00:02:41.460I was actually just looking this morning. The something that's really funny is that the royal family is hiring a new communications assistant. And it's just so like, let's see, a communications assistant for the private secretary's office of royal communications at Buckingham Palace. And they're just paying them just the crappiest salary on the planet. And it was just such a perfect punctuation of their behavior throughout this entire experience to be like, wow, what what a final encore performance for you guys to share this salary number.
00:03:10.580It's like the equivalent of $30,000 in an American salary.
00:03:39.420And I was just like, what postgrad is going to get the job from hell and think it's going to be like, it's an opportunity.
00:03:46.480You know how people I know that for me, people were always like, well, when you work with, you know, really important people, they'll help you.
00:03:52.680And I'm like, do they do they help you or are you just going to need their indentured service?
00:03:57.420Unclear. Well, I'm seeing this another way.
00:04:00.300I think I'm going to apply for the job.
00:04:36.660So, all right. We're this. This is a thing. Much, as I said before, that I will be trying to be Mrs. Pennsylvania, which I am, which I am. I'm applying.
00:04:46.180Oh, yeah. This is the kind of experiential journalism that I think our audience is here for.
00:04:51.980Yeah. I really need to know about your pageant journey. I am rooting for you.
00:04:56.200What an upset that would be for a journalist with 12 books to win that pageant.
00:05:00.620I know. I know. I'm worried they would want me to have another child. And I can't because Nick is snipped. I mean, I could. I would just have to go find find a, you know, ringer, a hot young ringer.
00:05:14.740Exactly. Exactly. None of these are obstacles. No, no. So fill me in on on the latest. I mean, you like I said, you are essentially my New York Times these days when it comes to a lot of news, a lot of news.
00:05:30.220And that, you know, that's the I consume most of my news through through Caro Claire Burke on TikTok.
00:06:28.640you think what do you think of it I mean to be honest I just it doesn't feel real to me right
00:06:39.560yes so so here's what I find interesting about this because I had to kind of pause at this moment
00:06:46.340as someone who was sharing a lot of like thoughts about what was going on on TikTok I kind of had
00:06:50.820to pause and be like okay I'm not I'm not as interested in the idea of whether it's her or
00:06:57.280not though I am like genuinely engaging or like consuming content from other people who are
00:07:02.460over that like I don't think I think that the video quality and the way that it was shot
00:07:07.220was done so either with such poor skill or with such intention intention to confuse that I don't
00:07:15.200blame people who are confused by it like it is such a blurry video the woman really doesn't like
00:07:20.900it's easy to not see Kate Middleton in that video and so I really don't blame people who are like
00:07:25.120this is making me feel even crazier yes well that's i mean that's the thing that i i want to
00:07:31.400talk about because all of this makes me feel crazy it made me feel like a strange conspiracy theorist
00:07:38.260like one of those pasty middle-aged white dudes living in their parents basement convinced that
00:07:44.480the aliens are gonna come get them and i don't like feeling that way but at the same time it
00:07:51.540just didn't feel real. I don't know why. Something felt off. I also don't know why I care. It could
00:07:57.780be an old video. It could be King Charles in a wig. And all of it felt strange to me. And I don't
00:08:07.140want to feel like a weird conspiracy theorist. Yeah, I think that's how a lot of people feel.
00:08:11.880I think there's a certain resentment that comes with looking at something that just inherently
00:08:17.100feels off and not necessarily knowing what is off about it and just immediately being kind of
00:08:22.620labeled as someone who is radical or extremist for having a sort of type of disenchantment.
