00:00:00.000When I'm looking at the next 12 months of my life, what I do not have on the books and what is
00:00:08.840impossible for me to have on the books is a trip to Sicily. However, the next best thing to having
00:00:14.920my own adventure in Sicily was reading Joe Piazza's new novel, The Sicilian Inheritance.
00:00:20.440It is a vacation in a book. If your vacations were sexy murder mysteries that also dive deep into generational trauma, but not in too heavy of a way, it is the perfect book to take on a plane. It is the perfect book to read next to your public pool while taking breaks to yell at your kids.
00:00:44.740it is the perfect book to get you out of a reading slump and it is available now wherever you get
00:00:51.120books. Okay, I have to admit something. Every time that I've gotten on a plane in the past week or so,
00:01:02.760which has weirdly been a lot of times, I've been like, okay, this is the flight. This is the flight
00:01:08.660that I'm going to get off and there's going to be something new and very exciting about Kate
00:01:13.300Middleton. And there has not been. There hasn't been. But there are updates. There's some
00:01:19.160very, very interesting and, you know, somewhat juicy updates. They're not even juicy, but
00:01:25.160they're very interesting. But there's been some updates, and I think it's time we talk
00:01:30.160about them. So I'm bringing on our resident Kate Middleton correspondent, Caro Claire
00:01:35.060Burke to talk through all of it. Hi. Hello. How you doing this morning? It's early. It is early.
00:01:46.080I'm doing wonderful. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm probably doing better than Kate Middleton,
00:01:51.040to be honest. Who knows? Who's to say at this point if Kate Middleton ever really existed to
00:01:57.400begin with. Oh, now that that would be the start of an excellent Black Mirror episode, right?
00:02:05.580It's like the breaking news is actually that Kate Middleton was always a figment of our
00:02:12.120imaginations. Yeah, I had this woman comment on one of my TikTok videos saying the real Kate
00:02:17.880Middleton was the friends we made along the way. And I could not stop laughing. I thought it was
00:02:22.800so funny oh my god that's that is so good that is so good well there's a lot there's been a lot
00:02:27.760going on i will say that i've been on a lot of planes the past week and every time i got on a
00:02:33.840plane i was like oh something's gonna happen by the time i land something there's gonna be news
00:02:40.380it's so funny i was actually just looking this morning um the something that's really funny is
00:02:45.520that the royal family is hiring a new communications assistant and it's just so fun like a let's see
00:02:51.460a communications assistant for the private secretary's office of royal communications
00:02:55.540at Buckingham Palace. And they're just paying them just the crappiest salary on the planet.
00:03:00.720And it was just such a perfect punctuation of their behavior throughout this entire experience
00:03:05.640to be like, wow, what a what a final encore performance for you guys to share this salary
00:03:10.340number. It's like the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars in an American salary.
00:03:14.480So I just was really satisfied. Wow. And is this is this publicly posted?
00:03:18.560Yeah, yeah, I'll share it with you. It's on, I mean, it's on their actual website for a communications assistant. And yeah, you'll see it's key responsibilities, assisting senior colleagues with proactive and reactive communications. I mean, it's hysterical when you go down.
00:03:33.160Oh, wow. Now is not now is not the time. Who approved this? Who approved this message?
00:03:39.100I know. And I was just like, what postgrad is going to get the job from hell and think it's
00:03:44.800going to be like, it's an opportunity. You know how people I know that for me, people were always
00:03:49.300like, well, when you work with, you know, really important people, they'll help you. And I'm like,
00:03:53.240do they do they help you? Or are you just going to need their indentured service? Unclear.
00:03:58.100Well, I'm seeing this another way. I think I'm going to apply for the job.
00:05:01.240i know i'm worried they would want me to have another child and uh i can't because nick is
00:05:07.400snipped i mean i could i would just have to go find find a you know ringer a hot young ringer
00:05:12.500pulls their opportunities exactly exactly none of these are obstacles no no so fill me in on
00:05:20.320on the latest i mean you really like i said you are essentially my new york times these days when
00:05:26.220it comes to a lot of news, a lot of news, and that, you know, that's the, I consume most of
00:05:33.940my news through, through Caro, Claire Burke on TikTok. What's the latest on Kate Middleton?
