Oh What A Time... - #193 History’s Mysteries and Hamstring Updates (Part 1)

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

This week we’re discussing some of the greatest mysteries that history has to offer: we’ve got the infamous tale of The Princes in the Tower, and the big one - Who Shot JFK? Plus we have a brief history of the literary true crime genre.This week we’re chatting embarrassing injuries - if you’ve got one to share, you know what to do. Email us about anything you’d like right here: [e-mail] 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Tuesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, add free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the Oh Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to Oh, what a time. It's a history podcast. And speaking of history, it was just a few weeks ago that I was on this pod, telling the tale of how I had done my hamstring, the bad place of sports day. And I imagine everyone is gasping for an update.

My cat's come in for an update. He's coming absolutely desperate. He's purring because he's like, I love Chris's injury stories. I don't know if you can hear that. Do you know a cat can suffer nine hamstring injuries in his life? nine fatal hamstring injuries. Tom came over my house for England, Norway. You were less bothered, I think it's fair to say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were having a little kick around in the garden. This is after my horrific hamstring injury on the dance race. Against my better judgment, we went into the garden for a little kickabout, almost straight away, the kids had been in the paddling pool, the grass was a little bit wet, I slipped and I redid my hamstring again. This is like a week later. He really went down.

Do you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Brian Robson, Captain Marvel. He was always getting injured in World Cups. He was never really... You know, he'd often miss out on the big moments because he'd picked up an injury doing something, you know, incredibly brave. Have you ever seen the film Final Destination? Yes.

That's basically Brian Robson's career. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fate was just after him for injuries. And now, I'm not. I'm a bit similar. There was film that reminded me more of, Chris, was, you know that scene in up where the old lady keels over

and has a heart attack on the hill? It was a bit like that. It wasn't really Brian Robson in the World Cup. It was someone probably in their mid-90s, having a bit of a fool. Chris's sporting career, is actually the first 10 minutes of up, is the most depressing thing

you'll ever hear about in the world. Now, you can't make me laugh too much like that, because as I went over, falling in the garden. I felt my hamstring, like, rip a bit. I could feel it, but also I landed awkwardly, like, on my ribs. And this is now two weeks after that fault. My ribs are now worse than the hamstring.

They're still hurting. They're still hurting. And then what's more, my four-year-old son is learning to ride his bike. The other day, I was like, I'll take him out. I can do this. He's very new to riding a bike, and he's made it. He turned and went straight for a lamppost. So again, I needed to have a quick burst of pace, which I don't have.

Did the hamstring again for a third time. And then, like, had to bend down and then did the rib again. And so now I am just a bag of bones right now. And, you know, if this was, we were chatting earlier on WhatsApp about, like, medieval injuries. I think at this stage, the medics in maybe 1066 would say, there's no more we can do for you. Yeah, just put him down. Just have him destroyed. Say goodbye to your family.

Get him on a raft, push him out to sea. We were talking about medieval injuries on our WhatsApp group because we're a bloody good laugh. And it is history, history, history. It sounds to me a bit, though, like you might have broken a rib because I broke one about four years ago. There was this stupid viral thing about how,

I can't even quite describe what it is. There's like a type of press up off. You broke your rib doing the cinnamon challenge. I coughed so hard, Elle, I blew out all my ribs. No, it's a mad thing where women and men, I can't whether a sit-up or a press-up. There's some kind of move that it's about the weight of your upper body and your bones.

Basically, there's a difference which means if you're male, you flop forward doing this move. Oh, yes, yes. You're aware of this thing? And women stay upright. I did it with Claire, refusing to accept that this would be true, and then landed hard on the kitchen floor and broke my rib. And it hurt me to breathe for a good four months afterwards.

So I think you're like me for it. So did you have to go to weigh your knee? No, I think I went to my doctor, the local doctor, and they checked it. And they were like, no, that seems like a broken rib. You can just tell. It's just one of those things. And also broken ribs, there's certain injuries where you just have to wait it out. They can't do anything for you.

They're like, that's just that now. And you just have to wait for instance to change, which could be anywhere between six months and a year. So just enjoy. What's the lamest injury you about then, Elle? You must have had a couple of funny little falls. Hackney Half Marathon was two months ago, and I lost another one of my toenails today.

So I've been two months since I did the Hacney Half Marathon, and it just came off. And bits are still falling off you. Bits are still falling off me. I took today's toenail off in front of my kids, So they think I'm a tough guy. Yeah. But you're like, it was 30 miles, two months ago.

