Shame, Scams, and The Stories We Tell Ourselves (with Ollie Wards)

Deep Cover Presents: Snowball

Pushkin Industries

True Crime, History

4.3 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jake sits down with Snowball creator Ollie Wards to discuss how a family mystery became an international hit. They trace Ollie’s journey from the first recorded conversation with his dad – recorded under a hotel duvet – to the heart-pounding moment he found himself face-to-face with the con artist herself: Lezlie Manukian.

Along the way, they touch on the challenges of reporting on family, the psychology of scammers and their victims, and the strange kind of closure that comes when truth is messier than justice.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:04.4	A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers,
0:09.1	but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.
0:13.1	The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.
0:15.9	So why did it take so long to catch him?
0:18.5	I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting Lisk,
0:21.9	the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam,
0:26.8	available now.
0:27.9	Listen for free on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:41.1	Pushkin.
0:45.2	Hey, this is Jake.
0:47.2	We're here at the end of our special presentation of Snowball, a series that was
0:51.6	originally produced by Ollie Wards and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
0:56.6	But there's more. I recently got a chance to sit down with Ollie and ask all the questions I had
1:02.8	about how he made the show, what it was like to report on his own family, how he feels about the series
1:09.0	now, and where everything has ended up since he stopped
1:12.7	recording. I really think you're going to like it. So sit back and enjoy. Remind me, so where is your
1:22.1	hometown? Like, where did you grow up again? Auckland. So I'm from New Zealand, but I'm speaking to you
1:27.2	today from Sydney, where
1:29.0	I live now.
1:30.7	You know, one of the things to mention here is this is literally the first time that I have
	...

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