You're Wrong About - The JFK Assassination Part 1 with Mackenzie Joy Brennan

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Where is Dana Scully when you need her? For the first installment of this two-part episode, legal correspondent Mackenzie Joy Brennan tells Sarah about what happened before, during, and after the moment that John F. Kennedy was shot in that Dallas motorcade, the lasting cultural images that have been burned into the public consciousness, and the story of the man who shot the man and the man who shot the man who shot the man. Plus, the conspiracy theory that walked so that the paranoias of today could run — and how we can orient ourselves in reality despite our strongly held beliefs. Digressions include Oregon Trail bison, jaundiced tans, and the triumph of 90s legal thrillers.More Mackenzie Joy Brennan:http://www.mkzjoybrennan.comEdited + produced by Miranda Zickler:http://www.linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonsterFact checking by Julie KliegmanMore You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchYWA on InstagramSupport the show

This is what I'll do after the grid goes down. I'll tell people what I remember from The Simpsons. Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where sometimes we talk about the mother of all conspiracy theories, I would say, not clickbait. With me today is our law talking correspondent Mackenzie Brennan. McKenzie, hello. Hi, I think I agree. It's definitely like in the top 10 bracket of conspiracy theories. Should I spill the beans such as they are?

You should. For the people who have a playlist going while painting a ceiling and haven't just looked at the title. What are you talking about? Heck yeah. In fact, I have a song to add to the playlist because I was a big Conorobrist fan and sold out mentions this. It mentions a magic bullet and a grassy knoll. So that's your first clue. There you go.

And to quote my favorite reference to get this out of the way, it is, of course, the line in Veep in which Celina, Nina Meyer says, I wouldn't be your veep if there was a grassy knoll full of Jody Foster fans at your inauguration. And McKenzie, who are you? And tell us about your life until you joined us on this podcast. Yeah. So I've always been super obsessed with the Kennedys in general. And I think in COVID went down the various rabbit holes associated. But I've worked in various government entities as, you know, on both the legal side, a lawyer and on the policy side. I also do like true crime ethics commentary on the side. And now I'm knee deep in historical constitutional research about, you know, the foundations of our country. So all of these things intersect with this story. And I think that's part of why it appeals to

so many people is that it covers so many fields of our lives and interests. Yeah. True crime ethics commentary is a very underrated side hustle, I would say. Thank you. It's, um, I'm glad people are starting to talk more about it and the fact that we can indulge in our human interests and also not compound harm while we're doing that. Yeah. And trying to figure out the difference between the public's right to know and one's own desire to know, which can sometimes feel like each other, especially if we're not examining ourselves very hard. That's a great line to draw in a way of putting it because obviously we all have some lurid impulses. and this story is unique, obviously, because it is American human interest. Like, we all do deserve to know collectively.

But there are cases where that is not true. And we see through this case where, like, we did get all the details as they came out because we were entitled, how much that can complicate the understanding of a narrative and how messy that can get. Yeah. And I can't wait to get into all that with you today. It's been an interesting road, you know, just in terms of. So many of the things that intersect with this. And I wonder kind of in terms of your interests at this moment and time, like, why do you think we should be talking about this story?

It's always relevant, right? Like, I think for those of us in our generation, too, there was a resurgence of the relevance of the conspiracy theory specifically when the Oliver Stone JFK movie came out. And I believe that was 91, which was, you know, we'll get to it towards the end when we're talking about. about remaining, like, recriminations that come back about this and sources of misconceptions. But a lot of that movie was fake. The movie that makes me ask the question, why does the district attorney of Louisiana have the JFK assassination in his jurisdiction if it happened hundreds of miles away? Right. And also, how does Harry Connick Jr.'s dad fit into all this? Oh, great point, which I remember learning in law school that he was an attorney in his own right,

which was wild. But obviously, like, think of the fact that this comes up so frequently in cultural references, that there's the grassy mill reference. That specifically is one of the conspiracies. It's not any of the established facts. We'll get to it. So I'd say, like, the you're wrong about of what I want to hit is misconceptions, conspiracies, public opinion at the time.

And since then, because obviously there have been other sources of. conspiracies. And what's really interesting to me is what modern science is actually added to the forensic understanding and what we can look back on now that seemed maybe bizarre or unexplained that actually does track with the science, which. Oh, that's a good one. That's my favorite part. Yeah. Because you can see forensic science kind of growing up with these conspiracy theories. Yeah. And think of where it was at the time. Really, really unenvolved in comparison. I mean, where was it? Do you have an example. I feel like the famous murders I can think of are like Sam Shepard, which inspired the fugitive, which, you know, famously, I think, points to a time when you were kind of like, we found this guy near

this thing that happened. So, you know, we do. Yeah. It's probably him. And I think that also probably in retrospect plays into people thinking that there is a conspiracy going on here because the forensics right in a very narrow sense were not advanced. And we'll get to why blunders really compact. some of those issues and kind of compounded it in a way that made conspiracies more likely than believing the facts. Yeah, I can only imagine. Because there were a lot of things, and I think this is more a part two addition, but like with the initial autopsy handling and people wanted certain things to be very formal and not in the hands of, say, the Dallas County Medical Examiner. And there are also choices about propriety of what hospital we went to,

were the Kennedys and he's the president, but that meant that they didn't get a forensic autopsy done. And that actually makes a huge difference in murder cases. So I think there's kind of two prongs to it. There's the forensics weren't very advanced. And then there's the weird bureaucratic slash presidential blunders that were made in the very early days that were still feeling the after effects of the holes that left, so to speak, oops.

You know what? It's a, wait, sometimes you're not even trying to make puns and yet they happen around you. Yeah. So, um, so how about that? I thought like our first bit can be the context of the assassination and what JFK was doing in Dallas, what it meant for the country. And then moving to obviously Lee Harvey Oswald himself was killed shortly thereafter. that probably contributed to a lot of, you know, eyes gazing askance at who's doing what. So what do you know about the assassination and what's the context that it lives in in your brain? Yeah. I feel like I know the pop culture version, which is, you know, something that has come up on

this show a lot, but just the fact that the pop culture universe, I would say, of like, roughly, you know, 1950 to 2000, let's say the age of mass media before the internet replaced TV is kind of the most viable form of communication, where it was like one of the fairly finite list of pop culture phenomena that was referenced all the time, right? And that people understood visual references to it. And there's like, you know, what jumps to mind? And this is, you know, JFK inspired a boom in this as well. But that there's like an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa becomes a beauty queen. And then because she has to step in to replace the winner. And there's like a visual homage to the photo of LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One or whatever plane it was in that episode of The Simpsons, you know?

And so the outline of it in terms of like this big sort of cartoon that it became, I think it feels like maybe the way we talk about 9-11 now where there's this like big layer of like gallows humor around it to protect ourselves from like. like the abject horror of it if you think about it too hard. And yeah. So I mean, the pop culture version right to me is that you have the Kennedys in Dallas. It's 1963. Everything's groovy. Well,

it's not groovy yet. It's, things might be a go-go by then, though. Yeah. And that he's this like young, youthful, tan, healthy president,

actually very sickly. So funny. Yeah. But a very tan, sickly person, which still throws people off. If you're chronically ill, just get a tan, I guess. Well, I've actually read about that because one of the reasons that I love this,

it became a hyperfixation, obviously, but he was jaundiced that some of the conditions that he had actually made him have a yellow hue to his skin. But in especially like the proto-color imagery that we had at the time, it made him look very tan and healthy. But like it was exactly the opposite. Incredible. But like lack of forensics, lack of like high-res. Like today people will be like, the president is looking jaundiced or something.

Absolutely. But also there would be a lot of conspiracy theories about how he's a Catholic, just like then. Disgusting. That's something. Yeah. And, you know, so many movies and shows and just random things I've seen throughout my life are like flooding my brain right now because there's... It's everywhere. The history of it.

And there's a thing about your parents talking about it if they're kind of boomer age or around there, which certainly my mom remembered it very closely. Yeah, so what was her story? What was her memory of it? Well, I mean, nothing particularly unusual and probably like the same story. I have about 9-11, which is I went to school like usual. And then the teachers told us something terrible had happened. Actually, 9-11 on the West Coast, you woke up to it. I woke up to it. Yeah. But where it's a normal day and then it's not. And you're just kind of like a kid who's not directly affected by it at all, but just who's like, I think maybe it's like these things are powerful partly for a kid because they're kind of an early moment of seeing how little control

adults have over their world at the end of the day. I was going to say that. Yeah, like anything that that gives a small person an indication of the grownups being very, very concerned, I remember that with 9-11 and not to get on to a tangent of that, but it does track that that seems like a parallel experience. Yeah. But when my mom was saying there was a plane crash with such sobriety, and I'm sitting there thinking like, well, you know, plane crash is bad, but why are you talking like this? Yeah.

And in our family, my mom was pretty little at the time of the JFK assassination, but I do think it's wise to share with some of the younger listeners what this meant for the generation that, like, she her parents it was their anniversary and they're in new york so you know a center of many things and too many places and trains were closed for my grandparents to go out that night and they were a republican family but my grandma cried you know it was just there was enough unity at the time and it was so bizarre although i will say four presidents have been definitely assassinated there are a couple questions about other poisonings before that, but four definitively assassinated in office. And they were all in the period from 1860s to 1960s. So that really was a bad time to be a president,

huh? Yeah. Who are our four presidents? Yeah. So we have Lincoln, obviously, was 1865. Then James Garfield, 1881, William McKinley, 1901, and then JFK was 1963. It's fine. I would have said it was more, but then I guess we got into attempt. you know, like Squeaky Fromm and Gerald Ford. And our last topic, Reagan. Yes. Yes. And America's, the 1980s special little guy.

