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- [00:00]
Devin
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Manny
Why are TSA rules so confusing?
- [00:07]
Devin
You got a hoodie on. Take it all.
- [00:09]
Manny
I'm Manny. I'm Noah.
- [00:11]
Devin
This is Devin.
- [00:12]
Manny
And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called no Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? Well, I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it, you know?
- [00:25]
Devin
Lock him up.
- [00:25]
Manny
Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
Devin
No Such Thing. Everyone thinks they'd never join a cult.
- [00:38]
Lola Blanc
But it happens all the time to.
- [00:39]
Devin
People just like you and people just like us.
- [00:42]
Lola Blanc
I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth.
- [00:44]
Megan Elizabeth
We're the hosts of Trust Me, a.
- [00:46]
Lola Blanc
Podcast about cults, manipulation and the psychology of belief.
- [00:50]
Devin
Each week we talk to fellow survivors.
- [00:51]
Lola Blanc
Former believers and experts to understand why people get pulled in and how they get out.
- [00:56]
Megan Elizabeth
Trust me.
- [00:57]
Lola Blanc
New episodes every Wednesday on Exactly right. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:05]
Devin
Every case that is a cold case that.
- [01:07]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
Has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast, America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth.
- [01:18]
Devin
He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases.
- [01:28]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:35]
Narrator (Shock Incarceration)
What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.
- [01:48]
Noah
He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you.
- [01:54]
Narrator (Shock Incarceration)
Listen to Shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:14]
Lola Blanc
What is the first thing you think of when I say George Magazine?
- [02:17]
Megan Elizabeth
I know exactly what it is, right? So it was JFK Juniors magazine, which it came out the year that I graduated from high school. The Kennedys were super important in my family and I, like, knew all about his mom at that point, who to me, she was not JFK's wife. She was a famous in New York. Just take it as thoughts of an 18 year old. But for me, it was the first thing I read at the time. I read the New Yorker, but really only the literary stuff and the fiction and the poetry and I read Vanity Fair but really only the culture part. So this to me was like the first thing. It was not hard politics, but definitely seemed like a Washington D.C. thing, which was weird to me because to me all media was New York based. I don't know how long it lasted, but I definitely was like the second subscriber. It was like me and my mom subscribed to it.
- [03:13]
Noah
I'm George Severis.
- [03:15]
Lola Blanc
I'm Lyra Smith and this is United.
- [03:17]
Noah
States of Kennedy, a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story and today we are talking about George magazine. Here's ABC on the launch. So who was that guy getting so much attention from the media this morning by George? That was John. As in John F. Kennedy Jr. And to sort this out just a little bit further, George is the name of a magazine he started. Bertha Coons has details.
- [03:44]
Devin
The premiere issue of George looks Red Hot with supermodel Cindy Crawford on the COVID and a lot of big name Advertisers inside.
- [03:52]
Lola Blanc
In 1995, JFK Jr. And PR executive Michael Berman starring started a new magazine focused on political news and culture. The COVID of the first issue featured supermodel Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. Inside, you could find a conversation between JFK Jr. And George Wallace, a profile of Newt Gingrich, and a short piece where Cindy Crawford and Isaac Mizrahi judged the outfits of politicians.
- [04:19]
Noah
Although magazines like Esquire and Vanity Fair covered politics and pop culture, George magazine wanted to put politics and politicians front and center in JFK Jr. S politics was already moving towards entertainment during the Clinton era with politicians clamoring for the spotlight. Like for example, when Bill Clinton himself played sax on Arsenio Hall.
- [04:42]
Devin
I'm glad you're here. Let's get right down to things.
- [04:46]
Noah
What do you like, the old Elvis.
- [04:47]
Devin
Or the Hoot stamp? You know, I know you're an Elvis fan.
- [04:52]
Noah
I led a national crusade for the young Elvis.
- [04:55]
Devin
Really?
- [04:55]
Noah
Yeah.
- [04:56]
Devin
You know, when you get old, you.
- [04:58]
Lola Blanc
And obviously he wasn't wrong. But nowadays when people in media look back at George, it's often thought of as a failure, which isn't really accurate once you look at the whole story.
- [05:07]
Noah
According to people who worked at George, Kennedy was passionately involved in the day to day of running a magazine. He was in the office, at meetings, involved in editorial decisions. And not only that, but his interviews and editors letters were read apparently by 80 to 90% of the magazine's readers. Unfortunately, the rest of the features were a bit more inconsistent.
- [05:25]
Lola Blanc
As we know JFK Jr. Died tragically in the summer of 1999, only four years after George magazine launched. But I can't help but feel like the magazine could have been a huge success if he'd had more time.
- [05:37]
Noah
It could have at least been a moderate success for another couple of years before the Internet and social media started killing all magazines. But that is a conversation for another time. Today we have Rolling Stone features editor Kate Storey with us. She is the author of White House by the Sea, about the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. And she also wrote a very comprehensive article about George magazine for Esquire, detailing the history of the magazine. To quote her piece, George magazine covered politics like it was pop culture. Was it folly or a glimpse of the Trumpian future? Kate, thanks so much for being here today.
- [06:09]
Devin
Thank you for having me. It's so fun to talk about George.
