January 19, 2011 • 45 mins
Many people are familiar with depictions of the Mafia in film, but what's the real story? Join Chuck and Josh as they break the infamous code of silence and shed light on some of the most dangerous and mysterious organizations in the western world.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com and welcome to the podcast.
(00:20):
I'm Josh Minnesota, Fats Clark, There's Chuck, Butterface Bryant. Where's
a couple of goons ready to break your thumbs on Butterface.
I'm actually the opposite of butter Face. I'm a butter body.
Those are what I came up with. That's good, Okay,
you get the papers. Get the papers. This one is
going to be lousy. With Chuck's Italian impressive. I want
(00:44):
to go ahead and um apologize to the Italian American
Anti Defamation League. Actually that is a serious c o A.
I wanted to say because a lot of Italian Americans
get upset about things like the Sopranos being portrayed as
game bixters. We're not saying all Italian Americans and gangsters,
but we're gonna talk about the mafia. It's a real thing,
(01:05):
and specifically we're gonna when you say the mafia, even
though it's used in all these different ways, right, it's
it's specific to Italian organized crime groups or Sicilian. Yeah, well,
Sicily is a part of Italy. Yeah, sort of, that's Sicilians,
and they probably would say not so much. Well, under
(01:26):
modern geopolitics, it's a part of Italy, right, I just
wouldn't say that in Sicily. Well, if you want to
talk about the mafia, even even broadly, the Sicilian mafia
is part of five total right. Yes, Oh we got
going already, did you know? Yeah? I was like, wow,
that's set up here. We are you? I mean, should
(01:48):
we name those or you just want to get to
those at the appropriate time? Did I throw you off? No?
I'll name him right now. Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra Mafia
from nap the Calabrian mafia from Calabria, right, Uh, the
Sacra Corona, Yunita or Unita, they're recent, they are based
(02:11):
in the Puglia region region. He's getting out of hand already.
And look also Nostra, which is uh, that's a good
place to start, yeah, because that's what's been come to
be called the American mafia. That is exactly right, Chuck.
And that's our first bit of jargon we should cover.
I think it is grammatically incorrect. It is you know, uh,
(02:35):
cosin nostra means our way, right, Yeah, possibly our thing. Yeah,
the FBI and I think the sixties were wire tapping, um,
the American mafia. They mentioned cosin nostra and um the
FBI came to use that as the term for the
Italian mafia, adding law so it means the r way.
(02:58):
I came up with the Italian mafia in the United States.
But it's stuck, right when the FBI labels you, that
label sticks and black. Cosa nostra, like you said, describes
the American mafia, which is one of the five Italian
mafia groups in the world. Today. I got a friend
named Blastfeld. We call him Blass, and I call him
(03:20):
La Blasa nostra. It's a good nickname, I think. Uh,
there's some other terms we're gonna throw about here. Uh,
the Almerta. I did look up how to pronounce some
of these. Actually, the Almerta is the code of silence, really,
that's how you pronounce it. Yeah, tah is the and
(03:40):
fascists on top. A made man is someone who is been,
you know, inducted into the mafia family. A capo originally
was the head of the family in Sicily, but now
there are lieutenants in the mafia. Then the family, of
course is the gang within the mafia, like the family
(04:01):
is uh, each individual gang, and then of course the
wise guys. Let's let's break down the hierarchy. Right, we're
talking family is a gang within the mafia, and there
can be usually say anywhere from ten to a hundred,
which strikes me as an incredibly arbitrary number. But there
are different families within the mafia. And if you're talking
(04:22):
about the Sicilian mafia, there's there's a lot of families.
There a lot of families in the US, right, um,
and beneath the in the hierarchy, beneath the family, each
families is headed by a boss, right don a don
or boss. Then you've got the underboss, possibly more than one,
but usually just one. Uh. The boss is right hand man. Yes,
(04:46):
Sometimes underboss makes his own decisions based on the you know,
the family way. Sometimes the underboss will go to the
boss say what should I do? Boss? Then travel down
to the lieutenants and let the now and you know, Chuck.
