November 21, 2023 • 55 mins
The Kennedy family is one of the most well-known and influential dynasties in US politics, and the family members are enormously wealthy. Yet despite successfully seeding nepotism at the heights of government, functioning as pseudo-celebrities and racking up substantial profits over the generations, the family has historically been fraught with personal tragedy. Join the guys as they crack the case of the Kennedy curse.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realist. This is
the week of an infamous anniversary in United States history,
and that's why we're bringing you not only this classic,
but another conversation with JFK expert Rob Ryder, who's done
a couple of other things as well, a few so
(00:22):
with this classic. You know, we've been looking at the
JFK assassination for quite some time. It's part of modern
American folklore, and with that, it's it's not surprising that
there would be modern myths and legends built up around
just this family.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh yeah, Well, there have been so many deaths that
just appear to be horrible accidents, right, But when you
look at them all in order. Let's say, if you
looked at all of the Kennedy families who've died in
plane crashes, for instance, it all begins to or it
seems like maybe a pattern.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And how much of that is us searching for patterns
or seeing those that don't exist, versus there being some
sand to the so called Kennedy curse.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
We are joined with our super producer, Paul cape Cod Dectt.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. A Wicked Had episode, I should say,
pack the cat, have it yad, Yes, Wicked Had Yes,
just so, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's how you do it the only way.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We might run into a few of those accents in
today's show. So, by the way, at the top of
the show, go ahead and give us a call at
one eight three three st d w y t K
as you listen along and let us hear your craziest
uh Northeastern accent.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, I'd love to hear, especially if you're not from there.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, which we are not.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
By the way, chicking in the cay the guy won't go.
It's different but similar.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh yeah, there's also the pet cemetery main accents of
my favorite you know you burry you out, I'll go
into the road loss Hey said, I was a no
I used to.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Sometimes that is better.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It was a knight, just like this.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I'm just gonna agree with you again.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Mom, Matt, you got this.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Give us fun.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know you're not.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
You're not gonna grace us with your golden voice.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It'll come with all right, that's fine, right, okay?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Uh, why are we talking about Northeastern accents? Why are
we talking about Massachusetts in particular? We're so glad you asked,
because we are attempting to add a little bit of levity.
What is going to be a story riddled with tragedy, lousey,
with disaster, replete, and overflowing with untimely death. Today we
(03:10):
are talking about the Kennedy family, one of the most
influential political dynasties in recent US history. They're on the
level of the Roosevelts or the Tats.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, they're the American political dynasty, I would say, rather
than other than the Bushes perhaps, and maybe the.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Clintons, and maybe the Clintons. The people would also often
cite the years of the JFK presidency as the Camelot time, right,
and they romanticize it.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Did you guys say? There was a meme floating around.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
It was an image of Bill Clinton kind of peeking
out from behind these bronze sculptures of George and Barbara
Bush and the caption was Clinton hiding in the bushes.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I have not seen that one.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
Nope, it's cute.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Well, according to some, despite their tremendous success in the
world of pr right in public diplomacy, the Kennedy family has.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
A dark side. That's also not a debate.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
But today's question is it's the Kennedy Family cursed. I
don't know if many people have heard about this, Matt.
I think you brought this one to us originally, right.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Sure, yeah, just because I've heard I've heard of it.
Maybe I'm not sure. We perhaps were discussing JFK in
an episode.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I think it came up.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, yeah, Okay, Well, here are the facts. We've covered
a lot of things related to the Kennedy family before,
Like you said, with JFK RFK, we have that at
least videos on that. We've also dove in poor choice
of words to the chap Equittic incident. Yeah, let's just
(04:47):
keep it.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Let's just come on man own it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And we had a fantastic interview with the writers of
chap Equittic. But this stuff all comes into play. This
is a an overall look at these tragedies. But first
we have to learn about who the Kennedys are, which
I don't think we've ever done on this show. The
Kennedy family origin, and let's do their early timeline. Surprise, surprise,
(05:13):
they come from Ireland. Yeah, in case they didn't already
get that across.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Now, and this is a shot here, but do you
think early Kennedy influence stemmed from those political machines that
raised up Irish immigrants to positions of prominence.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It's it's an interesting question, and I would I would
say definitely, because you know, we hear a lot about
Tammany Hall and New York, but Boston was not very different.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
I had their own I'm sure. I don't know what
it's called.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
No, Yeah, well, well let's starting in Ireland. There's a
guy named Brian Kennedy. As you could tell, this is
close to his heart, and he says the origins of
the family can be traced to a clan called which
I will mispronounce because I don't speak Gaelic. Oh, and
you know I went to Ireland recently. All the signs
are in Gaelic and English.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Which is a script of its own right. Almost like
Cyrillic or like the Russian alphabet.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
You can.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I was trying to learn Gaelic just while I was there,
to say cool phrases, but no one cared.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Everyone spoke English.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I saw one television channel I think was like a
public education thing with these people speaking Gaelic.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That sounded really cool.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh wow, interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
We've just been alerted by our super producer Paul that
most people in Ireland do not, in fact call it Gaelic.
They call it Irish. Irish, you speak Irish. Well, that
was a long intro to something that I am about
to mispronounce. Their family clan was osiniad Fione, which was
(06:56):
one of three clans ruled a kingdom named or Mooned,
and they resided in what is today Pecaine, County Tipperary
in fifteen forty six, but they lost their social status
in the New English Order in the Kingdom of Ireland
and they had to move. They ended up in Donganstown,
New Ross, County Wexford by seventeen forty and that is
(07:19):
where a fellow named Patrick Kennedy is born in eighteen
twenty three. Patrick cam Bridget Murphy are the first Kennedys
to live in the US. Patrick worked as a cooper,
which means he made barrels.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Nice. That's a good thing. Make you need a lot
of those in eighteen hundreds, especially.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
If you're going to get into bootlegging down the line spoilers.
They have five kids, Patrick and Bridget, and one of
these Patrick Joseph Kennedy or PJ to his buddies, which
for some reason, I just love that as a nickname.
He became a legitimate businessman.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And a legitimate businessman.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, and served in the state legislature. This makes him
the first Kennedy politician here in the States. He's also
the paternal grandfather of President JFK, one of Pj's kids.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Guy, And it gets confusing here.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, so there's Patrick Joseph Kennedy and then he's got
a kid named Joseph Patrick Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
It's also known as Joe.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So there's PJ and Joe.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I don't know if they like that j and JP ye.
I don't know if they got charged extra at the
hospital for using new names and they just continually had
to trade these out. But yeah, Joe was born in
eighteen eighty eight and he is the one who became
instrumental in the family's political and financial rise.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And he was kind of a shady cat.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Let's say, he was known to associate with certain elements
of the underworld.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Elements I'm sorry, are you using hyperbole here?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And also the mob, oh yeah, gangsters, yeah, the Irish Italians,
some of the he had some friends in some places well.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
And again with the whole political machine thing that was
an early version of like the mob, not an early version,
but operated very similarly, make getting collections and influencing votes
and you know, state events.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, intimidating rival politicians. Even so, he is a character,
fraud with mystery and could be an episode of his own.
Not the nicest man. He was a controversial figure in
Boston because, despite the fact that he made a ton
of money through what he claims were legitimate means, in
(09:38):
high society in Boston, money alone cannot pave your path
to acceptance. It doesn't matter how much money you have,
if you earned it in the last few generations, you're
a peasant.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
It's gotta be old money, yeah, old old money.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And he wanted to buy his way into this society
to gain the acceptance but it was tough because when
big rumors about him, even though he always say he
was a legitimate businessman, one of the big rumors about
him for decades that persist even today is that he
was intimately involved with bootlegging.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, and we can recommend a book called The Patriarch,
The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
if you want to learn a lot more about him,
right right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And he went on to work as a US ambassador
to London, which started to gain him entrance into the
upper echelons of the political class. And it's there that
he continued to make some hard decisions. He got kind
of house of cards with it, didn't he. But we'll
(10:44):
get into that his time over the pond in a
little bit. For now, maybe we can talk about some
of the notable individuals of the Kennedy Klan.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
First we have JFK.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty fifth President of these fair
United States. Then we have his are there, Ted Kennedy,
a Senator from Massachusetts, and I believe, guys, the long
one of the longest standing senators my history of the office.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Known as the Lion of the Senate, the Lion.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
Then we have Robert Bobby right Kennedy, Yes, who is
Attorney General and later a senator from New York.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And these are just the top three, right, We've got
there's several other Kennedy's that are influential in business and
that are influential to one degree or another in politics.
The family overall has amassed a cartoonishly large fortune at
this point. It's estimated to be five hundred million dollars
if we're talking net worth. But that's just what's on
(11:42):
the books, and there's some pretty compelling evidence that, you know,
when you're at that level, there's pretty compelling evidence that
they have the means to not be entirely transparent.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
To like offshore accounts.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, offshore accounts maybe things that wouldn't be recognized in
terms of assets or things that are you know, properties
in other countries where reporting laws.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Are a little looser, a little different.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, just like the accusations of the Bush family years
back buying all that land in Paraguay.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Right, do you remember that one?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I remember that. That one disappeared from the news too.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
Weird when that happens, you gotta wonder, I know, their machinations.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, does it mean they were just wrong?
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Or what you know, because one thing that we don't
see a lot of nowadays is any attention paid to
retractions in the news, right, because nobody came out and said, no,
that never happened. The Paraguay thing, it just disappeared.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
We just if we don't talk about it anymore, it
never happened.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Like at the Pentagon where they say we don't lie,
the truth just changes.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, No, that's a real like they actually say lead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So you'll probably notice, fellow conspiracy realist, that at this
point we have not mentioned anything particularly tragic, just the
story of one's family's rise to the political elite of
the US. But what if there is more to this tale?
Could the Kennedy family in fact be cursed?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
We'll find out right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Years where it gets crazy. So how did this curse begin?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
If it's a curse, you just did two handed quotation
fingers large. But yeah, but it's hard to argue with
the level of seeming cursedness that we're about to delve into.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, there's a there's a guy named Edward Kleine who
is billed as a political researcher, and he says that
he thinks this curse has haunted the Kennedy family for
one hundred and fifty years, but there's no uh no,
one really agrees on what events started it or how
a curse is defined.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
Well, a curse is what happened when a witch will,
let's have fingers at you and says, I curss thee.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, it could be anybody if you know the evil eyes.