00:08:28.700And I think one of the things that's been interesting to me over the last week and that
00:08:31.700I've been thinking about is that in the last few years, we've become so acclimated with the
00:08:36.880emergence of different types of AI. Like you have chat GPT, you have doctored photos. And as we
00:08:43.360become more familiar with artificial intelligence mimicking human behavior and human, you know,
00:08:49.300works of art, we're also getting better at like sniffing out when things feel uncanny and just
00:08:54.300like just just like a hair off like, oh, this is so close to being a story written by a person,
00:08:59.060but it's not. This is so close to being a natural video of people, but it's not. And so I think
00:09:03.900whether whether it's like a body double is up to debate, I guess, with some people. But I think
00:09:09.860there's also just certain things where it's like it feels unnatural. It feels like it was staged or
00:09:15.220like someone told them to do that or like the person who was taking the video intentionally
00:09:20.680made it hard to see. Like at some point, it feels like something about it does not feel like a video
00:09:25.900that is actually designed to give more true information. And I think that's what a lot of
00:09:29.640people are sensing. Exactly, exactly. And I think, look, our brains are having to evolve very quickly
00:09:35.960with all of the AI. And we're just trying to find safety in a lot of ways so that we can start to
00:09:42.880sniff out what is fake because a lot more fakes are going to be coming down the pipeline. And I
00:09:47.040think that's a really interesting way of looking at this. I think people are just generally nervous
00:09:52.260about, you know, fake news, fake information. And that's yet another reason that we're a little bit
00:09:58.440obsessed with this Kate Middleton situation. Yeah, I also think that we are we are a society
00:10:04.240that is increasingly defined by the amount of content we consume and we are expecting closure
00:10:10.540like I think a lot of people are expecting that there is someday going to be an answer
00:10:14.140and I do think that that I mean we talked in our last conversation about how Kate Middleton truthers
00:10:19.780quote-unquote are being compared to QAnon and the only way in which I'm willing to make that
00:10:24.060comparison is in the idea that like QAnon kind of dissipated the strength of it dissipated after
00:10:30.220January 6th, because a lot of books had a conclusion like they felt like they had reached
00:10:35.060the end of their quote unquote prophecy. And I think with with this confusion around what's
00:10:41.180going on with Kate Middleton, there is no closure. And we are being told that this video is a form
00:10:46.180of closure when in fact it's not because it doesn't answer questions about what Kate Middleton
00:10:51.740thinks. It doesn't answer questions about like her her her well-being. A lot of questions that
00:10:56.860were raised during this process, you know, appropriate or not, about her sense of autonomy
00:11:01.720and her power and her mental health. And so I think we're going to have to live with the fact
00:11:05.880that those questions were raised kind of accidentally or were never meant to be raised,
00:11:10.800and they're probably never going to be answered. We're probably never going to know that much more
00:11:13.940about what happened during this time period. And Kate Middleton, sure as shit, isn't going to be0.96
00:11:18.260the one who tells us. No, she's not. In the application that I'm going to send to be the0.99
00:11:23.900communications assistant for the palace i would like to give them a strategy which is it leans
00:11:31.640heavily on guilting the public um so say like just i mean and being a little bit honest hey
00:11:38.620kate had we they don't even have to be specific about the kind of surgery you know but like a
00:11:44.960very a very serious surgery she is like doing x y and z and we need this much time for her to
00:11:53.180recover and just want they just wants privacy just I want to give them a strategy to not do
00:11:59.220what they're doing right now well something that is also interesting to that that I would you know
00:12:04.480here's my two cents when you become the director of royal communications yeah no it's gonna happen
00:12:09.600that's I need a new job anyway like I don't uh I was figuring out if I'm gonna write another book
00:12:15.120and maybe this is what I want to do instead I honestly think that you would have more uh you
00:12:18.900would have more fun living out the fiction of whatever is taking place in that. So yeah,
00:12:24.140my thought is that for a long period of time, for centuries, the silence and inaccessibility
00:12:30.020of royal figures was something that added to their power. And now when you look at royal family
00:12:36.100members and you actually never get statements directly from them, I think it adds to a sense
00:12:42.280of disempowerment and it makes them look weak. Like I think that the public is starting to
00:12:46.980increasingly view Prince Prince William and Kate Middleton and all of these people as like genuinely
00:12:53.780like as bobbleheads, like as people who don't necessarily ever speak for themselves. And I think
00:12:59.400to a certain extent, if I were in charge of communications, I would be curating moments that
00:13:04.180are highly strategic, highly planned out, but in which those royal members are taking control of
00:13:09.920these narratives themselves. And if Kate Middleton were to record a video and say, hi, I'm fine,
00:13:16.980That would be hugely powerful, hugely humbling, and would definitely shut up a lot of people and make them feel maybe a little bit of shame, a little bit of embarrassment, because the person that they've been talking about all this time is finally addressing them.
