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You can’t trust anyone. Particularly not author, entertainer and collector of scams Nicholas J. Johnson. Scamapalooza attempts to separate facts from fraud as Nicholas explores the worlds of deception, illusion and swindles with the rogue's gallery of writers, magicians, comedians and confidence artists that are his guests. For business inquiries, topic suggestions, and guest proposals, email info@conman.com.au. “Nicholas J. Johnson is the man to talk to about scams.” - ABC Statewide Drive V ...
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PATREON MY STUFF STEVE'S WEBSITE STEVE'S TIKTOK I’ve been sick for the past few months. Which is why there has been an episode of a Scamapalooza in a little while. Instead, I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed feeling sorry for myself while trawling tiktok. Among the craft videos, slime reviews and video game analysis, I came across a video of a…
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Support the podcast on Patreon! Magicians have secrets that you don’t see on stage. I’m not talking about HOW they do the tricks—the trapdoors and mirrors—but the mundane secrets that make the show happen. The tour schedules, the marketing plans, the box office reports and the horror stories of gigs that went off the rails. Kent Blackmore, digs up …
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Support the podcast on Patreon! If I had an origin story as a magician/con artist/science communicator it would be me, in the early 2000s, hunching over my computer trying to count how many times a basketball is being thrown while completely missing the full-size gorilla walking right through the middle of the shot. The creation of psychologists Ch…
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Imagine it's 1850 and you live in a rural area, far away from doctors and the latest advances in medical technology. And then you get sick. What would you do? It's this fear that gave rise to The Snake Oil Salesmen, travelling hucksters who sold ointments, tinctures, tablets and the eponymous snake oil. In this episode, I talk to historian Dr Jo Cl…
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Support Scamapalooza On Patreon I busted my cat scratching the couch yesterday. As soon as she caught my eye, she stopped scratching and started to stretch instead, acting as if she’d hadn't just been digging her claws into our brand new four seater. The question is, did she KNOW she was trying to deceive me? Or did it just look like that through m…
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I’m often asked what my favourite con artist movie is and I always have a different answer. Usually, I’ll say Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men or David Mamet’s House of Games. If I’m feeling a little pretentious I might name drop Fellini’s Il Bidone or Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket. At the same time, I also have a soft spot for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, …
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If I told you that “the cafeteria is permanently closed for the schnitzel inventory.” what would you think I was saying? If your Russian, the chances are you’d know exactly what I was getting at. The novel The Little Golden Calf is the story of Ostap Bender a con artist trying to become a millionaire in 1920s Soviet Russia, a time when millionaires…
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Have you ever had to deal with corporate bullshit? Had your projects “put on the back burner”? Or had your job “right-sized”? Also, what the hell is “disruption?” Ian McCarthy is the Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at Simon Fraser University. His paper Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit introduc…
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If I had to guess what the cardinal rule for card counters was, “Don’t draw attention to yourself” would be way up there. While card counting isn’t illegal, casinos aren’t too keen on having players use probability to actually win at blackjack. Flying under the radar seems like common sense. What I wouldn’t expect is for a successful card counting …
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Every other week, I am sent a video of someone playing The Shell Game. Maybe it's a cat finding a single treat under three cups, or maybe it's a magician impressing audiences with hand-carved replica walnuts and silicone peas. However, despite being one of the most famous scams in the world, The Shell Game is also one of the most misunderstood. Eve…
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There is a popular image of a con artist that doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s an image of well-dressed, suave, fast-talking swindlers who—despite their dodgy dealings—always does the right thing in the end. After all, they have a code. Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf in The Sting. Danny Ocean and his gang in the Ocean’s film. The casts of sho…
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I have long suspected that Deepak Chopra spouts garbage. Despite being a trained physician, the author and self-help guru’s trademark new-age ramblings have always struck me as little more than pseudo-scientific garbage. But, I’m also the kind of guy who doesn’t like to dismiss ideas out of hand, just because I don’t understand. It turns out that m…
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How does the daughter of a railroad hand become a millionaire in an age when women couldn’t even open a bank account? If you’re Cassie Chadwick, the answer is you pull off one of the most audacious scams in history, a fraud that took millions from US banks and saw the richest man in America turn up at her trial. On this episode of Scamapalooza, I t…
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Have you ever thought about how magicians learn their tricks? Not the methods—the smoke and mirrors behind the illusion—but the actual process of learning a new effect. Even magicians don’t think too much about how they learn magic, treating our instructions like a recipe that—if followed—will create a moment of wonder. Brian Rappert, a Professor o…
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If you know me then you’ll know that my nemesis is Dr Matt Pritchard. For the last few years, this evil genius has been creating impenetrable optical illusions on social media. A toy elephant vanishes in a split second in impossible circumstances. A lego pirate ship appears in a clear glass bowl. A bike helmet is suddenly filled with coloured balls…
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My kid just performed their first solo magic show. In front of 300 of their peers, they correctly predicted a randomly selected TV show, vanished a bottle of coke and tricked the principal into opening a can of spring snakes. Classic comedy! But why do so many kids, particularly girls, give up on magic? Amy Kimlat is a children’s author and former …
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Why have there not been more video games about card cheating? I remember playing Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist as a kid and thinking that the stage of the game where you have to catch the Wheaton “Aces” Hall cheating was the best bit. Why couldn’t that be the whole game? Game designer and illustrator Nicolai Troshinsky has taken up the challe…
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Did you know the world “bullshit” might just be an Australian invention? During World War I, Australian troops found themselves arriving at the front and suddenly under the command of British officers. These officers were obsessed with appearances and would have the Australian soldiers bull polish their shoes constantly, regardless of whether they …
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Magicians have a complicated relationship with the Harry Potter franchise. On the one hand, the success of J K Rowling's creation has given them hours of work at movie premieres, book launches, and themed events. On the other hand, it's hard dealing with constant jokes about where our broomsticks are and whether we were raised under a staircase. Th…
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There's been a weird evolution in the wellness industry. What was once a market dominated by new age, holistic, self-care has seen a recent rise in hypermasculine, ideology-driven bro science. Forget Gwenyth Paltrow’s jade vagina eggs, these are health products that advocate eating raw liver, dangerous workouts and tanning your testicles. In this e…
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