New Years/Christmas Q + A!!!!!
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Welcome back to another episode of the Underworld Podcast, the podcast radio program where two journalists, myself, Danny Gold, and my partner in crime, Sean Williams, take you on a journey every week into the world of international organized crime. This week, though, we are not doing that. It is the week between Christmas and New Year's. You know, we're not supposed to do anything. But Sean and I have chosen, you know, the wrong paths in life. So we are actually pulling

putting in the work because we made a deal with the devil the uh the content devil and we're here to uh you know feed the beast but uh sean you're about to go on vacation though aren't you

I'm off to Aussie. So I'm going to Australia. I don't know if it counts. Last time I went to Bougainville, I stopped in Brisbane for a couple of nights on the way there and there back. So I'm off to Sydney on New Year's Eve. So I'm going to see some fireworks. I'm going to see some cricket and hang about by a pool and do all the things I should be doing right now. Yeah, it's going to be good. Are you abandoning your child to do that?

Unless I leave him to wander around the pool and drown, then no. Yeah, I might wander off and see some professional sport without him. But no, it's a family. It's a first family holiday. I think it's the first one. Well, with all this Patreon money flowing in, of course you can take your family on an hour and a half long flight.

But yeah, we are going to do a Q&A for you guys. We asked for questions from the Patreons and then also on Instagram and I think on Twitter, anywhere else. But some of you even wrote in with some questions. Most of you just had really not nice things to say about Sean, which I disagree with. Yeah, so without much further ado, Sean, do you have anything to add to that?

Nope. Nope. All good. Great. Great. Let's get going. Okay. So first question is from Alec. He says, you're our favorite, my favorite podcast, which, you know, good. I send it there. And can you do more reporting or give more information on Honduran youth selling fentanyl on the streets on the West coast of the U S I live in the Bay area and fentanyl is rampant.

Um, I, yeah, I mean, I don't know too much. I know obviously people are selling a lot of fentanyl all over, uh, especially on, on the West coast and in Philadelphia, but I do not know about Honduran youth selling it on the streets of the West coast. I imagine it's, you know, uh, coming up from Mexico and there's the normal gangs that have the distribution networks there that might be Central American. Um, uh,

and Mexican as well, Mexican-American or Mexican in general. But I don't know specifically about Honduran youths. I assume that they're not the only ones doing it. Sounds kind of personal. I don't know. Do you have any insight into that?

No, I mean, I was going to say on a Honduran front, like, I remember when I was out in Belize last, God, like 18 months ago. With the rapper Shine. Yeah, Shine Story. Yeah, yeah. And I was talking to these kind of like rasta gangsters in Belize City, and they were all pretty deep with the Hondurans back in the day, in the 90s and early 2000s. And they were saying that's where they got the majority of their drugs and guns. Yeah.

Maybe I could tap up a few old contacts from there and we could do a piece on that. I should have done it at the time, really, but that's pretty much my only understanding of Honduras at all. I don't really know anything about it.

Yeah, I mean, they had, you know, like El Salvador, they had the 18th Street and MS-13 there. And I also kind of wonder, it'd be interesting to look into this, what the deal is now that Bukele has pretty much shut down the gangs in El Salvador. If they float outward into surrounding countries, if they're more in the States right now that are involved maybe in selling on the streets. But I'd really like to, you know, I think it was...

Honduras and Guatemala had serious gang problems. So I'd be interested to see what was going on there. But you know, Honduras has always had a pretty, not always, but I think there's definitely been people that have gone down there the past 15, 20 years that have done really good work on the gangs. But Kyle, that doesn't answer your question, but it's the best we can do.

Yeah, I mean, I would just give a shout out for Guatemala City, which is probably the scary or outwardly most scary gang city that I've ever been to. Oh, really? I didn't even know. I spent like three nights there like years ago and it was...

Fucking terrifying. Yeah. People like shooting guns on flatbeds and like openly, you can just see the stuff going on the streets is pretty rough. Uh, this was back in 2017 or something like that. So I hope it's changed for the better now, but, uh, rough, rough. Yeah.