I feel like we must mention that what is it, Hinkley as a memoir that's like, you know, Jody Foster is a lesbian because of me. And it's like, okay. We were talking about this. Like, don't open your mouth. We were all rooting for you. I know. When people like you should talk as little as possible, which as you can imagine is very

difficult for me because that's my whole job. Yeah, but you didn't do this. So I think you get a little more latitude on that. It's a very good caveat. See, I need to call you sometimes to like, litigate on my defense against my anxiety. I think that would be good. Yeah, some people should have more anxiety about speaking. Some should have less. There you go. So yeah, it feels like it was one of these, like, these pretty rare absolutely earthshaking moments. And interesting for us that it, It's the first time that there really is a 24-hour news cycle. That it's noted as one of the only times early on that the TV stayed on and that people were actually reporting for 24 hours.

So thanks for that. I mean, look, I never like to bring up the devil. But like maybe that is when the devil climbed out of a test pattern. Is that one of those like, you know, the like Vitruvian Man circle and it cuts to like technical difficulties? Yeah. Let's just make a devil. one of those, you know, because the idea of people needing to be encouraged to pay as much attention as possible to the media at any hour of the day in a way that was ultimately

designed for profits is like, no, a big part of how we ended up here with everyone overstimulated and getting dumber all the time. Well, it's interesting because like this really did merit being there for 24 hours. But I imagine once that seal is broken, then it's hard to not justify like, hey, we can do this around the clock for profit, even if nobody's dead. Yeah, and to have the text knowledge sheet to do it. Yeah. I mean, in a weird way, it's like World War II where you develop all these tools for warfare and weapons and then the war ends. And you're like, well, shucks, what are we going to do with all this technology?

And of course, that did lead to, like, make sure advances in non-weapon directions as well. But, you know, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. You sure can't. You can't put him back in the devil box. Well, yeah. And so they kind of, I feel like the resident pop culture images, and I never thought of it this way before, but much like Midsamar, it is daytime horror. Right? And the Kennedys are writing very slowly in a convertible down the parade route, which I realize this is a reason we don't do this anymore.

Not to say they're asking for it, but in retrospect. Yeah, but right. And also not to give too much credit to conspiracy theories, which, as we all know, is not something I like to do. But it's one of those things where I'm sure the question of stupid or conspiracy theory comes up a lot. Absolutely. And I feel like there's a good quote, which is said more succinctly than I'm going to say

it. But something like don't credit conspiracy, what you can attribute to stupidity. And especially where like multiple government. agencies playing with one another is concerned, which is we'll get to it at the end. But that really is what it ended up being is a bunch of bureaucratic blunders plus, you know, evil is always evolving, you know, what threats look like is evolving. Right. Because you look at American intervention in Southeast Asia at the time famously and you're like, why do we think they would be so competent domestically if, you know, they're really not doing well. A ground war. Yeah, exactly.

never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line. It's like, think after the Revolutionary War, a similar sort of thing, that they were used to fronts of people marching on each other. And we essentially would line up from time immemorial and shoot at each other in a line. And for us, the Revolutionary War was the first time when we really got a bit of higher ground in more ways than one because the Americans knew the terrain. and they didn't have to do the let's all shoot each other in a line thing, but the British should. Anyways, things are always evolving.

The thing is, once you start trying to topple other countries, which became a big part of our foreign policy, then you don't know the area as well. But that's getting, yeah, getting into the whole latter half of the 20th century. Yeah, bottom line, I guess, is like government distrust and social unrest can breed a lot of suspicion, even when the government is trying to do something somewhat above board with the Warren Report and Commission. It really shows the ripple effects of mistrust in the government. Yeah. Well, and this connects with, you know, something I think a lot about the OJ Simpson trial. Spoilers. And also, I guess, where we are now, or, you know, you have, we'll come back to this

story one day, but for now that you have, you know, the OJ. Simpson jurors really, really, not willing to believe any of the forensic evidence, or at least quite a lot of the forensic evidence being presented to them in a way that's very frustrating and hard for a lot of people to take and especially emphasizes this great racial divide because the jurors are mainly people of color and are not inclined to trust the LAPD. Yep. And white America is absolutely shocked by this, but also, you know, hopefully with the benefit of time, it's possible for everybody to maybe see that, you know, to me the issue here is that

The LAPD had a terrible track record, obviously, and especially in terms of the way that they treated black people who lived in L.A. So it kind of created that suspicion that anything must be poisoned. It's a great, like, microcosm version of what we see going on here. Right. Well, and they, and they were also by not being believed being found guilty of something they actually had done, right? Yeah. Because regardless of how. they behaved in this case. It also was about how they had behaved as an entity for this entire time. And also, interestingly, you have also a situation, and I feel like this is relevant, where you have a group who's asking for our trust, who has not behaved in a trustworthy way

consistently. And now that they have to actually try and take the evidence they're gathering really seriously, they've been cutting corners for so long that they don't actually know how to handle evidence properly anymore, even if they want to. You know, so this thing of like looking at the incompetence, especially of groups that are kind of clashing and have overlapping areas of authority, you're like, yeah, even if the stakes are incredibly high, you can't rise to the occasion if you haven't been practicing. Yeah, and it's really the magic formula for maybe for conspiracy theories in general. It's tough when the division is so deep within the country and this is where you look to

leaders who divide rather than unite, which is something that obviously plagues us still. But you'll see how there's kind of strife from both sides. So one side thinks that he's too communist, one side thinks he's not communist enough, and thus nobody is happy. There's no side that anybody trusts. And then how are you ever going to believe the findings that comes out of a government that is thus structured? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's sounding more familiar than I ever thought it would. Right. And so I feel like there's like a very strong, just kind of iconic set of images that have ended up in the American subconscious about this, that like you would understand even like probably a very small reference to, right? Where you have like the very photogenic, despite whatever issues are bubbling below the surface presidential couple who are writing in a very slow moving convertible. and that they've got the governor and his wife and what a police officer in the car as well.

Yeah, so it's a convertible with three rows of seats. And in the back you have JFK and Jackie. In the middle jump seats, you have Governor Connolly and his wife. And then in the front, you have two Secret Service officers. And it's like a 10-mile-long motorcade, as will come into play. There is also a car behind them with Secret Service agents riding on the jump board. and they will hop off, but we'll get to that. You know, hard to imagine that they really went over what to do if this happened.

Or maybe they did. Right. But the fact of putting the sitting, I realize this is kind of the reason we don't do this anymore, but the fact of putting the sitting president in like a slow moving open target is really just something. And it, yeah, it brings up the question of incompetence or conspiracy. Like if you were playing a video game, this is the ideal way. to track a target. This is the bison and the Oregon Trail of human tragedies where you're just like, well, I can just shoot so many Oregon Trail bison because they walk across the screen like we're low on RAM.

Sitting ducks. And so we basically have this very slow moving target and someone somewhere shoots at the presidential motorcade and hits the president. I want to say two times. And also, I can't remember who else gets shot, but I want to say that a couple of people also in the car do. And then we just have this, like, day of confusion for the American people, from what I can tell, where you have famously Walter Cronkite breaking in to a soap opera multiple times to give updates and tell people that the president has died. And again, in a way, I think immortalized by the Simpsons taking his glasses off in a way that shocks a nation, because he's not a grown-up. He's just a man. He's one of us. And of course, later we find out, well, there's like a lot of aftermath that I won't try and recount.

But there's also, and for anyone who grew up watching Parker Posey in the House of Yes, especially the iconography of like Jackie Kennedy wearing the pale pink Chanel suit that gets covered in her husband's brains. Or at least that's like the kind of macabre way that we talk about it historically. But there's like something about that image that like I keep picturing in my head is like the entirety of the thing in a way. And then we apprehend the Dallas police, I guess, apprehend a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald, who then gets shot in the gut by a nightclub owner like the next day and dies. And then we have to make Kevin Costner movies about it for the rest of our lives, the end. Naturally. And then there's like a guy who's taking video and accidentally takes footage of an assassination.

And so it's like we've had them before, but we've never been able to look at footage of them. And hopefully we won't be doing it again in American history. Well, yeah, obviously that's become pretty commonplace, thinking of the Kirk video that circulated. The Zapruder footage, it's really interesting. This was another turning point, I think, in a resurgence of conspiracy theories, because the film itself was not originally released. The first look that the public got was when the war in report itself came out.

And that was only in stills. So 64, October 64, pretty quick turnaround. That is fast. The Warren Commission releases their report. Yeah. And it's very thorough. We'll go through the process. But people only saw the stills and it's in the motion that we eventually saw in the Zepruder footage when it aired on Geraldo in 1975 that you see some of the things that stirred up footage.

Oh, my God, not Geraldo. Yeah. Right. Am I actually having a resume so varied that nobody even remembers that part of it anymore? That was, it was huge. It spurred a whole new assassination investigation in 76 because that's the source of that. Well, we'll get to what it was the source of. Well, yeah, so let's get into it. So what am I wrong about and like what was unfolding in the kind of nuances that it was hard to see at the time? And also like, yeah, a little bit of like who was JFK, honestly?

