The Daily Folgen

“Ellen, have you been trying to get in touch with the royal family of Oudh?” Our reporter receives an invitation to the forest.For more information, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

The story passed for years from tea sellers to rickshaw drivers to shopkeepers in Old Delhi. In a forest, they said, in a palace cut off from the city, lived a prince, a princess and a queen, said to be the last of a Shiite Muslim royal line. Some said the family had been there since the British had annexed their kingdom. Others said they were supernatural beings.It was a stunning and tragic story. But was it real? On a spring afternoon, while on assignment in India, Ellen Barry got a phone call that sent her looking for the truth.In Chapter 1, we hear of a woman who appeared on the platform of the New Delhi railway station with her two adult children, declaring they were the descendants of the royal family of Oudh. She said they would not leave until what was theirs had been restored. So they settled in and waited — for nearly a decade.For more information, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Yesterday, we looked at the origins of President Trump’s baseless theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election. This theory inspired one of the two investigations he sought from Ukraine that triggered the impeachment inquiry. Today, we look at the origins of the president’s second theory. Guest: Kenneth P. Vogel, a reporter in The New York Times’s Washington bureau. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s diplomatic record on corruption in Ukraine contradicts President Trump’s claims.There are a lot of accusations flying back and forth between the president and the former vice president. Let us help you sort them out. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.