- [06:12]
Lola Blanc
Yeah, there's a lot of JFK junior Being the JFK junior That we all dream and want him to be in. A lot of the stories behind George.
- [06:21]
Noah
Magazine, I mean, it really is almost like Sex and the City characters. We were like, rereading your piece for Esquire from 2019 that is sort of like a, you know, an account of the heyday of George magazine. And it really makes you nostalgic for this idealized version of 90s New York that you almost think is too romanticized and doesn't actually exist. But it did, and it was in Tribeca.
- [06:45]
Devin
Yeah, absolutely. And the people who worked for him, when they talked about it, you could see them light up and talking about this pretty brief period of all of their lives. But it was really special for the people who experienced it.
- [06:55]
Lola Blanc
So you have a book out now, White House by the Sea. It's about the Kennedy compound. We've read your Esquire piece on George magazine. Just wondering what first got you interested in the Kennedys or what was your introduction to writing about the Kennedys?
- [07:11]
Devin
Yeah, so the George piece came first. And it came about because I was a writer at Esquire magazine at the time, and it was coming up on the 20th anniversary of JFK Jr. S death. In a thing magazine often do is use these anniversaries to go back in time and tell a story that we want to tell. So we were having a conversation about John, and the Esquire readers were obsessed with him. Like, whenever there was a photo they would put up on Instagram, people just were so interested in him. So we were trying to figure out what is a way to tell his story that would be interesting. To these readers and what hasn't been told yet. And we were talking about George magazine, and it felt like just the right time to go back and revisit that piece of his life. And I had written about media a little bit, so that I came into it from the media side of it. And it's really more of a media story than it is a Kennedy story. Like, I spoke to all these people who were working at the magazine, the publishers and everything like that. I didn't speak to any Kennedys for that piece, but that piece ended up leading to a conversation that I had with a book agent about the Kennedys. And after the piece came out, she said, I've always dreamed of a Kennedy compound piece. And similar to the George piece, I kind of was like, well, that sounds amazing. I don't know if I'm the right person for it, but the more I kind of dug into it, the more it felt like exactly the kind of thing I'd want to tackle. So I kind of backed my way into two very Kennedy stories without necessarily really being a Kennedy writer. Like, I'm from the South. I'm not from New England. I really came to both of these projects with an outsider's view, which, for me, was really fun.
- [08:31]
Noah
So one of the things that I find most interesting about a Kennedy starting a media publication is that the Kennedys were such media fixtures themselves, like such tabloid fixtures. And to turn the tables like that almost feels, you know, sort of weirdly empowering. It's like they're seizing the means of production by, you know, making their own magazine rather than just, you know, being covered in ways they maybe don't appear agree with or in ways that they would prefer not to be. So I want you to sort of paint a picture for us, like, where were we in terms of JFK Jr. S public Persona at the time? How was he seen when he decided that out of nowhere, you know, he's gonna go from being a lawyer who famously failed the bar twice to becoming a magazine editor?
- [09:12]
Devin
Yeah. The thing that's so interesting about his life is he was really born into the public eye. He was born during his dad's presidency, but then, you know, the time during the presidency, he was very much covered by the media, constant, just constantly in the newspapers. But then after his father died, there was that iconic image of him saluting his father's casket as it went by, which I think was really stuck in a lot of people's minds for a very long time. After that, though, his mom, Jackie, really took him and his sister out of the spotlight. You didn't see that much of them. But then after he graduated and went to Brown, there was like this new kind of rush of attention on him. He was named People's Sexiest Man Alive at one point. And there was suddenly kind of this new fresh interest in him when he became an adult. He went to law school. He failed the bar exam twice, but then briefly worked as an assistant district attorney in New York and then was trying to figure out his next steps and had this conversation with a friend of his who ran a PR firm, a man named Michael Berman. And they described it as they were having a conversation after Bill Clinton inauguration about the campaign and how successful that was. And the conversation kind of turned to the way the Clintons were, kind of used the media in that campaign. And there's, of course, the famous image of Bill Clinton playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall. And it was. Is kind of a very different way of engaging the public during campaign. John and his friend Michael were having this conversation, and they say that they don't remember who said it first, but one of them said, we should do a magazine that kind of encapsulates these two parts of life, politics and pop culture. So that's how he got to that point. He had no journalism background, aside from being a fixture in the media for so long. One of my favorite stories I reported out for this piece was that after they decided to do this, he went to a seminar about how to make a magazine at a New York Hilton, which I think is just. Just such a funny image of him, you know, rolling up to this Hilton to learn how to make a magazine. That's where it started.
- [10:59]
Noah
And one of my favorite parts of that story is that the person running the seminar said, you can basically make a magazine about anything except religion and politics.
- [11:06]
Devin
I know, exactly. And people continued to tell him that he heard it there and then he also kept hearing it when he was trying to find a publishing partner. He went to Jan Winner, who famously founded Rolling Stone. He went to Hearst, and everybody was like, this doesn't. You're not going to make money. There were, of course, politics magazines at the time. There was New Republic and others. They just weren't big, flashy moneymakers. You know, publications like Vanity Fair and Esquire covered politics, but it really wasn't the heart of what they did. And there was just this belief that you couldn't make money from it. And he finally found a partner in David Pecker, who was running Hachette Philippadji at the time who was very eager to partner with him. And that's how it got made.
