In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street," out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Joe Berlinger. Bernie Madoff was considered an elder statesman of the stock market, but hidden away from his legitimate securities firm, he was running an unregulated hedge fund. But it was all a Ponzi scheme swindling investors out of $64 billion. “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street” chronicles the rise a...
Jan 11, 2023•35 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Next up on You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street." This series reveals the truth behind Bernie Madoff’s infamous $64 billion global Ponzi scheme - the largest in history - which shattered the lives of countless individual investors who had placed their trust in the revered Wall Street statesman. In our next episode, host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Joe Berlinger. If you haven't watched “Madoff: The Monster of Wall S...
Jan 04, 2023•7 min•Season 6Ep. 1
To finish out the year, we're replaying one of our most popular episodes of 2022. Wherever he went, Simon Leviev’s entourage would follow. A carefully curated supporting cast – his business partner, his driver, his security guard – created an air of glamour and legitimacy. But who were these people? Were they in on the scam? Or were they as much victims as the women Simon swindled? The Making of a Swindler Part 1 is a companion to the documentary, "The Tinder Swindler", only on Netflix....
Dec 28, 2022•41 min•Season 5Ep. 54
At the top of Rebecca's Best Of list, we're replaying her interview with “Descendant" director and producer, Margaret Brown. The Clotilda was the last known ship to arrive in the United States carrying enslaved Africans, decades after slave importation was outlawed. The ship was burned and sank somewhere in the Mobile River, while its passengers would later settle in the community of Africatown. In the century that followed, the descendants of The Clotilda struggled to preserve their heritage in...
Dec 21, 2022•39 min•Season 5Ep. 53
One of Rebecca's favorites of 2022, we're replaying her interview with "Trainwreck: Woodstock '99" director Jamie Crawford and producer Cassie Thornton. Organizers from the original Woodstock tried to recreate the music and magic at a new three-day festival in 1999. But concert-goers expecting another groovy weekend were met with high food prices, dirty water, and mountains of litter. And promoters learned too late their audience wasn’t filled with 60s flower children; they’d drawn an army of ro...
Dec 14, 2022•33 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, host Rebecca Lavoie talks with Amanda Richards, the docs and docuseries writer for Tudum, Netflix's editorial companion site, about their favorite Netflix titles from 2022. This year there were intriguing cold cases, historical crimes, and cunning con men. There were meltdowns at power plants and meltdowns at rock concerts. There was also plenty of drama on reality shows. We cheered for cooking, baking, catfights, and matchmaking. There were game shows ...
Dec 07, 2022•27 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Jessica Dimmock. Between 1986 and 1991, the remains of four missing women were discovered in the same field in League City, Texas. Authorities couldn’t rule out the deaths were connected to a string of 30 murders outside of Houston since the 1970s. Then another string of disappearances began in the 1990s...
Nov 30, 2022•35 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Pepsi, Where's My Jet?" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews documentary subjects John Leonard and Todd Hoffman. In a 1996 ad campaign, Pepsi claimed if you earned enough points people could get free sunglasses, leather jackets…or a Harrier jump jet. When a 20-year-old college student found a loophole that would let him obtain a $32 million plane for just $700,000, he and his friend bega...
Nov 23, 2022•33 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary “Capturing the Killer Nurse" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Tim Travers Hawkins and author Charles Graeber. Charlie Cullen was an experienced registered nurse, trusted and beloved by his colleagues at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. He was also one of history’s most prolific serial killers, with a body count potentially numbering in the hundreds across multiple medical faci...
Nov 16, 2022•38 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary “Descendant" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director and producer Margaret Brown. The Clotilda was the last known ship to arrive in the United States carrying enslaved Africans, decades after slave importation was outlawed. The ship was burned and sank somewhere in the Mobile River, while its passengers would later settle in the community of Africatown. In the century that followed, the de...
Nov 09, 2022•39 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we conclude our look at volume three of the Netflix series "Unsolved Mysteries" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Robert M. Wise about his episode "Body in the Bay" After Patrick Lee Mullins's small boat never returned from a ride on the river, search crews scoured the waters in and around Tampa Bay. Days later, his body was discovered in a shallow part of the bay, carefully tied to his own anchor…but his empty boat was recover...
Nov 02, 2022•35 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we continue our look at volume three of the Netflix series "Unsolved Mysteries" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Gabe Torres about his episode "What Happened to Josh?" In 2002, Josh Guimond left a party at St John’s University in Minnesota and was last seen walking back to his apartment. When his friends realized he never made it home it kicked off a massive search of the area’s woods and waterways. What could have contributed...
Oct 26, 2022•40 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about volume three of the Netflix series “Unsolved Mysteries" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews series executive producer Terry Dunn Meurer and director Donald Eichar. Over the next three weeks, new episodes featuring more unexplained deaths, baffling disappearances, and bizarre paranormal activity will be available on Netflix. "Unsolved Mysteries" is a series you don’t just watch. Viewers engage with the stories, offerin...
Oct 19, 2022•30 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary “The Redeem Team" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director and executive producer Jon Weinbach. When the US added NBA players to their men’s Olympic basketball team in 1992, it seemed they’d never lose again. But in the years after that first Dream Team, the international competition got better and the American teams began to coast. After a humiliating bronze-medal performance in 2004, orga...
