The Reality of the Royal Pool

This episode of seearch Engine is brought you in part by Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, and keep everything running in one place Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, or running a design studio, square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground My current favorite small business that uses Square, which I want everyone to go visit and say the search engine send them is Anoki It's in Sarres, New York. It's an Asian pantry and vintage clothing store. Both the clothes and the KimG are fantastic. and they use square at the register What I've noticed is that the hardware looks polished and the software is incredibly straightforward. so businesses can set it up and start taking payments quickly With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now you can get up to two hundred dollars off square hardware at square dot com slash go slash engine Squa RE d. com slash geo slash engine Run your business smarter with Square. get started today This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Snapple Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break But not just any break. This is a refreshing break, a snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a moment to go over some of my faves Snaabble Real Fact one three six one, a nun held one of the first PhDs in computer science. Snppble Real Fact one, six four three The first search engine's name is Archie For Snapple Real Fact one hundred fif seven, in New York, it is illegal to sell a haunted house without telling the buyer S snapple real factact one, two, two eight chims can develop their own fashion trends So grab a snap, takeake a second, enjoy the moment Because let's be honest This might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple, make your brake more interesting Now let's get back to the show Hello, search engine Nation and all the ships at sea Summer is finally actually truly here And this week, we are celebrating by bringing you one of our very favorite classic episodes of seearch Engine and enjoyable well enjoyable for us, hopefully for you. Quest after a very silly question It's a story about kings and queens and the places they allegedly cannon ball a story which took Sarch enine's team of crack reporters across the Atlantic I hope you like it. We'll be back next week with a new one for you or If you just need to hear something new from us right now, We actually have a fresh new episode on the incognito mode feed It's a story that is about the pursuit of greatness and spicy noodles But in order to hear that you would need to be a subscriber to. incognito mode which you can find at search engine. show. Most human beings start asking questions at about two and a half years old. Our first questions usually begin with what quintessential toddler quer What's that The more sophisticated how and when questions, those developmentally arrive room three. And then between three and five, Deluge, the constant questions The why questions. Why is salami so hard to stop eating? Why do people lie? If you can think back, you can probably remember this age when your parents were like perfect search engines, capable of handling almost anything you threw at them. And you also might remember the few times they'd refuse When you'd ask some question whose answer they weren't quite ready to share And you get in, it's complicated or maybe a when you're older. I can remember, I swear, decades later, the frustration of that strange invisible wall In fact, I was reminded of that wall quite recently A listener had a question about something that felt Honestly, very basic, very answerable But it just wasn't unpatchable hole in my understanding of the world. And the more we tryed to answer it. The less it seemed like a fun lark, and the more it made me want to howl with rage. Actually, the entire staff here howl with rage Why couldn't we know this Why was it being kept from us Check, check It started in a stylishly appointed one bedroom apartment, not far from my house Hi Hey' How's it going? Welcome. The listener whoses home we just entered, his name was Chris Chris sends me a lot of questions. they tend to be especially good And the question he had this time is about the British royal family? Well sort of Are you normally a royals person? I am not normally a Ryoyals person. I came into this when it just felt like the entire world was conspiring to make me care. Y You know, and I needed to find my own way to care about it. Right. Like if this is going to be the only show on the TV of the internet, you're gonna find like a minor like plot line that you can get into. Exactly. I need to find a hidy hole that feels like it's my own. Yes. Yeah When Chris and I were talking, it was early summer, twenty twenty three And the entire world seemed obsessed with something that was happening in England. Coronation of King Charles In case you did not care or follow, a recap Queen Elizabeth died H son Charles was taking the throne And there was some drama attached the occasion. A feud between Charles's son, Prince Harry, and his relatives There was a tell all book, an Oprah interview, allegations flying to and fro Many people had questions about the royals about their private lives I did not Every Royal headline hits M you're the same. It's always like Prince Chatterley of the House Targaryen had a royal row at the Buckminster Dog show or whatever I tuned it the way I always tuned it out Chris, all this din, did a funny thing to his curiosity It made him wonder not about the royals interior lives, but instead about a different kind of royal interior So okay, around the time of all of the coronation drama, I went down this really insane rabbit hole looking up facts about Buckingham Palace. I guess I was just kind of intrigued by this idea that Prince Charles was moving into a new palace and it just looked so beautiful inst stinctly from the outside. and I was like, I wonder what it looks on the inside. It's probably the most famous palace in the world. We all can imagine what it looks like on the outside. It's just like This storybook version of a palace. I actually cannot picture Can we look at it Of course, so okay Pulling it up on Google Images. I'm gonna to show you the outside So this exterior photo that Crisps up It's honestly a little hard to describe, but I'm going to give a shot I see lots of Corinthian columns, many windows, most couched with these beautiful stone triangular pediments Honestly, it's a little similar to the building style you see in Washington, DC's monuments. It's just significantly more impressive. Yeah, it's a massive palace it's insane. And the idea of living in it is just so inconceivable because it's like you're like living in like P part of Washington DC that all the fancy buildings are, but that's just your home. Like, yeah, I live in the Pentagon, the White House, the Washington Monument. L it's not a home But it is a home. It's like the home for the fanciest people in Britain Exactly. Yeahah. I mean, the White House is a really interesting thing to compare it to because the White House, I just have zero curiosity about what it's like in there. I feel like I know. It's like boring wallpaper. It's four posture beds You know what I mean? And it just looks small and rinky dink compared to this. Let's google the number of rooms. I feel like it's close to one thousand. Oh Jesus Senator thirty five That's fuckinge That's crazy. Like we're in my apartment right now. It's approximately three rooms seeven hundred and seventy five rooms is a lot of rooms. It's a lot more than three. But what had specifically pqued Chris's curiosity is that even though British taxpayers have funded all seven hundred and seventy five of those rooms Very few rooms can be seen by the British public. The White House, you can visit, you can tour. If you win an election, you could live there Buckingham Palace is different The belongs to Dinists of One family, forever. And the vast majority of its many rooms are only accessible to that family and their many servants You can go and tour You want to see very much Tumble down this rabb hole found that his curiosity was particularly drawn to one Mysterious room One thing