00:05:40.100Oh, what a, what a week we all had. So the, the short story here is that a video,
00:05:49.160I'm putting that in air quotes, of Kate and Will, I'm also putting that in air quotes,
00:05:52.760was shared by TMZ showing them walking in like a shopping area near where they live.
00:05:59.040And this was both meant to put an end to the conspiracy theory conversation and was also done
00:06:07.180so poorly, shared so poorly. The video quality was so awful that it basically turned the
00:06:14.520conspiracy theory into like one final huge dragon roar of an event. Like,
00:06:22.600I don't know. Have you seen the video since? Oh yeah. Oh, I've seen the video. I've seen the
00:06:28.480video. What do you think? What do you think of it? I mean, to be honest, I just, it doesn't feel
00:06:37.680real to me, right? Yes. So, so here's what I find interesting about this because I had to kind of
00:06:45.300pause at this moment as someone who was sharing a lot of like thoughts about what was going on
00:06:50.020on TikTok, I kind of had to pause and be like, okay, I'm not, I'm not as interested in the idea
00:06:56.100of whether it's her or not, though. I am like genuinely engaging or like consuming content
00:07:01.580from other people who are debating over that. Like, I don't think, I think that the video
00:07:05.360quality and the way that it was shot was done. So either with such poor skill or with such
00:07:11.600intention to confuse that I don't blame people who are confused by it. Like it is such a blurry
00:07:19.000video the woman really doesn't like it's easy to not see Kate Middleton in that video and so I
00:07:23.560really don't blame people who are like this is making me feel even crazier yes well that's I
00:07:28.680mean that's the thing that I I want to talk about because all of this makes me feel crazy
00:07:34.760it made me feel like a strange conspiracy theorist like one of those pasty middle-aged
00:07:41.680white dudes living in their parents basement convinced that the aliens are gonna come get
00:07:46.180them. And I don't like feeling that way. But at the same time, it just didn't feel real. I don't0.90
00:07:53.360know why. Something felt off. I also don't know why I care. It could be an old video. It could
00:08:00.140be King Charles in a wig. And all of it felt strange to me. And I don't want to feel like a
00:08:07.940weird conspiracy theorist. Yeah, I think that's how a lot of people feel. I think there's a certain
00:08:13.640resentment that comes with looking at something that just inherently feels off and not necessarily
00:08:18.780knowing what is off about it and just immediately being kind of labeled as someone who is radical
00:08:25.220or extremist for having a sort of type of disenchantment. And I think one of the things
00:08:29.860that's been interesting to me over the last week and that I've been thinking about is that
00:08:33.060in the last few years, we've become so acclimated with the emergence of different types of AI,
00:08:38.640like you have chat GPT, you have doctored photos. And as we become more familiar with artificial
00:08:44.940intelligence mimicking human behavior and human, you know, works of art, we're also getting better
00:08:51.280at like sniffing out when things feel uncanny and just like just just like a hair off like,
00:08:56.720oh, this is so close to being a story written by a person, but it's not. This is so close to being
00:09:01.000a natural video of people, but it's not. And so I think whether whether it's like a body double
00:09:06.480is up to debate, I guess, with some people. But I think there's also just certain things where
00:09:11.100it's like it feels unnatural. It feels like it was staged or like someone told them to do that
00:09:16.940or like the person who was taking the video intentionally made it hard to see. Like at some
00:09:22.320point, it feels like something about it does not feel like a video that is actually designed to
00:09:26.980give more true information. And I think that's what a lot of people are sensing.
00:09:30.740Exactly, exactly. And I think, look, our brains are having to evolve very quickly with all of the AI. And we're just trying to find safety in a lot of ways so that we can start to sniff out what is fake because a lot more fakes are going to be coming down the pipeline. And I think that's a really interesting way of looking at this. I think people are just generally nervous about, you know, fake news, fake information. And that's yet another reason that we're a little bit obsessed with this Kate Middleton situation.
