Kennedy Curse | Conspiracy Theories Behind the Most Influential Family in American History

The Kennedy family has often been referred to as American royalty. Some know them for their fame, their wealth, and their power. Others may have only heard of them through the heartbreaking pattern of tragedy. In addition to their political prowess, untimely death and unfortunate circumstances have run in the Kennedy family for longer than many might be aware. So today, we're diving into the history and the theories of the infamous Kennedy curse. This is Red Webb. Welcome back, Task Force 2, another episode of Red Webb, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me hearing this case potentially for the first time Alfredo Diaz. Okay. The Kennedy's. No of the family. I don't know anything too crazy about him. I mean, looking forward to learning more and seeing how deep this rabbit hole goes. Yeah, dude. I had been lightly aware of this for a long time. You know, you and I almost exactly two years ago now, when we first went independent, covered the JFK assassination case and all the conspiracies within that. And that gave me a deeper glimpse into this. But man, looking at this now, the Kennedy curse goes way deeper further back than I would have expected, but it does seem to follow a specific trajectory through the family line. It's really wild. So I'm going to walk you through the history of that and then some of the theories that attempt to explain might maybe like what's going on here. But what do you know if anything about the Kennedy curse? I mean, nothing to be honest. Yeah. I know that the, you know, maybe random tragedies, but nothing ever sticks in my mind when they come up. So I'm very interested to see what would the curse entail. How is it affect the family? How many generations of the family is affected by this supposed to curse whatnot and so great questions. And it's nice to speak to your fresh mind about it because then, you know, sometimes I know too much about one thing or not enough about another. And so when I get to walk you through these, you ask the right questions that make me go, oh, right, I didn't even think about that. And so it'll be interesting to get your take as we go through this. But as we dive in task force, we are cooking in the kitchen. There's a lot going on in the kitchen is red web pod.com. How do you like that? Freedom. Oh, this Wednesday, we've got a discord event. It's break room live. Come join us as we record our break room show. It's kind of like our behind the scene show where we talk about what's going on in our lives. This Wednesday, it is happening one to two p.m. central time because we have a global audience. We're trying to move that time frame around to help others be able to join here there in the other places. And then Friday, we have a gameplay in another horror game called the floor above. Very excited about that one. Let's come check it out. And then some big stuff next Monday, Fredo, you know this very well. We have our travel ghost hunt coming out. So that's going to dovetail into the episode and we go into the history of West Virginia Penitentiary. You guys voted on it. And so we went to it that we did it was a massive place is a big place and this is one in particular that I really, really want people to watch because I I don't like we've done stuff with Estus methods before, and it's like, okay, that's interesting. This one has such a visual that I can't even Oh no, okay, I'm going to tell you straight up task force. And I say this in next week's episode, too, I won't go into the weeds on this, but I had some life events happen in my world that prevented my ability to go with them this last weekend as they film this. And so Fredo Christian and Shane held it down. And so I'll be with you watching this episode for the first time and they won't tell me what happened. So when we do the debrief, you're going to see me react to this for the very first time. They're being very teasing about what it all is. So I just keep escalating, man. Things. I don't understand how we're hitting this streak of escalation and you know, Shane explained that night, he was like, there's a look, he's usually talk of when you go to a place and you experience something and you start going to other places, it's a snowball effect. You carry this energy with you. And I was like, Oh, okay, all right. That could help explain what's going on here because there is, there is stuff that happens clear as day that I don't think anyone's going to be able to explain. And then there's things that happened with certain devices that have never worked for us before. But like, really, task force, he said he wouldn't tell me what device it was. So I just sent them off with all of them and three of us had a horror movie moment where we all paused and looked back and it was I just all say, that's it. Oh, what a promo, dude. Oh my God. I'm so so much FOMO. Yeah. And now I'm not overhiving this one. This one is very interesting. Dang, dude. I cannot wait to see it. Task force stay tuned. We will do our debrief in the coming weeks here. That's okay. Again, lots cooking with that kind of rattled me here. Next week is also the beginning of July and that brings a couple of things. One, we have our annual founders collection, Fredo. We've been cooking in the kitchen on this one. We found a really awesome artist and with a very unique art style, who is helping us craft some really dope Japanese street where we have a moth man inspired design and a yokai inspired design that I think are absolute fire. So those will be available exclusively in July and then that is going to support the six year anniversary stream, which is on July 10th. So if you want to keep the snowball of ghost hunting going, help support us on that stream because we are pushing to of many stretch goals, get another ghost hunt on the books for Halloween. For merch, Patreon members get early access. Okay. Lots of promo redwebpod.com. Thank you all so very much with that said, lots of sensitive topics in this particular one. You know, there's a lot of death and a lot of other things. So if you'd like those, they are in the description, let us begin. The Kennedy curse refers to the timeline of familial tragedy that has followed the famous Kennedy family for decades. The legacy of the Kennedy family actually begins all the way back on January 14th, 1858 with the birth of a man named Patrick Joseph Kennedy, who was the grandfather, just to give the context of President John F. Kennedy. So PJ Kennedy was born on this day in Boston, Massachusetts, and to begin the spree of photos I have for you coming out of the JFK library appropriately, here is a picture of that man, PJ Kennedy. Take a look at all P.J. Yeah. Ah. I always got a little handlebar mustache. He's got his cereal buttoned up classic black and white photo and pose, you know, a little bit off to the side. Look. Right. He styled up for the times. I love that tiny baby of the pale. I'll tell you right now, he's not drinking any beverages cleanly any time soon. That mustache is voluminous. It's lush for sure. There it is. It's lush. So he was the youngest of five children to his parents, Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy, who were Irish Catholic immigrants from New Ross County, Wexford in Ireland. So this is kind of when the family jumps over here to the Americas, and PJ was inspired to be a young entrepreneur and was the only surviving male of his family, which does begin the small spree of tragedy. His eldest brother John died of cholera as an infant, and two months before PJ was born, in fact. And then his father, Patrick, passed away due to an illness when PJ was only 10 months old. So not an easy life growing up in this time period here, it's a 1858 again. Now skipping forward to his adulthood, PJ's business career launched when he finally bought his first saloon in downtown Boston. Subsequently, he then went on to buy two more bars in different areas of the city, allowing him to buy a whiskey importing business before the age of 30. So this man really starts to build up a business empire at a young adult age, and all this money came from two sources, one simply saving up, being a savvy businessman, and two, the support of his mother, who owned a successful grocery store and liquor store. And so this kind of begins the family's foundation of wealth that you're going to see really grow from here. Yeah. In 1884, he became heavily involved in his community, and thus began to move into politics, which is where the Kennedys would essentially sit for until today, right? He served five single terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and then he served three two year terms in the Massachusetts Senate and became one of Boston's leading Democrats. During this time, PJ began dating a woman named Mary Augusta Hickey, and the pair of them married on November 23rd, 1887, and later had four children, one of which unfortunately passed