00:13:30.980To keep having messages come out from some like vague communications department, like a la Lumen at Severance, like it just it feels very silly to me.
00:13:41.720And I think a lot of people are like, ooh, like another message from the communications.
00:13:46.980Another message from above. You're right. Yeah. Just have Kate. And even if she looks shitty, who cares? Who cares? Just say, hey, I'm OK. Leave me alone. I think it would do a lot. And I think I think a lot about how celebrities used to hide behind their publicists back when I was a reporter for the celebrity gossip magazines. And now they don't. Now they communicate directly with their fans via social media.
00:14:13.300Of course, publicists are still often crafting those messages, but people expect that level of intimacy from a celebrity.
00:14:22.540And make no mistake, Kate is a celebrity.
00:14:26.820And I would also add that one of the problems that was created from the sharing of that video, the TMZ video, is that now people know, okay, there are one of two options.
00:14:36.160Option number one is that the video isn't real.
00:14:38.440Option number two is that the video is real in every sense of the word.
00:14:42.100You know, it was taken this weekend. That is William and Kate. And that means that Kate is visibly capable of walking, of talking. She looks, you know, whether she's had plastic surgery or not, she looks capable of recording and sharing a video.
00:14:55.240And so that's, I think, another point that people are making, which is like, okay, so it looks like she could at any point say, I'm fine. Why has that never been an option? Even if, you know, the one of the leading theories is that she has a colostomy bag, that does not present, that does not prevent a person from speaking to the camera with a top up, you know, video.
00:15:14.600No, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. She's not, she's not in a bubble. She's not bubble boy.
00:15:18.900it's painful to see how poorly it was done and it's also it's boring like it was interesting
00:15:26.980at first now it's like you guys are just you're so bad at your jobs that this is boring0.87
00:15:31.080well it's gonna get a lot spicier once i get this job oh it's not well so well you know i i do have0.95
00:15:40.500to go to london uh because the sicilian inheritance is launching in the uk about two weeks after we
00:15:47.540launch in in the U.S. So I was going to fly over there anyway. I'll let them know that in the job0.99
00:15:54.380in in in in my cover letter that, hey, I can present these plans in person for you.
00:16:00.720You should also source some questions and feedbacks and also record everything. You
00:16:04.980should be recording everything. Do you think I wasn't going to record everything? I mean,
00:16:07.820I've got I I know I'm like a spy. After doing after doing all of this research in Sicily for
00:16:14.420the latest podcast, I have microphones that fit in my bra. I believe it. I believe that 100%.
00:16:21.340We are going to take a quickie, quickie break here. And when we get back,
00:16:26.360we're going to talk about how this Kate Middleton situation relates to both Britney Spears and Amanda
00:16:33.280Bynes. Another 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. Have you been kind of tainted? No, no, I know nothing about this. Tell me every time.
00:16:59.920Well, it connects to Kate Middleton in my head, at least. So basically, long story short, HBO has released a four part docuseries that kind of details some really startling accusations and allegations and, you know, evidence based accusations against a lot of people who worked at Nickelodeon, just like the dark side of children's television.
