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- [00:00]
Paula Byrne
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Johnny Knoxville
Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside media and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
- [00:27]
Paula Byrne
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
- [00:35]
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
- [00:43]
George Severis
They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.
- [00:48]
Paula Byrne
So we're sitting like, oh, God, what do we do?
- [00:50]
George Severis
What do we do? That was dumb.
- [00:52]
Paula Byrne
People, do not follow my example.
- [00:55]
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your PODC.
- [01:08]
Maggie Freeling
The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [01:21]
Paula Byrne
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
- [01:33]
Maggie Freeling
Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [01:47]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime and that would spiral out of control.
- [01:58]
Paula Byrne
And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. I didn't kill him.
- [02:04]
Malcolm Gladwell
From Revisionist History, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:17]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.
- [02:27]
Maggie Freeling
32 Locke nuclear weapons.
- [02:29]
Paula Byrne
You're like, wait, stop. What?
- [02:31]
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:56]
George Severis
I'm George Severis. And this is United States of Ken, 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 Kathleen Kennedy, or she was known to those close to her, Kick Kennedy. Kick was born on February 20, 1920, the fourth child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, after siblings Joseph Jr, John F. Kennedy and Rosemary. The book the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys describes Joe, Jr, Jack, and Kathleen as, quote, the golden trio, who share the inestimable advantages of being wealthy, good looking, confident, and intelligent. And even within that golden trio, it was no secret that Kick was her father's favorite. Kick spent her adolescence in London while her father served as the ambassador to the United Kingdom. She became an it girl in London society circles. She later worked as a journalist in the US before moving back to London and eventually marrying William Cavendish, or Billy, as he was called, a British nobleman who was the heir to his father's dukedom. The marriage caused a lot of family drama, especially with her mother, Rose. As Billy was, of course, not Catholic. A series of tragedies soon befell Kick. Shortly after her wedding, she lost her brother Joe and then her husband, all within a few very short months. Two years later, she and her new lover, Peter Fitzwilliams, died in a tragic plane crash. To talk about Kik's life and legacy, we are joined by author and literary critic Paula Byrne, writer of the biography the true story of JFK's sister and the Heir to Chatsworth. Paula, welcome to United States of Kennedy.
- [04:39]
Paula Byrne
Thank you for having me.
- [04:40]
George Severis
And before we begin, I do want to say, on the record, while we're recording, that you're a big presence in my household because my husband is one of the biggest Barbara Pym fans in America. And it's something that I'm ashamed to say, when we first started dating, I had never even heard of her. I just didn't grow up reading a lot of literature like that. And so I remember early on, your book was one of those books that I would find in various different bookcases throughout the home.
- [05:06]
Paula Byrne
Well, I literally love your husband already. Like, that's just the best thing I've ever heard. It's brilliant.
- [05:12]
George Severis
But we are unfortunately not here to talk about Barbara Pym, even though I would love to impress him with more factoids. We're here to talk about Kate Kennedy. So, first of all, you yourself are an Irish Kennedy, and I heard you say that on another interview. What was your relationship to the Kennedys, just as public figures growing up?
- [05:31]
Paula Byrne
Well, we're not obviously related to the Kennedys. My grandfather was called Robert Kennedy, and we were an Irish Catholic family living in the northwest of England near Liverpool. And we always had two sort of precious items in our household. I was one of seven children, and there were two boss. So one was of the Pope and one was of jfk. And it's amazing how many other people have said exactly the same thing. I thought it was just my family, but my parents were not given to idolizing anybody particularly. So it was really interesting to me that jfk, the first Catholic president, was put on the same pedestal as the Pope. And my parents, like, whatever, don't play football. Don't. Don't knock. Don't knock jfk. Just leave him, leave him. So they sort of really idolized the Kennedy. So I think I always grew up and my parents, My mother was. She was the Kennedy. And there were 13 children. And, you know, they look like the Kennedy family. My, my parents, my mother's siblings, they actually, they have a lot of personality. They are great raconteurs. They're really good looking. Like they're just like Kennedy's eason through and through. So I kind of felt there was an affinity before I even wrote about Kathleen Kennedy. I think I just grew up feeling that he was somebody that was revered in a family that didn't really revere anybody apart from the Pope.
- [06:57]
George Severis
That is so interesting and for, you know, our predominantly American listeners. I know you didn't grow up in Ireland, but can you describe the place that the Kennedys hold in the Irish imagination? I mean, since I've started doing this podcast, people I know will, you know, travel to Ireland or be there on a trip or something, and they will send me the funniest instances of, you know, a framed photo of JFK in some random pub or they're saying a bus. I mean, what is the place of the Kennedys just day to day in Ireland?
- [07:25]
Paula Byrne
Oh, it's honestly huge. It's just huge. You know, we always thought of the Kennedys as American royalty. And I think it's mainly because, particularly in Catholic families, the fact that he was the first Catholic president of the United States was just so huge. And let alone the sort of myth of the Kennedys and all those children. And of course, I guess for my parents generation, they remembered the Kennedy family coming to England in 1938 and 1939 when their father Joe became ambassador, and the kind of impact on the British press and the Irish press was so huge. And these gorgeous children, nine of them, with these dazzling Smiles and full of personality. The impact of that family with their dazzle was just completely huge. So I feel like. And wherever I go, when I said, oh, my mum's a Kennedy, people would be like, oh, wow, are you related to the family? So I think there's. Honestly, even today, there's massive kudos having some connection to that name because particularly in Catholic, Irish families, there is such love for the Kennedy family.
- [08:37]
George Severis
Yeah. Your description of the Kennedys in England especially, and the entire media ecosystem hounding them and them becoming immediately like the protagonists of any country that they're in. I mean, this is different, but it reminds me of my family is Greek. And when Jackie started spending more time in Greece because of Onassis, she suddenly became the number one celebrity in all Greek people's minds. I mean, they just, all of them have a way of capturing and then maintaining people's att.
- [09:08]
Paula Byrne
Oh, yeah, for sure. I think because Kennedy's particularly jfk, you know, he was such a young, handsome president. And I think the advent of televisions in people's rooms was a really important cultural, social phenomenon because it brought Kennedy into everybody's day to day living. So people felt they knew him even though they didn't know him. And he was so personable and charismatic. So I think that he was just so appealing on all sorts of levels.