away at the age of one. That was Francis Spenetic Kennedy, but you also have Joseph Patrick Kennedy senior, Mary Larada Kennedy, and Margaret Louise Kennedy. So the eldest was Joseph Patrick Kennedy senior, and he would essentially become the patriarch of the Kennedy family that we would come to know today. I do have an image of him now, so you got another face to go with the name, but as you. pull that up. Francis, like I said, passed away, unfortunately, at a very young age. And then Mary and Margaret, as I understand, lived normal, quiet lives outside of the spot lights. Nothing really to report home there about other photo, a little bit more modern but black and white, rocking the same circle style glasses. You know what? Maybe he just inherited those. He's like, put a thicker frame on that runs in the family. But yeah, he looks distinguished, just a little bit more modern and runs in the family. Yep. It's also very interesting that you can see a legacy there starting to build. That's just something that I can't look back on in my family. You're like, oh, you know, and here they have this huge track of how it all started and the legacy. That generational wealth, you know? Yeah, the generational wealth. You can see how it picked up steam and where it went to. Yeah, that's something interesting. You can backtrack like that. Yeah, yeah. And it really does come down. I mean, yes, a lot of family members in this family made big leaps and strides along the way. But when you come all the way back to PJ Kennedy, he's the one that laid that foundation thanks to his mom and then got the family kind of hoisted into the spotlight of politics and local power and things. So now we have Joseph Patrick Kennedy, senior who will kind of continue on the family legacy. So Joseph was born September 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a bright and prominent student and he attended Boston Latin School there. It is said that he excelled on the baseball team and was even elected as class president, also beginning to show his charisma. The guys got the riz and he's got the athletic prowess. Okay. And then after graduating, he went on to attend the illustrious Harvard University where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1912. He then went on to establish himself as a successful businessman and gained much of his fortune as a stock and commodity market investor. He also reorganized and refinanced several Hollywood studios in the 1920s at the beginning of the roaring 20s when wealth and just a lot of things were growing and money was shaking hands and falling out of trees. It seemed Yeah, flowing. It was flowing. Yeah, it flew like wine. And this is where he made a substantial amount of his profits. Once again, taking the family to the next level. Now I hear you asking, okay, well, where's all the tragedy? Where's the curse? Again, I think all of this history is important foundational work to understand the history of the family and understand maybe even some of the psychology that goes into the family on where and because then tragedy basically falls all of his kids more or less. So I do want to take a small step back during World War One. He worked as the assistant general manager in the Boston area for a shipyard where he met none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt at a time before he was president. Franklin D. Roosevelt was just the assistant secretary of the Navy, but this is again where the family makes another leap in stride building who they are building their network, their social fabric as it were. And the pair remained acquainted when Roosevelt ran for president in 1932. Joseph donated helped raise money for the campaign. Obviously Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the election and therefore had Kennedy in mind. In fact, this part I had no idea about in 1934. You know what the SEC is, the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was established in 1934 less than a hundred years ago and Kennedy was the top of the list to kind of run that as a chairman. In fact, he led the commission for the first two years of its existence, 1934 and 35. And so in two generations, this family went from immigrating over from Ireland to BAM on the head of this brand new SEC. Yeah, it's just dominant force to be honest. That's mild. That snowball effect, it can happen for ghosts and it can happen for wealth and power. You know, you and I are just rolling in the ghost goods. Yeah. Okay, so throughout his entire career, he had been building a family with his wife Rose Fitzgerald. I was kind of glossing over that, but that's kind of where I wanted to end because the two of them were married in 1914 and over the following like, you know, 20 years up until leading in, you know, the SEC and things, they had nine children together. And those were Joseph Jr. John Rosemary or Rosemary, Kathleen A. Kick, Eunice Patricia, Robert A. K. Bobby, Jean and Edward A. K. A. Ted. These are names you probably recognize at least a few of, but it was with this generation that tragedy seemed to suddenly engulf the Kennedys. And this would begin to take shape as five. I'll say this now. Five of the nine children would die untimely deaths at young ages. Whoa. Okay. So I mean, strange, but also, I don't know, it's like, you know, if you think cinematically. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how they come into this world with their striking deals with things that they shouldn't be fighting deals with. Like where is the success come from. You know, is it someone that was like, yeah, I'll take the deal and then their family is plagued. Is a monkey policy situation stuff like, ah, your cook and if Christian was here right now, I would say jot another one down this man's psychic ability, but you're totally on the right path. I mean, you know, there's two schools of thought there is the paranormal angle like, is there genuinely a curse here? And we're going to explore this at the end of the theories. But then there's also exactly what you're talking about. What happens along the path towards power that, you know, is there a risk profile that is increased in the public eye? Are there other things happening in that type of lifestyle? You know, these are all very real things to put on the table for conversation later. But five of nine children and it wouldn't really stop there. I think at least another one of the children would find themselves facing tragedy in another form, though that wouldn't cause their untimely demise. But we're going to break down each and every one of them, because I think it's going to help us understand the conversation when we get to the theories. This episode of Red Web is sponsored by Rocket Money. To ask for us, you know, I like to ask the question, how many subscriptions are you paying for right now? And I don't mean to question your intelligence, but do you really know? 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Rocket Money can also consolidate checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single dashboard to give users a clear view of their full financial picture. Listen, Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps finding canceled unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/redweb. That's rocketmoney.com/redweb. One more time, rocketmoney.com/redweb. So let's begin with Rosemary Kennedy. As the eldest Kennedy daughter grew up, it was clear that she was not quite the same as her brothers. Now as we talk about her, I do want to have this image in your mind because this is what she looked like, and I think it is important, especially as we talk about those who have passed that we respect who they were and everything else in their lives. And we will end by the way with a positive upswing. There is some positive that comes out of this so-called curse. But that's Rosemary. Again, we're still in the black-and-white photo area. But way more modern, you know, we've got a bouquet effect going on. Image is a lot sharper. We are dressing of the times, you know, layered long coats, things like that. Yep. Now, talking about how she's growing up, you know, she's a young child at this point. This is her as an adult, of course. Doctors, you know, she's taken to the doctors. They're trying to explore why might she be different? Behaviorally, or what have you? In doctors' deduce that she had suffered from what's called hypoxic, isemic, insolopathy, or very simply HIE, or the lack of oxygen at birth. And because of this, I'm kind of coalescing a very complex medical situation into simple terms. But because of this, doctors said she would essentially not hit the same developmental milestones as her siblings or other children her age, kind of put her on her back foot, and her parents then, as she continued to grow, moved her to a school for the so-called intellectually disabled at the time. And this way, she could get extra time, extra attention as she was going through her studies. However, once she