The Underworld Podcast
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.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 49 minutes
- Episodes
- 227
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
The Story of Sweden's Gang Crime Chaos: From Yugoslav Kingpins to Bombings, Rifles and Roadblocks
Sweden: ABBA, IKEA, third-wave coffee. A wealthy paradise? For some. For others, the Scandinavian state has become a homicide hotspot, with gun crime and grenade attacks on the rise. We tell the tale…
00:59:15 |
Tue 28 Sep 2021
Taliban Heroin Gang and the Failed War on Afghanistan's Opium
Over the last two decades, the Taliban have moved from simply taxing Afghanistan's opium farmers to controlling every link in the chain of the world's biggest heroin supply. In Afghanistan's Opium Na…
00:59:20 |
Tue 21 Sep 2021
The Golden Age of Hijacking, Kidnapping and Radical Cold War Terror
Ulrike Meinhof is dead and the remaining founders of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader Meinhof Gang, are behind bars in Stuttgart. Is this the end for Germany's most notorious hard-left terrorists…
00:38:20 |
Mon 13 Sep 2021
Afghanistan's Opium Nation: Drug Lords, Warlords, and Drug Wars
For decades, starting a few years even before the Taliban took power the first time around, Afghanistan has dominated the world’s opium and heroin market, in some years producing up to 90% of the glo…
00:44:48 |
Mon 06 Sep 2021
The Baader Meinhof Gang's 'Revolution' of Murders, Bank Robberies, & Blowing Themselves Up
The Baader Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction, came about as post-war Germany sought to rebuild from the death and destruction of the Nazi era. As the Cold War gripped the world and self-declared revo…
00:42:45 |
Tue 31 Aug 2021
DM'ing Dominican Narcos, The Shooting of David Ortiz, & Cesar The Abuser
The Dominican Republic has long been a transshipment for cocaine heading to the United States and Europe. In recent years Dominican traffickers have started playing major roles in the supply chain. C…
00:45:33 |
Tue 24 Aug 2021
The Murdered Crime Reporter & the Mocro Mafia, Holland's Underworld Kings
On July 6, legendary Dutch crime reporter Peter de Vries was shot in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. A week later he was dead - another casualty of the sprawling Marengo Trial that could snare…
00:38:54 |
Tue 17 Aug 2021
Syria's Narco State, Jihadi Supersoldiers and Hezbollah Traffickers: The Story of Captagon
Multiple billion dollar shipments of the drug known as Captagon have been seized in the last few years as the cheap amphetamine floods the Middle East. Alleged to have helped fund the Syrian Civil wa…
00:43:14 |
Tue 10 Aug 2021
Inside North Korea's Meth Trafficking: The World's Biggest Narco State?
When a bizarre group of international gangsters shook on a massive meth deal with a DEA agent in Bangkok, Thailand eight years ago, it kicked off a manhunt ensnaring Hong Kong Triads, Outlaws bikers …
00:53:53 |
Tue 03 Aug 2021
The Cuban Mob: Billion Dollar Rackets, the CIA, Lucchese Mafia Firebomb Wars, Miami Cocaine Trafficking and Fidel Castro
Jose Miguel Battle's Cuban Mafia known as The Corporation ran a billion dollar numbers racket with brutal enforcers for three decades, growing so powerful that they went to war with the Luccheses, fi…
01:01:21 |
Tue 27 Jul 2021
The Untold Story of El Chapo's Rise and Fall w/ special guest Noah Hurowitz
(Apologies for sound issues on this one) Before he was Public Enemy Number One—shipping tons of cocaine from Sonoran tunnels into the US—El Chapo was just a poor kid from Sinaloa, trying to make a qu…
01:04:31 |
Tue 20 Jul 2021
The Icelandic Drug-Smuggling Fellowship's Massive Bitcoin Heist
How did an Icelandic band of international drug smugglers pull off their nation’s most shocking heist, robbing millions in Bitcoin mining machines then disappearing into the frozen wilderness? And ho…
00:41:07 |
Mon 12 Jul 2021
Cartel Land: How Acapulco went from Sinatra Singing to Sicarios Shooting
Acapulco has become one of Mexico's, and the world's, bloodiest cities. It saw a stunning 127 murders per 100,000 people in 2019, making it the most murderous city in the world. It's a long way from …
00:45:19 |
Tue 06 Jul 2021
The Snakehead Sister Ping: China's Most Infamous Smuggler
She was the greatest smuggler, a Chinatown hero. Or was she a menace? Sister Ping made millions from those fleeing eastern China to the US. But ‘The Snakehead’s legacy is wound up in legend, conspira…
00:52:20 |
Tue 29 Jun 2021
The Pink Panthers: The Secretive Organization of the World's Top Jewel Thieves
Emerging out of the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkans-based international thieves known as the Pink Panthers have coordinated many of the world's most lucrative heists, sometimes stealing tens of mi…
00:56:21 |
Wed 23 Jun 2021
The Russian Mafia's NHL Extortion Play
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 80's and early 90's, both gangsters and hockey players headed to America (and Canada!) for new opportunities, making use of the skills they had developed b…
00:44:16 |
Wed 16 Jun 2021
Turkey's Mafia Boss Youtube Sensation Trying to Bring Down the State
Sedat Peker has long been a top mafia boss in Turkey, but in recent weeks he's found a new calling: Youtuber. He's taken to youtube and social media to air out accusations of corruption and conspirac…
00:50:14 |
Wed 09 Jun 2021
The Billion Dollar Dealer Who Linked Hell's Angels, Mafia Families, Cartels, and Native American Smugglers
Jimmy Cournoyer brought a billion dollars of weed into New York City and the east coast through an organization that brought together the Rizzuto and Bonnano Italian Mafia families, Native American S…
00:39:50 |
Wed 02 Jun 2021
Curtis Warren, the English Gangster Who Tried to Take Over an Island:
Curtis Warren wasn't known as "Cocky" for nothing. Perhaps it was his rapid rise to the top of Britain's drug trade, becoming Cali's man in Europe and Interpol's "Target One". Perhaps it was a fortun…
00:45:19 |
Tue 13 Apr 2021
Brazil's Red Command Rules the Favelas
In the late 1970's when a military dictatorship ruled Brazil, revolutionaries and hardcore criminals formed a collective in a brutal maximum security island prison, giving birth to Brazil's first sup…
00:48:06 |
Wed 24 Mar 2021
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