Anna Delvey: This Summer's $cam Queen

B can't get enough Anna Delvey. A&B break down our fascination with scammers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. Now today, I'm
pretty happy to talk about this topic. Um. This is
a topic that kind of came on my radar on

(00:27):
social media, specifically Twitter, and I was kind of obsessed
with it. And then I was so pleased when a
few people wrote in asking for us to do an
episode on it. And that topic is scam Queen Anna
delv Yes, Bridget was very, very very excited to talk
about this, um, and I I kind of have read

(00:49):
a little bit about it, and I'm excited because Bridget
is excited, so I hope that everyone is kind of
excited to learn about this. Yeah, scammers, famous scammers are
my fan fiction. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. You know you
should find fan fiction about famous scammers. I would that
would make me too happy. I would die of happiness.

(01:10):
It's a good way to go, though. It is a
good way reading about Reading in depth are like fan
fiction about scammers. I would die with a smile on
my face. So one thing that people, if you listen
to this show, you probably already know about me, which
is that I have a love of things that are
kind of problematic. Um. I like, you know, we have
that series specifically on problematic fames that I was excited

(01:32):
to do because I love so many people and things
that are problematic. Um. I love Tanya Harding, I love
bad movies and bad TV. And one of the things
on that list of problematic, kind of messed up things
that I kind of can't get enough of is scammers.
You know, I've always been fascinated by people who pretend

(01:55):
to be something they're not. And you know, I think
one of the reasons why we kind of myself personally
but as a culture, why I think that we're so
interested in scammers, it's because, you know, you meet so
many people that come off as confident, They come off
like they know exactly what they're doing, and they are
very good at you know, that authentic veneer of who
they are, and then you find out, oh, that's all

(02:16):
an act. Actually there's a scammer, Like they're scamming me
right now. And I think that there's something in that,
you know, part of me feels like we all sort
of feel like we're scamming on some level, and that
when you meet somebody who is has bold face perfected
that scam, it's almost sort of even though they're doing
something awful, at least for me, you almost kind of

(02:37):
have to respect it. Yeah, and you are not the
only one who feels that way, Bridget clearly because we
have found some research into it. But um, why why
do you think as a culture we are so into this? Well,
it's funny. Over at The New Yorker, writer Gia Tolentino
has this great theory that they kind of our fascination

(03:01):
with scammers kind of comes in seasons, and she calls
it grifter season. She writes, Grifters season comes a regularly,
but it often comes in America, which is built around
mythologies of profit and reinvention. Its spectacular ascent, the shady,
audacious figures at its center, exists on a spectrum from
folk hero to disgrace. The season begins when the public
catches onto some series of scammers of a particularly appealing sort,

(03:23):
the kind that provoked both shod In freuda and admiration.
And I think that really kind of nails my sort
of love hate relationship with scammers, because on the one hand,
it's disgraceful somebody somebody scamming somebody else out of money,
you know, abusing their trust. All of that is disgraceful,
but it's difficult to sort of not respect a certain

(03:47):
level of boldness of scams. Like there's this meme that
was kind of popular, maybe like a year or two ago,
Joanne the Scammer. It's an alter ego of a of
a comedian where he's pretending to this scammer who was
always running scams on people and coming up with sort
of little witticisms about scams, things like, you know, scam
today before today, scams you. I think it's a couple

(04:10):
of things. I think it's a fascination with scamming in general,
but I also think when it's a woman, I do
think there's a little bit of an anti heroin thing
happening where we so often expect women to be, you know,
good and trustworthy, and when we think about scammers or criminals,
we think about men. But then when a woman is

(04:31):
doing the scamming, I think she almost there's almost this
inclination to lift her up as an anti hero. Yeah, yeah,
I can see that for sure, And I think that's
something we do see in our media and entertainment and
another reason that in culturally we might have this this
kind of love and respect of scammers is that scammers
thrive in times of cultural unrest or unease. The writer

(04:54):
Bridget mentioned before Gia Tolentino. In her piece, he uses
a quote from Maria kna Ova from her book The
Confidence Game. Cons thrive in times of transition, and the
term confidence man was coined in eighteen forty nine by
the New York Herald and pieces about a bumbling scammer
who would ask strangers in the street, have you confidence

(05:15):
in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow? No,
I hope not. At that point in American history, the
gold Rush was producing a swarm of swindlers in California,
and free banking was enabling wildcat banks and counterfeiters to
circulate worthless bills. Scammers love nothing better. ConA Cova notes
than quote explorting the sense of unease we feel when

(05:38):
it appears that the world as we know it is
about to change, which it does make complete sense that
that's the time when you would want to kind of
play on people's in securities and unease. Yeah, and we
are for sure in the middle of a moment of
cultural and social and political unease, goes on Terray One

(05:58):
gets the sense that these days that such unease may
become constant. The entire globe is getting hotter, market pressures
are accelerating, technology is advancing at a dizzying rate. At
some point between the Great Recession which began in two
thousand and eight and the terrible election, of scamming seems
to have become the dominant logic of American life. The
things that people have historically used to build non scammy

(06:20):
lives in this country, housing, higher education had deteriorated to
the point where they are likely to punish you if
you're not already wealthy. The bankers pushing reverse mortgages, the
recruiters at for profit colleges, and the many startup founders
hoping to take massive investor back losses until they eradicate
the rest of the market understand the world better than
we do. That's part of the reason they're so riveting.

(06:41):
Down to the last details. Scammers show us the glitzy
bullsh intrinsic to the stratospheric wealth in America. They show
us that the best way to make money in this
country is to treat everybody around you like a mark. Yeah,
I mean, when you think about it, it's hard not
to be fascinated by that, by that kind of social aim,
treating everybody sort of yeah, Mark, and it kind of

(07:03):
reminds me of the Great Gatsby and how he sort
of tricked his way up into that society. See. But
but even when I'm so glad you brought up that story,
because that story is sort of about the scam inherent
to this idea of the American dream, right, that Gatsby
has reinvented himself in kind of a scammy way, you know,
bootlegging and lying about his identity and all of that,

(07:26):
because like and like, on its face, it seems like
the American dream that he bootstrapped his way up into
into success. But actually the American dream is bullshit, and
so of course it's a scam exactly. Yeah. Um, And
there are plenty of quote good scammers of all genders.
Billy McFarland of fire Festival fame, the British Royal Family expert.