reached her 20s, she reportedly began to experience violent mood swings. Now, this is where the story kind of takes a sinister turn, looking back. Her father decided to enlist her in a new, experimental procedure that would so-called "fix" her ailments. And terribly, he chose to do this without even consulting the family. He essentially didn't even want to inform them until after the procedure was done in complete. And in 1941, Rosemary Kennedy was the victim of a botched [BLANK_AUDIO] lobotomy that left her unable to walk or even talk and left her with the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old. I mean, the further back you go, the more certain disabilities, you know, diagnosis, it just misunderstood, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. You can go for not even that far back and just like, oh, depression wasn't taking seriously or anxiety and things like that, you know, stuff that are just very much research and respected now comparatively. But yeah, and so from there, no, man, I've seen it firsthand too when there's my families with wealth and status where they not only don't accept it that there's, you know, there's some, you know, maybe there's some diagnosis is there or stuff like that, but they want to fix it, or they're just like, right, you know, modern day, it's like, hey, take some medication and boom, you'll be fixed and it's like, that doesn't work like that. And then you go further back and it's like, okay, we're going to do this, you know, experiment and we're going to do this medical thing and it's going to fix you because, you know, we have a status here that we're trying to uphold. Right. Yeah, an ego. An ego, right? And I've seen it firsthand and it's like, yeah, then it plays out here, right? It wouldn't be a surprise if there was a major part that was just like, hey, I don't want this to be talked about. I don't want this to be a part of the legacy of the family. And so we're going to spend the money that we have to fix you, you know, right. Yeah. I can understand it. I certainly can't agree with it. You know, I'm with you on that. I'm with you on that. I mean, I think we all know what lobotomies are, but just in case, I like to cover the basis here. It's an archaic harmful and obsolete medical practice where in doctors, they don't remove a chunk of your brain as kind of people like to exaggerate. I mean, it's more of severing nerve pathways in the brain, usually the frontal lobe. And the whole theory is that it will disconnect whatever the problem is. It will fix the behavioral issue. It will whatever, whatever the theory is, it doesn't stand because they were quite controversial. And the bottom is began to fall out of favor. As you astutely pointed out, you know, in the 1950s, they began to steeply fall off mostly because of the advent of non-invasive medications. We understood a little bit more and we understood anxiety, depression, and various other ailments and found ways to explore those without cutting the brain up. Fun. I don't even want to say fun. Dark fact, the last lobotomy in the United States was in 1967, that's less than 60 years ago. Yeah. People today, that's like, yeah, it was something of my time, right? Or people today that are living in that government like, it happened to someone that I knew. Yeah. And while they're banned in many countries, technically in the United States, they are not. That's wild. Obviously, no one's going to go pulling one out and doing it. Right. But it's not banned. It's not banned. As far as I'm understanding, as far as I saw, the last guy that did it, you know, ended up killing their patient and lost their license to perform surgery. So yeah, I think that was the ultimately the goal though, they did this because they wanted to uphold some sort of reputation. And that continues because it was reported that she was only from then on ever discussed in most vague of terms because her family or at least her father believed that the knowledge of her mental illness could be damaging to their political careers. And then also, I'm sure there's some sort of like saving face with the idea that like you then went off and did this thing or, you know, committed her to this surgery that completely upset and ruined her life, um, her quality of life changed it forever forever. And so you just kind of want to tuck that away, which is sinister. But that is only the first of many dominoes. Now we move on to the eldest Kennedy son, who was known to be a high achiever and his father had hopes that he would one day become the first Catholic president of the United States. His name is Joseph Kennedy Jr. and we do have an image of him right here. Imagine just being bored in such a legacy or like, I'm aiming high for you. I'm aiming for a presidential. Yeah. Like what? Yeah. Like, man, I'm just looking to chill, dude. Right. You know, you think about, man, I wish I could come into generational wealth and just kick it, you know, and plenty of families have done that. Then there's other families that are like, mm-hmm, it's like, um, what's that show? Paradise? You and I watch paradise. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I was just about to bring up paradise. Mm-hmm. Yeah. James Margin character, who is the president. You know, you have a little flashback with his father who, you know, is this big, distinguished, you know, again, what we're talking about comes from money, establish, et cetera. He's like, no, I'm going to put you in the room with all the right people and you're going to become president of the United States and you're going to have a legacy that's greater than mine. And it's just like, that's the kind of stuff that you deal with when, you know, these families with the legacy and anything like that. It's like, yeah, they're successful and they have money and everything, but these are the things that like modern everyday kids growing up aren't faced with, right? Or it's like, you have a legacy to uphold and I named you this because like, it's a strong name and you're going to be strong and yeah. And that's sort of, you know, again, those generations for the back or men aren't supposed to really show their feelings and emotions, you're supposed to just hide all down because you're a man who's supposed to be strong and yeah, all this kinds of things. Yeah, dude. Yes, exactly. I mean, I think Task Force might have caught on that I'm a bit of a talking nerd, but I've been on a huge kick lately and it is interesting. I'll bring it up because it's relevant. But like, even in that story, which many themes are explored, one of them is the exploration of like the diminishing of kings, the line that's broken because families or the royal line essentially focused more backwards on the legacy, the names of their forebears and their fathers rather than the names on their sons. And so I think it's a tale as old as time, this, this pressure that gets passed on, whether it be in families like this or just in general, but here's a photo of Joseph Kennedy Jr., you want to take a look at that. You can see he was a member of the U.S. Navy Reserve. Yeah, he's got a little pin with the wings and everything. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, again, a picture of its time, black and white, hairstyle, like gel, sleep bag, perfectly put together. Honestly, you can really start to see the features here that then make it further on like into some of the other famous siblings elsewhere. Yes, definitely. It's starting to come through. The brow and things. Yeah. So his story is really interesting. He joined the U.S. Naval Reserve, June 1941. There he trained to be a pilot for the Navy before he was then sent to Britain. And this would be in World War II that all this is happening. He completed 25 combat missions and afterwards he volunteered for two top secret assignments. I wasn't going to go into detail on these, but I find them so deeply fascinating. I'll give you at least a little short synopsis. Operation Aphrodite and Operation Anvil, which I believe was renamed eventually to Operation Dragun, something like that. But in short, Operation Aphrodite was a World War II program wherein the U.S. military would take old, worn-out aircraft loaded with explosives, use radio controls to fly this out over Europe and attack German bunkers and other kind of heavily fortress bases essentially. I don't believe it was a success. I think ground forces did all the productive work in that regard, but I had no idea that that existed. There's taken these old Boeing aircraft, loan them up with bombs and radio flying them like a drone. That's crazy, and I mean, but that's just the way the future, you know. Drone warfare has come such a long way. Yeah, people's who's profession is literally to just pilot drones. Yep, there's whole industries that have been made just from, yeah, drone warfare. And per the NHHC Operation Anvil was the original codename, like I said, for essentially the landing operation of