As I was reading this and reading about the structure
of the mafia organization, it occurred to me that like
(05:09):
a lot of this mirrors management and organizational styles found incorporations.
That's why they call it organized crime. It is it
is very much like Okay, so you have a boss
who's real hands on, the underboss is going to probably
not be very uh not be empowered, just like right
(05:29):
if if you have a hands on manager, the supervisor
right below him is not going to have a lot
of power authority, right, Okay, Well let's just keep going.
The copos are beneath the underboss. They're like lieutenants, lieutenants,
and they will either control a part of the family
or maybe a geographical area, or maybe they run a
(05:50):
certain racket only like I just deal in uh, prostitution, prostitution,
illegal gambling, legal gambling, right, or it could be like um,
Tony owns you know, everything west of eleventh Street. Right.
So that's how the the capo um, that's how the
capo h is a cappo really hats off to you,
(06:14):
capo off to you at the pronunciation. But that's how
the the what is it the capo is defined? Right?
And I thought about this too, and good fellas, PAULI,
as you know, big and important as he seemed, was
just a capo, was he? He went in an under Boston.
(06:35):
I don't think so. Who was a big daddy in
that movie? They never showed because think about it, like
Henry hill Um or what is his name, Leiota Hendry, Yeah,
and Jimmy and all they were really just soldiers, yeah,
well made. And Hendry couldn't be made because remember he
couldn't trace his bloodline back to the old country, right,
(06:57):
so he would have been an associate. Yeah, but Joe
Pesci was made. No, he wasn't. No, remember what happened
to him when he went to go get made. Well
he was, he was set to be made because his
bloodline was was correct. Yeah, okay, that's so. Beneath the Coppos, right,
are soldiers and they're the lowest rank and file, lowest
(07:20):
level rank and file members of the mafia, but they
are members. They have been inducted into the family, young
guys who are are probably trying to make their way
up to at least Cappo. And then you've got associates,
which are anybody from an investment banker, an accountant, the
accountant in Untouchables, he would have been an associate to,
(07:42):
like somebody who work with who's good at safe cracking
or hijacking or dealing drug, dirty cop, somebody who works
with the mob, but I remember the family. That's an
associate and Josh, then there's one more very important part
of the mafia family. Yeah. And there's a couple of
ways to pronounce this, the Conciliada, I like the the
(08:03):
hard g Consigliati. Yeah, and that is If anyone's ever
seen the movie Godfather, which you should, um obviously, Robert
Duval is Tom Hagen. If you haven't seen The Godfather,
press Paul Is on this podcast, rent or buy it. Well,
we'll go buy one and two. Yeah, you need to
see both of those. Uh, and and then come back
(08:24):
to this. And actually, while you're at it, go watch
Good Fellows as well and Casino and um Apocalypse. Now. So,
Robert Duval played Tom Hagen, who is the council YadA
and the Godfather, And the key here is that they're
not a part of the family's hierarchy. They're not an
actual family member, not supposed to be. Yeah, because they're
(08:46):
supposed to offer outside advice their advisors. They're supposed to
rule on fairness rather than Vendetta's personal feelings, that kind
of thing. They're elected they're not appointed. Yeah, did you
know that. Well, that's ideally how it goes. So I
really all of the soldiers, the copos, the the under boss,
the boss, all these people, I guess probably not the boss,
(09:07):
but UM elect this guy to basically say, I'm going
to serve as the tiebreaker the referee probably obviously a
very trusted, wise person. But the problem is most of
the time they're just appointed by the boss. Well, yeah,
that's what it says. In reality, a lot of times
they are appointed, they're not always impartial like they're supposed
(09:28):
to be. That's the real world mafia, not Tom Hagen
in the movies. And Duval was a great consulada. He
was excellent. He's just a class act. He is all
the way around. Um, there's no head of the mafia.
