The Music Man, Part 1
Endless Thread
WBUR
4.2 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You may have seen this ad: A frenetic, wild-haired concert pianist says he can make any newbie a virtuoso in months. Just take his online course for $3,000.
Too good to be true? Redditors thought so. Posts dating back years cried scam. Some went further and claimed his virtual piano academy is a cover to recruit Scientologists.
In Part 1 of "The Music Man," Endless Thread investigates.
Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter with mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funding for this podcast comes from Math Works, creators of Mat Lab and Simulink software, |
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| 0:11.0 | Com. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Anna Williamson and this is the Experian Cost of Loving |
| 0:15.5 | podcast where we are going down to the nitty gritty and talking everything |
| 0:19.5 | finance and relationships. Make sure you check out the cost of loving on the Experian UK |
| 0:24.9 | YouTube channel and on Spotify. |
| 0:27.0 | W-B-U-R Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:38.0 | A few months ago, producer Grace Tatter told us about a mysterious set of videos that have been following her around the internet. |
| 0:45.0 | I mean it was kind of her fault though right Grace I guess it was I had been |
| 0:51.8 | interested in learning piano and I had this other friend who had also been wanting to learn piano whose name is also Ben. |
| 1:00.3 | Too many Ben's. Yeah, we already got one of those. We're going to call Grace's friend George. |
| 1:05.6 | Fine, we can call him George. George and I had been poking around online and learning about piano and he came across this online |
| 1:14.2 | piano school called Ridley Academy that he showed to me and Ridley Academy is |
| 1:19.8 | named after its very energetic founder, Stephen Ridley. |
| 1:24.0 | It takes six to 12 months of three minutes per day, |
| 1:27.0 | and it's as easy as watching Netflix. |
| 1:29.0 | And this appealed to Grace and George, because the price was usually nearly $3,000 but it was being |
| 1:35.8 | offered for a significant discount for only $1,400. |
| 1:40.3 | I did a little more googling about the school and Stephen Ridley and all of a sudden |
| 1:49.5 | whether it was the internet cookies or something else it seemed like every single ad I saw on |
| 1:54.7 | YouTube was from this guy. Those internet cookies will get you Grace. My name is |
... |
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