Natalie Robomet
Appearances
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
And I'm Natalie Robomedic. So there's this quote about relationships that I read in a novel and I think about all the time. It goes, you'll never know anyone's marriage but your own. And even then, you'll only know half of it. The idea is that however well we think we know our romantic partners, we never really can know anyone else fully.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
Even after 20 years and countless egg sandwiches cooked exactly that one specific way, one morning they can wake up and still do something that'll surprise you. But what happens if that surprise isn't an egg sandwich? What happens if it turns out to be really bad? If the person you loved, the person you were married to, wasn't telling the truth?
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
This is the story of betrayal, fraud, and what you do when the scrapbook life you've made for yourself gets ripped in two.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
Spring has sprung, and I am dying to get out of town. I'm actually going away this weekend with some friends, and I recently bought my partner a new Quince carry-on that I might just be borrowing for this trip.
Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
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Infamous
From Conned to Cupid I Part 1
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Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yeah, it feels like she perhaps languishes might be too strong a word, but just struggles for a couple of years. And we should say also at this time, because of all of her trial and all of that stuff, she'd personally lost hundreds of millions of dollars. So she's still rich, but she's nowhere near as rich. And at this point, other people are coming for her lunch, too.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yes, absolutely. But then this fantastic turn perhaps none of us could have seen coming was Martha's comeback via the Justin Bieber roast.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yes. So I have been obsessed with Martha, and I've been wanting us to do an episode on her for ages. I just think she is one of the most fascinating figures in our culture. At this point, she's this older woman, but she's managed to stay relevant. She made so much money by commercializing a domestic life, and...
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
And it's this fantastic play on her image. Right. Where she's aware that she's a woman of a certain age at this point who largely gets deemed irrelevant or invisible by society. And she also, on top of that, has this image of being this villain. fantastic, pristine homemaker. So the smartest thing she can do at that point is to completely subvert that, which she does by being filthy.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
And I also just want to say as part of that riding high, she's become iconic on Instagram. There's this one specific selfie that was parodied by Chelsea Handler of Martha's preening in her pool. And it's just so fabulous. It's so camp. She has fully become a gay icon. And then this documentary comes along.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
And that's what we're going to talk about with the very woman Martha said she wished was dead. That's after the break.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
She had one of the most epic downfalls that I think is, you know, we've forgotten about a little bit.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Alright guys, this week's episode is absolutely amazing. Because we're talking to someone from beyond the grave. At least, that's according to Martha Stewart. Vanessa called up Andrea Pizer. The New York Post columnist Martha Stewart recently said she was glad was dead. Except, as you're gonna hear, Andrea's very much alive.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Wow, that conversation is pretty amazing. But I think Martha Stewart might have the last laugh. She actually has an autobiography coming out that she says will be even more revealing than her documentary. So watch out. That's it for this week's episode of Infamous. We'll be back next week. If you like the show, go ahead and leave us a rating and review in Apple Podcasts. See you next week.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yeah, I mean, a young woman working on Wall Street in those years, you can just imagine the kind of environment she encountered, right?
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
It's an incredible conversation, and we'll be playing that later in the episode. But first, Martha. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robled.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yes. I also think it's worth noting that she also had a daughter. And in the documentary, she seems a little ambivalent about that.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yeah. And it's worth remembering, like, this was just what you did back then. You had to do this. And so whether or not she was cut out for it, she seemed to find her real joy both in her garden, but really in this house in Turkey Hill. She was pruning trees in the middle of the night and just really, really building what she would become known for, this sort of fantastic homemaking life.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Yeah, yeah. It really seems to have been something that she takes pride in. So at the same time as her career is taking off and she's doing these books, she goes through a divorce.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Right. So this leads us to the big scandal and the big trial that would mark the nadir of Martha Stewart's life.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Right. And selling these shares at this specific point saved her $45,000 or so. Which a lot of people have pointed out at this time, like Martha Stewart was pretty much a billionaire. And she takes great pride in the documentary and pointing out that she was the first female self-made billionaire. So some people have said like, okay, would she really have done this to save $45,000?
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
That's a drop in the ocean. But that's neither here nor there because it ended up going to trial.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
So unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably seen that Martha Stewart has been back in the news.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
Right. She was known for being mean. And it's one of those things where it's very easy to see the double standard in it, where plenty of men who are incredibly successful business people are known for being mean. But also with Martha, it's a little more complicated because the image that she was selling was this beloved homemaker who's just so good at centerpieces.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
But then at the same time, she's yelling at her underlings. And by the way, my partner's aunt used to be sort of a food stylist for Martha Stewart magazine, worked with her for something like 15 years, and Martha never spoke to her. That's the type of person.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
I think that imperiousness is arguably what led to her downfall in the courthouse. I mean, quite famously, which I have to say, I was very upset this was left out of the documentary. Martha Stewart iconically carried a Birkin to court. And this was back in 2004. Birkin's cost started at $6,000 then, which is $10,000 in today's money. And it was just perceived as completely tone deaf.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
So America's beloved domestic dominatrix, as some have called her, is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, Martha, that was directed by R.J. Cutler, who also made the September issue about Vogue magazine, among other films.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
I mean, the New York Times wrote, In Ms. Stewart's case, the Birkin did little to promote the image of an approachable woman who has struggled up from humble roots. Instead, it cemented an image of her as a pampered fat cat seemingly willing to snatch money from average Joe stockholder.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
So Martha Stewart gets sent to prison to a place called Alderson in West Virginia. And it's a minimum security prison for female inmates. But even though it was a minimum security prison, it wasn't a walk in the park.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
So there's a great Vanity Fair piece by Matt Turner called The Prisoner of Bedford. But in it, there are these fantastic anecdotes like Martha Stewart's nickname at Alderson was M. Diddy. She was in charge of decorating the prison for Christmas and she had a $50 budget. So we really get this image of Martha continuing to really be Martha, even though she's behind bars.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
So earlier this year, I actually watched a different documentary about Martha Stewart called The Many Lives of Martha Stewart, which came out in January 2024. It's CNN on Max. And that documentary spoke to a bunch of people who are actually former inmates with her. And they talked about Martha cleaning toilets, sending notes to other residents, probably smuggling food from the prison kitchen.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
I mean, according to one person, she sent a note to another inmate with a baked apple that she'd made in her microwave kitchen. with a little bit of caramel and cinnamon. And this is sort of my favorite image from this is that the day Stuart left prison, this one inmate said they had a potluck for her. And to no surprise, Stuart made a dessert to sort of say goodbye.
Infamous
Martha Stewart Called Her Dead
And all of them had no idea how she was able to make it in her prison microwave. So Martha left prison, but prison stayed with her in a way. According to this Vanity Fair story, she snuck out ginkgo from Alderson that she then grew in her greenhouse. So she smuggled out some pods and they grew into little saplings.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Brittany had been at Lululemon only for a little while, but Bethesda was actually the second store she'd worked in. As Isla mentioned, Brittany had been at the Georgetown store. She got let go from it for a reason Isla found a bit confusing.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Basically, during the holidays, Lululemon ran a special sale for employees called Shop Night, where workers could buy clothes at 70% off, an even bigger discount than usual. Lululemon employees were only allowed to buy $1,000 worth of clothes, but Britney bought more than $2,000 worth. It caused conflict between her and her manager, and Brittany was actually fired.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
But after launching an internal investigation, Lululemon Corporate overturned the decision, and Brittany was relocated to Bethesda's store around January 2011, where things seemed to be going swimmingly, according to Isla.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
The day of the attack, Isla actually hung out with Brittany that morning.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So the police also brought in Rachel, another educator working there the day of the attack. How long have you worked for Lululemon?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So a couple personal items had gone missing, but Rachel says it was nothing crazy.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So this specific Friday, when Rachel left for the day, this is what she remembers.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They both seemed fine. But apparently, after Rachel left, something happened that made everything not fine. Remember the bag checks where employees who are closing have to look in each other's bags? Isla explained it.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Well, apparently... When Jaina went to bag check Brittany that night, she found something. Jaina called another employee to ask about it. Here's that employee now.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Apparently, Brittany had said that this employee had rung her up.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
A different Rachel. The store manager. The woman who would find Jaina dead the next morning. State's attorney John McCarthy again.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Remember the size 14 men's shoes, the display ones that had been used for hemming, with that distinctive waffle print that had tracked blood around the store? Well, the footprints from the shoes never left the store.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
And police began to wonder, what if there hadn't been anyone else there at all? What if Britney had put the display shoes on to make it look like there'd been a man there? It would explain why Jaina had been killed, but the attackers had left Britney alive. And it would explain why the Apple employees had heard only women's voices. The problem? It didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Just because someone gets caught stealing, that doesn't mean they kill the person who caught them. And what happened to Jaina was horrific. When medical examiners carried out an autopsy, they counted more than 331 wounds made with over five different weapons. The back of Jaina's head had 13 different fractures.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
There was just no way that Brittany, this friendly, charming athlete who was all into athleisure clothes, could do something like this. Was there? Next time on Infamous.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
This week, we pick up the story with those detectives as they try to figure out just who did this. This is Murder at Lululemon, part two. So Brittany didn't make it seem like the guy you heard from at the beginning of this episode had something to do with the crime. She told police that she and Jaina were attacked by two men she didn't recognize.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They were dressed all in black and wearing ski masks. One of them was about six feet tall. The other was closer to Brittany's height, five foot three. She said they sounded as if they were white. Now, this case was popping off in the media, so police were very motivated to find the assailants and quick. They get to work, hunting down any clues they can find, starting with surveillance tapes.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
The Lululemon store didn't have interior cameras, so they can't see exactly what happened inside. But the Apple store next door does have a bunch of security cameras. And one of them points right at the parking lot outside the store. Police secure the tape from Friday, March 11th, the night of the crime. One of the lead detectives on the case is eager to find out what it reveals.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So he goes home, pops the DVD into his computer, and scrolls to 10 p.m. I can just imagine him squinting at the screen in the dark, looking for anyone who matched the descriptions Brittany had provided. At first, he doesn't see much, just average shoppers in light-colored clothes. But then, just after 11 p.m.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
That's state's attorney John McCarthy again, the chief prosecutor for the county. He's describing what police found on the CCTV tape.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
One about six feet tall, the other shorter. Both dressed in black and wearing beanies that looked like they could have been ski masks if they were to be pulled down over their faces. Investigators spring into action.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
They start questioning them. The two men are nervous and can only speak broken English. And these men say they have a perfectly good reason to be in that footage. They work in a restaurant in that shopping center.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
To be sure, one of the investigators went down to the restaurant. Other restaurant employees confirmed the men's stories. They couldn't have been leaving the scene of a murder. They'd just finished their shift. So the security footage lead was a dead end. But police also had tons of tips coming in. The reward for information was more than $100,000.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
This is audio of the two detectives who are investigating the case.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Most of these tips don't go anywhere, but a lot of people are calling about a man named Keith Lockett. He's a tall, black, homeless man known for being a drinker. Investigators are skeptical. This is mostly wealthy, mostly white Bethesda, and when people get scared, their prejudices quickly start to show.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
But some of the coolers say they've noticed Keith hanging out with a short guy and that he hasn't been seen at his usual location since the murder. And when detectives look into him, they find a colorful rap sheet spanning back years. Cocaine possession, assault and battery, robbery, the list goes on.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So even though they think it's a long shot, they start looking for Keith and they find him six miles away at a hospital with bloody clothes and a swollen eye. Now, Keith says that the reason his eye is swollen was that a man had punched him the night before. But he can't seem to keep the details straight about who that man was, how the fight started, or where it even happened.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
As the detectives interview him, Keith becomes increasingly agitated. He keeps saying that he's schizophrenic and needs medication. And detectives start to wonder, was he unstable enough to have committed this grisly crime?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Then there was the issue of Jaina's car. Jaina had actually driven to work that day, so when Brittany called her, telling her she needed to go back to get her wallet, Jaina drove back to meet her. So you'd expect that Jaina would park right outside the store. But her car wasn't there.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Local police had seen Jaina's car in the parking lot the night of the murder and they'd seen someone in it. When detectives get to the car, they discover something else.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
There was some blood in Jaina's car. Had the killers taken Jaina's keys, planning to steal it, but then just abandoned it a few blocks away? It didn't make much sense. And there was one more clue investigators uncovered.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
So, Jaina had impeccable credentials, with her exceptional education and master's degrees. She didn't need to sell Lululemon clothes to make ends meet. She was at the store because she was inspired by their corporate ethos, had even studied it. And Brittany, with her college education and Division I soccer career, had pretty impeccable credentials too.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She dated professional men, not just the guy you heard at the start of the episode, but a dentist and even a guy in the Secret Service. Brittany had come to Lululemon after working at a DC high-tier hotel, where she had said she'd work directly with VIPs, like the Jonas Brothers, to make sure their suites were exactly to their liking.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She was actually hoping that working at Lululemon would help her get to her next goal in life, to be an Equinox trainer. And now two Apple employees are saying that on Friday night, when Britney said that two men had been yelling and laughing as they carried out this horrible attack, they hadn't heard any men in the store.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
Instead, they said they'd heard what sounded like an argument between two women. This is interesting to detectives, especially now that the Keith lead felt like it was drying up. They'd collected his DNA to send to the crime lab, but they weren't optimistic. So they start talking to Lululemon employees, looking for new clues.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon I Part 2
She worked the early morning shift the Friday of the attack, and she knew both Jaina and Brittany well.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
When you really look at them, they're much more complex and the children are often the people who are being hurt.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
I think we wanted to do a series that represented what we loved about old school magazines. Tina Brown used to call it the mix. What's in the mix this week? And, you know, there'll be some politics, there'll be some scandal, there'll be some sort of trend piece. Like what are people talking about before Instagram and TikTok and all of this?
