Give me two months.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good age.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually, and I've I think I've said this on the podcast.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're no longer talking about Ethel, we're gonna talk about me.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, but um, I I don't know what this is, but in my mind, the odd years feel younger than the even years.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how I explain it.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I turned 25, I was like, oh, like 25 sounds awesome.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like what a great age.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Once I turned 26, I was like, oh god, 26 sounds like old.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then once I was 27, somehow 27 seemed like younger than 26.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then when you're like 39, you're not exactly 40.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, but like 35 did not feel old to me at all.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: 36 did.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: But now that I'm turning 37, I'm like, uh, I'm about to be 36.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a weird thing.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I always think the even years just hit me harder.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're like they just feel older.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say that to me.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: But now that I'm going to my even year, I'm gonna think about that.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then it'll have me look forward to 37.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: But then 37's awesome.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, 37, you're not 40.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're not even 38.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Mind-blowing math back.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, but I've I've had this theory since my mid-20s where I like weird.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is, but all the even years just feel very old to me.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the odd ones, I'm like, yeah, I'm 37.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: What about even in odd decades?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like 30s versus 40s.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna sum up a whole freaking decade.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think 40 is the new 30, so I'm very much looking forward to 40 in a few years.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: Same.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: We got lots of time before that, okay?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know how many gears we're gonna have.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Don't become a, you know, radical and political.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I try not to.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: Criminal.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say on this episode or this podcast, we try to only talk about old politics, not current politics.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: So don't worry.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: I only I'm only interested in the old stuff.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna embark on those conversations publicly on the podcast in any means.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: So take that for what it is.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: As we did discuss communism, it was very much a period of disclaimer.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is our disclaimer of we are not we have zero thoughts about it, zero ties, we are communism.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: We are just the messengers, and but it was a very prominent period of American history of fear and well, Disney had to deal with that too.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: They accused him of communism, and he had to he freaked out and was very anti-communist.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was a very interesting era where people had to either really lean into it or really deny it.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what's funny is at the beginning in the 30s, they were kind of proudly communist supporters, and then they had a back.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: Once it became what it was becoming, it wasn't no longer the glorified, like this sounds amazing.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: They had to pull back, but trendy politics.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: What can you say?
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well on that Elizabeth, any final words?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot of Easter eggs to die, so let's go hide eggs.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: So do yes and echo.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have some other things I've done?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know the truth to keep them out.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_02: They were never proven guilty beyond the reasonable doubt.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: Do yes and everything felt they were guilty at the time.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: Some people said they had to be in the clan.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_02: Julius and the foot Julia said that People look about this couple doubt.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: But they love each other, check out Julia S and the food.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: Don't you see that you can see anything?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a level That's something bigger system?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Something big the man Now it is over, no one knows that it begins Do you have the kingdom got the fall even the food back They can do what they please, but not for as long as you like D do yes and the two yes and the say they give the secret so they had them out of it I don't want asked to think of it it wouldn't be it again Do yes and that do yes the 50s was needs a bit of myth I think it's just a lie with the way that you would have been a little bit more than a lot of people.