The Welcome back, everyone, the 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, and Mysteries podcast. This is your host, John Haggardorn.

And since history is one of our central themes, and we're about to kiss history in the city that

never sleeps goodbye, I thought it important to remember the CBS cop show Blue Bloods, and throw them

some praise for getting the story mostly right, and for honoring family and the men and women who wear the badge,

which is a subject of our fall specials this year.

All things change.

Families, cities, people, leaders, and television shows.

Sometimes that change is good.

Sometimes it's cataclysmic. The Big Apple, New York City,

with its Statue of Liberty, its monuments, its Empire State Building, its legends, its towering

presence, and the people and the families who have fought crime, fought fires, saved lives,

encouraged art, risen and fallen in business and play, will always occupy an earned place in our memories. As I write this, the city

and the majority of its voters have decided on a new political direction which they hope will enrich

them. Time will tell how it all works out,

especially for families, the families that de Tocqueville touring America in the mid-19th century,

believe that, along with their churches, were the cornerstone of America and should be looked

out by Europe as a model for democratization. History repeats itself as we watch with

bated breath. Does TV mirror reality? We sometimes ask, and in this case, Blue Bloods did a

pretty good job in a number of ways. In the history of American television, there are dramas that merely occupy a time slot,

and then there are sagas that carve a permanent recess in the national consciousness.

For 14 years, every Friday night, as the rest of the world spun toward the weekend,

millions of Americans pulled up a seat to a single, humble, yet monumental table in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

...