From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses
Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.4 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake joins In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran to tell the story of the royal women who risked everything to flee the brutality of one of the world’s most powerful men. In four episodes, drawing on thousands of pages of secret correspondence and never-before-heard audio recordings, “The Runaway Princesses” takes listeners behind palace walls, revealing a story of astonishing courage and cruelty.
“The Runaway Princesses” is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. To keep listening, follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts or via this link https://link.chtbl.com/itd_f
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Alex. You might recall that the team that makes the award-winning podcast, In The Dark, joined us here at The New Yorker. |
| 0:08.1 | Season three of In The Dark is coming soon, and in the meantime, they've paired up with the New Yorker's Heidi Blake and produced an extraordinary miniseries based on Heidi's investigative reporting into Dubai's powerful royal family. |
| 0:20.5 | It's called The runaway princesses. |
| 0:22.7 | Keep listening for an excerpt of the first episode, which is available now wherever you get your |
| 0:26.5 | podcasts. |
| 0:28.6 | Hello. |
| 0:30.0 | My name is Latif Al-Makhton. |
| 0:31.8 | I was born on December 5, 1985. |
| 0:36.0 | My father is the prime minister of UAE and the ruler of Dubai, |
| 0:40.8 | Muhammad bin Rashid Saeed al-Mactoom. |
| 0:44.2 | In February of 2018, a princess from the royal family in Dubai sneaked over to a friend's |
| 0:50.8 | apartment and recorded a video. |
| 0:53.6 | I'm making this video because it could be the last video I make. |
| 0:58.0 | It was part of a secret plan that took her years to put together, to escape from Dubai. |
| 1:07.0 | The plan involved an inflatable dinghy and jet skis and a yacht secretly waiting out in the Indian Ocean. |
| 1:15.3 | Princess Latifah left her video with friends. |
| 1:17.9 | She told them to release it if something went wrong. |
| 1:20.7 | And if you are watching this video, it's not such a good thing. |
| 1:25.1 | Either I'm dead or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation. |
| 1:33.1 | She said, I don't know what's happening outside. |
| 1:35.0 | I hear gunshots, men. |
| 1:37.1 | And then we just heard nothing. |
... |
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