Immersive true stories, narrative non-fiction and tales inspired by true events. Written by award-winning journalists and storytellers. This is Paperless, an audio magazine from Vespucci.
Esquire's Best Podcasts Of 2022: “It’s your weekend long read, but pretty much any day you like and you don’t actually have to use your eyes.”
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Immersive true stories, narrative non-fiction and tales inspired by true events. Written by award-winning journalists and storytellers. This is Paperless, an audio magazine from Vespucci.
Esquire's Best Podcasts Of 2022: “It’s your weekend long read, but pretty much any day you like and you don’t actually have to use your eyes.”
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In a case that stunned the FBI, a linguist assigned to a high-profile terrorism case disappeared—only to resurface behind enemy lines, married to her target.
WRITTEN BY: MICHAEL LAPOINTE
REPORTED BY: EMILY DISCHE-BECKER
AUDIO: DOMINIC GOZO
NARRATED BY: EMILIA CLARKE
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A conversation with journalist Serena Coady, author of THE BEANIE BABY BANDIT '97.
HOST: MICHAEL LAPOINTE
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: NATALIA RODRIGUEZ
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It's Chicago in the summer of '97, and criminal defense attorney Kathleen Zellner (of Making a Murderer fame) is feeling worn out. After once defending a serial killer, she promised herself never to defend a guilty person again, and has devoted her life to exonerating the innocent. But after years of gruesome murder trials, she needs a holiday. When a lemon-yellow stretch Cadillac bounces into her parking lot, and out hops a five-foot-tall, 77-year-old man named Ben Perri, that holiday arrives. Ben has been accused of a bizarre crime: the theft of hundreds of ultra-rare Beanie Babies from the manufacturer's secret warehouse. With Beanie Baby mania in full swing, the toys are fetching stratospheric prices, and Ben will gladly hook you up with an elusive Digger the Crab or Radar the Bat. The press calls him the Beanie Baby Bandit, but he swears he's innocent. As this jovial grandfather and veteran charms Kathleen and her team, his carefree way of life gives her a new outlook on the difficult job she's chosen. But still, she can't quite answer whether he's guilty, and whether she's broken her promise to herself. Is Ben just an innocent lover of toys, or is he really the Beanie Baby Bandit?
JOURNALIST: SERENA COADY
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
SOUND-DESIGN & AUDIO MIX: ALICE BOYD
VOICE: JILL WINTERNITZ
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A conversation with journalist Shaun Raviv, author of THE MOCKBUSTER.
HOST: MICHAEL LAPOINTE
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: NATALIA RODRIGUEZ
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When small-time money counterfeiter Edward L. Montoro nearly dies in a plane crash, he decides to reinvent himself as a filmmaker. It's the late 1970s, the dawn of the age of the blockbuster, and Montoro pioneers the "mockbuster"—knock-off productions that capitalize on the popularity of mainstream Hollywood films. But as his little studio attracts the wrath of the movie industry, Montoro makes a desperate decision, sparking one of the great unsolved mysteries in cinematic history.
JOURNALIST: SHAUN RAVIV
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
SOUND-DESIGN & AUDIO MIX: ALICE BOYD
VOICE: ERIC JASON MARTIN
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A conversation with journalist Alex Mayyasi, author of The Way We're Built.
HOST: MICHAEL LAPOINTE
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: NATALIA RODRIGUEZ
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Facing hard times in the early 1990s, Subaru of America is trying to understand who exactly buys their sturdy but drab brand of cars. That's when one marketing executive notices a peculiar niche in their focus groups—lesbian women. In the conservative corporate culture of Subaru, a group of marketing executives will try to turn the company's fortunes around through a secretive marketing campaign.
JOUNALIST: ALEX MAYYASI
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: DOMINIC GOZO
VOICE: NESBA CRENSHAW
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A conversation with journalist Yochai Maital author of "The Badir Brothers".
HOST: MICHAEL LAPOINTE
JOURNALIST: YOCHAI MAITAL
AUDIO: NATALIA RODRIGUEZ FORD
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In a small Israeli village in the 1980s, three Arab brothers are born blind. When a payphone is installed at the end of the block, the brothers discover they can use their supersensitive hearing to manipulate the lines to do their bidding, the first step in what will become the largest telecom fraud in Israeli history.
JOURNALIST: YOCHAI MAITAL
EDITING: THOMAS CURRY
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: DOMINIC GOZO
VOICE: ALI SULIMAN
REPORTING BY: ADAM BIZANSKI
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A conversation about fakes, hustlers, and how to rip off the Grateful Dead with Harmon Leon, author of “Blinkers.
Host: Michael LaPointe
Journalist: Harmon Leon
Audio: Natalia Rodriguez Ford
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Teenage hustler Conor MacKay makes his living selling counterfeit tickets—or blinkers—at concerts and sporting events across the United States. It’s the early 1990s, the golden age of the blinker game, but as the federal authorities and Ticketmaster close in, Conor has to find what’s authentic in this world of fakes. A fictional story based on real events.