(07:49):
It was actually just a guy from upstate New York.
But we want to focus on female scammers because there
is something special about them, like Bridget mentioned earlier. Yeah,
I also think part of it is that we love
in this country to root for a woman and then
we love when she falls, like we love to follow
the demise of a woman, like we like we can't

(08:11):
get enough of a story of a powerful woman gone wrong,
or a woman who seemed like she had it all
and then really it turned out she was scamming everyone.
I do think that there's something about the vigor with
which that we enjoy these stories when it happens to
a woman. That's my that's just my opinion. I think
you seem like you're pretty well versed in this subject. Bridget. Yeah,

(08:33):
so I actually would love to do an entire series
of scammers. Scammers like Elizabeth Holmes you may know her
as blood testing scammer. She had that entire company UM
that was supposed to be able to give blood tests,
you know, like you could go to a CBS and
like prick your finger and it will be able to
give you all these tests in real time. But it
was actually just a scam. Like she'd gotten all this
money and it didn't work, and she probably knew it

(08:56):
didn't work, and a lot of people are like, she'd
probably be in jail, but she's not in jail. So
really interesting, fascinating, scammer. Also like black turtleneck scammer. You
never saw a picture of her not wearing a black turtleneck,
kind of ruin that look for everybody. To be honest
with you, there is Vogue scammer Yvon Bannaghan, who was
accused of siphoning away three thousand, five hundred sixty four

(09:16):
dollars while she was Grace Coddington's assistant. So many good
female scammers out there. So if you know of one
that you would love for us to talk about, whether
it's a scammer of today or historical female scammer, please
let us know. But today we are talking about the
undisputed scam Queen of Summer one, miss Anna Delvey. Yes,

(09:38):
I love scam Queen of Summer. Yeah. I actually put
out a I mean, this is an unsigned tofic pole,
but I put out one of those Twitter polls asking
who you thought the scam Queen of Summer was. I
made the running Anna Delvy, Elizabeth Holmes, Jill Stein or
like write in candidate. I think Anna Delavie actually ends

(09:59):
up coming in second the right and candidate one Donald Trump,
our President, came in first as the Summer's scam queen. Wow, well,
congrats to no one. I mean, that's another that's another
interesting point about why I'm so fascinated with scams because
we associate scammers with a certain class. I believe, like

(10:23):
when you think of scammers, you think of somebody who
is not a wealthy person trying to become or pretend
to be wealthy. We have like rich scammers all over
the place. Like Scott Brubitt, former head of the e
p A, was basically a scammer, but people people don't
label him a scammer because he's male and well connected
and rich and white. But homeboy was trying to use

(10:46):
his connections in the government to get his wife a
chick bil a franchise. Like, that's a scam. That is
a scam. He is a scammer. Yeah, he also was
trying to buy old mattresses. I can't wrap my head
around that one. Honestly, there's so many like classic scams
that if we stripped away the veneer of he's a
high level White House administration official, whatever, it would just

(11:08):
be any other scammer with like farragmo belt and like
knock off chanel, like it is such a budget scam.
The only reason we don't talk about it in that
way is because of his connections. Like if you if
you stripped all of those things away, which he actually
resigned so they have been stripped away. If you didn't
have that title, it would be it would be anybody
else like scamming their way into free stuff. Like we

(11:29):
like all scammers. Doe like he's not special just because
he's Scott Bruett. Yeah, Scott Pruett, You're not special. But
today we're not talking about just any scammer, right Ridget.
We're talking about Anna delbe one of your favorite scammers.
She's a good scammer. If there was like a scammer
trading cards, she'd be the one that I would be
really really stoked ticket. So let's get into who Annadelvie

(11:52):
is for those of you don't know um and why
she is the scam Queen of Summer. After this quick
break and we're back. So Anna Delvie, first of all,
she's my favorite scammer. I've read literally every piece of

(12:16):
content on the Internet about her Horizon Fall, including a
lot of comment threads. I don't know it was her
or like her representative or whatever posted her mailing address
in prison on her Instagram, and I sent her a
snail mail letter asked her to come on the podcast.
I will update you if we're able to get a
phone interview with Anna Delvie on this podcast. If someone
knows her, tell her that we would love to have

(12:36):
her on. So shall we come? You know, hear her
story and how she got to where she is. I
hope put it that way. Which is prison? Which is prison?
I mean, I think we know how she got where
she is. But that's the thing. It's like, when you
read these articles, there was a really there are really
good pieces in both Vanity Fair and The Cut that

(12:56):
are super in depth about the con that she played
and would of how she so successfully prayed on women
a certain sort of class aspiration of these women. It really,
it really is fascinating and masterful. So first, this Vanity
Fair photo editor named Rachel Williams, she was actually scammed

(13:17):
by delvi herself and it ended up costing her thousands
of dollars. So she wrote this piece about what exactly
happened in Vanity Fair. So basically, she meets Anna in
a hotel and Anna says that she's a German heiress
who lives out of a hotel. Anna has these grand
plans to open what basically sounds like the Soho House
of Art. So it's going to be quote a dynamic
visual art center dedicated to contemporary art um And she

(13:40):
talks about how she wants to use family trust money
to afford this. She wants to get investors. She sounds
like someone who has grand and ambitious plans. But here's
the thing. This kind of plan that if someone have
you met somebody in a hotel, even if they seemed
rich and they told me they had this this idea,
the plan would still kind of sound preposterous. But that's

(14:02):
one of the tenets of her scam, which is the
same way that Tinkerbell only exists if you believe in her,
like if you don't believe in her, she dies. And
I had this way of making people believe these grand
plans and these grand schemes of hers, even though they
sounded preposterous, and in a kind of way, the reason
that they are kind of believable is because they sound

(14:23):
over the top. Rachel Rights. In my line of work,
I had often encountered ambitious, well off individuals. So though
her undertaking sounded grand, in scale and promising in theory.
My sincere enthusiasm hardly outweighed a measure of skepticism. And again, yeah,
you can see how you know, someone meeting a rich
girl in a hotel who's like, I have this grand
idea to make this big, lavish club full of art

(14:47):
and rich people. If anybody else told you that you
would be, you'd think, oh, sure of course you're going
to do that. Yeah. Right. But because that sort of
part of her scam is, you know, having this sort
of las fair attitude about money and you know, having
these grand plans that don't seem like they would ever work.
That's kind of how rich people are. And if you
want people to believe that you are rich, having some

(15:08):
big undertaking that seems really far fetched would actually kind
of solidify that in a kind of way. You know, yeah,
for sure. And I think just the way she was
so she would just buy really expensive things at restaurants,
she kind of did have this particular circle of people.
So if you're thinking, m I don't know about her,

