Meghan Markle’s latest podcast makes for unbelievable listening

It’s hard to believe the Duchess of Sussex truly knows the slog of accelerator programs or funding rounds – or that anyone has ever actually said no to anything she’s pitched.

Meghan Markle on the set of her Netflix series 'With Love, Meghan'. Picture: Jake Rosenberg / Netflix

I don’t have strong feelings about Meghan Markle – sorry, Sussex. It appears my ambivalence makes me somewhat unique, for few cultural figures attract praise and ire like the former actor. But listening to her new podcast was an emotional experience for me; it triggered feelings of disbelief, exasperation, and a longing for it to be over.

In weekly episodes of Confessions of a Female Founder, the Duchess of Sussex sits down with women who have built businesses and launched start-ups. It’s a fine, if unoriginal, concept.

But the content?

Well, it’s unbelievable – not in the sense that it’s totally mind-blowing, but rather that I did not buy a single second of it.

The series begins with a longwinded and self-indulgent monologue about Meghan’s fretting over the packaging of her expensive As Ever preserves. It sets the tone for conversations that tend to revolve around her, rather than the experiences and insights of her guests.

As Ever looms large over the podcast series, the Duchess is yet to explain in what capacity she is herself a founder. Equally strange is the fact that she introduces herself at the start of each episode simply as Meghan, with no mention of the new surname she was at great pains to promote during her Netflix series With Love, Meghan.

Products from the Duchess of Sussex’s As Ever range. Picture: Supplied

Of the episodes currently available to stream, the audience is led to believe every guest is a close, personal friend of Meghan’s – just not close enough, apparently, that she could coax them into a studio to record their conversation in the highest possible quality. The episodes are punctuated by inside jokes and celebrity name drops, but not in a way that feels inclusive of listeners. The result is less confessions, more boasts.

To be fair, Meghan is intelligent and articulate: she’s fluent in the language of start-ups and entrepreneurialism, dropping verbiage like “IPO’d” and “iteration” and “incubation stage” into her almost-hour-long conversations. She wants desperately for us to believe she, like her guests, has pulled herself up by her bootstraps.

But I find it unbelievable that Meghan truly knows the slog of accelerator programs or funding rounds, or that anyone has ever actually said no to anything she’s pitched.

Meghan Markle and her husband Prince Harry. Photo: Raul Arboleda /AFP

Confessions of a Female Founder, then, is symbolic of a wider problem in the industry, which is the misconception that personalities make good podcasts.

The people holding the purse strings seem to think you can stick a microphone in front of anyone with a profile, a following, or royal husband and elicit something worth listening to. It’s why Spotify handed Meghan and Harry’s Archwell Audio production company $US20 million in 2020 to produce just 12 episodes of the imitative Archetypes podcast, also hosted by the Duchess. Those same executives then have the gall to be shocked when it all falls apart, slashing the jobs of people – writers, editors, engineers – who might be able to turn out a decent product if even a fraction of that funding were sent in their direction.

Podcast listeners are sophisticated, intelligent and engaged. To churn out hours of asinine chitchat in service of some celebrity’s ego is to show them nothing but contempt.

Of course, the women featured on Confessions of a Female Founder are absolutely deserving of the airtime, but I have to wonder if the people who might benefit most from their insights will actually make it through an episode.

Kristen Amiet is the producer of The ­Australian’s daily news podcast The Front. ­Confessions of a Female Founder is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.