00:10:00.740Yeah, I also think that we are we are a society that is increasingly defined by the amount of content we consume. And we are expecting closure. Like I think a lot of people are expecting that there is someday going to be an answer. And I do think that that I mean, we talked in our last conversation about how Kate Middleton truthers, quote unquote, are being compared to QAnon.
00:10:21.540And the only way in which I'm willing to make that comparison is in the idea that like QAnon kind of dissipated, the strength of it dissipated after January 6th, because a lot of books had a conclusion, like they felt like they had reached the end of their quote unquote prophecy.
00:10:38.300And I think with with this confusion around what's going on with Kate Middleton, there
00:10:43.500And we are being told that this video is a form of closure when, in fact, it's not because
00:10:48.300it doesn't answer questions about what Kate Middleton thinks.
00:10:52.140It doesn't answer questions about like her her her well-being.
00:10:55.920A lot of questions that were raised during this process, you know, appropriate or not
00:10:59.740about her sense of autonomy and her power and her mental health.
00:11:03.620And so I think we're going to have to live with the fact that those questions are raised
00:11:07.900kind of accidentally or were never meant to be raised. And they're probably never going to be
00:11:11.940answered. We're probably never going to know that much more about what happened during this time
00:11:15.620period. And Kate Middleton, sure as shit, isn't going to be the one who tells us.0.96
00:11:20.220No, she's not. In the application that I'm going to send to be the communications assistant0.97
00:11:25.000for the palace, I would like to give them a strategy, which is it leans heavily on guilting
00:11:32.600the public um so say like just i mean and being a little bit honest hey kate had we they don't
00:11:40.740even have to be specific about the kind of surgery you know but like a very a very serious surgery
00:11:47.800she is like doing x y and z and we need this much time for her to recover and just want they just
00:11:55.740wants privacy just i want to give them a strategy to not do what they're doing right now well
00:12:02.040Well, something that is also interesting to that, that I would, you know, here's my two cents when
00:12:05.600you become the director of Royal Communications. Yeah, no, it's going to happen. I need a new job
00:12:11.160anyway. Like I don't, I was figuring out if I'm going to write another book and maybe this is
00:12:15.820what I want to do instead. I honestly think that you would have more, you would have more fun living
00:12:20.000out the fiction of whatever is taking place in that. So yeah, my thought is that for a long
00:12:25.980period of time for centuries, the silence and inaccessibility of royal figures was something
00:12:32.060that added to their power. And now when you look at royal family members and you actually never get
00:12:38.440statements directly from them, I think it adds to a sense of disempowerment and it makes them look
00:12:44.220weak. Like, I think that the public is starting to increasingly view Prince William and Kate
00:12:50.520Middleton and all of these people as like genuinely like as bobbleheads, like as people
00:12:55.660who don't necessarily ever speak for themselves. And I think to a certain extent, if I were in
00:13:00.880charge of communications, I would be curating moments that are highly strategic, highly planned
00:13:06.280out, but in which those royal members are taking control of these narratives themselves. And if
00:13:12.200Kate Middleton were to record a video and say, hi, I'm fine, that would be hugely powerful,
00:13:19.080hugely humbling and would definitely shut up a lot of people and make them feel
00:13:23.020maybe a little bit of shame a little bit of embarrassment because the person that they've
00:13:27.260been talking about all this time is finally addressing them to keep having messages come
00:13:32.860out from some like vague communications department like Allah like Lumen at Severance like it just
00:13:39.320it feels very um silly to me and I think a lot of people are like oh like another message from
00:13:44.480the communications. Another message from above. You're right. Yeah. Just have Kate. And even if
00:13:51.620she looks shitty, who cares? Who cares? Just say, hey, I'm OK. Leave me alone. I think it would do0.86
00:13:57.760a lot. And I think I think a lot about how celebrities used to hide behind their publicists
00:14:04.060back when I was a reporter for the celebrity gossip magazines. And now they don't. Now they
00:14:10.260communicate directly with their fans via social media. Of course, publicists are still often