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Yeah. And I would just say like this season coming up, we are planning to cover the murder that happened in the Bethesda Lululemon between two employees who were there. And unlike a show that would do that as just a true crime story, we're really going to get into Lululemon's corporate culture. What is athleisure? What does it stand for? This idea of self-optimization and striving and striving
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
The reason behind that murder was that one of the employees thought that this was her golden ticket to like the good life. So we always look for that behind every story. It's always about something else. It's always about something else. Everything's about everything.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Yeah. So please go back. And there's almost 100 episodes there for you to listen to. You can pick and choose. Thanks so much.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
They had everything they would ever want in life. They had every opportunity and they squandered it ultimately to get their parents money.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
And I think the other way of looking at it, we'll talk about a little bit more, is as the relationship developed and you started to see a little bit more of what the brother's relationship was like with their parents, there is a legitimate argument to be made that... Jose and Kitty were not great parents. And you could even say that they abused their children.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
It just becomes a separate question of whether or not that justifies killing them. And that becomes the really difficult part for the brothers.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
People actually discussed what they had read in magazines at cocktail parties. We would often describe, you know, in editorial meetings like, oh, that seems like a good cocktail chatter piece. That seems like something somebody would say to somebody else at a party like, oh, hey, did you read blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's crazy what's happening there.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
So I have long been associated with Vanity Fair, worked there a bunch, and I really thought there's a place in the audio universe for Vanity Fair as a magazine. So that was my initial concept. What about you, Natalie? Yeah.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Right. Like, I mean, again, I can't believe I'm referencing Tina Brown twice in this conversation, but, you know, she used to say, every good publication needs a little bit of bad taste. Right. And so the idea of mixing something like Gabe Sherman, who just put out The Apprentice, which is an amazing movie about the relationship between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
What if you lost your fortune today? Well, then maybe I'll run for president. I don't know. He was on Infamous speaking about his relationship with Steve Bannon, which is long and wide ranging. And he traveled to Tokyo on a private jet with Steve Bannon to see populism sort of at work, quote unquote, in Japan while he was meeting investors.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
To take this really accomplished writer and his experience with one of the biggest political influences of our time and mix that with something like, why does my eight-year-old love Mr. Beast? Do you remember when you asked me to DM Mr. Beast? Yes.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
And what does it mean? I love that. Like, to me, that's the most fun part of even making audio is the clash of different textures and kinds of interviews and kinds of people and kinds of stories. That's why... We, as a company, we do a ton of true crime. We do a lot of investigative work.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
And Infamous was conceptualized as something that would be, quote unquote, light investigative, where we do look into things and we do a lot of reporting. The northern star of the show is what's the greatest story that we can tell and what would a listener want after hearing about Maria Butina, the spy, and her crazy relationship with a guy in the Dakotas?
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Do we want to hear then something more fun about the behind the scenes of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie? And so...
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
We hope listeners appreciate how much we mess with the timing of these episodes and the cadence of the episodes because we, all three of us know on this recording that we do move things in and out of slots very often because we're trying to think of what a listener would enjoy hearing next.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Yeah, and I think that story is a great example of the way we try to approach pretty much all of these stories, which is to do something unexpected. I think the idea of putting a lot of the religious thought that she was steeped in at the beginning of that first episode and really talking about what the satanic panic means is
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
And the history of the satanic panic before switching into the charges of child abuse was something that we all talked about a lot and were very concerned in terms of drawing listeners in. How do we give the story that's real and true and journalistically sound while also giving something that people can grab onto that's not as disturbing? So, like, I believe a lot of good writing is about story.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
switching in between medicine and sweets. Like you gotta have the sugar, you gotta have the cinnamon, you gotta have the whipped cream, you gotta have things that like draw people in. It's a process of seduction, right? And this show is actually a very produced and written show. It's not really a chat show, although we are doing a ton of interviews and more and more.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
You will be listening to interviews in a It's a pretty deliberate show in choice of topic, choice of guest, in some of the writing that gets done.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
My favorite episode that Natalie was in charge of and is so amazing is our series about the princesses of Dubai.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Like I grew up in Dubai. I mean, wait, can I say though, because nobody knows what your accent is from. So I think it is important to say where you're from.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Well, we almost keep clippings, right? Like we say like, okay, when Kim Kardashian goes public with skims, we're gonna do that. So we keep these little files of like, if something breaks, we'll do something on it.
Infamous
Infamous's 100th Episode!
Your heart just breaks. Yeah, I think that's one thing we really strive to do in the show is get to the emotional core of what these stories are. They aren't just stories about the rich and famous and their foibles. They're also about their victims. You know, we have done quite a bit about child abuse and a lot of the stories that break, like momfluencer breaks bad.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And why is it that men seem to so disproportionately do these things? Or is that fair?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah. And I just wanted to pick out something that you said earlier there, that it's not always just sort of men to women, that it can power abuse or whatever term we're using can transcend gender or sexuality. And most recently, there's another example in the news. This former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Michael Jeffries, was
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And perhaps a little more reflectively, why are we drawn to these stories, both as listeners and as journalists? To try and answer those questions, this episode, we're talking to a psychologist about some of the mental underpinnings of the sorts of people we cover, whether it's Diddy and his alleged crimes or Keith Raniere and his NXIVM sex cult.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
indicted on 16 federal counts of sex trafficking and international prostitution and the indictment basically alleged that between 2008 and 2015 jeffries and his male partner and a third man engaged in a sex trafficking scheme in which they would recruit men to engage in quote-unquote sex events where the alleged victims were allegedly given muscle relaxants viagra and
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
In exchange, they were enticed into these acts with modeling and career opportunities at Abercrombie. So, I mean, these are really just horrible allegations. But I bring it up to sort of point out allegations involving gay men. So it's not just men to women.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Absolutely. So Vanessa interviewed Keith Raniere, who was the leader of NXIVM. And she wrote one of the very early stories on NXIVM.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And it's so messed up, but he essentially used sex as a tool of manipulation in one of these ways where he would tell that sex with Keith was a way to kind of get rid of emotional blocks or energetic blocks and sort of a way to transcend and reach a higher spiritual plane, which actually is something that several different cults and cult leaders have said. But, I mean, what is it about sex...
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
This takes us on a slightly different tangent, but I just wanted to ask because it's something I've been wondering about. What role does sort of having experienced abuse yourself play into perpetuating abuse? I mean, it strikes me that these are probably different profiles of people, but you hear that saying hurt people hurt people. Would you mind just kind of talking a little bit about that?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
By the way, we had some technical difficulties during our conversation, so you're not going to hear very much of Vanessa. Sorry about that. And don't worry, she'll be back. All right, let's get to the interview. We're here with Dr. Kate Balistrieri, a licensed psychologist and certified sex therapist who focuses on providing counseling services to help people build resilience and recovery.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Is that why women like true crime? Because there's... So let me explain a little bit. There's so many statistics about how... True crime is disproportionately consumed by women. True crime shows audiences 80% female. And one theory has been posited that it's like women are less physically powerful than men. And if we can understand the psychology of criminals, we can better avoid them.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
But I also wonder if there's this sort of the phrase you just used where it's kind of a way to safely...
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
I think it's just so fascinating how our deepest fears can get metabolized into sexual desire and like the way in which sexual desire can become this playground or battleground for some of the things we're genuinely most worried about, frightened about, actively working through.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
I ask about the true crime thing because Vanessa and I have talked about this, but we're both incredibly drawn to these really dark stories. And both of us have worked on a lot of very dark stories. And there's a psychological weight that comes to hearing people's darkest experiences over and over. And yet... We don't stop doing it as reporters. Why am I drawn to these stories?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Kate has lots of very smart thoughts on psychopathy and something called the dark triad, a term we're going to get into, which probably covers a lot of the people we talk about. Keen, infamous listeners will remember we did an episode on Diddy and one of his former long-term loves and That is a story we're going to continue to cover.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
You know, like, why do I want to hear the worst moments of somebody's life over and over? And maybe it's all of the above. It's that it gives you a little bit of catharsis and control or maybe a chance of empowerment at seeing how they made it through.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
When we're talking about some of these more specific characteristics of kind of a narcissist, or I know it's not in the DSM, but a psychopath or somebody who has these Machiavellian tendencies, what are warning signs that people should kind of watch out for and avoid in their own life as much as possible?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
We've also talked a lot, of course, about NXIVM, the sex cult that was run by Keith Raniere. So all of these things are very, very related, I think. And yeah, I mean, Kate, I just wanted to start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice. And the victim blaming part of it is something I find myself trying to say to a lot of the folks I end up interviewing. I've spoken to a lot of people who've been the victim of con men or cult leaders. And there is so much shame that they carry of just feeling like this was my fault. How was I so stupid? How did I fall under this person's spell? I'm an idiot.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Why couldn't I see? It breaks my heart because I'm like, this isn't on you. This is them. Yeah.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
That's incredible. Yeah. I think that's the perfect note to end on. Thank you so much for talking to us and for coming on Infamous. Where can people find you?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, it's very dark stuff, but we'll try to make this conversation illuminating. Just to begin with, because I already used this term in the intro, what is the dark triad? What does that mean?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Okay. It's been a long time since I read Machiavelli. What is this? Remind us what that is.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
So then how is that different to a narcissist? Which I feel like is a word that's gotten thrown around a lot. I feel like it's all over my TikTok and everyone's just claiming everyone else is a narcissist. And I'm like, I don't really know that I know what that means. Yeah.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, that's so interesting because I think when we think in pop culture terms, this might be a little bit of a dated reference, but when we think of a narcissist in pop culture terms, we maybe think of like a talented Mr. Ripley type, like somebody who has that grandiose sense of self-worth and a lack of empathy.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
We just did an episode about Elizabeth Finch, who is the former Grey's Anatomy writer who... basically ended up lying about having cancer and doing a lot of strange and antisocial behaviors, lying about her past and her medical history in a way that really seemed to be with the purpose to kind of create attention for herself.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robamed. So if you're a regular listener, you've probably noticed that we tend to dive into a lot of scandals. Scandals that often involve some less than savory characters who do some less than savory things. And one thing Vanessa and I are always wondering is why? Why do people do the terrible things they do?
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
Yeah, I mean, I think probably the most prominent case of exploitation of women that's in the news right now relates to Diddy, who he was recently charged in a three count indictment with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. And
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
And basically the indictment alleges that Diddy abused, threatened, coerced women and others and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, obstruction of justice, a ton of other horrible things. And, A lot has come out about that case that has been talked about.
Infamous
Narcissists, Psychopaths and People You Know
But I think the thing that we really want to ask about is what drives somebody to do that? Somebody who ostensibly has it all. I mean, Diddy was incredibly wealthy and rich and powerful. Why would he need to allegedly take from people in that way?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah, I'm just having a moment where I'm like, emotionally, I can't believe that we're having to reiterate the importance of having your own money and your own way of making money and having, because in this society money is power, when it wasn't that long ago that we got to have credit cards. But I don't want to be attacking women.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I understand that it's a reaction to the time that we're in, but I'm just having a sort of like, oh my God, like...
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Yeah, you had this wonderful phrase. I just want to read the sentence. So the concept of romantic relationships as the ultimate life hack and the resigned idea that the only way to move forward is by moving backwards. And I think that's such great framing because we have been in the era of the life hack and the eternal optimization.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And so to view marriage and a relationship as a life hack rather than like a contract that you might be being entered into so you get sold off from your father and onto another man is like very interesting to me.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I'm a millennial and I have many friends who've graduated from Ivy League schools, who have masters, who can't find a job, who can't afford rent. And in a group chat I was in recently, one of my friends described herself as an aspiring trad wife. And she's incredibly smart and has a law degree. And it's because, this is my opinion, I think that it's because
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
The traditional ways of succeeding don't seem to be there anymore. We've gone to college, we've done all the things we're supposed to do, and yet we're still struggling. And I don't know, that allows me to have a little bit more empathy because I don't blame anyone. Like, we've been sold a bill of goods that doesn't really seem to be what it said on the label, you know?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
So despite the potential traps of being a trad wife, I really do believe in love and partnership, even though it's really hard to find. So to wrap up Cami's story, and to end on a positive note, we talked to the matchmaker she works with about religious matchmaking. Her name is Elisa Ben Shalom, and she's actually kind of famous. You might have seen her on the Netflix show Jewish Matchmaking.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Our producer Lily talked to Elisa about how to find true love.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Natrobe. That's N-A-T-R-O-B-E. And if you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book, Blurred Lines, Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. See you next week.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And we should talk a little bit about, you already referenced the aesthetic, but typically when I've seen videos like this on my TikTok, it's nearly always a white woman. And sometimes, as you said, referencing kind of a 1950s aesthetic or at least some sort of dress, floral dress, maybe a prairie dress. And yeah, espousing the benefits of this lifestyle. And it's not just a wife.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
There's kind of a stay-at-home girlfriend was a thing I was seeing on TikTok for a while. And there's kind of a stay-at-home girlfriend to trad wife pipeline, it seems.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
entirely from scratch i'm so glad you brought that up because i'm specifically thinking of nara when i asked my toddlers what they wanted for lunch they both wanted a grilled cheese so that's exactly what i got started on i got started by making my bread this is a really simple no-knead recipe you put all of your dry and wet ingredients into a bowl give it a mix and let it rise for two hours which gives me enough time to start making my cheese
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
I don't know whether it's a parody or it's definitely seemed to have moved into parody at least.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Right, but it's exactly as you're saying. It's this kind of intersection of the hyper-local, organic, ethical consumer who's really concerned with health and no additives and whatever, whatever, and then also doing that as a parody of a trad wife. But I mean, I also think about Ballerina Farm and the way that kind of this intersects with like, as you've already mentioned, like religious values.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Right, absolutely. I mean, that's a big thing that's hidden within it is the money of it all. I think it's worth talking about how money is functioning in these sorts of relationships generally. But as you just referenced with Ballerina Farm, like, class is an unspoken aspect of this.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And you wrote this piece for Washington Post called Trab Wives, Stay-at-Home Girlfriends and the Dream of Feminine Leisure. And I really, really loved that piece because it also, I thought, took like a very empathetic perspective rather than just making fun or dismissing trad wives. But for me, that's so where this is coming from.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
It's this desire to be part of like a leisure class, which is actually only
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
So if you've been listening to our series, From Cond to Cupid, you've been hearing a lot about one woman, Cami Verney, and the fantasy home life she was creating. Cami wasn't an influencer, but in putting together this story, we couldn't help but think about how Cami's presentation of domestic bliss mirrors something we've been seeing a lot of online. The Trad Wife.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
And what it makes me think about is actually whether this is a reaction to what's going on in the outer world. Like, how much is the trad wife aesthetic and trend on social media, women attempting to reclaim power in the domestic sphere? while their power is being taken away in other spheres systematically?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Totally. And it, you know, it makes sense to me. Like, if I think about the last 10-ish years, we had Lean In. We had kind of the idea of the girl boss, which was something I was slightly obsessed with. And I think we're at a point of disillusionment. with that because as you said, it's not that adding on more work meant that other work in the domestic sphere went away.
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
It just meant that you were doing it all and not having it all. And I guess my question is like, what's the answer? What's the solution to this?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
But what exactly is the trad wife? And where did it come from? To answer those questions, I'm talking to Monica Hesse, a columnist for The Washington Post who's written extensively about gender and trad wives. So today we are talking about trad wives. What is a trad wife?
Infamous
Why Do Influencers Want To Be Trad Wives?
Let's also now take a second and turn to the personal implications of this on a micro level. What happens if the trad wife goes wrong? What are the financial implications of this setup or arrangement if it doesn't work out?
Infamous
From Panic to Peace: Ten Percent Happier’s Dan Harris
Hey listeners, welcome back to Infamous, a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media. I'm Natalie Robomet. If you're like most people, life can be a little overwhelming. between money, career, relationships, trying to avoid politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table, it can all get too much sometimes. So Vanessa called Dan Harris of the book and meditation app 10% Happier.
