The Duchess of Sussex has resumed her Spotify podcast Archetypes after a four-week break following the Queen’s death and the official mourning period.
The podcast, which has been releasing new episodes every Tuesday since it first launched in mid-August 2022, was temporarily paused for much of September out of respect for the late monarch and to allow Meghan to focus on supporting her husband, Prince Harry during the couple’s extended stay in the UK.
In the first episode on Tuesday 6 September, Meghan was joined by comedian Margaret Cho, sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen and journalist Lisa Ling for a “candid and illuminating” conversation about the “Dragon Lady” stereotype and the other ways society limits and defines Asian women.
At the beginning of the episode, the Duchess opened up about her experience of growing up in Los Angeles, which she says was “full of culture that you could see, feel, hear and taste on a daily basis”.
Adding that she had a “real love” of getting to know other cultures, she spoke of going to a Korean spa with her mother as a teenager and her “adolescent embarrassment” of having to strip down in front of other women, as per the custom in Korean spas.
“It’s a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty because you enter a room with women from ages nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row. All I wanted was a bathing suit.”
“Once I was over that adolescent embarrassment, my mom and I, we would go upstairs we would sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles,” she said.
Previous guests on the podcast have included Serena Williams, Mariah Carey, and Mindy Kaling. Throughout each episode, the Duchess engages in intimate conversations centered around gender-specific stereotypes and labels.
As the show’s synopsis reads, Archetypes is “a podcast where we investigate, dissect, and subvert the labels that try to hold women back.”