- [09:37]
George Severis
I want to get into Kathleen because she was one of the sort of three golden children. It was Joe Jr. Jack and Kathleen were by all counts Joe's favorites, so to speak. But I had not really read too much about Kathleen before this. And I guess in my mind, based on things I had read, she was almost, if anything, just a symbol in that she was emblematic of this idea of the Kennedy curse. And obviously that is unfair to make her into just that. But there is something so just deeply trapped about the number of terrible tragedies that happened to her just within the span of five years. So if anything, my idea of her was almost as a passive figure that all these things happen to, rather than an active person with agency and with her own ambitions and interests and daily dramas. And there was very little written specifically about her before your book. So what was it that drew you to her as a historical figure?
- [10:37]
Paula Byrne
Well, I mean, just two things to follow up on that. She absolutely was a passive person. And it's so interesting that was your perception of her, because that couldn't be further from the truth, because in defying her family, in defying her faith and defying her country, she was an absolute feminist in doing what she wanted to do so to me, she was a very active figure in a family where the power of family, the power of boys in that family was so all pervading. And so for a child to defy, particularly somebody like Rose Kennedy, the matriarch, was really extraordinary. So that's the first thing I would say. And you're completely right about the tragedy. But of course, the first tragedy was Jo Jr. Of course, before Kick herself had her tragedies. So she was almost like the second. But you're completely right about the grief that happened in that sort of relatively short space of time. And what drew me to her. So I've always done biographies where I used to think of myself as a footnote queen. So I would write a book and then find a footnote about somebody, and I'd be like, oh, who's that? That I'd written a book about Evelyn Waugh and homosexuality. And Bright had revisited and. Because his early experiences with boys at Oxford. And it was a sort of revisionist biography of Evelyn Waugh, because I sort of upturned many of the cliches about him, and I sort of do that. Anyway, anyway, in the course of that book, I discovered him writing in his diary, kick saw, kick sat by. Kick da da da, Kick this, kick that. And I thought, kick. Who on earth is Kick? So I looked her up. Oh, my God. This is Kathleen Kennedy. This is JFK's sister. Sister. Why is he mentioning Kid Kennedy? Why are they friends? This is really bizarre. Evelyn Wall was not known to be kind to people. He was acerbic, he was intelligent. He couldn't bear most people. And he obviously was incredibly fond of this Kick person. So I did my research and then thought, wow, okay, this woman has been whitewashed out of the family history. This woman's story has not been told. So this is my shtick. This is what I do. I find these voices, it's lost voices, and I return them, their stories. And so to me, it was like, I've got to do this book. I've got to write. So also, I wanted to write about the Ken, the young Kennedys, being in Britain, because obviously I'm British, I spent a lot of time in America, but it felt very clear that it. It was Kicks time.
- [13:00]
George Severis
Yeah, it's funny, we did an episode on Rosemary Kennedy, and it was obviously a tragic story in a completely different way, but it was a similar story of the. Often the women in the Kennedy family get written out of the mainstream telling of the family story, and then it takes someone going back into the archives later on to dig out a coherent biography. But to that end, what was the research process like, considering there was so little written specifically about her? Were there any sources that were especially valuable?
- [13:33]
Paula Byrne
Oh, yeah. I mean, the Kennedy archives so obviously spent lots of time at the library in Boston. And it was actually incredibly overwhelming as a biographer, because, you know, I always say my two most difficult biographies was one, I wrote a biography of a biracial girl called Dido Bell, who was raised in a household at Lord Mansfield's house in London. And when I was asked to do that biography because a film is being made about it, I said, there are only eight known facts. What am I going to do? And they were like, no, you'll do it. The Kennedy was the opposite. Kick was the opposite. Rose Kennedy's archive alone has something like 8 million artifacts in it. It's so overwhelming. There are letters by Kick2Kick, thousands of photographs, all sorts of letters. This, for me, was quite a British story because obviously she married into one of the most aristocratic families in England, and she was scooped up by these aristocratic county country families, and they wrote about her. So there was no shortage of information, Trust me. Absolutely none at all. If anything, there was a glut of information. So having to sift through all of that was quite daunting in a different way to Bell, where I had suit little information.
- [14:45]
George Severis
Right, okay, so let's get into it then. So she, as a teen, she moved to London because her father became the ambassador. And then what was her adolescence like in London as a kind of. As an American in London and also as basically a. I don't want to say a celebrity, but someone who stuck out as part of this kind of American royal family.
- [15:05]
Paula Byrne
I mean, she was a celebrity, really. And she. She was probably one of the most famous sort of it girls on the planet. And, you know, she was very young. She was in her teens. She arrived with her siblings, and the press really took to her because she was so lively and very photogenic. She was beautifully dressed, like all the Kennedys were, but the women were really well dressed, dazzling smile. And the interesting thing about Kick and why the press? So right from the start, the press latched onto her. Okay, she's the star, she's the celebrity. She's the one everybody wants a piece of. Nobody gave a second look to jfk, not at all. He was ill. He was coming later on from the rest of the family. He was very intellectual, he's very studious. He was going to go to the London School of Economics Nobody cared. It was Kick, Kick, Kick. Everybody was interested in Kick. So again, for the biographer, lots of stories in the newspapers about where she's going, what party she's going to. And the interesting thing about Kick was how long before JFK and indeed Jo, her brother, even went into these circles, she was the one that was feted by this group of very sophisticated aristocratic families. And that's very hard if you're not British and if you're American, you don't get in. It's a closed shop. And she was more than accepted into. And it was through her that JFK and Joe and all the others were able to gain footage into these aristocratic homes. So she was the forerunner.
- [16:40]
George Severis
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
- [16:52]
Paula Byrne
All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie.
- [16:57]
Maggie Freeling
For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [17:13]
Paula Byrne
I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.
- [17:16]
Maggie Freeling
We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.
- [17:25]
George Severis
Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky.
- [17:28]
Johnny Knoxville
Housewife helped give justice to Jessica Kerr.
- [17:32]
Maggie Freeling
My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
- [17:42]
Paula Byrne
I did not know her and I.
- [17:43]
Malcolm Gladwell
Did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.
- [17:46]
Paula Byrne
That y' all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
- [17:55]
Maggie Freeling
From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
- [18:06]
Paula Byrne
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
- [18:15]
Maggie Freeling
Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [18:36]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did. Why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.
- [19:13]
Unknown male speaker (possibly a narrator or interviewee in Revisionist History)
He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize. Turn to the left. Tell my family I love them. So he had this little practice. To the right. I'm sorry. To the left. I love you.
