Episode notes
Kind of a departure this week. I listened to a whole long podcast series called Scamanda about a person who created a fictional situation for herself, lied about having cancer, and used that to bilk friends and family and strangers out of a lot of money. Thieves aren’t interesting, but this person wanted affection and caring and sympathy and a lot of help, and used her fake cancer diagnosis and treatment to get it.
The podcast is journalism about someone creating fiction about herself and using it for selfish ends, but it’s also about another journalist who became obsessed with the case and researched it exhaustively for years. That’s fascinating, too.
I’m so curious about the mindset of someone who can do this, who can lie and lie and lie, manufacture photos that represent medical treatments that never happened, set up fake scenari ...