- [11:43]
Lola Blanc
I'm so confused the way it's presented. A lot of times it's like, well, no one's going to advertise because they're going to be afraid to. Were there examples at the time or before then where just having politics as the topic had made it so that people couldn't be profitable?
- [12:00]
Devin
Well, I think it's that the advertisers fear of what kind of content they were going to like, appear across from which we still have. I mean, I work in magazines today. We still have those conversations. If you flip back through the magazines of the 90s and you look at, you know, Vanity Fair, for example, there are these big flashy car ads that made the publisher a ton of money. And if you flip through something like a New Republic, there are like academic publishing ads. Like, there's just a totally different level of advertisers. So it was true that it was harder to get advertisers because with politics you just don't know what you're going to be across from. Obviously, politics are so unpredictable. You know, stories about politics can be incredibly controversial versus, like fashion, for example, which is much safer.
- [12:37]
Noah
So when you think about something like Tina Brown's Vanity Fair, is the difference there just that it's not openly saying this is a magazine about politics and pop culture? Because if I were to describe Vanity Fair, I guess maybe you could call it entertainment and pop culture. But I mean, it certainly covered politics, it published political writers. So what was the difference?
- [12:58]
Devin
I think it was really having that front and center and that was the politics, not politics as usual, I think was the tagline. So just saying, this is our identity, this is what we are. I spoke to Graydon Carter for the piece, who was the editor in chief of Vanity Fair at the time, and he was like, of course we covered politics too. It just wasn't big flashing lights. We are a political magazine. John really wanted it to be like, we are a political and we are also a culture magazine. And we are doing both at the same level.
- [13:23]
Noah
And so timeline wise, this is. I mean, there's not really a non turbulent time in his life. Ultimately, you know, it's like every two years something either tragic or crazy happens, but it is launched. Correct me if I'm wrong, like a year after his mom dies.
- [13:38]
Devin
Yeah, it was shortly after his mom died. He was actually asked by Barbara Walters if his mom knew about the magazine. And he was kind of vague and he said, I think I might have shown her a prototype or something and she was happy for me. But, yeah, it was shortly after his mom died that it launched. But he would have been working on it a little bit before then. It would have been during her illness.
- [14:05]
Ken Jennings
Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings appearance on the puzzler with A.J. jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy. Truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in.
- [14:27]
Devin
I guess they would be conspiracy theorists.
- [14:29]
Ken Jennings
That's right. Are there Jeopardy.
- [14:31]
Devin
Truthers?
- [14:32]
Ken Jennings
Are there people who say that it. It was rigged?
- [14:34]
Devin
Yeah. Ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers.
- [14:37]
Noah
Right.
- [14:38]
Devin
And then there's the other ones which are like, they gave you the answers.
- [14:40]
Ken Jennings
And you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy. Legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [15:04]
Manny
Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.
- [15:08]
Devin
Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.
- [15:17]
Manny
Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50 of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Until this, pull that, turn this. It's just, I can do my eyes closed. I'm Manny.
- [15:31]
Noah
I'm Noah.
- [15:31]
Devin
This is Devin.
- [15:32]
Manny
And on our new show, no Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on over overconfidence.
- [15:41]
Noah
Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise.
- [15:48]
Manny
And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the Runway. I'm looking at this thing.
- [15:55]
Devin
See?
- [15:55]
Manny
Listen to no such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:02]
Devin
My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mum is a cousin. So, like, it's not like, what do.
- [16:12]
Lola Blanc
You get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start.
- [16:17]
Devin
Of a bad joke, but that really.
- [16:19]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
Was my reality nine years ago.
- [16:21]
Devin
I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.
- [16:25]
Lola Blanc
On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear.
- [16:30]
Devin
On 22 July 2015, a 23 year old man had killed his family and then he came to my house.
- [16:43]
Lola Blanc
So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack where stand up comedy and murder take center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
- [17:03]
Manny
A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.
- [17:08]
Noah
Most everything was burned up pretty good.
- [17:10]
Devin
From the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.
- [17:13]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.
- [17:35]
Devin
He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.
- [17:42]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:11]
Noah
So he's sort of this figure that people are both rooting for in their own way because he's America's prince and then also are skeptical of because he's like this kind of dumb hunk and is seen as unserious. So a lot of people that they went to get support and funding said no. All the major publishers said no. Finally it launches. What is the reaction?
- [18:35]
Devin
They continued to be very skeptical. It did well. It sold out of its first run. It had a lot of subscribers, about half a million, which is New Republic was about 100,000 at that time. So that was a really strong start. It was really interesting to go back and look at the media coverage from that time because it was all like, this is dumb, like he doesn't know what he's doing. Nobody's going to care about this. So the coverage throughout the kind of life of George was skeptical, but readers were into it. People bought it. They got a ton of advertisers. It was completely jam packed with those high level advertisers that he said he couldn't get. He did get them. Graydon Carter told me a story about going to try to get advertisers in Detroit and nobody was interested in Talking to Graydon. They were all just waiting for John, who was waiting in the hall, to talk to them next. So they were really successful in getting those advertisers that they thought they couldn't get. It was definitely a successful launch and it continued to be successful for a number of years. Right before he died, they were having challenges. The subscription numbers were going down. They were trying to figure out new ways to draw readers, other deals to make. MTV had been really interested in partnering with them early on. And David Pecker was having conversations with TV companies about doing some sort of George show with John as a host, in spite of him saying he didn't want to do that. So anyway, the launch was definitely successful. They faced challenges after a couple of years in business.