That's true, I'm doing the evil.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Double.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Let's say, okay, let's put it this way. A lot
of it's interesting that Klein puts it at one hundred
and fifty years because most everything seems to stem back
to the offspring of Joe Kennedy, not the grandfather, but
the father of Robert and JFK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
(14:45):
a lot of times with a curse, the folklore of
a curse, the history of curses, you curse a person
in their bloodline essentially, right, so descendants from that curse, well,
I mean, yeah, a lot.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Of times a pox upon your house.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So it's interesting that they put one hundred and fifty
years because I wouldn't I wouldn't go back exactly that far.
If I was the one saying, hey, this family looks cursed,
I would probably put it on Joe rather than on
Patrick Joseph Kennedy, just because it's mostly his kids in
their offspring that are really getting the bad end of the.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Stick, the fuzzy side of the lollipop.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, as our old mentor used to say, Yeah, that's
a really good point. So when we're talking about Joseph himself,
let's go back to what he actually did across the
pond that would later become controversial.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So we mentioned before that he was he became an
ambassador to England while he is working in his political career.
Then you know, World War Two happened, and in the
run up to World War two, as the Nazi Party
begins taking over, there's a lot of debate in England
as to, you know, how do we deal with this
threat with these people that are threatening us, They're threatening
(16:02):
all of our neighbors. They're doing unspeakable, horrible things. We're
going to try and cut them off from a monetary
perspective as much as we can, you know, by not
buying and selling goods to them. Anyway, there are a
lot of ideas that are floated around, and there are
some people in high society in England who disagree completely.
(16:23):
So we've got on one side. You've got let's go
through this, Ben, We've got Neville Chamberlain who Nazi appeasement
is what it's kind of referred to as right, but
it's more of let's not necessarily give them everything they want,
but let's try and work with them to a point
where they're not gonna bomb the absolute crap out of
us and just overthrow our government.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, the idea being that maybe not entirely capitulating giving
a few things to Nazi Germany at the time, would
I guess stable eyes the country or sort of mitigate
the aggression and also put them on a footing where
(17:06):
the Western Powers were saying to Germany, we understand that
you guys got pretty screwed after World War One.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, well, we see that you've got issues.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
We're sorry that you feel like you need an apology.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
Do you get a sense though this wasn't entirely with
evil intent, I mean it was, you know, it was,
it was. It was one way of behaving to try
to get things done right.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I mean, it's a philosophy on how to handle a
very tough situation, because on the other end, when you've
got military leaders who are saying no, we have we
absolutely have to fight them on the beaches. We had
to fight them everywhere. We got to say no, you bastards,
get back.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Can we play that? You play the let's Paul? Can
we play the Churchill.
Speaker 8 (17:52):
Quote from Seats and Oceans. We shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend
our island, whatever the couch may be. We shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds.
(18:14):
We shall fight in the fields and in the streaks.
We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
That really was Gary Oldman's finest role is finest time.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
I mean he deserved the darkest I remember when we
had we had an ad read for that ship, and
we had to redo it because we said the darkest hour.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
It was actually just the darkest hour, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah, yeah, we hope you enjoyed that ad reading. And
it is a good film. I'll give him that. I
really think that guy's a great actor. But as much
as I like Gary Oldman, my one of my favorite
historical figures at this day, at this point in time
in the story is rip, roar and drunk. Look in
(19:00):
Winston Churchill, that guy was insane. He like he helped
win World War two and I don't know if he
woke up remembering it most mornings.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
Yeah, just oh no, you're right, man.
Speaker 6 (19:14):
He definitely seemed sast almost any time he was on mic.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yeah, but you know what that's it's like, what is it?
Speaker 8 (19:21):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Hemingway says, you're not really a man until you're drunk,
being like you're not your best self. Not to encourage
the listeners here to just live life drunk, but there's
something to be said in that when you see these
people that are just like so in the zone through
utter drunkenness.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
It was to.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Behold, it was probably a you know, there's state dependent learning.
They had normalized at that point, so they may not
have been able. It's really sad to say they may
not have been able to function.
Speaker 6 (19:50):
So same with those ad men, you know, like oh yeah,
just the culture of like pitching these ideas while taking
your nine a m glass of whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
You know what kind assass A frast fancy boy is
too good for Martini at en right, Okay, So this
so Winston Churchill said we have to go to war.
Appeasement will not work. And you know, his side was right,
but that is not the side that Joe was on.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
That's correct, and and so a lot of people think
that perhaps some well actually Wilisia's go into this. He
was maligned, like he was viewed in a very negative light,
especially in the United States after this came out, that
he was they you know, he was called the Nazi sympathizer.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
He was on the wrong side of history. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, And again, like it's tough to say back then,
like maybe he truly believed that this was a way
to get out of it in a better way than
just I mean, we're talking about scores of people, you know,
British citizens who died as a result of the World
War two and the Nazis. But at the time it
was just a terrible thing, a terrible thing to do
(20:57):
in the aftermath of World War Two. And then he
had political aspirations in the US and ultimately those were
just dashing against the wall because everybody looked at him
in that light.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Well it's rough too.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Considering the outcome, he definitely comes off as like taking
the moral low ground, you know.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
When you really knowing what we know or what you
knew even just a little bit later, even like you know,
toying with that.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Notion was a bad look. They also had.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
There are indications that he had personal prejudice involved. As
far as anti Semitism, well.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
There are their indications, and it is tough because a
lot of it ends up being not rumor but a
little more hearsay than you know, an actual thing you
can prove.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
There's correspondence between some of the Kennedy family from Kennedy
and Joe Junior in nineteen thirty four in which the
son calls the Nazis dislike of Jewish people quote well founded,
and the dad is saying, I'm very pleased and gratified
at your observations of the German city situation.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Geez, okay, that's worse than I understood.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
So could that have been How is that related to
this curse?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, the thought is, perhaps, you know, that's pre a
lot of the cursing that's happening. I think nineteen forty
four is the first one that we've like clocked later
on in our timeline as to the first part of
the curse. So it would make sense if there was
a curse applied around this time, like beginning to middle
(22:31):
of World War.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Two, I as seem and that that kind of verges
on a spiritual aspect.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Oh yeah, sure, well, well that's this is another theory
that I've seen online, is that perhaps because of the
way that Joe Kennedy amassed his fortune. You know, even
though he says, oh, you know, I'm a businessman, just
like his grandma, his father said, I'm a businessman, perhaps
there was some ill gotten gains there, maybe a family
that was you know, taken advantage of, or someone got hurt.
(22:58):
So basically, either we've got in some of the theories
that have been put forth, either he's been cursed in
some way because of his involvement with World War two,
in the Nazis, or with some other group that he
wronged in amassing his fortune. Okay, that's what I have
seen online.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I like that, you say group. I like the idea
of some.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Real world interest pursuing someone. So you can already see
some of the issues here, folks.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
There's no.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Universally agreed on theory on what could have happened or
triggered a curse. There are several compelling guesses. As you said, Matt,
the most compelling timelines do seem to trace it to
Joe Kennedy, absolutely, but most use of the term curse
just centers on describing this strange collection of tragic events
(23:53):
that appear to bedevil this family much more so than
the average Jane and John Doe Smith Nuyan.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Nuian.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's twenty eighteen. It's American.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
Man, that's a fun one. I never knew how to
pronounce that until about twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, yeah, is it hyphenated Smith Nugan, I.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm just I'm picking a generic, average American family.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
So it's crazy, though, you guys, when you see these
stacked up like in a list, it's a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But also remember there are a lot of Kennedy's, that's true,
and associated Kennedy's.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
That's true. And then times were volatile.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And there are people who are Kennedy adjacent sort of
the way, like Redman is always hanging out with Wu Tang,
but is not himself in Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, what are okay?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
So, like, what are some examples of the curses I
think are examples of the curse itself.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Well, ultimately, there are a lot of deaths that we
would consider to be untimely. Sure early deaths, every death
is earlier than it should be, right or airplane accidents.
That's a whole category that we can kind of put
in here, because the Kennedys fly a lot. Most some
of the most affluent people do fly the most because
(25:10):
you can afford it, or perhaps you have your pilot's license,
and in this case, the Kennedys did fly a whole lot.
The first though, the first person who was killed in
an aircraft accident was actually serving his country when when
he was killed he was not a private pilot at
the time. On August twelfth, nineteen forty four. Joseph Kennedy Junior.
(25:32):
This is the older brother of JFK. He was killed
in an aircraft explosion when he was serving during the
Second World War. So nineteen forty four, Joseph Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
Okay, So, then in nineteen forty eight May thirteen, we
have Kathleen Cavendish, who is JFK's sister and also the
wife of the Marquis of Hartington.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Oh yeah, what is that?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Ah?
Speaker 6 (25:58):
Yes, the Barque of Hartington make some kind of weird
like like Connecticut local government position.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Let's do a Google search.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
What's Yeah, it's a landed title in the UK. So
what a lot of what a lot of political dynasties
do to get around what they sell to you as
a voter if you're in the US. What a lot
of them do to get the aristocratic heights that they
(26:29):
want as they marry into aristocratic families. So when it's
voting season, they can still put on some I'll say it,
they can still put on a pair of bullshit overalls
in a baseball cap and act like they have remotely
anything to do with ordinary people.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, like a duke.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
An earl, duke over heydude.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
That's funny anyway.
Speaker 6 (26:53):
So we've got Kathleen Cavendish, the apparent husband to the
Marquis of Hartington.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
She dies in a plane crash in France.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And there's another plane crash in June nineteenth of nineteen
sixty four. Ted Kennedy is in this plane crash, and
he and a senator named Birch Bob both survive with
some pretty pretty grizzly injuries.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
And the Reaper is gunning for this fellow.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
One of Kennedy's aides dies in the crash, and the
pilot of the plane also dies. I have a quick
question with this. It seems like a ton of plane crashes.
But to your earlier point, Matt, they were flying more
than average. And also I'm wondering if plane technology, if
aviation safety technology was just not where it is now.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I'm certain they must be the cave well.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And they're also in small private Yeah, I mean, if
there's just a higher risk with those with those aircraft.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
No Kennedy will fly commercial unheard of.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
In sixty nine there is the infamous chap Equitic incident
where Mary Joe Kopecni dies, is abandoned to drown by
Ted Kennedy, who survives and somehow retains a political career.