- [19:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
From revisionist history, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:36]
Molly Lambert
Jenna World, Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video and the Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. Hey, I'm Molly Lambert, host of Heidi the Heidi Fly Story, and I'll be your tour guide on a wild ride through adult films. We get paid more than the men. We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our Life. In the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson crossed over into mainstream culture, redefined stardom, then left it all behind. Mind, I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a man. With a cast of hundreds of actors and comedians playing key figures, we'll take a look at how adult films became legal in the 70s, hugely profitable in the 80s and 90s, and fell off a financial cliff in the 2000s. Listen to Gentle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:36]
Maggie Freeling
I'm Eva Longoria.
- [20:37]
Paula Byrne
And I'm Maite Gomez Rejuan. And on our podcast Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells and they called these ostrakon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the ostracon. And because we've got a very mi casa es su casa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by.
- [21:08]
George Severis
Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the El Golfo de Mexico.
- [21:14]
Paula Byrne
No, the America. No, the America. El Golfo de Mexico. Continua haciendo a si. Forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:53]
George Severis
And we're Back with United States of Kennedy. I want to sort of get into the social ecosystem at that time because I do think it's. It surely will sound very foreign to anyone living in 2025, but also especially an American living in 2025. So she was a debutante. She was in these sort of society circles. Can you describe just day to day, what that was like? What were these events like that she was welcomed into? What did that mean? What did she get out of it? How do you know if someone is climbing the ranks?
- [22:27]
Paula Byrne
Well, it's difficult if you're not British, to enter into that. The upper echelons of British society, particularly in 1938, what she had on her side as her father was the ambassador. So they lived in this incredible house at St. James's so they instantly had that cachet and they had that sort of invitation. But even so, the British aristocracy can close ranks. If your face doesn't fit and they don't like you or they find you vulgar or chewing gum and they think, oh, you're a ghastly American, they will not let you in. And that just didn't happen because. Because everybody fell in love with her. So what did that look like? So she gets presented at court, she learns how to curtsy, she learns how to dance. She has the most beautiful dress imaginable with Rosemary. And it's very frightening for Kit because she has to look after Rosemary, who we know about Rosemary and her troubles. And Kick was incredibly patient and very loving towards Rosemary, but there was a lot of pressure because to all intents and purposes, Kick was the elder girl because of Rosie's incapacitation. So she was the one leading the way. And very quickly she became. She was very endearing. And she was invited to an English country house and she was put through a test. People were being quite mean to her because in English country houses, you put your shoes out to get cleaned every night. And she didn't know some of those rules. And so she did put all her shoes out and the girls played a trick and they stole all the left hand shoes or the right hand shoes, I can't remember. See, she couldn't wear shoes and she just didn't care. She just wore a left shoe and a right shoe and she went down the stairs and they all said, why are you hobbling? And she said, oh, Robert broke my leg before supper. And she was instantly accepted because she just charmed everybody. Not easy to do. And from really that point on, after she passed that test, that horrible, snobby English way Of are you one of us even though you're not? She passed the test. And then what that then looked like was this English season. She was welcome to everything. So from horse racing to balls to society events to the opera house to English country houses where politics are discussed. I mean, I argue in my book that I don't think JFK learned about English country house politics because of Kick. If Kick had the entree. He did not have the entree. It was her. She had the entree. And it was through him that she met Churchill's. Winston Churchill's circle, his son. It was through Kick. So she was the one who was invited. And because I'd say she was so beautiful, she always wore these amazing hats. She had the best shoes, she had the best clothes, she had the best jewelry. So of course, she's just like catnip to the press. So they're commenting on, oh, she's at the races, she's at Royal Ascot, she's at Goodwood. She's at this event. She's at that event. She's at this ball. Oh, she's at that ball. And Nancy Astor took her under her wing, who was the doyen of English aristocratic society. So she just had this ability, like all the Kennedys do, I suppose, to completely charm people. So it was really interesting for her. Easy for her to be courted. And all the men fell in love with that. And the girls, these aristocratic sort of beautiful, slender, willowy beauties, were furious. Cause they said, kick, stealing all our men. They loved her, but they were like, she's stealing all our men. And she says. And the girls were like, she's short. And her bro brothers said, oh, she's got a short neck and she's got fat ankles. And, you know, and she's not going to be anything like these willowy, beautiful, aristocratic blondes. And she was stealing all the men. All the men were in love with her. Everyone fell in love with her. She just had incredible charisma. And also she was extremely down to earth. So whenever English people tried to be snobby, she would just not rise to it.
- [26:16]
George Severis
So I wanna, you know, I want to go into her relationship with men. Because that is, if there's one thing I did know about her, as you alluded to earlier, the fallout with her family based on the men that she decided to date slash marry. But you mentioned her relationship to jfk, and I want to go into that a little bit more. They were very close. I mean, you described them as almost twin. Like they really gravitated towards one another. And you say Jack wanted to be an intellectual, he did not want to be a politician. They talked about writing and literature and politics, which I think also was something else she brought to the table in these society environments where she was one of the only women, as you're saying, that's talking about politics and talking about current events. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about her relationship to Jack and what they had in common. Something that struck me was there was this quote here. And of course it's from a different book, but at some point Kick says, the thing about me, you ought to know is that I'm like Jack, incapable of deep affection. And that's kind of sad self knowledge about not being able to. To fully be in touch with one's emotions was something that they bonded over, I think.
- [27:29]
Paula Byrne
So I think that that's a really great quote that you picked up there. But also going back to the twin thing, they were really. They were almost like people described them as a sort of desi and you know, you know, that kind of screwball comedy because they were very witty and they were very luciable. They were very on it. And she stood up for herself. She stood up to him. She was as tough as the boys. She would outrun them in races. She was really sporty. She held her own because you have to hold your own if you're a Kennedy. Obviously you do. And she was bright and she was sassy and they had quite a teasing relationship, but they were extremely close. And as it almost like twins. And I think that quote is really interesting because it hints at deep self knowledge that really it was hard to be a Kennedy. And Rose was not an affectionate mother. She was a very cold mother. Their father was deeply affectionate and he used to spend time with each children. Most nights he would bring them into the bedroom and talk to them. But also there was this tension in the family because obviously Jo was deeply unfaithful to Rose. So family secrets were there and the kids knew about their father's affairs and they joked about it to 1 in odds. But that concealed hurt and damage. So in terms of that family system, it was deeply dysfunctional. And I think when Kick talks about that, it was that sense of growing up in a very dysfunctional marriage and what that meant for the children and the sexual double standard, you know, that the boys, you know, Joe would leave out pornographic magazines to the boys, but the girls are meant to be virgins until they get married. So you've got this sexual hypocrisy and the sexual double standard, and that's very difficult. I actually think Kick was deeply capable of affection and deep affection, and she showed that when she, you know, she married Billy. So I don't think that was true, but I think it also hints at this sense of dysfunction.