that I surfaced in my research about Buckingham Palace was there's a pool. Obviously there's a pool. That's a very commonplace amenity. But there are no pictures of a pool. No one's outside of the royal family seems to have seen this pool It's a very private amenity. Wa no one's ever taken a photograph of the pool in Buckingham Palace. It does not exist on the internet. There are speculations about where it is. So if you Google this pool You'll see this little chunk though. I'm also wondering Chris pulls up the Google search results, which spit out a bunch of screaming British tabloid headlines about the existence of this secret Buckingham Palace pool Some feature photos taken from a helicopter or maybe a drone, very high up. with one section of the palace exterior circled It's like a CIA intelligence photo where someone has taken an aerial shot of Buckingham Pallace and then they've just with a white circle circled theory for like instead of where Bin Laden's hiding in a cave, it's where they think the pool is hiding in Buckingham Palace That is exactly what it's like. And I need to know what it looks like in there So look, this is a closer picture of it. I think this is about the closest we've ever. This is definitely a pool house. So it's like It's like a It's hard to tell the scale. It's either two or three story stone building with like giant window frames, like this would be a really nice pool because it has the thing where you kind of have like Like modern buildings have like big windows that look out onto a yard, but this it's like on an old Roman looking building. And then also you get the view from an outside pool, but it's indoor and I'm sure it's heated Oh, that's nice That's really nice. It's the Parthenon with windows. The Parthenon with windows if it were just a swimming pool At this point, it might bear repeating. Chris doesn't care about the royals. If anything, he resents how much information about them has been dumped without his consent into his mind Photos of them in their bathing suits, anecdotes of about other squabbles Chris doesn't care about the Ryals Except now that there was one private room in the life of this internationally overexposed family One volume of water that had been perhaps arbitrarily made private, Now that Chris was being told he wasn't allowed to know about the pool Perversely, his curiosity roared online The reason that we haven't been able to see the swimming pool is actually what makes me feel like I need to see him I just kind of imagine that it's the coolest swimming pool ever Like that's sort of how I think of it. And for you is that like a really tall diving board? Is it like a really deep deep end? Is it like a jacuzi where it's kind of not tppid and gross? Like what is the coolest swimming pool ever in your imagination? I think it's like the rarest marble like You know, yeah, I think it's like just insane materials that it's made of For me, it would also be about like, The stair plplacement L because I think sometimes when you get to a experience a big swimming pool. The problem is where the stairs are where you like have to like swim too much to get out of it And I just feel like the royals would have had like really thoughtoughtful stair plplacement. Yeah, I agree I think every detail has been considered, including that one I assume that like curious people about the Royal syy have poured through like every part of their life sometimes in like really tragic ways I don't think that I'm intrepid enough that I will actually end up like in Buckingham Palouse, like hanging from the rafters with like a little camera or whatever. But I want to fulfill the curiosity at the hardest question. L what can I get to that will feel like an answer to this question which might be unanswerable I would settle for anything. better than what's out there online. Like any kind of imagery you could paint for me around the interior Any scenes you can paint for me? like yeah, like so and so like went to the pool and like ordered pool side neggronies. I'm like If I can just basically pull this pool. One moe more into the light of public view, you will be happy That's exactly right. Okay I think I can If that feels achievable. All right, thank you, Chris. I believe in you. Thank you. the break We dive in This episode of seearch Engine is brought you in part by Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, and keep everything running in one place Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, or running a design studio, Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground My current favorite small business that uses Square, which I want everyone to go visit and say the search eninend them is anki It's in Sareres, New York. It's an Asian pantry and vintage clothing store. Both the clothes and the KimG are fantastic. and they use square at the register What I've noticed is that the hardware looks polished and the software is incredibly straightforward. so businesses can set it up and start taking payments quickly With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now you can get up to two hundred dollars off square hardware at square dot com slash go slash engine. Squa RE. com slash geo slash engine Run your business smarter with Square. get started today This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Framer If you're anything like me, you know the pain of needing a quick website change only to have engineering say, yeah, how about next month It's frustrating when your d. com slows your business down instead of helping it grow That's why thousands of companies from early stage startups to Ftune five hundreds like Miro and MixPanel are turning to Framer. It's a website builder that works just like your team's favorite design tool, packing a robust CMS, excellent SEO, and integrated AB testing Framer offers entnerprise grade security and ninety nine point nine nine percent uptime SLA, making it easy to launch new landing pages or migrate your entire site Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer spepecialist, or get started building for free today at framer dot com slash search for thirty percent off a Framer Pro annual plan That's framer. com slice search for thirty percent off. Framer d. com slice search, rules and restrictions may apply Welcome back to the show Chapter one the outer circle When we started trying to answer this question almost two years ago It's not that we thought it wouldd be easy, but frankly Didn't seem mad hard We set the bar low enough. We just need to talk to a person who had seen the pool with their own eyes. All we were seeking was a fact as small as did the Royal pool have a royal diving board? If so, was it one of the really big ones, like with the ladder? So we made our reporting plan First up, the press office of the Royal Collection Trust The organization that manages visitor access to Buckghham Palace We told them we were very interested in the architectural history of the palace and asked if they can make a historian available for an interview To ourour delay, they responded They asked for a list of questions in advance. We send them over questions with our question about the pool artfully tucked towards the back where we hoped it would not trigger our alarms We said we just wanted to know if the palace had modern amenities Its a swimming pool And if so could they talk about that At those two words, swimming pool, they shut down like a pumpkin stand in November. Close for business I'm sorry for the disappointing response, we do appreciate you getting in touch. Okay We foundned out Next, we tried six degrees of separation We hit up Every friend of ours who is British or knew a British person Anone remotely famous or who knew a remotely famous person Shockingly, one person we knew had an old friend who had married into an obscure branch of the extended Royal universe She and her spouse, a member of the royal household, had been to the palace many times. But neither had ever seen this pool Weird One lovely British woman I met at a dinner, literally this devolved into just asking strangers at dinners about the rooyals told me, Oh, this will be an easy question to answer. There's lots of students actually who intern at the palace. and she said