Conspiracy, She Wrote

Each episode of Conspiracy, She Wrote is so well crafted. I get a little jolt of excitement whenever I see it pop up in my feed. Exhaustively and carefully researched!

I found the first episode pretty novel and informative, and was curious to keep listening. I was floored that the host failed to mention, in the second episode, that Prince Andrew has been credibly accused of sexual abuse for well over a decade, long before QAnon erupted. To use him as an example of ‘conspiratorial thinking’ around QAnon in Britain and then just completely omit the basic history was odd. The whole framing in that segment was odd. The tone was ‘listen to the dumb women who want to call out Prince Andrew’ and then cut to ‘see, this is how conspiracies form! Prince Andrew was one of many rich people with ties to Epstein!’ when he was literally identified, by name, by a victim, in the original 2014 Epstein trial in Florida. He settled a private lawsuit for sexual abuses in 2022. He has been stripped of all his royal duties. These are just facts. The whole fascinating and *difficult* issue that there are powerful people who have abused their power, like Epstein and Prince Andrew, who QAnon enthusiasts can point to as evidence. Like, c’mon. That was the first clue that this maybe wasn’t the podcast for me, and it didn’t get much better from there. The writing, sound design, delivery, etc all make it feel a like Unsolved Mysteries or something produced for the History Channel. I would really love a podcast that is trying to cultivate a deeper understanding of how women participate in the creation of false narratives in the collective story. This one feels a bit more like we are watching the small clips of the current car wreck of human history as opposed to trying to understand it.

I love the way this podcast weaves together history and feminism and dare I say; illuminates, the origins of so much that we thought was new and original in the 2000s only to find out we are just living in a loop of history repeating itself!

This podcast is so wonderful. I binged on four episodes in a row as soon as I discovered it. I miss the conversations I would have in ph.d. seminars, and this fills that gap in my life nicely.