Introducing American Grift: A New Podcast
A number of running threads quickly made themselves apparent during the seven months I spent in 2017 crisscrossing America: loneliness, disconnect, virulent xenophobia and racism, conspiratorial thinking. But the one that surprised me the most, perhaps, was that of grift.
Everywhere I went, I was confronted by some kind of scam — powdered drink supplement multilevel marketing schemes, bullshit “theological universities.” Grift was woven into so many people’s daily lives. National stories of frauds like Fyre Fest and Theranos and Dirty John dominated news cycles.
I couldn’t stop thinking about these stories, or writing about them, or talking about them. And so at the tail end of the Summer of Scam, I decided to inflate the podcast bubble a little more by recording conversations about these stories between myself and whoever I knew with a spare hour or two.
The result is American Grift, a twice-a-month (or so) podcast where I and two guests — generally fellow journalists — go deep on one particular fraud. The first two episodes are Anna Delvey and Theranos. Upcoming episodes will focus on Fyre Fest, the man who uncovered a fraudulent debt collection scheme, Dirty John, Rudy Kurniawan, and literally dozens of others.
There’s a sucker born every minute, and we’re going to talk about all the people who exploit them.
Catch episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud, and follow us on Twitter for updates.