Infamous
From Panic to Peace: Ten Percent Happier’s Dan Harris
Well, I don't want all this being used.
Infamous
From Panic to Peace: Ten Percent Happier’s Dan Harris
He teaches people how they can incorporate things like meditation into their lives to make real changes without doing anything extreme, like giving away all their possessions and joining a commune. But he didn't always do this. When Dan and Vanessa first met, he was a broadcast news reporter for ABC.
Infamous
From Panic to Peace: Ten Percent Happier’s Dan Harris
From flying into war zones to talking to celebrities like Paris Hilton and 50 Cent, Dan did it all. They talk about how the same ambition that fueled his success also fueled some pretty self-destructive behavior and how he managed to turn things around. It's a fascinating conversation, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
Infamous
From Panic to Peace: Ten Percent Happier’s Dan Harris
Oh, and by the way, just as Dan and Vanessa were wrapping up the interview, they decided they weren't quite done yet. So when you hear them say their goodbyes, keep listening. The conversation continues for another few minutes. And with that, here's the episode.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
So Jaina is this go-getter. She was actually about to move to the Pacific Northwest to be with her boyfriend. And then this horrible tragedy occurs. So what about the other victims?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
So these two athletes, Jaina and Brittany, were the women inside the store. The women who had been brutally attacked. Jetzt möchte ich einen Moment auswählen und ein bisschen mehr generell über Fitness und ihre Rolle in unseren Leben sprechen. Speziell die Art von Boutique-Fitness-Klassen und Luxury-Gyms, die Lululemon dich ausführt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Die, die in den 2010ern wilder populär geworden sind, wie SoulCycle, CrossFit und Equinox. Diese teuren, kultistischen Workouts, die nicht nur ein Weg sind, dein Körper zu bewegen, sondern eine Lebensweise, eine Marke, die kommt, um deine Identität zu definieren. Ich glaube nicht, dass es eine Überraschung ist, dass die Amerikaner sich von organisierter Religion entfernt haben.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Das hat mit dem Wachstum dieser Identitären Fitnessregime zusammengefasst. Und es gibt etwas Religioses an ihnen, denke ich. Die dünn gelassenen Klamotten bei SoulCycle, die furchtbare Verzweiflung von Crossfit-Liften, die hohen Türen und zigzige Atriums von Equinox, diese modernistische Architektur, gebaut, um Angst zu inspirieren und dich klein zu machen, als würdest du in einer Kathedrale sein.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Und die Lululemon-Store sind eines dieser heiligen Räume. Du bist wahrscheinlich in einer, oder am wenigsten hast du sie gesehen. Sie sehen wunderschön aus. Spaltlicht-Tabeln, gefälschte Mannequins, die in ihren berühmten, streckigen Yoga-Panzen gekleidet sind, schöne kleine Kuppelhäuser, die mit gerollten Yoga-Matten vorbeigelegt sind. Es ist hochwertig und tieflich aspirativ.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ein Ort, um Kleidung zu kaufen, das versprochen hat, dich eine bessere Person zu machen. Dieser Lululemon-Store in Bethesda war nicht anders. Hinter der Kante standen rote Shopping-Tüten mit Sagen auf sie, wie die heutigen Vorgaben. Dinge wie, atme tief und genieße den Moment. Erfolgspflichtige Leute verwendeten die Worte wünsche, sollte und versuche mit, ich werde.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Dieser Umfeld machte die schreckliche Szene, die die Polizei in Lululemon entdeckt hat, immer mehr zerstörerisch, sogar heilig. We got a hold of a video from the actual crime scene. At first, the store looks normal. Everything seems to be in its right place. But then you notice a mannequin is lying on the floor. It's got black bike shorts on and a striped shirt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
And there looks to be a bloody shoe print near it. Und in the back of the store, behind a purple door, they find Jaina. Die George-Washington-Gradin mit mehreren Master-Klassen. Sie ist bereits tot. Seine Haare sind geschliffen und geschliffen. Es gibt einen großen offenen Cut auf der Rückseite ihres Herzens. Eine Rippe liegt unter ihrem Nacken.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Die Rückseite ihres Pants sieht aus, als ob sie zerbrochen oder geschliffen worden sind. Im Bad finden sie Brittany, den starken Athleten, der schon mal Kunden zu Push-Up-Kontesten gefordert hat. Sie ist auf dem Boden, aber sie ist noch lebendig. Sie hat Kratzer über ihrem Gesicht und sie weint.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie trägt weiße Fußgängersocken, die in Blutstöhnen verkleidet sind, und schwarze Yoga-Panzen, die sich auf dem Kratzer öffnen. Plastische Zip-Tüten verbinden ihre Ankeile und Rüste. Eine grüne Shirt ist um ihren Nacken geworfen. Es ist mit dem Satz geprintet, setz deine Ziele. Die Leben sind zu kurz für den Treppen. Geh raus und renn. Die Beige-Bathroom-Türen sind in Blutstöhnen gesmehrt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Im Video sieht man drei weiße Blumen, die auf dem Boden gestoßen wurden. Sie sind Ivory-Petale, die von den grünen Strähnen ausgeschnitten wurden. Außerhalb des Bathrooms ist ein roter Lululemon-Kotthänger, eine Schnauze von Windex, Papier-Türen und eine Buddha-Statue. Einer dieser kleinen, ca. 10 cm langen. Die Buddha wurde überknockt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Brittany doesn't look like she's in good shape at all, so she gets rushed to the hospital. When she's there, she's stable enough to talk. She's freaked out, but she's coherent. So an investigator sits down with her, a woman, and Brittany starts talking to her.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie haben den Store zusammen geschlossen, was bedeutet, dass sie die Rechte ausgeschlossen haben, die Lichter ausgeschlossen haben und dann, bevor sie weg waren, haben sie alle in der anderen Tasche gespeichert, um sicherzustellen, dass es keine stickigen Finger gab, dass keine Items gekauft wurden.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Diese wurden als Tasche-Schecke genannt und es war der Weg, wie Lululemon die Storchen jeden Abend geschlossen hat, egal wo in Amerika sie waren.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es gab auch andere Vorteile, z.B. dass die Mitarbeiter mit Geld auf Yoga- und Fitnessklassen bezahlt wurden. Aber es gab auch ein paar Lululemon-Praktiken, die nur etwas seltsam waren. Ich spreche nicht von den intensiven Lululemon-Fans, wie zum Beispiel der Frau, die ihren öffentlichen Job verabschiedet hat, um dort zu arbeiten.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ich spreche von den seltsamen persönlichen Dingen, die die Firma ihren Mitarbeitern gemacht hat. Like, Lululemon was really big on helping employees set goals and achieve them.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Too personal, I'm sure, for a lot of people. But for Kat, who was so young and so new to the city, it was actually pretty helpful.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Von Sony Musik Entertainment und Campside Media bin ich Nathalie Robomet.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Nun, vielleicht kannst du es von dem Titel hören, aber diese Geschichte ist ein bisschen mehr traditioneller wahrer Kriminalität, als wir es normalerweise bezeichnen. Aber es ist auch viel mehr als ein sehnsüchtiger Mord. Es bringt so viele verschlossene Worte dazu, was es bedeutet, in Amerika im Jahr 2010 zu sein, welches die Ära ist, die wir bezeichnen werden.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es geht um Frauenheit, darum, wie Brands und Fitness-Fads und Fashion-Label die Anhaltspunkte unserer Leben geworden sind, quasi ein Moralsystem für uns zu erschaffen. Und die Gründe, warum wir diese Moralsysteme brechen, warum wir die schlimmsten Dinge als Menschen tun. Für diese Geschichte haben wir auch das Gerichtshof angerufen, um die Files und Gerichtsdokumente der Polizei aufzuholen.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Es gab so viel, dass sie uns einen Lippenabschluss gemailt haben, aber es wurde zurückgegeben. Also haben wir die Schwester eines unserer Kollegen nach DC gesendet. Long story short, haben wir schlussendlich unsere Hände auf eine Menge Files, einige davon sind noch nie veröffentlicht worden, so ihr werdet viele dieser Insider-Taperecordings über die nächsten paar Episoden hören.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
The first employee, Rachel, arrives. She's wearing orange sneakers. She's the manager of this particular Lululemon, and she's arrived to open it for the day, as she's done on so many other days. But almost immediately, right when she approaches, she can tell something is wrong.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Er stimmt. Nach dem Buch von Dan Morse, The Yoga-Store-Murder, gehen die beiden in Lululemon zusammen. Innerlich scheint alles normal zu sein zu Beginn. Racks von leckeren, knusprigen Kleidungen, viele inspirierende Sagen auf den Kappen und ein Schalkbord auf der Wand. Heute sagt es, dass wir alle gleich glücklich und glücklich sind. But then he notices something. Stains on the floor.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Small at first. But as he walks deeper inside, he sees more and more. It's blood. Some of it pooling beneath a purple door. He pushes the door open. Und was er im Inneren sieht, schickt ihn zurück in den Storefront.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Ein Ort, der mit einem fast religiösen Sinn und Zufriedenheit verbunden ist. Und jetzt liegen zwei weibliche Körper auf dem Boden. Die Szene ist voller Chaos. Das ist eine Umgebung, die sich nicht an gewaltige Verbrechen befindet. Die Gruppen beginnen zu sammeln. Die Geräusche verbreiten sich.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
In der Zwischenzeit, bei einem nahen Diner, ist Staatsanwalt John McCarthy, der Hauptprosekutor für die ganze Stadt von fast einem Millionen Menschen, ein ruhiges Frühstück genutzt.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Das machte es eines der größten, seltsamen und berühmtesten Töne, die er in seiner jahrzehntelangen Karriere gesehen hat.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Kat arbeitete bei Lululemon auf einer schönen Straße in Soho, in New York.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 1
Sie hat von George Washington University begonnen mit einem Degree in Business and Marketing und war sowohl ein Outdoorer als auch jemand in der Corporate Life. Als Kind hat sie sich mit ihrem Vater zu Boy Scout Campouts eingeladen. She took dance lessons. She was fluent in Spanish. She was very athletic.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
This episode contains candid and explicit conversations about sex. So if you're listening with children around, you may want to wait until later.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
I mean, Justin Bieber first got people's attention by covering songs by people like Usher and Chris Brown on YouTube. He was making these YouTube videos of him singing this sort of scrawny white kid from Canada. But oh my gosh, he has this smooth R&B voice and he can hit all the notes. And it really caught the eye of Scooter Braun. And Scooter Braun and Usher communicated. And according to L.A.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Reid's memoir, it was Usher who brought Justin Bieber to L.A. Reid. He is the very famous record executive who Usher auditioned for when he was 14. And L.A. Reid says that Usher got down on one knee and sang Boyz II Men End of the Road for him and then signed him from there.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Now, to be clear, Usher has not been accused of anything in relation to the Diddy case. Diddy himself has denied all accusations against him and pleaded not guilty. He's currently in jail in New York after being denied bail. But Vanessa herself actually wrote the first major profile of Usher in which he discussed his relationship with Diddy.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
So the connection between Diddy and Usher doesn't just end with Usher. It's also linked to another young star Usher mentored, Justin Bieber. We get this incredibly amazing parallel moment in some ways where Usher brings Justin Bieber to L.A. Reid. And I don't know if here's the place to say it. L.A. Reid himself was sued for sexual assault by a former exec in 2023.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
He did move to get that dismissed, but that case is still ongoing. Anyway, after Justin Bieber comes and sings for L.A. Reid when Bieber's 15, he spends pretty infamous, I guess now, 48 hours with Diddy. Usher went to live at Diddy's. Bieber spent 48 hours with Diddy. And there was a video that was shared to YouTube at the time.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
And you see Diddy saying something like, we're going to go full buck crazy.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Back in 2004, Usher was going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and Vanessa was in his house in Georgia, talking to him about living with Diddy. Hardest days of my life, he said of that time. I had to knuckle up, figure shit out in New York by my motherfucking self. There was always girls around. You'd open a door and see somebody doing it or several people in a room having an orgy.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. And I'm Vanessa Gregoriotis. So when I was growing up, one singer really soundtracked my middle school existence. Usher. Whether it was Yeah or My Boo or Confessions Part Two, Usher was everywhere in the early 2000s.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
You never knew what was going to happen. To discuss Usher's complicated legacy and his place in culture today, we called up Jasmine Hughes. She recently wrote a New York Magazine cover story about Usher that explored his tangled mess of sex, spirituality, and swag in the funniest way. Her writing is seriously fantastic. I mean, this is how she begins one paragraph.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Well, we need to be explicit. He's not been accused of anything as it relates to Diddy. And we'll see. But I think what they're undeniably is, is that there's something tainting this, lover boy image now. This connection with Diddy brings a darkness, a dark cloud that's really hard for his positive, light, sexy, holy R&B to shine through.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Fantastic. Okay. Can't wait to not see your name on the cover.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
That's it for this week's episode of Infamous. If you like the show, please leave us a rating and review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps people find it. Next week, we're taking a week off from our usual programming to do a little recap of why we make this show in the first place. We just celebrated our 100th episode, which is sort of crazy, and so we're taking a moment to look back and reflect.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
"'I am, in front of anyone else, a lesbian, but it's 85 degrees and we're in Atlanta and I'm in front of Usher.'" So let's get to that conversation with Jasmine. We're here with Jasmine Hughes, a brilliant writer and editor who won the 2023 National Magazine Award for Profile Writing.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
And most recently, she wrote an incredible profile of Usher for New York Magazine called Usher's Art of Seduction. Now, Vanessa, of course, also wrote a profile of Usher, not to age Vanessa, but almost 20 years ago at this point for Rolling Stones.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing his silky smooth tenor crooning over an R&B beat. Usher's music was this stomach-churning mix of sex and love and longing, one that made you feel something somewhere.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Yeah. I mean, what we're saying is that he epitomizes all of these contradictions at once where it's like there's this holiness and there's this sex up front. There also seems like there's an arrested development in his appeal to us, at least for me, because for me, like he is he was the soundtrack to my middle school existence.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Since then, Usher's never quite topped the peak of his 2004 album, Confessions, but he's since come back around in our culture as a nostalgia act, first with a Las Vegas residency, and then as the halftime performer at the Super Bowl.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
That was his epic moment, but... All good things in fashion, it comes back around on a 20-year cycle, and we're back at the nostalgia moment. After he joins as a judge on The Voice and does the Vegas residency in 2022 to 2023 and the Super Bowl, he's back as nostalgia.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
Vanessa's cover story for Rolling Stone was in May 2004, a very different time in Usher's life. He was fresh off the success of Confessions, which sold 1.1 million copies in its first week. He was only 25, but there were still lots of similarities between the Usher Vanessa met and the Usher Jasmine met.
