OUR RATING:
Where Scams Meets Comedy and Your Faith in Humanity Gets an Amusing Beating
Laci Mosley has achieved what many thought impossible: she’s made the complete breakdown of human decency into appointment listening. “Scam Goddess” is the podcast equivalent of watching a car crash in slow motion, except the car is filled with gullible victims, the crash site is littered with Bitcoin wallets and fake romance profiles, and somehow you’re laughing so hard you forget to feel bad about humanity’s collective stupidity. Mosley has carved out the perfect niche in the true crime space by focusing exclusively on the kind of crimes that, if you aren’t already concerned about the critical thinking skills of your fellow humans, you will be.
What I like about this podcast is that Mosley spares no gullibility. Her storytelling pursues a refreshing acknowledgment that some victims really, truly should have known better. While other podcasts tiptoe around victim-blaming with the delicacy of an inter-galactic diplomatic negotiation best reserved for Mr. Spock, Mosley serves up reality with the subtlety of a brick through a window. Yes, she has empathy for people who get scammed, but she also has eyes and a functioning brain, which means she’s not going to pretend that sending your life savings to an Austrian in the “import and export” business because he promised to marry you and whisk you away on an endless vacation was a completely reasonable decision made by a rational adult human being.
In each episode, Mosley presents a scam, explains how it worked, introduces you to the people who fell for it, and then explains why people fall for these things without making you feel like you need to start a GoFundMe for the victims’ poor decision-making skills. She manages to be educational, entertaining, and occasionally sympathetic all while maintaining the kind of comedic timing that makes you wonder if she’s been secretly studying the art of roasting people’s life choices as a doctoral thesis.
The guest episodes are also compelling audio fare, featuring comedians who bring their own unique perspectives to the world of human gullibility. These episodes feel less like interviews and more like group therapy sessions for people who’ve lost faith in humanity’s collective intelligence (a common occurrence amongst comedians). The guests often seem as baffled as Mosley by the stories they’re discussing, creating a delightful echo chamber of “how did this actually happen to a real person?”.
The show also serves as an inadvertent anthropology study of human nature, revealing the fascinating ways people can simultaneously be brilliant in some areas of their lives while displaying the critical thinking skills of a houseplant when it comes to obvious scams. Mosley has essentially created a podcast that functions as both entertainment and a public service announcement: enjoy these wild stories, but also maybe don’t wire money to strangers who claim to be stranded astronauts.
Mosley’s research is thorough, her storytelling is engaging, and her ability to find humor in humanity’s darkest moments of poor judgment is plain old fun. She’s created a space where you can laugh at people’s terrible decisions without feeling like a complete monster, mostly because the decisions are so spectacularly terrible that laughter feels like the only appropriate response.
“Scam Goddess” succeeds because it fills a very specific void in the podcast landscape: stories about crimes where the real mystery isn’t “who did it” but “how did anyone fall for this?” Mosley has built a temple to human gullibility and appointed herself as its high priestess, and frankly, we’re all better people for having witnessed her reign.
Where to listen to Scam Goddess
Episodes.fm | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro
Discover the best episodes of Scam Goddess