Episode 66: Where is Kate Middleton?
Why is the Royal Family struggling to produce a photo of Kate Middleton? We suggest there are multiple threads to whatever crisis and stalemate is going behind closed doors at Kensington Palace (specifically, in all likelihood; an affair, a looming divorce, Kate's mystery illness, and a King on his way out). It is a cause for concern if a woman - any woman - has not been seen in public for three months. Today it's increasingly difficult to fake real life events due to the internet and the hive mind of social media sleuths. We ask whether a Royal Family as a state-funded public-facing institution is viable in the 21st century? Do we even need a Royal Family? One that owns swathes of the UK's shoreline, land, and influences much of the country's development despite not really being good at anything.We also discuss how marrying into families still means you're still an outsider and only included upon certain conditions, how posh people are excellent at pretending to not notice things and presume everyone else also has a high aptitude for denial, the Royal Family's long history of mistreating women, and how the Royal's media machine is singlehandedly proving we do not have a free press and Noam Chomsky is entirely correct about how public consent is manufactured.