Infamous
Usher's Confessions (feat. Diddy)
But there's a dark speck on his lover boy image, one that's pretty uncomfortable to talk about. And that's the fact that when he was a teenager, Usher was sent to live with Diddy to learn about the music business. And ever since Diddy's indictment on sex trafficking charges in September 2024, Usher's connection to Diddy has been back in the spotlight.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
Ladies, I'd like you to meet the rabbit.
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
And it's even got a remote. I mean, how lazy do you have to be?
Infamous
Encore: The Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild | Part 3
She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.
Infamous
Blake Lively v. Justin Baldoni
Justin Baldoni speaking to what he called his dream team, lamenting the fact that he was put in the basement on the premiere of his own movie, he says, per Blake's demands.
Infamous
Grey’s Anatomy of Lies
We start now with a story that has incredible drama. It is potentially so over-the-top and crazy and involves elements of betrayal so massive.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but it might be something like 90% of people living in the country are expatriates and only 10% are actually nationals.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
It's a really interesting question. And I think that that is something that from my perspective, I watched the UAE debate while I was there. So when I was in school there, you had to take Arabic up until what would be the American equivalent of the eighth grade. So that was one way to be trying to establish a national identity.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And of course, all the traffic signs and road signs or whatever have Arabic on them. There have since been various government programs to ensure that there are That actually brings us to one of our listener questions, which is what do most average Emirati citizens do for work? Yeah.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I mean, I think there's no easy, quick answer to that because it's like any other country, what are a lot of people doing for work? I mean, plenty of them are working in the police or in the armed forces, a lot are in government roles, right? Whether that's ministry of finance or whatever else. I feel like back in the day, you wouldn't have seen an Emirati woman working in a
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
store, you know, working in Sephora. And yes, there are Sephoras in Dubai. But that is something that you might see these days.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yes, there's. Yeah, I'm laughing because I'm trying to find a delicate way to phrase this. But there's like an incredible amount of racism in the UAE, just as there isn't in any other country. And there are certain roles and especially service roles that are typically kind of like occupied by expats from Europe. say, the Philippines or South Asia. Exactly. Exactly.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And yeah, that's a whole other topic which we can get into.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And that's that's the other thing I wanted to say is there's really not an easy route to naturalization. What I mean by that is that it's not easy to get an Emirati citizenship just based on having lived there for X number of years. You can't naturalize in the way that you can in lots and lots of other countries.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Now, the New Yorker story highlights Shamsa, Latifa's older sister, and what happened to her in England. We discussed a lot of this in episode one of our series. If you remember, Shamsa was the older sister of Sheikha Latifa. Shamsa actually ran away in 2000. way before Latifa did.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And part of that is because being a citizen confers a whole lot of rights and privileges to you. But also, I think of that as a way to kind of protect the national identity of When you are in a country that has so many expats. Right. That makes sense. So, yeah, you can have lived there for 30 years, but you're not a citizen.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, exactly. Or you get to a certain age that might be retirement age and you have to retire elsewhere. Right.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Two very important questions. I will handle the booze question first. So yes, you absolutely can drink alcohol there. One of these emirates, Sharjah, is a dry emirate. So there's no alcohol served there. It's a dry state.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Poor Sharjah. But yes, so you absolutely can drink booze in Dubai. One thing I do think is funny is that if you listen to radio ads there, they actually like can't say the words wine and champagne. They'll have to use code words like bubbly or like I'm making this up like grapes, 50 dirhams for dinner and grape.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The other thing I was going to say was that in order to have a liquor license, like typically you have to be inside a hotel. So that's that's kind of one of the limitations. But that's the reason why a lot of the nightclubs and a lot of the bars are within hotels.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
No, that's not a thing that's happening in the UAE. I mean, again, like, probably depends on the family in question, right? I feel like most Emiratis that I know live very, very free lives and very kind of like equal lives. Women aren't asking for the permission of a male relative to travel.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
But maybe in the case of an individual family that is maybe stricter or more conservative, that might be happening. But across the board, I would generally say no.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah. And I think that's something that we heard about a little in the series is that there are these stricter lives for royal women. I do think that's kind of similar to being a British royal. You have somebody figuring out your travel and wanting to know where you are.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I would say it's perhaps even more so because the other thing to know that is strange if you've never been there is that the faces of the royal family are everywhere.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
She had escaped from her dad, Sheikh Mohammed's house in the UK, by driving a Range Rover to the edge of her father's estate. But we didn't quite know where she went after that. And the New Yorker figured it out.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And what I mean by that is on the front page of the newspaper every day, there would be a picture of the president or the head of Dubai, the head of Abu Dhabi, shaking hands with ex-dignitary or doing something with a diplomat on the front page of the newspaper every single day. I mean, there's even like on the highway, there's this big highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai called Sheikh Zayed Road.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And there's kind of a giant highway. billboard essentially with Sheikh Zayed's face on it that has just been up for years and years.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Do you want to end up in a prison in the desert? No. I'm joking. I'm joking. That's a joke. But absolutely not. There is no free press or kind of tabloid TNC-esque press in the way that we think of it in the U.S.,
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
actually I worked at a newspaper there in the summer when I was still in college and there was a lot of self-censorship that happened if I remember correctly I tried to publish a review of something and I'd use the phrase like seventh heaven and my editor she was like oh we don't we can't make any references to heaven because that would be like Christian I guess and I just thought that was so funny because it wasn't like the top editor reviewed that or
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Some sense or somewhere cut it out. It was more that she was just like, oh, I want to stay in the good graces of of X, Y and Z people. So I'm going to make sure that that we don't print this thing.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So the UAE is one of the U.S. 's biggest allies in the region. Saudi is another huge ally. And they're heavily invested in Hollywood in various ways, in various film slates and production companies. sports teams, real estate, tech, pretty much any industry you can think of, the UAE is invested in it primarily through its sovereign wealth fund.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
A lot of that information I would say is somewhat hard to find, but they're incredibly diversified because they're preparing for a life after oil, right? They know that oil is going to run out at a certain point, so they need to diversify.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
These are such great questions. So pretty much every time I go there, I have sort of a minor freak out internally about the climate crisis because you kind of drive around and you're like, this is so unsustainable. There's So much air conditioning. There's these kind of like gardens that are being watered every single day. And it feels incredibly unsustainable.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
There are a couple of buildings that I absolutely love. There's this one skyscraper in Abu Dhabi. It has these awnings that move around the side of the building with the time of day. So if the sun is hitting that side of the building, there are these awnings that kind of stretch out. And it kind of almost looks like these waffle kind of hexagons or whatever of awning that cover over the glass.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The other thing I was going to say that a lot of people don't know is that they actually seed rain there. I am not a scientist. You will be surprised to learn. But they seed clouds. So they kind of like engineer these clouds that then... pop and produce rain.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So desalination plants are huge and there's lots and lots of desalination plants. So Essentially, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they're right on the coast. So right next to the sea. And a lot of the water that gets used is desalinated. So it's kind of taken from the sea and then made usable.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yes, I've never thought of that. I mean, this is also a very rich country. Right. So. Right. So, yeah, it might it might be expensive. But look, when you're one of the most important kind of exporters of oil, your desalination plant might be the lowest of your concerns.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Well, let me know when you do and I'll show you around. That's it for this week's episode of Infamous. We'll be back next week with a new series we're very excited for you to hear. It's more true crime than our usual episodes, but it's a fascinating story that raises some really interesting questions about womanhood, athleisure, and what drives us to do the worst things ever.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
As we talked about, the UK and UAE have very deep ties. The UAE is a major trading partner to the UK. Tons of British tourists visit Dubai on holiday, many wealthy Emiratis have real estate in the UK, and so on. And that deep conviviality may be part of why Shamsa was not safe on British soil. This is what happened when British police were first alerted to her case.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And perhaps while the authorities were not paying attention, something awful happened to Shamsa. Here is what the New Yorker reported happened. They got their hands on a note Shamsa had written that said, quote, quote, They drove me to my father's place in Newmarket, where they gave me two injections and a handful of tablets.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The very next morning, a helicopter came and flew me to the plane, which took me back to Dubai. I'm locked up until today.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So a few years after Shamsa was captured, Shamsa's sister, Princess Latifa, tried to escape for the first time. This was back in 2002, when she was still just a teenager. Latifa was caught and allegedly imprisoned and tortured for years, though Sheikh Mohammed's office has denied that Latifa has ever been arrested or detained.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
When she got out, years later, according to the New Yorker, one of her guards was actually one of the guys who had allegedly beaten her when she was in prison.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
That just sounds so scary. It's unimaginable. And it really makes me reflect how brave she was to try to escape again, which she did 16 years later. This was in 2018, with the help of Tina Juhiainen, her capoeira instructor. But once again, as with Shamsa, Latifa was caught. And once again, another nation either turned a blind eye or actively helped.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Because according to The New Yorker, the Indian government wholly aided in Latifa's capture.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So with the help of the Indian government, Latifa was ferried back to Dubai, and her escape was scuppered. So after Latifa was obtained, a secret meeting allegedly took place between Latifa, her father, Sheikh Mohammed, and her sister, Shamsa, according to The New Yorker. Here's a voice recording of Latifa from the podcast talking about that meeting. So...
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
This was a huge moment for Latifa. The last time Latifa had seen Shamsa, she'd been heavily medicated and basically imprisoned by guards. And now Latifa, who herself had tried to escape and been caught, was being brought to see Shamsa, the older sister who had tried to escape and been caught.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The whole thing must have been so confusing for Latifa. This was her sister, who had tried so desperately to get away, who had said she was being held against her will. Latifa came to a conclusion about Shamsa. Shamsa is completely brainwashed.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So as you may recall, a lot of this information came out because of legal proceedings in the UK between Sheikh Mohammed and his ex-wife, Princess Haya, the royal from Jordan, who also ran away under slightly different circumstances. As Haya's case was going on, it appears that Sheikh Mohammed was using freedom as a bargaining chip for Latifa.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. I hope you enjoyed listening to our series on the princesses of Dubai. As I said a few episodes ago, there's been new reporting by another journalist on this case, and I want to get into that in this episode. However, the new information does not include figuring out for sure that Sheikha Latifa is free.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
There have been all sorts of strange photos that seem really forced, but the question of whether she is really free remains. I even found an Instagram account that I think might be Latifa's, though we don't know for sure and we don't know who's running it. It's under the handle Soylati. We DM'd the account, asking for an interview, but did not get any response.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The most recent upload from October 26th, 2024, includes a photo of Latifa walking a rescue dog in what looks like the UAE desert. In the picture, she's standing with this very cute brown and white pup on a leash. There are sand dunes and scrubby bushes in the background. Latifa's wearing a pair of Victoria's Secret pink brand camo leggings, a burgundy t-shirt, and big black aviator sunglasses.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The caption tags the account of an animal rescue called the Stray Dog Center, located about an hour from Dubai. According to this photo, she seems to be hanging out with animals again, something we know she loved. But I also can't help but see it as a metaphor. Maybe she's a stray dog who's been rescued. Or maybe she's been captured and is now being kept close on a tight leash.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So a lot of what I just talked about is really quite dark, but I wanted to pivot now to something slightly lighter. A while ago, I answered a bunch of questions about the UAE from listeners. You're going to hear our producer Shoshi Smolovitz pose those questions to me, and you'll hear me answer them.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So Dubai is this small city state in a country called the United Arab Emirates that is sandwiched kind of between Oman and Saudi Arabia, very close to Iraq and right across a body of water from Iran.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, absolutely. So the UAE itself does have a huge amount of oil, but it's comprised of different states. You can think of that as similar to American states like California or Maine or whatever. And where the oil is, is not dispersed equally within the country. So Abu Dhabi actually, and that's the capital, has the larger reserves of oil and Dubai in comparison has very little oil actually.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And that is one of the reasons why they have really tried incredibly hard to diversify through tourism and real estate and a million other assets and potential moneymakers. This man, Sheikh Zayed, he's passed away now, but he's really known as kind of the the founder of the nation. And he brought together these different families and different groups into the United Arab Emirates in 1971.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So that's actually really, Still relatively recently, right?
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Yeah, I know. So especially when you think about it like that, there has been an incredible amount of progress in that time. And, you know, very few countries establish the kind of international influence or kind of reputation that the UAE has already achieved.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And I actually think that really speaks to the great job that Dubai has done in creating a kind of PR reputation for itself around the world. Dubai is the place that rappers shout out. People say, oh, I want to go there for this exotic holiday, etc., etc. I mean...
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
They have made themselves known for five-star hotels or even seven-star hotels and malls, kind of a symbol of quote-unquote Western progress or capitalist progress in the region. You know, Dubai is known as being very high-end, but there are also a lot of package vacations that kind of... go there and there are tourists there from... Do they have a Club Med?