she knew at least one So she texted her friend, a former palace intern The friend confirms over text, Yes, there's a pool But then immediately clammed up. They said they couldn't really talk about their time there, even though this was years ago What were these monarchs hiding in their murky marine depths Our next move was to go to the archives producer Garret Gham read newspaper clips about the palace until his eyes bled Aen We started watching the documentaries Bkingham Palace One of the most famous buildings on the planet, home to arguably the world's most famous family. This particular series looked very promising. A quote, six part look at the secrets of Buckingham Palace. Today, it's the largest private house in the country with an astonishing seven hundred seventy five room includcing a swimming pool, a swimming pool They go on. A a swimming pool, a doctor's surgery, and a post office. There's even an ATM in the basement that dispenses cash only for the royals. The royals use cash Quion for different episodes. This is the story of Buckingham Palace. The documentary series starts well before the existence of the swimming pool. It starts actually with the story of the palace before it was yet the modern palace If you travel back in time two hundred and sixty years Buckingham Palace would have looked like this. We see an exterior shot of a red brick house on a country lane. Hsome, stately. Certainly nicer than your house. but not a palace That's becauseer's Buckingham Palace didn't start life as a royal residence. It was originally built as a private house by a man called the Duke of Buckingham. The private house that our modern Buckingham Palace would be expanded out from That first came into the royal family in seventeen sixty one In the centuries after, some of England's most notable architects would in phases transform this red brick townhouse into the eight hundred thirty thousand square foot behemoth that sits there today The story of that transformation is unspooled across the series's many installments. It begins to dawn on the attentive viewer as these installments roll on that even in what has been billed as a six part expose, the host is clearly locked outside of the palace gates The cameras don't film the interiors. Instead, it's a lot of blueprints, it's a lot of recreations A lot of people in wakes The swimming pool's appearance in the Dck, as a topic, comes after the section about Queen Elizabeth's mini cororgis As well as a corgi, King George gave his daughters another present, something which isn't found in the average home, even today We've arrived after three hours and forty eight minutes of punishing non pool related content at the subject that brought us here. By the time the nineteen thirties came around, no self respecting grand house was complete without its own swimming pool. And so George VI planned a surprise for his daughters, Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret someomewhere for them to have their weekly swimming lesson from the comfort of their own home You'd expect in this moment, in a sane or just world to see the dam pool, even just a still photograph of it Instead, what we get is the palace floor plans we've already seen, except now they add a green rectangle to represent the location of the swimming pool And then they cut to a very familiar by now exterior shot of the pool building, the parthenon with windows, photographed As always, from a great distance away We are no closer here than we were with Chris They rec cite some facts that we'd already come across in the newspaper archives The infamous Nazi attack on the pool, soon after its creation So almost immediately after the start of the Blitz, a bomb landed. and it wrecked the swimming pool. Maybe the Nazis were also mad, they weren't allowed to see the poool The pool was later rebuilt. We we learned that King Charles, as a little kid, would invite his schoolmates over to sail model boats in the pool, but still Nothing really about the pool itself. Does it have a diving board? a marble staircase? Is it big? Is it small? Is it an above ground number? We learn Selch It remains there to this day, but it's one of the most private parts of the palace No images of the interior have ever been made public So this was the toitality of what the BBC documentary could offer us about the pool. Basically nothing. It felt like we needed to talk to someone who actually had royal connections, who could get inside the palace with a camera in their hand Can you just introduce yourself? Like say your name and what you do? Hello, I'm Ashley Hicks and I'm a designer of interiors and objects for them and also a photographer of historic interiors. and I've written a book. about Buckingham Palaces interiors Chapter two The palace photographer Ashley Hicks spent months roaming Buckingham Palace. Take these beautiful naturally lit shadow drenched portraits of the interior rooms. He also has a personal connection to the palace. His grandfather was Lord Mount Betton, uncle of the late Queen's husband Prince Philip Ashley's relatives were central enough to the royal family that as a kid, every June, he would get an invitation to the Queen's birthday parade And we would go and watch them ride back into the palace We go and give the horses sugar lumps and carrots And then we would go up and have a you know, a Coca Cola because we were children and and some sandwiches and with our mothers saying. Now make sure you eat enough because that's all the lunch you're getting. How are the sandwiches of the palace They were pretty good actually. There were Marmite ones which, you know, obviously are very good if you like Marmite And if you don't even know what mite is I don'bt, then you need to study a bit of English culture Aually a person more intimate with the palace and its residents than most. He understood why we'd become curious about the palace in Tis Unlike its closest American relative, the White House, Buckyham Palace just feels inherently more shrouded I mean the interesting thing about the White House in a way is the amount that you see it in movies and on TV Yes I mean, that oval office, I mean, I feel like I've lived there, don't you? I do. and feel like I mean, literally I know how to get to the Secretary's room. I know how to get to the West wing. Whereas Buckingham Palace, generally speaking, people have got no idea. There's very little of it that gets seen. I mean, you can buy a ticket and go around and look at it, but then you don't see Very many rooms Of course, Ashley has seen many more of these interior rooms than most of us In twenty eighteen, the Royal Collection Trust enlisted actuallyle to document the formal spaces of the palace The Grand Hall, the throne room, the rooyal closet And what was it like to photograph it Well it was great fun, you know? It was slightly you know Every time I wanted to move an object or move a chair or something s were shrieaks of horror, you know, when somebody would have to come scutling along with a pair of white gloves for me to put on Then I was told, o, don't lift the chair by its arms all this kind of thing How many of the seven hundred and seventy five rooms were you allowed to photograph Oh, I don't know. A thirty or something like that Are there really seven hundred and seventy five? Maybe there are That's what I' been told Maybe there are. You can hear me, I think cautiously approaching the object of our interest here. I didn't want to scare off a royal relative But I moved the conversation to one specific page in this book the page on which our quarry had appeared I have your book here and it's I have it dog eared on page ninety you have this beautiful exterior shot of It's taken from the back gardens. Exactly. And so then on the left side of the photo, there's this building that It sort of resembles the Parthon with windows. Yeah. Is that the pool house? I think that is the pull Have you been inside No, no, haven't, man And are you curious about it? How to special it. so far as I know, it's a fairly ordinary swimming pool But maybe it's magnificent, who knows? Maybe it's worthy of your president elect. Maybe entirely go Who knows even the photographer who is allowed to photograph, to move ever so slightly, the