The Underworld Podcast

By: The Underworld Podcast
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  • Summary

  • Underworld exposes the secret world of transnational criminal networks that have flourished since there were banks to bust, drugs to smuggle, and scams to run. Journalists Danny Gold and Sean Williams bring their experience reporting on dangerous people and organizations to take listeners on a global tour of mobsters, warlords and crooks - from Brooklyn to Beijing, from the streets to the boardrooms - and everywhere in between. Underworld is a show about heroes, villains, and the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.
    Copyright © 2002 Airwave Media. All rights reserved.
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Social Sciences True Crime World
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Episodes
  • Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster and the Battle for Los Angeles: Mickey Cohen

    Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster and the Battle for Los Angeles: Mickey Cohen
    Jan 21 2025
    Mickey once said of himself, quote, “I was a pretty fair replica of the devil.” He also killed a bunch of people, and got away with it. A street hustler since he was 6, Cohen gained a rep as a hard-fighting professional boxer despite his short stature, and a rep as a wild-haired stick up kid that never backed down from a gunfight or a robbery. But when he got the call to head back to LA to serve as the number 2/bodyguard for Bugsy Siegel, everything changed. Under Bugsy, Mickey's statue rose sky-high, and he learned about the organized part of organized crime: legit businesses, using charm instead of guns, high society, and all that. He slept with A list actresses, was known for his insanely expensive wardrobe, ran LA's gambling rackets, high class prostitution, controlled labor unions, extortion rackets, was tied into all the movie studios and had an army of shooters. He mixed with politicians, newspaper editors, and every famous actor, and actress, of the era...all while fighting a deadly multi-year war with Jack Dragna over control of LA and the race wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • The Nazi Drug Kingpin, the Biggest Narco You've Never Heard Of & The Cocaine Coup

    The Nazi Drug Kingpin, the Biggest Narco You've Never Heard Of & The Cocaine Coup
    Jan 14 2025
    It’s January 5, 1982, and the central American state of Panama is playing host to one of the most extraordinary narco summits in history. Hosting the pow-wow is Manuel Noriega, chief of Panamanian military intelligence and just a year from siezing its control. Pablo Escobar, head of what will become the feared Medellin Cartel, is there too. But even these criminal heavyweights aren’t the biggest gangsters in the room. That title belongs to Roberto Suarez Gomez, Bolivia’s so-called King of Cocaine, supplier of Andean coca paste to a global blow industry. Suarez, a former cattle rancher and heir to a rubber fortune, has never been more powerful. Just two years previous he’d backed Bolivia’s so-called ‘Cocaine Coup', tearing through capital La Paz and installing violent general Luis Garcia Meza as president. Since then Suarez has built the modern cocaine market, cementing Escobar as his chief buyer, and pulling in Noriega and even the Castros of Cuba. But Suarez couldn’t have done all this without the fourth man in this room in Panama, quiet and slight, with a saturnine face that belies the litany of evil he’s managed in his 67 years. This is Klaus Barbie, fugitive SS officer and so-called ‘Butcher of Lyon’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 mins
  • The Teenage Hitmen of Marseille's Gang Wars

    The Teenage Hitmen of Marseille's Gang Wars
    Jan 7 2025
    You might recognize the city of Marseille as the home of one of the biggest drug trafficking operations in history, the French Connection. These days, though, it's no longer Corsican mobsters using France's second biggest city as a transshipment point to move heroin across the Mediterranean. Instead, the last two decades have seen street gangs of mostly North African teenagers warring over retail drug spots that can make over $100,000 a day. 2023 saw nearly 50 narco-homicides, as the French police call them, as a gang known as the DZ Mafia started to take control. And the violence is only increasing, as AK-47's become the guns of choice and 15 year old hitmen are hired off of telegram and paid 20,000 euros to kill other teenagers and then post about it on snapchat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins

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Profile Image for Philip Wildgust

Great pod cast

Well researched interesting content on the world of crime. listened to all of the pods

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