Oct 12, 2022•38 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga," out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews executive producer Dan Cogan. Powerful Wall Street hedge funds made a financial bet: if video game retailer GameStop went bankrupt, they’d make a killing on its devalued stock. But no one could anticipate an army of online day traders would prop up GameStop and squeeze the over-extended hedge funds that were short sel...
Oct 05, 2022•33 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Miles Blayden-Ryall. They slipped undetected in and out of the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and others stars just by watching their social media. They became known as The Bling Ring and their exploits were made into a book and a movie. But their stories didn’t end there. In “The Real Bling Ring” ...
Sep 28, 2022•31 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary film, “The Anthrax Attacks: In the Shadow of 9/11" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Dan Krauss. In the days after September 11th, the nation was on edge fearing more attacks. When politicians and media figures began receiving letters filled with deadly anthrax, officials thought foreign terrorists were responsible. But when tests revealed the anthrax was a strain used only by Americ...
Sep 21, 2022•37 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Sins of Our Mother" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Skye Borgman. Lori Vallow was known to friends and family as a devoted mother of three, a loving wife, and a woman of God. But then things changed. Lori joined a doomsday religious community. Her ex-husband was shot after a family confrontation…and the wife of her lover died under mysterious circumstances. Lori’s face was ...
Sep 14, 2022•31 min
In this episode of "You Can't Make This Up," Rebecca Lavoie is joined by Connie Wang from Tudum to discuss the best unscripted films and series on Netflix coming this fall.
Sep 07, 2022•13 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary “Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director David Terry Fine. Basketball referee Tim Donaghy worked his way through the ranks to become an elite official in the NBA. He and a friend from high school began placing bets on games he officiated. Soon, Donaghy’s picks were watched by organized crime - and eventually - the FBI. It unfolded in a scandal that threaten...
Aug 31, 2022•30 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews directors Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku. Notre Dame’s Manti T’eo was already one of college football’s biggest stars. His stature grew when he revealed his longtime girlfriend died at the beginning of his senior season. But on the eve of going pro, reporters uncovered his online girlfriend never existed. At a time when the public hadn’t heard ...
Aug 24, 2022•35 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Trainwreck: Woodstock '99" out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Jamie Crawford and producer Cassie Thornton. Organizers from the original Woodstock tried to recreate the music and magic at a new three-day festival in 1999. But concert-goers expecting another groovy weekend were met with high food prices, dirty water, and mountains of litter. And promoters learned too late their ...
Aug 17, 2022•33 min
Next up on You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “Trainwreck: Woodstock '99." The original 1969 concert promised peace and music, but its 1999 revival delivered three days of rage, riots and real harm. In our next episode, host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Jamie Crawford and producer Cassie Thornton. If you haven't watched "Trainwreck: Woodstock '99," make sure to add it to your watch-list before next week’s episode. Stay Tuned!
Aug 10, 2022•7 min
In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “The Most Hated Man on the Internet," out now on Netflix. Host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Rob Miller and producer Vikki Miller. Kayla was stunned to learn her intimate photos were posted on a revenge porn website called IsAnyoneUp.com. It was run by Hunter Moore, a self-styled bad boy who enjoyed the humiliation of the victims and the adoration of his equally raucous fans. When Moore refused to...
Aug 03, 2022•37 min
Next up on You Can't Make This Up, we are talking about the Netflix documentary series “The Most Hated Man on the Internet." Hunter Moore was a self-proclaimed “professional life ruiner” who found fame in the early 2010s with a notorious revenge porn website. But then the mother of one of his victims began her own quest to take down this Internet bully. In our next episode, host Rebecca Lavoie interviews director Rob Miller and producer Vikki Miller.. If you haven't watched “The Most Hated Man o...
Jul 27, 2022•6 min
The twisted conclusion is revealed about the little girl who never really knew who she was. A reinvestigation of the cold cases of Sharon Marshall and Michael Hughes unravels the mystery of the little girl who never really knew who she was. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before or after watching the film. If you are hoping to avoid spoilers, we recommend watching...
Jul 20, 2022•54 min
A so-called father’s obsession with his son turns deadly as the true nature of his crimes and aliases become clear. When the shocking past of federal fugitive, Franklin Floyd intersects with a Jane Doe mystery, an avalanche of secrets are revealed. With it, a resolution of the Sharon Marshall mystery seems closer than ever. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before o...
Jul 13, 2022•41 min
With escalating abuse and violence, a father becomes a husband, and very likely a killer. Sharon takes on a new identity, leaving her old life and her sense of self behind. A supposed accident leaves Michael in foster care as authorities discover his family was never who they said they were. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before or after watching the film. If you...
Jul 06, 2022•34 min
A father pushes his daughter into a life of selling sex as friends attempt to make sense of it all. Sharon leaves behind her dreams of college and brings a baby into a world of sex work, controlled by the one person who was supposed to protect her. Once again, her new friends struggle to help her escape. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened to before or after watching the...
Jun 29, 2022•37 min
A bright and mesmerizing teenager tries to make her way in the world only to find her father is the one person standing in her way. Sharon Marshall navigates high school in the 1980s with a mysterious home life that troubles all those around her. As her teenage years unfold, so does the darkness of Sharon and her father's relationship. Girl in the Picture Podcast is a companion to the documentary coming to Netflix on July 6, 2022. The podcast is a standalone audio documentary and can be listened...
Jun 29, 2022•38 min
