SMNTY Classics: Anna Delvey, This Summer's $cam Queen

Anna Delvey is back in the news. In this classic episode, we delve into her story and break down our fascination with scammers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and you're listening to
stuff I've never told you, a production of I Heart Radios.
How stuff First. Anna Sorkin, perhaps better known as Anna Delby,
has recently been back in the news. She was sentenced

(00:26):
in a New York court to four to twelve years
in prison on a handful of fraud charges. She rejected
a plea deal that could have gotten her out of
jail early if she voluntarily returned to Germany, would have
gotten her out of jail really um And in her remarks,
Anna Delvie said, I'd be lying to you and to
everyone else and to myself if I said I was

(00:49):
sorry for anything. And also I was power hungry. I'm
not a good person. Yeah, this is real Game of Thrones.
Whare Yeah? And I think last summer um past Co
it was Bridget She loves scammers. She loves a good

(01:09):
scam queen, and she was so excited to talk about
this and I was kind of about at a loop
and I enjoyed. I enjoyed learned about it. But that's
that's that's the thing, is why do we like scam queen.
At the same time, she also said I'm not sorry,
and I'd do it again. She did. I I'm not
gonna lie. That's just baller. I don't know what else

(01:31):
to say. I'm like, yeah, Okay, he owns it, she
runs with it. She don't do her she is she is.
So we thought we would rerun this, this classic episode
on Anna Telvi. We hope you enjoy. Hey, this is
Bridget and this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff

(01:52):
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 social media, specifically Twitter,

(02:14):
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 Delvy. Yes, Bridget was very,
very very excited to talk about this um and I
I kind of have read a little bit about it,

(02:35):
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 like 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. It's a good way to go, though.

(02:56):
It is a good way reading about reading in depth
a 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 Phase that I

(03:16):
was excited 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

(03:39):
who pretend 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
make so many people that come off as confident, they
come off like they know exactly what they're doing, and
they you're very good at, you know, that authentic veneer
of who they are, and then you find out, Oh,

(04:00):
that's all 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

(04:22):
kind of 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

(04:44):
of our fascination 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 and spectacular
ascent the shady, audacious figures, and it's center exists on
a spectrum from folk hero to disgrace. The season begins
when the public catches onto some series of scammers of

(05:06):
a particularly appealing sort, 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

(05:29):
of not respect a certain 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 be this scammer who was always running scams
on people and coming up with sort of little witticisms

(05:49):
about scams, things like, you know, scam today before today,
scams you. I think it's a couple 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

(06:10):
and trustworthy, and when we think about scammers or criminals.
We think about men, but then when a woman is
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

(06:31):
kind of love and respect of scammers is that scammers
thrive in times of cultural unrest or unease. The writer
Bridget mentioned before Gia Tolentino. In her piece, he uses
a quote from Maria ConA Cova from her book The
Confidence Game. Cons thrive in times of transition, and the
term confidence man was coined in eighteen forty nine by

(06:54):
the New York Herald and pieces about a bumbling scammer
who would ask strangers in the street, have you come?
And it's 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.

(07:18):
ConA Covia notes than quote exporting the sense of unease
we feel when 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.

(07:42):
One gets the sense that these days at 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 dominent logic of American life.
The things that people have historically used to build non

(08:04):
scammy 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

(08:25):
riveting down to the last details. Scammers show us the
glitzie 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 game,

(08:45):
treating everybody sort of yeah mark, And it kind of
reminds me of the Great Gatsby and haw he sort
of tricked his way up into that society. See. But
but even when I'm so glad he brought that story,
because that story is sort of about the sca am
inherent to this idea of the American dream, right, that
Gatsby has reinvented himself in kind of a scammy way,

(09:07):
you know, bootlegging and lying about his identity and all
of that, because and 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 bullsh and so of course it's a scam exactly. Yeah. Um,
and there are plenty of quote good scammers of all genders.

