The Underworld Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Robber Baron Mafias of the Lawless Amazon Rainforest Apr 11, 2023

Show notes

Last year’s murders of journalist Dom Phillips, and indigenous rights campaigner Bruno Pereira, shocked Brazil and the world. But they were just one violent conclusion to a story of mafias of all stripes—from fish mobs and narcos to KKK-like ranchers and rubber barons—who’ve stalked the remotest corners of the Amazon Rainforest since the turn of the 20th century.

Going from gold rushes to the death of famed eco-warrior Chico Mendes, it’s a tale of environmental crime and destruction, plus the growing threat of coca traffickers and urban gangsters, that didn’t just make Phillips’ and Pereira’s deaths a possibility—it made them near-certain.

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The Time Sean Went to Burma to Find A Billion Dollar Meth Lab Apr 04, 2023

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The biggest drug cartel in the world isn't Mexican, or Colombian. It's Asian. Buried deep in the Burmese jungle are networks of cutting edge meth labs, guarded by rebels and run by kingpins so powerful they make El Chapo look like a corner boy. In 2019, Underworld cohost Sean Williams went looking for one of the billion dollar meth labs spending months on the Mekong, in lawless casinos and hunting a drug industry bigger than any other on earth...and now he's a dad!

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The Golden Era of Clubs, Club Drugs, and Mafia Crews in NYC Nightlife to Miami and Back Mar 28, 2023

Show notes

In the 1990's, Manhattan's booming dance club scene was hit by two massive trends: Ecstasy and Techno. With the eye-patch wearing Canadian nightlife impresario Peter Gatien standing watch, massive clubs like limelight and Sound Factory became debaucherous drug dens ruled over by the ever-weirder club kids. Soon enough, though, a techno pioneer who would later go on to be involved with Wu Tang Clan saw the potential for massive profits and brought in roughneck junior mafia farm teams from south Brooklyn and Staten Island and things starting getting dark, quick. An infamous tabloid murder, a massive mafia bust and a lurid drug kingpin trial followed, but not before some of the major players relocated to Miami for a bit and made a name for themselves there. Once some former associates started talking, however, it all came crashing down, not just for Chris Paciello, but for the top level five family bosses he testified against.

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A Brazilian Murder, Narco Evangelists and Holy Warfare: The Gangsters of the Global Pentecostal Movement Mar 21, 2023

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Pentecostalism has exploded everywhere—and with it a whole new wave of grifters, crooks and machine gun-toting zealots.

Sean spoke to Elle Hardy, author of “Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World”, to learn about some of the movement’s less salubrious characters—beginning with the dark tale of a megapastor’s brutal slaying in Rio de Janeiro, and moving through Central America and even Papua New Guinea, where a new kind of theocratic gangster has emerged.

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The Antwerp Diamond Heist and the Gads Hill Train Robbery: History Daily Swap Mar 14, 2023

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This week we bring you guys an episode swap with the good folks at History Daily. In the first segment on February 16, 2003, five thieves break into the vault of the Antwerp Diamond Centre and pull off one of the biggest heists in history. In the second, from January 31, 1874, the outlaw Jesse James and his gang pull off one of the most infamous crimes in the American Old West with the Gads Hill Train Robbery.

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The Time the Mexican Army Ruined My Cartel Sleepover Mar 07, 2023

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Even the best laid plans of mice and men don't stand a chance when the federales get involved. In this episode, Danny recounts the time he linked up with a prominent member of the Sinaloa Cartel's Los Chapitos (El Chapo's kids) faction operating in the Mexican state of Sonora. As the head of the armed faction and a group called The Delta, El Durango was in the midst of a brutal war fighting the Caborca Cartel led by none other than Rafael Caro Quintero of Narcos Mexico fame, otherwise known as El Narco De Los Narcos. El Durango was keen on having visitors with video cameras over to his compound. Some other folks in Mexico, on the other hand, were not.

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Underworld Special - On The Hunt for Himalayan Purple Haze in Nepal Feb 21, 2023

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For thousands of years, Nepali farmers grew some of the world’s trippiest marijuana, in Himalayan valleys so fertile they were considered sacred. In the 1960s western hippies flocked to capital city Kathmandu, and divined wisdom at the thick end of a hash pipe. Nepal was suddenly the world’s cannabis capital.

Then Richard Nixon’s White House launched the War on Drugs, and pressured Nepal’s young king to ban the drug. Cops sent the hippies packing, and torched farmers’ cash crops. The result? Poverty, a black market in hard drugs—and a brutal Communist uprising that ripped through rural valleys like wildfire.

Today, though, Nepal is poised to legalize weed once more. Sean took a trip from Kathmandu into the Himalayan foothills in search of OG Purple Haze with two former heroin addicts—and got way more than he bargained for.

Sound design, scoring and production by the ever-brilliant Dale Eisinger.

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The Narco-paramilitaries of Northern Ireland Feb 14, 2023

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For generations, northern Ireland has been no stranger to armed militant groups willing to dispense violence. But whereas those groups once fought over political ideals, now they fight over drug routes and money. Since The Troubles ended and the Good Friday Agreement was signed, the battle-hardened youth of the north have started to put their skillset to use in the drug game. Journalist Adam Doyle breaks down the evolution of northern Ireland's new narco-paramilitaries and the frightening hold they have on their territory.

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Acid, Greasers, Hippies and Violence: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love Feb 07, 2023

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With slick hair, a wry smile and a penchant for violence, John Griggs was the picture of a Sixties California greaser. His gang caused chaos across Anaheim, and Griggs himself was a habitual user of hard drugs. Until, one night in 1966, they robbed a Hollywood pool party for its acid, Griggs took a bunch, and almost overnight pivoted to becoming one of America's leading proponents of psychadelics—right when hippie culture and the Summer of Love was at its peak.

Griggs' cult-like Brotherhood of Eternal Love became a lodestar for America's counterculture—and a gigantic smuggling operation from Mexico and the States, to the so-called Hippie Trail, stashing Afghan and Nepali hash in cars, film reel cans or even surfboards before reaping the thousand-percent markup back home. Griggs' goal was to flood America with so much LSD that every man and woman would get high and help create a new, peaceful utopia.

When renowned academic and acid-lover Timothy Leary joined Griggs' cause, the Brotherhood may have looked unstoppable. Then it was stung by disaster after disaster—from hardened criminals and police informants, to Leary's manic downfall and a plucky local cop named Neil Purcell. Part 1 of our show on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love charts John Griggs' irresistable rise to messianic stardom, and his group's creation of a new, potent acid named Orange Sunshine, just before his utopian vision began metastasizing into something most folks would later know as the "Hippie Mafia".

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The Jamaican Posses Take Over America: Kings of the Crack Era Jan 31, 2023

Show notes

The Wall Street of Patrick Bateman was just ramping up, and rap had taken over the Bronx and Brooklyn as Jamaican-American deejays like Kool Herc were inventing and spreading the new genre. But there was another group of Jamaicans that had come to America with a different plan. As the Cold War played out in 1970’s Jamaica, the two main political parties competing for the country each had a street gang they used to get the vote out in certain neighborhoods and keep the vote from getting out in others. The street gangs grew powerful and skilled in violence, but soon turned their attention from politics to getting paid. And that meant cocaine, and getting cocaine onto American streets. Rival crews like the infamous Shower Posse and the Spangler Posse set up shop all over the East Coast and then the heartland during the heydey of the crack era and soon turned their guns on each other, driving the murder rate to unprecedented heights and fighting bloody battles all over the east coast.

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