Surely. So what had you done to it? You just, that big toe or whatever had got such repeated impact that the toenail had died, basically. Is that what happened? I assume so. I'd never run a half marathon before. Yeah. And nothing like that had happened in training.

But I hadn't really gone far enough in training. I'd only done 14K in training. So then on the day, when I got home and had a shower, I noticed that a lot of my toenails were black. I thought, okay, all right, fair enough. It's one of those things. Because you've been running across the North Pole, hadn't you? That's what you did.

Yeah, it did look like I was frostbitten. So I got home and a lot of my tools were black. I thought, okay, I didn't expect of that. Never mind. And then over the course of the next few weeks. Never mind. Oh, my legs falling off. Oh, that's a shame.

Over the course the next few weeks, the toenails would become very wobbly and loose. And then I just realized I could just pull them off. So I started doing it in front of the kids. They think I'm crazy. But I'm a bit like, do you remember that Bill Murray film, Scroogeed? Yes. I'm a bit like there are just bits falling off me now.

And it wasn't even a full marathon. It was 13 miles two months ago. So that's not ideal, is it? I think for me, the worst was, well, the stupidest was I sat on my own hands. and disficated my own finger. That was a bad one. I was at school, like year 11. I sat down on a hard check

put my hand underneath me and managed to somehow push out my own finger. That was awful. I'd have it popped back in. I don't have you ever had anything popped back in, but that is not a pleasant thing to have done. Once again, there's nothing they really do. They just go, we're going to pop it back in.

It's going to be very painful, and then you just need to ride it out. But anyway, we're falling to pieces. We're getting old. That's the thing, isn't it? We're going to pop it back in and your finger won't work again for the rest of your life.

You're 15. Your thumb will constantly be up. You'll constantly be flagging cabs whether you want to or not. I had to have dental surgery after a night out with you, Tom. What happened? Because you knocked a bottle of beer into my mouth in a nightclub in bath. Did I? I'm so sorry.

Did you chip to me on your tooth? What? He didn't even notice? Chipped a tooth, yeah. And then I'd have to be like sanded down. I mean, that's not what the dentist. I thought I was dead to disrespected. Did that cost money? I can't remember.

I mean, I'm assuming it did. And I'm very sorry. But I was, you were very apologetic and I didn't really care at all. And then the next morning, I noticed that I had a big old, big old chip in the tooth. And I thought I should probably get that sort of you. I've never, I've never held it against you. I chipped my front tooth from the first day of a lad's holiday to Valoraki in 2001. The first time I jumped into the pool, I didn't realize the depth and smash

my mouth on the bottom. Literally, around all the girls in the hotel who all sat around the pole. That was my entrance. And that has then made you a toxic brand. Exactly. They're like not this guy.

Anyone but old chippy tooth over there. Frank Spencer's on holiday. So Chris, I'm sorry to hear about your broken body. We're all getting old. That's what's clear. There's no mystery about that. And why have I said the word mystery and really push that word like it matters? Oh, lovely.

Because today's episode is all about mysteries. I'm going to be telling you all about the start of crime fiction. So mysteries as a storytelling device, where that came from. I've got for you what many would consider to be the classic conspiracy mystery of the 20th century. And I think we're going to solve it this week. I can feel it. What's that? It's got to be JFK, isn't it?

Oh, yes. Sorry. Is it JFK? It is JFK. Oh, brilliant. JFC. Hang on. Great. And I'm going to be talking about the mystery of the princes in the tower. One of my favourite mysteries, actually. Ah, before that, let's kick off with a little bit of correspondence. This is from Grace Hughes, whose email says, Lipster Teat. Could Bob Dylan have the answer? I think we need to quick refresher. Ellis briefly describe what Lips to Teet is to anyone who

may have joined us since the Dan Snow episode. And this will feel quite strange without that context. One of us, I can't remember who, asked the completely reasonable question. Who was the first person to drink? Cows milk, how and why? Yeah. Did you milk the cow or did you just go straight? Listerteet.

And if you went lipstick, what other animals would you like to go lipstick with? Obviously, you could go lipstick with a goat. Goat's milk is very popular, but there are all sorts of other animals. and if we'd been on the radio, the switchboards would have lit up. We've had so much correspondence over the years on which animal you would and wouldn't like to go lipstick with. It's probably our, and this speaks volumes, our longest running feature.