(09:30):
Billy McFarland of Fire Festival Fame, the British Royal Family Expert.
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

(09:53):
the demise of a woman, like we like, we can't
get enough of a story of a powerful woman gone
wrong or well and 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

(10:14):
you seem like you're pretty well versed in this subject, Bridget. Yeah,
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 CVS and like,
prick your finger and it will be able to give
you all these tests in real time. But it was

(10:35):
actually just a scam, Like she'd gotten all this money
and it didn't work, and she probably knew it didn't work,
And a lot of people are like, well, 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

(10:57):
siphening away thousand and five hundred sixty four dollars while
she was Grace Cottington'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

(11:19):
of Summer one, miss Anna Delvey. Yes, I love scam
Queen of Summer. Yeah, I actually put out I mean
this is an unscientific 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 delve
Elizabeth Holmes, Jill Stein or like right in candidate I

(11:42):
think Anna Delavie actually ends up coming in second. The
right in candidate one, Donald Trump, our president, came in
first as the summer scam queen. Wow, well, congrats to
no one we lose. I mean, it's another that's another
interest point about why I'm so fascinated with scams because

(12:03):
we associate scammers with a certain class. I believe, like
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 Brummett, former head of the e
p A, was basically a scammer. But people people don't

(12:24):
label him a scammer because he's male and well connected
and rich and white. But homeboy was trying to use
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. Nastly, there's so many like classic scams

(12:45):
that if we stripped away the veneer of he's a
high level White House Administration official, whatever, it would just
be any other scammer with like Farragon 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

(13:06):
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
like all scammers do. 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 Delvie, one of your favorite scammers.

(13:28):
She's a good scammer. If there was like a scammer
trading cards, she'd be the one that I will be
really really stoked ticket. So let's get into who Anna
Deelvie 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 Deelvie, First of all,

(13:56):
she's my favorite scammer. I've read literally every piece of
content on the internet about her Horizon fall, including a
lot of common 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
smail mail letter asked her to come on the podcast.
I will update you if we're able to get a
phone interview with Anna delvi on this podcast. If someone

(14:19):
knows her tell her that we would love to have
her on. So shall we come? You know, hear her
story and how she got to where she is. I
he'll 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

(14:41):
are super in depth about the con that she played
and sort 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 will hims she was actually

(15:01):
scammed 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. Ana 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

(15:24):
she 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

(15:47):
one of the tenants 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
plan hands and these grand schemes of hers, even though
they sounded preposterous and in the kind of way the
reason that they are kind of believable is because they

(16:08):
sound 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

(16:28):
idea to make this big, lavish club full of art
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 a 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

(16:50):
if you want people to believe that you are rich,
having some 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

(17:10):
circle of people. So if you're thinking, hmm, I don't
know about her, but then you meet other people and
they seem to be in the 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.

(17:34):
She must still be 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 scammers 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

(17:56):
is having other people 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 scamed was getting other respected political people to
kind of vouch for him. And so once you're sort

(18:18):
of in and 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 handstamp. Yeah.

(18:39):
I do 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, 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

(19:02):
of person, and that her accepting you and inviting you
to things, it was kind of flattering and you sort
of wanted to be someone that Anna del Ve 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

(19:24):
talk about sort of how she seemed that 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

(19:46):
a lot of money, Like, I bet 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 it's
supposed to be picking up the tab on this whole trip.
Now here's where Rachel says that things took a turn.
So it 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

(20:06):
interior courtyard, three bedrooms, and a pool. And Anna ends
up forwarding Rachel the confirmation email, but due to some
seemingly minor staff 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

(20:27):
you doing? Part of me kind of gets it, she says,
since I did this 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 probably 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

(20:49):
wants to take me to Mary Cash. 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 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

(21:13):
aspects of it, it does 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

(21:33):
it's a trip that you probably 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,

(21:56):
I mean, I can 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

(22:18):
wealthy would also 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,

(22:38):
She never paid for dinner. She would notoriously sort of
walk out on the tab. It would be like ten 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 thorty dollars whatever. But I got the sense

(23:00):
being around her that it's kind of hard to explain,
but because she was so rich, a 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

(23:21):
it because I always ended up paying for things and
he had way more money, like 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 as

(23:44):
big a factor to him. So I'm not I'm not
making this up. It does seem like it's 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. Lulls traveling. So Anna's card
gets declined, and of course Rachel asks the thing that
everyone always asks when your card is declined, did you
tell your banks that you're traveling? And she's like, no,