the Allied invasion there in southern France, look into those guys. If you, it task force, if you're curious, very fascinating things of history there. But I do want to say during Operation Aphrodite, Joseph Kennedy, Jr., and co-pilot Wilford John Willie, they were tasked with flying a BQ-8 aircraft that was loaded with just over 21,000 pounds or like 96 hundred kilograms of Torpex explosive. Torpex is, it's like a type of explosive that contains three major ingredients, one of them being TNT, but it's twice to say it's like 50% more powerful than TNT is alone. I give you that because they're flying this aircraft, and it's reported that Kennedy and Willie had removed the safety pin on this explosive, essentially arming it for use. However, a mere two minutes later, explosives detonated prematurely, obviously instantly killing both pilots. Now, the details surrounding this accident were kept secret, given the warfare ongoing in the world, kept secret by the government until the war ended. But Joseph Kennedy, Jr., died, August 12, 1944 at the age of 29, but again, you know, things are happening. So here's the, you know, pattern start arising and then, you know, all these different things are happening. But also, it's like, is it because they're doing such abnormal things compared to the normal human being? Is that why they're having these different scenarios that aren't happening? Because if you're putting yourself in situations that are dangerous often, then yeah, you know, things like that will happen. Absolutely worth the discussion, because yeah. I'll say it. You're very much on the right trail of thought, at least for how I feel looking back on all of this. But keep that in mind as we continue forward because it will be a cornerstone of our discussion in the theories. Next up, we have Kathleen Kennedy, aka Kick. Now, in 1943, it's kind of a two-phase tragedy here, two different events, I should say. In 1943, while living in England, she met and subsequently married a politician named William Cavendish, Marquis of Hardington. The pair spent less than five weeks as a married couple before Cavendish left to fight in France during World War II, and four months after that, and only one month after her brother, Joe Jr. was killed, Cavendish was also killed by a German sniper during battle. Kick had become a widow at just the age of 24 years old. But then, five years later, it's May 13, 1948. Kick is traveling to Paris with her now boyfriend, and I'll try to get this name in one take. Peter Wentworth fits William 8th Earl fits William. Why are we repeating names? Honestly, that's a great question. What's William? So that's the boyfriend of the time, and I should have given you this photo of Kick here. So if you want to take a look at our image, E, also from the JFK library, that is Kathleen Kennedy there. Yeah, how uniform and everything, still black and white. So five years later, this would put her at 29 or so years old. Now, things take, as you know, it's a tragic story. All of these are. The pair go to see her father. Essentially, to convince him that Lord fits William is suitable to be wed, that he is going to be a worthwhile husband for the daughter. And he would continue to see the familial importance and prominence and pressures. Now, this is moving from France. They did that. They go to the French Riviera. They're kind of spending some time on vacation. But on their private flight, they were caught up in a storm and they began to experience severe turbulence. Once they emerged through these dark clouds, they then discovered through disorientation. They had no idea, but they were actually in a pretty steep dive. So as soon as they could see, they were in a dive that they couldn't really pull up out of. They attempt to pull back. They try to change direction, but unfortunately, combining all of this stress of the dramatic acceleration downward, and all of the turbulence that they're also being put through here, the plane itself was torn apart. Kick, Lord fits William along with the pilot and the navigator were all four killed instantly crashing into the ground. See, you know, there are multiple aren't flying planes and not in planes, things like that. Right. Not to say that these are normal occurrences because they're really not. But still, you know, you play yourself in situations that are different than others, what not. So Yeah, high risk situations. We will talk about planes. You know, I'm a geek for aviation. So we will talk. Thank you. We'll talk about small planes versus big planes. I know some task force members out there on a plane right now, in turbulence, listening and going, my wings, you're going to fall off. You're fine. You're good. You're good. Those things are hella overengineered. We're a different era and we're also on a small plane. So don't worry. But yeah, keep those thoughts in mind, Fredo, I really appreciate what you're picking up right now. Okay. Now this next one we did an entire episode on please go check it out because there are so many more details that I could do the service of giving you here. And some details that might astound you even if you're familiar with the case. But now we're talking about John F Kennedy. So this is November 22nd, 1963. The president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas during his presidential motorcade. Here is one of the famous photos on the Dallas morning news of that moment. Well, before that moment, I should say. Oh, yeah. Yeah. In the back of the three seat or the three row car. Yeah. Waving at all. The public that are just maybe 10, 15, 20 feet away. Yeah, we're all exposed, you know, but, you know, looking back on hindsight. Oh, yeah. Again, I could geek out. But like the pathway was changed just before all this went down. Why? And you'll have to find out by listening to our episode. But he was 46 years old at the time of his death. And he had been in office for a short three year stint. His death shook as you can imagine the entire nation. The assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was then killed before he himself could undergo any proper questioning or be prosecuted for his crimes. Again, there's a lot to unpack with not only Oswald, but also the theories on the killer. But also on Jack Ruby, the guy who killed Oswald, again, lots that I'm glossing over here. Also in the car were secret surface agents William Greer and Roy Kellerman, Texas governor John Connolly and his wife Nelly Connolly. And of course, the first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, aka Jackie, much like his sister kick tragedy haunted him prior to his death because just a few months before his assassination, August 7, 1963, Jackie Kennedy prematurely gave birth to a baby boy. And while he was quickly baptized and the couple named him Patrick, Patrick lived for only 39 hours and ultimately passed due to complications from neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. So this is a tragedy that was already hanging over the family. Just like I said, a few months prior to then, Jonathan Kennedy's assassination. And so you can't help but see the other immediate and not super common unfortunate circumstances that surround these moments. Yeah, this is a lot of things that are going down with the family, whether it be the situations that they put themselves in or just health issues in general. Right. Health issues for sure. For sure, because that boy Patrick, I should say part of the condition here is he was born I believe five and a half weeks premature, which increases the risk, increases the complications of the syndrome that we talked about here. But yeah, I appreciate the observations you're making. Yeah, but also you have to think too, it's like sure we're saying curse and stuff like that, but I don't think it's something that's rare to have these kind of health issues, especially over generations. Yep, and we'll unpack a lot of those thinkings, you know, like I said in the theories, but I think you're totally right. Yeah, and then when you have a lot of kids and then those kids have kids, just multiplies it exponentially. When you're having five, six, nine kids and those kids are also having a lot of kids, and then you start to have the focus on you. Yeah, you're going to start to see things that might other what the odds are suddenly increased, right? Oh, yeah, big time. So something that's rare might not be as rare across a broader population, but so at the time of his death, JFK left behind two living children, one daughter, Caroline Kennedy and one son, John F. Kennedy, Jr. Now we move into the fifth sibling who also passed away before we have one more tragedy with this group of siblings, and then a few modern elements that will be more light on and then of course the theories. So 1968, there is another assassination that rocks the Kennedy family. That's just like less than five years later, two brothers assassinated. This time it's Robert F. Kennedy also referred to as RFK. No, of