(15:29):
but then you meet other people and they seem to
be in this circle of orbit and they seem to
have accepted her, then you kind of start to accept, well,
she must have passed this test. If she traffics in
this group of people, then even if maybe she'll never
succeed in this plan that I think is probably unrealistic,
she must still have the money. She must still be

(15:51):
in this class of people that she is saying she
is in, right, And I mean I've I've actually had
a few mild ammers in my orbit and political work,
because anybody who's doing political work, like you will, you
will encounter some scammers for sure. That's another thing that
I think scammers really traffic in is having other people

(16:14):
to kind of vouch for them or verify them. And
I'm thinking of one scammer that who kind of like
this is something I knew personally, so I don't want
to like blow up their spot. I mean, they there
was an entire article about their scam, but one of
the things that was a hallmark of how he scammed
was getting other respected political people to kind of vouch
for him. And so once you're sort of in and

(16:35):
one person that you know is like authentic and like
legit like vouches for you, like you're kind of in it,
kind of like you kind of like game handstamp and
it sounds like Anna trafficked in wealthy, well connected people.
So if you meet somebody who is actually wealthy and
well connected and they're like, oh and as good people,
that's kind of like a hand stamp. Yeah. I do

(16:55):
find that if you the bigger the lie, the more
you might be like, well, no one would tell something
as ridiculous as that because it could be easily checked.
But if you have to do it with confidence though,
and kind of the way it sounds like her personality
was one that kind of made you believe she was
this type of person, the specific type of person, and

(17:19):
that her accepting you and inviting you to things, it
was kind of flattering and you sort of wanted to
be someone that Anna delv wanted to have in her circle. Definitely,
that's so part of it when someone, I mean, two
of the people who extensively went on the record about
being scammed by Delvy both talk about sort of how

(17:41):
she seemed but the kind of person who didn't really
let a lot of people in and like kind of
seemed a little bit isolated, and that because she chose to,
you know, want to travel with them and want to
be good friends with them, it was almost sort of flattering.
So basically, Rachel ends up going on this lavish trip
to a villa and Marrakesh, and you might be thinking like, oh,
that sounds like a lot of money, Like I bet

(18:02):
it was an expensive trip. Whatever you were thinking, it
was so much more lavish than that. They traveled a
full time butler who Anna was supposed to pay for,
so Anna is supposed to be picking up the tab
on this whole trip. Now here's where Rachel says that
things took a turn. So Anna ends up booking a
seven thousand dollar a night private riad, which if you
haven't heard of that, I have not either. It's a
Moroccan villa with an interior courtyard, three bedrooms, and a pool.

(18:24):
And Anna ends up forwarding Rachel the confirmation email, but
due to some seemingly minor snaff who, the plane tickets
have been put on Rachel's American Express card, and Anna
basically was like, oh, I'll pay you back. I'll pay
you back, Rachel. I mean, part of me thinks is
thinking that girl, what are you doing? Part of me
kind of gets it. She says, since I did this

(18:46):
all the time for work, I didn't give it a
second thought, So you might be thinking, wow, I would
never agree to this, But if you think your friend
is rich, you like, maybe you would? Like I asked
myself all the time, if I met this mysterious rich
woman who seemed to be rich, other rich people knew her,
she was throwing money around, she wants to take mary cash?

(19:07):
You know, I can't. I don't know if I would
do it or not, but I can't say that my
bullsh detector will be going off and then I wouldn't
do it. What about you? Yeah, I feel like reading
this article was very enlightening to me, because if you
just sort of hear the details without the sort of
personal all of these personal aspects of it, it does

(19:30):
sound like, wow, why would you ever agree to that?
But at this point they had been friends for a while,
and also she wasn't Rachel wasn't the only person going.
A personal trainer was going as well. Yeah, if if
it's your friend and she says she's going to pay
for it, you've seen her put down a lot of
money before. Um, it's it's a trip that you probably

(19:50):
are excited to go on. I don't think you'd have
any real reason if you've seen all these other people
vouch for her to suspect otherwise I would be uncomfortable
when it's like it would have to be on my
credit card. I think I would be uncomfortable, But I
don't think I would say anything, because you do want
the friendship to work. And uh, I mean, I can

(20:12):
just see it. I can see it. I can totally
understand going along with this personally. Another aspect of it
is sort of what I was talking about before, that
if you were trying to maintain that you were a
wealthy person, I do. I mean, this is going to
sound like a vast generalization. It does make sense to
me that someone who is massively, massively wealthy would also

(20:34):
be the kind of person who might be a bit
careless with what they perceived as small amounts of money.
I had a friend who was very, very wealthy, and
you know, she didn't work. She sort of was able
to sort of work here and there in sort of
creative field, and like was clearly being supported by her parents.
But she never paid for a cab, She never paid
for dinner. She would notoriously sort of walk out on

(20:57):
the tab. It would be like ten dollars to eight
dollars but because she just had a different sense of
money than we did. And so for me, someone who
is not rich, you know, if somebody picks up a
tab for me, I make a mental note, you know,
I have to get them back. I have to pay
them back. This is thirty dollars whatever. But I got
the sense from being around her that it's kind of
hard to explain, but because she was so rich, a

(21:20):
certain kind of las, a fair careless attitude about money
just kind of probably confirmed that she was rich. And
a kind of way, does that make sense, It totally
makes sense. I have I had a friend like that
as well, where there's kind of some resentment and we
had to talk about it because I always ended up
paying for things and he had way more money, like

(21:43):
way more money than I did, and it just didn't
seem to even occur to him that it would be
sort of a bigger deal for me. And like, I'm
totally I wasn't saying he needed to pay for everything
at all, but like equal let's share here, it just
didn't seem to be is big a factor to him,
So I'm not I'm not making this up. It does

(22:04):
seem like gets a little bit of a thing. Anecdotally,
it does seem that way. Yes, So here's where it
all kind of starts to go south for Anna and Rachel.
Well traveling, So Anna's card gets declined, and of course
Rachel asks the thing that everyone always asks when your
card is declined, oh did you tell your banks that
you're traveling? And she's like, no, I didn't, And so
this again sort of just is like, oh, well, she's traveling.