Because it also feels like we're so far away from this time now that, I don't know, there's a real risk of aestheticizing it. And it's like, I don't know, you guys. I think these people had some problems. That's my analysis. Yeah. I would say like probably like the moment will suggest, you can overcorrect in both directions about who JFK was. He was obviously a very flawed president. And you have Bay of Pigs and all that stuff that I think to go into in any depth would be its own epitaph.

Yeah. But he's got the Cold War on his hands. He is a very aesthetically pleasing president. He's got the Cold War on his hands. Yes. Right. Yeah. And then he's got this beautiful young wife who is very good at tying together loose ends and keeping up appearances. Like Jackie was pregnant during the campaign and still did a fair amount of work and then gave birth to Jon John John, who, I had a co-worker when I worked in the government who worked with John John while he was famously trying to pass the New York bar. But you had this beautiful family. She was the epitome of Catholic suffering hidden. Wow. So she gave birth and she had just had a baby die in August of 63. So right before this happened.

Man. Yeah. And you can see her really being an icon of kind of surviving gracefully for American women. And to that, I have to say, that's great. And also, like, I don't think you should have to be that graceful. Absolutely. Like, that should not be our standard, but also hats off to you for going through that. Or hats on because she looked great in hats.

She looked great in that little pillbox hat. And you were correct about the brains on the suit. In fact, her estate has required. that that outfit be held until 100 years after she was alive. So nobody can see it, who sort of overlapped with the event. God, fair enough. Can you imagine? Like, Courtney Kardashian would be wearing it to a Planet Hollywood event or something. Oh, God, right.

I forgot about that. Obviously, her husband had his dalliances as well, another source of suffering that she lived through with a sad smile. Poor gal. Yeah. So they went to Dallas because we're getting close to the next election. 1960 was when JFK was elected. And it was huge that they got Texas to begin with.

We didn't have the party lines that exist now. We still had a lot of Southern Democrats. And that is largely why LBJ was on JFK's ticket in 1960. It was that he pulled in Texas. still only won by a narrow margin. So they really had to fight back against the Republican resurgence that was very racially driven in the South. It's why we ended up losing that whole Southern Democrat wing is that they didn't and don't like civil rights in a majority sense. And that's not to say the people fit this.

Obviously, I'm from a Southern state. I get it. Yeah. But that enough of them do that they'll vote for it. And it can be capitalized on by some of the. worst people in the world, like George Wallace. And the power. Yeah, like the power is with the George Wallace's, even on the Democratic side. So you had like intra-party fighting likely because of the Southern versus Northern Democrats war. Governor Connolly, who was in the car with JFK, and one of the

Texas senators, Ralph Yarborough, both Democrats were feuding with JFK. So you have war from Democrats, you have Dallas specifically actually went for Nixon in 1960. Prior people from his cabinet and administration had actually been like physically accosted on recent visits to Dallas. So they actually recommended that he not go because it was such a hostile atmosphere. And he's like, no, it's fine. I'm not really a communist and that's why they hate me. So let's do it. So people are like, that's the communist Catholic president of the United States.

United States. Yeah. Disgusting. So the number of shots, because you brought up a number of shots and who was shot. I know this is going to be very important in a second. Yeah. So I don't want to get into the specifics until we get into the forensics because I think sometimes if you're introduced to the fake version first, it's tough.

As so many of us were by Kevin Costner. Right. So I don't want to get into the real nitty-gritty, but Governor Connolly was also hit. Mm-hmm. And JFK, it's largely thought by just about everybody that he was killed by the last shot. And that was the one that went through his head and neck. And that is not really disputed. That is when you see in the Zapruder footage and you also have accounts from people like Clint Hill,

who was the Secret Service agent who hopped off the running board of the car behind and crawled up under the trunk, which is also an iconic image because he's trying to get Jackie back in the car. She's trying to grab pieces of his head. And you just picture the strife of that moment and like the weird muscle memory of, well, I have to grab that to fix him. Oh, my God. I feel like you can you can tell that something really disturbs people if we turn it into sort of a series of references and jokes. Because like I saw invasion of the body snatchers again recently and something that really, I mean, it's such a good. great. All the body snatchers movies are great. I have not yet been won over by the 90s one. But I mean,

they're such great movies. And I feel like there's a lot as to why. But in the one from the 70s with Donald Sutherland, there's a scene where, you know, the way these pods work is that they'll kind of send their like suckers into your body and develop a copy of you. And then when they're done kind of creating your copy, they'll like suck all the juices out of your body. and then you'll just kind of turn into dust and then the pod copy that's been made of you will take your like dusty remains out to the garbage man the next morning. It's such a good movie.

But there's like a scene where this happens to Donald Sutherland and it's like, or it happens to a character who he cares about and who he's like holding in his arms thinking that maybe he can revive them. And then it's clear that like the pod has had too much time and this person just like disintegrate. rates in his hands and like the look of horror on his face.

And like trying to hold on to that person. I think that that's such a relatable feeling. And you think of somebody with her composure and everything that good etiquette demanded of a wife at the time. Yeah. And she's like trying to put her husband back together like a pie that she dropped on her in-law's doorstep. And for propriety too.

You know, she held his head and neck until they got to the hospital. hospital because it was evident immediately to the doctors there that she was holding it together. And that would have been an awful photo. And it's also part of what probably confused some of the transfer from what was in the car, the clothing left over because she was trying to cover his head and face, how many bullets were they were, obviously not to blame her. A lot of this falls on forensic teams. and more of his leadership down the line with what autopsies and photos demanded.

But arguably the propriety went a bit too far, but you still feel for what she must have been going through in that moment. And just the days of it, you know, you see that photo of her when LVJ is being sworn in on Air Force One on the way back. And she just looks stricken. Yeah. Like what the hell just happened. It's funny because I know what the images are of it, but it never occurred to me that she was like literally holding his body together. Yeah. And still performing.

I really enjoy the movie Jackie. I know that Natalie Portman is not a traditional Jackie look-like choice, but it really humanizes her experience. And I think Natalie Portman does a great job. But that moment of like the first bathroom that she's able to get to cry and wipe her face of his. blood and brain matter. Yeah. Like, when does she get to do that? And when she gets off the plane, she still has on her tights bits of blood.

And she tells Lady Bird, let them see what they've done to him. So that strength is there, too. Yeah. Yeah. So we have this immediate aftermath. And then in terms of the forensics and who's handling this, I wonder if we should talk about that aspect of it. Yeah, we can hit it briefly, and I think we'll go into greater detail when we get to why certain things went wrong.

But is there a thing of like the, you know, the White House being like, no, wait for us to get other better people to do it? Okay. Yeah. But not better, more proper. Oh. And that's where you really have. Where's Dana Scully when you need her? I know.

She's good and proper. But I think that's a big piece of why things went wrong. In fact, better minds than mine have reached that conclusion that, you know, they wanted him to get military hospital treatment at Bethesda because of his background. And that would be the proper place for the president's autopsy to be performed. But they didn't have a forensic team. And for gunshot murders, even to this day, forensic autopsies are crucially different because you don't have things like DNA in a case like this, even in the best case scenario. it's just the path of the bullet, how the injuries on the body, especially on the flesh that is going to degrade rather quickly. Yeah.

You know, exit wounds, where clothing was torn, all of that stuff corresponding to the inside. Yeah. And part of me is like, let's, without being too gross about it, and then I'm like, you know what, let's just be gross. Let's commit to being gross because it is a very forensics-based episode. And I think if you let it, if you let yourself be clinical, you know, because I think that you can talk about these realities without sensationalizing them. And this probably has a lot to do with my mom being a doctor. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, it does feel, I imagine that it's like just a reality that you have like a very limited amount of time before the body that you're examining, you know, begins to decrees.

Yeah. And you don't have the quality of evidence that you once did, I imagine. Well, that certainly is true, and I imagine that would have placed a pretty hard time limit on a lot of things, even if everything else had gone to plan. Oh, no. Unfortunately, they wanted him to lie in state. Oh, no. The Kennedy family slash administration, because obviously we have a lot of overlap between the two. You have Bobby Kennedy in the administration.

That was its own huge controversy at the time, because there were the nepotism questions. unlike other nepotism-related administration choices, Bobby was relatively qualified, so we will give him that. But he also, you know, he's representing the administration and the family. So he takes a key role in this. Yeah, that's odd. Again, intentions, I don't think you can blame anybody for these things, except for not deferring when they should have deferred.

But because they wanted him to lie in state, the person who wrote the autopsy report, the guy who did not a forensic, pathologist, but the doctor who was at the military hospital, which again, also with military, they don't question orders, whereas somebody who is not qualified at a different hospital may have said, hey, I don't do forensics. I don't know how to do this. Right. But you follow orders when you're in the military. But he completed the report from photos. No. Because they had to get him ready. Yeah. And that is the thing where you're like, okay, I get why people would come up with a conspiracy theory.

about this because I feel like partly conspiracy theories exist to like I feel like I see people if there's I'm sure there's a name for this as a logical fallacy but I feel like I see people doing this all the time of being like well I mean for them to do that that would be too stupid they would never do something that stupid. There's no way. I have news for you about people. We do stupid things. I wake up and I do six stupid things before breakfast honestly. Especially with retrospect. I mean obviously not everything can be accounted for by Monday morning quarterback syndrome. But like, I don't know that a grieving person, even in a position of power who's qualified, when the whole country is there waiting for propriety to tie all these things

together, is it weird that they didn't think of this? I don't know, especially when you have a military hospital where no one's saying it. Well, I mean, it's certainly surreal to think of them not, of it not occurring to anyone because in a way, how would it? But like, you know, pretty soon the question of who did this and how is going to be, like, I cannot stress enough how much time people are going to spend on that, you know, but that at the time it feels like a tragedy rather than a mystery. Yes. Right. So this feels like it's not really an autosy, but maybe like a fifth of an autopsy or something.