course, not the modern one, I believe this would be his father. Now RFK had a thriving political career, and if you would like this, I do have an image of him here at the event genuinely right before his assassination. He was a US Attorney General from 61 to 64 and then became a New York Senator. The photo here is on a podium. Tons of people even on the stage. I guess it's just the youths, reporters and whatnot, and you get a whole audience and the shot is an audience perspective. The thing is like one politics and so, you know, assassinations happen in politics. This is something that's not uncommon or at least attempts, right? And then on top of that, you're going to add the fact that I don't know. I can't help but think that do you, are you able to really truly build wealth without stepping on some toes? This is a very, very good question. Like to that amount, right? To make that amount of progress over generations and then get political. I mean politics alone, right? You're making alliances and burning down bridges on the other hand. Absolutely. Yeah, for every deal you make, you're upsetting somebody else. Yeah, for every deal and every step forward, you know, there's a step back with somebody else. Cause for sure. Yeah, and you're rubbing elbows with, I mean, very powerful people themselves, who they also have their familial pressures to do whatever they need to do or whatever black males are hanging over any of them. But also when you're in the public eye, you know, there are millions of constituents and millions of people we hear about assassination attempts, not even in the political room, just in the world. There are, it's a true crime podcast. We've talked about many serial killers. You know, there are people that are of the wrong mindset that think that killing is an option. And if you are their representative and you do something that slightly disagrees with their alignment or if they're unwell in any sort of way, yeah, you become the spotlight is quite hot. So that's kind of what happens here. It's 1968 and he had become the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. June 4th, 1926. It was announced that RFK had won the California primary and shortly after midnight on June 5th, he spoke in this photo as what's happening here. He spoke with supporters at the ambassador hotel there in Los Angeles and this is where he's celebrating his win. After this, he is making his way through the kitchen after his speech. He was told by we don't know who I don't believe. It might be on record. I don't have it on my notes. I don't want to miss speak. But he was told by somebody that it was a shortcut to get to the press room for whatever reason. However, in the kitchen, that's where he was shot three times by a man named Saran Saran. And he was rushed to the hospital where he underwent intense neurosurgery to try to remove the bullets and the bone fragments from his brain. But despite these efforts, he did succumb to his injuries and he passed away in the early morning hours of June 6th, 1968. I'm kind of moving through this one. We could go deeper into the motivations of that assassination. I will say just because even in modern times, it is such a hot button topic. I really don't want to step into those waters, but if you want to test for us, I encourage you to go look further into this assassination. If you wanted to do so, it would be kind of opening a can of worms and stepping into a larger conversation that gets away from I think the topic at hand. But I don't want to dissuade you from researching it and looking closer. I just don't want you to think I'm moving past things. Okay. So now it is July 19th, 1964. So we do go a few years earlier, but now we're moving into the less fatal tragedies. This is about Ted Kennedy. I have a picture for you here. He doesn't pass away, but he does undergo a series of unfortunate moments, lots to think about and talk about on the other side of this though. So Ted Kennedy would become one of the only survivors of yet another plane crash. And I think the pattern of plane crashes is a cornerstone of the curse element. Why so many of these Kennedys seem to go down in planes is definitely something that kind of draws people's pattern recognition, but he was with a group on their way to the democratic state convention. When their plane crashed into an apple orchard near Southampton, Massachusetts, Ted was pulled from the wreckage by fellow Senator Birch Bay, and he was then hospitalized for five months after suffering from a broken, yeah, dude, that's intense, broken back, punctured long and internal bleeding. And remember, this is before his brother's assassination, but this is another element that people kind of lean on for the curse. So RFK, his brother reportedly told aid Ed Goothman, quote, "Somebody up there doesn't like us," end quote, kind of putting out the idea that whether it was a divine power or a powerful kabal type entity or just bad luck, just kind of putting it out there into the ether and making people kind of go, "Hmm, interesting. What could that mean?" Yeah. But it's also just a saying, you know? I feel like it could very much just be just like, you know, off the cuff type of comment. Absolutely. Yeah. And everyone's taking it quite seriously. Truly. And without hearing the recording of him saying this, I don't want to insert humor where it doesn't belong. But it could be dark humor. Yeah. No, yeah. It really could be. Yeah. Like, how do you come to terms with the fact that four of your siblings have passed, not knowing that you're seemingly next on this mysterious final destination style docket? True. Yeah. That's a very good point. I mean, it's not uncommon at all to use dark humor, and that's a coping mechanism, for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's not far-fetched at all. If your siblings pass away, you see another sibling nearly die and it's similarly, you know, in a plane crash, two of which of the other siblings had already done, you know, some aviation but one exploded, one crashed. Yeah. It's a lot. I can't properly fathom what one would feel in that moment. But then, interestingly, this was almost exactly five years later. It's July 18, 1969. It is now a senator, and he's the only living Kennedy brother. And that night, he was leaving a party on Chapacwittic Island. With him was another party guest and aid, Mary Jo Kapekny. Actually, I do have an image of her, so we have an image of a non-Kennedy. So this is Mary Jo Kapekny, who is the aid, writing along with him. Okay. Modern new photo. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So everyone's all this nice attire. Everyone's got a nice head of hair, too. A lot, a lot of nice hair out there, dressing well, looks like in the front of like a political building with pillars and everything like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry. I was looking at her, but yes, him. So that's Ted Kennedy. You're looking at there in the suit as a senator and then right below that for you, Fredo is his aid, Mary Jo Kapekny. Mary Jo black and white, simple like headshot photo, like many of these other ones. Now you might have noticed Ted is a little older in his photo, whereas the photo we have for Mary Jo Kapekny is a little bit older and that is due for a reason, right? So Ted was bringing Kapekny back to the fairy landing when his car seemingly lost control of it, skidded off the bridge and entered the water below, Ted himself managed to escape, but unfortunately Kapekny did not. Now things get a little hairy here. This is almost its own episode itself as a lot of these things are, but Ted claims he did try to save her, but what's interesting is he didn't report the incident to the police until 10 a.m. the next morning, by which point in time, her body had already been recovered from the submerged car. So she's found recovered. She's dead. And then he comes forward and says, Hey, I, this accident happened. I'm reporting it. Oh, why? Is this foul play there? I don't, you know, I don't know. It's just why not report it when the moment happened. You waited until they already found out themselves to report it. It doesn't look good, but I'm not saying, I mean, it is, yes, it makes the report of the accident a little bit suspicious and it does kill his political career. I mean, it never recovers after such a suspicious moment. And only because Fredo, you and I are love languages movie and film and shows, I'm wondering if this, the moment from succession, being vague here, was inspired by this moment. You know what I mean? Oh, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about, because they explore this exact thing they do with more color, the exact same way, and then obviously they expand on it. And so that could be, yeah, I mean, the way they expand on it and the reasoning to have in the show could be the backbone for this, you know, essentially, it's just like, hey, families, they got a lot of money, they have a lot of