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


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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 Magazine
Here’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 archives
And here’s a pretty interesting FBI transcript of an interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, conducted in 2020
And 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 Girl
Here 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 2007
Here’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 ring
Here 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 CNN
Here’s a link to the Epstein email dump, neatly organized in this little faux-inbox
Here’s the meta study elaborating on the justice gap, which highlights precisely how fucked survivors of sexual assault are in their efforts to seek justice
Read Jessica Knoll’s phenomenal book, Bright Young Women, if you want a highly entertaining and cathartic literary experience to exorcise the fury from your body
Thanks (and also sorry???) for listening!


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If 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 Elegy
The 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 TIME
The Tragedy of Heterosexuality
Read the book
“The invention of ‘heterosexuality’,” by Brandon Ambrosino for the BBC



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