I think it would probably be good for somebody who died of natural causes. It would have been totally sufficient if we knew everything. If it were someone who wasn't the president and who died in a normal way, then it would be great. But unfortunately, all of the relevant details. are completely different. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And then there were some things like there was a shell that was under his coat on the stretcher that he was brought in on. And so that also helped eventually prove that, yes, that bullet that hit the back of his head did exit. It exited and was left on the stretcher because it was in his coat when he was taken in. But when the clothing was separated from the

body, it's like, where the hell is this? Is it in his brain still? But they don't see it in his brain. wait, we got to put them in the rotunda of the Capitol, so we figure out what your report is and sign it because we got to be done. Yeah. Well, secrecy and haste are always good for this type of thing. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, and it is so odd to think about sort of the White House as an arm of the Kennedy dynasty

and not the other way around, which it seems like maybe is what's happening here too. Yeah, I think especially in a position like this, there's probably a whole lot of deference given to the family also because I think of the ferocity and rightful indignation that you feel from accounts of Jackie at this time and she did not want death photos of her husband getting out there and so do you defer to that woman as the White House? Right. Probably more likely to if her brother-in-law is working there and he also doesn't want them released.

I don't know. Yeah. Well, and this is why you can't have the presidency exist above the law, right? because it seems like if we treated it as we would a normal crime, then people wouldn't have bent the rules in so many different places. Well, speed is an enemy too because, you know, the remedy for anything going astray of the law is kind of destroyed when he's buried. Like with time, I think any of these decisions could have been challenged successfully, but you can't redo a forensic autopsy. Like you can't. Yeah.

It's gone. Right. So even if you were to exhume him and be as goche as that would require at the time, you don't see the skin pieces. Medicine is a very gauche field. And I think that's one of its best qualities. Yeah. I tend to be too. So that's fine.

So there are going to be two paths diverging here. And I wonder when you want to get to Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassination. Well, I was just kind of wondering about him. Yeah. So maybe now what happens with him? Because the way I think I remember it. And spoilers, I guess. I do think Oswald did it.

I have never found it particularly convincing, except for maybe in like the 10 to 15 minutes after watching JFK. Before Googling, I had the same experience before Googling. Like, how much of this was real? Did he really do blank? And then it's like, oh, no, that was for effect. Yeah. But what I remember is that Oswald shoots the. president. He goes to what I like to call the book suppository because I'm so funny. And he

flees and I feel like he ends up in a movie theater for a little while there. Is that true? He sure did. Did you also get that like chain email in the early aughts that was like, can you believe that Lincoln was shot in a theater? And the guy ran to a barn. And KFK was shot in a barn question. I forget what the parallel was, but it was the book piece and the theater piece. There's something about it. But yes, he worked for the Texas school book depository. And so that piece on its own, I didn't know before going into this. I had some great sources, and I feel like I should have shouted them out earlier.

But one of them was the deep dive article in Life magazine on the Warren report that was written by then representative Gerald Ford, who was on the Warren Commission. So he goes through all the findings and whatnot. I did not know before that that Oswald was an employee of the depository. That makes a lot of sense. And also all these things that tie Oswald. Up and coming author, Gerald Ford, you know, I just love his journalist. Jesus Christ. I always picture him as Chevy Chase, which is just bad for everybody involved.

I always picture him as the Simpsons depiction. Do you ever see that episode? Oh, that's cute. No, I only saw him, like, they would always poke fun at how clumsy he was on SNL because it was a very safe joke for them to make, which they love. Right. They're like, oh, I love to be provocative. Yeah.

Well, in The Simpsons. In The Simpsons. And now we have a president who really looks like he's about to just like tumble down the stairs and we're no one's allowed to talk about it. We don't dare. Yeah. But in the Simpsons, George H.W. Bush moves in to spring. Like next door to the Simpsons.

And then Bart drives him insane. And so they leave. And then the Fords move in. And Ford comes over and is like, hello, Homer. Do you like beer? Do you like nachos? Do you like football? My name's Jerry Ford.

How about we watch football and drink beer and eat nachos? And they both fall over and go, do. See? Okay, so he fell over a lot. It's very good. This is what I'll do. After the grid goes down, I'll tell people what I remember from this instance. I would watch it.

It's great. But boy, this is not selling him as a reliable source, huh? if he falls down all the time. I don't know. I fall down a lot and I'm pretty scrupulous about facts. So great. And he obviously is working from the report itself. And then we have a Nova documentary on the forensic testing that they've done recently.

And then there's that four days in November book. So, yeah, should we talk about Lee Harvey Teabag? Let's do it. Yeah. I will just point out that my introduction to this whole topic, I feel, was that as a kid, I watched reruns of the Drew Carey show. And of course, Dietrich Bader's character is named Oswald Harvey, which you only find out why it's funny as you learn more about American history. Yeah, that's a fun little treat.

This guy, it's so funny that people suspect that, and I think this is born of the sentiment at the time, which was how can this little nobody of a guy do this? And now, as I'm looking. They're always doing this stuff. Yeah, like, if you're looking at the profile of him now in our era of mass shooters, which has brought us all very close to expertise of what makes a violent person who shoots a stranger, it's like, this is absolutely consistent with who would try to shoot a president because he is so uninteresting and so unimportant. In the Life magazine piece, the Warren Commission wrote that he had not a single meaningful

relationship and it became clear that never in his life, here in Russia or anywhere else, was Lee Oswald satisfied with the environment in which he found himself. Boy, that does sound familiar. Right. He told his wife who was a gal that he brought over from Russia that he would be premier of Mexico in 20 years. Like, no. And he was altogether just the worst.

In high school, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist who diagnosed. He noticed him with a personality pattern of disturbance with schizzoid features and called him quite disturbed as a youngster, impacted by emotional isolation and the rejection of a self-involved and conflicted mother. So his mom was a piece of work, too. I feel like we're also in classic blame the mother era and psychology, where they're like, mother picked the baby up too much. Mother didn't pick the baby up enough. It's got to be one of the two. Very true. And also moms weren't allowed to not be parents.

So, like, you had this problem a lot, that it's like, she didn't really want this child. Yeah. So it's interesting that when you force women to have babies who they have neither desire nor ability to care for, that they're, you know, that sometimes it, like, is unpleasant for the babies. It's a side topic, but it's relevant. Yeah, God forbid we learn from that lesson because, you know, there's a reason that they have all those charts of 18 years after Roe v. Wade that violent crime drops and yada yada. Anyways, but she really was a piece of work. She actually is the origin of the Leah Harvey Oswald was a government agent rumor, and it was not a convincing source.

We'll get to why. She's okay. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, she was very, quote, aggressive, dogmatic and difficult. There's a fun description of her in her interview. They said that as they were trying to interview her, and this is a government body, you know, your son has purportedly and by all appearances shot the president. And they said that she would just tell wild stories,

frequently forget what she was talking about, meander through blind asides, and then yell at them when they interrupted her to get her back on track, answering the question. And he also had a brother who fled the mom for some stability. So it sounds like he had a rough upbringing, as diagnosed first around age 12 when he went to Juvie for the first time. And what's the deal with the whole Russia thing?

Yeah, so he was definitely, he was a communist sympathizer, but in the way that a lot of angry young men find causes to be angry about. Like, I don't think he was committed to anything. He got very bored in the USSR. He's behind the Iron Curtain for almost three years, for two plus years. He brought a wife back. The commission described her as his handsome Russian wife. and she came back with him after his two plus years in Russia.

I remember finding out that she existed because weirdly I think there was like a TV movie about her in like the post-JayfK economy starring Helen Abonem Carter. And it's because I cannot imagine being more friendless in a way than being the young widow of Lee Harvey Oswald. And I believe having young kids at the time. Like my God. Yeah, they had two daughters, which is. was just great, great for everybody. And also her mother-in-law was not great or stable. The way that men are able to like, you know, and I know women do this sometimes too, but like,

boy, are there a lot of men and non-binary people. We can all be awful. Don't worry. But the way that men will like create a human life and like look at it and behold it and realize, wow, I am the most important person and role model and figure of love and authority. for this tiny human being whose soul I'm responsible for. And then they're like, what if I just like go get caught committing a pointless crime? Or like, what if I climb Anna Perna? What about that? Right.

I just had a baby. What if I almost die? I think I should do that. Well, and it also didn't give him enough purpose. Like, if you wanted to look for ways to influence the world, if you think you're going to be consulate in 20 years, Yeah. Good grief. I mean, I guess he did influence the world, but not in a way that he got to hang out and, you know, stroke his ego with. Well, this is the thing is like it's the easiest shortcut to being quote unquote famous. Yeah. But so he's leaving his family a couple weeks before the assassination too because he visited both the Cuban and Soviet consulates in Mexico. And this is an off-sided trip. It was very well investigated by the Warren Commission. And it has been. speculated upon and fictionalized by folks like Oliver Stone.