- [29:31]
George Severis
So she meets Billy when she's very young in London. Correct. And then she moves back to America, but then eventually goes back to England, and despite the fact that he is potentially engaged to a different woman, Sally Norton at the time goes back, and then they eventually do end up getting married. But can you describe, you know, for any Americans that might not be proficient in the ins and outs of British nobility, who Billy was and what his place was in England?
- [29:57]
Paula Byrne
I mean, it's hard to overemphasize just how he was literally the most eligible bachelor in the whole of Britain, and I would say above royalty even, because, you know, his father was the owner of Chatsworth and numerous other stately homes. He was rich beyond wildest dreams. He had an aristocratic pedigree going back centuries, and all the women wanted to bag him. They all were in love with Billy Harsington. And it's so extraordinary that when. And you mentioned that he met Kick and then she went back to America and came back. From the minute Billy, the most eligible bachelor in the whole of England, met her, he said she is the only one for. And although he did get engaged, he. It was only because he didn't think he could ever get her. And so when she came back, he dropped everything to be with her. But, I mean, Chatsworth is for people who've watched Pride and prejudice in 1995. You know, Chatsworth is at Pemberley. It's this enormous stately home in Derbyshire, which is completely beautiful. And as I say, the most aristocratic family. He's a duke. And Kick barely sort of knows what this is. And she makes a joke with Billy and says, oh, juki Wookie. And she's sort of teasing him. She says, oh, but you didn't really believe in all that. You didn't really take that serious. And he says, well, you know, I do take that really seriously. Because she didn't really understand how the aristocracy worked. So it's almost hard to overemphasize just how important Billy was. And the irony of that was the Kennedy family thought. Thought he's the worst man in the world to marry. Not that he's the richest man in the world. Well, in England, he's the most aristocratic man. He's completely devoted to her. He's the eldest son. He's going to inherit everything. He's a duke. And, you know, there aren't that many dukes in England. He's incredibly aristocratic. And yet for Rose, it was the worst match because he's not Catholic. So you can imagine. I mean, talk about the family discord as a result of this. But he was extremely eligible, happy, handsome, tall. And as I say, he completely fell in love with her. He could have had any girl was his for the picking. And he just said, it's Kick. That's the woman. And he fell in love with that at first sight and said, she's the one for me. It's an extraordinary love story.
- [32:20]
George Severis
Well, it is, especially because it really seemed like when she moved back to America, and this was during the beginning of the war, I believe she moved back to america in what, like, 39?
- [32:32]
Paula Byrne
Yeah, around. Yeah, yeah, 39.
- [32:34]
George Severis
And so she leaves London, he becomes engaged to someone else. Clearly, it seems like the love story is doomed. So it is especially very Romeo and Juliet that they end up miraculously, through her efforts to find a job placement, back in London in a few years. And it is a real sort of tortured love story. But in terms of the family's disapproval, because this is something that is such a huge part of Kik's life is that that eventually the family almost disowns her in a way. Jo is the only Kennedy, I think, at her funeral after she dies. Can you talk a little bit about Rose's relationship to Kik? Because it's interesting. On the one hand, as you're saying, Rose was very. Has this reputation of being very cold and very concerned with being proper and having her family be this emblem of politics, white American society and everything. On the other hand, as you have talked about in the past, Rose, on a literal level, believes that if Kick marries someone who isn't a Catholic, she won't go to heaven. So, of course, if she actually, on a literal level, believes that it is the kind and loving thing to do to try to prevent it.
- [33:49]
Paula Byrne
Yeah, absolutely. For sure. And, you know, I. I've never taken a particularly censorious attitude towards Rose or Joe, because I think actually they would were pretty in many ways good parents and in many ways terrible parents, like most of us. But I think for Rose, although she liked Billy and she could not have failed to have felt flattered that the Duke of Devonshire's son, who was going to inherit all of this, would have chose her daughter. But it was the religion in Rose's defense, and I make no Bones about this. In my biography of Kick, Rose says, what will all the other Catholic girls do if I sanction this and if I say this is completely fine? People will say, well, Kate Kennedy married out of their faith. And it's hard to describe that to a modern day audience about just how huge that intermarriage was, but it was a hugely important thing, given Rosemary's problems. She was the first Kennedy girl, and Rose envisaged the big wedding, the Catholic wedding. It was deeply important to all of them. And Rose was so distraught when Kik did marry Billy that she had a nervous collapse and she had to go into hospital. She was completely broken by this because she really felt that she'd let the side down. And again, talking to a modern audience, I'm saying, but this was a really huge thing. She loved Kick. She wanted Kick to be happy, but it was just. And Billy himself actually said, this is a Romeo and Juliet situation. He actually used that metaphor and said, it's like that. He said, it's exactly like that. And they were trying to find all different ways. And Romeo, they would say, well, okay, what if we marry? And what if the girls are brought up as cab? They tried everything. We could bring the boys up as Anglicans, we could bring the girls. And Rose is part of trying to find a solution. I don't want to demonize Rose, but there wasn't a solution. There couldn't be a solution. And they talked to various priests in very high places, archbishops, all sorts of senior clergymen, and a solution couldn't be found. In the end, Kick said, I'm gonna put the man I love before. And it was during the war, she was not sure whether he was gonna be killed during the war. And she decided to defy her family. And that was a huge thing to do. But her father supported her, and her father was still sent love and all. And the children, you know, the older children supported her and didn't take a censorious view. The younger children were disappointed, but they didn't really understand. So it was just a really tricky situation. But then as soon as she married Billy, Rose came around and said, I'll welcome him with open arms. It's done now. She said she would do everything to stop it. That once it was done, she was loving and sought for forgiveness and reconciliation.
- [36:34]
George Severis
And did the disapproval initially at least, go both ways? I mean, the Kennedy family, of course, did not want their daughter marrying a non Catholic. But what about, you know, this aristocratic British family, as you're saying, the most eligible bachelor in all of England. Did they care or did they disapprove of him choosing to marry an American or a Catholic?