But that is commonly considered to be the nail in
(28:15):
the coffin of his presidential ambitions.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, but again, somehow.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I would say, rightly, so, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Then you're right, somehow ended up being one of the
most beloved senators out there.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Somehow, soon we forget, so what else we have, because
this isn't all of it?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, is it?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
No? No, we're still going through all this. Okay, nineteen
ninety seven, you have Michael L. Kennedy. He's one of
Robert Robert Kennedy's children. He dies in a skiing accident
of all things, out in Colorado, and apparently there was
this Kennedy tradition of doing downhill skiing while playing American football.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So it's this weird thing where they would split up
the like if you're looking the whole slope, they would
split the slope up into varying fields. So like when
you're in this section, you're in one field and you
can score, then you're in this section you can score
in this field, and it just kind of goes down, down, down, down.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
So what you're saying, mad is that he was asking
for it.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
No geez no, no.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
Okay, alright, I misunderstood your meaning.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I will. I will say that some onlookers who would
view the this Kennedy tradition of playing this game thought
it was extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
That's what I'm saying. It sounds it sounds really dumb.
Michael lemoy and Kennedy, why are you doing this name?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Okay, so much to live for? Well, the strange thing
is that you get rid of your polls, because you
need your hands to catch the football and to throw it. Yeah,
and you're just going down these big slopes and you're
looking behind you sometimes to throw the ball, looking ahead
of you throw the ball. And yeah, he unfortunately hit
a tree.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
In thirty nine, right.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, to come through his injuries that way.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Thirty nine years old.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And then there's another aircraft incident, I believe.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Oh, yes, yes, this is John F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yes, his parents probably called him.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
They're probably just screamed Junior at him, Junia Junior, study
wicked hot.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yes, so John F. Kennedy's son, the junior. He was
on his way to Martha's vineyard up there in Cape
Cod again, flying a light plane, like a small plane,
and he crashed after he got a little disoriented. I
guess while he was in flight. He was flying at night,
which is you know, a little dangerous because if your
(30:33):
instruments go bad, it's it's pretty rough out there. He
ended up crashing in the ocean and he died there.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
Yes, it seems like these Kennedy's were risk takers.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
True.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
True, there's more to the story too, because this is
just scratching the surface I'm sure you can figure out
what we're going to dive into next, but see if
you're correct or not.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
After this brick.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
We have returned, and we must also acknowledge the most
widely known, untimely deaths in the Kennedy line. Those are
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three. As he rides through Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Lee Harvey Oswald, who we later discover was his assassin,
is gunned down at a police station two days later,
and this created, as we on this show in this
community very well know, widespread conspiracies about the president's death.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
You know, was there more than one shooter? Was he
taken out by the government.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
I mean, it's too long days, the mob, the Russians,
it just goes on.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yes, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Look, it doesn't matter if you consider yourself a fan
of the Kennedys or not. They were super into nepotism,
and nepotism is poisonous for the type of government that
we are.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Supposed to have.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I just have to put that in there. I know
that these people pasted. I know these assassinations were unjust,
but it's doing everyone at disservice if we ignore the
fact that nepotism is a very, very bad thing.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
You feel very strongly about this, Ben, You've mentioned it before.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Them, absolutely, and I will continue mentioning it until somebody
with a problem gets their brother or their cousin in
office and shuts down our show because it matters that much.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I hope I'm not poking the bear too much here, guys.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
But regardless, I'm not saying that they're I'm not saying
that they are inherently bad.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Roberto Robert F.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Kennedy is the Attorney General, right, so he's holding one
of the highest offices in the land legally speaking, while
his brother is arguably holding one of the highest offices
in the world.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
This is weird.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That's weird.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
Now, this is the whole thing. Yeah, and then he
gets he gets a bullet too. He gets an assassin's
bullet too, right, I mean.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
Assassinations in US politics.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
I don't see them as being wide rife in this.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
They're relatively rare.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, yeah, so he is.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
He's thirty eight years old, and he is calling for
further investigations into the JFK assassination because he believes there's
more to the story. Like the majority of Americans in
the wake of the JFK assassination, he thinks someone is lying,
and on June sixth, nineteen sixty eight, he is assassinated
(33:40):
after winning the California Democratic primary. The gunman sir Han.
Sir Han is alive now as we record.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
This isn't this the one where he was supposedly some
kind of Manchurian candidate.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
He has at least maintained that he has no memory
of this, that he was programmed somehow, and they're also
He also argues that forensic evidence and eyewitness reports of
the shooting back up his story that he was not
the fatal shooter.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
It's fascinating if you started digging into it. I don't
remember if we've done a huge thing on here and
here here and did something. I know we talked about it.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
Yeah, it may have been.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Like a like a Hodgepodge kind of episode, but I
definitely remember talking about this sleeper agent kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, which is frightening. And the big question is can
you pull it off? How how much it's I guess
it's more a degree of compulsion it's not can we
make people do things that would not ordinarily do without
their own knowledge of their actions. That's how advertising works.
The question is how far can we push it?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Well?
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Can I take it? Just to quick aside?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (34:52):
In service of this story, Have you guys seen the
latest Darren Brown.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Special on that miracle Miracle?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (34:59):
And you guys, if you don't who Darren Brown is,
he is what is deemed a mentalist. He is an
expert at everything from hypnosis to some more kind of
sketchy pseudosciencey things he's accused of doing. There's a neuro
linguistic programming I think is one of them. And he
is a master of implanting ideas into his subjects' heads.
(35:20):
And he is very good at picking out who will
be most susceptible too said implanted ideas, And when you
see him do his thing, it's hard to like poo
poo it, And it really does make me think, like
what you were saying, Ben, how far could you push
that if you weren't just a showman trying to make
a cool Netflix special.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I have followed that guy for years.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
Same I think.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Longtime listeners have heard us mention some of his cooler tricks.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
It's weird that all of a sudden, though, he's getting
Netflix specials and he's been around for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You think it's us, you guys hope so, I'd like
to think so, But for our purposes, I think the
fantastic players. There's so many questions that remain about these assassinations.
We got pretty oustiously optimistic earlier this year when some
formally classified statements about the JFK assassination were due to
(36:09):
be released, but not much.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, came out of it.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
It wasn't much in there got.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
A black ink yeah, yeah, like that old Onion article
where the CIA says they found out they've been using
black highlighters.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, for the past few decades.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So these are the two most popular ones. But there
are other stories that get ignored, And we would be
remiss if we did not point out a story, a
tragedy in the Kennedy family that for decades was just
not talked about, not just not talked about by the
Kennedys themselves, but not talked about by their support staff,
(36:50):
the various I guess people that they bound to obey
them or however you would describe that relationship and they
the president talked about it either. And that is Rosemary Kennedy,
who was one of the daughters of Rose Kennedy and
daughter of Joe Kennedy. She was arguably intellectually disabled in
(37:12):
a family with very high standards, and her father scheduled
a lobotomy for her, of course without her consent, a
catastrophic operation that left her with the mental capacity of
a toffler.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Well, yeah, when she was twenty three.
Speaker 10 (37:28):
This was forty one and nineteen forty one, so this
predates all the other stuff. So there's also some rumors
out there that maybe again you kind of got to
go out on a limb for this stuff, but maybe
somehow she's taken revenge on her family.
Speaker 6 (37:46):
Oh yeah, such a barbaric thing to do to someone.
And you know, it was just such a blind shot
in the dark. You know's nothing backing it up. What
would they have said was a reason that this would
be a good thing to do.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Well, by the way, she was assertive and she was
rebellious as she was getting older. Oh so like she
was endangering the Kennedy name. Essentially she had ideas, Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So this and didn't perhaps have the sense of nuanced
diplomacy and brand building that these folks were doing on
their way to becoming your next American empire. So the
way it was most likely sold was this will make
her more amenable and docile. That's the way people handle
(38:30):
the botomies. Oh my god, it'll help them be calm forever.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
Spoiler alert for one flow over the cuckoo's nest like
that time and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, there you go. Oh man, that's such a great book.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
By the way that I think, I think this is
the best horror movie version of the Kennedy Curse is
that they do this horrible thing to their one child,
and it's kept a secret, and she's actually somehow taking.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
Especially the one child being somewhat precocious and willful. I
guess right, and you know, and then I'm gonna shut
you down. You didn't think I was good enough to
be part of your you know, family line? Well, here
we go.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
That's a very compelling. Oh yeah, that's a very compelling
story that I have to ask you, guys and everyone listening,
do you all believe in something like karma? Do you
think it's a possibility.
Speaker 6 (39:29):
I don't know it's I think it's a name we
give for something very ephemeral and indescribable. I said to
someone the other day. God is the name we give
for improbable happenstance, you know what I mean, where Like
things just line up in a certain way, things work out,
and you call it God or something. That's just I
see this very similarly. It's the opposite, though, things align
(39:52):
in a very horrible way over a long period of time,
a dark coincidence, right.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I don't know if bad things happen to people who
deserve them. I think often people who are not constrained
by things like empathy or the human race being viewed
as a team sport. Yeah, I think they go around
doing terrible things without foreseeable or predictable consequences.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
Because they just steamroller anyone that's in their way and
they have no scruples.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, you hear the kids. That's how you get ahead
in life. You don't be nice, You become a steamroller,
and then you hit go and that's it done.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Until until the good, the good guys who do exist
find you and stop you.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It's just I don't know, Well, it's hard to stop
a steamroll. The only way you can really stop a
steamroller is if you've got a hill, then you're good.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
That's good man. Or with a bigger steamroller.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, like a giant zamboni. I know they're not steam rollers.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
It's all good.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I just wanted to say, zamboni. Have you seen they
are fantastic inventions.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
Makes me think of a magician.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yes, yeah, uh me zamboni.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Right, that's the ice you got, great zamboni.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You know. So, Also, to be fair to the controversial
figure of Joe Kennedy, it is completely possible that they
legitimately thought this would help, that they wouldn't be crippling
their daughter.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, when you have a doctor telling you this is
a little help, per No.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
I know even today we we we just we take
the doctor's word at face value. Even with that, when
it comes to our own health, it's so easy to
just like, well, this is you're you're the expert.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
This company is paying me to tell you that this
drug is awesome for what you got.
Speaker 6 (41:39):
Did you see that thing where an artist put a
giant sculpture of a heroin spoon outside of that company
that makes all the opioids?
Speaker 5 (41:46):
Whoa he got.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Arrested for like impeding a thoroughfare. It's like a really
ridiculous clause. That's the company's name now I can't remember.
It's not bear It. It was the Purdue, the Purdue
family pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Not the chicken.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Not the chicken. No, not to malign the chicken produce.
They are unrelated to the opiate produce. But that you know,
what's a great point about that, is there a lot
of people with the last named Kennedy who are not
themselves related.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
To these Kennedys. Yes, so we should we should point
that out. We should also ask.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Is this a true curse or is this just a
murky set of terrible, indefensible coincidences. Skeptics argue that what
appears to be a curse is more likely just cherry picking.