But really, the consulates largely ignored him, which makes sense. And it made him very angry. He described crushing frustration to his family members and then wrote a violent complaint letter to the Soviet consulate in D.C. For them ignoring him. What do you think? Just, I mean, and I know we don't know, but like in turn, do you have any kind of personal theories about like what this was about for him? like why communism is something to fixate on? Is it like a way to rebel partly?

I don't know if you've met this type of young man. I certainly have often a white, straight young man who is a leftist. You found out about Marxism? Yes. No, I, yeah, I sure have. And I have had a bad time. Yeah. I have too, because I tend to early on take them at their word.

And then in practice, it's like, you just wanted something to be angry about. Right. Or you were like already angry generally and you wanted to pick a thing to say that it was about. That's what I mean. Yeah. I remember very clearly during the BLM protests, seeing a lot of white men come out of the woodwork for the marching and the breaking of things. And I don't know where they are now. I don't see a whole lot of policy work from them. I don't see a lot of, you know, day-to-day posting of things that are helped. and don't center them. So to me, this tracks so much with the exact type of person who's going to do this.

And he's running to different places. He's fleeing people. You know, he's going to Russia. He's going on this trip to Mexico. And wherever he goes, there he is. And he's unhappy. Classic early 20s behavior, I really think. Totally. And he buys a bunch of guns. You know, he had two guns on him the day of and actually shot somebody else off. officer Tippett. This is what he was originally arrested for in that movie theater because he talked to a police officer who essentially was going to ask him where he was going. I think there was probably a way out of this that didn't require killing another person, but that was what he was originally found for. But we can talk about his mom as the origin of the government agent rumor now

because it actually dovetails kind of nicely. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Because that part is very interesting. Right? Like, I did not realize both how early this originated. Like, this was not an Oliver Stone thing. This was not a 1990s thing. It wasn't a 1970s thing. And thus, all these things about, like, well, did you know he spent time in Russia? Did you know that he went to the Cuban embassy and had these leanings? It's like, yeah, they did very early. And there was no other source in the entire investigation with the Warren Commission, in the entire investigation done in 1976. And since, that has shown any connection to anyone of relevance, but he just liked to yell about it.

The only source was his mom. And the reason for this, are you ready? Oh, yeah. So when he went to Russia for two plus years, she never accepted that her son just left her. He didn't leave her with any money. She became destitute while he was gone. She didn't accept that she could have a boy who just left her for no reason

and go to Russia because she was in. in such a shitty spot, him having left. So that was the source of her first asserting this was actually before the assassination. Really? Yeah, she took this as far as going to D.C. while he was still in Russia. She wanted to ask the government as an entity to recall her agent's son. Yeah, that does. I feel like I have read that Reddit post like this week, basically, you know? Right. Like, that's a real unhinged parent who can't process reality kind of a thing to do. And also he was a dick. Like she very clearly was destitute and he was just like peace.

Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing you're saying about him fitting the profile so well that we now understand for kind of young male American assassin, it's like, yeah, like boy has that data set presented itself in the ensuing years. And imagine if we had taken it seriously at the time. like this is an archetype that we should take seriously.

And also it's not like we didn't have the means to know because if we look at the other presidential assassins like. Yeah. Right. Because wasn't it? It was like of the other three, one of them was like a guy who Emma Goldman found really annoying and who was like kicked out of a utopian commune. And then, you know, you have.

Frustrated actor. Yeah. And then a young frustrated actor who, who's like great. idea was to shout six Semper Tyrannis after murdering the president, which I hate to say it, is very dorky. It's dorky. Nobody knows what that means now, I mean, unless you're from Virginia, because it's not on their flag. But he also was just like butt hurt that his brother was a better actor. I know. You're just a frustrated man. So Marguerite Oswald, his mom. That is a hell of a name. I love the name Marguerite. I never hear it. It's my grandma's name. And this must have

torn her up to have the same name as Oswald's mom. But so mom's wald. So she actually tries to get into the White House when she's in D.C., trying to get them to recall her agent's son. And a while after her trip, nobody talks to her. They ask her to leave. But months after that, she gets a letter from Lee Harvey and he's like, I'm bored here in Russia. I'm coming back. She thinks that this is because her covert request has been granted. Ah, yes. And that was the only source. She said that the president clearly had accepted her demands.

And then after the shooting, she revived this rumor or belief for her. And that was the only source. Yeah. And again, it's like, I do think that we put a little bit too much trust in sources that are, you know, close to somebody who perpetrated or was the victim of some kind of terrible tragedy because I think there's room for magical thinking in that that like we as the public maybe want to latch on tube and then we can use the proximity of the person as a reason to trust them more and ignore the fact that they're in fact more incentivized than the average citizen

to want to come up with a story about how this all could have happened in a way that simplifies it. Or something that we collectively want to believe already, which is that A, we can't trust our government right now and this is true. So B, they must be lying about this and C, it's very disquieting to believe that just some random little dildo can go to his workplace and kill the president. That's too much. It is. I don't like it. And yet, I like it so much more than, you know, any other theory that anyone could come up with. I mean, I like truth. Yeah. I like truth too. Yeah. But like I can see wanting to lean into Marguerite's version. But they did. So there are sworn denial. from both the Secretary of State Dean Rusk and FBI chief Edgar Hoover, which like a lot to be said

about both of them. But they also actually went to Moscow's U.S. embassy to interrogate personnel. They went to all the agencies and had independent people combed through agency records that could be related to make sure that nobody was holding out on them. And because of the risk of there being Cold War conspiracies after this, the Soviet government really, panicked right after the assassination because they were like, oh shit, this could blow up. So they actually sent a lot of stuff over and cooperated in those early days of report forming. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You don't hear it. That's some nice cooperation, I guess. Love it. I mean, it's self-serving, but. Well, of course. But it's nice to see people act even in their own interests in a way, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Because you see like a lot of the corruption. today, you know, what people talk about is like, well, you know, people are selfish. And it's like, I get that. But people are being manipulated to act in a way that doesn't even serve their own interests, actually. Totally. Yeah. It's like these guys, we are proud of Russia for not cutting their nose to spite their face in this instance. Good job. And of ourselves whenever we happen to manage it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the other thing that's fun about Lee Harvey was that it seems like his two options that he was entertaining before the assassination. It was either assassination or write a book.

And he went with, assassinate, but he wrote an epigraph that suggests that it would not have been a very good book. Well, even basic words are misspelled. I mean, I gotta say, didn't have incredibly high hopes. Yeah. Yeah. And again, this does align also very well with our conversation about, you know, with Hinkley and the Reagan assassination attempt where you have someone who's like,

you can see this kind of like indecision and like just drifting around and kind of like, interestingly enough, doing something that affects the span of history is sort of like on a weird whim, you know? Oopsie. Yeah. Yeah. Like I got to do something next week and nothing is jazzing me. I got to do something big.

It's either a haircut or this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. bangs, try the bangs next time. But like super narcissistic. And he's living in a delusion world about his relevance. It also made me think of like how there probably was a red scare shade to the conspiracy thinking too. Like, of course people want it to be a conspiracy because we have an enemy right now.

Yeah. And that also feels better. And it wouldn't be nice if the enemy was communist and not just like an all-American. guy. Boy, yeah, an angry boy from any place that any of us could be from. Yeah, so I think that's most of his fun background. His wife was very cooperative with the Warren Commission, just speaking to what she must have been going through. I don't, I don't know, man. Well, okay, and something that McKenzie, I didn't learn until, I don't know, much later in life, maybe even adulthood, was that it seems like part of why this tragedy was able to begin to seem like a mystery to people when arguably

it wasn't really very mysterious at all was that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't linger very long on this mortal plane, which I find so interesting. Can you tell us about that? And like, what, how did what happened there? I think you're absolutely correct that that is a big piece of why a lot of conspiracy theories were born out of this case. It really is like the perfect storm for all of these conspiracy theories. But yeah, he did not live even a week beyond the assassination and arrest. And I think the fact that another unknown gunman with frankly not a dissimilar profile to Harvey Oswald himself, just like this random guy with a rough, patchy background and connection

thus to all these questionable groups. You know, he was affiliated with different unions in Chicago, which is not a bad word at all. I mean, his name's Jack Ruby. I would certainly hope he's affiliated with various unions in Chicago. And also, would it be fair to say that his life involves broads? Okay. Both of those are really fun facts because first, he's actually Jacob Rubenstein. Jacob.

Embrace your faith. Right? He changed it when he moved to Dallas from Chicago, so honestly fair. Well, understandable. Yeah. And two, there is pretty strong evidence, actually, that he was gay. But, um, right? Jacob Jack, Ruby, you get in here this instant. But he certainly did facilitate the procurement and transportation of ladies. Allow me to do a little gay vocal stem, to put suddenly last summer.

We procured for him. Thank you. That was Elizabeth Taylor. Thank you. Perfect. I love it. I thought Liz was in the room. But I, yeah, he never married.