most precious furniture of the palace. The photographer who is the grandson of Laord Mountbaden himself Even this man had not seen the pool When a secret is kept for long enough and no reason is given Lesser minds become deranged They start to believe in conspiracy theories T talk about Adreina Chrome, five G, Inside Jobs, the Freemasons I was not there Yet But Spring of twenty twenty four months into this question. nowhere nearear its answer A strange pattern began to occur We had by then, reushed out So many people several royal biographers. anyy royal affiliate, no matter how extended, who'd been quoted in a news article and who seemed to promising the childhood friend of King Charles who haddiled boats with him in the port And usually we'd get no response. Sometimes wed get one helpful email back, but then immediately after, the line would go dead This was the exact feeling you get when you're reporting on a celebrity and they're telling their network to give you the cold shoulder Cool, see us coming. All I knew was we kept bumping into this invisible, sturdy royal wall A force field I knew we couldn't quite understand, but which I was sure was there And then my editor Shuty got this idea, which actually occurred to her while listening to a podcast. The podcast was called The Runaway Princesses. This incredible story about a royal family in Dubai. the story of alleged abuse of two of the princesses there It was dark, it was fascinating But the thing that struck truthy was the reporting An investigative reporter had managed to crack into a much more impenetrable wall of silence Not the British royals, but the Dubai ones who own several fancy, extremely private residences in the UK This reporter was the person we needed to talk to Yeah, the only thing I should warn you is I live by the sea and so there may be some unavoidable seagull noise but we can try and avoid it. That sounds bucolic. That sounds relaxing. I feel like No, that's so round. I'm deeply irritated after a while Chapter three The Investigative repeporter by the Ca. Heidi Blake is a writer for New Yorker, host of the podcast, Runaway Princesses We spoke this past April I emailed her with my predicament and she generously agreed to talk despite the profound triviality of our investigation You have a history of reporting on like one of the harder areas of reporting, which is extremely powerful, extremely secretive families, like oligarchs, royal families. like why is this the kind of story you find yourself drawn to That is a great ion and something I often ask myself like I I kind of constantly try to find a story that is slightly less unwieldy and then get drawn into these like knotghtty morasses and think, why do I do this to myself I don't know. I just There's something that sort of activates in me where I feel like there is kind of concentration of power in the hands of a person or people who are abusing it, I don't know. I just I kind of reach a certain level of outrage and it spurs me on to really want to get to the bottom of something. but Also, this is so fun because this is kind of not an outrageous thing. This is just like This is just an intriguing like why the hell don't we know what this pool looks like? Come on. Like what are they hiding? What is so secret about this pool? This is crazy Heidi was the first British person I spoke to who seemed able to see the invisible wall who didn't tell me that this was going to be easy before ghosting me for the rest of time. Heidi both appreciated the strange complexity of her question. and had suggestions about how to get it answered. with a reporting I did on the Dub Bis Royal family They've just had hundreds and hundreds of people pass through their employment, and actually that means it's not very difficult to find some people among them, especially, you know, if you make it a numbers game and you just approach. ton of people, some of them are going to feel like talking to you. And do you like, I mean, when you're doing one of your investigations and you're like, okay, I want chauffeurs for the royal family in this time period Is it just like I mean, I assume you're not going on LinkedIn. I am literally going on LinkedIn. You're going on Linkedn. That is literally what I'm doing. Yeah. LinkedIn is amazing. And this I feel like this is one of those things where like you know, magicians should never reveal their secrets because like it's LinkedIn. That's the secret. Really It's unbelievably good. Yeah, because what you can do I mean, this is obviously like a totally unintended consequence of LinkedIn, but everybody is on LinkedIn and everybody has put their whole professional history on LinkedIn. You can go on there and you can say, show me everybody who has previously worked at Buckingham Palace And it will give you hundreds and hundreds of results. and then you can filter those U so took the liberty of like doing this. Oh we see what we would find. Thank you. No, I mean, you know, you guys could do it with' kind of amazingly easy, so you can put in Buckingham Palace or the other way they describe it is the rooyal household. I was following along on my side on the computer And it was amazing to see Royal household And then this wall of humans It wasn't that we hadn't been trying to reach former employees Our methods had been relatively haphazard Now we had this well organized database, this surveillance system that people had volunteered for Heidi filtered her search to just show exX employees, the people most likely to talk And if you do that, you have like hundreds of results, you have A summer warden, a Sousx chef, butlers, junior footman, a building surveyor. There's a guy who was the marshal of the diplomatic Corps. But then this is when I got excited Then if you add The Sarch term swimming pool There are three people who are specifically talking about having worked in and around that swimming pool. So like these guys definitely know So you have Wait I'm looking Oh my Godd. So wait, you see I'm saying I've got a We're bleeding out the names here just to respect the privacy of these peopleick was a household electrician at Buckingham Palace from september nineteen seventy one, august nineteen ninety two. and one of his duties is listed as maintenance of swimming pool plants. So like this dude has seen that pool And why would he not tell you also These people that all have left the palace a really long time ago. So like I just don't think they're going to be feeling that awkward about talking about it We went through the details of these former palace employees And then Heidi told me she had her own theory about the pool. a hypothesis as to why it might be hidden behind a veil of secrecy. I think this is just a hunt, but I bet you, it's a really scuzzy rund down pool Oh, that's so funny because my assumption would be They don't want you to see it because it's like So in America, the wealthy are constantly trying to make you believe their're upper middle class. And so I was picturing something like opulent and golden and maybe like Maybe there was an elephant there somehow. But you're like, oh, it might just be kind of a crabby pool I think so because I guess, you know Obviously, Buckingham Palace does pomp and grandeur and circumstance and they wear that on their sleeves. But I think that one of the things particular about the quQeen wasas that actually, you Rumor always had it that in her private apartments, actually those rooms were really shabby with like threadbeare carpet and really old fashioned wallpaper. And there was this amazing thing. Back in two thousand three, a reporter from a tabloid here called The Mirror newewspaper managed to get a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace for the p few months And they kind of did it ostensibly as a like, this is a massive security breach. I could have poisoned the queen thing. But actually the thing that everyone remembers from that story is that he got photos of the queen's private breakfast room And it's like, I'll send you a picture, but it is like suuper shabby and she's eating her breakfast out of tupperware Really? Everyone was just like the queen is eating breakfast out of tuppette. Like she's eating cornflakes out puet. And that was the thing. like