- [19:54]
Lola Blanc
And what examples of articles or columns were in George magazine?
- [19:58]
Devin
Yeah, there was a regular column where John would interview a famous person. So that was kind of a mainstay. That was in every issue. There was a running column of if I were president, where they would ask celebrities, like, what would they do if they were president? Which to me was. When I wrote this article, it was 2019. It was during Trump's presidency. And you just think how differently that would be received now. I think just asking. It's presented in a very light hearted way. And so there was that. There were also serious things, features. They had a piece that Norman Mailer did for them. He profiled. I forget who he profiled, but Norman Mailer, of course, famously did a piece about JFK's campaign, which he wrote for Esquire. So they had really serious writers too. But it was truly a mix of politics and pop culture in the topics that they covered.
- [20:40]
Noah
I do want to point out one very funny tidbit from the if I were president column, which is you quote Madonna as saying if she were president, she would kick out Howard Stern from the country and welcome Roman Polanski back in, which is such an incredible window into the cyclical nature of these things. Men that are not well behaved, they just go in and out of style in terms of which ones are cool to support as like a bold statement and which ones are not. I think right now, Howard Stern, despite many, many things you could say against him, is back in favor now. So it would be the cool thing to say that you want Howard Stern in and Roman Polanski out.
- [21:15]
Devin
Yeah, that feels like a very shocking thing, I think, to say to bring back Roman Polanski. But I had the same impression when I read that line from that column.
- [21:23]
Noah
And there are so many names that are mentioned briefly in your piece that sort of stop you dead in your tracks. Ann Coulter is one of them. So who are some of the, like, famous columnist editors, writers that we would then recognize later on?
- [21:36]
Devin
Yeah, Ann Coulter had a regular column. John brought her on to bring the conservative voice to the magazine. Jake Tapper wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Chris Matthews wrote a few pieces for the magazine. Kellyanne Conway was interviewed for the magazine. Yeah, there were. As I flipped through, I was really lucky enough in my research for this to be able to get a hold of every single George magazine. One of the editors had saved them and had bound them all together. And I really recognized a lot of names, not just people who were on tv, people like Jake Tapper or Ann Coulter, but big name writers, magazine writers. Norman Mailer, of course, being one example. But they really had. They had amazing talent writing for them.
- [22:10]
Lola Blanc
Yeah. So what exactly went wrong there? It seems like a slam dunk. I've never said that out loud in my life, but, like, it seems so interesting to me. I want to read it. I'm surprised that it wasn't the success that it could have been.
- [22:26]
Noah
Well, it was initially. Right. I mean, it sort of, you know, came out with a bang.
- [22:30]
Devin
Yeah, it was initially. And it's hard to say exactly why it was faltering at the time of his death. I mean, the magazine business is a very hard business. There were differences between John and David Pecker that I heard about during the course of the reporting. There were differences in how public John should be. David really wanted him to go out there and be kind of a show pony for George, but also for the rest of his portfolio, for the rest of the Hachette brands. And John was not happy with that. So David Pecker left at one point and they had a new publisher in 1999, right before he died. So it was kind of going through a transition period. It was a period that you could, if it had lived for 20 years, you could look back and say those were regular growing pains. Or it could have been the beginning of the end. There's really no way to know. And of course, when he died, they had to make the decision of whether or not to move forward with it. And they decided to go forward and to, you know, see what it would be like without John in charge. And it did not last for long after that.
- [23:20]
Noah
So one of the, it seems one of the, like, signatures of it, you know, speaking of Ann Coulter and Kellyanne Conway, was that it had this approach of showing both sides, which is A very kind of, you know, I think very 90s idealistic point of view. And I'm wondering how was that perceived? And was there any bias that did sort of eke out or. Or did they ever do anything as bold as, like, an endorsement or an extremely favorable profile of some sort of politician on the COVID I mean, I know that they went easy on Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, but what was. If you were to say, like, what was the politics of George magazine? What would you say?
- [24:00]
Devin
Yeah, some of the criticism of it in the media was that it was a politics magazine that wasn't particularly political. They were really trying to be bipartisan, which I think, as you said, is such a product of the 90s in that period of idealism. But yet they kept to that. From what I saw, giving someone like Ann Coulter a regular column, I think really shows it. And Kellyanne Conway, I spoke to her for the piece, and she said that she, throughout her career, has been brought into media organizations as the Togan conservative voice. But she felt like John really wanted to hear what she had to say and hear the point of view of people who were not in his social circles. So I think that that did show in the magazine. And as I get into in my piece, I don't know that that could have worked throughout today, for example, but it feels very caught in time when you look at it. It really feels like I can see how this would have worked then. I can see how it might not necessarily translate to today.