He's his own interesting character on his own. So where's our movie? Yeah, where's our Jack Ruby biopic, honestly? And so this, because you think about it. And I mean, again, it's like this is a case where I feel like the impulse for conspiracy makes total sense to me because it's horrible. horrifying to think that, you know, the leader of the free world, especially during the Cold War, can be taken out just by some random antisocial 24-year-old. And yet, when you look at American history

in terms of assassination, what can't a white 24-year-old with no good work prospects do? Yeah. In this one field, they're just everywhere. And they're prolific. It also makes total sense to me that, like, if you had famously assassinated the president and then we're, I mean, you can, you can, tell us about the circumstances about this, but if like the public had sort of reasonable access to you, like, it kind of makes sense that somebody would be like, hey, what if I, you know, did a vigilante thing? Totally. And it was, you know, we were talking last time about people in our family and stories from the public about how earth-shattering this was and that it really, there was party line crossing unity about how awful this was. And people said, even after Oswald was arrested, like,

he's not going to live to see trial. Right. Because there was so much hatred on every side towards this person. Yeah. And also I'm mentioning, you know, if he's not going to be kept in isolation from other prisoners, then I feel like that could have been very dangerous for him too, understandably. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, everybody's against him. Rightfully so. Like, I'm not an Oswald stand. But, you know, the odds were there. Although right now, somewhere out there, there is a 14-year-old. girl who is standing Lee Harvey Oswald and I I am sending her all my best and the best of luck, best wishes. I hope she finds good role models to lead her elsewhere.

She'll figure it out, you know. So yeah, honestly, the incident itself was so fast. Where was he when this happened to get, give us, like set the scene for us here a little bit. Yeah. And it's great because you can actually, it's great. It's interesting. From a historian's perspective, yeah. And especially those of us who did not live through it.

You can see so much footage. In fact, there's a famous photo. Do you want to look it up right now? I don't have it saved. Yes, I do. But it won a Pulitzer Prize because it is virtually... Give me the words to Google this. Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald is the title of the photo.

What is it virtually? I'm sorry. It's virtually the moment that a bullet goes in. to his body. And it was by Robert H. Jackson, not to be confused with Justice Jackson by the same name. But it's a goofy-ass photo. I mean, cartoonish face. Right, exactly. It shows what I imagine to be kind of the surreal nature of the moment where everyone is kind of just like not yet reacting or just starting to react. And Oswald looks like someone just hit him with a snowball. Yeah, he looks like he's saying do. It does look like he's saying doe.

It's very anticlimactic. I mean, but it's so climactic. I think that's that juxtaposition is what's so interesting. So he's being moved out of the basement of Dallas police headquarters. And they're transferring him to county jail where presumably he would have awaited trial. With minimal security, I would imagine. What's what's the story there? I guess. I mean, maybe there's a thinking that there are so many folks around that nobody would dare fire a shot, kind of in the sense of the other assassinations that we've seen. and fail, like John Hinkley, was in a crowd, and so nothing really landed with the person that he was aiming at. Like, that is a scenario that occurs a lot, that you want to shoot somebody, but there's too much going on, which is why, in Kennedy's case, having an open car isolated from everything, moving very clearly in the open was such a good scenario for a shooting. This, maybe they were assuming, like, there's reporters everywhere, we're in the police station, Right.

There's no way. Or they didn't care. Right, because you are opening yourself up to immediately being caught, which I presume happens here. Yes. I mean, in fact, as he draws a gun, one of the police who knew him, he had nine criminal charges up until the time he was arrested for this, said, Jack, you son of a bitch. And so they know this is Jack. And they're like, oh, classic Jack. And does he say anything about what his motives are for this?

Or what's his deal here? I just got a photo from you. What did I guess send you? Well, it appears that he has a breast on either ear. And he looks delighted about it. That could sound confusing. He's standing there with, you know, I would assume a showgirl would be accurate behind him. And she's abroad, to be sure.

Yeah. And she's got, I think, some sequin. pasties on either nipple and she's just got her, she's got Jack Ruby's head sandwich between her breasts, like a lovely pinini. And he looks like he's like mid-sentence. And the woman kind of looks like Catherine O'Hara, actually. She does. And he looks like he's having an okay time. You know, he looks like one of the stooges. Supporting the historical thesis. Yeah. Absolutely. So he did own a nightclub, strip club. The Carousel Club was the name of the place that he owned. And what, in your opinion, is his deal? What causes a man to go from mere strip club

owner to assassin of a presidential assassin? I think he was... That quite a sentence, I might say. I know, right? In any other context, do you think it was an error? But I think he was an angry man. It's ironic. We talked last time briefly about how Lee Harvey Oswald was first detained in juvenile detention for truancy. And Lee Harvey was 12 years old, I believe. And he was 12 years old, I believe. And Jack Ruby also detained for Truancy, his first detention, at 11. Oh, my God. But yeah, so I don't know. Who can say I would love to do a deeper dive on him someday because it really is interesting that he maybe was living with a boyfriend.

If you want an episode on Jack Ruby, like, comment and subscribe. Yeah. Comment Jack Ruby. And he seems uncovered as characters in this plague go, you know? There's the vague assumption. that he's like mafia connected. And also to quote Dominic Dunn on the OJ Simpson trial, like even the minor characters in the story are all astonishing.

They are capital C characters. Yeah, so he's also hanging out around the police station a lot after the assassination, and he was very upset about it. One of the early press conferences, several people actually made this correction. So nobody jumped to the conclusion that because Ruby knew this, he had to be involved. But Oswald had been arrested previously in New Orleans for disturbing the peace when he was doing some rally with a Cuban advocacy group.

Now, at the press conference, the Dallas police got it wrong. And Ruby stood up with a whole bunch of other people and said, no, this group wasn't anti-Castro. It was pro-Castro because there were two free Cuba-type groups and one was pro, one was anti. So he was clearly very involved, all this to say, in the specifics of the case and who Lee Harvey Oswald was and was like, he's getting invested in this time between Kennedy's assassination and Oswald's. So Oswald falls to the floor. He does not die immediately. In fact, they have time to ask him anything you want to tell us now. And he shook his head. And also people outside applauded.

I should have asked him something more specific, but I'm sure it would have been hard to think of something at the time. To anticipate the theories that would come out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The last like banner thing about this, in my opinion, is that Nixon, in his response to this, had a classic Freudian slip and said, two rights don't make a wrong of the two assassinations. Oh, Nixon.

No, Nixon. He just said it. So he corrected himself. Nixon, got it together. It was too late. but yeah, oh, buddy. I mean, this is all very sad and stupid, but yeah. There's a great line in the book that I'm reading right now,

doppelganger, the Naomi Klein book. And it's something, you know, she puts it better than I can, but there's something so frustrating about, and a lot of us will recognize this from the current moment too, but having to take seriously the threat posed by such goofy, foolish, stupid, people and that weird juxtaposition of circumstances when it's like, exactly. These people are absurd and I don't want to take it seriously, but the threat they pose

or the outcome of what they've done is so grave. And our brains have trouble with that. I have trouble with that. Yeah. And I think that's that is a theme that's only sort of multiplied, I guess, since the story we're talking about. Totally. Because people are just people.

And maybe that's like a side effect of the news coverage that we've gotten in the intervening years is like we learn more about to the point of many of your shows. Like, these aren't these big evil behemoths that we could never understand or conquer. It's just like some guy named Jacob who was mad. Right. And you can usually, if not get to the bottom of it, get pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. But really, right. The truth is that you have this like this horrifying reversal of the world as you know it. And where my perspective, except for maybe in a 48-hour period after seeing JFK for the first time, has always been, isn't it horrifying, you know, basically?

And how do we accept how much damage some random 24-year-old man who doesn't feel like he's been praised to the degree that he felt necessary? That is due to him. Yeah. Isn't it awful what that kind of combination of alienation and entitlement can create and why are young men. Why are so many young men like that? And how do we have less of that, perhaps? But then it does seem like a lot of people, and in a way, it's hard to fault them, responded to this, especially at the time, this almost impossible to comprehend reversal of maybe what they believe to be the order of things

and thought, well, it's got to be a massive conspiracy because only, you know, a cabal of powerful evil world leaders acting together could possibly cause something so massive. And it's like, no, it's just to quote Crossroads. It's just some guy. He's just some guy. Random evil. I think there's some subconscious comfort. Yeah. To feeling that there's control, that there is some cabal that is like, that someone somewhere is in control. Yeah, omniscient daddy, because then we can just swap out that person. And then everything will be fine. But I think now more than ever, it's so ironic hearing you describe, Oswald rightfully as he was, that audiences today, and maybe that makes this a good time for this episode, more than any time in the past, can recognize that, like, there is a huge capacity

of one angry young man who feels he hasn't gotten what he's owed and everybody in his life has let him down, but he's very important. Like, the capacity of that archetype to do tremendous harm, especially with a gun on a random day, is we all know it. More than people in 1963 knew it. We know it now. Well, and then it feels like also that this began maybe this phase of sort of public assassinations as something that people kind of learn to fear, and especially if you're a civil rights leader or engaged in civil rights. And the kind of positive reinforcement that that sends to the assassinating type, I guess, that like, you can get a lot of attention if you destroy someone who's trying to do something good with their lives. Yeah.

And actually, this takes us nicely without getting us into any of the findings to why the Warren Commission was necessary. I mean, we all know why. Well, yes, we do. But I mean, I bet we can sure imagine. But yeah, tell us about that. And what is the Warren Commission and whose idea is it? How does this kind of get set in motion? Tell us about that a little bit. First of all, it's daylight, tons of witnesses, slow moving, presumably security. Why isn't it easy to figure out exactly what happened in all the details?