We're only finding notably tragic events from this huge family,
and that it's also not improbable or even unlikely for
(42:47):
a similar large family to have similar disasters, regardless of
their social standing. So if we just expand our sample
size large enough from that Smith New Yen example or whatever,
and will eventually be able to find someone who is
in a playing crash, someone who got a very specific
type of cancer.
Speaker 6 (43:07):
It's the same even when you start tracing people's lineages,
and at the end of the day, everyone's related to everyone, right, Yeah,
you get a long enough timeline, big enough sample size,
stuff happens, right.
Speaker 5 (43:18):
But you guys, I'm just gonna ask you, Matt, curses.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Do I believe in them?
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Man, that's tough, because if you don't believe in curses,
you better believe you're getting cursed. But no, I don't
really believe in curses. But that's just because I guess
my life has been pretty good so far, so you know, yeah,
what about You.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
Know, there's compelling stuff out there. I'm always a little
bit of a.
Speaker 6 (43:46):
Fence sitter when it comes to this kind of stuff,
But I don't know, sometimes I feel pulled.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
In one way or the other depending on what I'm
looking at, you know what I mean. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
I try not to have a hard fast no to anything.
I try to be open curses, no, just in general.
Speaker 8 (44:05):
You know.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
You know, I'm definitely skeptical about a lot of things,
but I am always open to being convinced otherwise. And
when you look at this stuff just stacked up the
way we looked at it sums up, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Here's the deal, do you? What do you think? Ben?
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Oh? Well, okay, so I am full disclosure.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I should say that various parts of my family do
completely believe in this, for various reasons that we will
not get into. But Ted Kennedy himself seemed to believe
that there was a curse afoot. He publicly mentioned the
phrase in nineteen sixty nine when he was testifying about
that time that he abandoned and drowned Mary Joe Kopecney.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, that curse that, you know, befell him as he escaped.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
And yeah, I gotta be really tough for him to
again his cushy job right to again leave a woman
in a car to die of asphyxiation just for taking
and ride with him.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
That's what he did.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
I'm not saying that he didn't do good legislation, but
he also again abandoned some what left of a car
to die, basically got away with murder and got away
with Yeah. So let's let's just play the clip. You
can hear him say it's a curse.
Speaker 7 (45:17):
Whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the
Kennedys whether there was some justifiable reason for me to
doubt what had happened and to delay my report.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
And to your question, no, there's another factor here, and
it's one that doesn't often get seriously considered in the
mass media because when we call something a curse, we're
conjuring these images, right of this, this nefarious warlock, a sorcerer,
a witch, the evil eye, a pox on your house,
and all this highly dramatic fictional stuff. Yeah, grim was
(45:54):
I have newt right, secret, secret arcane markings in the
house where you can't see, right, written.
Speaker 6 (46:01):
In blood, written in blood, Grandma's You ever been cursed
by a grandma? That's pretty that's the worst kind of curse.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
A grandmother curse.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
The worst kind of curse in the first is the
words of a grandmother.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Right, so.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Hold the horses, she's heading for the buckwheat. That's not
my grandmother cursed.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
But there there can be something foul afoot the functions
like a curse without it necessarily being supernatural. One of
these could be. One example of this would be a
blood feud. So if, for instance, and I will not
use us as examples because I don't want to jinx us, right,
that's just another version that's like like a low level curse.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I want to jinx us.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
So let's say that's when you curse yourself by accident
or whomever said I hated that game.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
When people we say the same thing. Yeah, I was
trying to let people.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Will says it's a conspiracy by the Coca Cola company
to get you to buy other people cokes. Just so
you know that.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
Oh that's right, it's one, two, three four you owe
me a coke? Like what, Yeah, that's a big thing.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
You have to buy coke for a really yeah, conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
So there can be a vendetta in curse form that
functions like a curse but doesn't have supernatural stuff. It
just has a group of people who have agreed to
carry out actively, right.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
Just tormenting members of another.
Speaker 6 (47:23):
Like hat Fields and McCoy's or something like that, or
you know, poisonings, political assassinations, you know, crimes of that level.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Too, right, right, right, exactly.
Speaker 6 (47:34):
And when you're a big giant political dynasty like the Kennedy's, right,
you're a target, man, you got a you're a moving target.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
That's exactly what I'm thinking because the primary examples for
people who believe there is a curse in something that
operates like it would be the allegations of the assassination
of RFK being related to his investigation of his brother's assassination.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
That for people who believe they are related, and.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I'm one, I rarely stayed my personal opinion on the show.
But too much stuff, too much stuff adds.
Speaker 5 (48:10):
You really brought it full circle.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Man.
Speaker 5 (48:11):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 6 (48:12):
It's a really good point you make that this, you know,
curse is another name for a phenomenon that you can't
fully explain. But when you really start to look at
this situation, it really starts to feel more like they
just had a lot of enemies.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, I mean, they definitely had quite a few conflicts.
I don't think you can get it at that level
without it. But whether you want to call it a curse,
the result of being above the law for generations or
just playing bad luck, the Kennedy family remains beset by
problems in the modern day. That is correct, folks. The
tragedies did not stop after the assassinations. They did not
(48:47):
stop with the stuff we mentioned, and the Kennedys are
not always the victims in these situations. In seventy three.
Nineteen seventy three, August Joseph P. Kennedy the Second crashed
a gep paralyzed his passenger. David Kennedy died of a
drug overdose in Palm Beach in nineteen eighty four. In April,
(49:10):
and then William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with
the rape of a young woman in the Palm Beach
Kennedy estate in April of nineteen ninety one. He has
received numerous charges of sexual assault. This was the only
one to go to court and he was acquitted.
Speaker 6 (49:28):
No way, Yeah, sarcastic if you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Tell if you're interested in that aspect of certain Kennedys.
But if there's also rumors about a lot of the
other male Kennedy's right having to do with sexual assault
and rape in some of these things, most of these
are allegations that cannot be proven. But you can go
to the New York Post and you can read something
(49:55):
by Maureen Callahan and it's called the Real Curse of
the Kennedy and it deals a lot with some of
these allegations.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
And then we have the case of Michael Skakeel, a
nephew of Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, who was convicted
of bludgeoning his neighbor in two thousand and two.
Speaker 6 (50:15):
Wait, wait, wait, this is the first non Kennedy name
we've had in this sordid tale. Why is the escape
and not a Kennedy?
Speaker 1 (50:22):
This is the redman to the Wu Tangs kind of
situation I have mentioned earlier. Yeah, both were fifteen at
the time. I feel like we talked. Did we talk
about this in the chap Equittic episode?
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I don't think we have.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Oh well, he was accused of bludgeoning a girl named
Martha Moxley to death with a golf club when they
were both fifteen. There were some other kids that were there.
He was granted a new trial in twenty thirteen and
freed on bail. Three years later, prosecutors appealed the court
(50:55):
reinstated his conviction. He's asked them to reconsider. He's still
on bail.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Jeez. So that was two thousand and two when he
was first like taking a court for that stuff.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
That's when he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, gotcha, And he was convicted of doing that. But
he was convicted in two thousand and two. But the
crime occurred in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Okay, and then we had those two in the nineties,
by the way, the skiing accident, and then I think
one car accident or was that a plane crash, plane
crash plane straight yeah, yeah, that was ninety nine JFK.
Junior's plane crash. So two in the nineties. Then there
after that, and then we get to twenty twelve May sixteenth,
(51:40):
This is when Mary Richardson Kennedy was found. She had
committed suicide. She was found there on the estate in Bedford,
New York. And that remember that thing that we were
talking about, the real curse of the Kennedys, It surrounds
that particular suicide. If you're interested again, if you want
(52:01):
to read more.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Well, okay, on this note, of course, as Matt said,
every death is too soon, and so we hope that
we hope that.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
If except for Hitler, for Hitler, sure.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
And so of course we hope that your family is
not beset by problems like this. We also want to
know what do you think. Do you think there is
a genuine curse or is this just an agglomeration of
coincidence framed in a specific way.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
You know, m hm.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah. And if you do think it is a curse,
why do you think it's happening. What's the core of it,
the inciting incident, I guess because there's always one of those,
if there is a curse.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
And I'm interested if a Kennedy ran for president today,
once you vote for.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Them, mm on principle, Like just because it's a name,
is what we're asking you.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yeah, like name recognition far Like how much does that
play into the story.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
And we're just thinking about it's because we're thinking about
changing our names honestly to Kennedy to so we can
run for office. So all three of.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Us are all four of us paulls out on this
full disclosure.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
We're all going to start flying small aircraft ink cod but.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
You know, we'll be careful and it has to be
four of us so that we're not kkk.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Yep, you know what I mean. Just think of the
memes we got to have.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
For once one of us goes down, though we're screwed.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Maybe we should each just get take the name of
a political dynasty.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Okay, there could be a Roosevelt Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush Clinton.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Oh who got stuck with Bush I'll be bush.
Speaker 5 (53:48):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
It's all.
Speaker 6 (53:50):
I knew the golden pipes would would rear their beautiful
tones eventually.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
And since we we finally got some amazing uh map
pressions Matt impressions there, that means.
Speaker 5 (54:03):
We can Matt libs, Matt lips.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
There we go. That's worth it.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
We can now bid this episode a do in peace,
lay it to rest, and hope that stragedies do not
continue in the Kennedy family, in your own family, heck,
in any family.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
Haven't they suffered.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Enough enough with the tragedies world and fate and whoever
else controls this kind of thing. Stop it just be nice.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
But yeah, let us know what do you think it's
a matter of karma? Is a coincidence? We want to
hear your take. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff, conspiracy Stuff show
some variation thereof.
Speaker 6 (54:41):
You can also find us on Facebook, and if you
really want to go down a fun rabbit hole, you
can join our Here's where It Gets Crazy Facebook group
where you'll find things like this amazing poster of this
upcoming movie starring Sam Elliott called the Man Who Killed
Hitler and then the Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Oh really both.