It is not a group, a single organization. It's not
like that. It depends. What do you mean. Are you
(09:48):
talking about the American mafia, the Sicilian mafia. Well, we're
talking to as a whole, largely about last So if
we're talking about Lakosa Nostra, there have been times when
there were basically ahead of the mafia before I think
the thirties, before the five families of New York were
really established and defined. There were people who were really
(10:12):
running the show or trying to run the show in
the country for the whole thing. Yeah, but for the
most part, you're absolutely right. It's there's nobody running the head.
There's a commission. I guess you could say, is the
head of the mafia. Right. Yeah, we'll get to the
commission in a minute. That's good stuff. When it comes
to naming the families, it's not a clear cut thing.
Sometimes it was the region. Uh. In the case of
(10:34):
New York, the main families were kind of accidentally named
in the Senate subcommittee testimony of A. Joe Alacchi in
nine sixty three. So once you say it in a
subcommittee meeting and then all of a sudden, it's sort
of the family names kind of stuck. And those names, Josh,
you want to go for those? Uh? Yeah, there were
(10:57):
the Banana, Jenna, Vasi, Gambino, Luches, and Profacci, very good
and some of those have been around before that. Um.
I believe the Bonano family was around for well since
the thirties, right, the um Profacci was around as well. Uh.
(11:18):
The gene Vase was relatively new oh, I'm sorry. In
the thirties it was Scalazi, Profacci, Luciano, Gagliano, and Banano. Okay,
and then in the sixties when Joe Volacci named him,
that was what they were named as they were named
after the most powerful bosses for their current bosses. Well yeah,
and and sometimes the family name would be transplanted if
(11:40):
they were taken over, like it almost happened with the
Gambinos and John Gotti took over the Gambino family. They
were very close to being called the Gotti family. But Gotti,
as everyone knows, was arrested for racketeering thanks to Sammy
the Bulgravano, and he's still behind bars today, so it
never became the Gotti family. No, the Profacci family did
(12:01):
become the Colombo crime family. So it does happen. There
are changes, that's right, But like we said, no hard
infest rules. That's that's the five families of New York
and those are the ones. They are most prominent. You
don't hear about the Buffalo family or the San Francisco
family or the Cleveland family, but these families exist. Uh.
(12:22):
Most of the time. They're named after the city that
they're running. Yeah, except in New York because so there
were just too many of them. Yeah, you couldn't call
the New York family because all five of them would
be like, oh what about the meat? It does happen
elsewhere though, Like there's the Patriarch crime family they run
New England apparently. Yeah. Nice, Well I'll talk about them
in a second. Right, where are we What which we
(12:44):
hit next? There's so much goodness in here. Well, let's
just go with the flow. How do you become a
member of the mafia. Let's say you're a um, you're
a low level safe cracker. Right, they'd be exciting, right,
but h and you've really proven your work. You've made
a lot of money. You're like, look, I want to
move on up. I like safe cracking, but I also
want to run numbers and horses and kids exactly. Um,
(13:08):
I want to become a member of the family. I
am Italian. I got to prove that my father at
least as Italian. Yeah. Most most of the time, it's
got to be both, but sometimes you can slip by it.
Just the old man is Italian, which is what kept
Henry Hill out of mafia because his father was Irish.
That's right, Um, I want to be inducted. What happens
(13:28):
well at an induction ceremony? It was really like most
induction ceremonies were pretty quiet and secret for a long time.
But as we said, Joe Valachi's testimony in the sixties
kind of blew the lid on a lot of this
stuff and this was one of them. Uh, what happens
is you sit down at at a table, you get
you're told to get dressed up or get dressed taken
(13:50):
to a private place. At your long table, you sit
next to the boss other mafio, so guys are gonna
be there, recite some oaths, promises of loyalty. Then you've
got to burn a piece of pay hold it. Here's
where the patriarchal family comes in. So in October, the
FBI managed to tap an entire induction ceremony and with
(14:10):
the card that piece of paper they talk about, it's
actually an image of a saint, like a family may have,
like a patron saying or whatever. So it's an image
of that and the the inductee holds it and says
something like well, in the patriarchal family, they were made
to say, as burns this saint, so we'll burn my soul.