00:17:20.040and obviously one of the stories that they explore at length is the story of Amanda Bynes
00:17:24.740who was a very famous child who was in a conservatorship just like um Britney Spears
00:17:31.160and who has had like a really tragic exit from uh the public eye and as I was watching this
00:17:37.980docuseries I couldn't stop thinking about Kate Middleton and I was just like that woman is in
00:18:14.900thinking about this the idea that like the only time we have seen her consent was when she said
00:18:19.820i do and if there's one thing we have learned from hearing megan markle's story it's that once
00:18:25.400you enter the royal family it is almost impossible to leave unless the person who brought you in there
00:18:31.140decides to leave with you wow i i you just blew my mind because i i actually i covered uh amanda
00:18:41.160Bynes and her her mental breakdown and her conservatorship. It was one of the last celebrity
00:18:47.980stories I covered, actually. I mean, I had had reporters all over the world on it. And that is
00:18:54.940so astute because, yes, it does. There feel like so many parallels in there about how different
00:19:05.960ways we control women and control celebrity and control female brands um and i just remember
00:19:13.260amanda's team and also britney's team because i could also i also covered that one also covered1.00
00:19:19.580that one um both of those those teams around those women were just desperate to lock them up0.76
00:19:28.180yeah 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
00:19:39.500ask me two years from now, what my takeaway from this time period will be, it's not going to be,
00:19:44.640it'll be something to do with like the PR failures of the royal family. 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 in0.90
00:20:00.580positions of power because they have power attached to their name or their title? Do they
00:20:06.540have like the ability to choose anything around their own life? And I think when it comes to Kate
00:20:12.500Middleton, she has no power when it comes to the whereabouts of her children. She has no power when0.99
00:20:18.780it comes to the public's relationship to her image. And she has no power regarding to like where she1.00
00:20:26.140goes and when and why. And again, I think about the interviews with Meghan Markle where she would1.00
00:20:30.320say she was stuck inside a house for months at a time. Like imagine. And I think we look at,
00:20:36.340you know, Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes and I it's so tragic to see the ways in which
00:20:41.740your psychology can be so warped from so many years of not being in control of your body
00:20:48.180and your mind. And I think this is especially pertinent to Kate Middleton with a lot of
00:20:52.920eating disorder rumors. Like I think that's really important to keep in mind that these people have
00:20:57.360very little control over so much of their own lives. Oh my gosh. Chew on this bold question
00:21:04.180from Dentine Gum. Is it ever okay to compliment a millennial on their skinny jeans in 2026?
00:21:15.540Dentine, chew bold. There's so much more going on here than just where is she? And I do think
00:21:22.920think that this could be the thing that, I don't want to say takes the royal family down,
00:21:28.840but just punctures, punctures so many holes in it. And we thought it was going to be
00:21:33.840Meghan Markle and Harry leaving, but I think that that was just the beginning. And I think that this
00:21:39.640could actually be the thing. Yeah, I agree. I think something that I've thought throughout is
00:21:44.620that it's so ironic that, you know, technology might be the thing that kind of, you know, is the
00:21:49.820straw that breaks the camel's back with the royal family, given all the things that have happened
00:21:53.860through the years. But yeah, I mean, I think that we are really, I think, especially in the U.S.,
00:21:59.160we are really starting to have maybe like the second wave that comes after me, too, is looking
00:22:05.140at different relationships to power. It's looking at more nuanced conversations about how men are in
00:22:10.960charge of women's lives. And I think the first wave was like essential and it was more a little
00:22:16.020bit more blunt in terms of what we're looking at, like black and white. And I think that this next
00:22:20.600wave is a lot more complicated and it requires people to sit with irreconcilable truths and
00:22:26.480hold them in one hand, which is like this woman, whoever we're talking about, a celebrity or Kate
00:22:31.040Middleton is unimaginably wealthy. They are like unimaginably privileged. And at the same time,
00:22:37.680they are basically in prison. And it's really, really hard to reconcile those two truths.
00:22:45.060absolutely absolutely oh one last thing I do want to talk about uh before we carry on with
00:22:52.860our busy mornings is that but mostly because I've got this book launch coming soon and I'm worried
00:22:57.780I'm not going to be able to dish with you for like two or three weeks and that'll make me sad
00:23:02.620so I just want to get all get in on my care of time um there was there has apparently been a
00:23:08.920records breach or an attempted records breach at the hospital where Kate was and I want to dig into
00:23:14.660that a little bit because even as we speculate about this, and again, I think it's okay to
00:23:21.620speculate about it given the fact that the royal family is a brand. I don't necessarily think we
00:23:27.780deserve certain information about her body, but we can speculate given how much power this family
00:23:35.820has. I do draw the line at medical records being breached. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like unequivocally
00:23:43.660unacceptable. And it looks like the hospital is doing exactly what it should do, which is not
00:23:48.960releasing the name of the employee, you know, suspending them or firing them or whatever they're
00:23:52.720going to do, making it clear that they're in control. Like, I think that's the correct thing
00:23:56.280to do. And I say that because we have seen a lot of situations in the last few years where
00:24:00.940someone does something either irresponsible or illegal, and then their name is shared with the
00:24:06.300world. And I don't think that that's necessarily appropriate. No. Yeah, it's totally wild. And I
00:24:11.840also think with an acknowledgement of my biases, I tend to be like very defensive of the quote
00:24:18.660public at large when it comes to like the public versus institutions. And so something that I was
00:24:24.700thinking when I read that is like, you could have nipped this in the bud at any point. And people
00:24:29.780with the internet are going to behave irrationally when you have millions of people who care about a
00:24:35.680story. And when there are incentives at play to have a break in the story, like someone can sell
00:24:42.120the attention for hundreds of thousands of dollars. So this might be like, hey, I can totally I can
00:24:49.080totally put myself in that mindset where you convince yourself that it's OK. You move past
00:24:54.120all of the moral and ethical problems of which there are countless. And you say this will change
00:24:59.500my life if I sell this because there are so many incentives at play. And so my thought is like,
00:25:05.680Never 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?