(22:26):
It's probably some sort of bank issue. This is embarrassing
to admit, but the times that I've had my credit
card or my debit card declined, the cashier always gives
you that very gracious you know, maybe you need to
call the bank. It's probably a problem with your card.
You know. They don't ever want to come out and
said you have no money. That's always a very gracious,
very gracious. So basically what happened after that is that

(22:49):
the hotel kind of gets wind that there's no credit
card on file for this extremely extremely lavish villa that
they're staying in. Then I'm sure costs. I mean, at
this point, if it's been thousand dollars a night, I
meant this point, it's probably so expensive. And once the
hotel gets wise. Basically Rachel has to flip the bill
in order for them to leave, and again that would

(23:10):
be so I mean, I don't know what I would
do in that situation. If you're being held in a
foreign country and you don't really have a lot of money,
and you don't you're not able to leave and listen,
a Vanity Fair photo editor probably does not make that
much money. This is probably an intensely terrifying thing for her.
Oh yeah, And in the article she talks about how
hotel security was like in their room all the time,

(23:33):
kind of waiting for them, not letting them go anywhere.
The personal trainers that went with them, she had already
left because she had like a stomach issue, so she
Rachel was alone with Anna, and Rachel by this point
was stressed out as well, and she wanted to go
ahead and leave, and they wouldn't let her leave unless
somebody paid, paid up, put a credit card down, and

(23:57):
Rachel was the one that had to do it, and
Anna was saying, you out, well, I can fix this.
I can't do it now. She was kind of being
she was very stressed about it and not being too
clear about how to solve the problem. She She was
sort of like, I'm not sure why this is happening,
I don't understand, and not offering any real solutions. I mean,
you would hope that if you're super wealthy friend, you know,

(24:20):
was this was happening, that they would be like, oh,
let me call my dad, let me do this, let
me do that. But it doesn't surprise me. I mean,
I'm sure that Rachel was very frustrated, but it doesn't Again,
the way that she was acting does not surprise me
that it didn't immediately kick in that oh, this girl
is broke and she's she's scamming all of us. So
when they get back to America, Rachel is trying to

(24:40):
get her money back, and it really sounds like she
started to kind of unravel. She writes, stress consumed to
my sleep and fueled my days. My coworkers saw me unravel.
I came to the office looking pale and undone. This
it sounds like this just take over her life. This
one trip and this one arrangement with this one person
that she happened to randomly meet in the hotel sounds
like it was hurting to take over her full life. Yeah,

(25:03):
And wasn't it like seventy thousand dollars on her credit card.
That's so much money. I mean in the article it's
quoted as being more than her her yearly salaries. This
is a year's worth of work that is gone because
of this one person. That's an amount of money. I
can't imagine if you you thought you a friend was
going to foot it, and then all of a sudden

(25:23):
it's on you and you weren't anticipating it and you
probably don't have it, that level of stress must have
been unbearable. Yeah, that would that would ruin my life.
So basically Rachel gets the police involved, and only then
is the sort of grandness of this whole situation revealed
to her. She was accused of falsifying documents from international

(25:44):
banks showing accounts abroad with a total balance and approximately
sixty million euro that's about seventy million American dollars, according
to a press relation from the New York County District
Attorney's Office announcing the indictment. In late she took those
documents to the City National Bank and it attempt to
secure a two million dollar loan creation for her arts
foundation and private club. When City National Bank denied a loan.

(26:07):
She showed the same documents to Fortress Investment Group in Midtown,
New York. Fortress agreed to consider the loan if Anna
provided a hundred thousand dollars to cover legal and due
diligence expenses. On January twelve, seventeen, almost a month before,
she returned to New York and secured a hundred thousand
dollar loan from City National Bank by convincing the bank
representative let her overdraft her account. She allegedly promised the

(26:29):
bank that she would rire funds shortly to cover the overdraft,
which is a very familiar thing in her world. She
gave the roan money to Fortress, so basically she was
moving around so many different large quantities of money, like
millions and millions of dollars and sort of kind of, um,
what's the expression, like robbing Peter to pay Paul, Like

(26:50):
getting money from getting a loan secured from one bank
and then using that loan to get another loan from
another bank, like a massive shell game where there was
never really any money to begin with. It kind of
sounds like a pyramid scheme, but with like people people
in money, not at no products at all, just just
one person convincing people she had money somewhere and she'd

(27:13):
get it back to you exactly, exactly. And this quote
that Rachel has from her piece kind of you know,
chronicling her nightmare with Anna, really nails it. Anna represented
the kind of life we all wish we could have.
It's too good to be true. The reality of Anna's
behind the scenes dealings, these figures flying from one account
to another, remains daizy to this day. That she was

(27:34):
allegedly orchestrating such an elaborate scheme while maintaining a believable
surface cool building her debit cards to pay for dinners, workouts,
beauty products, and spot treatments. She conjured a glittering, frictionless city.
Whatever one wanted could be bought. Wherever one wanted to
go was a cab or a plane right away. The
audacity of her performance sold itself and to let collapse
under the weight of its own ambition. It's part of

(27:56):
why I believed her, to continue to believe her. Who
would think to make this up such an elaborate tale
and carry on like this for so long? Who was she?
How do you know who anyone is? Really? And I
think that line really does a great job with encapsulating
what makes someone like Anna so so kind of mystifying.
You know, she really represented this world where everything is possible.

(28:20):
It's not surprising to me that it's all happened on
the back drop of New York City, because when you
live in New York, as I did for a few years,
it seems like there are two cities, right, There's the
one city where you are toiling and you're always sweaty,
and everything is always a nightmare, and even something simple
like wanting to get groceries or going to the bank
is a huge ordeal, and everything is hard. And I

(28:42):
just when I lived in New York, my my biggest
memories were like toil and how everything was. It was
always something like just to get groceries was the biggest
pain in the world. And I always felt like I
was sort of battling the city. And then you would
see these rich, moneyed, wealthy, well connected girls who seemingly

(29:03):
lived in a different city. Is like we lived. We
lived in the same city, but we lived in two
different cities in a kind of way. And I think
Anna represented the possibility that you can live in a
world where anything you want whether it's a massage or
a private workout, or a trip to Marrakesh or a
personalized gown. Whatever it is that you want, you can
have it. Like that is so seductive, and of course,

(29:26):
like who wouldn't want that? I think it is this
sort of modern day great Gaps, the American dream, where
you know, you can move to New York with nothing
and reinvent yourself to be this, this German heiress for
whom everything is possible, everything is at your fingertips. Yes,
And I do love that aspect of the story that
she was a German heiress. Um and that quote, I

(29:50):
think it's really well written in Um. It does capture
a lot of why you would you would go along
with this, why it was believable. I mean, to witness
someone outwardly so confident if the money isn't there, but
they're just playing no outward signs that there's a problem.

