This week, we take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey so far. Natalie and Vanessa talk about why they wanted to make this podcast, their favorite episodes including the first one (Girls Gone Wild), all the way through the fall of Ruby Franke. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Infamous show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. To connect with Infamous's creative team, plus access behind the scenes content, join the community at Campsidemedia.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What milestone is celebrated in this episode?
Again, that's infamous at campsidemedia.com. Here's that conversation now. So we're coming up on 100 episodes of Infamous. Oh my God. So exciting. That's crazy. So if you can think back a couple years ago, what was it that attracted you both to working on this series in the first place?
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?
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.
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.
I actually started a little more behind the scenes on Infamous as a writer and reporter. And what I loved about it was kind of the mix of high and low of subjects where we're dealing with pop culture figures, somebody like Kylie Jenner, who I reported a lot on when I was at Forbes before working in podcasting.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the creation of the podcast?
And we actually did a bunch of episodes on all of the scandals surrounding, is she a billionaire? Isn't she a billionaire? And her sort of Kylie Cosmetics fortune. But I loved that we kind of like take...
pop culture figures and treat them seriously and do a whole mix of both business and scandal, whether we're talking about Mr. Beast or Johnny Depp or a new kind of true crime story, that high-low mix was very appealing to me.
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.
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.
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.
I just want him to DM you back. I've been waiting two months.
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.
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?
Do we want to hear then something more fun about the behind the scenes of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie? And so...
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Chapter 3: What are some favorite episodes discussed?
You're listening to Infamous from Campside Media.
Vanessa, what's your favorite episode?
My favorite episode that Natalie was in charge of and is so amazing is our series about the princesses of Dubai.
Hello. My name is Latif Al Maktoum. I was born on December 5, 1985. My father is the Prime Minister of UAE.
So these episodes, they're called Dubai's Missing Princesses. Again, we originally published them in 2023. And they dive into the story of Sheikh Latifa, who was basically tried to escape from Dubai. And she is the daughter of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed. But we also really got to look into the story of her half-sister, Shamsa, who also ran away.
and Princess Haya, who was Sheikh Mohammed's wife, who in a different situation also fled the country. So it's actually the story of kind of three princesses, I guess, sheikhs who have tried to run away from Dubai and just absolutely the stuff of a Bond movie, you know, like Latifa was smuggled out of the city in the trunk of a car and then
there's jet skis to a dinghy to a boat and then Indian commandos storming the boat to bring her back to Dubai and allegedly drugging her. And a lot of that we were able to find out from British court documents. She'd also recorded a ton of videos as well, describing her own situation where she was essentially taken back to Dubai and then in her own words, kept prisoner. And
There are some questions as to the extent to which she's free now, despite pictures being posted on Instagram. But, you know, that story is really important to me because I grew up in Dubai, as I'm sure listeners are probably sick of hearing about.
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.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the 'Satanic Panic' episode?
For whatever reason, I kept hearing more and more raised voices, more and more yelling. It went from raised voices yelling, kids crying, to then I could hear thumps, like loud thumps against the wall. My gut feelings were telling me something is very off, very wrong. But on the surface, what they presented was an okay feeling. presentation of a regular day-to-day family.
That series is all about the Mormon momfluencer Ruby Franke and a therapist friend of hers called Jodi Hildebrandt and the way in which these two women came together and sort of devolved into very sadly, physically, probably emotionally abusing Ruby's children and it ended with a very shocking arrest and conviction of both Ruby and Jodi who are now in jail.
And so as part of reporting that, there were so many documents and police videos, like body cam footage, recordings from the interviews, their police interviews that we were able to get from the Utah government. And we used a lot of them, but there was still so much that just simply couldn't couldn't make it in. And honestly, a lot of it was because it was too disturbing.
I watched all of those videos and it was really tough and really hard to sit through watching videos of an emaciated child being found by police officers. And a lot of them really did move me to tears. It just
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.
When you really look at them, they're much more complex and the children are often the people who are being hurt.
Yeah. And to me, that story also is so much about fame and Mormonism and a woman striving for power within the ways that she's allowed to within the Mormon church, which is means within the home and becoming an influencer. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How do the hosts choose their stories?
through showing her home life but also at the same time part of her home life is her children and for me a big question coming out of that series is the burgeoning field of child labor rights in the digital sphere where I have a lot of questions as to whether it's ethical for momfluencers to be posting their children and because you're essentially making money off of your kids and your kids are under 18 and they might say they want to be on camera but like
Do they understand what being on camera means?
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
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.
That's our tagline. Everything's about everything. What a terrible tagline.
This is Infamous from Campside Media.
Well, thank you guys for answering these questions. It's fun to walk down memory lane four seasons in and to look forward to season five.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
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Chapter 6: What themes are explored in the podcast?
I don't think people even know there have been that many episodes. We don't really divide the seasons.
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.
Thank you.
That's it for this conversation. Thanks so much for being listeners of Infamous. We really couldn't make this show without you. So from all of us here at Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, have a wonderful holiday. We'll be back next week with a whole new episode. And here, as promised, is a little sneak peek at that conversation. See you next time.
They had everything they would ever want in life. They had every opportunity and they squandered it ultimately to get their parents money.
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.
It just becomes a separate question of whether or not that justifies killing them. And that becomes the really difficult part for the brothers.
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