Ep 195: Fall of Frauds, Gordon Haber, "Uggs for Gaza"

This week we're diving into our new fall season, in which we'll be reading stories, essays, and books with a "fraud" theme. That could mean stories in which characters are actually defrauding people, but it could also mean stories that are, themselves, frauds, as in fictional pieces masquerading as real-world documents. For this first episode, though, we've got a story that's the former, about a man who invents a charity at a party, while trying to impress a girl, and then has to see it through so he doesn't lose face.

We also talk about a famous literary fraud, in which a couple journalists, annoyed by the popularity of books they found to be vapid and sex-fueled, decided to write a lowest-common-denominator erotic novel, which turned into a best-seller.

Plus stories of romantic fraud, including men who pose as soldiers to rip off lonely women, and one about an accomplished physicist who was convinced a bikini model several decades his junior was in love with him, based entirely on internet correspondence.

A jam-packed, good-time episode!