(30:11):
It's it's impressive in a way. It really is. I
like am someone who I have usually when I have money,
even if I'm always like expecting my credit card to
get turned down, like I always am like here's my
credit card with a question mark. Used free credit cards
like gift cards, so you're like, there might be something

(30:31):
on this one, and I'm just like secretly in turmoil
that it's going to come back. They're gonna be like, well, sorry, man,
but this did not go through. Meanwhile, she's got Anna
Deelvia's no money, and it's just like confident again. Like

(30:52):
I know she's a bad person for scamming people who
didn't have a ton of money, but part of me
has to sort of admire that confidence where when you
walk up to a cashier and you give your credit
card to buy something lavish and your credit card is declined,
instead of being like, oh, I don't have any money,
which all of us would do somehow making it, you know,
it's like, let me talk to a manager. It's like
the person who has that kind of audacity, that person

(31:15):
is so not me, and I am fascinated by that person.
She really took fake it until you make it to
its ultimate, its highest, highest point, to the most extreme. Yeah, exactly.
So another sort of major player in the whole Anna
Delvie saga is Nef Naff really has emerged that sort

(31:36):
of the folk hero that we all deserve in this story. Uh,
Nef is like me, a black girl from Washington, d C.
Shout out to Netflix executives who are already turning Anna
deelvie story into a Netflix show. If you need someone
to play Nev, please call me because this was the
role I was born to play. Um Nev worked at
the hotel where Anna Delvi was living and really gives

(31:57):
a different a different glimpse into these scams. So basically,
Nef says that Anna Delvi, one of the sort of
layers of her scam was that she would treat the
people in the hotel very, very nicely, like basically become
their friends. And bear in mind, this is the hotel
where she was living and not paying the bill, so
she was like ragging up thousands of dollars. But by

(32:18):
befriending the staff, it kind of gives you a certain
kind of power to be able to do that. Yeah,
they want you since you're nice to them. They want
to believe that you are a next person and that
their money is They're like, they want to give you
that benefit of a doubt. Exactly. My favorite quote about
Anna from Nef, she says, you know how Rihanna walks

(32:40):
out with wine glasses, That was Anna, and they let
her by miss Selvie. So if you don't know what
that means, basically, Rihanna is often photographed pretty much illegally,
like leaving restaurants going onto the street. Was a full
glass of wine for the restaurant where she was just dining.
I think that's against the law to like leave to
like get a drink at the bar at a rest
and then like, unless you're in New Orleans, to de

(33:02):
stroll out onto the street. But they let her, And
that's what she's saying, Like Anna Delvy had that kind
of vibe where she would do these things and people
would just let her right And um nev noticed the
same rich people who act nonchalantly about money vibe as Rachel.
That is, it seems to be one of the key

(33:22):
things that sold her scam. When you're super rich, you
can be forgetful in this way, which is maybe why
no one thought much of the instances in which Anna
did things that seemed odd for a wealthy person calling
a friend to have her put a taxi from the
airport on her credit card, or asking to sleep on
someone's couch, or moving into someone's apartment with the tacit
agreement to pay rent and then not doing it. Maybe

(33:43):
she had so much money she had just lost track
of it. Yeah, that actually reminds me my rich friend
that I mentioned earlier. I helped her move out of
her place and I put her you haul on my
credit card because I was picking up a you Hall
to meet her, and she never paid for it. It
became a big thing, and eventually when I was like,
I need my money for that you haul, she had
just forgotten it. It It just slipped her mind. And that

(34:04):
that like, that's what I'm saying. This is not it's
for someone who is super wealthy. This does not sound
strange to me. It may seem strange, but it would
only maybe think like, oh, she's one of those rich
people who doesn't think about money like that. Yeah. From
what I read, she kind of had this flighty vibe
being sort of forgetful. So I can see just sort

(34:26):
of writing it off as a part of her personality
as well totally. And it does kind of sound like
throwing money around and making it so that people kind
of owe you or feel obligated to not point out
the inconsistencies of your scam is kind of part of
her armor. Neff writes, about how she once called something
out that she found a bit odd about Anna. This

(34:48):
rich person who actually legitimately was rich. Anna had told
Nef that this person's father they were thinking about being
investment partners. This person like had stock in this hotel.
And so when NiFe mentioned this to the to the
rich guy, the rich guy was like, don't you think
that if my father had an investment partner staying at
a hotel where he kind of that he kind of owns,

(35:08):
that person will be staying in a suite, not like
a little deluxe room. When Nif asked Anna about this,
Anna said, do you ever just have someone do you
so many favors you kind of want to pay them
back in silence? And I mean, come on, that is
a great line. Like that is like something out of
a movie. It really is. It's Hollywood, Hollywood, kitten, write
something better than that. It's so good. It's so good,

(35:31):
It's so good. Another great tidbit about Anna's story is
just what a bold faced scammer she was. One of
my favorite points is that the personal trainer that you
mentioned earlier, when Anna was still stuck in Marrakesh and
she had been low key scamming this woman. Anna didn't
have a way to get back to the United States,
so she asked if this woman could put a plane
ticket on her credit card and then Anna would quote

(35:52):
pay her back later, but we all know how that goes.
And the woman said, sure, I guess I will, and
Anna asked, can you get me first class US? Which, again,
it's such a impressive display that it's hard for me
to not sort of love it. I think she she
really tapped into that kind of how people behave when

(36:13):
you are used to that type of money. That if
you're used to first class and you think money is
no big deal and that's just something you sort of expect,
you would ask for first class. I think she sort
of understood this class of people pretty well, and she
played the role very well. Yeah, like I think she
I think you're right that she knew the markers of

(36:36):
how to make these people who were not moneyed but
who were in her orbit believe the scam. Like you know,
it's like how magicians they have like a flashy thing
and that they know that you're going to your eye
is going to be drawn to it, but that it's
actually you know, a misdirect. You know, it's like these
little things that make you believe in the scam. Yeah. Absolutely,

(36:56):
So we have a little bit more to talk about,
but we're going to pause for one more quick break
for word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you, sponsor.
So NeXT's version of this story kind of begins to

(37:17):
unravel the same way they did for Rachel, which is
having to pick up a big bill for a price
e meal. Um, it sounds like they went on to
this big meal. The waiter came back to the station
and began entering the credit card numbers. So basically it
sounds like Anna gave him a bunch of credit card
numbers and had the waiter put a bunch of them
in to see if they would work, and none of
them did. Next says, I started to sweat because I