- [24:49]
Noah
Before we move on, I want to talk about what happened after JFK Jr died and the legacy of the magazine and where it stands today. But I do want to take a second to just chat about what are your favorite kind of iconic covers, iconic photo shoots, articles that made a big impact. I mean, the first one was Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. And I love this part of the story, which is that they initially, the photographer or the art director or someone put a sock in her pants so that she had a bulge as George Washington. And then JFK Jr hated it so much that they had to airbrush it out. So that's like the first cover, you know?
- [25:28]
Devin
Yes, they came out with a bang. I mean, I think that that has to be my favorite cover. It's just. I feel like it was such a perfectly bold way to start that magazine. They described brainstorming that cover over Rolling Rocks with Carolyn Bessette and Herb Ritz, who was a famous fashion photographer and came up with this idea to have Cindy on the COVID as George Washington and To get her to book her. John called her directly and she told me, like, how do you say no to that? So she did it. And the art director told me about they were looking at these portraits of George Washington, and there was the bulge in these portraits. So why don't they give it a shot? And they wanted to see how far John was willing to go, and that was a bit too far. There's also a really iconic one with Drew Barrymore as Marilyn Monroe, which felt like a shocking decision for John to make. Marilyn Monroe, of course, was always rumored to have had an affair with his father. And they had Drew Barrymore dressed up as her in kind of a Happy Birthday, Mr. President motif. Feels like a bold thing for him to do. And I wrote in the piece that that was originally going to be Madonna dressed up as his mom. And Madonna wrote back. I could never pull it off. I don't have her eyebrows. But, yeah, the covers were great. When I speak to people now about the piece and speak about George magazine, the covers are, I think, what stick in people's minds. They had really great talent working. They really got, like, kind of the highest end fashion photographers. Matt Berman, who was the art director when John was working on the magazine, he was consistently the art director. And he shared a lot of his sketches with me of these different setups for the covers. And I think that's, to me, what makes the most impression. It's kind of the most memorable part of the magazine. Most of the people I talked to couldn't really remember a specific article that really changed the culture in the way that I feel like with Esquire, Rolling Stone. There are often these kind of really important pieces that really change the conversation. And I can't name any George ones that did that. But those covers really did stick in people's minds.
- [27:13]
Lola Blanc
So they're playing with Kennedy family history in the art. How did they cover the Kennedys in the writing?
- [27:21]
Devin
John was asked that when he launched it. He said, you know, if my family's in the news, we'll cover them. But there are plenty of other public publications that are covering the Kennedys. Like, we don't need to be doing it too much. And at that time, there wasn't a ton of Kennedy coverage. I think that just kind of by design of what was going on in politics. But there were famously two of his cousins who were involved in these huge controversies in the late 90s. One of them was accused of having a relationship with a teenage babysitter. And the other kind of very publicly cheated on his wife. And the way John responded to that was writing an editor's letter about temptation and kind of referencing his cousin's and his cousin's experiences. And then John posed partially nude in his photo for the Editor's Letter. The photo was the thing at the time that got the most attention. But when you look back at the editor letter now, it's a little hard to take when you think about the women who are at the center of these controversies, particularly the teenager. But, yeah, there wasn't a ton of Kennedy coverage in the magazine.
- [28:17]
Noah
It's funny, an editor in chief, a sort of famously attractive editor in chief, doing a nude photo shoot to accompany an editor's letter is almost something that, I mean, to state the complete obvious, if a woman did it, she would be, like, burned at the stake.
- [28:29]
Devin
Oh, my God. I know.
- [28:30]
Lola Blanc
It does seem like a lot of the photo shoots, too, that they were doing at the time seem borderline ridiculous. Yeah, you know, they're playing with this combination of pop culture and politics. But what were some of the photo shoots at the time?
- [28:45]
Devin
The two that come to mind are the two that I mentioned, the Drew Barrymore and the COVID What are the others? Oh, they had a fashion shoot that there was the talk of a national dress code. And so they were like, oh, what if high end designers design the national dress code for students? And that one fell very flat. It came across kind of silly. I mean, you can see in the pages the kind of push and pull of trying to pull off this, like, lighthearted politics, pop culture thing. And it's a hard thing to do without doing hard hitting, you know, political coverage next to it. It's a challenge. And you can see it in the pages that it was a challenge.
- [29:21]
Noah
Yeah, it seems like that is, you know, to theorize about what didn't quite hit. It does seem like, as you're saying, the difference between George and Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, all these places is that the entire point was to combine high and low. So they were able to get away with a Demi Moore cover or something, because inside they had a Norman Mailer essay, like a Joan Didion essay, You know, things that lent it heft. And it seems like maybe the overall tone of Georgia magazine was always pop culture.
- [29:51]
Devin
Y.
- [29:51]
Noah
It wasn't combining high with low. It was always sort of middle brow. Is that accurate?
- [29:56]
Devin
Yeah, and I would say that a lot of that was directly from John. One of the editors was telling me about a piece that he had turned in that was kind of heavier on the policy side. Of politics. And John was like, our readers care about the personalities. And John was really very involved in editorial, I think more than people realize, more than I realized when I started reporting the piece. But he was in every editor's meeting. He was staying there until late at night when they were closing the magazine. He was the one giving directives on direction of features and of course, involved in the covers. He was doing these interviews every issue, himself as well. So John is all over that magazine. It really. And that's not always, you know, editors in chief, not even just famous ones, but have kind of different roles to play at each publication. But that was a John publication kind of through and through when he was running it. The tone of it, the kind of bipartisan kind of light spirit of politics. That was really what he was trying to do, and that's really what the magazine is.