Sorry, that was Alec. This is Kyle. He says, maybe more on the Russian mob wars and the Irish mob or about the relationship between organized crime and politicians in India. That is not a question, but I will take all of those things into consideration. I think we have some good, in terms of episodes coming up, I'm due to talk to our friend Hugo about the Swedish gang wars that have been going on. He is a Malmo resident who follows that stuff closely.

a friend who is going to do an episode with us I think the next one may be on what was his name? Sey Chilop, the guy that oh yeah, the syndicate yeah, so I want to walk through that too, I got a bunch of stuff on the Vancouver gang wars that are going to be good and Sean, you got some stuff cooking up too, don't you?

Yeah, I'm going to do one on Tijuana. I don't know if anyone's been watching the news lately, but there was this crazy story where it was just like basically a sort of narrative straight from a Sicario movie, like a bunch of cops stole a bunch of cartel coke. And in the last few weeks, the cartel has been running around just popping off all of the cops who did it. So we're going to talk to Luis Chaparra as well. He's been out there. I think he's still out there this week. So that's going to be my next episode. And then...

Yeah, I think I'm going to maybe do something on Mesrine, Jacques Mesrine. He was like one of the biggest gangsters in French history, moved over and joined the Quebec freedom movement. There's a great movie with Vincent Cassell about him. So yeah, there's a bunch of different stuff. And then there's some reported things that I'm going to get into next year, maybe in New Zealand and Australia as well, because there's way, way more interesting stuff going on here. So yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'd love to do more stuff on India. I love India. I want to go there basically all the time. But that is such a massive shit show. It's hard to dig into one thing at a time. But they've got massive elections going on next year. So maybe we could do something around that. Yeah, that I'm sure will be easy for journalists to go and report on.

Next question, Samuel Patterson, where are we in the Ridwan Taghi trial? Because you did that episode, Sean, on the Macro Mafia, I think, right, and all that? Yeah. That's a good question. Where are we in that? Yeah, I mean, I was just doing a little bit of research. I mean, his son was arrested in Dubai in September. Of course, Dubai, that's where a load of this stuff takes place. That's where he was kind of hiding out with the Kinans for a long time.

And last week, three of his lawyers resigned saying they hadn't been given enough time to mount a proper defense, which is, I guess, a stalling tactic maybe. But back in summer, I think it was July, like middle of July, the judges on the case said there'd be a, quote, delay for months. So they think a verdict's coming pretty soon. I imagine it will. But yeah, just kind of suck it and see right now. Going to see whether that comes out in the next month or two.

We'll do something when he comes out because that's a huge, huge trial. Yeah, that's correct. I can't imagine he's going to get off, but who knows. To date, what's been your favorite episode of Research and Produce and the favorite one to learn about from the other co-host? I don't know. In terms of Research and Produce, I guess the ones that I haven't done actual reporting on, the ones I've just researched, favorite ones, I really liked learning about...

I guess the Vancouver sort of gang wars, like the Sikh stuff, that was really interesting to me. Yeah. Because I didn't know anything about that. It was really, it's a crazy, I forget the name of the main gangs that were doing it, but that was a crazy story to learn about. And then to learn from you, I don't know, I learned so much from you. I can't, I can't, I can't narrow it down. Yeah, it's just too much. I can't narrow it down. I mean, I like, you know, the Burma story I think is great. The one about the billion dollar methamphetamine drug

Yeah, there's more to come. Yeah, I think I really loved your one, Clubland. That was really cool. And the recent one about Cuba and knocking off Fidel Castro or trying to knock off Fidel Castro, that's kind of like right in my wheelhouse of, I don't know, CIA spies and drugs and mafiosos. So that was really cool. Yeah.

The one that I really, really enjoyed researching that came out recently and related to one that we did last year is kind of the Sahel terror gang cocaine shipment kind of stuff. Yeah, that was fascinating. I find that so fascinating. It's like countries that most people don't really know about. They don't get a lot of column inches in the newspapers. And then if people want to go back and listen to the Guinea Bissau stuff, that is nuts.

And I read one of the questions that someone's asked us later on, and I think I'm going to get into that in a bit more detail. But yeah, both of those ones were maybe my favorite ones to research in the last year or so. Right. Yeah. I mean, dude, I feel like almost every episode you do, I learn something interesting, unless it's about cricket. Actually, no, even the cricket one I thought had some interesting stuff to it. Oh, man. That makes my heart sing.