sway. And when it comes to it, they continue to raise bratty children or people, whatever and what not. And then just kind of always living this rich lifestyle about the law, yada, yada, yada, yada. And maybe get away with stuff for no people and I'll help get you out of stuff, etc, etc. That I think is the big thing, you know, whether they're spoiled or not, there could be a capricious behavior to a lot of them having access to wealth and opportunities that most don't. And then the almost dare I say the feeling of immortality, taking up what you were saying, you know, that maybe I can get out of anything. Maybe I increase my risk profile and do things a little bit more, do more of this and a little bit more of that. And yeah, now keep holding on to that, I know, I know there's a lot of history to unpack here, a lot of like of the curse, so to speak, of these tragedies to talk about. But yeah, wrapping up Ted here, he was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident. He spent two months in jail with his license being suspended for 16 months. Ted went on to live until the age of 77, I believe he then passed off cancer. And if I remember correctly, it was either a week or a month after his sister. But suffice to say, he did live a longer life than most of his other siblings. Now we talked about John F. Kennedy. It's time to talk about his son, JFK Jr. This was one of the last infamous tragedies that the Kennedy family suffered and it was his death. You know, he was born two weeks after his father was elected president and his father was then assassinated when he was just under three years old. He grew up to become a successful legal professional and he married his wife, Carolyn Besit Kennedy in 1996, and we do have a now very modern image for you to take a look at. This is both JFK Jr. and his wife. Oh yeah, very modern. I mean, this could be anywhere, but it looks like they're attending some sort of black tie event or a gala, just the way they're dressed up. Definitely. It does surprise me. All the pictures are a fresh, no head shots or, you know, everyone's will dress. It's just. the part, you know? Yes, absolutely. And I think this one being from 1999 is the one that lives most in my recent memory. I had always grown up knowing that there was a Kennedy who was a pilot that passed away. And we have already covered one such case, but it wouldn't be the last. On July 16th, 1999, JFK Jr., his wife, oh man, and his sister-in-law Lauren. We're all departing from Fairfield, New Jersey, and head towards Martha's Vineyard. JFK Jr. was piloting the aircraft and he had received his pilot's license just the previous year. So it's not like he was a well-decorated pilot. You know, when you only have so many flight hours, you can only fly so big an aircraft. Right. And we'll kind of talk about that more in the theories too, but he got his license in April 1998. So, you know, a little over here. You're in a quarter. Now on the flight, Kennedy checked in with air traffic control at Martha's Vineyard Airport, but the plane was reported missing after it did not arrive at the scheduled time. We've seen many cases like this. Once a search ensued aircraft debris and a black suitcase belonging to Lauren were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. At that point, officials stated that it was not likely that there would be any survivors given the condition of the debris that they found and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was able to locate aircraft fragments using side scans sonar and this then prompted US Navy divers to descend down into the water to kind of continue this recovery mission, see if they could decipher what might have happened if anything or anyone was recoverable. And after a few days on July 21st, the bodies of all three passengers were recovered. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the cause of the crash was pilot error. They stated that it was likely that John had become spatially disoriented and could not maintain control of the plane during the night descent over the water. And that's another thing that we've talked about quite a bit during more aviation-centric mysteries is when you're flying by certain controls. Right. It feels weird, you know, when you're on the ground, but you can become disoriented in a way that you're not aware of and you can lose track of the horizon. Your inner ear might think you're straight on, but you might be at an angle or in a dive. Yeah, I mean, I've experienced this playing some video games, you know, you're at a dogfight in a video game, you're spun around all of a sudden, like, wait, which way is up in which war am I right now? Right, right. You're just totally disoriented. And then, like, depending on how clear the water is and also what time of day, like, especially at night, you're right. Is there any light at night, you know? Is the moon blocked? It's yeah, there's all kinds of serious situations that are difficult to fly in and even difficult for the most experience of pilots. Absolutely. Now, you know, Kat and I, our researcher, we talked about this. There are some more recent events that we didn't want to really dive into too deeply. We kind of have a rule of thumb with Redweb that while we have done a few cases in the 2000s, there's like a rough, rough line in the sand around 2010, where we just like, if cases are alive and well and actively being investigated and aren't really solidified in history. True. We don't want to spread this information. We don't want to upset living family members or friends of certain scenarios. And so, you know, I didn't want to gloss over those and not mention them, but I also don't want to dive into the deeds on some of those. So these are, we have covered the most infamous tragedies that have afflicted the family, the Kennedys throughout their family tree. There are countless others throughout the years that have affected the family and those near to it. This isn't the most extensive because it is, you know, there are just other things around it. This would be a 15-hour podcast. But very briefly, like I said, very recently, 40-year-old Maeve Kennedy-McKean, RFK's granddaughter, passed away from a drowning accident with her son in the Chesapeake Bay on April 2nd, 2020. And then most recently, Tatiana Schlossberg was, who was also the granddaughter of JFK, who passed away on December 30th, 2025, from acute myeloid leukemia at just the age of 35. So again, much, much more recent events. But this brings us to the theories, the first of which I think you are kind of on the track of. So I want to start with the statistical conversation. Let's talk about probability and everything else around that. Because yes, a lot of people do look at the family and think that it was hexed and we'll talk about that. But some believe that when taking into account the size and the nature of the family, the statistical probability of tragedy actually increases that it doesn't become as shocking as it would seem when you start to outline them all one after the other. You know, I kind of collected some thoughts from you here. Great observations. You know, these are high profile individuals with access to funds, planes, public offices, and all sorts of dare I say toys of the elite. And all of these things could increase one's exposure to tragedy or at least compound your risk. Whatever that risk might look like, you know what I mean? For example, I wanted to talk about those smaller planes. You know, a lot of people are afraid of aviation and they also kind of point to planes as being safer than cars, etc. But smaller, especially private planes or four or two-seater cessinas, these very, very tiny planes are much more likely to crash than these larger plane counterparts. We're not talking about, you know, a 737 all the way up to an A380. We're talking about these like very small craft. A little bit more nimble. They're less weather tolerant. They have much simpler systems on board. And as you might imagine, require way less pilot training than a giant commercial craft. Yeah. And you also just don't know if there's anything in the sort of like, sure, cars that could be taken. When it comes to their training or them wanting to take off. Oh, I see. There's a thing there where it's like, yeah, and you know, you see it sometimes with even with us when we do things, right? We have very little social status. We have very little fame, but even then sometimes, you know, people are like, I don't worry about it. Like, you know, they have this level of trust or they this level of like why they make you happy because they know who you are. They know of you, etc. The sycophantic following of an elite, right? You know, you let them bend the rules. You'll let them kind of get away with things or the ego and narcissism of the elite, right? I'm painting with the broad strokes, but I think that's what you're kind of getting at. That's what I'm getting at. Could I pay to get a license quicker than