I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead
(14:33):
and you go drop the burning scene. Yeah, and all
of them are thinking probably in the next few years. Yeah,
we'll give you six months. Uh so, yeah, you burn
the thing holding your hand. Is there any kind of
like feet of strength that you're supposed to hold it
till it burns your fingers or anything like that that
I saw a lot of times. The the new soldier
is paired with a more experienced dude, who is your
(14:54):
godfather guide you through the whole mafia things. I did
not know that. I just thought godfather was like another
name for like a coppo or a boss or the Don. Well,
I thought I thought in The Godfather it was Don
Corleone was the Godfather, wouldn't he interesting? Uh, the inductee
has to say, you know, I'm gonna be a got
a pledge for life, take a drop of blood from
the trigger finger, which I love that obviously, and uh boom,
(15:20):
you're a made man. Yeah. Well, some the rumor has
it is that you have to prove afterward by taking
part in a murder, is the long standing rumor. But
I think it's before before. Yeah, like you have to
show that you're loyal enough to to kill when ordered
to or at least help out in a killing. You're loyal,
(15:41):
you can keep your mouth shut, you have the stomach
for it. Allegedly, Allegedly, we need to say that we
don't want to get sued by the mafia. And then
the final thing you gotta do before you can become
a made man is you have to face the commission.
And uh, in the twenties and thirties, we mentioned the
commission a second ago. There was so much activity, mob
activity going on that they were recruiting soldiers left and
(16:04):
right just to kind of like claim to two bodies
and say, well, we've got all these guys, and it
became confusing. I gottauld infiltrate and assassinate pretty easily. So
they literally formed a commission that's like all right, you
gotta it's like a registry almost. So remember I was saying,
like there were heads of the mafia, like in the US,
there were people vying for it, and this is what
(16:24):
it was creating, this hugely violent point in mafia history. Right.
So not only that, Chuck, it was prohibition as well. Well.
That was a huge time of the mafia very much
was right. So there's a lot a lot of money
to be made, an unprecedented amount of money to be made.
It was relatively new turf for the Italian mob in
(16:45):
the US. They've only been here for like maybe thirty
four years, right, um and the uh. There is a
lot of wars going on. And the guy who basically
brought ordered all this chaos through murder and structure was
k Luciano. Yeah, he was the one that had the
idea for the commission. And he also murdered the two
guys who were like the rivals for the boss of
(17:07):
bosses and then set up the five families. Now did he?
The commission is different now, The commission is the same
as as the committee meetings. Right, that's the same thing. Okay,
Well they grew out of the committee meetings, so the
commission got a register. That's the last thing you have
to do is literally be like, all right, my name
is Josh the the I Clark. No, it's just Minnesota
(17:28):
Fats clients. So the Fats Clark and I'm with the
Gambino family and I live in Bayonne, New Jersey, and
Kate and Long walks on the beach at night and
drown people with my bare hands. Right, So, um, you
can finally your made man. You're in the commission, you're registered,
you're the dude, right Well, the commission passes you, they
(17:48):
say that's okay. Well, well this guy is okay with
me to be in your family, because part of the
reason of passing lists of prospective members around is it
weeds out guys who another family has a beef with.
Who if it becomes part of your family, that's gonna
lead to war. Yeah, you don't want that to happen. Plus,
it brings them out of anonymity so that they can't
(18:11):
just walk up and shoot somebody in the face, right right, right,
because you can't do that unless you're made right right. Well,
this good stuff it is. It's just amazing. Middle class
white dudes like us are fascinated by the mafia. Where
we all want to be in the mafia. Uh So
let's talk about how the mafia makes money, because that's
what the mafia is. Let's I mean, let's get real.
(18:32):
The mafia is there to make money, and uh they
have a history of doing it through illegal means. Otherwise
they wouldn't be the mafia. They'd just be corporations. Right.
One of the way is one of the classic ways
you'll see in movies, which is actually a very real thing,
is extortion protection fees happens all the time, or it
did happen. Imagine it still does in some cases. Still.
(18:54):
Jerry was telling us about kiding Guatemala, who's who's killed
because the family couldn't pay for protection. Oh is that why? Man?