So that, you know, it's a fair question. And it was definitely a prevailing one, especially as people grasp for answers. And within a week of Oswald's shooting, which was only a couple days after the assassination itself. So within two weeks of the assassination also, So 60% of the public responding to a Gallup poll, so pretty reputable pollsters, thought that there was a second shooter. Oh, that's interesting.

Isn't that remarkable? And so that's a narrative that's out there kind of from the beginning? Very early. And why do you think that is? I think it's because of Jack Ruby. And I think it's because we didn't have easy answers when the circumstance seemed to, you know, Dealey Plaza where this happened. is essentially a bowl, which makes for a lot of problems with acoustics, and we'll get to that down the line with forensics. But, you know, it's daylight. The Secret Service exists. This is a

planned parade. There are tons of witnesses. Why didn't we know that night? And part of that could be kind of the instinct of needing someone to blame or similar to that instinct of like, why don't we have resolution on this now? And that transforms into, well, we should have resolution now, because I'm very disquieted and hear all the reasons I can think of why we should have an answer now. And you know how group think kind of goes with those moments. Yeah. And so much of the show has been about that. And I think the Reds Care too.

Right. And this idea that there are these nefarious forces trying to destabilize the United States. I mean, and it's not the most unreasonable thing to think because this is a time when like certainly the United States is pulling a lot of shady shit in terms of espionage. It's really, you know, we're receiving that in return. Yeah. And it also is easier to unite against a common enemy, yada, yada. Yeah. And it's out there pretty early that he had connections to pro-Cuba movements,

that he had spent time behind the Iron Curtain. So we needed fact-finding publicly and assurances for the American people. And then for lawmakers, doubly cautioning, you know, behind the scenes from the administration that, like, there are huge implications. if there's a communist conspiracy here. So let's determine whether that happened and then put it to rest with the public. Right. And to be fair, like if you were investigating this, you would want to look into that. Like, it would be ridiculous not to at the time. Yeah.

It's just that if you've disproven it, you know, everybody gets to move on. Then move on. And like we said before, the Soviet Union actually cooperated a lot pretty early on because they didn't want this to be, you know, a mutually assured destruction trigger. Yeah. It's like, we didn't even kill this guy and now we're getting blamed for it. Right. They're like, listen, we don't want that either. I mean, yeah.

We saw that strange love movie. Yeah. We didn't kill your boy. It's, yeah. So we convene this commission under the name of Chief Justice Earl Warren. And this is really funny. So the first article that is thought to acknowledge. the rash of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists

was a piece in the New Yorker in 1967 called The Buffs by Calvin Trillen. And it's talking to and about all these quote-unquote assassination buffs, self-appointed, about why they think certain things went wrong. And we'll touch on some of it. It's so interesting how easily these theories are put to rest with like one piece of forensic evidence. For instance, they talk about like, well, one doctor says that they, in Dallas, was interviewed and said that they were sure there was an entry wound in his throat. We already talked about the weirdness with the autopsy, there was an exit wound in his throat.

So for a physician to eyeball entry versus exit, there was a bullet wound in the throat, but then there was this tracheotomy performed to put the tracheostomy in, and that masked that wound. So something where there's one very clear explanation for it that doesn't take too long to think about. Yeah. Once you know the information, it's clear, but you could see how somebody would put that together with their own impulses potentially. And one of the folks interviewed in the buffs, long story short, too late, was talking about how they were suspicious of the Warren report and commission because Chief Justice Earl Warren wasn't liberal. He was appointed by a Republican. And so that, in retrospect, is really funny too.

And why is that? because I know you know this. Well, isn't famously the Warren Court, basically the like period in the Supreme Court where we introduced all of, I always feel that I'm going to use the wrong legal language. But basically like that we had all these cases that led to the precedents that give defendants the kinds of rights that people have been upset about ever since that are basically considered to be far too liberal, if anything. Is that correct? Yeah. Absolutely. And other civil rights issues were touched on by the court. the point being that Chief Justice Earl Warren actually became a very liberal jurist, even though he was Republican appointed.

So all of these things that you can see going into. So, you know, a little bit of inspiration for anyone listening who might be considering that. It's fun. Good point. Yeah. Well, okay, so we have the Warren report. And I would imagine that like basically immediately there would be the need for some kind of an inquest. Yeah, you would think.

So this had to happen. So, and is it the fact that there's like, there's the investigation of the assassination and then as the Warren report basically an investigation of the investigation? No, so the commission itself is probably in large part a stand-in for the trial of Oswald. Obviously, the mission is slightly broader because there's the, why did this happen? Not just proving one person's guilt, but like getting into bullet trajectories and findings and all that. And it ends up being a 296,000 word report. So the Warren report is just what was issued by the Warren Commission.

So the commission is what does all the investigating. And it was pretty like comprehensive. They have a presidential panel. And that was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. It had Arlen Specter on it, who is famous for switching parties in Pennsylvania. A parade of stars. Yeah. and their process involved, you know, going to government agencies, getting assistance from agency lawyers, then having independent commission people checking the agency's work so that if any punches were pulled, they would verify that against internal confidential records and make sure that nobody was hiding anything or couching anything.

They got depositions from all the relevant parties. So Marina Oswald, the handsome Russian wife that we talked about. Marguerite Oswald, the domineering mom who had her own conspiracy theories. And then Jack Ruby, who they called a sad and strange little man. Oh, no. Yeah. Should we make merch that says sad and strange little man? Sad and strange little man.

I would love a hat that said that. But you know, sometimes we all wake up on our like, I am a sad and strange little man. That's going to start being like the stim I use to. to hate on myself whenever I'm feeling bad. You're just looking at the mirror like, you sad, strange little man. It's such a good dig from somebody in a position of authority, too. Yeah. Yeah.

And then they just like followed all the rumors to their origin. Because by this time, obviously, you know, you have 60% of the public right after who thinks that there's a second shooter. So all these rumors, at least phase one of the rumor mill is out there. The information exists already. So they checked into these things and followed. followed each rumor to its origin, which I think is a good way to do it. So they traced that government agent rumor back to the mom and also found that there were no other sources. And they checked into the trip to Russia. They went to Russia. They looked into Ruby's prior associations.

They looked into what security measures failed. And they also went to Dallas and they reenacted the Zeppruder footage, which they had in full frame by frame. And could you tell us very quickly like what is why do we why does that footage exist and what what is this film for you know just if someone's listening who's like I am a martian and I am inhabiting a human body and listening to this podcast first of all thank you for spending your limited time listening to this but yeah what is what is the effect of watching this film and and what is the kind of little backstory behind it because it's such an odd it is such a weird stroke of faith that this exists at all totally uh yeah send more check berry to the aliens. So Abraham's uprooter was just like this dressmaker who was out to watch the parade

with a lot of Dallas. And he had what we would consider a pretty primitive 8mm video camera and ended up capturing the moments of all of the shots fired. And it became a huge basis for the investigation. And all of the images that you have seen, all of them, of the assassination and the moments immediately before and after are from that footage. So we are really at the advent of video, but not very far into it. So the fact that anybody had a camera trained on the car and was filming at this moment is huge for the investigation. Yeah. And it's just it's an eerie thing to watch. It's very eerie. Yeah, because it's just, you know, and of course it's, I think, unless you were some kind of like AV buff, like any kind of consumer home camera, you wouldn't be a recording sound. And so it's

just this like this eerie little soundless it's you know what about a minute maybe less than a minute this very short clip um that it's yeah less even the fact that it exists is is is eerie in itself i think it is and the fact that he was able to kind of steady cam it yeah pretty well i mean it's it's grainy but he does keep it trained on the car that's how you know bigfoot wasn't in the film because when big foot goes up the camera starts jiggling wildly famously and it's the law. So yeah, so I imagine, of course, like from, like mainly kind of from the perspective of ballistics and trying to evaluate, like, well, was there a second shooter or not? Is that the most important thing about it? Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, it maybe has caused more confusion

than good because of some neurological impacts of where the wound happened. And that's super interesting. Well, I can't wait until we get to the forensic stuff because that wasn't really known at the time. But I think part of why they did not release it. to the public initially, in addition to all the, you know, propriety concerns that the Kennedys had, that it does cause more confusion potentially, because there's not a whole lot of new information. We knew the car was there. We knew that he was hit in the head. But this shows the back into the left kind of impulse that JFK's body does when he's hit and that made people think that it couldn't be from the depository because of where that building was located in relation to the

car. If he's reacting to the blow of a bullet, he should not be moving back into the left. So that caused a lot of confusion. I think it shows where people were sitting in a very basic sense and it gives at least like one piece of media that you can examine to get the best view of where everybody was. Yeah. And also something, I guess, to compare eyewitness testimony too as well. Yeah. Yeah. And when you were used to doing investigations without video footage, it's like, well, yeah, this is great.

This is better than we would have had in any other circumstance. Yeah. So the commission goes to Dallas. Group field trip, they go to reenact the footage frame by frame. because the way that they knew it at the time of the report and the way that it was initially released is like frame by frame pieces of information. So they try to replicate each frame from the footage on location. They get the same car or the same type of car. Wow.

They get a man with JFK's same build. Wow. I had no idea they did this. This is very impressive to me. I know, right? Poor Governor Connolly. he has to go in the reenactment? He doesn't.