00:25:31.280And 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?
00:25:41.440Like, why did they have to satisfy us if not to lead into their whole concept of being a brand?
00:25:51.180Again, 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.
00:26:05.220I think that transparency is probably a good word for it.
00:26:10.160But talking about power, I do want to shift to one last thing.
00:26:21.180Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I love it when I break news to you.
00:26:24.040I 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.
00:26:30.620OK. 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.
00:26:44.180he said he said it shouldn't be a big deal because everybody doctors photos well
00:26:51.340oh oh oh my god i'm grinning ear to ear god you know i i hate that man but boy does he work0.99
00:27:02.880boy does he have his own pr team always working for him the shit that he says is just wasn't so0.99
00:27:09.040terrifying i would find him to be the most entertaining person on the planet god bless0.99
00:27:13.040we all used to that's the thing we all used to right when he used to be such a pleasure when he
00:27:19.120when he did not have the nuclear codes this was enjoyable oh my god wow no but there's more there's
00:27:27.140more um okay you look at these movie actors and you see a movie actor and you meet them and say
00:27:33.380is that the same person in the picture oh my god i wish he had added a name at the end you know he
00:27:40.060could have just he could have just been like i look at tom cruise okay you know wait did he say
00:27:46.260anything else yes yes he did then he said i looked at that actually and it was a very minor doctoring
00:27:52.640oh my god okay so you know what i really appreciate about donald trump which is
00:28:01.400yes i would like that's what i want to hear actually something i never thought i would
00:28:06.040in private, let alone on a public podcast. What I appreciate Donald Trump is the way that he
00:28:11.080basically so, I think unknowingly, like slices through all of these layers of, um, of like
00:28:21.020positioning and authenticity and power and says things that are actually so true that they're
00:28:30.500terrifying. And like, I think that that is the only positive that has come from his political
00:28:37.480career is the way in which he has exposed how many politicians are similar to him and how many
00:28:43.700figureheads and people in positions of power are really no different than celebrities. And it is
00:28:49.700so terrifyingly astute for him to point out how normal it is that the royal family is withholding
00:28:57.700information, lying and doing it poorly. He's like, yeah, I'll do stuff poorly. Is anyone expecting
00:29:03.760us to do things well? And it's like, wow, not a bad point. Like, it looks like we do kind of
00:29:09.060expect people to do things really poorly. Like I think about our Congress and how little
00:29:15.140information they have about like basic social. I mean, we talked about this in a previous
00:29:19.720conversation. They have no knowledge about how TikTok works, how Instagram works. Imagine if
00:29:24.200they had to do a communications thing. It would end up just like this Kate Middleton thing.
00:29:27.520They're all so artaic. I know. I know. It really would. It really 100 percent. Although, you know,
00:29:34.060maybe some maybe some of the staffers who've worked on Trump's campaign should go over to
00:29:38.840the royal family. Maybe I should bring them with me. Well, I now I'm imagining like looking through
00:29:44.260old Donald Trump photos and seeing like weird baby fingers on his hands or something. There's
00:29:49.040definitely weird baby fingers on his hands. And he's just like, yeah, he's like they should find
00:29:52.760someone to like you know doctor those photos better but i get it we all do this it's also why
00:29:59.620he is um always in control of interviews because i think he says things that actually stop they
00:30:06.040just stop people in their tracks like yes no response to that because he has just outed himself0.55
00:30:11.140he took the wind out of your sails and when he says i fake photos all the time what the hell is