The reviews are coming in for Meghan's podcast 'Confessions of a Female Founder'ions of a

[LaBarruci]

Not listened to the first in Meghan's podcast series, a conversation with the founder of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Heard, but the Mail has collated all the press reviews so far, with links. The Guardian, Telegraph and i-Paper are unanimous: the podcast is cloyingly dreadful.

The reviews for Meghan Markle's latest podcast are in! Two stars for Confessions of a Female Founder https://mol.im/a/14584193 via https://dailym.ai/android

that weird "haunting my own house in my black ballgown" video?
😄

As my old nan used to say ‘misery loves misery’

so 3/3 podcasts all have the misery health woes.

How does she even know what they have? Has she had them tested? Can you even test for those? Children have suffered from RSV for years but it always came under the umbrella of a cold or chest infection. It’s only recently that it has been highlighted as a particular virus, because of the problems of lack of immunity after lockdown. She just has to make everything sound so dramatic 🙄

I follow a paediatrician in the USA and she quite often talks about having tests done for flue etc , so I guess it's possible Meghans kids were tested:

Not sure what the point of that is though unless they are very unwell. They are both viruses which, although unpleasant, will go away on their own with nothing more than some Calpol. Unless there are complications of course but I don’t think that is the case for Meghan’s children. And it’s odd for them to have two different diagnoses at the same time 🤷‍♀️

Oh , I absolutely agree with you, it's all done for dramatic effect.

'With that comes the woman who is juggling it all and doing it all from home, being confident enough to tell the truth about what's going on, because you can't give grace to someone in the same way if you just have no sense of it"

What does this ⬆️ even mean?

I think it means “I am totally relatable because my kids are snotty” 🤪

Fuck knows!

I mean, I recognise all the words she uses, and I know what they all mean individually. I just don't understand what she's trying to say when she strings them all together.

I wonder if anyone ever actually says to her "er, I'm sorry - I don't understand".

More word salad after acknowledging that American Riviera Orchard was word salad. I don’t think she is very self aware, just saw a buzzword and thought she’s use it to make herself sound better 🤷🏼‍♀️

She's the female version of Russell Brand , never known to use 3 words when 100 will do.

They always test for flu etc in the USA.

Her kids clearly don't get the yearly flu vaccination.

Did she give her employees the grace to take time off when they were sick? I have distinct memories of her checking in every day when one of her employees (?Ashley Hanson) was sick which at the time I thought was completely overbearing.

(American employment terms seem to be absolutely horrendous so I'm kind of surprised by this approach to business)

To be fair, here in the US pediatricians (children all have pediatricians, not a GP like in the UK) routinely check for RSV and the influenzas and now covid. They're all really easy tests, take 5 seconds, and you get the result in a few minutes. It supposedly helps the doctor decide whether or not to prescribe antibiotics (and whether the child can go back to school or not). Having grown up in the UK, all these things just fell under "a sore throat" and "a bit of a cold", but not here. There are more "diseases" that are routinely checked for with teens, and the vaccination requirements for schools and colleges is significantly more demanding than in the UK. I'm still undecided which system is better - but am sure it's the way it is in the USA because it makes more money for big pharma and the insurance companies.

ETA the flu vaccine is required by many state laws (CA is probably one of them), but they're largely accepted as having 50/50 chances of being effective because nobody knows at the time of vaccination (end-August/early Sept) which strain of influenza will do the rounds in the winter.

In the US, it’s common to test and people therefore do refer to the particular illness they have. It’s very different to the UK.

What's becoming clear is that now that MM has freedom to be her best self, it's obvious what that best self is. I suspect she's probably still a bit restricted in what she can/can't do and say because of who her husband is, but that still leaves plenty or room for other stuff.

She has enormous financial backing, massive PR backing, and stratospheric visibility. A huge, huge headstart and the fairest of fair winds. And still, the output is at best mediocre, at worst execrable. It's tacky, mediocre, uninteresting, unoriginal - basically doesn't add anything to anyone's life. There's just nothing to see that isn't already everywhere, and done a hundred times better.

She's just not very good at...anything. Actually, that's not true. She is very, very tenacious, and she has skin as thick as a rhino. She takes an absolute battering any day of the week and three times on a Sunday. These traits count for a lot. She also has a singular vision of what she wants and is working to reaching that goal. But all the downsides, including the absolute lack of any talent or ability that would help her reach that goal, massively outweigh the positives.