00:14:14.800crafting those messages, but people expect that level of intimacy from a celebrity. And make no
00:14:23.300mistake, Kate is a celebrity. She's a brand. Right. Yeah, 100%. And I would also add that
00:14:27.920one of the problems that was created from the sharing of that video, the TMZ video,
00:14:33.000is that now people know, OK, there are one of two options. Option number one is that the video
00:14:37.440isn't real. Option number two is that the video is real in every sense of the word. You know,
00:14:42.340it was taken this weekend. That is William and Kate. And that means that Kate is visibly capable
00:14:47.320of walking, of talking. She looks, you know, whether she's had plastic surgery or not,
00:14:52.420she looks capable of recording and sharing a video. And so that's, I think, another point
00:14:57.020that people are making, which is like, OK, so it looks like she could at any point say,
00:15:01.340I'm fine. Why has that never been an option? Even if, you know, the one of the leading theories is
00:15:06.440that she has a colostomy bag. That does not present that does not prevent a person from
00:15:11.340speaking to the camera with a top up, you know, video. No, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. She's
00:15:16.740not she's not in a bubble. She's not bubble boy. It's painful to see how poorly it was done. And
00:15:23.900it's also it's boring. Like it was interesting at first. Now it's like you guys are just you're so
00:15:29.200bad at your jobs that this is boring. Well, it's going to get a lot spicier once I get this job.0.99
00:15:35.820Oh, well, you know, I do have to go to London because the Sicilian Inheritance is launching in the U.K. about two weeks after we launch in the U.S.0.99
00:15:49.300So I was going to fly over there anyway.
00:15:52.220I'll let them know that in the job, in my cover letter, that, hey, I can present these plans in person for you.
00:16:00.480You should also source some questions and feedbacks and also record everything.
00:16:04.760You should be recording everything. Do you think I wasn't going to record everything? I mean, I've got I I know I'm like a spy.
00:16:11.640After doing after doing all of this research in Sicily for the latest podcast, I have microphones that fit in my bra.
00:16:19.260I believe it. I believe that 100 percent.
00:16:22.680We are going to take a quickie, quickie break here.
00:16:25.340And when we get back, we're going to talk about how this Kate Middleton situation relates to both Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes.
00:16:34.760another thing that i was going to ask you is i don't know i'm sure you haven't had the time
00:16:49.040to do this but you might be aware that there is a nickelodeon docuseries that's been getting a lot
00:16:54.460of attention um have you been kind of no no i know nothing about this tell me every time okay
00:17:00.080well it connects to kate middleton in my head at least so basically long story short hbo has
00:17:04.500released a four-part docuseries that kind of details some really startling accusations and
00:17:12.040allegations and you know evidence-based accusations against a lot of people who worked at Nickelodeon
00:17:18.220just like the dark side of children's television and obviously one of the stories that they explore
00:17:22.980at length is the story of Amanda Bynes who was a very famous child who was in a conservatorship
00:17:29.180just like Britney Spears and who has had like a really tragic exit from the public eye.
00:17:36.360And as I was watching this docu-series, I couldn't stop thinking about Kate Middleton.
00:17:42.360And I was just like, that woman is in a conservatorship.
00:17:46.880She has no access to her own finances.
00:17:50.720Her children are in custody of the monarchy.1.00
00:18:08.900She is not in control of when she talks and where she goes.
00:18:12.700And I just couldn't stop thinking about this.
00:18:15.900The idea that like the only time we have seen her consent was when she said, I do.
00:18:20.400And if there's one thing we have learned from hearing Meghan Markle's story, it's that once you enter the royal family, it is almost impossible to leave unless the person who brought you in there decides to leave with you.
00:18:34.140Wow. You just blew my mind because I actually I covered Amanda Bynes and her her mental breakdown and her conservatorship.
00:18:46.040It was one of the last celebrity stories I covered, actually. I mean, I had had reporters all over the world on it. And that is so astute. Because, yes, it does. There feel like so many parallels in there about how different ways we control women and control celebrity and control female brands.