a, or can my license go faster further? Right. I'm not saying that happened, but I can totally understand how that could. Right. And also if I'm asking, you know, I'm sure there's always kind of checks on you to be performed before you could just take off on the plane. But if I'm asking them not necessarily skip it, but to get it ready soon. Oh, like, oh, actually, I really got to get going, guys. It's kind of an inconvenience for me. Like, okay, I mean, honestly, we've seen that with big planes too. Sometimes that just happens. Yeah, that's true. I mean, airlines do even without the status, right? Airplanes just like, hey, we got to get this off the ground. And then so it's like these routine checks end up being just like, well, what do you mean you got this checked on in like five minutes? Because we got to go and we're behind planes do that all the time. Big airlines are just like, all right, just let's get the there's a bare minimum here that we need to do to get the bare minimum going. And then let's get them out of here. I mean, I think the perfect example that we're all pretty aware of, even if it's passively is the star or the celebrity goes to a restaurant and the meal is comped. And I'm like, if anyone can afford it, let them pay. Let them pay. And I think, you know, you could kind of tell the caliber of a celebrity when they're like, no, let me, let me pay or like, at least let me tip, you know, right? But I mean, a small example, but it, but it highlights what you're saying. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm getting at. Now, additionally, the Kennedy tragedies are highlighted because, as I said, they're kind of a pillar of American culture. They've been referred to as American royalty by many. They're just so prominent for so long. And I do want to quote Eunice Kennedy here. As she once said, quote, I've come to believe that it's not what has happened to our family that has been a curse as much as it's the fact that we've never been able to deal with it privately. End quote, which makes a lot of sense, you know, when you start to put the spotlight on a family that is going through a lot of tragedy, yes, it starts to, you know, we're inclined to see patterns. And we want to find meaning in otherwise like these meaningful people dying young. Yes. And really, maybe it is just like the fact that they're just dealing with it publicly is kind of part of it rather than a product of it. But even so, you know, we talk about stats and all these things. It's hard for many to ignore the pattern of misfortune that seemingly plagued the family specifically for many years. You know, like I said, six of the night in Kennedy children born to Joseph Patrick Kennedy senior and Rose Kennedy were the subject of tragedies and most of them untimely deaths. But before we move on, I kind of put something here in my notes to discuss before we get into the urban legend of the curse. My last thought is that while it is a statistical anomaly, there are so many famous families in the world that it almost seems bound to have happened to any of them or one of them, you know what I mean, when you when you start to look at the world, there's billions of people. And so if it wasn't the Kennedys, could it have been the Gettys, the Guinnesses, the Onassis families, other families that have all been struck with tragedy. And you know, we as people tend to focus on strange events. We ask why things happen. Rare things do happen all the time, and given the publicity of these particular rare moments, and the unfortunate circumstances around them, I think we're all left seeking meaning, which then brings me to the term called, "Apaphemia," and "Permarium Webster Apaphemia" is the tendency to perceive a connection or a meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things. So, are these random, are they interconnected? Who knows? Ultimately. But I do think that there's an argument to be made for the statistical probability, right? Right, yeah. I just think it's the situations that the probabilities are just higher for them. And also, this is hard to kind of put into words, and I've thought about this ever since I realized that the moon is to our eye the exact diameter as the sun, because proportionately their sizes are the same ratio as their distances to us, if that makes sense. And it's also the largest moon to planet ratio we are aware of, certainly in this solar system. And so a lot of people have thought, well, why, you know, it's also tidal locked, where it rotates, but one face faces there are the whole time, and so we have this mysterious dark side of the moon. All this to say is it leaves a lot of people wondering, why is that? That seems so rare. And I go, well, because if it wasn't that way, we wouldn't be talking about it. Yeah, that's true. It was just normal, ever, or just seeing it appeared to be normal, then yeah, we wouldn't be. Like if this whole thing, this Kennedy curse, was only going to happen to one in a million families, or famous families, we would talk about the one time it happened, not the 999,000, whatever that it didn't have. Exactly. That's the thing, right? We're not going to talk about the times it didn't happen. Again, coming back to the moon, because I'm a space geek, I'm a geek geek, but like, I've always gone, well, because we see it, just because it's like, can the world be, it would be so impossibly rare for the world to have nothing rare happen ever? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I just, no, that's a great, that's a great point. Trying to find my words out loud here. Yeah. But this does lead us to the urban legend, and this is, again, I want to refer to the sensitive topics here, because it starts to get a little hairy. You know, sure, we can talk about a curse, and that's all fascinating, but why is there a curse? That's where it starts to get a little, so there's a prominent urban legend that some believe explain the idea of the Kennedy curse, and why it went down one of the family branches so specifically. Now, in the time leading up to the World War II era, and this is, this is that urban legend, okay? So this is all from here moving forward, a little bit here say, a little bit like missing some facts and data points, okay? The eldest Kennedy son, Joseph Junior, made his stance clear. And I think we all know what World War II was about, but he made his stance clear that he sympathized with the Nazi regime, and Adolf Hitler subscribing to their anti-Semitic beliefs, saying that fighting them was useless, why should the US go fight them, maybe even join them? And this is a not so fun fact as well. I don't know if you know this, but in 1939, there was a Nazi rally. And I think it was in Madison Square Garden. It was wild. There are photos of that happening, hoisting up the image of George Washington and things. Yeah, dude, it was, uh, it was a time. That's true. So continuing on here, there was a ship called the SS St. Louis. It was carrying over 900 Jewish refugees coming back or trying to flee obviously Nazi Germany in 1939. Now as the legend goes, the ship was wanting to dock in the US. And there was a rabbi that approached Kennedy who was at the time, the US ambassador to the UK, and he asked them to let the ship dock. Like Kennedy, they're coming, the refugees, we need to let them land so they can be, you know, safe. And supposedly, again, hearsay here, but Kennedy refused and was dismissive of the rabbi. And then this kind of urban legend continues to evolve that says that in retaliation, the rabbi then cursed Kennedy, declaring that his family would suffer from many tragedies as punishment for refusing to save the refugees. And then ultimately facing rejection from both the US and then Cuba. It is said, the ship ultimately returned back to Europe, where many of those would be refugees died then in the Holocaust. While this story is unverified, some believe it to be a myth, others point to it as the root cause of the Kennedy curse. Hell of a curse, though. As one hell of a curse and one hell of an ability from a rabbi. Right. Right. I think there's a little bit of anti-Semitic belief kind of delicately lightly slathered in there, dog whistle style, because it's always, you know, a non-Western ideology or or whatever, that it must be, that's the origin of the curse. But also, I gotta be honest, that's a nuke of a curse. You didn't curse the guy, you cursed everyone that came after him, who for all intents and purposes are innocent, you know what I mean? Yep, exactly. And so it's just like, oof, that was a one hell of a move, man. What hell of a move? I don't know if that squares up properly. Yeah. So I don't know. I always think curses are interesting. I always want to really, really assess them and see if there's anything like supernatural that we could possibly grab onto. Here, I do struggle to subscribe to this one because there's not much else to go on there. I agree. Especially in the face of hard statistical