- [36:56]
Paula Byrne
No, they absolutely did not. They absolutely loved her. And they fell in love with Kick, as did everybody. Both Billy's parents did. But his mother, who was very, very close to Billy, just knew how happy Billy was with Kick. And she adored her. And they adored all of the Kennedys. And to this day, the Dukes of Devonshire are still in touch and friendly with the Kennedys. There was an alliance and it has never broken. They there was no sense of being snobbish. There's no sense of she's Catholic. There was no sense of her being American. They were absolutely enchanted by her.
- [37:31]
George Severis
We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after this break.
- [37:43]
Paula Byrne
All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie.
- [37:48]
Maggie Freeling
For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [38:04]
Paula Byrne
I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.
- [38:06]
Maggie Freeling
We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.
- [38:15]
George Severis
Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky.
- [38:18]
Johnny Knoxville
Housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.
- [38:22]
Maggie Freeling
My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
- [38:32]
Paula Byrne
I did not know her and I.
- [38:33]
Malcolm Gladwell
Did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.
- [38:37]
Paula Byrne
That y' all see. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
- [38:46]
Maggie Freeling
From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
- [38:56]
Paula Byrne
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
- [39:05]
Maggie Freeling
Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [39:26]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.
- [40:03]
Unknown male speaker (possibly a narrator or interviewee in Revisionist History)
He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize. Turn to the left. Tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right. I'm sorry. To the left. I love you.
- [40:14]
Malcolm Gladwell
From revisionist history, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to revisionist history, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:26]
Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis here. My book the Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the US housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploded. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release and a decade after it became an Academy Award winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short story, what it means when people start betting against the market and who really pays for an unchecked financial system is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the Big Short now at Pushkin fm Audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.
- [41:32]
Jonathan Goldstein
I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
- [41:39]
Paula Byrne
How can a hundred and one year old woman fall in love?
- [41:46]
Jonathan Goldstein
And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.
- [41:51]
Paula Byrne
And so I pointed the gun at.
- [41:54]
George Severis
Him and said, this isn't a joke.
- [41:56]
Paula Byrne
And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
- [42:01]
Jonathan Goldstein
Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.
- [42:07]
Malcolm Gladwell
We could give you a whole brand.
- [42:08]
George Severis
New thing where you're like super charming.
- [42:09]
Unknown male speaker (possibly a narrator or interviewee in Revisionist History)
All the time, being more able to.
- [42:11]
George Severis
Look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.
- [42:14]
Jonathan Goldstein
Like, listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:34]
George Severis
And we're back with United States of Kennedy. So I want to talk a little bit about, you know, outside of her relationship with men, you, you mentioned this idea of Kik being a feminist in her own time period. So in terms of her, let's say, career and professional ambitions, when she had that brief period in America between her adolescence and moving back to Mary Billy, she was a journalist. She worked at the.
- [43:04]
Paula Byrne
The Washington Herald.
- [43:05]
George Severis
The Washington Herald, yes. Thank you. And then during this. This early period of the war, and of course, my knowledge of history is spotted here, but during this era of the war, you could almost argue women got a small taste of liberation because they had to step in and do the work needed at home while all the men were away. And so what was that like for Kick?
- [43:29]
Paula Byrne
Oh, you're absolutely right. And it was liberating. So, obviously Joe Sr. Wanted all of the children off English soil when the war broke out, he was completely convinced Hitler would win. He said that Hitler would win the war and Britain would be decimated, and he wanted to get his children to safety. So they all went. And Kick didn't want to go because she just loved England so much and she wanted to join the Red Cross and all of this, which she did eventually, but she went back. She, as you say, she became a respected journalist. She had a bit of a relationship with another journalist, John White. She never did any showing off about who she was. She used to wrap her fur coat into a plastic bag. She was amazing. And again, everybody loved her. But she had a plan, and her plan was to join the Red Cross as a sort of doughnut girl, feeding donuts to the GIs and coffee. And she was on a mission to get back to England, despite everything. And she did get back. And I think that in itself is hugely feminist to say, I am going back to this country at war. And at this point, you know, her parents getting sort of horrified, really, but she was completely determined. And I think you make a really good point that as with the First World War, women were way more liberated because of the war, and they did have to step into male jobs. And it was an exciting time to be. And she had a brilliant time. She went back, she joined the Red Cross, she worked with the GIs. She was utterly hardworking, charming, loved, made everybody laugh. She always brought so much joy and pleasure. She was brave. There are bombs being dropped left, right and center, and she gets on with it. She's there with JFK and Jo when war breaks, and she goes along to listen to Chamberlain's speech. She's right on the cusp of all this political upheaval and unrest, and she's up for it. You know, she's not saying, I want to be safe in America and want to marry some Harvard jock. She's not doing that like she's saying, I want to go back. And it was hard. It was hard work. What she did back in England was hard work. It wasn't cushy.
- [45:26]
George Severis
The determination she had to be exactly where she wanted to be. I mean, initially she hoped for an assignment doing public relations for the Red Cross at the London Central office. Then she somehow could not get that. And so then she was being placed in one of the Red Cross's rest and recreation clubs, which is what today, I think, evolved into the USO. So the job over there was to entertain GIs and sailors on leave. And then when it became clear that that's what she would do, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that most of the women at that entry level would be placed in some sort of more rural environment in one of these far flung. But she, through a combination of determination on her own part, and also, of course, calling in favors via her father and via her family, she got placed at like the most high profile, prestigious place, which was in a posh Victorian hotel like a block from Harrods. Exactly where someone would want to be that was at the center of it all. So this is during the beginning of the war. It is impressive that she somehow made her way back exactly where she wanted to be in order to. To both do more interesting work and be with the man that she wanted to be with. Is it worth getting into the fact that in the meantime, Billy became engaged to a different woman? It's unclear what kind of became of that.
- [46:48]
Paula Byrne
Yeah, I mean, it was very. He broke it off and he was engaged to Sally Norton. And then he broke it off. Cause he wasn't in love with Sally. He was still in love with Kic, but I think he didn't think Kick would come back. And then the minute Kick came back, he raced to see her and it was all back on. I don't think anybody ever really thought he would ever go through with the other engagement. It was during war, people were making rash decisions. When you think you're gonna die the next morning, all sorts of rash decisions are made. People can become very impulsive. But his heart was never in it. He just. Cause he was so in love with Kathleen. And then when she came back, that was it. They were back together. And this time he said, that's it. He was completely determined that they would get married.