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
I know that may be hard for some people to hear, and it certainly is for me. So here's what happened. A few weeks after we first aired our series in March 2023, The New Yorker published an excellent in-depth story by Heidi Berg called The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai and a podcast on the series In the Dark.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
They don't, but like spiritually they do. No, there's... If you go at any given point, there's tourists. We're not just talking from the UK or America. You've got tourists from Russia, from... all over there. And the same goes for expats. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of expats living there.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
She says she found a gun left on her bed with the safety catch off. A provocation. A threat. Then, one afternoon, Haya and the kids were at home in their Dubai palace when one of the sheikh's helicopters unexpectedly touched down in the yard. The passengers, a pilot and a few security guards, allegedly climbed out. One said he had come to take a passenger to al-Awir, a prison in the desert.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
There have been more photos, more meetings with UN representatives, but questions remain. Despite all of the attention Latifa's escape received, no one has been brought to justice for attacking the boat near India, or for the treatment Tina and the rest of the crew say they received. Latifa's sister Shamsa, the one who ran away back in 2000, has still not been seen in public for decades.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And the thing is, there are so many more strange cases involving Emirati royals. Cases that have never really gotten any attention. For one, Sheikh Mohammed has another ex-wife who claims he kept her from her child. Randa Albana, a Lebanese woman who married him in the 70s, told the Sunday Times she hasn't been allowed to see their daughter since she demanded a divorce nearly 50 years ago.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Then there's Sheikh Mohammed's brother, the late Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Back in 2000, the same year Shamsa was allegedly abducted, her cousins, Maktoum's kids, were also living in England. They were in this giant rooftop apartment in the fancy London neighborhood of Knightsbridge, when all of a sudden, four Emirati bodyguards allegedly swooped in and escorted them away.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Their nanny called the British police. She thought they'd been kidnapped. In the press at the time, the incident was chalked up to a disagreement between the Sheikh and his wife over where their kids should go to school. He wanted them to return to Dubai, while she wanted them to study in London. But it all sounds eerily similar to Shamsa, her abduction, and her desire to study abroad.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And sadly, this alleged treatment isn't a thing of the past. We are hostages in our home. As recently as October 2022, Sheikh Mohammed's nephew's ex-wife alleged that she faced abuse, harassment, and intimidation during a bitter custody battle. My children and I are terrified and frightened for our lives. It seems like the same thing just keeps happening over and over.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
I mean, Latifah is just out there, supposedly doing okay, but we don't really know. It's almost like the world isn't watching this situation. Or doesn't care. And maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Because this is a story about women seeking their freedom. Arab women, specifically.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
A demographic the world likes to use as a symbol of oppression when convenient, rather than humanize with the depth reserved for other people. And in America, we like to think that we're better than all that. That we really are free. But freedom means something different to everyone. And we definitely don't all have it. For some, it's the right to work. For others, it's the ability to have guns.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Of course, it doesn't help that the people alleged to have done wrong in this story are incredibly powerful and incredibly rich. People in my life were even worried about me being involved in this series. That I might disappear the next time I visit Dubai. Just be hauled off at passport control and never seen again. Or that something might happen to my family.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Thinking about all this, it's hard not to hear Latifa's voice in my head from that original 2018 video.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Haya's son clutched her leg. She assured him the men were only joking. But she later says she thought if Zayed were not there, they would have taken her. In fact, one of the guards in this very same helicopter had allegedly abducted Shamsa from England way back in 2000. Sheikh Mohammed claimed the helicopter landed in the yard by mistake. But Haya felt that she and her children were in danger.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
And what was she going to do about that? Run. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
We also learned about Haya's affair and Sheikh Mohammed's apparent anger about that affair.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
So a while ago, we talked about how in the UAE, some wives can practically be their husband's property, but they can also quickly become not their property.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 4
Now, we don't know for sure if this is what Sheikh Mohammed did with Haya, but under Sharia law, that's all you need to say to divorce your wife. And on February 7th, 2019, without Haya knowing about it, he ended their marriage. It may have been a deliberate date. It was the anniversary of her father's death. And after that, according to Haya, things got really scary.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
No, I didn't. But we had a very strict no-gift policy. Oh, my God. You guys are so uncorruptible. So moral. Well. So we're on the set of this photo shoot. And this was the era where Kanye and Kanye's stylist were dressing her. So everything was very clearly pre-planned in her wardrobe. And my understanding was that it was kind of pre-approved by Kanye. Right. So we had these photos for the inside.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And then we also had to do the photograph that was going to be on the cover of Forbes. And The cover of Forbes has a very set formula. It's, you know, looking straight on, arms crossed, looking very business-like.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Business. Yeah. And what she was initially wanting to wear, I believe it was this Balenciaga, straight off to the runway, kind of silk slip dress, almost like a nightie. There was, like, lace involved. Essentially very sexy with cleavage, with shoulders showing. And how I remember it was that... Our photographer and the folks on set were essentially like, this is a little too sexy for Forbes.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Yeah, that's very surprising because I would expect that for like a pre-smartphone era. But this was like, what, 2014, 15, something like that?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
This is a lot more skin. Usually it's like an older guy in a suit, you know? And so there was some debate, can we put a blazer over it? And then there was this whole back and forth, like, no, the blazer over it isn't approved by Kanye. That's not the look. I remember phone calls back and forth and whatever, whatever.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So after that photo shoot, I got in the SUV with her and she'd gotten changed at this point. This was the Yeezy era. So she's wearing this like Life of Pablo orange oversized T-shirt. And somehow magically we're in the parking structure in the basement parking structure of where we're going for our meeting. And all of a sudden there's paparazzi there.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So we get out and she's being photographed as we're walking in. There's some fantastic shots of like me lingering in the background, just being like, probably holding my notebook, being like, I'm not paparazzi ready. And she kind of said something to me like, well, you know, today it's gun violence awareness day. So I'm wearing orange. So I need to be photographed in orange, which is like the...
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
anti-gun violence color and i'm not saying that she called the paparazzi you know i don't know i didn't see any of that happen but miraculously she was suddenly photographed wearing the color she needed to be photographed wearing miraculous so miraculous so the next time we you know i think it was a
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Maybe about a year later, there was a Forbes summit and Kim got booked to come and speak on stage and be interviewed by Steve Forbes, which really went down as an event for the ages. And I remember hugging her and thinking, oh, she kind of smells like fake tan. Which is such a particular scent. If you know it, you know it. You know, I'm not knocking her. She still looks amazing.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
But she just literally got straight off a 13-hour flight. And then the next month, she was launching her KKW Beauty. This was her makeup line that was also a portion of it was bought by Kody. So I went to this launch that she did at the YouTube offices in Marina Del Rey.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
sense exactly so i walk into this thing and it's it's a it's a makeup beauty event and this was like the peak days of youtube beauty influencers right so it's me and a bunch of beauty influencers like james charles was sitting next to me and he was wearing those black balenciaga sock boots that were all the rage at the time i was bequeathed a pair of sock boots oh my god by a friend of mine after the balenciaga scandal who was she was like i'm a public person i can't be seen wearing these
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And I was like, okay, I'll take them. Oh my God. Well, yeah, there was also Patrick Starr, who's another fabulous makeup influencer. Everyone was just there, this full beat, like so glamorous. And at the end, Kim was kind of standing in front of a step and repeat, taking pictures with people. And I just went up to say hi and- You know, I wasn't going to get a picture with her.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
That seemed unprofessional. And, you know, of course, she she pretended to remember me or she actually remembered me. And yeah, that was my time with Kim.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So you met her for a drink. And was that, you know, was this just to get to know each other? Was this like very much on the record for a story? Yeah.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
I mean, and that's something we talk about in the episodes is essentially like this line between what's real and what's fake. And it's always so interesting to me what they do address and don't address on the show. So in this new iteration of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, like in this season, they don't at all address Astroworld, which was kind of the absolute huge catastrophe that-
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Travis Scott, like the father of Kylie Jenner's kids, was very much involved in. But we finally are getting some information about Kanye a little bit. And of course, kind of some inherent drama between Kim and Kourtney. But what's always so fascinating to me is that critics aside, whether the new iteration of their show is boring or not aside, they've still managed to keep it going.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Like there's been this sustained interest over so many years. And yeah, I mean, I guess I just really want to hear from you. Like, why do you think they've been able to kind of stick around for so long? That's really the big question to me.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Yeah, I guess I'd never really thought of them as a functional family, but I guess in a lot of... Depends how dysfunctional your own family is. Right, right, right. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. But it is true.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Like they do actually talk to each other and are, as you said, very much involved in each other's lives, even if there's also a lot of commerce and a lot of like extenuating circumstances that make that so.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And isn't that what iPhones have done to us all? Isn't that what Instagram has done to us all? Yes, exactly.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
phone right she wants to hear her songs on kids bop radio and then look at herself in a mirror singing wow i mean and i do remember when that book came out like it was so ridiculed but i i you know now i'm like that's kind of amazingly camp and like i want to see kim kardashian in a john waters movie I know.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
There's something really fantastic about that and just ahead of its time in a very interesting way where I've always wondered if we're just witnessing some big performance art piece and the joke's really on us.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So since we released our series on Kylie Jenner over the past couple of weeks, which you should go back and listen to now if you haven't already, we've gotten a lot of feedback from listeners.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Oh, my God. What did she say? What was her face doing?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
But I also think there's, I mean, and this is what is so interesting with the kind of her relationship with Kanye and their children is that's such a core part of hip hop is standing and showing the ascension from where you've come from. And the fact that you have enough money to pay
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
put your kid in a fur coat that they can throw up on especially when it is a black child just given the history of the oppression of black people in this in this country like it's it's an incredible symbol of ascension and an amazing visual but That's what makes it so complicated is like, is Kim thinking about all of that? The ascension she's thinking about.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
I think that obsession with money just I think that's why we're so obsessed with them, because it perfectly encapsulates like
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
the greatest pressures and fascination of our time where it's like there's more people who are more wealthy than ever before and also greater income inequality than there's ever been before and we can also see so much more stuff and see so many people posting so many more things and we have a chance to buy so many more consumer products and there's an endless need to buy buy buy but also just like a great emptiness
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So then you start actually reporting it. And I assume you spent like a day with her. So tell me about that.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So Whale Rock, I believe they're now defunct, but they were a technology company that was making apps for a slew of celebrities. I mean, mostly the Kardashians, I think. So they had, Kim had this like her own app where you could subscribe. I think it was something like $2.99 a month and you could kind of subscribe.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And it was basically just like a personal blog where Kim was posting like how to look cute with braids, like five clothing ideas for date night or whatever, as well as kind of like exclusive pictures. It was essentially kind of like a gated and paid subscription model for like a personal blog.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Yeah, I can't wait. I'm actually dying to hear from you about your personal experience because we didn't even get a chance to get into that. And me, you. So Vanessa, what I really want to know is how did you first meet Kim Kardashian?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Right. She's like incredibly polite. And I definitely took that away from my experience with her as well. Do you remember what she was wearing?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So I am looking at the picture that accompanied your Rolling Stone cover story. It is Kim on the cover of Rolling Stone, clearly nautical theme. It's her bust up. She's kind of turned towards the camera. She's wearing a little sailor hat. She kind of has minimal makeup, kind of a natural glow. Lips slightly open. She's got these big silver earrings.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And then this very prominent red, like, balconette bra, I would say, kind of that's coming up over her top. So the bra is very much exposed. And then she's got this blue and white kind of, again, nautical sailor-esque bra. top pulled down off the shoulders. But it is very much, I don't know another way to put this, tits on display.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Right. You know, Terry Richardson is a controversial, to say the least, photographer known for a lot of pretty sexually explicit images and also for allegedly coercing models into performing sex acts with him. I don't know if we want to go into all of that. But what I will say is like knowing Terry Richardson's oeuvre, her breasts really are the focus of this photo. And it very much I mean, it's
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Very, very explicitly sexy is what I would say. And the headline just says Kim inside her real world.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomet. And I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. And welcome back to our show.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
I mean, so when did you interview them? I've actually interviewed Kim a couple of times. So the first time was for this July 2016 Forbes cover story that I did with her. And just a little bit of background, Kim had this mobile game that was a different thing to the app that you wrote about.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
She had this mobile game called Kim Kardashian Hollywood, which I don't know if anybody remembers playing it. I had some friends who played it avidly. But essentially, the entire premise of the game was that you were trying to make it as a celebrity and trying to get more famous.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And it's very interesting because actually this game already existed and the company that made it, Glue Mobile, was seeing that there was some success with this game, with this idea of like people trying to get famous and they decided like we should layer a celebrity over it to kind of like supercharge this game. And so Kim Kardashian, you know, famous for being famous.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
That's what she's known for is like for ascending the ranks of fame from Z-list to A-list. They brought her in and it was this kind of incredible deal per my reporting. She was getting 40% of the game's revenue. Not of profit, like of the game's revenue.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
Exactly. Kim really went to work with this game. You know, she would like send them pictures of her on vacation. She would let them know where she was going, what she was doing. So then they could write that into the game, for example. So she was going to Mexico. You could also be going to Mexico in the game. And it kind of like was a way to live vicariously as Kim Kardashian.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
So that's the backstory. So I met her at this, it was actually at the photo shoot for the Forbes cover. And she's there sitting in hair and makeup. She's wearing like this little white robe. She had her feet up on kind of a counter. And she turned to look at me and she's like, Oh my God, so nice to meet you. She immediately got up and gave me a hug.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
And I remember being surprised by just how tiny she was. Like, I think she is small. She really is. And I remember looking at her hands and just being like, Oh, your hands are
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 3
so small and so immediately she's super personable and she's like how are you you know so nice to meet you you know i hear you're from dubai i love dubai clearly her publicist had done the research on me and given kim the lowdown on who i was and where i was from she's like You know, I hear you're Lebanese. One of my best friends is Lebanese. Like, blah, blah, blah. Oh, my God. Geez.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Nun, laut einer zweijährigen Investition der BBC, hat Mike Jeffries offensichtlich junge Männer für Sexpartys gegründet, unter dem Hinblick auf die mögliche Modellierung für Abercrombie. Die ganze Geschichte ist wirklich, wirklich zerstörerisch. Es bildet eine schreckliche Bildung eines mächtigen CEOs und seines Partnern, die schlechte Dinge mit jungen Männern tun.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und ein weiterer, kalkulierter Pattern. Es war wohl auch ein dritter Vertreter dabei, ein Mann namens Jim Jacobson, der so genannte Auditionen durchführt hatte, um diese Jungs auszutesten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Die Gefühle gehen weiter, zu beurteilen, dass sie, wenn sie seine Auditionen durchführen, okay sein würden, um Partys zu besuchen, einige von denen am Haus von Mike Jeffries in Hampton stattfanden. Sie sagen, das Haus wurde von Hausmännern ausgestattet, attraktiven Männern, die in Abercrombie & Fitch-Uniformen tragen mussten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Um es klar zu machen, hat Jeffreys nicht schuldig zu allen Angelegenheiten gebeten. Aber die Angelegenheiten sind ziemlich verdammt. Die Gefühle, zumindest eine, die damals nur 19 Jahre alt war, sagen, dass Jeffreys und seine Begegnungen sie in Sexpartien verabschiedet haben.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und dass sie in diesen Partien mit Substanzen verabschiedet wurden, um sie zu verabschieden und in Sexaktionen zu beeinflussen, zu denen sie entweder nicht oder nicht zu verabschieden konnten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Das ist einer der ehemaligen Modelle, die für den BBC-Podcast gesprochen hat, World of Secrets, über seine Erfahrungen. Er geht weiter, um zu beschreiben, wie spezifisch diese Events waren.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Diese Angelegenheiten sind alle in Ordnung mit einer größeren Kultur von unabhängigem Verhalten, die damals in Abercrombie rammt. Zum Beispiel der Fotografer, der viele von diesen ikonischen, fast nudischen Fotos gefilmt hat, Bruce Weber.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Und es war an diesen Partien, die auch, wiederum bezeichnend, in London, Paris, Wien und Marrakesch stattfanden, dass junge Männer verurteilt wurden, gefordert wurden, Non-Disclosure-Agreements zu signen und Druck auf Alkohol, Viagra und Muskel-Relaxantien zu konsumieren, bevor sie sich in explodierende Sex-Akte engagierten. That investigation was published in 2023.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Then, late last year, Jeffries, along with his partner and Jim Jacobson, were indicted on multiple charges, including sex trafficking and interstate prostitution, all of which he's pleaded not guilty to.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Diese Woche hat Natalie einen Kontakt mit Alison Klayman, der Schauspielerin des 2022er-Netflix-Dokumentes White Hot, der Erste und Nächste von Abercrombie & Fitch. Und sie wurden auch von Colin Jones, einem der Produzenten des Films, eingeladen. Der Film war vermutlich der erste Domino in der Reihe von Ereignissen, die den Entschlossenen führten.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Colin und Alison interviewierten ehemalige Modelle und einige der Vorschläge, die sie auf der Kamera gemacht haben, ermutigten andere, voranzugehen, nach einer explosiven 2023er BBC-Erfahrung. Sie sprechen über das, was Abercrombie früher war, was es sich jetzt verändert hat und bis zu welchem Punkt es sich geformt hat und geformt wurde durch die Kultur. Hier ist diese Konversation jetzt.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Lily Houston Smith. This week, Natalie is going to be bringing you a story about Abercrombie & Fitch, the aspirational brand of my childhood anyway. It was the brand my parents refused to buy for me and that I believed in my heart would make me cool.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Ich weiß nicht wirklich, was ich dir gemacht habe, aber ich nehme ein Pinot Grigio.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
The Hamburglar was just a mascot, but Jerome Jacobson was the real deal. A McDonald's security chief who almost pulled off the ultimate inside job. On Wondery's podcast, The Big Flop, Comedians join host Misha Brown to chronicle pop culture's biggest fails and try to answer the age-old question, who thought this was a good idea? At the time, the McDonald's collab with Monopoly was a genius idea.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Ich habe einige Abercrombie-Geräte verkauft, aber meistens mit Geschenkkarten, die meine Brüder für Weihnachten schicken würden. Als Kind finde ich das sehr seltsam, aber die Geschenkkarten hatten immer auf ihnen eine sehr provokative Foto eines fiten, weiblichen Mannes, der so niedrig gekroppt wurde. Ich meine, genau über Skandal.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Come get a Big Mac and you could go home with a million dollar prize piece. The only problem? When they picked their head of security, the one guy in charge of protecting those million dollar pieces, McDonald's drew the wrong card. Comedians Ify Wadiwe and Beth Stelling joined Misha to break down what really happened with the McDonald's Monopoly scandal.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Alison, Natalie and Colin are about to talk more about Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, who took over after the company was acquired by the same man behind Victoria's Secret and The Limited. Jeffries is now facing accusations of exploiting and abusing young men during his time leading the company.