(24:06):
I didn't. And so this again sort of just as like, oh, well,
she's traveling, 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

(24:28):
very gracious, very gracious. So basically what happened after that
is that 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 seven thousand dollars a night,
I meant this point, it's probably so expensive. And once

(24:49):
the hotel gets wise, basically Rachel has to foot the
bill in order for them to leave. And again that
would 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

(25:09):
thing for her. Oh yeah, And in the article she
talks about how hotel security was like in their room
all the time, 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 the stomach issue,
so she Rachel was alone with Anna and Rachel by

(25:30):
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 Rachel was the one that had to do it.
And Anna was saying, you know, 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

(25:52):
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 solution. I mean,
you would hope that if you're super wealthy friend, you know,
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,

(26:13):
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's trying to 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 co workers saw me unravel.

(26:34):
I came to the office looking pale and undone. This
it sounds like this sort of that 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 starting to take over
her full life. Yeah, and wasn't it like seventy thousand
dollars on her credit card? So much money? I mean

(26:55):
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 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

(27:16):
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 banks showing accounts abroad with a total
balance of approximately sixty million Euro that's about seventy million
American dollars, according to a press relation from the New

(27:37):
York County District Attorney's Office announcing the indictment. In late
she took those documents to the City National Bank and
an attempt to secure a twenty two million dollar loan
creation for her arts foundation and private club. When City
National Bank denied a loan, 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

(27:58):
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 that her overdraft her account.
She allegedly promised the bank that she would wire funds
shortly to cover the overdraft, which is a very familiar
thing in her world. She gave the browed money to Fortress,

(28:22):
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 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

(28:43):
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 get it back to you exact,
actually exactly. And this quote that Rachel has from her
piece kind of you know, chronicling her nightmare with Anna,

(29:06):
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 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.

(29:27):
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 until it collapsed under the weight of its
own ambition. It's part of why I believed her, to
continue to believe her. Who would think to make this
up such an elaborate tale and carry on with this
for so long? Who was she? How do you know

(29:48):
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 mystify. You know, she really
represented this world where everything is possible. It's not surprising
to me this has all happened on the backdrop of
New York City, because when you live in New York,

(30:09):
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 listen, I just when I
lived in New York, my my biggest memories were like

(30:31):
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 lived in a different cities
like we lived. We lived in the same city, but

(30:51):
we lived in two different cities in a kind of way.
And I think Anna represented the possibility that you could
live in a world where do you think 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, like who wouldn't want that?

(31:12):
I think it is this sort of modern day Great
gats 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

(31:33):
and that quote, I 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 displaying no outward side that there's

(31:54):
a problem. It's it's impressive in a way. It really is.
I I like 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

(32:15):
be something 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 Annadelvia's no money, and it's just like confident again.

(32:37):
Like 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

(32:59):
that it 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, the
most extreme. Yeah, exactly. So another sort of major player
in the whole Anna Delvi saga is Nef Naff really

(33:19):
has emerged that sort of the folk hero that we
all deserve in this story. H Nef is like me,
a black girl from Washington, d C. Shout out to
Netflix executives who are already turning Anna Delvie story into
a Netflix show. If you need someone to play Nef,
please call me, because this was the role I was
born to play. Um. Nef worked at the hotel where
Anna Delvie was living and really gives a different, a

(33:42):
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 a hotel where she was
living and not paying the bill, so she was like
ragging up thousands of dollars, but by befriending the staff,

(34:04):
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 out with wine glasses?

(34:26):
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 restaurant and then like,
unless you're in New Orleans, to de stroll out onto

(34:47):
the street. But they let her, And that's what she's saying,
Like Anna Delvey had that kind of vibe where she
would do these things and people would just let her.
Right And um, nef noticed the same people who act
nonchalantly about money vibe as Rachel that is, it seems
to be one of the key things that sold her scam.

(35:10):
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 she had so much money she
had just lost track of it. Yeah, that actually reminds

(35:32):
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 to became a big thing, and eventually
when I was like, I need my money for that
you haul, she had just forgotten that. It It just slipped
her mind. And that that Like, that's what I'm saying.
This is not it's for someone who is super wealthy.