- [47:32]
George Severis
As we're moving on, we're getting closer and closer to the sadder parts of her story. But, you know, there's something about Kik to me that seems almost, you know, not to sound glib, but there's a sense of, like a privileged girl studying abroad. Like, you know, it's almost like an Emily in Paris figure. Like, she's. She has this very optimistic outlook. And she's always trying to both have a really full social life and also advance professionally and also have love affairs. Well, I don't know if I called them love affairs, but, you know, flirtations with men, whatever. And there's this quote from when she was working at the Red Cross where she wrote to her parents. The director just had a little chat with me. The first complaint was that I had too many phone calls. Second, I should cut down on my personal life. I don't see how I could possibly do it any more than I am already doing. So that really adds some personality. Okay, so I want to walk through the timeline a little bit. She marries Billy in May of 1944. Then in August of 1944, her brother Joe is killed in the war, which in this generation of Kennedy is the first major tragedy that really, you know, begins this series of tragic accidents and political assassinations. And it's the first big tragedy. And then just a few months Later, September of 1944, Billy is killed. So what was that chapter of her life like? What were her writings like during this experience?
- [48:58]
Paula Byrne
Oh, you know, as you can imagine, she was absolutely devastated. She was actually in America when she heard that Billy had died. And her father broke the news to her. She was in New York and absolutely devastated. And Jack JFK said it was one of the worst days of his life to see her pain and her anguish. Cause she'd been through so much to marry Billy. And it was so heartbreaking. They'd had such a happy honeymoon, and they were just so in love. And it was her worst nightmare. But of course, losing Jo before then, adding to that sense of loss. So she'd lost a lot. And so she was really devastated. But she was absolutely determined to go back to England. Even though she had a husband, but she still. All her friends were saying, come back, come back, come back. And she did go back. And she writes this really poignant letter. And she says, I feel like a cork bobbing, you know, in an ocean or adrift without Billy. So she got herself a little house, and she was surrounded by love and warmth and of course, her innocence adored her. And even more so after Billy's death, because they said, you gave him the only happiness he really knew in his whole life. So they were super indebted to her, but it was. The loss was incalculable. You know, it was an incalculable loss. And as you rightly say, Joe's death initially was the beginning of this domino effect of tragedy. And, you know, Rosemary's lobotomy, all of these terrible things started happening to the. These golden children, these nine beautiful, golden, clever, talented children. And the loss just kept happening. The loss, it was loss after loss after loss. And Rose really came into her own because she was really a rock and a support to Kick. And she said, look, I know, I know I wasn't supportive of this, but I did accept it. And although she said God works in a mysterious way and maybe this is what God wanted, which is what she would do because she was very pious and very devout, she was very supportive. But again, I think, I think testament to Kick's courage is she could have easily, as you say, she was very privileged, she was titled now she had money beyond her wildest dreams. She could have just stayed in America. She could have just been surrounded by her family. The war wasn't over, but she was absolutely no, determined to go back. That is where I belong, that is where my friends are and I'll pick myself up and dust myself off. And she deeply, deeply courageous. And I do think the loss of her brother Joe was huge, huge had a huge impact on her.
- [51:29]
George Severis
And what was her day to day life like after she became widowed?
- [51:35]
Paula Byrne
Well, she became quite involved in politics. So she had this beautiful little house at Westminster and she was able to go and listen to speeches and she hung out in quite a political intellectual circle. And, and in fact, JFK came over and she drove him around in her little blue car and he was really beginning to understand how politics. Because obviously with the death of Joe, he said, I feel my father's eyes boring into me because now I've got to be president. So it really changed everything for jfk. And she again sort of scooped him up and said, come and live with me and come and see how this is done and come and talk about politics. And I think in a funny way she really came into her own because she was no longer just Billy's wife, but actually she became more politicized, more fascinated by the world around her. She lived very close to Winston Churchill after the war and fed him and used to live eggs. And she became way more serious, I think, than what she had been perceived to be. Cause she was a socialite, privileged debutante. And Billy's death and Jo's death made her very serious. In many, many ways. But she's still a girl that everyone wants to dance with at the ball. And again, people are, oh, my goodness, now she's still stealing all our men. She's stealing Peter Fitzwilliam. And, oh, my God, they still all fall in love with her. But when you read those letters after the war, towards the end of the war and after the war, there's a note of real seriousness in those letters, of the impact, the tragedy of the war, the tragedy of Billy's death, her sorrow at not having had a child. Cause that would have been a very different if she'd had a child and an heir to Chatsworth. Been very different for her. But she didn't. And that was a great tragedy and a great sense of loss for her. But she was beetling around in a little blue car, becoming much more of a political animal than she'd ever been. So she was moving in quite interesting. She had that journalist background. She was moving in quite interesting circles. But then she met Peter William Fitzwilliam.
- [53:31]
George Severis
I do want to get into Fitzwilliam, but because you mentioned it, I'm curious. You say she became a political animal. She started moving in these circles. What were her politics? What were her beliefs? What were her values? What political issues did she care about?
- [53:44]
Michael Lewis
About.
- [53:44]
Paula Byrne
I don't. I mean, it's. She didn't really talk about that. I mean, obviously after the war, and Britain was a very different place, and it. It was still a place of utter deprivation and poverty. And London was bombed. Liverpool was like, you know, it was a world in utter sort of chaos. And what. They were trying to rebuild the country. And so then labor was starting to become really important, you know, and I think politics. So when I say she was interested in politics, she went and listened to. Listened. She listened. She didn't affiliate herself to anything. I mean, I think she was deeply democratic and she was deeply anti Nazi, as everyone in England was at the time. But I think she was somebody who just went along and sort of listened, kept her eye to the ground, took her brother around, said, come and listen. Let's listen to this speech. Let's listen to that speech. Let's listen to the other speech. But she died soon after, so there wasn't enough time for her to read, get into it. But I saw a difference. I saw a difference in the tone of the letters and in the thinking and in her influence on bringing JFK to see how things were done politically in Britain.
- [54:53]
George Severis
We're going to take a short break. Stay with us.
- [55:05]
Paula Byrne
All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half truth is a whole lie.
- [55:10]
Maggie Freeling
For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [55:26]
Paula Byrne
I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.
- [55:29]
Maggie Freeling
We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.
- [55:37]
George Severis
Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky.
- [55:41]
Johnny Knoxville
Housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.
- [55:44]
Maggie Freeling
My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
- [55:55]
Paula Byrne
I did not know her and I.