Speaker 6 (54:59):
Yeah, I'm both a ring Sam Elliott, Aiden Turner, Caitlin
Fitzgerald and Larry Miller and our boy Ron Livingston. And
at first people thought that it was a spoof, but
it is a real picture my friends coming soon to
a cinema near you.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Wow. Okay, And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realist. This is
the week of an infamous anniversary in United States history,
and that's why we're bringing you not only this classic,
but another conversation with JFK expert Rob Ryder, who's done
a couple of other things as well, a few so
(00:22):
with this classic. You know, we've been looking at the
JFK assassination for quite some time. It's part of modern
American folklore, and with that, it's it's not surprising that
there would be modern myths and legends built up around
just this family.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh yeah, Well, there have been so many deaths that
just appear to be horrible accidents, right, But when you
look at them all in order. Let's say, if you
looked at all of the Kennedy families who've died in
plane crashes, for instance, it all begins to or it
seems like maybe a pattern.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And how much of that is us searching for patterns
or seeing those that don't exist, versus there being some
sand to the so called Kennedy curse.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Let's jump right into it.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
We are joined with our super producer, Paul cape Cod Dectt.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. A Wicked Had episode, I should say,
pack the cat, have it yad, Yes, Wicked Had Yes,
just so, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's how you do it the only way.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We might run into a few of those accents in
today's show. So, by the way, at the top of
the show, go ahead and give us a call at
one eight three three st d w y t K
as you listen along and let us hear your craziest
uh Northeastern accent.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, I'd love to hear, especially if you're not from there.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah, which we are not.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
By the way, chicking in the cay the guy won't go.
It's different but similar.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh yeah, there's also the pet cemetery main accents of
my favorite you know you burry you out, I'll go
into the road loss Hey said, I was a no
I used to.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
Sometimes that is better.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
It was a knight, just like this.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
I'm just gonna agree with you again.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Mom, Matt, you got this.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Give us fun.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know you're not.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
You're not gonna grace us with your golden voice.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It'll come with all right, that's fine, right, okay?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Uh, why are we talking about Northeastern accents? Why are
we talking about Massachusetts in particular? We're so glad you asked,
because we are attempting to add a little bit of levity.
What is going to be a story riddled with tragedy, lousey,
with disaster, replete, and overflowing with untimely death. Today we
(03:10):
are talking about the Kennedy family, one of the most
influential political dynasties in recent US history. They're on the
level of the Roosevelts or the Tats.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, they're the American political dynasty, I would say, rather
than other than the Bushes perhaps, and maybe the.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Clintons, and maybe the Clintons. The people would also often
cite the years of the JFK presidency as the Camelot time, right,
and they romanticize it.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Did you guys say? There was a meme floating around.
Speaker 6 (03:40):
It was an image of Bill Clinton kind of peeking
out from behind these bronze sculptures of George and Barbara
Bush and the caption was Clinton hiding in the bushes.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I have not seen that one.
Speaker 5 (03:52):
Nope, it's cute.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Well, according to some, despite their tremendous success in the
world of pr right in public diplomacy, the Kennedy family has.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
A dark side. That's also not a debate.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
But today's question is it's the Kennedy Family cursed. I
don't know if many people have heard about this, Matt.
I think you brought this one to us originally, right.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Sure, yeah, just because I've heard I've heard of it.
Maybe I'm not sure. We perhaps were discussing JFK in
an episode.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
I think it came up.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, yeah, Okay, Well, here are the facts. We've covered
a lot of things related to the Kennedy family before,
Like you said, with JFK RFK, we have that at
least videos on that. We've also dove in poor choice
of words to the chap Equittic incident. Yeah, let's just
(04:47):
keep it.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
Let's just come on man own it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And we had a fantastic interview with the writers of
chap Equittic. But this stuff all comes into play. This
is a an overall look at these tragedies. But first
we have to learn about who the Kennedys are, which
I don't think we've ever done on this show. The
Kennedy family origin, and let's do their early timeline. Surprise, surprise,
(05:13):
they come from Ireland. Yeah, in case they didn't already
get that across.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Now, and this is a shot here, but do you
think early Kennedy influence stemmed from those political machines that
raised up Irish immigrants to positions of prominence.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It's it's an interesting question, and I would I would
say definitely, because you know, we hear a lot about
Tammany Hall and New York, but Boston was not very different.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
I had their own I'm sure. I don't know what
it's called.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
No, Yeah, well, well let's starting in Ireland. There's a
guy named Brian Kennedy. As you could tell, this is
close to his heart, and he says the origins of
the family can be traced to a clan called which
I will mispronounce because I don't speak Gaelic. Oh, and
you know I went to Ireland recently. All the signs
are in Gaelic and English.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Which is a script of its own right. Almost like
Cyrillic or like the Russian alphabet.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
You can.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
I was trying to learn Gaelic just while I was there,
to say cool phrases, but no one cared.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Everyone spoke English.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I saw one television channel I think was like a
public education thing with these people speaking Gaelic.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
That sounded really cool.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Oh wow, interesting.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
We've just been alerted by our super producer Paul that
most people in Ireland do not, in fact call it Gaelic.
They call it Irish. Irish, you speak Irish. Well, that
was a long intro to something that I am about
to mispronounce. Their family clan was osiniad Fione, which was
(06:56):
one of three clans ruled a kingdom named or Mooned,
and they resided in what is today Pecaine, County Tipperary
in fifteen forty six, but they lost their social status
in the New English Order in the Kingdom of Ireland
and they had to move. They ended up in Donganstown,
New Ross, County Wexford by seventeen forty and that is
(07:19):
where a fellow named Patrick Kennedy is born in eighteen
twenty three. Patrick cam Bridget Murphy are the first Kennedys
to live in the US. Patrick worked as a cooper,
which means he made barrels.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Nice. That's a good thing. Make you need a lot
of those in eighteen hundreds, especially.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
If you're going to get into bootlegging down the line spoilers.
They have five kids, Patrick and Bridget, and one of
these Patrick Joseph Kennedy or PJ to his buddies, which
for some reason, I just love that as a nickname.
He became a legitimate businessman.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And a legitimate businessman.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Yeah, and served in the state legislature. This makes him
the first Kennedy politician here in the States. He's also
the paternal grandfather of President JFK, one of Pj's kids.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Guy, And it gets confusing here.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, so there's Patrick Joseph Kennedy and then he's got
a kid named Joseph Patrick Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
It's also known as Joe.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So there's PJ and Joe.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I don't know if they like that j and JP ye.
I don't know if they got charged extra at the
hospital for using new names and they just continually had
to trade these out. But yeah, Joe was born in
eighteen eighty eight and he is the one who became
instrumental in the family's political and financial rise.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And he was kind of a shady cat.
Speaker 5 (08:40):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Let's say, he was known to associate with certain elements
of the underworld.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Elements I'm sorry, are you using hyperbole here?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And also the mob, oh yeah, gangsters, yeah, the Irish Italians,
some of the he had some friends in some places well.
Speaker 6 (09:00):
And again with the whole political machine thing that was
an early version of like the mob, not an early version,
but operated very similarly, make getting collections and influencing votes
and you know, state events.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, intimidating rival politicians. Even so, he is a character,
fraud with mystery and could be an episode of his own.
Not the nicest man. He was a controversial figure in
Boston because, despite the fact that he made a ton
of money through what he claims were legitimate means, in
(09:38):
high society in Boston, money alone cannot pave your path
to acceptance. It doesn't matter how much money you have,
if you earned it in the last few generations, you're
a peasant.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
It's gotta be old money, yeah, old old money.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And he wanted to buy his way into this society
to gain the acceptance but it was tough because when
big rumors about him, even though he always say he
was a legitimate businessman, one of the big rumors about
him for decades that persist even today is that he
was intimately involved with bootlegging.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, and we can recommend a book called The Patriarch,
The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy
if you want to learn a lot more about him,
right right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And he went on to work as a US ambassador
to London, which started to gain him entrance into the
upper echelons of the political class. And it's there that
he continued to make some hard decisions. He got kind
of house of cards with it, didn't he. But we'll
(10:44):
get into that his time over the pond in a
little bit. For now, maybe we can talk about some
of the notable individuals of the Kennedy Klan.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
First we have JFK.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty fifth President of these fair
United States. Then we have his are there, Ted Kennedy,
a Senator from Massachusetts, and I believe, guys, the long
one of the longest standing senators my history of the office.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Known as the Lion of the Senate, the Lion.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
Then we have Robert Bobby right Kennedy, Yes, who is
Attorney General and later a senator from New York.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And these are just the top three, right, We've got
there's several other Kennedy's that are influential in business and
that are influential to one degree or another in politics.
The family overall has amassed a cartoonishly large fortune at
this point. It's estimated to be five hundred million dollars
if we're talking net worth. But that's just what's on
(11:42):
the books, and there's some pretty compelling evidence that, you know,
when you're at that level, there's pretty compelling evidence that
they have the means to not be entirely transparent.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
To like offshore accounts.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, offshore accounts maybe things that wouldn't be recognized in
terms of assets or things that are you know, properties
in other countries where reporting laws.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Are a little looser, a little different.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, just like the accusations of the Bush family years
back buying all that land in Paraguay.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Right, do you remember that one?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I remember that. That one disappeared from the news too.
Speaker 6 (12:21):
Weird when that happens, you gotta wonder, I know, their machinations.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, does it mean they were just wrong?
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Or what you know, because one thing that we don't
see a lot of nowadays is any attention paid to
retractions in the news, right, because nobody came out and said, no,
that never happened. The Paraguay thing, it just disappeared.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
We just if we don't talk about it anymore, it
never happened.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Like at the Pentagon where they say we don't lie,
the truth just changes.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, No, that's a real like they actually say lead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So you'll probably notice, fellow conspiracy realist, that at this
point we have not mentioned anything particularly tragic, just the
story of one's family's rise to the political elite of
the US. But what if there is more to this tale?
Could the Kennedy family in fact be cursed?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
We'll find out right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Years where it gets crazy. So how did this curse begin?
Speaker 6 (13:32):
If it's a curse, you just did two handed quotation
fingers large. But yeah, but it's hard to argue with
the level of seeming cursedness that we're about to delve into.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, there's a there's a guy named Edward Kleine who
is billed as a political researcher, and he says that
he thinks this curse has haunted the Kennedy family for
one hundred and fifty years, but there's no uh no,
one really agrees on what events started it or how
a curse is defined.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
Well, a curse is what happened when a witch will,
let's have fingers at you and says, I curss thee.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, it could be anybody if you know the evil eyes.
That's true, I'm doing the evil.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Double.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Let's say, okay, let's put it this way. A lot
of it's interesting that Klein puts it at one hundred
and fifty years because most everything seems to stem back
to the offspring of Joe Kennedy, not the grandfather, but
the father of Robert and JFK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And
(14:45):
a lot of times with a curse, the folklore of
a curse, the history of curses, you curse a person
in their bloodline essentially, right, so descendants from that curse, well,
I mean, yeah, a lot.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Of times a pox upon your house.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So it's interesting that they put one hundred and fifty
years because I wouldn't I wouldn't go back exactly that far.
