"Telemarketers" with Adam Bhala Lough & Sam Lipman-Stern

Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Continuing our Emmy coverage, today we speak with the creators of the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary series, “Telemarketers”. Co-director Adam Bhala Lough describes the 3-part series this way: “Two scumbag telemarketers discover that there are cogs in the wheel of a multimillion dollar scam. And so they band together to try to take down the scam and then take down the industry.”

Adam joins Mike on the pod along with one of the characters he lovingly calls a scumbag: his co-director and cousin Sam Lipman-Stern. They discuss the other scumbag, Pet Pespas, who despite being an recovering if accomplished telemarketer as well as a recovering if chronic heroin addict–or maybe because of both those things–is the driving moral center of the series. In addition to exposing the scam that is telemarketing for the local chapters of several powerful charitable organizations such as the Fraternal Order of Police and the Police Benevolent Association, the series provides the depiction of friendship despite the odds as well as the seemingly unlikely growth of Sam as a talented documentary filmmaker.

Hidden Gems:

“The Land of Look Behind”

“Crazy Rulers of the World”

Follow:

@AdamBhalaLough on twitter/X

@samlipmanstern on Instagram and twitter/X

@patrickjpespas on Instagram

@topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.