no one had ever seen that before Hidy send me link to the story. And in the photos, I could see the weirdly dingy room. There's a plastic princess phone, an FM transistor radio on the table I have to admit it gives me feeling I've neverelt towards the Royals A warm feeling They seem human Queen here living like a retireree who just needs to make her pension last which I think is basically the situation of the monarchy. like they actually You know, their estate is huge and kind of enormously expensive to maintain and they're having to constantly scrap for taxpayer funding to to maintain these state rooms. And so the queen was notoriously frugal you know with her own sort of stuff. And so that's my hunt. I reckon this ball is rundown and embarrassing and they don't want anyone to say it for that reason. But I mean, I could be completely wrong, mayaybe there is an elephant Our listener Chris had imagined that because the pool was hidden, it had to be fabulous Perhaps there's an American bias that expects that anything hidden must be special. Eciting, better than what's here Heidi's view was that, like many backstages, Buckingham palaces could be less glamorous than what the public got to say. In any event, we had another path to try. We're gonna to take a short break and when we return, search engine. crosses an ocean This episode of seearch Engine is brought you in part by Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, and keep everything running in one place Whether you're selling lattes, cutting hair, or running a design studio, Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground My current favorite small business that uses Square, which I want everyone to go visit and say the search enine send them is Anoki It's in Sarg', New York. It's an Asian pantry and vintage clothing store. Both the clothes and the KimG are fantastic. and they use square at the register What I've noticed is that the hardware looks polished and the software is incredibly straightforward. So businesses can set it up and start taking payments quickly With Square, you get all the tools to run your business with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now you can get up to two hundred dollars off square hardware at square dot com slash go slash engine. That's sQua RE d. com slash geo slash engine Run your business smarter with Square. get started today This episode of Search Engine is brought to in part by Snapple. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break But not just any break. This is a refreshing break, a snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a moment to go over some of my faves Snappble Real Fact one three six one, a nun held one of the first PhDs in computer science. Snabble Real Fact one, six four three The first search engine's name is Archie For Snnapple Real Fact one fif one seven, in New York, it is illegal to sell a haunted house without telling the buyer Snapple real Fact one, two, two eight chimps can develop their own fashion trends So grab a snaple, takeake a second and enjoy the moment Because let's be honest This might be the most refreshing part of your day Snapple, make your brake more interesting Now let's get back to the show This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Ray Kon Let's talk about Father's Day because it is sneaking up fast If you're still figuring out what to get the dad in your life Here's an idea. Raycon's essential open earbuds have been a total game changer for me. Honestly, it feels like they were made for dads or stepdads who love being active outside To open your design sits just outside your ear canal, so you can get really clear sound, but can still hear what's happening around you That awareness is perfect for tackling fitness goals safely Plus, they're lightweight with a rotating ear hook, meaning they actually stay in I can wear them Walking my dogs, catching up on podcasts, or just cooking dinner in the kitchen. They are really nice with great sound Raycon already has over three million customers, premium sound and a thirty day guarantee Upgrade your dad's everyday routine. go to buyraycon dot com slash search engine openen to get fifteen percent off Welcome back to the show. I think you're like super off mic or else I'm I'm probably off mic. I also can't hear myself at all Chaptter four Search enginine's royal correspondent, Garret Graham Hey teacher, hey Gt. How's it going? You know? Another day in Paradise. Yeah? Yeah I amm here to tell you about some digging that I've done. I need to be honest here. We've been using the Royal Wi in this episode a lot We researched, we investigated The Ryal wee for most of these months Garret On this journey, Ger didn't just ingest historic newspaper archives and royal biographies. Honestly, by this point, he knew more about the palace than many of the experts we were talking to cool question had bit him the same way as it bit our listener, Chris Garret had gone from a person who didn't care about the royals to someone who deeply wanted to see their pool And more than anything, he wanted to know why it was the pool would be a state secret When reporter Heidi Blake had surfaced these new leads Kr jumped on them So walking out of that conversation with Heidi, it felt like she had mapped out this like crazy wall of suspects connected to the palace by like Redstring and All that was left for us to do was like, t trace that regring until we found a suspect who would talk and like flip somebody. Are they convicted of a crime? They're convicted of having seen the swimming pool of Buckingham Palace and not telling us about it yet. In the world of proodcasting, holding on to narratively interesting information is a crime. It is a crime, and they're found guilty So the first person that I reached out to was the tabloid guy that Heidi told us about, like the mirror reporter who had snuck into the palace and snapped a photo of the quQueen's corn fllakes or whatever U But it turned out that the tabloid had dealt with someillegal action after this piece came out. and so they had actually agreed not to publish any more information from their reporting whichich meant that The tabloid guy was out. Yeah. But the next step that I took was just to start reaching out to the people on LinkedIn. And as reporter Heidi Blake mentioned, there's basically three people who had mentioned the swimming pool on their profile. There's a twenty something project manager There's a retired electrician And there is a maintenance officer turned arom theraapist, all of whom were one time employees of Buckingham Palace, but are no longer maintenance officer turned aroma theraapist. That is right. Life has so many chapters. It does. That's not a chapter you expect to find in a book about Buckingham Palace, but it's one that I was pretty charmed to find. So okay, so you're poking around So yeah, the first guy I decided to reach out to is the twenty something proroject manager. He worked at the palace just a few years ago, and the clue on his profile that he might have the goods that we're looking for is that he was involved with realizing, quote, substantial carbon saving opportunities for the onsite swimming pool plant operation. Okay, that feels feels likesing. It feels like this guy would have seen the p poor onign So I like sloouted this guy out on the internet. I learned pretty quickly that he's ex military and also happened to share the name of a fourteenth century Earl of Pembroke, whichich to me, those are two details that kind of suggest like this guy might have some sympathies towards the royals and maybe he won't be willing to break the privacy for the sake of an American podcast. It's so funny how producing a podcast is kind of like online dating where You're cold approaching someone and you're looking at their little footprint and you're just like, arere they gonna like for me? Are they gonna to talk to me? Like it's sort of the same like Drawing a ping from a couple dots type of thing. Yeah, And I reach out several times actually, no response, tootally fine. we have more suspects. I move on to the next one. Okay. The next person I reach out to is the retired electrician. He works there from the seventies to the nineties, which on the one hand, it