Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avrogant.

This day, December 15, 1960, 73-year-old retired postal worker Richard Paul Pavlic is arrested

for a plot to assassinate President-elect John F. Kennedy had just been elected in that

year's election. On December 11th in Palm Beach, Pavlic lined his car with

dynamite and parked outside of Kennedy's compound waiting for him to leave for Sunday mass.

His plot was to ram his car into JFK's limo as the president to be left his home,

killing everyone inside. The plan did not

pan out as we know and as we'll discuss in a minute, but this was of course just

under three years before Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas.

So let's talk about the would-be assassination of JFK and lots more about this transition

era going into the 60s.

Here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter

Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. Lots of

interesting details in this plot and this would be assassin.

But why don't we start big though?

I was going to say, why would someone want to kill Kennedy at this point, but

you know, I think we'll get into some of the things that are going on in Pavlix

mind. But in a larger sense, does this story help us maybe reframe it like not everyone loved JFK when he first came into office, which I think is part of the sort of Camelot myth that a lot of us have in our heads.

Is there some bigger lesson or reminder there?

J.FK was an enormously divisive candidate.

First of all, he and Richard Nixon, who ran against one another in the 1960 election

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