Hello Media Consumers. It's Brian Curtis, along with producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin.

Amanda Dobbins will join us in just one second. But first, I want to welcome you to the February issue of the press box.

If you're new here, every month we interrupt our media navel gazing to produce a podcast,

an issue, as we used to call it in the media before times, about a single topic.

In this month, Amanda and I are going to answer a question that touches journalism and politics,

that touches pop culture and even public health. The question is, why are we still talking about the Kennedys?

Makes sense that my parents' generation, the baby boomers, would be smitten with the Kennedy

political dynasty. My mom remembers John F. Kennedy being elected president in 1960.

She remembers where she was when she learned that Kennedy had been assassinated three years later.

It also makes sense that my generation would inherit the mania for the Kennedys,

which was stoked by repeat viewings of Oliver Stone's JFK.

But what's interesting to me is the flame being kept alive even

today. Ryan Murphy has a new series about the 90s romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn

Beset. There's an upcoming Netflix series that gives the Kennedys the full-on crown treatment,

with Michael Fosbender playing the family patriarch, Joe.

25 years after her death, Carolyn Beset remains a style icon on Instagram and elsewhere.

And there are still Kennedys in politics like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy,

Jr. and JFK's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, who's running for Congress.

Today, Amanda and I are going to talk about the Ryan Murphy series love story.

We're going to figure out the reasons for this modern incarnation of Kennedy mania.

And then we're going to go back in time and see how the Kennedy flame was kept alive over the last few decades.

Welcome to the February issue, why the Kennedy dynasty will never end.

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