- [30:58]
Ken Jennings
Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is Ken Jennings appearance on the puzzler with A.J. jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy. Truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in.
- [31:20]
Devin
I guess they would be conspiracy theorists.
- [31:23]
Ken Jennings
That's right. Are there Jeopardy.
- [31:24]
Devin
Truthers?
- [31:25]
Ken Jennings
Are there people who say that it. It was rigged?
- [31:27]
Devin
Yeah. Ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers.
- [31:31]
Noah
Right.
- [31:31]
Devin
And then there's the other ones, which are like, they gave you the answers.
- [31:33]
Ken Jennings
And you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy. Legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the puzzler podcast. The puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:58]
Manny
Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.
- [32:02]
Devin
Attention, passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.
- [32:10]
Manny
Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Until this. Pull that. Turn this.
- [32:21]
Noah
It's.
- [32:22]
Manny
It's just. I can do my eyes closed. I'm Manny.
- [32:24]
Noah
I'm Noah.
- [32:24]
Devin
This is Devin.
- [32:25]
Manny
And on our new show, no such thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on on overconfidence.
- [32:34]
Noah
Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise.
- [32:41]
Manny
And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the Runway. I'm looking at this thing See, Listen to no such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.
- [33:01]
Noah
Most everything was burned up pretty good.
- [33:03]
Devin
From the fire that that not a.
- [33:04]
Noah
Whole lot was salvageable.
- [33:06]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.
- [33:28]
Devin
He never thought was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.
- [33:35]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [33:56]
Narrator (Shock Incarceration)
What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.
- [34:09]
Noah
He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you.
- [34:14]
Narrator (Shock Incarceration)
Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional program that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months.
- [34:40]
Noah
The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and.
- [34:45]
Devin
We didn't know what to expect in.
- [34:46]
Noah
The morning, nobody tells you anything.
- [34:48]
Narrator (Shock Incarceration)
Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:05]
Lola Blanc
He comes out with the magazine. This predates the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, but it happens at the exact same time, like a time when that was the joke on every late night show. It kind of seems like the perfect example of how this magazine could have been a huge success, like if it tapped into that part of the zeitgeist. But for some reason they didn't.
- [35:31]
Devin
Yeah, she shied away from it. They covered it in a way that was clearly like we covered it, you know, we kind of checked the box. They had a piece about Vernon Jordan and they did a thing about kind of workplace relations. Or something like that. But they didn't really kind of go for the hard hitting pieces about what happened here. How did it happen? And when I spoke to Keith Kelly, who was a media reporter at the time, who covered the magazine very closely, he felt like that was really kind of a beginning of the end type of thing for it. Like I said, it's very hard in retrospect to look at that four years where we were when he died and to know what would have happened after. But that was pretty widely viewed as an opportunity where they really could have captured the national conversation around that, and he didn't. I think one piece of speculation was that his dad, of course, famously had affairs while he was in the White House. And that might have been a side of things that made John feel uncomfortable. He never said that. So that's the speculation. And then editor, who I spoke to was working there at the time, also said that he felt like they should have done more reporting, more journalism around the Clinton Linsky scandal, and they didn't. So, yeah, I think that John being editor in chief drew so much attention to this publication and of course, got advertisers. But the Kennedy name, his own perspective, could also cause challenges for it.
- [36:45]
Noah
It's almost like he wanted to have his cake. Anita, too, by having these provocative covers that reference Marilyn Monroe and reference his mom and the Kennedy mythology, but then doesn't back it up with the juice that people would expect. I mean, you would want to open a magazine that has Drew Barrymore as Marilyn Monroe edited by Kennedy and have political writing. 1999, JFK Jr. And Carolyn Bessette and her sister obviously tragically die in a plane crash. Speaking of pop culture celebrities on the COVID what happens after that to the magazine?
- [37:18]
Devin
Yeah. So after their death, there was a directive to the staff of, you know, we're gonna keep going. We're gonna figure out what to do next. Hachette bought The Kennedy family's 50% stake in the magazine and they pushed forward. There was a new editor in chief installed. There was a lot of media coverage about who would be the next editor in chief of George without John, it was really hard for anyone to imagine it without him. Al Franken was one name floated. But they ended up going with a longtime managing editor for Money magazine. Frank Lawley is the one who they brought in. And there was huge turnover in the staff after that for many reasons. Frank got rid of a lot of them. A lot of them left. Frank told me he felt like John wasn't able to pursue his own ideas for the magazine because he lacked the editorial expertise. Many people who worked with John, I think, would really disagree with that. But. But that was Frank's view as coming in fresh as the editor in chief. So he wanted to kind of start fresh. And then the first person he put on the COVID was Donald Trump, which the people who I spoke to who knew John said he just never would have done that, I think. And it was. Whenever I tell people I wrote a piece about George, I think people often conflate the timelines, and they think John did that. And of course, there are all of these crazy QAnon things about JFK Jr. And Trump and all that, but that was the first cover after his death. Another one of Frank's covers was Linda Tripp. Speaking of the Monica Lewinsky story, people who worked with John said that they also don't think he would have put Linda Tripp on the COVID So the magazine, long story short, did not last very long without John.