NARRATOR: CARTER BELLAIMEY
JOURNALIST: HARMON LEON
AUDIO EDITING: MADDIE HICKISH
MUSIC, SCORING & SOUND-DESIGN: DOMINIC GOZO
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It's Los Angeles in the mid-2000s and Nina is chasing the LA dream. She falls into sex work and gets caught up in her boyfriend/pimp's latest scheme: robbing banks. A disparate group of sex workers are transformed into a gang of bank robbers named The Starlet Bandits...
Narrator: Jurnee Smollett
Journalist: Lexi Pandell
Audio Editing: Natalia Rodriguez
Music, Scoring & Sound-Design: Dominic Gozo
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It's Los Angeles in the mid-2000s and Nina is chasing the LA dream. She falls into sex work and gets caught up in her boyfriend/pimp's latest scheme: robbing banks. A disparate group of sex workers are transformed into a gang of bank robbers named The Starlet Bandits...
Narrator: Jurnee Smollett
Journalist: Lexi Pandell
Audio Editing: Natalia Rodriguez Ford
Music, Scoring & Sound-Design: Dominic Gozo
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When the great Russian writer Anton Chekov visits the penal colony on the remote island of Sakhalin in 1890, he is astonished to learn that they’re holding a famous prisoner—Sonya Golden Hand. He finds the legendary con-artist in solitary confinement, her legs clamped in iron chains. Chekhov kneels down beside her on the filthy prison floor. Tell me the story of how you ended up in chains...
A fictional story inspired by historical events.
Writer: Michael LaPointe
Voice: Olga Kurylenko
Audio Editing: Maddie Hickish
Music, Scoring & Sound-Design: Dominic Gozo
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A woman grapples with the mysterious murder of her husband in their Denver home. All the doors were locked from inside, there is no sign of break-in, but her husband lies there, stabbed to death. The murder haunts the house, already a place of mourning after their son Anthony did not return from World War II. As a local detective struggles to pry apart the puzzle of the murder, Helen begins to see a ghost in her dead son's room. The killing isn't over.
A fictional story inspired by historical events.
Writers: C.Avery & Maggie Milstein
Voice: Lauryn Allman
Audio Editing: Thomas Curry
Music, Scoring & Sound-Design: Dominic Gozo
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For Maeve DuVally, coming out as transgender in a corporate America was a journey of self-discovery that required her to hit rock bottom before she came out on top. This is her story.
Journalist: Pamela Ryckman
Voice: Jamie Clayton
Audio Editing: Natalia Rodriguez
Music, Scoring & Sound-Design: Dominic Gozo
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Narrated by Steve Buscemi, this is the story of Gosnell Duncan and the silicone dildo. After suffering a work-related accident, Caribbean-born Gosnell Duncan was paralyzed from the waist down. An engineer by trade, and determined not to let his disability come between him and the love of his life, Angela, Gosnell poured his knowledge and energy into crafting a new invention from his Brooklyn basement: the world’s first silicone dildo. His invention was intended for others too; specifically, he sought to bring pleasure to people with disabilities. Letters would come from all over the country with specific requests for his custom-made sex toys - letters telling Gosnell intimate secrets and hoping he could help. Despite many obstacles — including laws that could send him to prison just for advertising his products — Gosnell changed the world, one dick at a time. This story brings overdue recognition for an inventor like no other.
Journalist: Hallie Lieberman
Voice: Steve Buscemi
Production: Christopher Hooton
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The Oakland A's of the early 1970s were the most iconoclastic team in baseball history. Never before had a club so collectively traumatized baseball's establishment with its eccentric behavior and business decisions, not to mention its outlandish facial hair, while simultaneously setting records: five consecutive division titles and three straight championships. Yet despite all the winning, the drama that played out on the field was somehow exceeded by the drama in the clubhouse. There were fistfights between players on the regular. The one thing that kept the team from splintering was the fact that, as much as they might have loathed each other, they loathed the team’s owner, Charlie Finley, even more... At least they had that much in common. In 1973, Finley pushed it too far, maneuvering to get a player off the team on false pretenses, uniting his team against him as the World Series hangs in the balance.
Journalist: Jason Turbow
Voice: Jud Meyers
Production: Christopher Hooton
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Inspired by the life and work of Leon Theremin, a Russian inventor whose most famous invention was the Theremin –– an instrument that produces otherworldly, haunting music, and which is played seemingly by magic. At the height of the Cold War, Theremin’s passions for music and science drew him into dangerous territory: the price of pursuing his great passions would be to live his life as a spy.
A fictional story inspired by historical events.
Writer: Michael LaPointe
Voice: Gerard Howard
Production: Christopher Hooton
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Based on the life of Susanna Madora Salter.
Narrated by Elle Fanning.
Argonia, Kansas, 1887. Susanna Salter is baking bread when there’s a knock at the door. She learns she’s been nominated for the mayoral elections as a prank by some of the men of the town. After all, what could be funnier than the notion of a female leader? Nobody expected that serious, reserved Susanna would accept the nomination, let alone that she would be elected the first female mayor of the United States.
Journalist: Olivia Rutigliano
Writer: Maggie Milstein
Voice: Elle Fanning
Production: Christopher Hooton
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