means like it's been a while since this guy's seen the pool, but on the other hand, it means like he was definitely there before the NDA era. And so maybe he's more keen to chat with us about it I reach out LinkedIn and on Facebook again Zero responsive. Okay. so then why? I go to the final person on LinkedIn. And honestly, this is the one that I'm kind of the most optimistic about because again, this is the maintenance officer turned aroma therapist. Oh, okay. ye. The LinkedIn bio just reads, quote, using aromas to support positive mental health, which like not only is this a person who is in a totally different field of work now, but this is like a decidedly non royal Line of work Okay. And so I'm like, we found our person. I just need to get this person to see the note that I send. And so I reach out on every single platform I could find her on And this one actually turned out kind of interesting. She said Nothing. So what was not a single word of reply? There was nothing interesting about it. It was just a failed attempt at a joke. I see,. But anyway, the point of all this is just to say that LinkedIn was kind of a bust. There were other people that I reached out to who didn't want to talk to us. But I want to tell you the story of one person who would talk to Please. In the world of royal servants, there are few more controversial figures than Paul Burrell Pul is a fascinating character. As Diana's butler and footman to the Qeen, he served the royal family for over twenty years. O one manistory. Chapter five Ch But Paul Burrell spent twenty years working alongside the royal. He started as a footman to the quQueen before becoming Princess Diana's butler, regularly crossing paths with Prince Philip. So this is a person that came up in multiple conversations that we had, but on and off the record. and it's a guy who's kind of infamous in British tabloids He was Diana's former butler and after her death, he kind of presumably sees an opportunity and kind of cashes in on his access to the royal family when the entire world is obsessed with Diana and the circumstances surrounding her death. And so he writes a book about his time working on staff for Diana, which he did without royal approval, which I think is a big no no. And so you know, even now like thirty years removed from Diana's death or however long it is, like he's still taking lotots of media opportunities to talk about his time in the royal household. In interviews, he speaks with this kind of like high school theater drama I feel her presence and she's often in my dreams. I don't live in a mausoleum to Diana. I live in this world and my life has changed as well But you can never forget the people who touched your heart All this to say, he seems like the perfect candidate to Tell us what the swimming pool at Buckingham Palace looks like S your Jo Jo. It's a sh out of an em And after a couple of weeks, an agent got back to us, which is kind of unusual for a search engine booking request. L we're not used to dealing with agents. like it's a podcast, but let me just read you the message that the agent sent me Please Hi girret. I hope you're well Many thanks for your inquiry, spelled with an E, and apologies for the delay in getting back to you Can you please let me know what fee you have for the recording M sters And of course, by fee, that agent means that we need to pay money to do an interview with the Butler. And at search enngine, I think most journalists in the US, we don't pay for information, meaning we don't pay sources to talk to us. It's like a generally accepted norm. There's exceptions. There's people who either just do it, like I think tabloids will do it. actually In a lot of documentary film, they won't pay someone for an interview, but they'll like pay them a lot of money for their childhood photos and then ask them to also be interviewed, which is kind of a workaround. but like, Generally speaking, there's this idea rightly or wrongly that You don't pay sources for interviews because the idea is that Once you're paying somebody to say something, You both have power over them, which may or may not be a problem But also they have an incentive to say what you want to hear. Right. But I should also say like there does seem to be like a real non malicious cultural difference here, which is just like There are different boundaries in different countries around journalism. and one of those differences in the UK is that reporters are a bit more comfortable offering sources like some compensation for information. L I found some poll data saying that fifty three percent of reporters in the UK believe paying people for confidential information is justified on occasion compared to five percent of journalists in the US. Well onene can't help but notice that it There's very few generally agreed upon ethical rules for journalists in the United States. and one of the few that we all seem to abide by is the one that involves us getting to be cheap. So if you told me that you know, in the more progressive and sophisticated future, we realize that this rule didn't make a lot of sense. and'd be like o, okay, sure. And on the other like this this is also just a guy who has sustained an entire career off of selling the information that he does have. So it shouldn't be totally surprising that he's asking for this. Like in some ways, it's a perfect reasonable request But the agent ends up offering us the butler for fif fiveteen hundred pounds, which is like two thousand ish dollars. We politely decline Actually it was okay because this is around the same time that we're about to fly to England. Chapter six American tourists in London So we weren't going there to report the story per se. We were going there for another commitment. like Sur shouldnt been invited to speak at a podcast conference, but we'd said yes because we knew Buckingham Palace was an ignore And honestly, like it's funny that you say it that way because that is kind of the extent that I thought about it. I was just like, oh, it's over there. We'll be closer to the object of our reporting S, is that what is that little tan building to the right of the palace I don't think that's the swimming pool. Oh, D. Mbe Honestly, it's a little embarassing listening back to this that we just kind of hopped on the tube and went to Buckingham Palace without a reporting plan. I mean, we're walking towards it, I suppose we'll get more information. But that's not the pool. No. Well, the pool has glass on the outside. Oh right, this looks a little more mausoleumy We show up, there is a massive crowd. There's like a royal marching band like playing brass instruments as we walk by The bad news was like the reason why it was such a madhouse outside of the palace gates We quickly realized was that we happened to be there in a month when the palace was closed to tourists, which meant for us that We weren't going to be able to get inside of the palace Okay, we're passing around sort of, would you say this at the back of Buckingham Palace? We're on the Oh gosh, let me get my directions down So we walk around the perimeter of the palace, literally like looking at my phones, Google maps to like see how many feet we were away from the indoor pool. As the crow flies, we're two hundred forty nine feet away From the building that supposedly has a swimming pool Google Match is giving me a route Yeah be very bloody by the time you're there. There's also And we were trying to figure out, I think this was your idea Let's from the exterior be as close to the pool as we can. I just wanted to know if we could see it, like if there was some gap in the shrubbery that would allow us like a glimpse of the building in real life. It was a noble idea. There wasn't. There wasn't. It sounds nice though. There's nice birds chirping Oh yeah, onn the other side of the wall, I'm sure life's great People are swimming Hang it out. What have you just heard somebody yell with a French accent can involve. So that was a tip number one, which was in May. but honestly I personally left feeling not that disheartened because I knew I was going to be back in London because I had a friend getting married there in August. and so I knew I'd have another shot. And also August happens to be