Infamous
Abercrombie’s Dark Side
Aber in der Vergangenheit haben sich einige Angelegenheiten erzeugt, die diese seltsamen, sexierten Geschenkkarten viel weniger lustig und viel mehr bedrohlich sehen. Und das hat alles zu tun mit der Firma's ehemaligen CEO, Mike Jeffries.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
They made her move Jaina's car? Why is Brittany offering up this information? I mean, if she really can explain this, maybe all the other puzzle pieces will fall into place. Maybe she's innocent after all.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Maybe not. Because Britney's saying she saw a cop. Probably that patrol officer who'd seen someone behind the wheel the night of the murder. And she didn't flag him down. The cops have heard enough. They're ready to confront Britney. From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomad. And I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
This episode, detectives zero in on their prime suspect. This is Murder at Lululemon, Part 3. So in the span of a week, Brittany has gone from victim to prime suspect. Maybe she'd been caught stealing, and in her panic, she'd killed Jaina, and then tried to cover her tracks.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
State's attorney John McCarthy again, the chief prosecutor for the county.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
So police have a new suspect, Brittany. Maybe, they think, Jaina had caught her shoplifting and Brittany lured Jaina back to the store and killed her. But it was just so unbelievable, and it didn't answer a lot of questions. Like, for example, remember how they found Jaina's car a few blocks away from the store?
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Detectives started digging into Brittany's past. They soon found out the cropped pants incident wasn't the first time that Brittany had allegedly been caught stealing, not by a long shot. According to Dan Morse's book, The Yoga Store Murder, back when Brittany was young, she seemed to have a habit of sticky fingers.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
For example, when her sister babysat for a neighbor, that neighbor said that whenever Brittany would accompany her, stuff would go missing from the house. Just little things, coins from the change jar or pieces of cheap costume jewelry. Later, when Brittany started playing varsity soccer in high school, she made friends with her teammates. And one of Brittany's friends' wallets kept going missing.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The teammates suspected Brittany. When they confronted her, they said she broke down and admitted it. Brittany's really fun to hang with, they would say. But be careful. She steals and she lies. Then, when she got into college on a soccer scholarship, there were allegedly more instances of thieving. Enough of her teammates raised concerns to the coach and she was off the team.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
which was devastating, not just because she loved soccer, but because she also lost her scholarship. By the fall of 2004, Brittany dropped out, just a handful of credits shy of graduating. She moves to DC after school and troubles continue. In 2006, she gets into a relationship with a dentist and ends up getting a job in his practice as an office manager.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
But they break up, she leaves the job, and a while later, he alleges that she breaks into his house and steals stuff from his new girlfriend. A Lacoste polo shirt, a pair of diamond earrings, a bottle of Vera Wang perfume. The ex files a restraining order against Brittany. Brittany agrees not to go near him for a year. After that, Brittany's roommate accuses her of stealing, too.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
And her sister does. It just doesn't seem to stop. Brittany bounces between jobs and relationships. And apparently, she was also looking for creative ways to make ends meet. At one point, she browsed Craigslist for potential sugar daddies. She texted one of the advertisements and began a correspondence with the prospective benefactor.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The two made plans to meet up and Brittany wrote, I don't have any hidden agendas. I'm just a younger woman with goals slash dreams and could use financial assistance. But she also seemed to be trying to get her life together. She was going to exercise classes all the time and working towards a new career in fitness.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
A patrolman had seen someone sitting behind the wheel after midnight, after the murder had taken place. Had that person been Brittany? And if so, why would she get into Jaina's car? Before detectives can even figure out their next move, they get a call from Chris, Brittany's brother. He says that apparently Brittany has something important to tell them, something she'd forgotten to say earlier.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
Actually, two days before the murder, the store's management team had brought up the missing things at a regular meeting. They'd noticed that Britney had worked all the shifts where things disappeared. $10 here, a bottle of perfume there. And the reason why Britney left the Bethesda store came up as well. Dana was at that meeting and heard everything.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
The night of the murder, after she talked to Brittany about the crops, she called the same coworker and said something along the lines of, I caught her.
Infamous
Murder at Lululemon | Part 3
So Brittany, her sister Marissa, and her brother Chris all head to the station. Chris and Marissa wait outside, and Brittany sits down in the interrogation room with two detectives. What you're about to hear is tape from that conversation.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Tina and her associates managed to smuggle a cell phone to Latifa and Latifa started sending them video messages. The situation is very hard. In one, Latifa sat in the corner of a bathroom wearing a dark shirt. She brought up Mary Robinson's visit and told the story, but from her side.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Latifa's supporters kept reaching out to human rights organizations for help, but they hadn't heard much since Mary Robinson's visit.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
So far, Princess Haya had believed Sheikh Mohammed when it came to Latifa. Observers thought Haya may have been either a knowing participant in the campaign against Latifa or porn. But that was all about to change because a fissure in Sheikh Mohammed and Haya's relationship turned into a chasm. At the end of December 2018, Sheikh Mohammed published a poem. It was called The Morality of a Knight.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
One of our producers, Rajiv, is going to read it.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Now, Sheikh Mohammed has written a lot of poetry. In the Arab world, it's not super weird for a royal to write poetry. It's like a president releasing a memoir or giving a commencement speech after being in office. It's just something people do. And most of his poems are about horses, his nation, pretty innocuous, universal topics. But these weren't innocuous.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
To me, they seem pointed, venomous even. Here's another from a few months later.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
But Sheikh Mohammed seemed like he wasn't mad at Latifa or even Shamsa. These poems appear to have been directed at Haya, his beloved modern Jordanian wife. Why was he allegedly mad at Haya? It all had to do with a certain employee of hers, Remember how Latifa made friends with Tina, the Caprera instructor? Well, Haya made friends with one of her own employees, her hunky British bodyguard.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
And starting around 2017 or 18, he became more than a friend. Right around when all the international drama with Latifa was going on, Princess Haya was apparently having an affair with one of the men who was supposed to protect her. Not unlike Princess Diana, who allegedly slept with her own bodyguard. Now, let's just remember that Sheikh Mohammed was legally married to two women at this point.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
I'm not saying that cheating is okay, but an eye for an eye and all that? Regardless, Sheikh Mohammed's reaction became out of proportion to the affront, and the messages only got darker over the next few months. In one phone conversation, Sheikh Mo allegedly told Haya, I have received bad news about you.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya hung up, terrified. Haya says a number of her trusted staff members were dismissed and replaced with people loyal to Sheikh Mohammed. She probably felt like, all of a sudden, even the walls had eyes. And then, anonymous notes allegedly began appearing in her house.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
By the way, we sent a detailed list of questions to Sheikh Mohammed's attorney about everything you're hearing in this episode. He didn't return our request for comment. And that wasn't all. While their seven-year-old son Zayed was on a trip, Mohammed allegedly phoned Haya and said, He is a desert boy.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
According to Haya, Mohammed didn't try to hide his disdain for her in front of their kids either. During one visit, he allegedly said to his son, Zaya, do we need a mama?
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
By March 2019, Haya says her desk at the ruler's court had been removed. To Haya, it was a public slap in the face, an indication she no longer had any power. Maybe Haya finally realized what Sheikh Mohammed was capable of. Or maybe her own desire for freedom suddenly aligned with Latifa's cause. Whatever it was, Haya was about to pick up the baton Latifa had placed down.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Right. And she recorded that video that would go viral, the one that Louise watched in a cafe in Beirut.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Spring has sprung and I am dying to get out of town. I'm actually going away this weekend with some friends, and I recently bought my partner a new Quince carry-on that I might just be borrowing for this trip.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This year, I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades I deserve with Quince's high-quality travel essentials at fair prices, like lightweight European linen styles from $30, washable silk tops, and comfy lounge sets, with premium luggage options and stylish tote bags to carry it all. The best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to quince.com slash infamous for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash infamous to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash infamous
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
So Haya told a court she only became aware of Latifa's disappearance when the rest of the world did in March 2018. Initially, she thought Sheikh Mohammed couldn't possibly be responsible for the forcible return of his daughter. Haya and Sheikh Mohammed had a son and a daughter of their own. He often doted on them, especially their daughter Jalila, who seemed to be Mohammed's favorite.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya says she asked her husband about Latifa's video. She says he told her that Latifa was bipolar and unstable. Mental illness is even more stigmatized in the Arab world than in the West. So dubbing Latifa as bipolar effectively painted her as persona non grata. Princess Haya says she felt sympathy for both Latifa and Sheikh Mohammed. But she was basically not involved. Until December 2018.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This BBC documentary was a major news event. Latifa's story was not going away. Dubai's ruler was forced to publicly respond.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
The very same day, a United Nations committee made another request that Dubai prove Latifa was alive. Princess Haya sprang into action. Haya called her friend, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
On December 15th, 2018, Mary Robinson says she went to one of Haya's residences for lunch. Mary sat down with Latifa and a couple others. An array of fruit plates and Evian bottles lay before them on a table. They looked at each other, warily, chatting.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This lunch with Mary Robinson was supposed to assuage concerns. But the whole thing just looked off. Robinson was dressed for a stately lunch, a white collared shirt under a tailored peach jacket, pearl earrings. Latifah was dressed in a hoodie, zipped all the way up.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Weeks after the lunch, Mary Robinson gave a public interview.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Princess Haya had to respond. And she did so on a top Irish radio station, RTE Radio 1.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Haya made it clear that she'd acted of her own volition.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Any time the interviewer pressed her on Latifa's disappearance and the BBC documentary's reporting, Haya said the same thing.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
She pushed Mohammed's narrative. that Latifa's escape had been a kidnapping.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
And she implicitly denied all of Latifa's allegations from her video.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
But it wouldn't be long before Latifa's version emerged. That's after the break.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
As the Mary Robinson episode played out, Tina Jauhiainen looked on in horror. After Tina got out of jail in the UAE, she started working with others on a campaign they dubbed hashtag free Latifa. But she hadn't been able to get back in touch with Latifa. In fact, no one had heard from her in months. Then Tina was in Finland, sitting with her brother, when she got an odd message.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
This was a total stranger. The person said Tina would need to answer a series of security questions before they would give her the note.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 3
Finally, Tina received a picture of a letter Latifa had written to her.
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Before turning off the recording, Latifa had a final message for her father.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Look, when Shamsa escaped, it was so long ago, turn of the 21st century. Cell phones with cameras weren't readily available. The internet was in its infancy. There was no Twitter or Facebook. Not that many people even heard what happened with Shamsa. But this time would be different. More after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
So that video that Latifah made, it went viral. It made news across the world.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Soon, a UN committee demanded something. They wanted Dubai to prove that Latifa was alive. And some of Latifa's skydiving friends even flew a banner over the 2018 Kentucky Derby. It said, Dubai, where is Princess Latifa? Now, Tina and the rest of the crew members were released from jail, but Latifa hadn't been heard from. The whole situation was really confusing.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Many in the Arab world couldn't believe that the Sheikh would treat his own daughter with such apparent cruelty. And it didn't help that rumors started circulating about the captain of the yacht, Herve Jobert.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
In May 2018, the Delhi Beast ran an article that claimed that Latifa's escape was a highly orchestrated extortion plot between Latifa and Joubert. The story is only on the record source, Hervé's ex-wife.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
By the way, this has never been proven, and Joubert denied all the allegations in the article. And to us, this is what he said. Why would you give credit to a former bitter ex-wife who knew nothing about this operation? This ransom demand has been refuted in high court already, and it does not make sense. Latifa did not want to go back. So ransom? For what? For her to be returned? Nonsense.
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Louise remembers there were so many different stories swirling.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
But Sheikh Mo, through the whole ordeal, was silent. And remember, he didn't respond to our questions either.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
But Sheikh Mo wouldn't stay silent forever. Or, at least, an emissary of his would speak out. And then, this story would take an even stranger turn. next week on Infamous. Infamous is created and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa Grigoriadis. This episode was co-hosted by Natalie Robomed, who wrote it with Heather Schroering.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Producing by Heather Schroering, Natalia Winkelmann, Lily Houston Smith, and Grace Heerman. Princess Latifah and Sheikh Mohammed did not comment for this series. Shoshi Shmulevitz is our managing producer and editor. Sound design by David Devereaux. Recording by Ewen Lai Tramuen. And fact-checking by Matt Giles. Voices by Rajiv Gola and Lily Houston-Smith.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and myself. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle. If you're enjoying Infamous, please rate and review the show. It helps us more than you know.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. And I'm Natalie Robamed. This is Dubai's Missing Princesses, Episode 2. So last episode, we heard all about Princess Latifah and her sister Shamsa, who had tried to run away years before Latifah.