And actually, one of the early questions was, who was the first person to go lipstick, and what did they go lipstick with? Well, Grace Hughes has some thoughts on that very question. Hello, you handsome historical heroes. I love that, not least for the alliteration. Thank you. I discovered, oh, what a time a few months ago, so I'm a little late to the party, but I am steadily working my way through the episodes, and I'm currently on episode 150. I thoroughly enjoyed your early musings on who the first person may have been to go lips to teeth, but I hadn't thought much about it until yesterday when I was listening to Bob Dylan, a Bob Dylan playlist, and his 2006 song, Thunder on the Mountain, came on. And in it, he declares that I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows.

That's one of the lyrics from that song. Oh, dear. It occurred to me that it sounds very much like he must have gone lips to teat. I wonder if he knows any more about the history of going lips to teat, and whether you boys might think it's worth contacting him to pick him up at his very ample brains on this subject. I suspect any inquiries on the subject will be met with cold silence, but the thought of potential email exchange amuses me greatly. That's actually not a bad idea.

The idea of us email is still in representation of follow. find out if he knows anything more about who went hips to eat first. So behind that, Grace. Incidentally, the same verse of the song also includes one of the best rhymes I've ever come across with Dylan pairing, tough sons of bitches with orphanages. Very nice. What a gem. Anyway, thanks for the highly entertaining point. It's my go-to these days. Best wishes, Grace.

Thank you, Grace. I'll give you that line again, boys. I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows. That's a choice, isn't it? I just want to say to him, oh, you're hard. Yeah. I'm guessing that's not a literal line, is it? Unless he's really now just sort of, be perfectly honest about his strange lie. Imagine a cow 900, you're thinking, just a hundred to go. Yeah, old Bonnie Moo.

Just a hundred to go. Can you put your musical seatbelts on, please? I'm about to offer an opinion on Bob Dylan. Did you say Bonnie Moo? I did. Fantastic. Because of the line of a thousand cows, it made me think of, yeah. Fantastic.

Fantastic. Yeah, buckle up. Here's my opinion on Bob Dylan. Rubbish lyricist. Oh, massively disagree. How many Rose must a man walk down before you can call him a man? What does that mean?

How many sees must have white dove sailed before she sleeps in the sand? Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. What is this? A fever dream? He's got, he's completely got away with it. It's just vaguely. mysterious, isn't it? It's not I've got a soul, but I'm not a soldier.

And what does that mean exactly, Chris? You are quite simply an insult to global culture. So thank you, Grace, for that, uh, that email. I'm completely behind you on the fact that Bob Dylan might have the answer, lips to teeth wise.

We, well, generally might get in contact with his management. We'll get, we'll hear about it here. If we do do that. If any of the rest of you have anything you'd like to talk to us about, and here's how you get in contact with the show. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at ohwattatime.com,

and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, what a time, pod. Now, clear off. Now, every week on this show, if you are a member of our Patreon, Oh, what a time, all-timer tier. We will figure out where in history your name may have been before, using pure instinct. And this week, our name is Lucy Docherty. I think she sounds like an absolutely lovely, very caring Irish midwife.

And like, if you were born in a certain village, guarantee that you were brought into this world by the lovely, gentle, sympathetic hands of Lucy Docty. Everyone in this village was delivered by Lucy Doherty apart from one child who was delivered by the fireman during like a there was a one random one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that child is a drug addict.

Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking an early paleontologist who found one of the most important dinosaur, full dinosaur skeleton in maybe like on the cliffs of Dober, that sort of thing, I probably didn't get the recognition she deserved. It was like a full T-Rex. The first woman to study paleontology at W.

University. There we are. She went on a dig in about 1890 and she was wearing like a massive dress with a petticoat. And then a lot of old white men claimed basically all the spoils were all the hard work

that Lucy Docherty. Yeah, yeah. She has written the best paper on T-Rex femurs you will ever read. And this is why whenever they find a T-Rex now they name it Lucy. Yes.

Oh, that's nice. This is why. Lovely. Another option is the last person to live in a lighthouse. Yeah. But boats kept crushing and eventually for the good of everyone, they decided Lucy just wasn't good enough.

Well, she had a drink problem. She was crap. I'm imagining in that situation, Elle, her heart's just not into working in the lighthouse. She just wants to be an illustrator, for example. Yeah, she was always just inside working on that or working on an app or something that she's Really, that's a real key.