Next we have our man BeerSpillPhil, which great name, who's from Philadelphia. My dude, you wrote a novel over here, but there's a couple of questions here actually about the cricket story. Sean, is there any potential cricket story that would confuse an audience that does not understand cricket even more as to how the game actually works? And I feel like the answer is all of them. Yeah, yeah. Only marginally more than that sentence. But if I understand it correctly, I mean, look,

Phil, I could go deep. You could have a two-hour podcast on the physics of the googly. So whatever you want, I got it. But it's getting...

The best thing in the world is basically teaching American audiences about cricket. So I get to do a massive nut graph on what cricket is, which is the best thing in the world. But I reckon I've got one of those every three years. So I think it might be a while until I get anyone interested in Sports Illustrated or anyone at Sports Illustrated interested in cricket again. I think the guy was saying, my editor was like, your first two stories have been rugby and cricket. So it's basically a miracle. And I'm trying to pitch him something about darts at the moment. So if I get those three through...

I don't know, maybe some kind of a Sandman situation happens. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I'm always up for a cricket story, but I don't think many other people are. So that might be the one for a while. And then he wasn't sure from the article, was the 1X bet successful in attracting gamblers in India?

Oh, they're huge, man. I just watched a series between, I think it was India and I'm going to say Bangladesh or something. And there was like 1x bet holdings everywhere around the ground. They call it 1x bet there to get around the authorities. It's huge. It's huge. It's like India is the biggest gambling battlefield in the world. There's like this $150 billion game

gambling industry and almost all of it is illegal. So people are trying to kind of legitimize it or just take some of the illegal money. And yeah, it's pretty rough. And that's kind of what that story was about is all of these even sort of Ukrainian and Russian companies trying to go for the Indian, the rupee. So yeah, they're very, very, very successful.

They basically didn't even bother responding to the story. And they seem to have just carried on regardless with sponsoring loads of cricket stuff, even though there has been a bit of pushback. But there's some more to come on that front as well. I'm working on a few more things. So we'll see how it goes.

I respect that move these days. Just like, just not care, you know, not issue a statement, not like apologize. Just like, don't care. Just keep going. Yeah. Um, another question too, from our man beer spill, Phil, what's the take on the trend in us media covering organized retail crime. There was a retraction from an agency group about it recently. Um,

And it's just kind of, I guess his main questions are, what are your thoughts on organized shoplifting? Is there anything either of you would be interested in doing? No, in researching or reporting on more and which aspects of it would you try to cover? I think someone actually asked this a while ago too for us to look into it. And I think, you know, I sort of think there's some nuance to the conversation, right? It's definitely a real thing. I don't think it's as widely pronounced as like some of the more

aggressive articles, I think, say, but it's a real thing. Like, people, like, there are organized rings that do this sort of thing. Like, Rite Aid and Duane Reade and CBS are losing, like, you know,

substantial amounts of money by putting all their stuff behind lock and key. Businesses don't like to lose money. Like they wouldn't be doing that unless they felt that it was necessary. You know, they can look at their bottom lines and see what it is. Like no one's doing that for fun or to prove a point, right? Cause it's called, I go into those stores and I half the time I either leave without buying anything cause it's too fucking hard to get someone to come unlock the thing or I buy way less than I was going to. And like the number one thing those stores want to do is have you buy their products. Right.

There's this thing where someone who's a hyper leftist online will be like, oh, they're stealing to feed their kids. It's like no one's stealing 20 things of Tide to feed their kids. They're stealing it to hustle it and to make money, and usually it's related to drugs. Do I think there's huge organized rings where people are making millions of dollars? No. But do I think that people go in there with the objective of

stealing a lot, do I think there are smaller rings? Yeah, I think that's pretty much a definitive thing. And if you look at some of the other articles about it, there's like

Look, I'm going off the top of my head here, but there'll be stories about how 90% of the shoplifting from a certain store is done by the same 20 people and along those lines. So I think the answer to that falls somewhere in the middle. And Sean, when you were here in the US, weren't you involved with doing organized shoplifting or you were just doing that for fun for yourself? We're going to skip over that. But if anyone wants to look at

a lot more parochial on small scale but also quite funny which is basically what everything in New Zealand is. There's this like one jewellery chain called Michael Hill in the whole of New Zealand and they just got absolutely murked by an organised series of like hits basically all over the country. I think it's like within two months so

So even in Wellington, just down the road from us, only a block away, which is the safest, most quaint little place, there's security guards at this Michael Hill branch and everyone's terrified, so it's quite funny. Like a break-in? Like a robbery? Yeah, like break-ins. I think it's to do with the two big bikey gangs, so the Mongol Mob and the Black Power. But yeah, it's happening, but...

