Scamapalooza with Nicholas J. Johnson

PATREON MY STUFF STEVE'S WEBSITE STEVE'S TIKTOK I’ve been sick for the past few months. Which is why there has been an episode of a Scamapalooza in a little while. Instead, I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed feeling sorry for myself while trawling tiktok. Among the craft videos, slime reviews and video game analysis, I came across a video of a young academic making iced coffee while explaining his research into why some people detect misinformation on social media while others let it slide. Is it an education issue? A psychological block? Or do people just lack the proper motivation? On this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to Steven Rathje about his research into fake news, his one point one million followers, and how to fix the problem of truth on social media. He also gives me genuinely useful ideas on the types of TikTok content my followers would want to see.

Support the podcast on Patreon! Magicians have secrets that you don’t see on stage. I’m not talking about HOW they do the tricks—the trapdoors and mirrors—but the mundane secrets that make the show happen. The tour schedules, the marketing plans, the box office reports and the horror stories of gigs that went off the rails. Kent Blackmore, digs up those secrets. An author and magic historian, Kent has dedicated his life to telling the stories of Australia’s most colourful figures. From William Fraser, the Convict Conjurer, to magic superstars like Les and Esme Levante, Blackmore has spent decades piecing together posters, newspaper articles, and ephemera to explore not just their stage personas but the stories of people behind magic. KENT’S WEBSITE: https://sydneymagic.net/

Support the podcast on Patreon! If I had an origin story as a magician/con artist/science communicator it would be me, in the early 2000s, hunching over my computer trying to count how many times a basketball is being thrown while completely missing the full-size gorilla walking right through the middle of the shot. The creation of psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla video went viral and the research paper become infamous, winning the pair an ig nobel award in 2004. Now, Daniel and Christopher are back with a new book Nobody’s Fool an exploration of all the ways human beings are deceived and a few ideas on how to avoid it! On this episode of the podcast, we talk about the book, the gorilla, and the best ways to avoid being taken for a ride. The Book My Website

Imagine it's 1850 and you live in a rural area, far away from doctors and the latest advances in medical technology. And then you get sick. What would you do? It's this fear that gave rise to The Snake Oil Salesmen, travelling hucksters who sold ointments, tinctures, tablets and the eponymous snake oil. In this episode, I talk to historian Dr Jo Clyne about snake oils (both real and fake), electric hairbrushes, and the weirdest treatment for non-existent tapeworms you've ever seen. Support the show Jo's facebook page

Support Scamapalooza On Patreon I busted my cat scratching the couch yesterday. As soon as she caught my eye, she stopped scratching and started to stretch instead, acting as if she’d hadn't just been digging her claws into our brand new four seater. The question is, did she KNOW she was trying to deceive me? Or did it just look like that through my human eyes? Lixing Sun is the man with the answers. A professor of biology at Central Washington University and the author of The Liars of Nature and The Nature of Liars, Lixing's work explores how and why animals deceive. On this episode of the podcast, we talk about why the Navy painted zebra stripes on their ships during world war 2, why a duck would want to see on Volleyball and how cuckoos and warblers negotiate peace in an egg switching arm race. Lixing's Book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691198606/the-liars-of-nature-and-the-nature-of-liars My Site: www.njjohnson.com.au

I’m often asked what my favourite con artist movie is and I always have a different answer. Usually, I’ll say Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men or David Mamet’s House of Games. If I’m feeling a little pretentious I might name drop Fellini’s Il Bidone or Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket. At the same time, I also have a soft spot for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Paper Moon, and Brother’s Bloom. However, if you were to ask me what the WORST con artist movie of all time was, I have an answer The Sting 2. Released a decade after the original with none of the original cast, The Sting 2 is a mess. With a nonsensical plot and a complete lack of charm, The Sting 2 is a forgotten film that deserves to be forgotten. On this podcast episode, I talk to Nick Mason from The Weekly Planet podcast about why I hate this movie so much and find out whether The Sting 2 deserves my disdain. (Throughout the interview I repeatedly refer to Mac Davies as Mac King. Mac Davies is one of the stars of The Sting 2. Mac King is a comedy magician I once saw eat a guinea pig on stage in Las Vegas. My apologies to Mr King.)

If I told you that “the cafeteria is permanently closed for the schnitzel inventory.” what would you think I was saying? If your Russian, the chances are you’d know exactly what I was getting at. The novel The Little Golden Calf is the story of Ostap Bender a con artist trying to become a millionaire in 1920s Soviet Russia, a time when millionaires aren’t supposed to exist. Little read in the rest of the world, the book is a classic in Russia. It’s taught in schools, there are multiple movie and TV adaptions, statues of the main characters can be found in towns across the country, and lines from the book have made their way into usage, Face with anything that’s not all it's cracked up to be, a Russian might say “No, this is not Rio de Janeiro.”. Dodgy enterprises are labelled “horns and hoods” or “Children of Lt. Schmidt”. On this episode, I talk to Maya Vinokour from the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU about the book, its history and what it can tell us about Putin, Trump, and 21st-century satire. PATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=34623445 MY SITE: www.njjohnson.com.au MAYA's WORK: www.as.nyu.edu/faculty/maya-vinokour.html

If I told you that “the cafeteria is permanently closed for the schnitzel inventory.” what would you think I was saying? If your Russian, the chances are you’d know exactly what I was getting at. The novel The Little Golden Calf is the story of Ostap Bender a con artist trying to become a millionaire in 1920s Soviet Russia, a time when millionaires aren’t supposed to exist. Little read in the rest of the world, the book is a classic in Russia. It’s taught in schools, there are multiple movie and TV adaptions, statues of the main characters can be found in towns across the country, and lines from the book have made their way into usage, Face with anything that’s not all it's cracked up to be, a Russian might say “No, this is not Rio de Janeiro.”. Dodgy enterprises are labelled “horns and hoods” or “Children of Lt. Schmidt”. On this episode, I talk to Maya Vinokour from the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at NYU about the book, its history and what it can tell us about Putin, Trump, and 21st-century satire. PATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=34623445 MY SITE: www.njjohnson.com.au MAYA's WORK: www.as.nyu.edu/faculty/maya-vinokour.html

Have you ever had to deal with corporate bullshit? Had your projects “put on the back burner”? Or had your job “right-sized”? Also, what the hell is “disruption?” Ian McCarthy is the Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at Simon Fraser University. His paper Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit introduced the C.R.A.P Framework, a system for organisations to reduce the amount of bullshit in the workplace. In this episode, I talk to Ian about how organisations deal with the problem of B.S. and what, if anything, workers can do to make their lives less difficult. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=34623445 This Place Is Full of It: https://t.co/yq2McRbmgJ Confronting Indifference Toward Truth: https://t.co/Fkcenv1Eie Me: https://linktr.ee/nicholasjjohnson

If I had to guess what the cardinal rule for card counters was, “Don’t draw attention to yourself” would be way up there. While card counting isn’t illegal, casinos aren’t too keen on having players use probability to actually win at blackjack. Flying under the radar seems like common sense. What I wouldn’t expect is for a successful card counting to share his experiences on youtube in a wildly successful series of videos. Well that’s just what Steven Bridges has done. Since 2018, Steven has been recording his experiences as he went from card counting novice to professional counter. On this episode of Scamapalooza I talk to Steven about how he balances counting cards undetected while racking up millions of views on youtube. STEVEN’S YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/channel/UCqK0ukwGsTDh7sHih1OmLJA MY WEBSITE: www.njjohnson.com.au

Every other week, I am sent a video of someone playing The Shell Game. Maybe it's a cat finding a single treat under three cups, or maybe it's a magician impressing audiences with hand-carved replica walnuts and silicone peas. However, despite being one of the most famous scams in the world, The Shell Game is also one of the most misunderstood. Even the name is misleading, as it is rarely performed with actual shells and it is definitely not a game. It's a scam that you cannot win. Every year, tourists lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on this simple wager. In this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to Nick Stein, a.k.a. The Crooked Croupier, about how the scam works, why it's so profitable, and why, despite its notoriety, it still manages to take so much money. NICK'S WEBSITE: https://www.crookedcroupier.com/ MY WEBSITE: www.conman.com.au

There is a popular image of a con artist that doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s an image of well-dressed, suave, fast-talking swindlers who—despite their dodgy dealings—always does the right thing in the end. After all, they have a code. Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf in The Sting. Danny Ocean and his gang in the Ocean’s film. The casts of shows like Hustle, Leverage and white collar. But before all of them was Professor Harold Hill, the title character of the Meredith Wilson musical, The Music Man. The story of a small-time con man’s attempts to convince the people of river city Iowa to invest in his non-existence boy’s band has been a staple of theatre, movies, and TV since it premiered in 1957. In 2022, the musical broken box office records when Hugh Jackman starred in a revival. It's also the inspiration for the monorail episode of The Simpsons. On this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to theatre maker Em Chandler about why Harold Hill has endured and what about musical theatre makes it the perfect medium for telling a swindler's story. MY SITE: www.conman.com.au EM's TWITTER: www.twitter.com/polyponder

I have long suspected that Deepak Chopra spouts garbage. Despite being a trained physician, the author and self-help guru’s trademark new-age ramblings have always struck me as little more than pseudo-scientific garbage. But, I’m also the kind of guy who doesn’t like to dismiss ideas out of hand, just because I don’t understand. It turns out that my instincts were correct. A 2015 study in the journal Judgment and Decision Making showed that many of Chopra’s tweets are indistinguishable from a randomly generated sentence using Chopra's favourite buzz-words. They are—according to studies authors—Bullshit. On this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to the lead author of the study Gordan Pennycook and how you measure what is and isn’t bullshit and why it’s important to spot the difference.