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Yeah, it does seem that way. And now we're going to hear exactly how Latifa escaped. And it's mostly from Tina's perspective. We'll hear what happened after she ran away. So it all began in February 2018 at a cafe in Dubai called La Serre. It's in downtown Dubai, spitting distance from the tallest building in the world. Early one morning, a royal driver drops Latifa and Tina off for breakfast.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
I can picture the scene around them. Women with designer handbags, sipping lattes. Men in their traditional white robes, dish dashes in Arabic. They're chatting over espressos. First, Latifa strode to the bathroom. She took off her black abaya, applied makeup, and put on sunglasses. As they departed, Latifa left her cell phone behind. She and Tina headed to Muscat, the coastal capital of Oman.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
It's about a four and a half hour drive. On the way, they took some selfies. Then they pulled into the beach. There was a dinghy there that had been waiting for them, and they climbed in. Tina's friend and a personal trainer, he drove the dinghy. They went out about 15 miles into the turquoise sea. Joubert was there. He was waiting with a pair of jet skis.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Several miles later, they reached a yacht that Joubert was piloting. It was named the Nostromo. That's Italian for shipmate, and it's a very popular name for boats. It's also the name of the spaceship in the movie Alien.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
This Nostromo was a white yacht with a navy blue hull and two large masts. Not quite the super yacht that Latifa's father owns. Latifah climbed on board. She was determined to make it out this time. She was not going to be like Shamsa. She was going to get to safety. And her plan?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
She was going to the grand city on a hill, the place of freedom, the place where Natalie and I both live, the United States. So they set out across the Arabian Sea. They watched movies, sent messages to friends. But were those messages secure? By now, Latifah knew her father would have discovered she was gone, and she worried about what he might do.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
She got even more worried when they lost touch with the guy who piloted the dinghy. So Latifah sent a very important message, one that might save her life. That's after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
So Latifa and Tina were on this boat on their way to America, but sailing towards India. But they weren't alone.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
It turned out that Sheikh Mo's office had reportedly gotten in touch with an FBI agent at the U.S. consulate in Dubai. According to USA Today, he asked for their help in locating Latifa. He told them the princess had been kidnapped and she needed urgent assistance. So this FBI agent pulled data from the boat's internet provider and they gave it to Dubai officials.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
At this time, the UAE government was also believed to be a client of the NSO Group, a cyber intelligence technology firm and creators of a spyware tool called Pegasus, which can secretly hack and extract data from people's phones. At this point, Latifa and Tina were off the coast of Goa. That's a resort town in India that's very popular with young people, full of dance clubs.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
This whole life that Latifa wanted was almost there to touch. But for now, Tina and Latifa were still below deck in their room. Then they heard a noise.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The cabin began filling with smoke, and they could barely see anything. They struggled up the stairs to the deck.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
These men were from the Indian Special Forces. One of them boarded the boat, tied Tina's hands behind her back, and dragged her to the deck. The men kept shouting, asking who Latifa was, and Latifa just kept repeating, over and over, I am seeking political asylum. I am seeking political asylum. But the men just dragged her away, kicking and screaming. Tina heard her say something.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Tina watched on in fear as Latifa was carried away by the men. Guards looted the boat, taking electronics and even Tina's makeup.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Tina was left on the Nostromo with the crew and the guy who had coordinated this entire escape, Hervé Jobert. Jobert, by the way, responded to some questions from us, but declined to be interviewed for this series. At some point, Tina says she noticed there were UAE soldiers on the boat. It seemed to her that India was allowing them to be here, just turning a blind eye.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
An Indian news outlet even reported that Sheikh Mo had called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the situation. The two countries had a relationship. I mean, India had many, many citizens working in Dubai, building all those huge skyscrapers. Tina says that the UAE soldiers had access to two large helicopters. And now Latifah was getting hustled away.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The helicopters disappeared into the air. The Nostromo began to move. Once the boat reached the UAE, Tina says she and the rest of the crew were blindfolded, cuffed, and transported to the middle of the desert. There was a secret prison there. The interrogation began immediately.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
As the men pressed Tina, she had the sense that these men thought it was all a plot. She was somehow involved in kidnapping Latifa to extort money from Sheikh Mohammed.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
The interrogators questioned Tina for hours that night, and then again for days. She was being treated like an accomplice.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
And she might not have if it wasn't for a very clever trick by Latifah. Before she'd escaped, Latifah had recorded a video of herself. She was in Tina's apartment, telling her entire story to the camera. So the audio you've been hearing from Latifah, that's where we got it. But the world hadn't seen this video yet.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
While she was on the boat, Latifa got the video into the hands of a group that aimed to help people who had been wrongly imprisoned.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
David Haig is a businessman turned human rights advocate.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
And now, this video was on YouTube. It was visible to the entire world, and the world noticed.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
Louise was in a cafe in Beirut when she clipped on the video.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 2
In her video, Latifa warned that her father would try to discredit her. She made it clear that she is actually just one of three of the Sheikh's daughters who are named Latifa, and that the royal family might point to one of her other sisters and say, see, Latifa is fine.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
The only seven star hotel in the world. Dubai is a playground for expats and the mega rich.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Who is responsible for this world of earthly delights? Well, there's one man who takes credit. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Welcome to Dubai. Sheikh Mo, as he's called, is the all-powerful ruler of Dubai. He's 73 years old, but his beard is jet black, which might mean it's dyed, and overall, the look is very stern Arab dad.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Infamous is created and executive produced by Gabriel Sherman and me, Vanessa Gregoriotis. This episode was co-hosted by Natalie Robamed, who wrote it with Heather Schroering. Producing by Heather Schroering, Natalia Winkleman, Lily Houston-Smith, and Grace Heerman. Princess Latifah did not comment for this series.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Shoshi Shmulevitz is our managing producer and editor, sound design by David Devereaux, recording by Ewan Lai-Tramuwen, and fact-checking by Matt Giles. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and myself. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle. If you're enjoying Infamous, please rate and review the show.
Infamous
Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Sheikh Mo is a monarch, but he's sort of like a cool monarch. He drives around in a white Mercedes G-Class SUV. The license plate, number one.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
He projects the image of a progressive democratic ruler, or at least progressive for the Gulf region. He's a poet, an author, a horse lover. Some horses just give you that feeling, you know, telling you that there is something about them. Through their eye, you can see their heart, and the horses is fantastic. Sounds pretty great, huh? Sheikh Mo seems like the perfect leader for his country.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
A man whose vision helped turn Dubai from a speck on the map to a world-renowned destination. A man who represents wealth, prestige, and progress. And of all the things that are big about Dubai, the skyscrapers, the overseas horse races, the money, there's one more thing. Sheikh Mo's family.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
At certain points, he's had multiple wives at once, which is permitted under the country's Sharia law, and a lot of children. He's thought to have up to 30 kids.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
This was the general assessment. But there was one child who didn't agree.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Infamous, and I'm Vanessa Grigoriadis. This is episode one of our four-part series, The Missing Princesses. This week, we're telling yet another dramatic story about the rich and famous, but this one is from halfway across the world.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
It's a story I've done a lot of reporting on, but I'm also going to be joined as a co-host by Natalie Robamed. She's a writer on our team, and she has a personal link to the country. So, Natalie, tell us about that.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
So that's like when people say, oh, these people, they were just living in tents. Like, I mean, is that the truth? Or what was it like back then?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
But when you were growing up, it was obviously more sophisticated than that.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
And then suddenly it becomes this, like, champagne brunch Louis Vuitton toting hellscape. Like, right?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
But their values are consistent with real housewife values? I mean, what are these people doing living in Dubai then?
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
And that's what our story is about. It's about what happened to three princesses when they tried to break out of those golden handcuffs. Natalie will kick it off after the break.
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Encore: Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 1
Welcome to Dubai. It's a dazzling metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, flanked by rolling sand dunes and the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf. This is one of the world's great cities.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
So Kylie scored big by selling half her company to Cody. But Maddie soon notices something.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Kylie did a sponsored post talking to her followers for the Surgeon General around this time.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
But it becomes clear to me during this meeting that even though it's called Kylie Cosmetics, it's her mother, Kris, who's really steering the ship.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
No one was buying makeup. This meant that the value of makeup companies like Kylie Cosmetics were also going down.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
What Maddie figures out is that Kylie is no longer a billionaire. She's worth only $900 million. Not that big a difference, but still enough to drop off the billionaires list. And Maddie notices something else, too.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Now, when a public company buys a private one, it has to make certain disclosures about the acquisition to its shareholders. And the disclosures Cody made about Kylie Cosmetics were pretty revealing.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I'd been led to believe that Kylie Cosmetics' revenues were well north of $300 million for 2018 and seen tax returns to that effect. But these public filings said revenues were actually less than half that. That's not just a rounding error. That's a big difference. And the thing is, when I'd initially started looking into Kylie Cosmetics, I'd also thought their revenues seemed too high.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
The first time I saw Kylie's tax returns, analysts and industry experts had told me they were implausible, so I'd initially gone with a lower estimate. But then another publication ran the same sky-high tax return number I'd seen, and by the time 2018 rolled around, industry opinion had changed. It's like someone had shown me proof that the sky was green. And I hadn't believed it.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
But then all the sources I trusted started saying the sky actually was in fact green. So I changed my mind and published a really big story stating the sky was green. And maybe it had had a greenish tinge.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
They told me that Kylie Jenner owned 100% of Kylie Cosmetics. But according to Cody's filings, that wasn't the case.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Which is only fair. She is her momager. Remember, she said it herself.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
With all this new information, Maddie reached out to the Kardashian-Jenners to ask about the discrepancies.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Meanwhile, Maddie and Forbes editor Chase Peterson Withorn got to work on a new story with this very provocative headline. Inside, Kylie Jenner's web of lies and why she's no longer a billionaire.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
This is from a video Maddie and Chase recorded at the time.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
It was just like the lip filler scandal, except instead of her lips, she was allegedly inflating her revenue. The internet ate it up.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Do you remember how many million views?
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Every article seemed to take Glee and Kylie no longer being a billionaire. It was schadenfreude, but it all seemed slightly displaced because she was still really rich.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
So one thing like I've always been shocked by is like, or not shocked, that's a little too stark, but I've always raised my eyebrow at is ultimately the net worth that you came out to in your article is $900 million versus a billion. Nobody knows the difference. Right. Okay. She can still get anything she wants. She's still richer than the majority of Americans.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
But what I was so surprised by was like, that is not what people ran with. People ran with Kylie Jenner's no longer billionaire.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
In classic Kylie form, she responded on Twitter. Maddie's going to read some of her tweets for me.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Jenner's lawyers did send Forbes a letter. Here's some of what that letter said. The accusations that the Jenners and or their accountants falsified tax returns and then lied about their 2016 revenue for the last four years are absolutely false. The Jenners never filed suit against Forbes.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Now, I want you to picture a gold nugget. It's angular, glistening, almost bubbling in the light. It's so beautiful, so lustrous. But when you look closer, it almost seems too shiny. As though it's been polished. You go to pick it up and it feels light. Lighter than it should. Because this isn't gold. It's fool's gold. Pyrite. And maybe that's what Kylie Cosmetics was.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is Infamous, and I'm Natalie Robomet.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Maybe it looked like a hugely successful makeup company that was worth over a billion dollars. But maybe its actual elemental composition was something less sturdy. Now, to be fair, the whole beauty industry has seen a downturn in valuation prices in recent years, but it's pretty clear that Kylie Cosmetics is worth far less than it used to be. And the same goes for Kylie Jenner.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Her current net worth? Only $680 million. Kylie seems to be having second thoughts about her influence on beauty writ large. In the trailer for the new season of the Kardashians' Hulu show, Kylie said this.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I don't know if that's earnest, or if it's a calculated attempt to fit in with current trends. Or both. Because culturally, there's been a shift away from the full glam makeup look the Kardashians are known for towards Hailey Bieber's more minimal, clean-girl aesthetic. The BBL body shape the Kardashians proliferated seems to be giving way to the return of waifish, ozempic-fueled figures.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And this is episode two of our series, Plumping Profits. This week, we're diving back into the story of Kylie Jenner and the scandal over whether she did or did not lie about the size of her cosmetics company.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Fans have even accused Khloe and Kim of reversing the BBLs they've never admitted to having in the first place. But I keep thinking about something that struck me in my interview with Kylie, how she seemed so young to have done all the things she'd done. You've done everything like such an amazingly young
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Listening to her say this, I was thinking, if I was this rich and this successful at such a young age, I'd just quit everything, move to a giant branch and paint watercolors. But when you're a Kardashian-Jenner, the drive to become more famous and make more money seems to be in your blood. It's more than the family business. It's the only way to be in the family.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Infamous is a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment. This episode was written by me, Natalie Robomed, and executive produced and co-hosted by me and Vanessa Gregoriadis. Shoshi Shmalovitz is our managing producer and editor. Lily Houston-Smith is our producer, and we had support from Emma Simonoff and Julia Case-Levine.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
David Devereaux sound designed this episode, and it was recorded by Ewen Lai-Tramuwen. Kylie and Kris Jenner spoke to me for a Forbes magazine feature where some of this reporting appeared, but they were not interviewed again for this episode. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriadis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Thanks to our operations team, Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, and Destiny Dingle. If you enjoyed Infamous, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I think that's a really, really good question. And this week, I want to take us back to that interview with Kylie and play you a little bit more of what I found to see if we can answer that. All right. So Kylie and I are sitting in Chris's office. It's this black room with a giant desk and huge black bookshelf. Books are neatly arranged in color-coded stacks.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And I'm trying to make small talk with Kylie Jenner. I mean, what do you say to Kylie Jenner? We're doing this other thing for the store where we're having someone's makeup done with all the different makeup of The other folks are on the self-made women's list.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
The way I remember it, Chris goes and sits behind the desk. Kylie and I are in chairs in front.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I make some callback joke about Mr. Wonderful, a.k.a. Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. I don't remember what that was in reference to, but it's sort of fitting. Because Chris Jenner may as well be a Shark Tank investor.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
This is the only real time I've got to quiz Kylie on her business. But we're not even alone. Her mom is still here, still dominating the conversation.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Remember, I'm here to write a story for Forbes to figure out if Kylie's a billionaire or not. So I've got to ask questions about finances.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
So we're back at Kris Jenner's house in Hidden Hills. I'm hovering by a big dark wood dining table, waiting to be told where to go. I'm here to sit in on a meeting with Kris, Kylie, and a couple of people who work on Kylie Cosmetics.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And anytime I do, Kylie defers to Chris.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I mean, would you say it was six figures? I don't know. It's six figures. Chris is vague or kicks the can down the road. Do you know how many units were sold in 2017? Like, is that a number I can... We'd have to look.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And for a lot of the interview, Kylie doesn't seem to be really there. Chris just kind of takes over. At one point, Chris goes off on a tangent, waxing poetic about Kylie.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I look over at Kylie and she is fully just zoning out.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Luckily, I don't just have to rely on that one interview with Kylie and Kris. As part of my reporting on the Kylie Jenner beat, I also see tax returns from Kylie Cosmetics' LLC. I speak to industry experts who help me put a number on the size of Kylie's business. Remember, I wanted to know how much Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Jenner was really worth.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
After weeks of reporting, fact-checking, going back and forth with editors, I finally got an answer. It's big. Kylie Cosmetics is doing an estimated $330 million in revenue. And Kylie's on track to become a billionaire.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Kylie's face is dead center against a blue background. She's wearing a blazer with these huge shoulder pads. Power dressing, but she looks so young it's more like a kid playing dress up. She's smiling slightly, her giant puffy lips curled upwards at the edges. But it's not the picture that's got people talking. It's not even the story. It's the cover line.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
That's the line of text on the front cover.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
This is just me using my phone's voice memo, so the audio's not great.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Kylie Jenner is set to become the world's youngest self-made billionaire. And it's these two words, self-made, that people are reacting to.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
How on earth can someone from a wealthy, famous reality TV family be self-made? Even dictionary.com gets in on the shade of it all. They tweet, self-made means having succeeded in life unaided.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Forbes defines self-made as somebody who built a company or a fortune on their own rather than inheriting some or all of it. Now, to be clear, I did not come up with that definition of self-made or decide to call Kylie the youngest self-made billionaire. My editors did. But let me explain.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Forbes decided Kylie counted as self-made because she wasn't handed a pre-existing company that her family started, like the Waltons. Those are the billionaires whose dad and uncle started Walmart. There's a whole scale that Forbes uses to rank how self-made someone is, but I'm not going to get into all that.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
All you need to know is that Kylie gets points because she started the company herself and is the CEO. Yep, she had a head start because she came from a wealthy, famous family. But according to Kylie and Chris, she invested money that she had earned herself.
