Shownotes Transcript
Hey, In the Dark listeners, it's Madeline Barron. We're hard at work reporting season three of In the Dark. But while you wait, we're bringing you an amazing story we made with our colleague at The New Yorker, Heidi Blake. So Heidi, where do we start? It starts with the story of a princess who decided to run away. My name is Latifa Al Maktoum. My father is the prime minister of UAE and the ruler of Dubai. Princess Latifa's father is one of the world's richest people.
His wives and children live in unbelievable luxury. But the family's rules for women can be suffocating, and defying them can mean brutal punishment. Princess Latifa wanted to escape. In February of 2018, she sneaked over to a friend's apartment and recorded this video. So I need to make this video in case I don't make it.
Her escape plan involved an inflatable dinghy and jet skis and a yacht secretly waiting out in the Indian Ocean. She left the video with friends. She told them to release it if anything went wrong. And if you are watching this video, it's not such a good thing. Either I'm dead or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation. Where are they? What have they done to them?
Are they dead? Are they not dead? How did this video get to us? What the hell do we do now? She said, I don't know what's happening outside. I hear gunshots, men. And then we just heard nothing. It was just complete blank. There is one suspect, her father, the sheikh.
The Sheikh, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He transformed Dubai from a little fishing village into a world power. With all this money comes tremendous power.
Power that extends far beyond this one incredibly wealthy city. Because you're a rich and powerful person, you can effectively break any wall you want in our country and get away with it. While she was reporting this story, Heidi got access to things no journalist had reported before. Letters, audio recordings, and videos made in secret by the Sheikh's daughter, Latifa. She interviewed people who'd never talked to reporters.
And now I've been working with the In The Dark team to make a new podcast, The Runaway Princesses. It's the story of a powerful sheikh and a daughter determined to be free. It's a story of police being told to stand down when they get too close to the sheikh's family secrets. It's a look behind the palace walls to answer the question, why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed's family keep trying to run away?
The Runaway Princesses will be available soon in the In the Dark feed. Subscribe to In the Dark now to get all four episodes. Hey, it's Madeline. If you're a fan of In the Dark, I'm here to tell you, you need to subscribe to The New Yorker. If you love long-form storytelling and you've listened to all the serialized investigative podcasts, you've already watched everything good on Netflix, there is a wealth of stories you are going to love waiting for you at The New Yorker.
This magazine has some of the most remarkable reporting I have ever read. We're talking Ronan Farrow's recent investigation of Elon Musk, Katherine Schultz's Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the earthquake that will devastate the Pacific Northwest, Lawrence Wright doing the definitive work on Scientology, Rachel Aviv uncovering disturbing conditions at a Christian center for troubled teens. You'll have access to it all. And you'll get a free New Yorker tote bag. Indisputably, the best tote bag around.
That's newyorker.com slash dark. I hope you subscribe. I promise it'll make you smarter and more entertained and way better at dinner parties. Again, that's newyorker.com slash dark. From PR.