Diabolical Lies

Order Yesteryear if you like nice things, have good taste, or don’t want Katie to show up in the middle of the night at your house with a strongly worded remonstration.What does it feel like to spend 10 years of your life pursuing an uncertain dream when the chances of breakthrough success are one in a million?What does it feel like to—finally, at long last—be “the one”?Caro Claire Burke, one-half of your favorite podcast, is publishing her debut novel this Tuesday, April 7. Yesteryear is mouthy, thrilling, important, ambitious, and, as one of my favorite reviews said, “moves like a freight train.”Sound like anyone else you know?Today, I finally get the opportunity to talk to caro claire burke about:* whether publishing your debut novel is a dream come true or a nightmare* who she was before she wrote Yesteryear* her seemingly endless years writing clickbait for a paycheck in the content coal mines of various aggregators* how she felt when we met 🥰* how I felt when we met 👹* the psychological experience of feeling like everyone’s looking at you (Professionally™️) and knowing the precise dates and times when your life’s work will be dissected for sport in public lol* to what extent it’s fair to infer someone’s politics from their fiction (a la this piece)* her Official Stance on separating the art from the artist (compelling tbh)* a spoiler-frenzied discussion of the Next Great American Novel* and a very personal, very special update for Caro This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

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Some quick housekeeping to start this lovely Sunday:If you’ve already pre-ordered Caro’s debut novel Yesteryear, or wish to do so now, Knopf wants to thank you. They’re sending custom, limited edition bandanas to DL Substack subscribers — all you have to do is input proof of your order in this link here, and they’ll ship you the bandana, clean and simple. (This is only for US subscribers.) Thanks so much for the support, y’all!Jeffrey Epstein got away with it because he was richer than God. No — he got away with it because he had a rolodex filled with the most influential and powerful people on the planet. No — he got away with it because of his wiliness, and his almost preternatural ability to charm people. All of these claims have been discussed to death in both mainstream and alternative media, and continue to serve as the prevailing theories for why this man was able to abuse young women at a terrifying scale for decades without suffering legal repercussions for it. Today, we discuss an alternative hypothesis. ”A Young Jeffrey Epstein Made An Impression On His High School Students,” by Cat Schuknecht for NPR“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich,” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Matthew Goldstein for The New York Times “The Talented Mr. Epstein,” a March 2003 profile by Vicky Ward for Vanity Fair “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” a 2002 profile by Landon Thomas Jr. for New York MagazineHere’s one of the many, many early pieces of reporting I leaned on from The Palm Beach Post; not going to link all of them because it would fill Substack’s word count limit but highly encourage poring through their 2005/2006 archivesAnd here’s a pretty interesting FBI transcript of an interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, conducted in 2020And here’s the deposition interview between unproblematic king Brad Edwards and World-Renowned Fucking Loser Epstein:Highly encourage anyone and everyone to read Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s GirlHere is the deposition Katie and I role-played where a Very Smart Lawyer played Very Smart Gotcha with Giuffre about, checks notes, whether or not she was a bartender in 2007Here’s where a federal judge decided that Giuffre’s testimony about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring was not relevant to a case about Epstein’s sex trafficking ringHere is a timeline from the Miami Herald on all this gruesome shit; cc looking through their archives, too, as well as the archives for The Tampa Bay Times for any interested armchair sleuths If you liked that timeline by reporter Julie K. Brown, consider reading her book, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story”How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein,” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg for The New York Times“Newly Unsealed Epstein Records Shed Light on Years of His Financial Transactions with Wall St. Figures,” by Kara Scannell for CNNHere’s a link to the Epstein email dump, neatly organized in this little faux-inboxHere’s the meta study elaborating on the justice gap, which highlights precisely how fucked survivors of sexual assault are in their efforts to seek justiceRead Jessica Knoll’s phenomenal book, Bright Young Women, if you want a highly entertaining and cathartic literary experience to exorcise the fury from your bodyThanks (and also sorry???) for listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comIf you pay attention to political commentary, you’ll often hear a few pieces of conventional wisdom:— America is “too polarized” — “Both sides” are “too extreme”— Or, most innocuously, that politicians should simply do that which is “popular,” which is itself code for policies that are considered “moderate”But do voters really punish candidates for being extreme? Are most “popular” ideas the “moderate” ones? And, moderate or not, does popularity necessarily indicate merit?The supposed antidote to this handwringing about political polarization is, more often than not, the mythical “centrist” candidate who will appeal to the even-more-mythical “ordinary American.” Centrism is, as the name implies, an ideology that lacks an ideology. Today, Diabolical Lies investigates the myth of centrism.[Full references and citations can be found in the show notes at www.diabolicalliespod.com.]