a month that Buckingham House is open to tourists And so I booked not one, but two palace tours while I was going to be over there Welcome to Buckingham Palace. Please pay attention whileilst we give you some useful information so you can make the most of your visit And I show back up.. my second time at Buckingham Palace. two months. And the first tour I had booked was like the actual inside of the palace, because much of the interiors is that they'll show to visitors And so I walk up the side entrance and I go through what's pretty much airport style security. Before you pass through our airport style security, Please remove anything metal or electronic from your pockets. There's metal detectors, there's bag screeners, an announcement that no photos will be allowed inside the palace. But I put my iPhone in the front pocket of my shirt so I can like talk to myself and take notes as I'm walking through the palace like audio diary style. And so I enter the palace, I walk down what's actually kind of like a dingy hallway that's poorly lit that pretty quickly opens up into The fancy part of the palace Okay, we are officially inside the palace It's very quiet in here And the first thing I see is the inner courtyard. which is the first time you get a sense of just how massive this place is. I think it's something like ball field in both length and width. Yeah. And so you get shuffled along from there into what they call the Grand Hall, which is exactly what it sounds like. Tour more or less proceeds as you would expect. I mean you're going through the state rooms, which are the fancy rooms that have historically been open to the public and they're all filled with like impossibly expensive looking decor, a lot of gold, a lot of gold And maybe the coolest grandfather clock I've ever seen. Honestly, I had the feeling like I was walking in side of Ashley Hicks's book. It's funy, as you were describing, it was like, this is exactly my mental image of it. And then I remember like, yes, you have a mental image because you've flicked photos of this Did you feel like Had you walked past a hallway with like a little velvet stanion in front of it, had that hallway had a door with the word pool on it, you would have been tempted to just book. I definitely thought on multiple occasions, like I think I can outrun some of these guys. There were like secret looking doorways off to the side. I was curious where some of these things went. I think that they mostly just lead to servant corridors where food and other items get ferried through the palace that visitors can't see So I'm kind of like, shuffling somewhat quickly through this first tour because The second tour is in the back Gardens. And the back Gardens is where building that we're interested in sits. Like the back of the palace is where the swimming pool is. So then I show up to like the sign that says this is where the second tour starts. And I'm about to start the garden tour Wh you won't believe happens to start directly in front of the swimming pool Seriously, So could you like see through the windows? I was standing on the steps. Obviously I'm walking directly up to it to try to look in, but it's very opaque two way glass. Like my assumption is you're inside the pool and you can look out on the beautiful back gardens of Buckingham Palace, but from the outside you canot see anything. L the panes just look like ink stained squares of glass. Which was honestly so tantalizing. like a quarter inch of glass is what was separating me from the answer to this question that I have been th for Fr. It was so frustrating. And to make matters worse, we start the second tour and the tour guide who's like this kindly British woman from Essex with long gray hair. And the first thing she says is If you look to your right, there's the indoor swimming pool. I've actually swim in it. What's the new king has actually turned down the temperature a few degrees, so I'm swimming in at less, but there's the pool house right there And so for the rest of this ninety minute tour, I'm thinking the whole time, please say more about the swimming pool, please say more about the swimming pool please say more about swimmingool But but instead she's pointing out like the rare shrubbery that they have lining the gardens and she's pointing to the rose garden and the marmalade plants and the tennis courts, which are actually kind of cool, if a little dingier than I would have expected And at the end of the tour, I'm kind of trying to play a cool, but I go up to her and I ask, like, hey, you mentioned that you had swim in the Buckingham Palace swimming pool? Yeah. Like I'm so curious. what's it like in there And she tells me It's just a normal swimming pool Four of us have to swim in it at the same time in case there are any accidents There's a squash cord in there as well. and immediately gets drowned out by hordes of other people on the tour asking her questions about the rose garden and marmalade plants. And that's the only information I get from her Wait, four of us have to swim in it at the same time in case there's accidents? I don't have any like decoder ring to interpret these words. These are just the precious few words that I gleaned from this like wealth of information before she was cut off from me forever. Okay. So what we had here was like I mean, as you said, the mission was to bring the swimming pool like one more mode into the light of public view.. I feel like we've done that And so I talked to Suthy and we were like, yeah, I think we have enough to answer the question. L we know enough to answer Chris's specific question. It's just a normal swimming pool, like not some Fancy marble swimming pool At this point, we still didn't know why it was a secret. Yeah, the world, we understand is fundamentally unknowable, but you want to think that like some things could be known So I went back LinkedIn. Okay And this time instead of just searching for the keywords Buckingham Palace in swimming pool, I search for the keywords, Buckingham Palace and podcast. What? And it turns out there's one former employee of Buckingham Palace. Also Has a podcast. Of course. Oh my God, of course The thing that is wrong with the world, which is that there's too many podcasts is also the thing that's right with the world, which is that if you have a question, you can find someone who likes to answer questions into a microphone. Of course the suspect we were looking for the whole time was another podcaster. The worst kind of criminal there is We' going talk toorr Chapter seven Secrets of the Palace Hello Hi PJ. how are you I'm good, how are you Sing very well I've never done anything like this before.s exciting. I am excited to be talking to you. It's been a long journey to get here. I hear there's a lot that goes into these episodes by the sounds that you go really deep on really niche topics. I had to look at some and listen to a few since Garrett messaged me Yeah. Yeah, I mean you are the person at the bottom of our rabbit hole this week There's easually where people find me to be honest This is Rithic Kara host of the podcast Football for sale, which is actually about soccer. and also a former employee of the Royal household What did you think about the house before you worked there? I think you have a really weird relationship with it growing up in the UK. L you sort of see it as this place that is shrouded in a lot of mystery. and most of the time you see it is just on the TV when The royals are coming in and out of it. I don't think a lot of British people actually do go inside of it because you sort of just walk by it and you're like, oh, that's just there And when I got the job, I was actually that was the first time I' ever been inside And then as soon as you go inside your' light This place is insane. And how did you end up working there Um I was During my first year of university and My dad I said you need to get a job over the summer because university holidays are much longer than school holidays. So he was like, you need to get a job You're nineteen years old, do something with your life. So I was like, okay, we literally went on Google, search summer jobs in London and it was the first thing that came up and it was the last day of