(37:38):
knew the bill was mine. The amount of the bill
was about three dollars, which isn't a lot of money
compared to the other bills that Anna was racking up,
but it was a lot of money for somebody like
Nev who ended up having to cover the bill, And
she says that doing so made her feel sick, But
after all the money Anna it spent on her, she
understood that it was her turn. Oh yeah, yeah, I
can I can see that too, Like, you don't want

(37:59):
to argue about money necessarily with someone who has been,
at least in your understanding paying for the bill up
and to that point exactly, exactly, um, and yeah, that's
really when things sort of took a turn. And really
for Nef, what I think was really the hard part
here was this idea that this was so intersected with

(38:20):
Nef's work because she was staying at the hotel where
networked and so at one point they realized Anna has
no credit card on file and she'd basically been living
in this hotel, and the management of the hotel came
to to help her sort it out, and they were like, yeah,
did you did you know this person was staying here
without a credit card? Like blah blah blah. And then
a classic scammer move when this was brought up to

(38:44):
Anna by NEF, Anna compensated by buying bottles of expensive
champagne for the hotel staff, thinking that like, oh, if
I get them a pricey gift, maybe that will smooth
things over. Anna didn't pay, and eventually they locked her
out of her room again with Scott Prewitt that happened
to him too. Yes, more similarities, more similarities. So in April,

(39:09):
Anna deposited a hundred and sixty dollars with a bad
checks into the same account and someone was able to
withdraw from that account before they were returned, and that's
how she managed to pay off her hotel. So again,
really like moving money around, using one scam to pay
off another person that she had scammed. And again keep
in mind, Nef and Anna were really cozy. They were

(39:30):
buddy buddy, and Nef worked at this hotel, so of
course it got her into all kinds of hot water
with her job. I'm sure. Nef writes in the cut
that at one point they called her into the office
and they said, Nef, did you know about this? She
says she started dying laughing, and she says that he
thought it was kind of a boss move. So not
what I really see eye to eye here in a
kind of way where even though it's a massive scam,

(39:52):
you kind of gotta respect it. Yeah, it's pretty impressive,
just the level of it, the scale, to have so
many people sort of pulled into it. There's a part
of part of you that sort of has to ask
to respect. I gotta give credit where credit is due
on this one. So later Anna deposited two bad checks

(40:13):
into an account she had at Signature Bank, netting her
eight thousand, two hundred dollars, and this is how she
ended up being able to take what she called a
planned trip to California, where she was arrested outside of
passages in Malibu and brought back to New York, where
she would faced six counts of grand larceny and attempted
grand larceny in addition to theft of services according to

(40:33):
the indictment. And the cut got to the real Anna
behind the scam. Anna Sarkin, who was born in Russia
in nineteen ninety one and moved to Germany in two
thousand seven when she was sixteen with her younger brother
and her parents. Anna attended a high school in a Schweiler,
a small working class town sixty kilometers outside of Colonia
near the Belgium and Dutch border. She's not actually an heiress.

(40:57):
Her dad worked as a chuck driver and later as
an executive at a transport company until it became insolvent
in two thousand thirteen, whereupon he opened a heating and
cooling business specializing in energy efficient devices. So even though
there was no truth to her being this rich German heiress,
I think a lot of Americans, myself included, probably know
so little about Germany that if she said, oh, I'm

(41:19):
from this like small town in Germany, it was even
that even if you knew that town was not, you know,
fancy and wealthy, it sounds like a working class town,
you might buy into it a little bit like, oh,
she says she's from this town in Germany, sounds fancy. Well,
it's kind of funny because I think it also plays
on the fear that we all have of looking stupid, right,

(41:40):
or being embarrassed. You want to sound like, oh, sure,
I know where that is, Like you're educated and you're
aware of that world. You don't want to admit that
you don't know something. So it kind of plays on
just the human nature of trying to to fit in
and sound and tell in front of people. Well, that

(42:02):
actually reminds me of another scammer couple that I love,
the couple that scammed their way into the Obama administration's
state dinner. So their last name was Salahi, and somebody
wrote that because this was a state dinner, and you
had lots of like foreign diplomats and foreign important people.
Because their name sounds a little bit like important, can important,

(42:22):
it could be the name of an important couple from abroad.
That that was one of the reasons they were able
to scam their way into this dinner so easily, because
nobody wants to look at the doorman who is giving
this important foreign couple a hard time, So maybe it's
just better to just let them in even though they
aren't an important couple. But you know that that idea
of not wanting to a embarrass somebody who was important

(42:44):
or be be embarrassed because you didn't know who this
important person was definitely feeds into it. Sure. And like
a fear of being called out on your your ignorance
on something or causing like a kind of a scene,
I can completely understand, and wanting to avoid that and
just going along with it and then finding out that, uh,

(43:07):
it was all a big, a big lie. So another
thing I love about this whole Anna situation is that
when the cut interviewed her from prison, she still sort
of maintained that this these grand ideas opening this fancy
art club for rich people. She still maintains that they
were actual plans that she had. They weren't. There wasn't
a scam. She actually believed that she could move enough

(43:30):
money around and fund this thing and make all the
money back. Yeah, and uh, if it's true, it's always
a more believable story if there is a little bit
of truth to it, you know, if there's like just
a peppery ing of of true things in there. That's
the crux of any good scam is a little bit
of truth. Yes, exactly. So this lie at the cut

(43:53):
I think crystallizes for me why this is such a
fascinating story. They're right about her her grand play hands
to open this art club. They right. Maybe it could
have happened in this city where enormous amounts of invisible
money trade hands every day, or glass towers are built
on paperwork promises. Why not if Abby rose in the
son of Holocaust survivors, could come to New York and

(44:15):
fill skyscrapers full of art, If the Kardashians could build
a billion dollar empire out of literally nothing, if a
movie star like Dakota Johnson could sculpt her ask so
that it could become the anchor of a major franchise.
Why couldn't Anna delve. During the course of my reporting,
people kept asking why this girl. She wasn't super hot,
they pointed out, or super charming, She wasn't even very nice.

(44:36):
How did she manage to convince an enormous amount of cool,
successful people that she was something she clearly wasn't. Watching
the Riker's guards shove Fast Company into a Manila envelope,
I realized what Anna had in common with the people
that she'd been studying on the pages of that magazine.
She saw something others didn't. Anna looked at the soul
of New York and recognize that if you distract people
with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the

(44:57):
indica of wealth, if you show them the me, they
will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the
thing was, it was so easy. I love that quote
so much because I think it's true. I mean, Anna
Delvi scammed her friends, a lot of whom didn't really
have that much money to begin with. And side note,
we actually don't even know the depths of her scams.