- [38:42]
Noah
And I'm just wondering. The Trump cover was pre Apprentice. So he was, correct me if I'm wrong, sort of like a tabloid joke in New York society. Like, he was this guy that tried to punch above his weight. There's a story about how during the photo shoot, he kept grabbing Melania's butt, you know, as they were being photographed. What was the tone of the coverage of Trump? Was it making fun of him? Was it endorsing him?
- [39:05]
Devin
I think it was trying to keep that spirit that John created the magazine with, like a. This is a person who has flirted with politics and Trump had. The way that it was told to me was that somebody on the business side was the one who floated the name of Trump. And this was after David Pecker left as well. So there were a lot of people in the Trump orbit who the timeline didn't quite match up. So it wasn't David Pecker, but somebody on the business side said, this guy Donald Trump is really interesting, and he's constantly in the news and he has floated these political aspirations. We should put him on the COVID But if you look back at the coverage, it's definitely not making fun of him. It's more celebratory than the other side. But it's kind of trying to present this bipartisan picture of, like, here's this New York personality, and can you imagine if he wants to be president one day? I think not. Probably imagining what would have happened. Yeah.
- [39:50]
Lola Blanc
There's something in your article that I thought was really interesting. In a shocking moment, there's a story about him having creative differences with his co founder and that they had the physical altercation.
- [40:05]
Devin
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Lola Blanc
Are there more details on that? It's hard to imagine.
- [40:09]
Devin
It is hard to imagine. I know I reread it myself recently, and I'd kind of forgotten that that was in there. But, yeah, that had been reported in the media when it happened, as most things about the magazine were. There was so much coverage. I think that was in. I forget where that was, but it was reported publicly. The people who were working there at the time remember it happening. They remember there was a ripped shirt sleeve and that John had bought Michael Berman a new shirt as an apology and he had a lock installed on his door. That there was a physical altercation, but that nobody I spoke to really remembered exactly what it was over. Nobody I spoke to saw it happen. They just kind of saw the aftermath of it. But, yeah, it was kind of a disconcerting and jarring detail.
- [40:50]
Noah
Film and JFK jr's temper was sort of an ongoing storyline, even outside of George magazine. I mean, there's like, the famous video of him and Carolyn fighting in Central park. And it seems like maybe generally speaking, he was well liked, but that's the one thing where people were like, well, he does have a temper. You have to sort of like, stay on his good side.
- [41:09]
Devin
Yeah.
- [41:10]
Noah
I have a question that I forgot to ask earlier, which is we keep mentioning Graydon Carter as someone who is somehow collaborating with. What was that relationship? Cause Graydon was at Vanity Fair at the time.
- [41:20]
Devin
Yeah, they were kind of nemeses at the time, so they were competing against one another. So Graydon had Vanity Fair, which was the biggest magazine at the time. They were selling a million copies a month. And then George was coming up and in a way, trying to compete against Vanity Fair. I think in John's kind of highest aspirations, George and Vanity Fair would have really been kind of dueling on the newsstands. Vanity Fair was a much more successful magazine, even considering the successful launch of George. But, yeah, Graydon and John were business adversaries.
- [41:47]
Noah
So, you know, we're in a very weird time in media and in magazines. I was actually thinking, as I was reading about George Stephanopoulos being this young upstart from the Clinton campaign. I was thinking, and I say this in a completely neutral way, that the modern equivalent is like the pod, Save America guys coming from the Obama administration and founding their media company. And now instead of a magazine, it is a podcasting company. And, you know, maybe in the next, next generation, it'll be some sort of like short form video, you know, who knows what. But I guess my question is what is the legacy of George magazine? And what would a George magazine type media enterprise look like today?
- [42:24]
Devin
I think that the kind of takeaway that I had is that John was right about his instincts that politics of pop culture would continue to kind of merge. I think obviously in the president that we have. You see that, that's very true. The Obama's had this deal with Netflix. I think neither of those were things that we could have quite predicted in the early 90s. So I think he was right in that. So I think the concept for the magazine, he had the right instincts. I don't think George could be around today. I think the tone of it just wouldn't quite work. The thing though is that everyone covers politics. Teen Vogue, fashion magazines like Elle do huge political profiles. Vogue often has some of the biggest names in politics on the COVID It's just politics is everywhere and you really can't pull the two apart now. So it's just hard to imagine George today. Interesting case study in my mind is Jack Schlossberg, who of course is JFK Jr. S nephew. What he's trying to do with politics and social media, pop culture. I think having written the article and also the book, thinking about what people in the Kennedy family do with that name and with that legacy is really interesting. A lot of them have. It's kind of challenging to figure out what to do with this incredible legacy on their shoulders. A lot of them of course completely steer away from the spotlight. But the ones who want to engage with politics or engage with the national conversation, I think Jack's kind of how he's pursuing voice is in some ways kind of echoes what John was doing with George. I think John was interested in politics. A lot of the people I spoke to thought that he would run for office one day after he got the magazine kind of on its own two feet. I think I see that with JAG too. I think you see him trying to kind of figure out a voice, trying to have his say about politics out in the world. And the way you do that now is with social media. The way you did that in the 90s was with the magazine. So I think that's kind of one of the more interesting kind of legacies of it.