applications. And so I just Really Yeah. Yeahah, it literally just said, like retail assistant Buckingham Palace. And I was like, okay, sure And so I just put an application, actually went to the palace for my interview and then got a call a couple of days later, saying yeah, we want you to come and work here. So in July of twenty nineteen, Rithk showed up for the first day of his Royal summer gig And so what was your official title once you began It's not glamorous. It was just retail assistant When Buckingham Palace opened in the summer for guests, they have a shop, like a temporary pop up shop. I say temporary. It's a massive structure that they put in the garden But only for those three months and you go and work in this shop in the garden for three months? sort of just like as a Rail asssistant but like quasi Tour guide as well, because People still obviously you do get a bit of background and people still want to talk to you about it when they're in the shop And did it feel like, you know, you describeed the title as unglamorous? I've worked in retail jobs before and I didn't find it too exciting. Did you feel more like I'm working a retail job Bughham Palace, which feels like I'm working a retail job Buckingham palace. Like did the specialness of a palace permeate your days? I think you don't see it until you do something else. So that was the first job I'd ever had And then I went and worked the year later at my local Tesco', which is like your Spermarket Yeah, supermarket. And I was doing like fruit and veg. so I was doing food stuff. And at that point I was thinking about I was like A year ago I was working in Bucham Palace and then it hits you and you're like, wow, I got a level of access to this place most people in their lifetime will never get. There's also the thing I can like over my family members a lot, which is quite fun And when you started working there like Did anyone ever give you like a talk about secrecy and privacy, like what you were allowed to say about what you saw and what you weren't or like what questions you should answer and what you shouldn't? Yeah, so there was a lot about that, right? because obviously you're working for this institution that a lot of people would to know about. So obviously I'm not going to sit here and give you like a walkthrough of exactly how many steps it takes to get from one place to one place and exactly what doors that you have to go through to go from one place to another place. Obviously I can't do that U I think also a lot of it was about like journalism and the media because the entrance we go in and out of was obviously known as being the entrance that people who work there will go out of and they said like People will see you, people will know that you work there and they don't care what you do or the fact that you just work in the shop donon't answer questions. Like if people want to come and ask you about stuff. go and talk to us, as you may know with the royal family, there's always a story about them in the papers. So for example, when I was working there, there was one particular scandal that was going on at the time, which I will let you figure out which one it was because it was quite a big one that I think people still talk about today involved a man from your homeland T And what time period was this? This was twenty nineteen Okay, when I you're talking to the most Royal dumb person pererhaps in North America but but there was an ongoing scandal that everybody but me knows about Yeah, there was an ongoing scandal about a man in America who owned an island and one of the particular British royals Oh, a man who owned the island I do know that one. Okay. Yeah. yeah, yeah yeah. In case you are as slow as I am, This was a scandal that involved a man whose name rhymes with Effrey Jepstein We got a big talking too about anyyone evenven if they are just like seemingly a customer in the shop. Anything about that, you do not say a word. You're like one of the guards with the Fuzzy hats. Yeah, you could do that, but youd just be like, nothing and you just move on because what people will do is they will say A royal spokesperson said this. Oh. So if you, nineteen years old wororking is j found off Google If you were being indiscreet and I were buying a royalty set and I asked you and you werere like, I don't know, it sounds pretty messed up though then If I worked for a British tabloid, the next day would say Royal spokesperson says scandal pretty messed up Yeah that's the risk that you're playing with It made sense that even an employee as junior as Rithic had been media trained Be after all There was treasure hidden in the palace information valuable information that could be pillaged by traitorist butlers, raaiders who left the palace with novel facts about the royal's private lives An easy way to make a living Hence these are res Rithic is willing to talk to us. Not for money, not for gossip. But because frankly He'd sess us out And he could tell We legitimately had zero interest in the royals. or in their private lives. that we had only ever really wanted to know about one thing What can you tell me about The swimming pool by Gam Palace the actual question. Yes. And so Yeah, it's weird. L there is one like I think that that's the main thing. You're like You wouldn't have thought about it. Oh, I've thought about it. Have you Have you seen it I have seen it. You've seen it with your own eyes Yeah Well, yeah, because generally when people work in government or in those kind of positions is because you work in such secure sites. a lot of the facilities you need are on site So It makes sense that the people who work there get access to a swimming pool in a gym So you don't have to leave the site to go Do it. And it's I think whoever put this question in may not like this answer, but it's just a swimming pool. L it's a tiled surface with a swimming pool in the middle of it with changing rooms and a gym attached to it in a building Take a moment. to is'ink in Parthenon with Windows builduilding, where we'd imagined a spacious swimming pool surrounded by space and light and generously poured poolside negrronis We'd imagine that as a royal po. sometimes The family allowed their staff to swim in Rutthick was saying This is the staff wall and the attached staff gem With amenities like what you'd find at your local YMCI is what was hidden behind the impenetrabably dark glass When you say justice swimming pool, like I open the door. Yeah. I walk in. Yeah, just like, what do I see You are at your local gym. with the swimming pool And are people swimming like on a day where you walk in or they' just like's so you're saying Yeahah, people work at Bham Palace 're swimming in the pool. Yeah, if you wanted to. ye Did you swim in the pool No, I didn't join the gym because I wasn't living close enough to the palace to make it make sense You could have I could have. yeah that was why we went there because they were like, Ohh you can join this gym if you want to. But yeah I could have done And is their diving board? Diving boards are very American. There isn't like diving boards are American. We fought a war for a diving board. You know, there's like little like springy you don't mean like there's springy diving boards. Yeah Yeah, we don't have them I'd heard the rumor there's squash court in the house at the pool, which would make sense because the gym is that true Yeah tellell me about the gym It's again, it's just pretty it's a government funded gym. It's just the basics that you need in a gym. It's got your machines, it's got your free weeights, it's got your treadmills and other cardio sort of machines It's not like this is the leg machine from like King Whatever, theVth and it was liberated in this war. It's like that part of the palace breaks the rules of everything is Buckingham Palace in Buckingham Palace. Yes Our research found that apparently, in nineteen seventy, Buckingham Palace was registered as a grade one building A designation meant to preserve buildings of quote exceptional architectural, historical or national significance The provision would, among other things, prevent some future mad king from tearry out Bucyham's Crinthine columns to make room for a jacuzzi, or a nice flat screen