Little bit of a heterosexual smackdown taking place today!But first, some housekeeping:As a reminder: Caro’s debut novel, YESTERYEAR, is coming out this spring (April 7th, to be exact), and she would love to see you all at the evening launch event in NYC. One can reasonably assume there will be laughter, tears, a book signing, and Caro on a stage looking incredibly sweaty while she talks about all things America, womanhood, tradwives, writing sex scenes in fiction, etc. She’ll be joined on stage by the famed pod duo Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton as moderators for the evening, which essentially means we have finagled this book launch into a pseudo Good Noticings/Diabolical Lies crossover event. Ur welcome.Also, we’d be so grateful if you humored us with a little anthropological insight by letting us know how you found the pod. Quick survey here.Now, onto the show notes.The Usha-Verse“What Is Usha Vance Thinking?,” by Irin Carmon for The Cut“From Yale to Newsmax, Usha Vance Has Helped J.D. Vance Chart His Path,” by Joseph Bernstein and Katherine Rosman for The New York Times“Usha Vance Tries to Defend her Husband’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Comment,” by Eric McDaniel for NPR“The One Thing You Need to Know to Understand Usha Vance,” by Susan Matthews for Slate…and of course, If Books Could Kill’s Coverage of Hillbilly ElegyThe Rama-Verse“The Artist in Gracie Mansion,” by Danya Issawi for The Cut“Artist Spotlight of Rama Duwaji,” by Nasri Atallah for YUNG“Mamdani Names an All-Woman Transition Team,” by Nandika Chatterjee for TIMEThe Tragedy of HeterosexualityRead the book “The invention of ‘heterosexuality’,” by Brandon Ambrosino for the BBC This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comNote: This episode was filmed on Monday, January 19 and the edit was finalized early on Saturday, January 24, before news broke about the second (known) ICE execution in Minneapolis of 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti.Today, we’re talking about a beloved American pastime: killing civilians in the name of public safety.On the right, you’ll watch JD Vance and his trademark charmless sneer explain that this is only happening because civilians are being disorderly. Kristi Noem will tell you—straight from her lying bitch face—that ICE agents are being assaulted every day.And on the liberal side of the aisle, you’re more likely to hear that the problem is that these agents aren’t “trained” to “follow the law.”This conversation examines how media has traditionally been used to manufacture consent, and where new media might be used to undermine its efficacy; where individual identity does and does not matter when it comes to state violence; and what “public safety” and “order” really mean, and what these concepts serve to justify.Strap in.