Oh, he doesn't. Okay, thank God. They do get him a stand-in, but the stand-in is wearing his actual coat with the shot in it. Wow. Right? So it's really thorough. Yeah. And they have to use like a surveyor, those, you know, three-point surveying systems with different people operating it to get the exact location because there was no modern technology.

I mean, we take for granted how easy that would be now. Right. But they painstaking. re-create. There's a reason we put all that time into figuring it out. Yeah. Yeah. And they actually mount the recovered rifle from Lee Harvey Oswald in the same window with a camera fitted to the scope. So it sees exactly what she saw. Right? See, this is the thing, right? It's like, because I know that people, we love a conspiracy. It's comforting. It's, you know, et cetera. But like, is there anything better than truly putting your all into trying to figure out exactly what happened as well as you can? Doesn't

this sound fun, you guys? I think this sounds so fun and it also, I can picture it because I'm kind of like this. Like, the commission doing such a good thorough job and thinking like once I give them all the information and show them how thorough I was and why we reached the conclusions we did, like, then they'll get it. But then people still reach other conclusions and or don't read all the information. Yeah. I mean, I think that like there's this element where the law itself or the American legal system is kind of based on this thing that's always been very beautiful to me, which is this professed belief in the value of everyone agreeing to like have, you know, a trial or a hearing and, you know, these various ceremonies that are meant to be

a search for truth. And then how it seems like, despite that being the claim so often in practice because of like, this or that law, this or that statute, this or that filibuster, like the sort of handshake wink wink kind of a thing that can happen that a lot of human behavior and impulse and excuses and sort of you know our various cultures of lying and corruption and whatever else like get in the way of that but that the fact that there will always be people who believe in that and take it literally there'll always be that redemption there for me or that possible redemption I think so yeah and we can embody that redemption because this really does bring us back to that theme of like when a government breeds mistrust and when a society breeds mistrust,

too, because there were also societal triggers for this, you know, the anti-civil rights crowd, etc. that when there's so much social unrest and government mistrust, people will be suspicious even when you're being candid and even once you've decided to put all the information out there. So it's tough because the people who did the Warren Commission investigating probably didn't create the bed that they were sleeping in to that extent, even though they were government folks. But like, this is a, there were two dozen 500 page volumes of what they put out. And then the Warren report is let's read it. A summary of it. Jesus fuck. Wow. Wow. So it's like, it's so much information. And the report itself is, is that almost 300,000 word report. And all this goes into it. And so basically what

they conclude and then we can break down the rumors, but they conclude that there were three shots fired and one missed. Governor Connolly feeds into a lot of conspiracy theories because he fervently disagrees based on what he heard. Which is tricky, right? Because it's like on the one hand, I feel like... He's a victim, you know, like he went through this. He's a victim of that and he, you know, and he has a closeness to this that basically almost nobody else will ever have. And yet, you know, You know, as far as I can tell, I'm not an expert, but like, based on the research that I've done and the way this has come up and what I've looked at, experiencing something traumatic can enhance your memory of it and can also make that memory harder to access accurately. And I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. I think both of those things happen to us, you know.

I think they're both true. Yeah. And I think that like your brain is probably going to prioritize the processing of other information than shot number. Right. And survival-related information because you know that you have to protect yourself in that moment. Yeah. And your loved one because he's with his wife, Nellie. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Wow. And the president. I mean, you're also there with the president in the country. And it, like we said, and as will become really relevant in the forensic, like audio testing, it's a bowl. It is an urban atmosphere that's a bowl, Dealey Plaza. So that is terrible for accurate acoustics. Right. And is that because there's so much more echo potentially?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's off of all these buildings. Apparently in like war atmospheres, this becomes a nightmare in figuring out where shots are fired also because it's bouncing off buildings of different materials and different sizes. And you just can't, your brain can't account for what that does to sound. And also interestingly, like, you know, because of. our proximity to World War II, you know, and also Korea for what it's worth. There would be so many of the people investigating this who did have some kind of experience with wartime or combat and, you know, who would have some of that insight. Because it's just interesting to think about demographically,

you know? Yeah. And I'll end this part with something that I'll definitely reiterate, but somebody from the Nova documentary said, what you think happened to JFK says more about you than it does about what happened to JFK. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I think that's true. And it is like, it's one of those stories where there, especially as we have kind of investigated and reinvestigated,

there have been so many theories over time that there's kind of something for everyone to pick to sort of, you know, show what resonates with you because you have so many options to resonate with by now. And different varieties of conspiracy too. Like you can pick your favorite that fits what you're, your leaning is. You probably have every conspiracy theory flavor, and I know we're probably going to get into some of that next time. But yeah, tell us a little bit about what we're going to what we're going to talk about when we return to the investigation. Yeah. So I think this is the really

meaty stuff. And I want to do two different stages of rumor fodder. I have it in my outline as like fodder one, fodder two. So like where these things were. born what the people who believed them thought or what the public thought. Once we get into the more niche theories and branches of information, it'll less be the public and more what this camp thinks. And then the second stage of rumors, because there's a whole bit of fallout from the report itself that people had either made up their mind already or this didn't resolve their questions or it raised more questions, et cetera. So there's this first wave and then we'll have a little bit of for when everybody learned about the Zepruder film in motion.

There's a second house investigation of what went on. They release a new report, kind of to appease the public. And then the 1991 JFK movie revives this whole thing from the 70s to 90s. And then we'll have the last list of rumors. And yeah, and it feels like we're kind of looking at like different generations of Americans kind of bringing new baggage to this as well. That's a good point. And also, I mean, would it be, would it be fair to say that we're kind of looking at

the evolution of the American conspiracy theory because it feels like whether we know it or not, it seems to me that like a lot of the kind of Trump-era conspiracy theories that we're living with and, you know, living through in many ways because, of course, there are so many conspiracy theories, especially online that it seems like, A, are able to sort of germinate faster because of the way we communicate now and the way we can sort of be siloed into people who are, you know, equally conspiracy minded as opposed to just trying to talk to whoever we happen to work with, like we used to do back in the day. But the way that people try and make sense of what's going on politically in the world we're in, it feels like this is like where we developed our American culture

of conspiracy theory making. And I wonder if we're maybe even in a way going to kind of get into a little bit of a taxonomy of American conspiracy theories with the responses that we can see people having to this. I would love to do that. And it hadn't occurred to me to track it so closely to the respective eras. But I think we can we can do that as we go through these two lists specifically because the source for the first list of rumors at large is this 1964 Life magazine deep dive into the report by one of the commission members, representative Ford at the time. And so that really captures the minds at the time. And then this second phase of rumors that's addressed in the new forensic testing in the NOVA documentary and some other things that have

gone into it is more representative of, I think the documentary came out right before Trump. So it's even removed from our current reality and we can touch on where we've gotten now when conspiracy theories are espoused by the White House in many contexts. And that's very different, very new in this volume. And this beautiful, wonderful, full circle moment. Isn't that nice? Isn't that special? Because, you know, the White House used to inspire crackpots who refused to accept the laws of physics.

And now that's who works there. And so it just goes to show something. It shows something. And we will talk about it all together. We'll hold hands and figure it out. We'll hold hands and figure it out. I'm just, I don't know, I love talking to you about these topics in a way because I feel like there will always be people who, despite how much conspiracy theories become our national pastime, really cannot give up the belief that explaining the truth as clearly as possible and putting your whole heart and soul into it has value. and matters and will change people's minds because you can't change everyone's mind.

But that doesn't mean that you don't still have to do it. Yeah. Words that line? I don't know. I haven't found it. Maybe I'm just as stubborn because I keep trying to do the same thing. Yeah. But there's got to be some merit to somebody standing by the truth, right?

So we're doing it. Right. But it's kind of like I think when I was younger because I was raised on like triumphant 90s legal thrillers, right? Rose like, well, you just like, you enter your evidence into the record and then you say you can't handle the truth or no, I guess that's what you say if you're testifying. You say something else. It's a military law.

It doesn't even count. That's fine. You bring in your surprise witness at the end and then everyone goes, oh, my goodness. Well, I guess I have no choice to accept the truth to despite how it challenges my previous worldview. And then you grow up and you learn that things are perhaps more. complicated than that. It's wild. I think that truth won't get people out of some ways of thinking. Yes. Well, and also I think it's like, it's kind of like a moment of really maybe renewing your vows with the

truth in a way and like choosing to love it, not because it fixes everything all the time, but because you still care about protecting it, even if it doesn't have the power to stop everybody in its tracks the way you maybe once that when you were younger. And it's better than not being with the truth. And it is vulnerable in a way you maybe didn't imagine and needs to be protected. Yeah. And you like being with the truth more than you like not being with the truth to continue the metaphor. And that also doesn't mean I'm going to light my home with stark overhead lighting, you know. Oh, God, no. The truth can still be cute. The truth can have brain recharge time. Yeah. It's imperative. The truth can promote sleep hygiene. Yeah. Well, I'm really excited for next time. And until then, just like,

keep looking for the truth, keep researching, keep just finding joy and learning things, everybody, because I think it's just the best. And I think a lot of that is its own reward, too, you know, because the more, the more we seek out information, I think, the more often we feel truly connected to each other, because if we get, if we create a world to be out of wishful thinking, then that inevitably will distance us from the people who can't confirm the reality that we want to be true. And we drift farther and farther away from each other. And we can't afford that. The truth, as they say, is out there.