I guess it's like on a smaller scale than New York, obviously, but it's similar. These are just sort of opportunist things that are tied to bigger groups, but they're not like a business model for these groups. They're shifting drugs. I don't really give a shit about bangles, but yeah, it's happening.

Yeah, I mean, if you work in retail, you're expected to... Anyway, you know what? Let's not get into that and discuss previous youthful indiscretions. But he has a follow-up question, too, about car theft with the Kia stuff and the stuff in places like Philadelphia and the Northeast US. Are people stealing for money or for the thrill of it? I have no idea. Yeah.

I don't know what the motivations are. I mean, obviously there are some cases of people joyriding. Yeah, I got no idea. I think there are cases of people joyriding stuff in Philadelphia. I've definitely seen reports of that. I assume there's money in it. If it's like 15, 16 year olds, generally I think it's stuff for the thrill. But I assume like chop shops are still a thing and like stealing cars. And I know that was a big thing in Philadelphia.

in New Jersey and in Oakland with organized luxury carjacking and theft. They would get on boats and ship them out to West Africa. That was a huge thing for a while. I'm not sure...

I feel like with newer cars and newer technology, can't they trace things easier? Yeah, I don't think they have a lot of the shit that people went for back in the day. He mentions catalytic converters. I don't think anyone nicks catalytic converters these days, do they? Oh no, dude, of course they do. Really? I got mine nicked like three years ago. Yeah, dude, that's huge. Shit.

Okay. Cadillac converters is a huge thing and much easier to get away with than stealing a car because you get under a car. You can have one out in like four or five minutes, maybe even less, and then flip it. And it's like, you just go into a car, pick a few up. And they used to hit my neighborhood nonstop.

Yeah, dude. It's huge. I remember it being a huge thing back in London when I was... God knows how young I was then. But I just assumed that that had gone out of fashion. No, dude. That is huge in the States. Like, huge. Fucking ruined my month. It cost like a G to replace. It sawed mine out. It was worth... My fucking car wasn't worth $1,000 when that happens. Oh, man.

But beer spill fill, man. Thanks for the kind words and the many questions. Is this entertaining, Sean? You think anyone's going to listen to this all the way through? Yeah, yeah. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. There'll be some hapless fools who's going to listen. Henry Smith, what crimes or rackets, if any, do you respect for their cunning or ingenuity? I mean, I don't know. I mean, just people who don't get caught. You know, I think the...

Credit card scam? There's 17, 18-year-olds who figured out how to credit card scam for a while. That was a smart thing to do. You don't get a lot of years on it. What was the Bitcoin credit card thing that I talked about way long ago where they were using Bitcoin to purchase stolen credit cards and make their own credit cards? That's a good scheme. I respect it because it's not... The cost-benefit analysis, if you're going to break the law,

Why do something where you're going to get untold amount of years for pocket change? These guys were going for big money and I don't know, it wasn't super costly. Yeah, I mean, anyone from a really poor country who gets involved in stuff that isn't just outwardly killing people, whatever, I don't really care. Yeah.

I think I read one of the questions further down and I want to talk about Haiti because what's going on there is pretty horrendous. But you cannot argue with young people in completely broken societies getting involved in crime. It's like the underlying stuff. I don't know. Maybe someone's going to complain that I'm being too woke or whatever. But

It's like, you know, in that, like that Sahel episode, right? Who's going to tell some guy from Niger that he's not going to traffic cigarettes across a border? Whatever. That's fine. That's okay. Uh, is that cunning or ingenuity? No, probably not.

I'm trying to think of anyone that's been really, really clever. Yeah, cigarette. I think cigarette smuggling, like in the States even. Yeah, definitely think that's a good look. And even people, drug dealers who sell, I think, higher priced drugs or stuff. I'm not talking crack or heroin, but people who...

You know, it's a lot of work. People don't realize that like being a drug dealer is really hard. You've got to be available. You know, you can't just like not show up to a client. You've got to be on the move all the time. Like delivery service drugs is a really hard business to run. People don't really, people think it's easy. It's not easy. We stand drug dealers.