(35:53):
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 of writing it off as a part of her
personality as well totally. And it does kind of sound

(36:16):
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. Nef writes about how she once called
something out that she found a bit odd about Anna.
This rich person who actually legitimately was rich. Anna had
told Nef that this person's father they were thinking about

(36:39):
being investment partners. This person like had stock in this hotel.
And so when Nef 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,
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

(37:00):
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 couldn't write
something better than that. It's so good. It's so good,
It's so good. Another great tidbit about Anna's story is
just what a bold face scammer she was. One of

(37:23):
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
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? Which, again,

(37:46):
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
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,

(38:07):
you would ask for first class. I think she's 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
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

(38:30):
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 mister act. You know, it's like
these little things that make you believe in the scam. Yeah. Absolutely,
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.

(38:59):
So NeXT's version of this story kind of begins to
unravel the same way they did for Rachiel, 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

(39:19):
them did. Next says, I started to sweat because I
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
Nef 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.

(39:42):
I can see that to you, Like, you don't want
to argue about money, necessarily with someone who has been
at least a 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 is really the hard part
here was this idea that this was so intersected with

(40:05):
NeXT'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 have 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 in a classic scammer move, when this was brought

(40:28):
up to 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 little smooth
things over. Anna didn't pay, and eventually they locked her
out of her room. Again with Scott Frewer, that happened
to him too. Yes, more similarities, more similarities. So in April,

(40:53):
Anna deposited a hundred and sixty thou dollars with a
bad checks into the same account and something I was
able to withdraw seven eight thousand dollars 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, Neff and Anna

(41:14):
were really cozy. They were buddy buddy, and Neff 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, nev 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

(41:35):
though it's a massive scam, you kind of gotta respect it. Yeah,
it's pretty impressive, just the level of it, the scale,
and to have so many people sort of pulled into it.
There's a part of part of you that sort of
has to has to respect. I gotta give credit where
credit is due on this one. So later Anna deposited

(41:56):
too bad checks into an account she had at Signature Bank,
netting or 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

(42:17):
to 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 high school in Aischfeiler,
a small working class town sixty kilometers outside of Colonia

(42:37):
near the Belgium and Dutch border. She's not actually an heiress.
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,

(42:58):
I think a lot of Americans, myself and Clue did
probably know so little about Germany that if she said, oh,
I'm 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

(43:20):
on the fear that we all have of looking stupid,
right 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

(43:43):
and sound intelligent in front of people. Well, that 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 of
like foreign diplomats and foreign important people, because their name

(44:04):
sounds a little bit like import, can important, 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

(44:26):
not wanting to a embarrass somebody who was important 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 wanting to avoid that and just going

(44:46):
along with it and then finding out that, uh, it
was all a big, a big lie. So another thing
I love about this whole an a situation is that
when the cut inner you 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

(45:09):
they were actual plans that she had. They weren't. There
wasn't a scam. She actually believed that she could move
enough 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.

(45:31):
That's the crux of any good scam is a little
bit of truth. Yes, exactly. So this line at the
cut I think crystallizes for me why this is such
a fascinating story. They're right about her her grand plans
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, where glass towers are built

(45:54):
on paperwork promises. Why not if Abby rose In, the
son of Holocaust survivors, could come to New York and
feel 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 Delvie. During the course of my reporting,
people kept asking why this girl. She wasn't super hot,

(46:17):
they pointed out, or super charming. She wasn't even very nice.
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 guard shoved Fast Company into a Manila envelope,
I realized what Anna had in common with the people
that she'd been studying on the pages about magazine. She
saw something others didn't. Anna looked at the soul of
New York and recognize that if you distract people with

(46:39):
shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indica
of wealth, if you show them the money, 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 Deelvie scammed
her friends, a lot of whom didn't really have that
much money to begin with. And side note, we actually

(47:01):
don't even know the depths of her scams. 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

(47:23):
built on. Yeah, I love that quote too, and it's
sort of reminds me of um. Every time I go
to Las Vegas, I have a weird it's just a
weird feeling and being there that I can't look away from. This.
This is like humanity and its basis like pleasure, entertainment seeking.

