PJ Vogt

All I knew was we kept bumping into this invisible, sturdy, royal wall.

A force field I knew we couldn't quite understand, but which I was sure was there.

And then my editor Shruti got this idea, which actually occurred to her while listening to a podcast.

The podcast was called The Runaway Princesses, this incredible story about a royal family in Dubai, the story of alleged abuse of two of the princesses there.

It was dark, it was fascinating, but the thing that struck Shruti was the reporting.

an investigative reporter had managed to crack into a much more impenetrable wall of silence.

Not the British royals, but the Dubai ones, who owned several fancy, extremely private residences in the UK.

This reporter was the person we needed to talk to.

That sounds bucolic.

It sounds relaxing.

Chapter 3.

The Investigative Reporter by the Sea.

Heidi Blake is a writer for The New Yorker, host of the podcast Runaway Princesses.

We spoke this past April.

I'd emailed her with my predicament, and she generously agreed to talk, despite the profound triviality of our investigation.

You have a history of reporting on one of the harder areas of reporting, which is extremely powerful, extremely secretive families, like oligarchs, royal families.

Why is this the kind of story you find yourself drawn to?

Heidi was the first British person I spoke to who seemed able to see the invisible wall, who didn't tell me that this was going to be easy before ghosting me for the rest of time.

Heidi both appreciated the strange complexity of her question and had suggestions about how to get it answered.

And do you like, I mean, when you're doing one of your investigations and you're like, okay, I want chauffeurs for the royal family in this time period,