She wants to work in tech. She just loves going to bed early. Can't sleep with a light on. He felt like Lucy. It's 10 past nine. Yeah, you know, I'm quite an early riser, actually. So I tend to go to bed early. Not again, Lucy.

There you are, Lucy. Either you can be one of the early paleontologists you found the first fully intact T-Rex or a woman who is responsible. for the count of the deaths of hundreds. Yeah, exactly. It's up to you, Lucy. It's not for us to choose where you came from in history.

We'll leave that to you. And if you want to join Lucy on the oh what a time, all-time tier, here's how you can do that. Hello again, you horrible lot. Enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon supported today? For a mere handful of farthings, you can get ad-free shows, two bonus subscriber episodes each month,

access to all the past bonus eps, first dibs on live tickets, and even help decide what subjects the boys cover next. Your support makes everything possible, so sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's a time, or oh what's a time.com. What are you waiting for?

Stop dawdling. All right, well, this week we are talking about some of history's greatest mysteries. Boys, what will you be telling us about? I will be telling you all about the start of crime fiction, basically, all the excitement around it and why people fell in love with this genre. I've got a royal mystery for you. Are the Princes in the Tower? It's a famous one. I can't wait for that. But right now, we're going to get into.

one of arguably the biggest mysteries of the 20th century, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. But me and Darrell are our historian, Dr. Darrell Leeworthy. We are completely agreed on this subject. The fact is, this is not a mystery. In fact, it's probably the least mysterious murder in modern American history. Really? The killer, quite clearly, in my opinion, and in the plenary,

of Dr. Darleyworthy was Lee Harvey Oswald. He acted alone and the physical, ballistic and photographic evidence all points one way. However, no crime of the 20th century has generated more conspiracy theories, more books, more films, more speculation. It has become the archetypal example of a case where the facts of a killing are known, but the public simply refuses to believe them. Do you know which famous football manager from the 90s and beyond is completely obsessed with the assassination of JFK. Harry Rednaud. Guess again?

So it's an active football manager still working today? No, retired. Okay. Kenny Dalglish? Bigger. Than Dalglish? Marini. Still a lie.

Ferguson? Ferguson. Alex Ferguson is completely obsessed of the assassination of JFK. Anyone who's been to his house will tell you, He's got loads and loads of books on the assassination of JFK. Plus, he's actually got some memorabilia from Dealey Plaza. I really hope that's why he threw a boot at David Beckham's head. It was all about disagreement over JFK.

Back into the lift. Back into the lift. Yeah. Well, where did the boot come from? Was it the grassy no? Was it with Sir Alex even the one who kicked it? The grassy pitch. Yeah, exactly.

The public have been obsessed with the murder of JFK, the assassination rather, for decades. And here's some of the reasons why. Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, which starred Kevin Costner, cemented this conspiracy narrative for a generation. Novelists including Don DeLilo, who wrote Libra, and Stephen King, who wrote the 22nd of November, 1963. They've both used the assassination as a launch pad.

Even The Simpsons has taken its shot with Homer famously declaring, Marge, I figured it out. Leah Harvey Oswald wanted to steal the Jack Ruby. The killing of JFK is not just an event. It's basically like an entire conspiracy theory mystery genre. I mean, a fundamental thing seems is the fact that it was filmed as well. That's kind of crucial, isn't it, really? It's a documented killing.

Yeah, only on a few cameras. Famously not that many, but it's filmed from a few angles. Let's recount exactly what happened. So at 1230 on the 22nd of November, 1963, President Kennedy's motorcade was making its way through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Can I just check,

none of us have been there, have we? We haven't actually been to have a look. Sorry, are you now throwing us into the mix as potential? Where were you? What's your alibi? Well, my mum and dad were alive in 1963. I don't know where they were.

I can't tell you. So it could have been Nestor. It could have been your mom. You know, she was an 11-year-old girl at the time, but there's a chance. 11 years old girl and a cracking shot from the sixth floor of the Texas school book depository. That's where the sniper's bullet was fired from.

The sixth floor of the Texas school book depository. It struck the president in the neck the first shot. The wound was serious but survivable. With fast enough medical attention, Kennedy would probably have lived through that first shot, which is fascinating to think about. When you see the footage back, you see him kind of grab his neck as that first shot rings out.