- [55:56]
Malcolm Gladwell
Did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all see it.
- [56:00]
Paula Byrne
They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
- [56:08]
Maggie Freeling
From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
- [56:18]
Paula Byrne
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.
- [56:27]
Maggie Freeling
Listen to Graves county in the Bones Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [56:49]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Elliot, Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth Senate's family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.
- [57:26]
Unknown male speaker (possibly a narrator or interviewee in Revisionist History)
He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family and apologize. Turn to the left. Tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right, I'm sorry. To the left, I love you.
- [57:36]
Malcolm Gladwell
From Revisionist history, this is the Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [57:49]
Molly Lambert
Jenna World, Jenna Jamison, Vivid Video and the Valley is a new podcast about the history of the adult film industry. I'm Molly Lambert, host of Heidi the Heidi Fly Story, and I'll be your tour Guide on a wild ride through adult films. We get paid more than the men. We call the shots. In what way is that degrading? That's us taking hold of our lives.
- [58:14]
Paula Byrne
Life.
- [58:15]
Molly Lambert
In the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson crossed over into mainstream culture, redefined stardom, then left it all behind. I'm a powerful woman. I think that's intimidating to a man. With a cast of hundreds of actors and comedians playing key figures, we'll take a look at how adult films became legal in the 70s, hugely profitable in the 80s and 90s, and found fell off a financial cliff in the 2000s. Listen to Gentle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:49]
Jonathan Goldstein
I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
- [58:55]
Paula Byrne
How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
- [59:03]
Jonathan Goldstein
And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.
- [59:08]
Paula Byrne
And so I pointed the gun at.
- [59:11]
George Severis
Him and said, this isn't a joke.
- [59:13]
Paula Byrne
And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
- [59:18]
Jonathan Goldstein
Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.
- [59:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
We could give you a whole brand.
- [59:25]
George Severis
New thing where you're, like, super charming.
- [59:26]
Unknown male speaker (possibly a narrator or interviewee in Revisionist History)
All the time, being more able to.
- [59:28]
George Severis
Look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.
- [59:32]
Jonathan Goldstein
Listen to Heavyweight on the Ice Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [59:50]
George Severis
And we're back with United States of Kennedy. So as you're saying, she's stealing everyone's husband. Speaking of that, she meets Peter Fitzwilliam. This is the second sort of love of her life. And. And Billy was not Catholic, which was, of course, controversial. But Peter is not only Protestant, but also married. So I'm sure Rose thought that the worst was behind her in terms of faux pas. But this was even worse than she could have imagined. So what was that courtship like?
- [60:16]
Paula Byrne
Oh, a total whirlwind. And she wrote a letter to Kick, wrote to jfk, saying, I think I found my Rhett Butler. Gone with the Wind with the big film in 1939. You know, everyone was in love with Clark Gable. And if you can imagine the living manifestation of Clark Gable, that would be Peter Fitzwilliam. Handsome, a war hero, sassy, satirical, clever, unbelievably brave. He was a war hero, and he was married. He had a child, and he fell in love with her at a dance, at a ball and was just totally smitten. And utterly determined to marry her. And at one point he said, just tell your dad, if the Pope wants a church, I'll build him a church. What do I need to do to marry you? So, again, like with Billy, he was completely serious. He wasn't messing around. And as you rightly this was. If Rose had thought she'd had her worst nightmare, this was actually even worse because of all the problems. Not only not Catholic, but married child, he'd have to get divorced. He was living apart from his wife, but he was a roommate. He was a great flirt, he was a great seductor. Billy was not worldly. Pick was his first love. Billy was a shy, languid introvert, and Peter was the opposite. And I always felt when I was doing my research for my book, that he was much more of a Kennedy boy. He was like her brothers, who she felt very familiar. They were macho, they were daredevils, they were fearless, they were charismatic. They were very, very different to Billy. And she was quite literally swept off her feet.
- [61:51]
George Severis
So was there. I mean, of course, this is all unfortunately building to them tragically dying in just a few months later. But was there any hope of reconciliation with Rose? Were there conversations about it? What?
- [62:04]
Paula Byrne
Well, she very cleverly got to her brother. She got to Jack first and got him on side, and then she got to her father. Cause she was her father's favorite child. And she felt that if she went via the brother and her father, they would talk Rose round. And indeed, she was going to meet Joe with Peter when their plane crashed. So Rose obviously horrified. But Kick was on a mission. If I get my dad on sight, if I get Jack on side, and I'm gonna do it, she's gonna do it. She's done it before. She's absolutely gonna do it. But obviously, Rose, when she finally discovers a. That they were sleeping together, because that was discovered after the plane crash, she was so devastated that she had been sleeping with a married man that she. That was when the whitewash began. That's where Rose just lost it and said, I almost. I'm just gonna whitewash her from the. She almost becomes a Persona non grata because she was so deeply horrified by Kik's behavior.
- [63:02]
George Severis
So obviously, Kik and Peter end up dying in this horrible. I mean, there's. The Flight Safety foundation has this description of exactly how the plane went down. And I'm not even going to read it because if you have any anxiety about flying, this is like the worst two paragraphs you can read. I mean, it's like if there's turbulence on a plane and you imagine what could happen if this was a horror movie, let's just say that's exactly it. Yes, that's exactly what happened. I. I mean, one of the wings flew off. When they were finally out of the turbulence, they were already in a free fall, nosedive. I mean, it is truly horrible. They both die, and then, famously, Joe is the only Kennedy present at her funeral. So, obviously, Rose was incredibly hurt and scandalized by her sleeping with a married man. What was the rest of the family's reaction?
- [63:53]
Paula Byrne
I mean, just devastation at Bobby she was very, very close to. And Jack she was very, very close to. So I think her brothers, because she was so beloved, were absolutely heartbroken. JFK was really heartbroken, as was her father. And he said this beautiful thing, by God, must have wanted her for himself, to have taken her from us. So they were all completely devastated. But there was this scandal because of the circumstances in which, you know, she was found with a married man. There was contraception in her luggage. You know, there were flimsy negligees. It was very clear they'd been off on a dirty weekend before they met Jo. And so it was a huge scandal, but obviously complete devastation. And she was buried at Chatsworth. So the Devonsers swooped in again and said she should be buried in England, in Chatsworth. And I'm always very moved by the story of jfk, you know, stopping his helicopter on the way to Ireland when he makes his presidential visit. And he stopped and knelt at Kick's grave. He stopped at Chatsworth and laid flowers and prayed at her grave, knelt down and prayed. You know, it was absolutely devastating. And Jo dies, Billy dies, Kick dies, Peter dies. I mean, it's just a terrible tragedy all round. But I think Rose was really damage limitation, really. So she was very determined that this was a scandal. And particularly as it's very clear that Jack's going places. They just don't want a scandal like this on the family name. And that's when the whole apparatus sort of kicks in on, we don't talk about this. None of us are gonna go to the funeral. It will only be Jo. You know, this will not get discussed. And of course, Rose was devastated, wrote about it in her memoir, but absolutely devastated as she would be. But this begins the process of we don't really talk about Kick.
