Recommended Podcast: “The Enforcers” from This American Life

September 19th, 2008 | Posted in Uncategorized 3 Comments »

Act 1 of this American Life’s latest episode, The Enforcers, mesmerized me. I highly recommend listening to it. Here’s the description:

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur. The three self-made enforcers tell Ira their story. For more on what they did, along with photos, maps and phone recordings, go here. (29 and 1/2 minutes)

In short, Ira Glass tells the story of how some “baiters” returned a con on one of the Nigerian email con men. It’s hilarious at first, and then becomes somewhat dark and unethical.

While you’re downloading podcasts, be sure to include Alistair Christie’s podcast on Virtual Machines — very useful if you’re writing installation documents.

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Tags: baiters, con men, Ira Glass, Nigeria, podcasts, scams, This American Life, virtual machines, VMs, What I'm Reading

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Nina says:

September 23, 2008 at 11:37 am

I listened to this podcast on my run yesterday. I was cracking up at the Monty Python skit, but the story itself was pretty disturbing. The second part of the podcast (on the banks) was also pretty interesting in light of the last few days.

Bailout Poll - Aye or Nay?.....Take 2 - Page 3 - IH8MUD™ Forums says:

October 1, 2008 at 9:28 pm

[...] intimately involved in advising both of our Presidential candidates. This was entertaining: Recommended Podcast: “The Enforcers” from This American Life | I’d Rather Be Writing – T… The second half was about the incredible willingness for the regulators to basically not enforce [...]

shweta shetye says:

December 29, 2008 at 3:07 am

Tom,

This was a really good piece for a novice writer in an agile environment. I really enjoyed listening to Alysa and made a few notes as well. I think the builds suggestion that she has made will really take care of 60 % of the technical accuracy with respect to UI.

Thanks,
Shweta

I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson