top of page
Teacher's Resources
Search
Episode 30 – The Bullshitters Book Club with Vinny DePonto
Everyone wants to be a good liar. Or at the very least, be able to spot a good liar. But what do you do when all of the books on the...
The Many Deaths Of A.V. Lamartine
On a spring morning in the 1859, A.V. Lamartine walked into the Chemeketa Hotel in Salem, Oregon. The concierge noticed that the man...
Episode 29 – Dom and Dumber with Dom Chambers and Bayden Hammond
Dom and Dumber have taken on a mammoth task, combining magic and sketch comedy into an entirely new genre. In this week’s Scamapalooza,...
Episode 28 – Mediums At Large with Paul Zenon
On the last episode, skeptic Richard Saunders talked about treating those who claim they have psychic powers with respect and the level...
Now You See Me 2
As a magician, scam expert and crime writer, I have strong feelings about Louis Letterier’s 2013 magician heist Now You See Me. Check out...
The Five Greatest Female Con Artists Of All Time
If you’re to believe popular culture, the world of the professional swindler is a particularly masculine place. After all, it’s con MAN...
Episode 27 – The Million Dollar Challenge with Richard Saunders
“Prove it.” It’s the catch cry of skeptics and critical thinkers around the world. Presented with fraudulent claims of psychic powers and...
What the hell is an “honest con man?”
When I’m performing I always insist on being introduced as an honest con man. (It’s in my rider along with a bathtub full of mountain dew...
The Martin Shkreli Hoax: Why we’re the bad guys
On Valentine’s Day, Martin Shkreli, a man unfamiliar with the human feeling like that we call love, took to twitter announcing that he...
How To Write Twists That Shout
I’ve written two books with twists: Fast & Loose and Chasing The Ace. One more and I’ll be committed to M Night Shyamalan Home For Plot...
Episode 26 – F Is For Fake with Simon Caterson
Orson Welles’ last project before the descending into a life of frozen pea commercials and voicing Transformers was F Is A Fake. The film...
Episode 25 – Romance Scam Survivor with Jan Marshall
Jan Marshall is an extraordinary woman. Having studied psychology, sold computers in the early days of personal computing and travelled...
Welcome To 2016
Scamapalooza returns this week with a miniepisode that, while it doesn’t have a guest, is packed full of news, stories and the tired...
5 Ingenious Small Scale Swindles I Wish I’d Come Up With
The website Reddit is a treasure trove of little confessions, bite-sized trivia and minor misogyny (Ok, major misogyny, but that’s a...
5 Most Popular Scamapaloozas of 2015
After years of procrastinating, Paul Culliver from Mammoth Audio and I finally launched the podcast Scamapalooza in July. Since then,...
Episode 24 – Houdini and The Medium with Jon Cox
In his time, Harry Houdini was known not just as the world’s most famous magician but also as a hoax-buster, exposing fraudulent psychics...
Episode 23 – The Sun and The Moon with Matthew Goodman
On 25 August, 1835, The Sun newspaper printed a series of hoax articles claiming they’d found life on the moon including man-bats, two...
Episode 22 – Piff The Magic Dragon with John Van Der Put
Of all the magicians I’ve met, Piff The Magic Dragon is the most unique. After all, he’s a dragon who has appeared on Las Vegas casino...
Episode 21 – The Sting with Matthew Specktor
There are two types of con artist movies: those made before The Sting and those made after The Sting. The 1973 George Roy Hill film won...
Meth heads, identity theft and a bucket of lemons
Jack is a good neighbour. Maybe a little too good. After forty years on the street, he knows everyone and is always willing to lend a...
Here you'll find resources for teaching and promoting critical thinking, scam protection, and deception education. Many are linked to his school incursions while others are just for fun.
Make sure you subscribe to Nicholas's podcast. Scamapalooza. He interviews psychologists, authors, and researchers about why people are so easy to fool.
bottom of page