How does the daughter of a railroad hand become a millionaire in an age when women couldn’t even open a bank account? If you’re Cassie Chadwick, the answer is you pull off one of the most audacious scams in history, a fraud that took millions from US banks and saw the richest man in America turn up at her trial. On this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to Tori Telfer, author of Confident Women, about Chadwick’s extraordinary rise to wealth, her downfall, and why this incredible con artist isn’t better remembered today. Tori’s Website: www.toritelfer.com My Website: www.conman.com.au

Have you ever thought about how magicians learn their tricks? Not the methods—the smoke and mirrors behind the illusion—but the actual process of learning a new effect. Even magicians don’t think too much about how they learn magic, treating our instructions like a recipe that—if followed—will create a moment of wonder. Brian Rappert, a Professor of Science, Technology and Public Affairs at the University of Exeter, believes there’s more to learning magic than just following directions. Starting as a complete novice, he’s documented the process of becoming a magician, not to reveal the secrets, but to understand the process by which magicians acquire their skills. In this episode of Scamapalooza, Brian goes deep into his research exploring the nature of learning magic. Be warned we do discuss certain Christmas-related secrets that may be inappropriate for very young listeners. WEBSITE: www.conman.com.au BRIAN'S BOOK: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/55818

If you know me then you’ll know that my nemesis is Dr Matt Pritchard. For the last few years, this evil genius has been creating impenetrable optical illusions on social media. A toy elephant vanishes in a split second in impossible circumstances. A lego pirate ship appears in a clear glass bowl. A bike helmet is suddenly filled with coloured balls. Unlike other online magicians, Matt uses almost entirely unique methods that have baffled the most experienced magicians. There are no edits, no CGI, and no hidden assistants behind the scenes. His videos stand up to close scrutiny and multiple views with only a handful being exposed by keen-eyed observers. In this episode, I talk to Matt about how he creates his illusions, why they work, and how science magicians like him promote critical thinking. If you’re in the UK, check out sciencemagicshows.co.uk to have him visit your school. If you’re in Australia, check out www.njjohnson.com.au for my own school shows.

My kid just performed their first solo magic show. In front of 300 of their peers, they correctly predicted a randomly selected TV show, vanished a bottle of coke and tricked the principal into opening a can of spring snakes. Classic comedy! But why do so many kids, particularly girls, give up on magic? Amy Kimlat is a children’s author and former kid magician whose new picture book Hocus Pocus Practice Focus inspires kids to stick with their passions, no matter how hard it gets. I talked to Amy about performing magic as a kid, girls in magic, and being a first-time author. A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK: www.amykimlat.com/honest ME: www.conman.com.au TWITTER: www.twitter.com/countlustig FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/honestconman INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/honestconman

Why have there not been more video games about card cheating? I remember playing Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist as a kid and thinking that the stage of the game where you have to catch the Wheaton “Aces” Hall cheating was the best bit. Why couldn’t that be the whole game? Game designer and illustrator Nicolai Troshinsky has taken up the challenge with Card Shark, a new game in which players have to lie, cheat, and swindle their way through 17th-century French society with nothing but a deck of cards and their wits to survive. On this episode of Scamapalooza, I talk to Nicolai about the inspirations for this unique game and the challenges he and the team of developers at Nerial faced in bringing it to life. If you enjoy the episode, head please subscribed and leave a review at Apple Podcasts. It only takes a second and it makes a huge difference in spreading the word. Me: www.conman.com.au Card Shark: www.devolverdigital.com/games/card-shark

Did you know the world “bullshit” might just be an Australian invention? During World War I, Australian troops found themselves arriving at the front and suddenly under the command of British officers. These officers were obsessed with appearances and would have the Australian soldiers bull polish their shoes constantly, regardless of whether they were dirty or not. The Australians called this pointless activating bullshitting, and the word spread from there. Today, we see bullshit everywhere. Not merely lies but a disregard for what is true. On the podcast today I speak to John Petrocelli, a professor of psychology, director of the Bullshit Studies Lab, and the author of the life-changing science of detecting bullshit. We explore what bullshit is, why we do it, and most importantly, what you can do about it! If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to leave a review!

Magicians have a complicated relationship with the Harry Potter franchise. On the one hand, the success of J K Rowling's creation has given them hours of work at movie premieres, book launches, and themed events. On the other hand, it's hard dealing with constant jokes about where our broomsticks are and whether we were raised under a staircase. The Boy Who Lived casts a long shadow. So what happens when the world of the magician collides with the world of Harry Potter? Since 2016 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been combining J K Rowling's wizarding stories with extraordinary stage magic. There’s no suspension of disbelief; the characters appear to be performing real magic, live on stage. Lee Cohen is the Magic and Illusions Consultant for the Australian production of Harry Potter and the Cursed child. In this episode of Scamapalooza Lee talks about how she got this incredible job how she teaches magic to actors who have never picked up a trick in their life and the differences between theatrical illusions magic tricks and special effects. For more information on today's show visit www.conman.com.au