(45:19):
But when you look at like it does kind of
make you think, is in America kind of one big scam?
And in a kind of way, that is one of
the reasons why we're so fascinated by her story and
stories like hers, because we see people sort of scammed
their way into success all the time, and in a
kind of way, it just seems like what this country
is built on. Yeah, I love that quote too, and

(45:41):
it's sort of reminds me of um. Every time I
go to Las Vegas, I have a weird this's just
a weird feeling in being there that I can't look
away from this. This is like humanity and its basis
like pleasure, entertainment seeking. It's really hard to describe, but

(46:02):
I think that Anna was able to tap into if
you do have a large amounts of cash or shiny
things to distract people, that we are so hung up
on this, and it's sort of like reveals the superficial
aspect of humanity that is both fascinating and kind of upsetting.

(46:23):
It's a really interesting dichotomy. Definitely, I'm sure folks are
so tired of hearing me make this connection, But I
do think there's a little bit of a social media
aspect to this, because Annadelby's an Instagram is still up
and she has the artifice of someone living the lifestyle
of like a of a mysterious, wealthy, traveling you know,

(46:46):
rich girl. She has that down so well. And I
think it's what you're saying. It's like, if you could
have the trappings of wealth and that sort of shiny
artifice of wealth, that really it can be so distracting
even though you know it's not real, you kind of
let yourself believe it. And I think that's what Anna
traffic in. Even though we know, like there is no

(47:07):
free lunch. If someone befriends you and says they're going
to whisk you away to Morocco for free, that's probably
not true, but it feels so good to believe that
you could live a life like that. I just this
really just remind us me of my times living in
New York when I would just look at these these
these young women who were the same age that I was,
and I would want their life so badly. I'll never

(47:29):
forget this time I had to go to Kinkos to
fill because I was filling out this paperwork and it
was this really intense like involved having to get things
copied and triplicate and all of this. So I had
to go to Kinkos. Kinkos was a little bit far
away from my apartment, and the subway wasn't working, and
so the only subway that I could take to get
there was was not working. So I had to walk,
and so I walked. It was like a few miles

(47:52):
and the hot, hot sun. When I got to Kinkos,
it was closed, and I was like overcome with this
feeling of dread and sort of turmoil. And I turned
around to go back to you know, walk back home,
because there was no way other way to get home.
I couldn't afford a cab. The train was down. What
was it? When I turned around, I turned around too

(48:14):
quickly and I ran smack dab into a road sign
and it broke my glasses. And so so I sat
down on this stoop in Williamsburg and somebody opened the
window of the stoop I was sitting at, and I
was like, can you leave? Can you not sit on
my stoop? And right in that moment, this black car
full of beautiful, thin young girls, probably my same age,

(48:38):
got out of this car, and they were impeccably dressed.
They were like hipster sheek, they were laughing, were the
epitome of Brooklyn, care free, and I remember thinking we
live in two different cities. At that moment felt so
I just felt I've never felt dirtier or sweatier, or
grosser or more sort of down on my luck. I

(48:59):
want to be clear, there are people who are living much,
much harder lives than I was living in Brooklyn, But
in that moment, I felt very down. And seeing this,
these glittering girls who just seemed to float on air
getting out of a town car, like like a private
town car, I just remember wanting that so badly, so badly,
wanting to know what that life would be like to

(49:20):
just wherever you wanted to go, there's a it's a
town car way, you know what. I'm sure these girls
have problems. I'm definitely projecting my own stuff on them.
But I see that in Anna, where you know, a
Vanity Fair photo editor who makes sixty grand a year
in one of the most expensive cities in the world
probably sees someone like Anna and what they offer as

(49:41):
so just intoxicating and the idea that you could that
you could be within grasp of it. I don't blame
anybody for getting caught up in her in her whirlwind, No,
I don't either. It's like a tale of two cities
for these are modern times. It is though I know,
I know what are thinking, like, why did you do
a whole episode on this, but it is. It really

(50:03):
demonstrates a lot of class aspiration and sort of the
perversion of class aspiration. I think, yeah, I think you're
completely correct. So that's been our our first and what
will probably be a mini series on scammers. Oh, you know,
I could talk scammers all day. There was one time
I was I was watching this documentary on Netflix and

(50:24):
somebody came over to my house and I was like, oh,
I've been trying to watch this documentary on on wine
on Netflix for so long. And he was like, documentary
about wine on Netflix. That does not sound like something
that you'd be into. And I was like, Oh, actually,
it's about this wine scammer who ended up scamming all
these fancy wine types and buying like counterfeit wine. And

(50:45):
he said, oh, that sounds that sounds right. I was
figuring you would not be watching just a straight by
the books documentary about wine. Somebody would have to be
getting scammed for you to be interested. Well, if your
listeners any suggestions for um for scammers that we should
talk about, please send them to us. And if you're

(51:07):
a scammer, if you're currently scamming, give us a call.
Well let's talk. Let's talk about your scams. Yes, Bridget,
Bridget would love love more more than anything to your
from you. Yeah. And in the meantime, let's talk about
some the listener male Okay. Jacqueline wrote sports fandom Slash.

(51:28):
This is about our fan fiction episode. It exists. Our
PF is not slowly limited to one direction. I myself
these days, tend to read and write football RPF. I
think our demographics plants a little bit older than average.
Most folks I know in it are in the mid
twenties to mid thirties. I also know people who write
a lot of hockey AIRPF, but I don't follow hockey
enough to really know more than some of the main

(51:50):
players and ships in both cases, though, I think, in
addition to exploring everything you mentioned about deeper relationships between
folks we already see in Cannon, there's something kind of
interesting about exploring masculinity, issues of homophobia, and very public life,
particularly in exclusively male spaces. Maybe I like pretending to
be a fly on the wall. I don't know, but
that's definitely part of it. There's also a contingent who

(52:12):
writes fim slash, usually about the American Women's National Team.
Women's football outside of US w n T tends to
be pretty small fandom generally, so if you like me
and follow Brazil w NT or Chelsea Ladies, you're just
s O L. It's interesting because my academic research has
put me in contact with several professional footballers, some of
whom appear periodically and FICK. The ones I know aren't
that famous, but it's happened, and they definitely know. Some

