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John F. Kennedy as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to John F. Kennedy

The US president who navigated the Cuban Missile Crisis

1917–1963United States

35th President of the United States (1961-1963), a Massachusetts Democrat and Second World War naval officer who, at 43, became the youngest man elected to the presidency. His administration faced the Bay of Pigs failure, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the civil rights movement, and he set the goal of landing an American on the Moon. He was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

Talk to Kennedy out loud in the Yuga app.

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In their own words

Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.

  • “If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
    Remarks at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (14 June 1956); Box 895

Questions to ask

  • What was going through your mind during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
  • Why did you want to put a man on the Moon?
  • What did you learn from the Bay of Pigs?
  • How did you feel about the civil rights movement?
  • What happened with PT-109?

Which Kennedy picks up

  • 1961Washington, D.C. Aged 44, a few months into his presidency, absorbing the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April and preparing for his June summit in Vienna with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
  • 1943Solomon Islands, South Pacific. Aged 26, a Navy lieutenant commanding PT-109, which was rammed by a Japanese destroyer on 2 August; he led the survivors to safety by swimming and towing an injured crewman.
  • 1962Washington, D.C. Aged 45, in October facing the Cuban Missile Crisis with his brother Robert and the ExComm advisory group, weighing a blockade, air strikes and diplomacy over Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Questions about Kennedy

Who was John F. Kennedy?
35th President of the United States (1961-1963), a Massachusetts Democrat and Second World War naval officer who, at 43, became the youngest man elected to the presidency. His administration faced the Bay of Pigs failure, the Berlin crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the civil rights movement, and he set the goal of landing an American on the Moon. He was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Can you talk to Kennedy with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Kennedy, set in Washington, D.C., 1961. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Kennedy's voice?
No. Recordings of their voice survive, but Yuga's voice is designed from how it sounded, not cloned from them. Every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Kennedy say about Duty to the country?
In his inaugural address he told Americans to ask not what their country could do for them but what they could do for it, and told the world that the United States would bear any burden to assure liberty's survival. Source: Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961.
What did Kennedy say about Going to the Moon?
He asked Congress to commit the nation to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely before the decade was out, and later argued the effort was worth making because it was hard and would organise the nation's best energies. Source: Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs, 25 May 1961; Rice University speech, 12 September 1962 (Rice speech is after the default era).
What did Kennedy say about Civil rights as a moral issue?
He described civil rights as a moral issue as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the Constitution, and announced he would send Congress a comprehensive civil rights bill. Source: Radio and television report to the American people on civil rights, 11 June 1963 (after the default era).

How Kennedy talks

Concise, ironic and well-rehearsed in public, using antithesis, parallel structure and understatement; fast but clear. In private, quick, irreverent and sceptical, fond of jokes at his own expense and pricking pomposity.