But then came the second shot. Fired from the same vantage point, it hit the president in the head as the car passed the infamous grassy knoll. And this second shot was a catastrophic wound. Parts of the president's brain was splattered across the vehicle. And you see his wife, Jackie Kennedy, climb over the back of the car and almost try to grab parts of the president's splattered brain

across the back of the vehicle and collected them up. It's a horrific scene. Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital arriving at 12.13. 38 p.m. doctors declared him dead at 1pm. And then after that, that famous Walter Cronkite news bulletin, have you ever seen it where he takes off the glasses and says, the president, I've been past the note. Oh, man. The entire event itself lasted around half an hour, but from the moment of the first shot, an investigation was basically underway. Attention quickly

focused on a white man in khaki clothing, seen leaning out of a sixth floor window. Okay, it was my dad. All right. He's a white man. With a Welsh twang, strong Welsh accent. Yeah, a white man in khaki clothing was seen leaning out of a sixth floor window of the book depository. When police searched the floor there, they found a Manlika Carcano rifle,

an Italian bolt action military weapon, and ballistic fragments matched it precisely. Oswald's fingerprints are on the barrel. It's funny with this case, because it's almost like the more evidence there is that people think the greater the conspiracy goes. But it's like there's so much evidence it was Oswald. Oswald in turn fled the scene.

And this is what people don't realize, but he actually shot dead a Dallas police officer named J.D. Tippett while on the run. He was eventually... I didn't know that. So he murdered someone else while on the run. He was eventually captured inside the Texas theater. Under arrest, Oswald denied everything. He claimed he was a political scapegoat,

a former U.S. Marine who had spent time in the Soviet Union, and now stood accused in his own work. words purely for his beliefs. Oswald's biography is, it's really, I think this is another reason why conspiracy theory is kind of grip this particular assassination, because Oswald's life is weird, but it also helps explain why so many people have refused to accept the simple version of events. So as a young man in the 40s and 50s, he became fascinated by Marxism and read the classic Marxist text. After serving in the US Marines, he defected to the Soviet Union and settled for a time in Minsk. There, he married a young pharmacist called Marina Prisakova in 1961, and not a happy marriage.

He turned out to be violent. He once beat his wife so badly that one of his American landlords warned him to stop or he would face eviction. He returned to the United States with Marina in 1962. And within a year of coming back to the US, he had shot the president. No one knows for certain why he did it because he never actually said. But it appears there would be political motivation, specifically about Q. Cuba. Oswald was associated with a fair play for Cuba committee, a pro-crack, a pro-Castro group based in New York. He had watched with furious the United States back the disastrous Bay

of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which aimed to overthrow Castro. By 1963, Oswald had demonstrated he was prepared to use violence for political ends because just a few months before he shot Kennedy, he had attempted to assassinate, retired U.S. Army General Edwin Walker in Dallas, who was a prominent right-win figure. The attempt, that attempt on Walker failed, but it revealed he was prepared to kill for a cause. Yeah. If I'm his lawyer, I am saying, I'll be honest,

it's not looking great. As I'm going, we're going into, you have a track record of trying to assassinate people. There's prints all over the gun. When you were fleeing, you killed another person. I'm not massively confident. I'm far too much for people, please. I'd be like, no, I think it's all right, actually.

I think I could get you off this. I wouldn't bloody worry about it, actually. I think it's all right. Don't worry. I think this is a slap on the wrist. So, yeah, Kennedy in Oswald's mind seemed to have been the American face of the anti-Castro policy

that had failed at the Bay of Pigs. Two days after the assassination, the story took a turn that would drive conspiracy theories on once again in the ensuing decades. On the 24th of November 1963, Oswald was being transferred. and this bit blows my mind.

He's kind of being publicly transferred when you see the pictures. Oswald is being transferred from Dallas police headquarters and as he's being transferred led in front of like a, it seems like a random bunch of the public. A local nightclub owner called Jack Ruby

stepped out of the crowd and shot him dead and this was being broadcast on live television. Subsequently, this meant that Oswald never stood trial. He never spoke in court, whatever he might have said about his motives, his associates or the American state, whatever he was going to say, he didn't, because it all went to the grave with him.

But this is the moment where the conspiracy theory industry really begins. I mean, not only was he killed by Jack Ruby before he'd went to trial, Jack Ruby himself was terminally ill when he shot Oswald. So, you know, it's a good candidate for someone to hush up someone, if they are the full guy for an enormous conspiracy. So there's elements of this that kind of make sense. but I mean, there's just so much evidence that Oswald did it. However, because Ruby had silenced Oswald so publicly

and because eyewitness accounts of the shooting itself were confused. Some claim to have heard two shots, others three, some pointed to the grassy knoll. There's just so much speculation that it's just an enormous space for voices to come in and opine around what might have happened. And here are some of the more popular theories that the American rights saw a communist plot Oswald had, after all, defected to the USSR or the American left.