I mean, I'm just saying like, there's a lot of work ethic that goes into it that people don't realize, but that our next question is, would the pod legalize drugs? And, um, I mean, I don't know about you. I actually, I go back and forth. I think there were definitely times when I think I would say yes, but I don't think that's the case now. I feel like when you look at places where they've tried to do stuff like that, it's mostly not been good.

I don't know what's going on in Portugal. Weren't they big on that with decriminalizing and having social services? If you do do it, you've got to really ramp up social services. I also just think of myself. Not now because I'm boring now, but if stuff is easier to get, you're going to do more of it. That's like any vice. You know what I'm saying? I think obviously the drug war does way more harm than

than good. But I don't really have an easy answer to that. I just think that obviously there's a lot of drugs I think that should be legalized. When you go a bit higher to crack, coke, heroin. Yeah, that's terrible shit. I just don't think that stuff should be super available anywhere. Even like weed is now. It's weird. People should be protected from it.

Yeah, it's like...

I remember speaking to a fan of Phil Brown who's like, I don't know, I just defer to her for most things of this kind. Yeah, she's like the world expert on all this stuff. Yeah, she was saying that the Netherlands, Scotland and Portugal she mentioned as well, they've got really good harm reduction systems in place but they also have really shit outcomes so it kind of needs either more investment. It's kind of one of those things where you're just like, oh, we just need more money for this true thing.

system to come into place. But you know, politically no one's going to pay fucking half the GDP just to make drugs available. So I don't know. It's really tough. I mean, the fentanyl stuff like that is terrifying. You can't legalize that. That's just impossible. Cocaine, maybe that's a different matter.

But it's like such a minefield. I mean, like, I guess all we can say is what's happening now doesn't work. So we need to change that. But if you want policy answers, then go to someone else. But yeah. Yeah, I'm not your guy. Like, I don't get paid to think about that. Like, I don't have any answers for any of this stuff. Legalize weed and ecstasy. That's what I would say. Let's do that. Come find me 10 years ago and I'll talk about this stuff with you all night. Now, I just, I don't care.

Liam Dunn, what do you guys like about each other the most? What a sweet question, Liam. That's nice.

Sean is, you know, Sean's a very handsome man in person. I got to tell you guys, but, uh, I guess that he like puts up with all this and he's also game. He's like game for anything. You know, I came to him with this idea and he was like, yeah, fuck it. Let's go for it. I mean, let's be honest. He didn't have many options, but like he was up for it and he still is up for it and he puts the work in and, uh, he's a great, right? I mean, what don't I like about, well, mostly like his jokes, but, uh, and he's like the only, he's the only person that's worse at like business aspects than I am. Like,

I thought I'd link up with someone to run a business, which this I guess technically is. Yeah, he'd come in here and figure it all out, but

No, we're both terrible at that. How long did it take for me to send my bank details to you for the latest amount of money? This was money you were owed, like a substantial amount. It wasn't that it took you a long time to send them to me. You just kept sending me the wrong ones. And I'd be like, Sean, this is a lot of money and it could get lost. And he was like, yeah, yeah, I think this is it. I think this is it. And I'm like, you should be sure when you're having someone send you money of what your information is. Yeah.

And we're talking about, you know, because it's podcasting, we're talking about a hell of a lot of money here as well. Yeah. This is big, big dollars. A lot of money, a lot of money for us.

I think that you are far better at speaking about stuff on the cuff than I am. And you've got far better mind for that kind of stuff because you've done a lot of it. And when I came to the podcast, I was basically just a nerd with a notebook, which is not what I'm not now. But yeah, you're way better at that. And I think you're way better at kind of

speaking about things and I don't know, like communicating. Proving you wrong literally on this podcast, on this episode. You also know shit about a lot more than I do. I feel like I know exactly the amount about organized crime that I write about in the pod scripts and almost nothing more. So you can like wander off on all kinds of stuff. You seem to read a hell of a lot of shit. So yeah, kudos to you.

I want to keep going because I would say your writing has gotten... You're a writer, so it's hard to switch from writing articles to writing for voiceover or talking video. It's really hard. I only knew because I had to switch years ago. But you've gotten a lot better at that and your reads are really good too. There's barely any edits anymore. People need to go back to the early ones to see how it could be. You've improved your game and the way you speak and all that sort of stuff.