She's like a really eager gymnast who made the team because she flirted her way in. Now she's on the team she works really hard and has a vision in her mind that she'll win Olympic gold, except she can't master any of the skills, won't listen to the coaches who tell her how to train, but just keeps trying this skill and that and demanding attention for whatever she does do, pushing herself to the front of the queue and in front of the camera. After a while it just gets annoying and you need her to move aside so you can see the gymnasts you really want to see. You can't feel embarrassed for her because she brings it all on herself and puts herself in the path of derision and failure. You're just left wondering "why are you doing this?".

I know, it's so weird to me still. Someone the other day specified that they had tested positive for Flu A.

She cannot cope with the notion that she made a mistake or that someone told her "No, you can't, no, you are wrong." And because she can't cope with that, because she can't remotely cope with looking foolish or not looking perfectly in control
This is what I said about her show- the episode in which she makes the creamer for her friend's coffee. She let's it boil over and burn, and the camera guy alerts her to it, but she looks horrified at things not being perfect and controlled, and gives herself away. She then says 'oh it's fine, it's still great'. The expression on her face was hilarious.

I have a bit of sympathy for her with this - I hate getting things wrong in front of other people, and always worry about being judged when trying something new.

One of the things I admire about Kate is she finds it easy to laugh at herself when things go wrong so she's always up for giving things a go like going down that slide at the Lego plant or shooting arrows, kicking balls, doing a rugby lift etc.

She doesn't mind looking a bit silly.

People like that are easy to be around.

Meghan is wound so tightly - I imagine she's quite stressful to around when she's nervous.

People who are never wrong are impossible to live with. From personal experience, one ends up walking on eggshells as even an imagined criticism is met with anger, sulking and the silent treatment ,leaving the other person wondering what on earth they have said to warrant the treatment. IMO only weak , vain , insecure people behave like this. There's nothing wrong with being wrong, the ability to admit your mistakes is a far more attractive trait than being right all the time.

@wordler try not to worry, people that matter don't care if you cock up xx

The problem Meghan has is that everyone has worked with someone like her. The person who can never be wrong, the person who always has to have the last word. They are utterly draining. They describe themselves as perfectionists, and love to criticise, but when you ask for examples (so the person can improve) they nit pick over something so insignificant. They are also horrible bullies under the guise of constructive criticism. Oh and they also claim they are super nice and people love them.

Fortunately the Meghan that worked with me left and the atmosphere is 100% better.

"Skin as thick as a rhino".
But wilted to the floor every tine the Big Bad British Press said sonething about her she didn't like.

I gave this one a listen and Kadi Lee is actually more interesting than the first two guests. She is a colourist to rich white woman and she is Black. After you wade through the initial boring bit where they describe where they meet, it gets better. They met during the pandemic when Meghan claims she used box dye on her hair (how very Covid zeitgeist!) and needed someone to sort it out PDQ. They talk about being masked up but then Kadi says that Meg and H were all bear hugs - this is bloody weird because Kadi gets in that she's not a hugger (also there was a deadly virus knocking around). They desperately trying to not mention Covid and all talk centres on BLM/George Floyd being the biggest issue. Maybe it was in the US, but to me that speaks of real privilege around Covid.

They have a bit of an obligatory discussion around black hair care and I sort of assumed that Highbrow Hippie might be aimed towards non white hair textures. It's not. Kadi's salon is rich white Cali central. She's clearly good at what she does and for a WOC, working as a hair colourist is unusual so good for her. She owns her own high end hair salon which survived Covid, all very impressive.

She talks well about getting investors and when branching out into her product line, she did some decent research. The product line is a hair serum and a supplement so at the moment, I'm not convinced they are particularly innovative (there's lots of talk about not doing a shampoo cos that's basic). They also poo poo doctors doing hair health and that she is obviously more knowledgeable. The other thing that slightly grates is their discussion about selling the line on because this seems to be the goal, Unilever here we come.

For the large part, Kadi talks and Meghan listens so far so good. It's all going so well and then right at the end, Kadi makes a totally planted statement about Meg being an amazing hostess. Just like that, you feel duped and that this whole thing is just one big play. It leaves a rather bitter after taste which is a shame because I felt like Kadi had a genuine passion.

All in all, it's not the worst thing, but it is still very little weight and anytime Meg contributes, she says nothing of significance. What interested me most was she isn't using the Duchess of Sussex title at all and is described as "Meghan". I welcome the omission of her title, but I'm not sure she's on Madonna or Cher level yet.