00:19:11.600And I just remember Amanda's team and also Brittany's team, because I also covered that one, also covered that one. Both of those those teams around those women were just desperate to lock them up.1.00
00:19:28.160yeah yeah and i it's just it's something that i really i since i saw the docuseries uh you know
00:19:34.820two days ago i just can't stop thinking about it and i think that to me like if you were to ask me
00:19:39.960two years from now what my takeaway from this time period will be it's not gonna be it'll be
00:19:45.180something to do with like the pr failures of the royal family i've i've been so amazed watching
00:19:49.600that and i also think to me the lesson is like these ideas that we have of power when it comes
00:19:55.320to women? Like are women in positions of power necessarily because they're famous? Are they in
00:20:00.580positions of power because they have power attached to their name or their title? Do they have like
00:20:06.980the ability to choose anything around their own life? And I think when it comes to Kate Middleton,
00:20:13.360she has no power when it comes to the whereabouts of her children. She has no power when it comes to0.88
00:20:19.500the public's relationship to her image. And she has no power regarding to like where she goes1.00
00:20:26.600and when and why. And again, I think about the interviews with Meghan Markle where she would say0.88
00:20:30.660she was stuck inside a house for months at a time. Like imagine. And I think we look at,
00:20:36.180you know, Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes and I it's so tragic to see the ways in which
00:20:41.720your psychology can be so warped from so many years of not being in control of your body
00:20:48.200and your mind. And I think this is especially pertinent to Kate Middleton with a lot of eating
00:20:53.100disorder rumors. Like, I think that's really important to keep in mind that these people
00:20:57.060have very little control over so much of their own lives. Oh, my gosh. There's so much more going
00:21:04.360on here than just where is she? And I do think that this could be the thing that I don't want
00:21:11.740to say takes the royal family down, but just punctures, punctures so many holes in it. And
00:21:17.080we thought it was going to be Meghan Markle and Harry leaving. But I think that that was just the
00:21:22.980beginning. And I think that this could actually be the thing. Yeah, I agree. I think something
00:21:28.360that I've thought throughout is that it's so ironic that, you know, technology might be the
00:21:32.960thing that kind of, you know, is the straw that breaks the camel's back with the royal family,
00:21:37.060given all the things that have happened through the years. But yeah, I mean, I think that we are
00:21:41.280really, I think, especially in the US, we are really starting to have maybe like the second
00:21:47.260wave that comes after me too, is looking at different relationships to power. It's looking
00:21:52.340at more nuanced conversations about how men are in charge of women's lives. And I think the first
00:21:58.740wave was like essential and it was more, a little bit more blunt in terms of what we're looking at,
00:22:03.120like black and white. And I think that this next wave is a lot more complicated and it requires
00:22:08.000people to sit with irreconcilable truths and hold them in one hand, which is like this woman,
00:22:14.080whoever we're talking about, a celebrity or Kate Middleton is unimaginably wealthy. They are like
00:22:19.740unimaginably privileged. And at the same time, they are basically in prison. And it's really,
00:22:26.760really hard to reconcile those two truths. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, one last thing I
00:22:35.240do want to talk about uh before we carry on with our busy mornings is that but mostly because i've
00:22:41.160got this book launch coming soon and i'm worried i'm not going to be able to dish with you for like
00:22:45.340two or three weeks and that'll make me sad so i just want to get all get in on my carotage um
00:22:51.380there was there has apparently been a records breach or an attempted records breach at the
00:22:56.900hospital where kate was and i want to dig into that a little bit because even as we speculate
00:23:04.260about this. And again, I think it's okay to speculate about it, given the fact that the
00:23:08.780royal family is a brand. I don't necessarily think we deserve certain information about her body,
00:23:16.420but we can speculate given how much power this family has. I do draw the line at medical records
00:23:24.260being breached. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like unequivocally unacceptable. And it looks like
00:23:30.900the hospital is doing exactly what it should do, which is not releasing the name of the
00:23:34.800employee, you know, suspending them or firing them or whatever they're going to do, making
00:23:56.400And I also think with an acknowledgement of my biases, I tend to be like very defensive of the quote public at large when it comes to like the public versus institutions.
00:24:07.820And so something that I was thinking when I read that is like, you could have nipped this in the bud at any point.
00:24:14.020And people with the Internet are going to behave irrationally when you have millions of people who care about a story.