Oh, well, there you go. That's a nice end to the year. Cam McArdle, biggest organized crime moment of 2023. Oof, I don't know. I think you put an answer here. Ovidio Guzman, Arrest and Extradition. I think, yeah, that was huge, huh? That's huge. Yeah, yeah, because it's like, that's genuinely going to shake up by not just organized crime in the Sinaloa cartel, but it's actually going to

make a huge difference politically in Mexico as well. Um, because AMLO, as I think we've spoken about a million times on the shows, like hugs, not bullets or whatever the shit he said, stupid stuff. And now he's kind of gone full circle and realize that doesn't work. Um, and I think there was the arrest and extradition of that major, uh,

was it like the army officer? I think I spoke to Keegan Hamilton about that. It's kind of like turning, I think, back to early, maybe Vincente Fox sort of years in Mexico where they're actually going to start going after people. And even though there was like, you know, war on the streets, that guy, Ovidio is like,

I think he's facing trial now. I think it's going ahead. So yeah, that's a really, really big moment right there. That's kind of maybe an about turn for Mexico. And secondly, I wanted to talk about Barbecue, this guy. You probably know a lot more about this than I do, but he's basically taken over

Port-au-Prince and sort of trying to take over Haiti. I mean, like, you know more about this, right? How big, this guy has been on every documentary going and every single TV station. He loves media. I didn't realize, so I haven't been tuned into that for the past, I think, four or five months since things got really bad. I think when we initially did an episode on it, I didn't realize that he, because I thought it was competing gangs. I didn't realize that he had pretty much taken over the city on his own.

Yeah, he's like bunched them all together, right? So now he's kind of the king of the underworld there. Or I mean, it's not even the underworld, right? He just owns the streets. The government. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty terrifying stuff going on there. And I mean, Bukele is doing his own thing and sort of arresting every... Oh, yeah. That's a huge story too. Him just completely shutting down the gangs in El Salvador. I feel like considering the work that we've done on El Salvador, that feels pretty big.

Patrick Cummings, do you generate your own story ideas for the show or for your longer written reporting or do you take a sign pitch from media entities? How do you find out about obscure underworld figures? For the show, we mostly, I think, yeah, I mean, I come up with them ourselves every now and then someone writes a recommendation. We had a lot of recommendations. Yeah. Very often. Yeah. Some of them are good. Some of them are good. Yeah.

A lot of them sometimes are on stuff we've already done, which it is what it is. There's a lot of episodes. But no, I mean, back when I was a freelancer, it was almost always stuff that I generated on my own. Every now and then, I'd get someone coming to me with a story. The two podcasts I'm making now that are going to be out this coming year that are documentary style, they came to me with a story or with the main characters, and I sort of had to figure out the story.

So that's been interesting. Obscure Underworld figures, I don't know, man. I just read a lot on this stuff. Once it became a part-time job, you kind of have to dive yourself into it and then people come to you with stuff. So it gets, I don't know, it gets interesting. Yeah, I would say...

With the stories coming to you kind of thing, it's like a snowball, right? So the more stories you do, the more stories are going to come to you. I mean, the amount of features that have come to me off the back of other features is just, I mean, it's like 90% of them. Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, at the start I was obviously like pitching my ass off. And I mean, like you really do have to pitch a million times a month to get any work when you start out. But, um, and then people start coming to you. And then because I really want to do these like expansive giant esoteric stories about fucking sports betting in cricket, then I tend to be the one reaching out and trying to do them. I'm trying to, I'm trying to pitch a story about the world's champion Scrabble player at the moment. Uh,

So that is a hard sell, but I will sell it. I promise. And yeah, I mean, it's similar to you. Like how'd you find out about obscure figures? Like this guy in the latest episode, the Sahel, I remember speaking to a reporter. Lorraine is her name and she is Scottish, but she does a lot of work in West Africa. She's really, really cool. I think she works on the, is it a transactional organized crime index? One of those ones. She does a lot of work for them.

And she was interested in Guinea-Bissau and also she had mentioned someone called the El Chapo do Sahel. So there's not a lot of stuff about him out there, actually. It's like pretty fresh ground. So I would suggest any young freelancers who don't mind getting their head chopped off, then just get a flight out to Miami and try and figure out stuff about him. But

Yeah, just read, read, read, read, read. Don't do that. No, don't do that. Don't do that. No, just read books and play PS5 instead. But yeah, that's kind of how it works.

Next question is from Reese. How did you get into professional journalism and what would you have done differently? I would not have gotten into professional journalism, Reese. Are we even in professional journalism? People are like, I want to make a difference or I want to go on adventures. You don't really...