If I was the one saying, hey, this family looks cursed,
I would probably put it on Joe rather than on
Patrick Joseph Kennedy, just because it's mostly his kids in
their offspring that are really getting the bad end of the.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Stick, the fuzzy side of the lollipop.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, as our old mentor used to say, Yeah, that's
a really good point. So when we're talking about Joseph himself,
let's go back to what he actually did across the
pond that would later become controversial.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So we mentioned before that he was he became an
ambassador to England while he is working in his political career.
Then you know, World War Two happened, and in the
run up to World War two, as the Nazi Party
begins taking over, there's a lot of debate in England
as to, you know, how do we deal with this
threat with these people that are threatening us, They're threatening
(16:02):
all of our neighbors. They're doing unspeakable, horrible things. We're
going to try and cut them off from a monetary
perspective as much as we can, you know, by not
buying and selling goods to them. Anyway, there are a
lot of ideas that are floated around, and there are
some people in high society in England who disagree completely.
(16:23):
So we've got on one side. You've got let's go
through this, Ben, We've got Neville Chamberlain who Nazi appeasement
is what it's kind of referred to as right, but
it's more of let's not necessarily give them everything they want,
but let's try and work with them to a point
where they're not gonna bomb the absolute crap out of
us and just overthrow our government.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, the idea being that maybe not entirely capitulating giving
a few things to Nazi Germany at the time, would
I guess stable eyes the country or sort of mitigate
the aggression and also put them on a footing where
(17:06):
the Western Powers were saying to Germany, we understand that
you guys got pretty screwed after World War One.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, well, we see that you've got issues.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
We're sorry that you feel like you need an apology.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
Do you get a sense though this wasn't entirely with
evil intent, I mean it was, you know, it was,
it was. It was one way of behaving to try
to get things done right.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I mean, it's a philosophy on how to handle a
very tough situation, because on the other end, when you've
got military leaders who are saying no, we have we
absolutely have to fight them on the beaches. We had
to fight them everywhere. We got to say no, you bastards,
get back.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Can we play that? You play the let's Paul? Can
we play the Churchill.
Speaker 8 (17:52):
Quote from Seats and Oceans. We shall fight with growing
confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend
our island, whatever the couch may be. We shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds.
(18:14):
We shall fight in the fields and in the streaks.
We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
That really was Gary Oldman's finest role is finest time.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
I mean he deserved the darkest I remember when we
had we had an ad read for that ship, and
we had to redo it because we said the darkest hour.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
It was actually just the darkest hour, the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah, yeah, we hope you enjoyed that ad reading. And
it is a good film. I'll give him that. I
really think that guy's a great actor. But as much
as I like Gary Oldman, my one of my favorite
historical figures at this day, at this point in time
in the story is rip, roar and drunk. Look in
(19:00):
Winston Churchill, that guy was insane. He like he helped
win World War two and I don't know if he
woke up remembering it most mornings.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
Yeah, just oh no, you're right, man.
Speaker 6 (19:14):
He definitely seemed sast almost any time he was on mic.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Yeah, but you know what that's it's like, what is it?
Speaker 8 (19:21):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Hemingway says, you're not really a man until you're drunk,
being like you're not your best self. Not to encourage
the listeners here to just live life drunk, but there's
something to be said in that when you see these
people that are just like so in the zone through
utter drunkenness.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
It was to.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Behold, it was probably a you know, there's state dependent learning.
They had normalized at that point, so they may not
have been able. It's really sad to say they may
not have been able to function.
Speaker 6 (19:50):
So same with those ad men, you know, like oh yeah,
just the culture of like pitching these ideas while taking
your nine a m glass of whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
You know what kind assass A frast fancy boy is
too good for Martini at en right, Okay, So this
so Winston Churchill said we have to go to war.
Appeasement will not work. And you know, his side was right,
but that is not the side that Joe was on.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
That's correct, and and so a lot of people think
that perhaps some well actually Wilisia's go into this. He
was maligned, like he was viewed in a very negative light,
especially in the United States after this came out, that
he was they you know, he was called the Nazi sympathizer.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
He was on the wrong side of history. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, And again, like it's tough to say back then,
like maybe he truly believed that this was a way
to get out of it in a better way than
just I mean, we're talking about scores of people, you know,
British citizens who died as a result of the World
War two and the Nazis. But at the time it
was just a terrible thing, a terrible thing to do
(20:57):
in the aftermath of World War Two. And then he
had political aspirations in the US and ultimately those were
just dashing against the wall because everybody looked at him
in that light.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Well it's rough too.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Considering the outcome, he definitely comes off as like taking
the moral low ground, you know.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
When you really knowing what we know or what you
knew even just a little bit later, even like you know,
toying with that.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Notion was a bad look. They also had.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
There are indications that he had personal prejudice involved. As
far as anti Semitism, well.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
There are their indications, and it is tough because a
lot of it ends up being not rumor but a
little more hearsay than you know, an actual thing you
can prove.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
There's correspondence between some of the Kennedy family from Kennedy
and Joe Junior in nineteen thirty four in which the
son calls the Nazis dislike of Jewish people quote well founded,
and the dad is saying, I'm very pleased and gratified
at your observations of the German city situation.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Geez, okay, that's worse than I understood.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
So could that have been How is that related to
this curse?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, the thought is, perhaps, you know, that's pre a
lot of the cursing that's happening. I think nineteen forty
four is the first one that we've like clocked later
on in our timeline as to the first part of
the curse. So it would make sense if there was
a curse applied around this time, like beginning to middle
(22:31):
of World War.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Two, I as seem and that that kind of verges
on a spiritual aspect.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Oh yeah, sure, well, well that's this is another theory
that I've seen online, is that perhaps because of the
way that Joe Kennedy amassed his fortune. You know, even
though he says, oh, you know, I'm a businessman, just
like his grandma, his father said, I'm a businessman, perhaps
there was some ill gotten gains there, maybe a family
that was you know, taken advantage of, or someone got hurt.
(22:58):
So basically, either we've got in some of the theories
that have been put forth, either he's been cursed in
some way because of his involvement with World War two,
in the Nazis, or with some other group that he
wronged in amassing his fortune. Okay, that's what I have
seen online.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I like that, you say group. I like the idea
of some.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Real world interest pursuing someone. So you can already see
some of the issues here, folks.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
There's no.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Universally agreed on theory on what could have happened or
triggered a curse. There are several compelling guesses. As you said, Matt,
the most compelling timelines do seem to trace it to
Joe Kennedy, absolutely, but most use of the term curse
just centers on describing this strange collection of tragic events
(23:53):
that appear to bedevil this family much more so than
the average Jane and John Doe Smith Nuyan.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Nuian.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
It's twenty eighteen. It's American.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
Man, that's a fun one. I never knew how to
pronounce that until about twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, yeah, is it hyphenated Smith Nugan, I.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm just I'm picking a generic, average American family.
Speaker 6 (24:18):
So it's crazy, though, you guys, when you see these
stacked up like in a list, it's a lot.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But also remember there are a lot of Kennedy's, that's true,
and associated Kennedy's.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
That's true. And then times were volatile.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And there are people who are Kennedy adjacent sort of
the way, like Redman is always hanging out with Wu Tang,
but is not himself in Wu Tang.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Yeah, what are okay?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
So, like, what are some examples of the curses I
think are examples of the curse itself.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Well, ultimately, there are a lot of deaths that we
would consider to be untimely. Sure early deaths, every death
is earlier than it should be, right or airplane accidents.
That's a whole category that we can kind of put
in here, because the Kennedys fly a lot. Most some
of the most affluent people do fly the most because
(25:10):
you can afford it, or perhaps you have your pilot's license,
and in this case, the Kennedys did fly a whole lot.
The first though, the first person who was killed in
an aircraft accident was actually serving his country when when
he was killed he was not a private pilot at
the time. On August twelfth, nineteen forty four. Joseph Kennedy Junior.
(25:32):
This is the older brother of JFK. He was killed
in an aircraft explosion when he was serving during the
Second World War. So nineteen forty four, Joseph Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 6 (25:44):
Okay, So, then in nineteen forty eight May thirteen, we
have Kathleen Cavendish, who is JFK's sister and also the
wife of the Marquis of Hartington.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Oh yeah, what is that?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Ah?
Speaker 6 (25:58):
Yes, the Barque of Hartington make some kind of weird
like like Connecticut local government position.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Let's do a Google search.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
What's Yeah, it's a landed title in the UK. So
what a lot of what a lot of political dynasties
do to get around what they sell to you as
a voter if you're in the US. What a lot
of them do to get the aristocratic heights that they
(26:29):
want as they marry into aristocratic families. So when it's
voting season, they can still put on some I'll say it,
they can still put on a pair of bullshit overalls
in a baseball cap and act like they have remotely
anything to do with ordinary people.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, like a duke.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
An earl, duke over heydude.
Speaker 5 (26:51):
That's funny anyway.
Speaker 6 (26:53):
So we've got Kathleen Cavendish, the apparent husband to the
Marquis of Hartington.
Speaker 5 (26:58):
She dies in a plane crash in France.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
And there's another plane crash in June nineteenth of nineteen
sixty four. Ted Kennedy is in this plane crash, and
he and a senator named Birch Bob both survive with
some pretty pretty grizzly injuries.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
And the Reaper is gunning for this fellow.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
One of Kennedy's aides dies in the crash, and the
pilot of the plane also dies. I have a quick
question with this. It seems like a ton of plane crashes.
But to your earlier point, Matt, they were flying more
than average. And also I'm wondering if plane technology, if
aviation safety technology was just not where it is now.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
I'm certain they must be the cave well.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
And they're also in small private Yeah, I mean, if
there's just a higher risk with those with those aircraft.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
No Kennedy will fly commercial unheard of.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
In sixty nine there is the infamous chap Equitic incident
where Mary Joe Kopecni dies, is abandoned to drown by
Ted Kennedy, who survives and somehow retains a political career.
But that is commonly considered to be the nail in
(28:15):
the coffin of his presidential ambitions.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, but again, somehow.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
I would say, rightly, so, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Then you're right, somehow ended up being one of the
most beloved senators out there.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Somehow, soon we forget, so what else we have, because
this isn't all of it?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, is it?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
No? No, we're still going through all this. Okay, nineteen
ninety seven, you have Michael L. Kennedy. He's one of
Robert Robert Kennedy's children. He dies in a skiing accident
of all things, out in Colorado, and apparently there was
this Kennedy tradition of doing downhill skiing while playing American football.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So it's this weird thing where they would split up
the like if you're looking the whole slope, they would
split the slope up into varying fields. So like when
you're in this section, you're in one field and you
can score, then you're in this section you can score
in this field, and it just kind of goes down, down, down, down.