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Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Kylie acts as something of a creative director, accepting or dismissing suggestions from everyone else. Sometimes Kylie completely smacks down her mom's ideas in the ubiquitous dismissive child way that will sound familiar to any parent.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Staff at her 21st birthday party wore t-shirts with the Forbes cover printed on them. The father of her kids, rapper Travis Scott, even mentioned the cover in a verse. And self-made or not, definitely not, in March 2019, eight months after my first article, my editors and I looked through the evidence and are satisfied. Kylie has made the cut.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I imagine Kris and Kylie must have celebrated this moment, Kris in particular. After years of cloying, ascending, from tabloid column inches to toilet paper endorsements, they'd gone from a punchline to a status symbol. Kylie Jenner was now a billionaire, and she'd even beat Kim to the title. A few months after Kylie becomes a billionaire, I leave Forbes and someone else tackles the Kylie beat.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Not long after Maddie took over covering Kylie, something huge happened.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
The Cody deal backed up my reporting. It proved that her company was worth more than a billion dollars. And it wasn't just a huge deal for Kylie. It was one of the biggest celebrity exits ever. But the timing of it struck me as interesting. The Cody acquisition was announced just months after I'd announced that Kylie was a billionaire.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
And I started to wonder if this hadn't all been part of the plan. I thought back to something Chris had said during the interview when I'd asked Kylie about whether they would ever sell. Have you thought about taking outside investment or selling the company at all?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
I'd included this quote that they'd be interested in selling in my story. And I'd added another quote from an Ulta executive who said, it could easily be an instant game-changing acquisition for any company on the hunt for a winning brand with a younger customer. My story had basically been a walking prospectus for Kylie Cosmetics. A perfect pitch book. The ideal glossy advertisement.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Maybe I'd been had. I'd ostensibly been the gatekeeper of the Forbes billionaires list. The person with power deciding whether they got on or not. But they'd gotten what they'd wanted. And then they'd leveraged that into 600 million dollars. More money than I'll probably ever see. I got calls when the news of this sale happened. And I do remember jokingly saying to somebody like, where's my 10%?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Yeah. Because seriously, like that's one of the main reasons like people want articles in Forbes. It's like, you look really good. And then if somebody's saying what a great business this is, it bolsters your image.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 2
Of course, we'll never know. And regardless of my role in it, they'd played their hand to perfection. But something was about to happen that would turn the whole company on its head. That's after the break.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
I look like a hipster, not a billionaire. But the woman I'm here to see, she is on her way to being a billionaire. And it's not Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the family. It's also not Kim Kardashian, the biggest star of the family, the one who started their whole dynasty just with a sex tape. It's the youngest daughter of the family, Kylie Jenner.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
The didn't she camp insists Kylie is just overdrawing her lips. A technique where you line your lips outside their natural borders to create the illusion of fuller lips. Drag queens do this all the time. Here's Kim Kardashian.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
But by April 2015, teenagers have turned this into a viral joke.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Yep, kids are taking shot glasses, putting them on their mouths, and then inhaling until the glass squeezed tighter and tighter around their lips. When they finally take the shot glass off however long later, their lips are swollen into a pout the same shape as the shot glass rim and Kylie's mouth.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
This is a big viral moment. And of course, the Kardashians are going to strategize how to respond to it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
People are pissed about it. I mean, Kylie is 17 at the time. And I imagine Chris thinks, how can we make a buck out of this? Here's what Chris said to me.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Because turns out, Kylie Jenner Inc. had filed a trademark for a new product. A lipstick, to be exact. And it was going to be called Kylie's Lip Kit for the perfect pout. I mean, why not make lemonade out of Juvederm?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
These Kylie lip kits are matte lipsticks with matching lip liners. They're called lip kits because they are, you know, two things together. In this Snapchat video, Kylie rubs the lipstick on her hand to show off the shade. This one's Candy. It's a light neutral pink.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Dolce is a warmer brown, like the color of caramel.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Everyone knows her lips are fake. That it's not this lipstick that makes them look big. But it doesn't matter. On launch day, Kylie allegedly sells $400,000 worth of lip kits in less than 60 seconds.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Three months later, in February 2016, Kylie restocks and adds three more shades. By now, the name of the company has changed from Kylie Lip Kits to Kylie Cosmetics, a sign of her growing ambition.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Remember how I said that part of the Kardashian intrigue has to do with the impossibility of knowing what is real and what is fake? Well, my job as a Forbes reporter was to figure out what was real. So I began looking into Kylie Cosmetics, this apparently super fast growing business. My big question was, how much was it and Kylie Jenner really worth?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Now, I'm not a Keeping Up with the Kardashians fan. I pretty much never watch the show. Don't get me wrong, I like reality TV, but I'm more of a Love Island lover. The competition, the unpredictability of new love, the batch of fresh faces every season. The Kardashians is all about family dynamics and the family brand, and I was never interested enough to follow it closely.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
If this was a movie, now would be the montage of a journalist rifling through papers, knocking on doors, pacing around an empty newsroom late at night. The reality was a lot more boring. I would turn on my computer each morning and start clicking around. I looked up registration documents and LLC details of the manufacturer of her makeup.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
I made calls to various sources, talked to my editor at Forbes about what I found. I knew how to do this. I'd worked on the wealth team at Forbes for a few years before I covered entertainment. And it was a kooky job.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
I valued private companies, figured out how much art collections were worth, spoke to yacht experts and Ferrari connoisseurs to try and calculate just how many hundreds of millions of dollars a particular asset might be worth. We looked at tax documents, annual reports, talked to analysts. We used our bullshit meter to feel out whether someone was trying to talk us into a higher number.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Maybe they were trying to sell their company or get more favorable interest rates on a loan. Or a lower number. Maybe they wanted to avoid a tax order. And now I was doing the same with Kylie Jenner. Me and maybe a couple hundred million dollars were all that was standing between Kylie and the billionaires list.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
And as good as her family is at altering appearances, at blending truth and fiction, I had all the resources and years of experience at Forbes at my disposal. I was going to get the truth. Here's a snippet of that with Chris.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
But what I would come to learn was that the Kardashians were better at shaping the narrative than I ever could have imagined. They didn't just shape it. They carved it, created it, sustained entirely new truths, slicing and contouring their faces into oblivion. filtering their bodies, their entire worlds, to obfuscate reality.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
And I was about to find myself in a funhouse of mirrors, lips, tax returns, and very plump profits.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
But what I have been following for years is this family's business. Maybe closer than anybody else outside the family, besides their accountant. And actually, the world doesn't know Kylie's about to be a billionaire. Because despite driving a Prius, I'm a reporter for Forbes magazine, a magazine that covers wealthy people and business.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
And soon, we'll be calling Kylie Jenner the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
in a world full of uncertainty one thing is constant the world's super rich will often grab our attention forbes has just released its annual billionaires list forbes does all sorts of journalism which they package with ads for very expensive watches but it's best known for making lots of lists of the richest people in the world the brass ring of american wealth culture
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Part of my job is to verify whether people really are billionaires. In other words, this hipster with a bowl cut was the gatekeeper of the list that all these rich and powerful people desperately wanted to be on.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous, and I'm Natalie Robomet. I'm Vanessa Grigorianis. And this is episode one of our series, Plumping Profits.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
And you and I have personally interviewed a bunch of them, or a lot of them. Well, I've interviewed Kim. Okay, I've interviewed Kim and Kris and Kylie. Ooh, trifecta. I know, I know. I've got to catch them all.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
She's the youngest daughter of Kris and Caitlyn Jenner. And she's basically Kim's half sister. She's the younger, hotter Kim Kardashian. The Gen Z Kim. That's how I would think of her. And I mean, if we're even going by Instagram followers as a kind of metric of fame, she has more followers than Kim right now, which kind of blew my mind. I looked it up last night. Kylie has 394 million followers.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
It's June 2018, and I'm pulling up to Kris Jenner's house in Hidden Hills, northwest of LA. The first thing I do is drive up to a bougainvillea line security checkpoint, where a guard makes sure my name is on the list. Then I head down a street that has lots of rolling, grassy hills on either side, the gigantic plots of land separated by miles of white railings, the kind you'd see on a ranch.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Yeah, it's really, really difficult to understand how many people want to look at the pictures that they're posting.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Yeah. And we will get into a lot more of the neon bikini thong snapping a little bit later. But, I mean, basically this whole story is about how I found myself setting off this huge debate about how rich Kylie was. Oh, my God. But I was also going to get caught up in a scandal.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Because the Kardashians may or may not have been lying to me. about how much Kylie Cosmetics was worth. I'd walked into their house, and if you watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians, you know what this house looks like inside. It's got black and white tiled floors, spiral staircases, everything decorated like a very modern boutique hotel.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Now, neither Kris nor Kylie are actually living here at this point. Apparently, the only son, Rob Kardashian, is, but he's nowhere to be seen. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved with the Kardashians, as you'll come to find out.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Kylie's not Armenian, like her Kardashian-Hoff siblings, but she has the same dark features that characterize her family. Long brown hair, brown doe eyes, the kind of perfectly round apples of the cheeks that only filler can provide. Her face is impossibly symmetrical, and she's beautiful in a surgically serene way. The day I meet her, her hair is pulled back in a bun.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
I'm struck by how quiet she is and how young she seems. Now, I've interviewed a lot of very famous people. Not a flex, it just comes with the territory. And Kylie is really different to them. When The Rock walks in a room, it's like he's arrived. He's shaking everyone's hands, giving a megawatt smile. All eyes are on him. And she's not like that.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Kylie's much softer spoken, much more self-contained. She seems so confident and out there on Instagram, but in person, she shrinks a bit. She's reserved. Like she has a wall up. But she is glamorous. Cool. An expert at posing. Exactly the kind of thing that works well on social media. Which might explain why she's so huge on it.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
The really weird thing about Kylie, though, is that she grew up on TV. Kim was 27 when their reality show started airing. Kylie was 10. She didn't really have a life before the Kardashians were the Kardashians. And I can't imagine what it must do to you to internalize and normalize everything they've become known for.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
This is Kylie, a long time ago, in the very first episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She's in Kris Jenner's bedroom with Kim. She's dressed in a green tank top and one of those little bolero shrugs that were popular at the time.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
And then, all of a sudden, Google Maps tells me I've reached my destination. Like all really expensive homes, you can't see anything from the street. Just lots of big trees. But there's a black SUV parked outside with two bodyguards. I must be in the right place.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
In this clip, young Kylie starts dancing. Squatting low, posing with her finger to her lips. Exactly the kind of moves parents in the 2000s were worried kids would copy from Britney and Christina videos. Okay, now there's something else in Chris's bedroom you should know about. Back then, it was all the rage to do aerobics with a stripper pole.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
So Kim had given Chris a stripper pole for her bedroom. And Kylie climbs on it. She swings around it like a set of monkey bars.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
When Snapchat comes around, Kylie starts posting to it incessantly. Her popularity explodes, and she claims she becomes the most viewed person on the app.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
I mean, not to be cynical, but Tyga and Kylie are doing the oldest trick in the Hollywood PR book. Go out with someone famous, get papped together, cue endless articles about drama in your relationship. The result? You both get more famous. Now, there's this idea with the Kardashians that Kris's favorite child is whoever makes her the most money. Here they are on Barbara Wolters.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
So Kylie still needed to prove herself. And how do the Kardashians prove themselves? To themselves, to America, and most especially to their mom?
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Now, there's something very gross about how our culture is obsessed with commenting on women's bodies, as though that's their only value. But the thing about the Kardashians is that there's this whole other racial aspect to it that I want to talk about. At this point in time, they're famous for stereotypically non-white features, like big butts and big lips.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Even though they're half Armenian, half white American, or in the case of Kylie, fully white, there is a kind of ethnically ambiguous cosplay going on. And the thing is, many people think that the Kardashians aren't only famous for being born with these features, but that they've made themselves have those features through surgery.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
In season six of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kim decides to address the intrigue on camera. And things get very strange, very quickly.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
As I get close to the gigantic Mediterranean-style house, I think about how I'm not really the typical fancy lady you'd expect to see arriving here, carrying a Christian Dior bag and driving a G-Wagon. I'm in a tiny Prius that probably hasn't been washed in far too long. I'm 27 years old and wearing all black. My hair is in a bowl cut and I've got a nose ring.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
In this episode, Kim's sister Chloe jokingly suggests that Kim get her butt x-rayed to prove that she doesn't have implants.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
So she goes to the doctor to x-ray her butt.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
Maybe her butt is real. Maybe it's fake. But it speaks to what's so fascinating and endlessly entertaining about the Kardashians. What keeps so many of us coming back for more. This question of what's real and what's fake. Which is a driving force behind reality TV in general. It's this disorienting blend of fiction and reality. And the Kardashians are the masters of the form.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
All of this is important to understand before we get into the next part of this story. Before we discuss a part of Kylie's body that's going to make her very famous, make her a lot of money, and get my attention as a reporter for Forbes. That's coming up after the break.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
So let's get back to the part of Kylie's body that's going to make her famous and get Forbes interested in her. The whole reason I drove out to Hidden Hills. In all of these photos and videos that Kylie's posting, all of these shots of her with Tyga, and definitely when I met her, one thing really stands out. Her lips.
Infamous
Encore: Plumping Profits? A Kardashian Scandal | Part 1
They're cushiony and oversized, like king-size pillows, and painted perfectly with a matte lipstick. But they haven't always been this way. In spring 2014, people noticed that Kylie's lips have suddenly gotten a whole lot bigger. They were once a flat line, like a pencil. Now, they were giant. And just like with Kim's butt, many people think Kylie has gotten lip injections.