- [44:11]
Noah
Yeah, I was thinking of Jack especially because of the cheekiness they both have. They both combine the severity of, you know, someone who is in a political dynasty with the sense of humor of like a pop culture media figure. And specifically I immediately thought of Jack, because when we were talking about John wanting to do a cover that references his mom or that references his dad had, Lyra and I were just looking through Jack Schlossberg's social media output for a different episode and he had one tweet where he asked, who does everyone think is hotter? Usha Vance or Jackie Kennedy? Which is of course his grandmother. And so it's like they both like landed on the same joke, which is haha, my mom or grandmother was attractive.
- [44:53]
Devin
Yeah. It's so true.
- [44:55]
Noah
So funny that just in this new generation, as you're saying, the equivalent of a magazine is becoming a social media influencer and Jack is now like going live on Instagram and trying to have his own sort of like low budget talk show. And you know, there are some warning signs that I would say maybe imply that it might be short lived, you know, in terms of a media property, but it is part of a long legacy of these sort of more like trickster y Kennedys that exist one every generation.
- [45:23]
Devin
Yeah. And you can tell like they knew they wanted to say something about politics and they knew they wanted to have people hear them and so they're using the medium of their times. But I think it's a challenge. I think that being a Kennedy, people are gonna pay attention to whatever you do and whatever you say and kind of what you do with that. You're gonna be met with a lot of criticism and it's an interesting challenge.
- [45:43]
Noah
So you're currently a features editor at Rolling Stone. You've worked in magazines for most of your career. What is your take on where we are with magazines and with print media and with digital media? I know it's the worst possible question I could possibly ask a career journalist, but. But I do want to know, like, when you think of your career in magazines, when you think of people's relationship to magazines during such a crazy, turbulent political time, what do you see? The Future? The next five, 10, 20 years?
- [46:11]
Devin
Yeah, I mean, it's an impossible question. And when I ask myself, I feel like every day, I guess what I would hope is that I've always done features, so I've always done real trend of true long form magazine storytelling. And my hope is that kind of storytelling will exist with these incredible legacy brands in some capacity. A lot of the stories I work on now are turned into documentaries and feature films and books. So I think the best way to exist in magazines today is to be very grateful that I'm in magazines while they still exist, but to also be sort of flexible in terms of what that will be in the next 10 or 20 years, just to hope that the storytelling remains intact even if the pages of a magazine don't. And I think if that's the case, if these stories are existing and various other ways other than a hard copy of the magazine, that's okay.
- [46:57]
Noah
All right, well, we'll see you on Jack Schlossberg's Instagram talk show for the second part of this discussion.
- [47:02]
Devin
See you in the van.
- [47:03]
Noah
All right. Thank you so much, Kate, for joining us. This was really a delight.
- [47:06]
Devin
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [47:07]
Noah
Thank you.
- [47:08]
Lola Blanc
So that's it for this week's episode.
- [47:10]
Noah
Next week we're talking all things Carol Radswell. She's the former Real housewife of New York City who was married to JFK Jr. S cousin, Anthony Radwell.
- [47:19]
Lola Blanc
Well, so subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy every week.
- [47:31]
Noah
Hey, it's me, Earhart. Mind if I pick the next song? Listen, even though we're eating better, people who've had one heart attack are at higher risk of another. But Repatha Evolocumab plus a statin lowers LDL ctrl, our bad cholesterol, and our heart attack risk. So let's talk to our doctor about Repatha.
- [47:50]
Lola Blanc
Do not take Repatha if you're allergic to it. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing or swallowing, swelling of the face, lips, tongue, throat or arms. Common side effects include runny nose, sore throat, common cold symptoms, flu or flu like symptoms, back pain, high blood sugar and redness, pain or bruising at the injection site. View the important safety information in our banner. Listen to your heart. Ask your doctor about Repatha. This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meats World. Parents, quick question.
- [48:20]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
When is the last time you won snack time?
- [48:23]
Lola Blanc
The other day I handed my son a perfectly portioned Pinterest level snack and he traded it for a Mott's applesauce pouch.
- [48:31]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
I'm not mad, just impressed.
- [48:33]
Lola Blanc
And that's why Mott's no sugar added applesauce pouches are perfect to keep on hand. They're made with real apples packed in a super easy pouch, perfect for tossing in a lunchbox, keeping in the car.
- [48:44]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
Or grabbing as you're running out the door.
- [48:47]
Lola Blanc
Plus, they're a good source of vitamin C and kids love them. Win, win. Make sure your kid wins.
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Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
Snack time with Mottz. Real apples make real good applesauce.
- [48:57]
Noah
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- [49:33]
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- [49:52]
Devin
And it was.
- [49:53]
Narrator (America's Crime Lab)
That's why Rodney said it's an exhilarating feeling knowing they really care. Want more support for your members so they can make more of their benefits? Go to CMK Co Stories to learn more. That's C EMK Co Staries.
- [50:08]
Devin
This is an iHeart podcast.