analysis, you know, kind of like, I think that just rings my bell a little better. That one requires a lot of blind belief. Yeah, and a little bit of kind of smudging over the details and squinting the eyes to blur the picture. Now, this is kind of the longstanding positive upswing that I wanted to have. You know, there is a lot of tragedy in this episode. It is the very nature of the topic. But despite the tragic events that have plagued the family, there are some positive changes in learnings that have come from all this heartbreak. For example, after the botched lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, she and her sister Eunice became close in her later life. And she was an advocate then for the rights of the intellectually disabled. And this then, I don't know if you know this, prompted her to found the special Olympics in 1968, which is an amazing cornerstone of that community and empowering. And every, like, anyone of special needs. Yeah, I think it's a very wonderful thing. The power can be used for good. You know, I mean, it definitely can be. I'm sure there's a, we were talking about all these different things, but I'm sure there's a plethora of good things that they've done. It can't all be bad. Hopefully, you know, hopefully you like to believe it can't all be bad. Right. Some of them got to work out and also like, I don't want to sit here and paint a bad picture of all the Kennedys, you know, we're mostly focusing on the moments of of dire tragedy and deaths in what have you. So I think you and I are more talking broadly about like what might increase risk factors and things like that, not trying to character assassinate. So, so there we have it. The origin of the special Olympics in 1968, which is absolutely beautiful. And then following the 1968 assassination of RFK, there was an immediate review and then expansion of the secret service that was conducted, not the same kind of level or caliber here, but it essentially took the secret service and expanded its protection from the immediate presidency and vice presidency outward into major presidential and vice presidential candidates. So that way, you know, because politics, as you've pointed out, is it's a hot spotlight to be in. And for better or worse, however you feel about any given candidate, we don't want there to be some sort of like, all right, anyone who's rising to power like a JFK of it all, who wants to do well by the entire nation is now like, okay, well, at any given moment, they could be gone. Yeah, way in. Like that's no matter who it is, you don't want to just be able to be like, yeah, if you don't agree, you could just really do, you know, some terrible things of that person and get away with it or make it, it's easy to do stuff you wanted to type thing. Right. That is a horrible world. There's horrible people to be fair. Okay. We're all feeling it. And you can argue some people deserve it. Sure. You know, we're putting out vibes. There's a system for this. There's a system and I don't want to live in the wild west where we put up posters of faces and say, get them. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Anarchy and chaos. Yeah. So, you know, again, not the same level, but you like to see learnings from tragedy and positive benefits. Now, the family has also experienced civil tragedies due to cancer as we talked about in some of the modern cases, which has led various members to become champions for cancer research, which chef's kiss immaculate move. Thank you. That's what you want to hear using your wealth for this kind of thing. Ted Kennedy had a massive part in advocating for and designing the National Cancer Act of 1971 or the National Cancer Program, which officially launched the country's war on cancer. So, yes, was it a dark episode? Do we cover a lot of like terrible moments for this family in particular 100%, but there's also a lot to be proud of, a lot that has grown like a phoenix from these dark ashes. But ultimately, you know, the Kennedy family does remain one of the most famous families here in America. And while each untimely tragedy was publicized for the world to see, it could be argued that the misfortunes were simply the result of life only seeming like a pattern on the world stage. Yeah, I lean towards that, you know. I feel like you could even talk about other families not as famous that have had even worse things happen. multitude of just terrible tragedies. There's just one that's in the limelight right and has been for some time. and when you have power, political status, things like that. Yeah, more eyes on you, you have more interactions, you have more access to things. Yeah, creates this whole world that you're living in, where there's just a lot of different good and bad things that don't necessarily happen to normal people. And again, like some of those other families that I mentioned, even they see an odd increase of aviation-based disasters or patterns, and so I'm like, you know, and that really does make me go, okay, yeah, maybe it isn't a curse. Maybe there is something more pragmatic, more down-to-earth, for lack of a better word going on here. And so it's one of these really interesting topics that Kat actually brought to the table, and I thought would be really interesting conversation, not only to kind of elucidate everybody to all these different kind of moments, but also really dive into a more nuanced conversation on the theories, rather than just blindly going, "It's a curse, and it's terrible, and anyone could be cursed." "I curse you." You know, like, yeah, I just crossed the line, and it's like, "Oh, I curse you." It's like, "Oh, okay." Yeah, this isn't drag me to hell, you know? All right, well, as we come to an end, I realized next week's episode, which we filmed before this episode, I didn't do any shout-out. So I got some catch-ups for the squawks here, starting off with Dan Mack, who was our newest member of the task force at redwebpod.com. Thank you for becoming a buff scientist, Dan. We also have our squawks, Brumman, Andy Schrock, Locke, Neo Trickster, and James Hill. Thank you all so much. But yeah, man, July's going to be filled to the brim, Frado. We got that merch coming next week. We got the ghost hunt that you're just like, tantalizing us all with. Dare I say titillating? If that's the right word, I don't know. I need. He's back on his "I Need Answers." I've said I need someone to explain this. I'll go as far as I don't think people can explain this. Dang! I'll go that far. Dang, after last. I don't think this. I don't think we can explain this. Is it like things flying off the shelves and Christian levitating? No, it's not. Nothing crazy. But I mean, terms of just like, yeah, on the more subtle and, you know, air quotes. Like, I don't think this can be explained. Dang! And we did Yorktown. So, Yorktown was nuts. Okay. Well, in Task Force, you know we're not here to make things up or just blindly believe. Not at all. I am so curious. Yeah, I just. Yeah, I think there's, you know, there's something to what Shane is saying. It might just be some kind of snowball effect that's happening right now. We're bringing this energy from one place to another. I'll say this. Shane has done way more ghost tons than we think he's actually done. This man has done everything under the sun, but he, way before Redweb existed, has done many ghost tons for other shows and professional shows. So, he would know. He also has an age. So, I need to check him for gold rings, you know? Yeah, I got to check him for sure. I think that man might be bearing the want, you know? All right, Task Force. Well, gear up, suit up, get excited. That's happening next week. And then we have our stream and just what, like two weeks, give or take July 10. So, mark your calendars. Yeah, that's big. Come out, help support us. Even if it's just watching, it goes a long way, posting about it, telling your friends, what not. We got all kinds of cool fun stuff scheduled. And it's the biggest way to support us, if there was ever a time, like boom, that time of the year, right there. We'll have awesome stretch goals for you guys to work towards. So, when you support us, as a collective, as a Task Force, you guys are working towards something, but it is, it means everything to us. It really does. It's the big show of the year. Our big annual thing, big annual thing. I'm so excited. We've got, yeah, he said it all. We've been back in that kitchen, sweating and cooking, and we got something fun for you. All right, all right. With that said, this has been the infamous Kennedy Curse. Frado, thank you so much. Any final thoughts on this, on this curse before we leave? I think circumstances. Okay, yeah, I think so, yeah. I think it's the handful of circumstances for him. All right, well, with that Task Force, we curse you and Frado. I'll see you right back here next Monday. It was bad. Forget another mystery. It was a little salt. Is it right in the eyes? Bye, everybody. [MUSIC]