Hey, In the Dark listeners, it's Madelyne Baron. We're hard at work reporting season 3 of In the Dark. But while you wait, we're bringing you an amazing story we made with our colleague at The New Yorker, Heidi Blake. Heidi, where do we start?

Well, it starts with the story of a princess who decided to run away. My name is Latifa Al-Maktoum. My father is the Prime Minister of UAE and the ruler of Dubai. Princess Latifa's father is one of the world's richest of the most people. His wives and children live in unbelievable luxury. But the family's rules for women can be suffocating, and defying them can mean brutal punishment.

Princess Latifa wanted to escape.

In February of 2018, she sneaked over to a friend's apartment and recorded this video. So I need to make this video in case I don't make it.

Her escape plan involved an inflatable dingy and jet skis and a yacht secretly waiting out in the Indian Ocean. She left the video with friends. She told them to release it if anything went wrong.

And if you are watching this video, it's not such a good thing. Either I'm dead or I'm in a very, very, very bad situation.

Where are they?

What have they done to them?

Are they dead? Are they not dead?

How did this video get to us? What the hell do we do now? She said, I don't know what's happening outside. I hear gun shots, men. And then we just heard nothing. It was just a complete blank. There is one suspect, her father, the Sheik. The Sheik, Muhammad bin Rachid Al Mqtoum. He transformed Dubai from a little fishing village. Oh, this is nothing. This was desert. Into a world power. And look now.

Skyscrapers rise in clusters, manmade islands rise from the sea and entire neighborhoods- With all this money comes tremendous power, power that extends far beyond this one incredibly wealthy city.

Because you're a rich and powerful person, you can effectively break any more you want in our country and get away with it.

While she was reporting this story, Heidi got access to things no journalist had reported before. Letters, audio recordings, and videos in secret by the Sheikh's daughter Latifa. She interviewed people who'd never talked to reporters.

Now I've been working with the In the Dark team to make a new podcast, The Runaway Princesses. It's the story of a powerful Sheik and a daughter determined to be free. It's a story of police being told to stand down when they get too close to the Sheikh's family secrets. It's a look behind the palace walls to answer the question, why do the women in Sheik Muhammad's family keep trying to run away?

The Runaway Princesses will be available soon in the In the Dark feed. Subscribe to In the Dark now to get all four episodes. If you want to hear all the episodes of The Runaway Princesses right now, ad free, we've got a special offer for you. Go to newyorker. Com/dark and subscribe to The Newyorker for just $1 a week. You'll be able to unlock all four episodes of The Runaway Princesses right away, and you'll get full access to everything else The New Yorker publishes. This magazine has some of the most remarkable reporting I have ever read. We're talking Ronan Farrow's investigation into Elon Musk, Katherine Schultz's Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the earthquake that will devastate the Pacific Northwest. Lawrence Wright doing the definitive work on Scientology, Lauren Collins's true crime story about the unraveling of an expert on serial killers. An expert on serial killers. David Grant, writing, Impossible to Put Down Stories About Mutiny and murder. You'll have access to it all. And you'll get a free New Yorker tote bag, indisputably the best tote bag around. That's newyorker. Com/dark. And if you're already a subscriber, just download the New Yorker app to listen to every episode of the Runaway Princesses, ad free right now.

From PRX.