00:24:20.880And when there are incentives at play to have a break in the story, like someone can sell the
00:24:27.200election for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This might be like, hey, I can totally I can
00:24:34.000totally put myself in that mindset where you convince yourself that it's OK. You move past
00:24:39.040all of the moral and ethical problems of which there are countless. And you say this will change
00:24:44.440my life if I sell this because there are so many incentives at play. And so my thought is like,
00:24:50.480Never should have happened. It was always going to happen with the amount of people who were obsessed with this. And this is what happens when institutions are shady. And so thank God that someone in that hospital stopped it from happening because it shouldn't have happened. And the royal family should once again be looking at what they're doing and being like, why are we so bad at communicating information in a way that satisfies the public? Why has this happened?
00:25:16.220And frankly, if it's only happening in the U.S., because I know a lot of Brits have said it's only the U.S. that cares about this, why did the royal family continue to share these weird videos to begin with?
00:25:26.360Like, why did they have to satisfy us if not to lead into their whole concept of being a brand?
00:25:36.100Again, as someone who covered celebrities for so long and think it is such an important job to cover power, I do think that people just deserve a little more transparency.
00:25:50.140I think that transparency is probably a good word for it.
00:25:55.100But talking about power, I do want to shift to one last thing.
00:26:06.100Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I love it when I break news to you.
00:26:08.960I like what a thrill. I actually have no idea what you're about to say. I so rarely feel this way. Oh, my God. Tell me.
00:26:15.540OK. OK. So Trump was just doing an interview and he was asked about Kate. And I mean, this response, I just I snorted. I snorted my coffee all over my computer. It may be broken now and I don't care.
00:26:30.360He said he said it shouldn't be a big deal because everybody doctors photos.
00:27:41.480OK, so you know what I really appreciate about Donald Trump?
00:27:46.240Yes, I would like that's what I want to hear, actually.
00:27:49.880Something I never thought I would say in private, let alone on a public podcast.
00:27:52.940What I appreciate Donald Trump is the way that he basically so, I think, unknowingly, like, slices through all of these layers of, like, positioning and authenticity and power and says things that are actually so true that they're terrifying.
00:28:16.180And like, I think that that is the only positive that has come from his political career is the way in which he has exposed how many politicians are similar to him and how many figureheads and people in positions of power are really no different than celebrities.
00:28:33.660And it is so terrifyingly astute for him to point out how normal it is that the royal family is withholding information, lying and doing it poorly.
00:28:45.460He's like, yeah, he told you stuff poorly. Is anyone expecting us to do things well? And it's like, wow, not a bad point. Like, it looks like we do kind of expect people to do things really poorly. Like, I think about our Congress and how little information they have about, like, basic social. I mean, we talked about this in a previous conversation. They have no knowledge about how TikTok works, how Instagram works. Imagine if they had to do a communications thing. It would end up just like this Kate Middleton thing. They're all so archaic.
00:29:14.520I know. I know. It really would. It really 100%. Although, you know, maybe some maybe some of the
00:29:20.620staffers who've worked on Trump's campaign should go over to the royal family. Maybe I should bring
00:29:25.200them with me. Oh, I know. I'm imagining like looking through old Donald Trump photos and
00:29:30.600seeing like weird baby fingers on his hands or something. There's definitely weird baby fingers
00:29:35.400on his hands. And he's just like, yeah, he's like they should find someone to like, you know,
00:29:39.260doctor those photos better but i get it we all do this it's also why he is um always in control
00:29:46.880of interviews because i think he says things that actually stop they just stop people in their
00:29:52.080tracks like yes no response to that because he has just outed himself he took the wind out of
00:29:57.320your sails and when he says i fake photos all the time what the hell is this man response hey could
00:30:04.580could we talk about border policy and he's like well let's let me tell you what i think of that
00:30:08.660Kate Middleton video. That's so wild. Wow. God, what a treat. What a treat. I want to hear what
00:30:15.420Biden says, and I hope this becomes like a central campaign issue. Sames, same, same,
00:30:20.700same. This has been a real treat. Tell everyone again where they can find you because everyone1.00
00:30:26.280loves following you. Yeah, such a privilege to have come on to this show and to get to talk to
00:30:31.580you so many times. You can follow me at Carol Claire Burke with three E's on TikTok. Wonderful.
00:30:37.640And this is our 100th episode, our 100th episode.