At what point do you walk away from your dreams? Kashy gave himself a deadline: if he didn’t become a pop star by the time he turned 25, he’d give up music. But years after he left his music career behind, the universe gave him a second chance, thousands of miles from home.

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

The king’s speech? That may mean far less than what has so far gone unsaid over the days of celebration and circumstance. What comes next for the man and his family?