(52:34):
of the guys who regularly star logically be kind of weird.
There's a really firm separation and compartmentalization, and the fandom
between ships pick and real life characterization is thick. Is
mostly drawn from interviews and social media personalities. But I
don't think anyone thinks, oh boy, I don't know much
about sports. These two sports folks are secretly in love

(52:57):
or whatever present them with slash fan works and person
which I suppose does make it a bit different from
some live action fandoms like Supernatural or Avengers. Maybe a
year ago there was actually a bit of panic when
an editor from dead Spin wanted to do an article
on football RPF centered around New York City FC players.
This led to me and some other folks I know
changing the privacy settings on some postings on AO three. Happily,

(53:20):
I think the article was dropped. While I don't think
many of us are ashamed of our writing hobby per se,
sports fandom can get super toxic, and our little corner
AO three and Tumbler tends to be pretty much troll free.
The concern was that added attention from say, our slash
shocker would lead to writers being harassed. I don't know
if that concern was really logical, but hey, like the

(53:43):
rest of fan fiction, football RPF is very much produced
and consumed by women and non binary folks. The few
cis gender men I know who exist around it, and
I don't even think these two right are gay. And
this was in the wake of gamer Gates, so I
think everyone on the internet was still on high alert. Naturally,
most of us have been put through the fake geek
girl test at least once. We all have individual horror stories,

(54:05):
but usually they go something along the lines of some
dude at a pub thinking we're only there for a boyfriend,
or if we are there alone, it's only because the
players are cute. Ironically, the folks that produce fick in
this fandom are some of the biggest tactics and history nerds.
I know. If some dude really wants to quiz them
on who was in the typical Manchester United starting eleven in,
I say go for it. Jokes on you, random public ads.

(54:28):
I dragged my male friends to matches from my clubs,
and I can augle in Hazard's bubble, but while still
knowing when he's offside and that drys Marten's is the
superior Belgian striker. I totally butchered that name. Apologies at
any rate. Female football fans are often victims of gate keeping,
not unlike female fans and more traditionally geek spaces. But

(54:49):
I wouldn't try it with the fan fake writers. They
know there's anyway this has gotten long if you've made
it through many things for your patients. I really enjoy
the women in queer folks side a football fandom, and
I always love sharing it with interested parties. It's been
incredibly supportive and a wonderful way to meet folks from
all over the world. Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, I
just I thought that was really interesting because I cannot

(55:11):
only imagine, uh kind of the intersection of fan fiction
and sports fandom can get pretty toxic, and I'm happy
to hear that there are these pockets on the Internet
that have gotten away from that, and it sounds fascinating
to me. Yeah, of course people out there are writing
fan fiction about athletes. This never occurred to me, but
as soon as we read the email, I thought, of

(55:33):
course people are doing, Matt, of course they are. I
love it. Yeah, I do too. Um, and please keep
sending in everyone who sent in their fan fiction, thank you,
and please keep them coming. Please do Next letter, Nicole wrote,
I was so excited to listen to this two parter
on fan fiction. Well, I read a little fan fiction

(55:53):
as a team. I am now in my mid twenties,
and I've recently begun to write some fan fiction because
I find it fun. I'm relaxing, creative outlet and good
actors providing my own original fiction as well. You touched
a little on how women can explore their sexuality through
fan fiction, and I wanted to share my own experiences. Well,
I have not read any fan fiction of a sexual content.
Identify as bisexual, and I recently married to a great

(56:13):
guy I had been with most of my adult life.
I have found that the more quote smutty fan fiction
is a way to express and acknowledge the aspects of
my sexuality that fall outside of my heatero monogamous relationship.
Through the safe, independent medium of reading fanfic, I have
also learned about many different kinks that I have discovered
new ones I have brought in a conversation with my husband,
and we both agree it has supported us and being

(56:35):
more open and more sex positive than we were raised
to be. Recently, a thirteen year old female friend of
the family was caught reading some sexually explicit thick on
her what Pad account, and I felt the reaction of
her parents was a little shaming, including banning or from
the account and sharing their concerns with others. While there
are certainly some smutty thick out there that is questionable,
such as incest, fix much of an explore sexuality in

(56:56):
a healthy way, and often in a way that acknowledges
emotional aspects of sex as well. I think in this way,
explicit fan thic might just be one more positive way
to explore sexuality and most porn, which is certainly something
that many parents would struggle they had caught a son
rather than a daughter looking at ps. Your comment at
the end of part two about making lemonade out of
lemons might have been funnier than you know. Lemon is

(57:18):
a term for smuddy scenes and fan fic. Who knew,
Nicole think I'd love to say that we knew that,
and that we were making a really clever joke. But
I didn't know that Annie, did you? I did, but
I didn't catch it when you when you made that
that comment, I did not put together. But that is
really funny. Um. I had a friend when we were

(57:40):
probably thirteen. Her parents caught her reading some dirty fan
fiction and I mean dirty for thirteen year olds, perhaps, um,
and they banned her from her account, and I shared
my printed fan fiction with her. I was a little
little instigator trying to keeper with the hook up. I

(58:02):
love it. I love that you were like well underground
fan fiction network. Yeah, I kind of was. Um. So
I love all these these letters about people who have
found community and fan fiction. I'm really happy that that
exists exists for us on the Internet, and it does

(58:24):
sound like it can be a healthy sexual outlet, oh
for sure. For sure. And even I just think that
since I do feel we publicly don't really allow young
women to express sexuality or talk about it, I think
that it is a way to explore things and figure
out things about yourself, um, safely. And there are definitely

(58:46):
problematic things in fan fiction, and I'm not saying there aren't,
but I think in general it is a positive thing
that it is. It is out there and it is
a way to to talk about to explore these things
about yourself. Definitely, um And honestly, it seems like the
fan fiction episodes really struck a chord with folks. I'm
happy that folks are still writing in and like any said,

(59:08):
please keep sending usselves fan fictions. Yes we're still We
were not joking about the fan fiction. Uh. With high
production value, well higher production value, we'll see what we
can do um like many series, So keep keep sending
them in. We are working on that. You can email
us at a mom stuff at how stuff works dot com,

(59:30):
and you can also find us on social media. Can't
you bridget you? Absolutely can. We are on Twitter at
mom Stuff podcast and we were on Instagram at stuff
Mom never told you. And thanks as always to Dylan
Fagan and Kathleen Quillian for helping us make this show happen.
Thanks as always, and thanks to you listeners. Please keep
those letters coming. Who do I do