Have you heard? The men of America are in the midst of an existential crisis. A battle for good, evil, and the future of humanity. Who will emerge out of the darkness to lead the masses to freedom? Enter, stage left: one Scott Galloway. Enter, stage right: two extremely hot and horny hockey players. WHICH OF THESE HEROES WILL SLAY GLORIA STEINHEM RESTORE GLOBAL DIGNITY TO THE MEN?Today, we find out. A note from Caro before we begin: If the details within this episode cause your brain to overheat, I recommend pausing and listening to one of two auditory meditations: * any live version of Praying by Kesha* the West End Girl album from start to finish Worked like a charm for me!Below, you’ll find a summary of the three major debates we wish to have with Galloway, as well as an additional list of resources to pad your intellectual toolkit for your own interior monologue debates, followed by some love for Heated Rivalry to balm your restless soul. Scott Galloway vs. Diabolical Lies, a Debate in Three Parts1.) On educational biases against men The argument made by Scott Galloway: The crisis of modern masculinity begins in the schoolroom, with young boys falling rapidly behind in the educational system by the time they reach kindergarten. This is largely due to developmental differences and educational biases which put young girls at an advantage, one that carries on through to college and higher ed, where they now have majority representation. TL;DR: Little girls have way better brains and the school system is totally set up for them to win, which is why they’re fully creaming little boys all around the world, and that is bad.The rebuttal, from Diabolical Lies: It’s true that certain studies have shown broad neurological differences between the sexes during adolescence, but these differences do not constitute a monolith. Plenty of other studies have flat-out disputed the premise of neurological differences altogether, alternatively suggesting that the difference in behavior between young boys and girls in classrooms is culturally driven. And anyways, given how men have been known to cut out the frontal cortex of ladies who yap too much, I think we’re licensed to say: Stay the fuck away from our brains regardless, you weirdos! It also seems like an example of profound biological cherry-picking to claim that women have an indisputable biological advantage to young boys during the educational period, when the onset of menstruation during this exact same time period puts women at a proven massive deficit on a global level. An estimated one in five girls globally and one in four in the US end up missing class or dropping out of school altogether because they cannot afford menstrual products. Is that a crisis? How about the fact that unexpected pregnancy is the number one reason young women drop out of school altogether, a stat that translates to millions of educational dropouts globally each year? How about that? Is that a crisis? Additionally, while it’s true that young girls do score higher in class on average, and that they do attend higher education in greater numbers, there’s no evidence that this is due to an educational bias. On the contrary, there is strong evidence to suggest that girls score higher grades in class and go on to college and graduate school in high numbers because they have to. Evidence shows that women need to have at least one more degree than men to achieve pay parity across a number of fields; even then, the pay gap is still stark. And beyond that, it’s worth asking a few questions: are young men no longer going to college because the system discriminates against them, or are they no longer going to college because college is now coded as feminine, and therefore perceived as undesirable? And if we’re going to worry about educational biases, is gender truly the lens we should be examining the problem through, or are race and class far more useful for exploring discrimination in educational outcomes?TL;DR: idk, read a book or somethingmental health breakI HOPE UR FUCKIN PRAYING SCOTT2.) On men being specifically and exclusively screwed in this current economy The argument made by Scott Galloway: The current economy increasingly punishes the many in favor of elevating the few. In recent decades, the cost of housing, education, and healthcare have skyrocketed, and wages haven’t even remotely kept up with inflation. For the first time in American history, younger generations no longer feel confident they will achieve a higher standard of living than their parents… and this dire economic situation is one that disproportionately impacts men. TL;DR: Men care more than women about manly things like living in homes because rahm emanuel said soThe rebuttal from Diabolical Lies: Contrary to popular belief, women are also people, and therefore impacted by broad socioeconomic issues, not the least of which include the affordability and housing crisis in America. This is to say nothing of the childcare cr

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comEarlier this month, the Office of the Texas Governor Greg Abbott quietly released a statement that “emphasized the importance of TPUSA Club America chapter enrollment and involvement on high school campuses across the state,” in effect signaling their intent to support after-school programs for right-wing extremism in Texas public schools.This would appear to be your average, garden-variety depressing update relevant only to those living where the Stars At Night Are Big And Bright, except for the fact that Texas has long been a laboratory for approximately half a dozen Christian Nationalists, high from huffing the fumes wafting off their barrels of oil money, to speed-run insane shit that ends up in documents like Project 2025. So what can we learn from studying their playbook and understanding the mechanics of their holy war as ground zero for Christian Nationalism? Diabolical Lies investigates.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comSurprise! Caro & Katie react in real time to the programming we all should’ve seen coming: “CBS News Presents: A Town Hall with Erika Kirk.”

Coming at you with our first ever bonus conversation for the public, in which we discuss the ongoing Starbucks Workers United strike taking place at hundreds of locations (and growing) all over the country right now. It’s also a conversation in which we offer a humble request of you this holiday season: Don’t go to Starbucks right now, if you can manage it.If, for whatever reason, you do need to go to Starbucks right now, fine. This is not a game of purity tests! It’s a game of numbers. As such, consider cutting your usual order or frequency of visits in half. Get your kid the cake pop, but cut out your regular cappuccino, or take the venti to a tall, etc. Every dollar you withhold from this corporation during a sustained labor strike is going to hit them that much harder, and the potential ripple effect of a combined consumer and labor boycott on one of the largest food & beverage corporations in America is hard to overstate.Other references & citations* As of Monday, 3,800 baristas across 130 cities are holding the line* Workers in 10 other countries (!) began protesting in support* If you’re a Starbucks barista thinking about organizing your store, you can reach out here* Starbucks Workers United national strike fund This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