Speaker 5 (29:11):
So what you're saying, mad is that he was asking
for it.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
No geez no, no.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
Okay, alright, I misunderstood your meaning.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I will. I will say that some onlookers who would
view the this Kennedy tradition of playing this game thought
it was extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
That's what I'm saying. It sounds it sounds really dumb.
Michael lemoy and Kennedy, why are you doing this name?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Okay, so much to live for? Well, the strange thing
is that you get rid of your polls, because you
need your hands to catch the football and to throw it. Yeah,
and you're just going down these big slopes and you're
looking behind you sometimes to throw the ball, looking ahead
of you throw the ball. And yeah, he unfortunately hit
a tree.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
In thirty nine, right.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, to come through his injuries that way.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Thirty nine years old.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
And then there's another aircraft incident, I believe.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Oh, yes, yes, this is John F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yes, his parents probably called him.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
They're probably just screamed Junior at him, Junia Junior, study
wicked hot.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yes, so John F. Kennedy's son, the junior. He was
on his way to Martha's vineyard up there in Cape
Cod again, flying a light plane, like a small plane,
and he crashed after he got a little disoriented. I
guess while he was in flight. He was flying at night,
which is you know, a little dangerous because if your
(30:33):
instruments go bad, it's it's pretty rough out there. He
ended up crashing in the ocean and he died there.
Speaker 6 (30:39):
Yes, it seems like these Kennedy's were risk takers.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
True.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
True, there's more to the story too, because this is
just scratching the surface I'm sure you can figure out
what we're going to dive into next, but see if
you're correct or not.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
After this brick.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
We have returned, and we must also acknowledge the most
widely known, untimely deaths in the Kennedy line. Those are
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three. As he rides through Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Lee Harvey Oswald, who we later discover was his assassin,
is gunned down at a police station two days later,
and this created, as we on this show in this
community very well know, widespread conspiracies about the president's death.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
You know, was there more than one shooter? Was he
taken out by the government.
Speaker 6 (31:47):
I mean, it's too long days, the mob, the Russians,
it just goes on.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yes, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Look, it doesn't matter if you consider yourself a fan
of the Kennedys or not. They were super into nepotism,
and nepotism is poisonous for the type of government that
we are.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Supposed to have.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I just have to put that in there. I know
that these people pasted. I know these assassinations were unjust,
but it's doing everyone at disservice if we ignore the
fact that nepotism is a very, very bad thing.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
You feel very strongly about this, Ben, You've mentioned it before.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Them, absolutely, and I will continue mentioning it until somebody
with a problem gets their brother or their cousin in
office and shuts down our show because it matters that much.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I hope I'm not poking the bear too much here, guys.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
But regardless, I'm not saying that they're I'm not saying
that they are inherently bad.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Roberto Robert F.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Kennedy is the Attorney General, right, so he's holding one
of the highest offices in the land legally speaking, while
his brother is arguably holding one of the highest offices
in the world.
Speaker 5 (32:57):
This is weird.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That's weird.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
Now, this is the whole thing. Yeah, and then he
gets he gets a bullet too. He gets an assassin's
bullet too, right, I mean.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
Assassinations in US politics.
Speaker 5 (33:08):
I don't see them as being wide rife in this.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
They're relatively rare.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, yeah, so he is.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
He's thirty eight years old, and he is calling for
further investigations into the JFK assassination because he believes there's
more to the story. Like the majority of Americans in
the wake of the JFK assassination, he thinks someone is lying,
and on June sixth, nineteen sixty eight, he is assassinated
(33:40):
after winning the California Democratic primary. The gunman sir Han.
Sir Han is alive now as we record.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
This isn't this the one where he was supposedly some
kind of Manchurian candidate.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
He has at least maintained that he has no memory
of this, that he was programmed somehow, and they're also
He also argues that forensic evidence and eyewitness reports of
the shooting back up his story that he was not
the fatal shooter.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
It's fascinating if you started digging into it. I don't
remember if we've done a huge thing on here and
here here and did something. I know we talked about it.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
Yeah, it may have been.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
Like a like a Hodgepodge kind of episode, but I
definitely remember talking about this sleeper agent kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, which is frightening. And the big question is can
you pull it off? How how much it's I guess
it's more a degree of compulsion it's not can we
make people do things that would not ordinarily do without
their own knowledge of their actions. That's how advertising works.
The question is how far can we push it?
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Well?
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Can I take it? Just to quick aside?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (34:52):
In service of this story, Have you guys seen the
latest Darren Brown.
Speaker 5 (34:56):
Special on that miracle Miracle?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (34:59):
And you guys, if you don't who Darren Brown is,
he is what is deemed a mentalist. He is an
expert at everything from hypnosis to some more kind of
sketchy pseudosciencey things he's accused of doing. There's a neuro
linguistic programming I think is one of them. And he
is a master of implanting ideas into his subjects' heads.
(35:20):
And he is very good at picking out who will
be most susceptible too said implanted ideas, And when you
see him do his thing, it's hard to like poo
poo it, And it really does make me think, like
what you were saying, Ben, how far could you push
that if you weren't just a showman trying to make
a cool Netflix special.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
I have followed that guy for years.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
Same I think.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Longtime listeners have heard us mention some of his cooler tricks.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
It's weird that all of a sudden, though, he's getting
Netflix specials and he's been around for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You think it's us, you guys hope so, I'd like
to think so, But for our purposes, I think the
fantastic players. There's so many questions that remain about these assassinations.
We got pretty oustiously optimistic earlier this year when some
formally classified statements about the JFK assassination were due to
(36:09):
be released, but not much.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, came out of it.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
It wasn't much in there got.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
A black ink yeah, yeah, like that old Onion article
where the CIA says they found out they've been using
black highlighters.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, for the past few decades.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So these are the two most popular ones. But there
are other stories that get ignored, And we would be
remiss if we did not point out a story, a
tragedy in the Kennedy family that for decades was just
not talked about, not just not talked about by the
Kennedys themselves, but not talked about by their support staff,
(36:50):
the various I guess people that they bound to obey
them or however you would describe that relationship and they
the president talked about it either. And that is Rosemary Kennedy,
who was one of the daughters of Rose Kennedy and
daughter of Joe Kennedy. She was arguably intellectually disabled in
(37:12):
a family with very high standards, and her father scheduled
a lobotomy for her, of course without her consent, a
catastrophic operation that left her with the mental capacity of
a toffler.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Well, yeah, when she was twenty three.
Speaker 10 (37:28):
This was forty one and nineteen forty one, so this
predates all the other stuff. So there's also some rumors
out there that maybe again you kind of got to
go out on a limb for this stuff, but maybe
somehow she's taken revenge on her family.
Speaker 6 (37:46):
Oh yeah, such a barbaric thing to do to someone.
And you know, it was just such a blind shot
in the dark. You know's nothing backing it up. What
would they have said was a reason that this would
be a good thing to do.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Well, by the way, she was assertive and she was
rebellious as she was getting older. Oh so like she
was endangering the Kennedy name. Essentially she had ideas, Yeah, seriously.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
So this and didn't perhaps have the sense of nuanced
diplomacy and brand building that these folks were doing on
their way to becoming your next American empire. So the
way it was most likely sold was this will make
her more amenable and docile. That's the way people handle
(38:30):
the botomies. Oh my god, it'll help them be calm forever.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
Spoiler alert for one flow over the cuckoo's nest like
that time and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, there you go. Oh man, that's such a great book.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
By the way that I think, I think this is
the best horror movie version of the Kennedy Curse is
that they do this horrible thing to their one child,
and it's kept a secret, and she's actually somehow taking.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
Especially the one child being somewhat precocious and willful. I
guess right, and you know, and then I'm gonna shut
you down. You didn't think I was good enough to
be part of your you know, family line? Well, here
we go.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
That's a very compelling. Oh yeah, that's a very compelling
story that I have to ask you, guys and everyone listening,
do you all believe in something like karma? Do you
think it's a possibility.
Speaker 6 (39:29):
I don't know it's I think it's a name we
give for something very ephemeral and indescribable. I said to
someone the other day. God is the name we give
for improbable happenstance, you know what I mean, where Like
things just line up in a certain way, things work out,
and you call it God or something. That's just I
see this very similarly. It's the opposite, though, things align
(39:52):
in a very horrible way over a long period of time,
a dark coincidence, right.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I don't know if bad things happen to people who
deserve them. I think often people who are not constrained
by things like empathy or the human race being viewed
as a team sport. Yeah, I think they go around
doing terrible things without foreseeable or predictable consequences.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
Because they just steamroller anyone that's in their way and
they have no scruples.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, you hear the kids. That's how you get ahead
in life. You don't be nice, You become a steamroller,
and then you hit go and that's it done.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Until until the good, the good guys who do exist
find you and stop you.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It's just I don't know, Well, it's hard to stop
a steamroll. The only way you can really stop a
steamroller is if you've got a hill, then you're good.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
That's good man. Or with a bigger steamroller.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, like a giant zamboni. I know they're not steam rollers.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
It's all good.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I just wanted to say, zamboni. Have you seen they
are fantastic inventions.
Speaker 5 (40:55):
Makes me think of a magician.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yes, yeah, uh me zamboni.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Right, that's the ice you got, great zamboni.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You know. So, Also, to be fair to the controversial
figure of Joe Kennedy, it is completely possible that they
legitimately thought this would help, that they wouldn't be crippling
their daughter.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, when you have a doctor telling you this is
a little help, per No.
Speaker 6 (41:24):
I know even today we we we just we take
the doctor's word at face value. Even with that, when
it comes to our own health, it's so easy to
just like, well, this is you're you're the expert.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
This company is paying me to tell you that this
drug is awesome for what you got.
Speaker 6 (41:39):
Did you see that thing where an artist put a
giant sculpture of a heroin spoon outside of that company
that makes all the opioids?
Speaker 5 (41:46):
Whoa he got.
Speaker 6 (41:47):
Arrested for like impeding a thoroughfare. It's like a really
ridiculous clause. That's the company's name now I can't remember.
It's not bear It. It was the Purdue, the Purdue
family pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Not the chicken.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Not the chicken. No, not to malign the chicken produce.
They are unrelated to the opiate produce. But that you know,
what's a great point about that, is there a lot
of people with the last named Kennedy who are not
themselves related.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
To these Kennedys. Yes, so we should we should point
that out. We should also ask.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Is this a true curse or is this just a
murky set of terrible, indefensible coincidences. Skeptics argue that what
appears to be a curse is more likely just cherry picking.