Some people get someone exonerated for murder and that's great and all that. But for the most part, you don't really make a difference. And you get to go on adventures somewhat, but you know who gets to make a huge difference and go on adventures all the time? Rich people. So...

Yeah, become one of those and then you can put your money into things and it'll be better. Look, here's the thing. If you're smart, don't go into journalism. Just become rich and use the money that you make to change things that you want to change to support people you want to support and to go on adventures. If you're not that smart and you're just going to have some office drone job where you don't get to actually make a lot of money and go on adventures and change things, maybe then go into journalism. But if you're smart, there's really no reason to do it.

Alright, so I have to be the angel on the shoulder, do I? I mean, what would I have done differently? I would have chosen my parents and background differently, so that's a thing in British journalism. But I mean, I got into professional journalism in a really winding way. I just wanted to write shit and my background, like all my family are builders and I grew up as a builder. I worked as a builder for like 10 years, so...

I didn't really know what you could do and make a living from writing. So someone suggested writing for a local newspaper, which is what I did and worked in a part of London called

Dagenham and Redbridge, which anyone listening to this pod who knows London is going to laugh their tits off because it's not a nice place. And it was run by basically the National Front, like the fascists, like openly fascist local government at the time. But that meant that it was really, really interesting. Then I went into documentaries and films and all kinds of stupid shit. So,

And then I kind of wound my way back to doing freelance journalism. But what would I have done differently? I tell you what, on a really earnest, earnest, earnest note, it was like an incredible way to get into different parts of the world that you would never normally see. But I probably wouldn't have got as messed up as I did. I used to go partying and just do loads of crazy shit. And I probably should not have done half of that. But half of it was cool.

But yeah, I don't know. You need to knuckle down, man. It's hard. And I'm not very good at it now, so who knows? This one is from Hugo. One of my favorite Underworld characters is Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. Have you ever encountered anybody that resembled that darkness intention? Is that Dennis Hopper? Yeah, is the Dennis Hopper complete psychopath? I mean, obviously not. No. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. I met this one guy. I was just thinking about this. And there's one guy I met in Mumbai when I was doing a story about a hitman trying to find this hitman. Any fixer in the underworld who knew about this hitman that I was trying to find. I did find the guy eventually, but it was a bit of a damp squib. But yeah, the fixer was called Dainish Patel. He just had like 20 phones on him and he was covered in gold.

but also like clearly off his rocker on gear in some of some form and was really tetchy and always went around with this massive bodyguard who was wearing a shawal kameez and he was a patani, which is like these gigantic sort of Iranian Pakistani guys who everyone's scared of. I might be getting that wrong, but they're scary fuckers. And he was,

probably it for a crime story was as close as I've come to someone like that. But no, man, I mean, you're not going to meet Dennis Hopper. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I just don't think, um, I don't know. I don't, I feel like, you know, people don't talk like they do in movies for the most part. I mean, there's, uh, you know, I'm talking to some like, um,

American mafia guys at the current moment and some of them are very charming and have a certain... They're older now, so maybe when they were younger, they were scarier. One of them has been through a lot, so he's got just family-wise and everything else. So he's got this darkness and tension in him that is pretty overpowering at times. But it's... Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't think you meet so many people that you're like, this guy...

People go on to have adventures. It's a tough question. Nothing stands out to me. Maybe this leader of 18th Street, and I forget his name. Again, no one's jumping out to me. If I can't remember their name, maybe they're not as pronounced at that.

I think this is why I do stories about different stuff and not just like one beat because people are interesting, right? It doesn't really matter what they're doing or where they're from. Like people from different spheres can be super interesting and other people do stuff that you think is really, really cool and off the hook can be boring as hell. And that's why they're good at it. So, yeah,

Yeah, I don't know. From sports stars to musicians to drug dealers, you never know what you're going to get. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely met a lot of really interesting people, people who I'd love to know more about or kind of figure out what their story was or how they got to be like they are. Just not in that, not in like Dennis Hopper and Blue Velvet sort of way, you know? No. Here is one of our last questions. Matthew, question for both of you. Any crime, gang, trafficking book recommendations along those lines?