That's awful. Wow, I realized that was a reason. So
you know, that's the scene from the movie where they
go into the and rough up the shop owner and
say you gotta pay for protection. Basically to protect you
from us. Is sort of what it boils down to. Yeah,
(19:15):
although imagine sometimes it might have been some legitimate protections.
But the impression I have of it is like, yeah,
they're saying, if you don't pay, then you're not going
to be protected from us. But I think if you
do pay, you kind of enter into this fold where
other people can't mess with you, and if they do,
you can go to the capo or whoever is running
(19:36):
the show that you're paying tribute to um and say
I've got this problem I need you to take care of.
Like I think it gives you access if you're like
a regular paying person. And we'll see when we talk
about mafia history how closely this mirrors, you know, sicily
and the under the feudal system, any feudal system. Really well,
(19:56):
remember in The Departed when Leo just went house on
those two guys that were extorting the shop owner and
he thought he did this guy favor, and then the
shop owner was all ticked off. Afterwards, He's like, thanks
a lot, man, you know you you brought down this
a reign of terror on me. Oh that's right, he
killed you can kill him. But he mutilated their faces
in the shop. Um. That was such a good movie.
(20:19):
It was. It was great. So alcohol. We talked about prohibition,
illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling. Those are extortion, and that's just
the illegal stuff they can also they also managed to
make money off stuff that would otherwise be illegal if
they hadn't hijacked it, or would otherwise be legal. I
mean yeah, like importing and exporting stuff like that. It
(20:39):
was stealing things that other people important. Next, well, that's
what I mean. But Gotti was like, was he the
one that was into women's apparel? That man had taste?
I wonder if that's they probably modeled that DeNiro thing
at the end on him, the end of Good Fellows
where DeNiro has the the Ladies Clothing warehouse. Yeah, but
that was on Gotti. But I don't know if it
was because I think Jimmy was an actual person because
(21:00):
that was all Henry Hill like real life stuff. Yeah,
but they could have borrowed who knows, or maybe whoever
he was based on was into women's clothing. Maybe. So,
like you said, they want to make lots of money.
So while there are like muggings and stupid things like that,
they generally would rather hijack a boat and pay off
a dock worker or steal a semi truck full of
(21:21):
cigarettes instead of knocking off a store or something like that.
They want the big dough or they could, say, I
don't know, infiltrate a labor union and threatened to have
their workers slow or stop construction if they don't get
additional money. Yeah, that happened in New York for decades.
The Mafia infiltrated the Team Stretch union specifically, and they
(21:44):
said in this article, at one point the Mafia could
have nearly brought all construction and shipping into the US
to a halt that they wanted to write that was
thanks in large part to a guy named Jimmy Hoffa,
who actually it turned out, you know, he was a
labor organ eys are in the thirties and that was
like when the cops used to crack the heads of
labor organizers on behalf of guys like Henry Ford. Right, Um,
(22:07):
so he was like the real deal, but he was
also super crooked too. Yeah, he's buried in Oakland Cemetery
right here in Atlanta, is all right? Now, he's famous
for not knowing where he was buried. Really, Yeah, he disappeared, Okay, Well,
the rumor was he's buried under Giant Stadium and I've
heard that one before too. But you know, you know,
(22:27):
they finally pinched him and he went to prison for
a while, and Nixon pardoned him, supposedly because half of
the teamsters and like a bunch of gangsters like gave
a lot of money to Nixon's campaign. Interesting, that's allegedly,
but Halfa gets out and starts campaigning for prison reform.
Five years after that. Four years after that, he goes
(22:49):
to lunch in Michigan. Never seen from again has declared
legally dead in nineteen eight three, but he was the
head of the Teamsters, but he was finally pinched for fraud.
And the whole point of being of controlling a labor
union was you controlled labor, but you also add access
to their pension which everybody is paying into. Well, they
(23:11):
used the pension to underwrite huge contracts in Vegas at
one point to control until the seventies. Alright, we're getting
all that. Uh, let's go back to the history. You
were talking about how it mirrored Sicily, and I think
that's one of the most fascinating parts about this. So
go yeah, because extortion is another way of extracting tribute.