- [65:40]
George Severis
Yeah.
- [65:40]
Paula Byrne
And that was entirely to do with the circumstances, not just of Billy and her defection, but Peter. I mean, she'd really gone one step further. And that was for her mother, untenable, but not for the rest of the family. Just completely devastated by her loss.
- [65:55]
George Severis
Yeah, it's such a recurring Kennedy theme, this kind of push and pull between private and public. And sometimes public trumps private. And doing the quote, unquote, the right thing is simply not a good enough reason to do something if it will also cause scandal and outcry and, you know, cause a stain to the family name. I want to ask one final question, which is sort of a. I don't know. It's one that I often think about when reading things about the Kennedys, which is that anyone who writes about the Kennedys is immediately accused of being either too hard on them or too reverential. And this is obviously a book that you are explicitly saying, you know, you want to portray Kate Kennedy as this empowered woman, as a feminist, as you're saying, you know, you want to tell her story, which has not been told before in this sort of a comprehensive way. Did you face criticism that it is too, you know, hagiographic like, that you are almost, you know, putting the Kennedys on a pedestal?
- [66:52]
Paula Byrne
So not on the whole. I think I had one review that accused me of that, but that was a lone voice. I mean, most of the critics really liked what I was doing, not least because I said from the start, I'm not getting into the politics of Joe Senior. I'm simply looking at him as a parent. And what was so interesting was the Kennedy family really embraced me after I published the book and wrote to me and invited me to JFK's 50th anniversary, and I met the family and got invited to the party. And the Kennedy family said to me, thank you for seeing our grandparents as people. And that was really moving to me because, you know, whether you think Joe's a monster, whether you think Rose is a monster, I don't really care. And also, I don't really think anybody's a monster. Nobody's black or white. We're all shades of gray. We all do our best. We're not all great parents. We're all flawed human beings. So I came at it from quite a humanist point of view. And the family said, we really appreciated that. They did say a lot of Americans really knock the Kennedys and vilify the Kennedys. And she said, particularly the eldest daughter, Bobby's eldest daughter said to me, as a family, we were quite moved by the fact that you seem to be one of the few people saying, hang on a minute. These were parents, and they actually did some great things. And they did some terrible things, but they were human and they were flawed, but they were still, in their own way, loving. And she said the Kennedys was so lovely, as were the Duke of Devonshire's family, who also were very moved by the book because they loved Kick so much. And so the Duke of Devonshire invited me and said, we love your book because it's so easy to take a pop at the Kennedys. It's so easy for me to do that and to be really dismissive and scathing and. But I was really interested in the young jfk. The young JFK went round German Germany picking up hitchhikers because he said, they're students, they speak English. Tell me what's happening with Hitler. Not the playboy jfk, but the deeply intelligent intellectual who was diagnosed in England because he was so ill. I just wanted to shine a light on a time in the Kennedys lives other people perhaps didn't see, because people still say, I didn't know they lived in England. I didn't know JFK went around Germany when he was a young man. So I just wanted to shine a light. Yes. You know, you're going to get people who said, oh, I was too kind towards them, but I also felt for me, she was heroic, and I wanted to bring out that. Defying your country, defying your faith, defying your mother, who's so strong and your family was deeply courageous. And so I just wanted to shine a light on that. And then you just have to then leave it up to the reader to make up their mind as to whether they agree or not. You know, that's right.
- [69:27]
George Severis
And this is something we run into in this podcast as well. I mean, the point of view of each guest is so completely different. I mean, there are some people that come in basically wanting to argue that the Kennedys are all complete frauds and they have been, you know, a stain on American history. There are other people that, as I'm sure you know from the ecosystem of writing about the Kennedys, there are people that exaggerate their connection with some Kennedy that is long deceased, that could never speak out and be like, actually, we weren't friends and we weren't at that party together. You know, there are people whose whole thing is being like a former friend of Jackie's and now and now writing books about it. And it's a family that, especially on the interpersonal level, it is so difficult to find anything resembling objective, actual truth. So all of these narratives have to coexist, and some of them are more human and Some of them are more systemic and about power dynamics and their place in American history. But I think this was for me, you know, just as a pure biography of someone's life that was caught up in such strange circumstances during such a pivotal time in American history was really, was really very fascinating. So thank you so much. This was really, really great. Thank you.
- [70:35]
Paula Byrne
Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.
- [70:37]
George Severis
That's it for this week's episode. United States of Kennedy is hosted by me, George Severis. Original music by Joshua Topolsky, production help by Carmen Lorenz. Our executive producer is Jenna Cagle, research by Dave Ruse and Austin Thomas Thompson, edited by Graham Gibson and mixed by Doug Bain. United States of Kennedy is a production of iHeart podcasts. Subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all things Kennedy each week.
- [71:09]
Johnny Knoxville
Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crime Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big Money Players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
- [71:31]
Paula Byrne
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
- [71:39]
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
- [71:47]
George Severis
They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.
- [71:52]
Paula Byrne
So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do?
- [71:54]
George Severis
What do we do? That was dumb.
- [71:56]
Paula Byrne
People, do not follow my example.
- [72:00]
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [72:12]
Maggie Freeling
The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [72:25]
Paula Byrne
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.
- [72:37]
Maggie Freeling
Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [72:51]
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionist History. We're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a a crime that would spiral out of control.
- [73:02]
Paula Byrne
And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough.
- [73:07]
Malcolm Gladwell
I didn't kill him from revisionist history. This is the Alabama Murders. Listen to revisionist history, the Alabama murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [73:21]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu. Every single episode.
- [73:31]
Maggie Freeling
32 lost nuclear weapons.
- [73:33]
Paula Byrne
You're like, wait, stop. What?
- [73:35]
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [73:52]
Paula Byrne
This is an iHeart podcast.