I think we always recommend Mick Mafia just because it's a really, really good piece of work about that sort of stuff. Who is it who wrote The Corporation? TJ English just writes really good crime books. Fantastic about, I think, The Corporation. A bunch of others. I think he wrote one about the Westies. I think we've used four of his books for different episodes.

along those lines. Patrick Wynn, I think Sean, you know him or still speak to him. Yeah, Patrick Wynn, Narcoland and yeah, or Nocatopia, isn't it? No, no, Narcatopia. I have a copy of it that I haven't read yet, but Hello Shadowlands I thought was really, really interesting just because I love those like Southeast Asia sort of stories. God, I wish I was home now just because my whole shelf now is basically books like this just because of the...

of the podcast and everything like that. Yeah, that's a really cool part of doing this show. I would say on the other side of the coin, Moneyland by Oliver Bullough is absolutely incredible. Showing how, I think he says like one sixth or one seventh of the money in the world is basically dark money and is laundered. So that's a real eye-opener because it's not...

I don't know. It's just like, you know, follow the money kind of stuff. And it really, really is crazy how much money is going into just like tax havens and sort of, you know, I mean, real estate, we keep saying it and that kind of stuff. That's a really great book. Kilo by Toby Muse. He's a longtime friend and just an incredible book about the entire

cocaine industry process, everything from the farmers to the sellers to the cartel bosses in Colombia. It's really something else. Yeah, and if we're actually talking about kind of vets of the pod, then Young Grillo's El Narcos is an absolutely great read as well. Yeah, I mean, I think Gunn's, what's his other book called?

Oh, God. Now you're going to catch me out. Blood, gun, money. Blood, gun, money. Gangster, gangster, warlords, all that. But El Narco, I think, is probably the best out of all those. It's an excellent, excellent book.

Yeah, I mean, for one of the recent episodes, I mean, it kind of is an offshoot of a project that I've been working on for about two and a half years now that's actually finished tomorrow, which is very exciting. But I read Christopher Robin's Air America, which is about how

The CIA kind of like, you know, exploded the drug trade back in the 70s and the secret war in Vietnam and that stuff. That is a brilliant book. And he does some great reporting. And I think I kind of remember looking back on some stories in the newspapers at the time and like the whole world and their dog was refuting his journalism and saying that he was talking shit. And it is all subsequently proven to be true. So that's a great book.

But there's tons. I mean, like Alex Perry's Good Brothers that I think we did a show on that at the start of the year. That's brilliant. Kind of heartbreaking tale of the Andrangetta and the women that try and get out of it. Yeah, I mean, there's so many. I mean, guys, we've got to read this. I mean, I don't think I've updated that in about two years. But, oh, what's it called? The one about Bombay that...

Maximum City? Maximum City, yeah. Yeah, Suketsu Meta, that's brilliant. Yeah, I met him once years ago. Very interesting guy. Oh, cool. But yeah, there's, I mean, there's a lot of good books about...

You know, how organized crime getting started in the U.S. in the early 1900s. I mean, I love the original Gangs of New York, you know? The original one from Herbert Asbury, I think. And then Luke Sante, right? Low Life. All those old school... Yeah, Murder Inc. Oh, Murder Inc.'s good. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I think that's enough, right? We gave you guys a... That's a pretty solid list right there. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure there's other really good ones that we've forgotten that people who have come on the podcast have written. So apologies if that's the case. Yeah, I don't know, man. New Year in what, four days? Anything else you want to add? Any words of wisdom? Anything? I don't know. Words of wisdom? No. I mean, just...

Just thanks for tuning in. It's been a crazy year, right? We've switched providers and had all these contract things going on and it's been kind of stressful at times. So thanks to you guys for... Totally stressful.

Oh, it's really stressful. It's just like working down a mine in Pakistan. But yeah, it is really cool that you guys listen and you subscribe and those of you who pay on the Patreon as well. Yeah, massive thank you to all of you guys. Yeah, and keep listening and all that. So that's the fact that you guys have been with us, some of you for years now.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still, you know, I think we're still both sometimes in awe that thousands of people, tens of thousands of people actually listen to this every week. But, you know, I guess the bar is set really low in terms of other...

Just in general, what's out there. But, you know, I keep just mumbling over this. Anyway, yeah. Is this you ending on a high note? Okay. I'm just, I'm tired, man. Thank you guys for tuning in. Regular episodes start again next week. If this wasn't to your liking, just go back. There's like 150 episodes. You'll find out what it is. ... ...

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