First things first: Merch is here! Get it now before it’s gone. We’re so proud of this limited edition drop of deeply diabolical merchandise. Items will ship in mid-January, and 33% of all net profits will go to Feeding America, a non-profit nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies.If you’re a paid subscriber, you can access two exclusive pieces of DL swag by using your special password, which can be found in our merchandise announcement, or in the episode preceding this one in your audio feed. I, Caro, usually to try to be witty for show notes but frankly there are too many resources to share for this episode so I’m going to organize them by the three major topics covered in this conversation and then leave it there, ya girl has been poring through met gala archives for days and she’s TIRED.on the body positivity movement, aka that time period where we were all briefly “liberated” by the charitable and fierce activist work of, uh, corporate capture First, you should read anything that Virginia Sole-Smith or Aubrey Gordon write on the topic (and here’s the column we quote from Gordon about being “body positive but”)Now, onto the links.The Guardian op-ed on the “end of body positivity” by fat columnist and writer Rose StokesSome useful historical information on the history of fat activism (generally speaking, the national association to advance fat acceptance (naafa) is a great org)Vogue’s 2025 inclusivity report which lamented our drop in body positivity from, checks notes, 2% percent of models to 1.8% of modelsSome helpful context for the real-world weight loss of glp-1 vs clinical trialssome evidence for just how often we undergo a culture-wide chicken little moment of running around screaming that “ultra thin body types” are “suddenly back in vogue” and “it’s a dangerous new trend”* we were worrying about it in 2023* …and also in 2022* …and also in 2019* oh and by the way, when we *did* have fat characters on the screen, we basically mocked the characters mercilessly for being fat, yay for body positivity!* anyways yeah we were also talking about this in 2016* and 2012* and 2007You get the point. Oh also here’s an op-ed about michelle obama’s crusade against obesity that might complicate the narrative around conservatism equaling skinny cultureon the moral panic around eating disorders, featuring a series of fun facts caro learned on her intellectual rumspringa which thoroughly blew her mindsome recent studies on the potential inheritability of eating disorderssome background information on how men and fat people have been historically excluded from eating disorder research and recovery avenuesa historical explainer of anorexia (and here’s where I found the William Gull excerpt)info on the high comorbidity between anorexia and obsessive-compulsive disordera deep dive on the “biopsychosocial” of it all in relation to eating disordersand then a quick side door into the tressie-katie convo that truly rocked our worlds as well as this incredible comment we received on our liv schmidt/skinnytok ep, in its entirety:casual!on the magical third door/leg stool: Rayne Fisher-Quann’s theory of being “womaned”Here’s the full piece Fisher-Quann wrote for i-D MagazineAnd the book I reference, Damned Whores & God’s Police, by Anne SummersHere’s the JLaw NYT interview, as well as the Kristen Stewart NYT interviewThat’s it, thanks for coming to the show, there will be no encore, etc etc etc- This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comFeminist hysteria has replaced logic and reason in the American public discourse, or so says one Helen Andrews. Today, we dive into the logical underpinnings for this argument and conduct a close read of the source material, which does a genuinely impressive job of evading all manner of pesky contradictory data (women’s workforce participation declining since the year 2000, women making up less than 50% of corporate America even at the entry level, etc.) in order to mount an incredible argument: Wokeness is *sharply inhales through teeth* just chick stuff.Consider this a corollary to our The Men Are Not All Right episode, in that the “Great Feminization” panic is yet another outgrowth of the thesis that governs all of American gender politics: Society is failing men, but women are failing society.All references and citations in this episode can be found on the episode page at www.diabolicalliespod.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comAs a reminder, this is a bonus episode, which means (say it with us now) we didn’t try that hard Thanks for everyone who showed up to our live AMA this week. We laughed, we cried, we read RFK’s “swallow” poem to Olivia Nuzzi and will never be the same. A sampling of questions asked, and answered, in this conversation:

Earlier this month, Katie made a major announcement about her brand Money with Katie: In 2026, she will buy back her intellectual property rights and equity from Morning Brew, shutter the podcast for the indefinite future, take full ownership of the weekly newsletter, and return to her roots as a writer. This is a massive decision, to say the least, with major financial and spiritual implications — and if I, Caro, may be so bold, it feels very Diabolical Lies-coded. When Katie made the announcement public, it served as an excuse for me to corner Katie into a conversation I’ve been wanting to have with her for a very long time. So today we’re doing it. We’re diving into the full story of Money with Katie, featuring but not limited to:* how Katie became involved with personal finance* what it was like to build MWK from a side hustle to a seven-figure brand* where her political deconstruction from a capitalist to a radical commie fits into this equation* what it was like to kickstart another podcast while working sixty hour weeks* how much fun it was to meet me, Caro, hee hee ho ho* why she’s deciding to pivot at the exact moment when most people would double down on what’s “already working”Next spring, we will do a similar episode about me related to my novelist career. As a reminder, we’re doing an live AMA/bonus ep/gigglefest on Substack on Monday, November 24, at 6 PM EST. Email questions to [email protected]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

A “point, counterpoint”-style deep dive into the double-sided coin of “ethical consumption” and “ethical salesmanship” (or its alternative, “selling out”) under that little thing we call “capitalism,” sponsored by our treasured economic partners in the Saudi Royal Family.“Is There REALLY No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism?” from Clotheshorse with Amanda Lee McCarty (2024)“This feminist t-shirt isn’t actually made in a sweatshop” by Zing Tsjeng from Dazed (2014)Karl Marx in America by Andrew Hartman (2025)“Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction,” a lecture series from 1952 by all-time neoliberal juggernaut Ludwig von Mises“The Litter Myth” from “Throughline” by NPR (2019)“A Beautiful If Evil Strategy” by Chris Rose from Plastic Pollution Coalition (2017)“Leaked Audio Reveals How Coca-Cola Undermines Plastic Recycling Efforts” by Sharon Lerner from The Intercept (2019)“What is Amazon Web Services?” by Melissa Eddy from The New York Times (2025)“People Think Amazon Is an E-Commerce Company, but 74% of Its Profit Comes from This Instead” by Anthony Di Pizio for The Motley Fool (2024)This video from Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism, about whether one’s identity as a consumer can ever be weaponized as an anti-capitalist tool“Ethical Consumerism Isn’t Dead, It Just Needs Better Marketing” by Julie Irwin for Harvard Business Review (2015)“The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility” by Aneel Karmani for Wall Street Journal (2010)“Nirvana: Inside the Heart and Mind of Kurt Cobain” by Michael Azerrad for Rolling Stone (1992)“Lived Through This,” an interview with Chuck Klosterman, by David Wallace-Wells for Vulture“The Rise and Decline of the ‘Sellout’” by Franz Nicolay for Slate (2017)Shakespeare’s Sonnet 110, in which he bemoans the need to do spon con so he can make a living as a writer“In the 90s, We Worried About Nirvana ‘Selling Out.’ I Wish That Concept Still Made Sense,” by Dan Brooks for The Guardian (2023)“How We Stopped Caring About Selling Out” and “Comedy’s Favorite Truth-Tellers are Playing Jester for the Saudi Prince” by Emily Topping for Current Affairs (2025)“The Age of the Double Sell-Out” by W. David Marx (2025)“I didn’t listen to a single Taylor Swift song on Spotify last year. She still made money off me.” by Chris A. Williams for The Philadelphia Inquirer (2024)“It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverup” by Freddie deBoer (2025)“Ha ha! Ha ha!” an infamous review of Trick Mirror by Lauren Oyler for London Review of Books (2020)“The Journalist as Influencer: How We Sell Ourselves on Social Media” by Allegra Hobbs for The Guardian (2019) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.diabolicalliespod.com/subscribe

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.diabolicalliespod.comAs with all bonus conversations, this episode breaks from the regular format of this show and operates instead like an homage to how it started—sending impassioned voice memos back and forth. Enjoy.*snaps into character to method-act as Tyra Banks* We were all rooting for you.