They saw the fingerprints of the CIA angered by Kennedy's Cold War caution. And then there's also JFK's links to the mob, which had lost a lucrative Cuban operation contract after the revolution. Some believed Vice President Lyndon Johnson himself had orchestrated the killing to seize power. It's also worth noting that Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, they themselves were convinced the CIA had done it. They thought it was an inside job. There's one group you haven't mentioned.

The Welsh. Welsh nationalists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were, yeah, it was to get our own parliament and we decided to bump off the most important moment. Some reason that's been lost in all of this. Ballistic, photographic and forensic analysis has repeatedly, a time in again,

pointed to a lone gunman firing from behind the motorcade, exactly what the Warren Commission concluded in 1964. But because you've got Oswald, silence. This vacuum is just filled with kind of conspiracy. But perhaps the most interesting question is the one that historians love most. What if? What if Kennedy had survived? Would he have won re-election in 1964? I think yes. Who would have succeeded him? What might America have become? When Stephen King wrote his novel 22nd of November, 1963, Stephen King imagined a worst-case scenario, developed with input from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin

that Kennedy serves two terms but is succeeded by the segregationist governor George Wallace and the Vietnam War escalates into a third world war. Historians generally agree Kennedy would have won a second term, but there is another more surprising conclusion, which is that many of the great reforms of the 1960s like the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, none of those would have been possible without the wave of grief that swept over, that swept over, the nation.

Interesting. Following Kennedy's death. So basically like Lyndon Johnson had so much political capital on the back of a martyred president that a lot of JFK's agenda was actually pushed through a lot more easily than it would have been

had he survived. An interesting thing to think about. I think there's some truth to that. Modern American politics is still kind of living in the shadow of that 1960s legislative program. Much of the modern American right from Reagan's onwards

has defined itself against those reforms of the 60s. without them, movements like Maga and the political rise of Donald Trump look very different, which brings us to one unresolved question, not who shot Kennedy, that we know, but why did Lee Harvey Oswald really do it? And how in the middle of the most heavily guarded criminal transfer in American history did Jack Ruby walk right in and put a bullet in him? Ruby questioned afterwards, offered his own vague explanations that he had acted out of grief

for Jackie Kennedy, that he wanted to spare the country a trial. but no one believes him. I mean, even I, that's one aspect of this. I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Rumors of the mob obviously linger and their association with JFK. The assassination of JFK in the end is not one mystery. It's actually quite a lot of mysteries, at least two.

You know, what drove Oswald? Why did he do it? And then why did Jack Ruby silence him in turn? Both went to the grave in November 1963 and no amount of ballistic analysis will ever recover them. It is, to this day, a fascinating mystery. with a kind of element of it that is quite well solved, I'd say. Maybe it's my own personal grief for the death of JFK

or maybe the death of the American dream, but another one of my toenails has just come off. What? A third toenails? I've lost a third, yeah, thanks to the Hattney Half Mile of Thorn. I cut over two months ago, May the 17th, I recorded this, on the 22nd agenda. Not to worry, this is also what happens in horror movies.

When someone starts to turn into sort of the undead, there'll be a few scenes where they realise a bits of their body are dropping off. It's never great, is it? No. Exactly, yeah. It is zombie-like behaviour for just bits of me to fall off. There are no zombie films where someone's toenil comes off, and then the zombie goes,

Oh, sorry, I run a charity half marathon about two months ago and raised quite a lot of money for Parkinson's UK. There is, I'm not to be cruel though, I think Chris you'll agree, if Alice's topic turning into a zombie, there will be a tipping point where we will have to cut you from the show where it's no longer sustainable. No longer feasible.

Brains, brains. I think at that point, we do need to cut you out. I'm sorry. I think we're one toenail away from having a serious conversation about Alice's future. So there we go. That's the end of part one of mysteries. part two right now, including one of my favourite mysteries. Ellis will be telling

us about the princes in the tower. You can get part two right now by going to patreon.com forward slash show Watertime. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye-bye. Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, add free, plus access to our full archive of bonus content,

two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the O-Water Time group chat. Plus, if you become an oh what a time, all-timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time.