We're only finding notably tragic events from this huge family,
and that it's also not improbable or even unlikely for
(42:47):
a similar large family to have similar disasters, regardless of
their social standing. So if we just expand our sample
size large enough from that Smith New Yen example or whatever,
and will eventually be able to find someone who is
in a playing crash, someone who got a very specific
type of cancer.
Speaker 6 (43:07):
It's the same even when you start tracing people's lineages,
and at the end of the day, everyone's related to everyone, right, Yeah,
you get a long enough timeline, big enough sample size,
stuff happens, right.
Speaker 5 (43:18):
But you guys, I'm just gonna ask you, Matt, curses.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Do I believe in them?
Speaker 5 (43:24):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Man, that's tough, because if you don't believe in curses,
you better believe you're getting cursed. But no, I don't
really believe in curses. But that's just because I guess
my life has been pretty good so far, so you know, yeah,
what about You.
Speaker 5 (43:40):
Know, there's compelling stuff out there. I'm always a little
bit of a.
Speaker 6 (43:46):
Fence sitter when it comes to this kind of stuff,
But I don't know, sometimes I feel pulled.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
In one way or the other depending on what I'm
looking at, you know what I mean. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (43:56):
I try not to have a hard fast no to anything.
I try to be open curses, no, just in general.
Speaker 8 (44:05):
You know.
Speaker 6 (44:06):
You know, I'm definitely skeptical about a lot of things,
but I am always open to being convinced otherwise. And
when you look at this stuff just stacked up the
way we looked at it sums up, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Here's the deal, do you? What do you think? Ben?
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Oh? Well, okay, so I am full disclosure.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
I should say that various parts of my family do
completely believe in this, for various reasons that we will
not get into. But Ted Kennedy himself seemed to believe
that there was a curse afoot. He publicly mentioned the
phrase in nineteen sixty nine when he was testifying about
that time that he abandoned and drowned Mary Joe Kopecney.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, that curse that, you know, befell him as he escaped.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
And yeah, I gotta be really tough for him to
again his cushy job right to again leave a woman
in a car to die of asphyxiation just for taking
and ride with him.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
That's what he did.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
I'm not saying that he didn't do good legislation, but
he also again abandoned some what left of a car
to die, basically got away with murder and got away
with Yeah. So let's let's just play the clip. You
can hear him say it's a curse.
Speaker 7 (45:17):
Whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the
Kennedys whether there was some justifiable reason for me to
doubt what had happened and to delay my report.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
And to your question, no, there's another factor here, and
it's one that doesn't often get seriously considered in the
mass media because when we call something a curse, we're
conjuring these images, right of this, this nefarious warlock, a sorcerer,
a witch, the evil eye, a pox on your house,
and all this highly dramatic fictional stuff. Yeah, grim was
(45:54):
I have newt right, secret, secret arcane markings in the
house where you can't see, right, written.
Speaker 6 (46:01):
In blood, written in blood, Grandma's You ever been cursed
by a grandma? That's pretty that's the worst kind of curse.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
A grandmother curse.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
The worst kind of curse in the first is the
words of a grandmother.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Right, so.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Hold the horses, she's heading for the buckwheat. That's not
my grandmother cursed.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
But there there can be something foul afoot the functions
like a curse without it necessarily being supernatural. One of
these could be. One example of this would be a
blood feud. So if, for instance, and I will not
use us as examples because I don't want to jinx us, right,
that's just another version that's like like a low level curse.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I want to jinx us.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
So let's say that's when you curse yourself by accident
or whomever said I hated that game.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
When people we say the same thing. Yeah, I was
trying to let people.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Will says it's a conspiracy by the Coca Cola company
to get you to buy other people cokes. Just so
you know that.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
Oh that's right, it's one, two, three four you owe
me a coke? Like what, Yeah, that's a big thing.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
You have to buy coke for a really yeah, conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
So there can be a vendetta in curse form that
functions like a curse but doesn't have supernatural stuff. It
just has a group of people who have agreed to
carry out actively, right.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
Just tormenting members of another.
Speaker 6 (47:23):
Like hat Fields and McCoy's or something like that, or
you know, poisonings, political assassinations, you know, crimes of that level.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Too, right, right, right, exactly.
Speaker 6 (47:34):
And when you're a big giant political dynasty like the Kennedy's, right,
you're a target, man, you got a you're a moving target.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
That's exactly what I'm thinking because the primary examples for
people who believe there is a curse in something that
operates like it would be the allegations of the assassination
of RFK being related to his investigation of his brother's assassination.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
That for people who believe they are related, and.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I'm one, I rarely stayed my personal opinion on the show.
But too much stuff, too much stuff adds.
Speaker 5 (48:10):
You really brought it full circle.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Man.
Speaker 5 (48:11):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 6 (48:12):
It's a really good point you make that this, you know,
curse is another name for a phenomenon that you can't
fully explain. But when you really start to look at
this situation, it really starts to feel more like they
just had a lot of enemies.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, I mean, they definitely had quite a few conflicts.
I don't think you can get it at that level
without it. But whether you want to call it a curse,
the result of being above the law for generations or
just playing bad luck, the Kennedy family remains beset by
problems in the modern day. That is correct, folks. The
tragedies did not stop after the assassinations. They did not
(48:47):
stop with the stuff we mentioned, and the Kennedys are
not always the victims in these situations. In seventy three.
Nineteen seventy three, August Joseph P. Kennedy the Second crashed
a gep paralyzed his passenger. David Kennedy died of a
drug overdose in Palm Beach in nineteen eighty four. In April,
(49:10):
and then William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with
the rape of a young woman in the Palm Beach
Kennedy estate in April of nineteen ninety one. He has
received numerous charges of sexual assault. This was the only
one to go to court and he was acquitted.
Speaker 6 (49:28):
No way, Yeah, sarcastic if you couldn't.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Tell if you're interested in that aspect of certain Kennedys.
But if there's also rumors about a lot of the
other male Kennedy's right having to do with sexual assault
and rape in some of these things, most of these
are allegations that cannot be proven. But you can go
to the New York Post and you can read something
(49:55):
by Maureen Callahan and it's called the Real Curse of
the Kennedy and it deals a lot with some of
these allegations.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
And then we have the case of Michael Skakeel, a
nephew of Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, who was convicted
of bludgeoning his neighbor in two thousand and two.
Speaker 6 (50:15):
Wait, wait, wait, this is the first non Kennedy name
we've had in this sordid tale. Why is the escape
and not a Kennedy?
Speaker 1 (50:22):
This is the redman to the Wu Tangs kind of
situation I have mentioned earlier. Yeah, both were fifteen at
the time. I feel like we talked. Did we talk
about this in the chap Equittic episode?
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I don't think we have.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Oh well, he was accused of bludgeoning a girl named
Martha Moxley to death with a golf club when they
were both fifteen. There were some other kids that were there.
He was granted a new trial in twenty thirteen and
freed on bail. Three years later, prosecutors appealed the court
(50:55):
reinstated his conviction. He's asked them to reconsider. He's still
on bail.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Jeez. So that was two thousand and two when he
was first like taking a court for that stuff.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
That's when he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, gotcha, And he was convicted of doing that. But
he was convicted in two thousand and two. But the
crime occurred in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Okay, and then we had those two in the nineties,
by the way, the skiing accident, and then I think
one car accident or was that a plane crash, plane
crash plane straight yeah, yeah, that was ninety nine JFK.
Junior's plane crash. So two in the nineties. Then there
after that, and then we get to twenty twelve May sixteenth,
(51:40):
This is when Mary Richardson Kennedy was found. She had
committed suicide. She was found there on the estate in Bedford,
New York. And that remember that thing that we were
talking about, the real curse of the Kennedys, It surrounds
that particular suicide. If you're interested again, if you want
(52:01):
to read more.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Well, okay, on this note, of course, as Matt said,
every death is too soon, and so we hope that
we hope that.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
If except for Hitler, for Hitler, sure.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
And so of course we hope that your family is
not beset by problems like this. We also want to
know what do you think. Do you think there is
a genuine curse or is this just an agglomeration of
coincidence framed in a specific way.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
You know, m hm.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah. And if you do think it is a curse,
why do you think it's happening. What's the core of it,
the inciting incident, I guess because there's always one of those,
if there is a curse.
Speaker 1 (52:46):
And I'm interested if a Kennedy ran for president today,
once you vote for.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Them, mm on principle, Like just because it's a name,
is what we're asking you.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yeah, like name recognition far Like how much does that
play into the story.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
And we're just thinking about it's because we're thinking about
changing our names honestly to Kennedy to so we can
run for office. So all three of.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Us are all four of us paulls out on this
full disclosure.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
We're all going to start flying small aircraft ink cod but.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
You know, we'll be careful and it has to be
four of us so that we're not kkk.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Yep, you know what I mean. Just think of the
memes we got to have.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
For once one of us goes down, though we're screwed.
Speaker 1 (53:30):
Maybe we should each just get take the name of
a political dynasty.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Okay, there could be a Roosevelt Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush Clinton.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Oh who got stuck with Bush I'll be bush.
Speaker 5 (53:48):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
It's all.
Speaker 6 (53:50):
I knew the golden pipes would would rear their beautiful
tones eventually.
Speaker 1 (53:55):
And since we we finally got some amazing uh map
pressions Matt impressions there, that means.
Speaker 5 (54:03):
We can Matt libs, Matt lips.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
There we go. That's worth it.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
We can now bid this episode a do in peace,
lay it to rest, and hope that stragedies do not
continue in the Kennedy family, in your own family, heck,
in any family.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
Haven't they suffered.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Enough enough with the tragedies world and fate and whoever
else controls this kind of thing. Stop it just be nice.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
But yeah, let us know what do you think it's
a matter of karma? Is a coincidence? We want to
hear your take. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook,
and Twitter, where we are conspiracy stuff, conspiracy Stuff show
some variation thereof.
Speaker 6 (54:41):
You can also find us on Facebook, and if you
really want to go down a fun rabbit hole, you
can join our Here's where It Gets Crazy Facebook group
where you'll find things like this amazing poster of this
upcoming movie starring Sam Elliott called the Man Who Killed
Hitler and then the Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Oh really both.
Speaker 6 (54:59):
Yeah, I'm both a ring Sam Elliott, Aiden Turner, Caitlin
Fitzgerald and Larry Miller and our boy Ron Livingston. And
at first people thought that it was a spoof, but
it is a real picture my friends coming soon to
a cinema near you.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Wow. Okay, And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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