(47:46):
It's really hard to describe, but 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. It's a really

(48:08):
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 Anta Gelity's Instagram is still up and she has
the artifice of someone living the lifestyle of like a
of a mysterious, wealthy, traveling you know, rich girl. She

(48:31):
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 that 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 free lunch.

(48:53):
If someone befriends you and says they're going to whisk
you away to Morocco for free, as probably not true,
but it feels so good to believe that you could
live a life like that. I just This really just
reminds 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 forget this time.

(49:15):
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 through 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 and the hot, hot sun,

(49:38):
and 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,

(49:58):
I turned around too quickly and I 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,

(50:21):
probably my same age, 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

(50:41):
on my luck. I want to be clear, there are
people who are living much, much harder lives, and 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 oneing
that so badly, so badly, wanting to know what that

(51:04):
life would be like to just wherever you wanted to go.
There's a it's just the town car away, you know what.
I'm sure these girls have problems. I was 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 so just intoxicating and the idea

(51:29):
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 people are thinking, like,
why did you do a whole episode on this, but
it is. It really demonstrates a lot of class aspiration

(51:51):
and sort of the perversion of class aspiration. I think, yeah,
I think you're completely correct. So that's been our first
and what will probably belivia 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 somebody came over to my house and I
was like, oh, I've been trying to watch this documentary

(52:13):
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
he said, oh that sounds that sounds right. I was
figuring you would not be watching just a straight by

(52:34):
the books documentary about wine. Somebody would have to be
getting scammed for you to be interested. Well, if your
listeners have any suggestions for um for scammers that we
should talk about, please send them to us. And if
you're a scammer, if you're currently scamming, give us a call.

(52:54):
Well let's talk. Let's talk about your scams. Yes, Ridgid
Bridget love love more more than anything to your from you. Yeah.
And in the meantime, let's talk about some the list
No male Okay. Jacqueline wrote sports Fandom Slash This is
about our fan fiction episode. It exists. Our PF is

(53:16):
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 RPF, but I don't follow hockey enough to
really know more than some of the main players and ships.
In both cases, though, I think, in addition to exploring

(53:38):
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 writes film slash,
usually about the American women's national team. Women's football outside

(54:02):
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 of the guys
who regularly star logically be kind of weird. There's a

(54:22):
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 or whatever
present them with slash fan works in person, which I

(54:45):
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 AOH three. Happily, I
think the article was dropped. While I don't think many

(55:08):
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
rest of fan fiction, football RPF is very much produced

(55:30):
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,
but usually they go something along the lines of some

(55:52):
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 fit 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. I dragged my male friends to matches

(56:14):
from my clubs and I can all go 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 I wouldn't try it with the fan

(56:35):
fake writers. They You 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 of
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

(56:56):
cannot 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, well,

(57:17):
of course people are doing, Matt, of course they are.
I love it. Yeah, I do too, Um, and please
keep sending in everyone who's 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 as a team. I am now in

(57:39):
my mid twenties and I've recently begun to write some
fan fiction because I find it fun, relaxing, creative outlet,
and good practice 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 guy I had been with the

(57:59):
most 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 headtero 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 more open and more sex

(58:21):
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. There is certainly some smutty thick out there
that is questionable, such as incest. Pis much of its
more sexuality in a healthy way, and often in a

(58:42):
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 than most porn,
which is certainly something that many parents would struggle that
they had caught a son rather than a daughter looking
at ps. Your comment at the end of part two
about making lemon date out of lemons might have been
funnier than you know. Lemon is a term for smoody

(59:04):
scenes and fan fick 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 comment, I did not put
that together. But that is really funny. Um. I had
a friend when we were probably thirteen, her parents caught

(59:27):
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
keep her with the hook up. I love it. I

(59:48):
love it. You were like, well underground fan fiction Network, Yeah,
I kind of was. Um. So I love all these
these letters about pople who have found community and fan fiction.
I'm really happy that that exists exists for us on
the Internet. And it does sound like it can be

(01:00:09):
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 problematic things in fan fiction, and

(01:00:32):
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 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, please keep setting ourselves fan fictions.

(01:00:55):
Yes we're still we were not joking about the fan
fig action. 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, and you can also find us

(01:01:16):
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