It's another way of saying extracting tribute. Right in Sicily.
(23:33):
Sicily lived under the feudal system long after the rest
of Europe. Look to other forms of governance, right, and
the feudal system is basically like, I'm a landowner. I
control all this land, but I can't possibly work all
of it. I'll let you guys live on this land.
I'll let you live and you give me some of
your grain, most of your grain, however, much of your
(23:53):
green I want. That was an early model for what
the mafia did, right, and if you don't do this,
I'm going to have this other class of society. Basically
my foot soldiers kill you or kill your wife or
whatever until you do what I want you to. That's
the feudal system. Yeah. And the reason that Sicily was
kind of the birthplace, not kind of, was the birth
birthplace of the mafia. It was because Sicily is out
(24:14):
there in the med It's very accessible and because of that,
it was invaded a lot. It's very strategic, controlled by
a lot of different people over the years, and that
led to instability such that the people of Sicily didn't
look too and sometimes it was just lawlessness, but they
regardless even if there were laws, they didn't look to
the state to solve their problems. It became very much
a family thing, a local thing. Yeah, you solved it locally.
(24:37):
Your family took care of business. They took care of
things outside the law. And that kind of is what
birth the mafia. So basically you can look at that
capo's territory or the capos racket as the land, the
feudal land, the capos the feudal lord, right, yeah, and
(24:58):
and it mirrors it almost identically. There's extortion, there's tribute, um,
there's there's the threat of violence, there's the use of violence.
All of it is based out of this feudal system
that collapsed in the nineteenth century in Sicily, but was
immediately replaced after this bout of lawlessness by the mafia
following pretty much the same thing. And then they came
(25:19):
to America. Then they came to it. Well, yeah, this
is actually interesting how this happened to and um, Mussolini
had a big crack down on the mafia. It's very
harsh on the mafia, put a lot of them in prison,
and then the U. S troops occupied Sicily during World
War Two. They thought a lot of these jailed people
were political prisoners, so not only did they set a
(25:41):
lot of them free, they made the mayors and police
chiefs and that was they were like, hey, I really
appreciate that we're back on the streets now. Thanks for
quashing Mussolini. We're in more control than we ever was
yea who was a real thorn in our side for
a long time. So uh. In the postwar Sicily, there
was a group there was a ceasefire because there was
so much warring going on within the families, and they
(26:03):
formed the Cupola and the Coppola basically oversaw all of
the families commission. Yeah, it's an early version of the
commission that would happen years later. And Um, the American mafia,
the tactics that like casinostri uses mirrors the Sicilian mafia
in a lot of ways, like recruiting young guys to
(26:23):
like do the dirty work and eventually inducting them. Um,
the the whole extracting tribute in the form of extortionmarta,
the code of silence, right, Um, yeah, the whole lifestyle
of the mobster is reflected in the Sicily right. Yeah,
so that's the birthplace. Yeah, and it was going pretty
well in Sicily until the eighties and nineteen eighties, so
(26:44):
not even that long ago. And uh, they had a
big trial called the Maxi Trial, right because, uh, the
the government went after the Sicilian mafia, and the Sicilian
mafia was like, okay, well, these two big prosecutors are
coming after are both gonna dyeing car bombs. And I
think they underestimated the response to the public, which turned
(27:05):
against him. So they had this Maxi Trial, which they've
built a special courthouse, which is essentially a bunker. Try
four hundred Sicilian mobsters, and I think three hundred, three
hundred and thirty eight were found guilty. I got a
different number. I got three hundred and sixty convictions. It's
a two year trial. They had three judges. They had
one judge and two alternates that literally sat in on
(27:27):
the whole trial. Just in case something happened to the
one judge, like a car bomb, they wouldn't have to
start all over declare mistrial. The second one would step up.
Somebody killed the second guy, the third guy would step up.
Nothing happened to the first guy. He made it all
the way through. I can't believe that. I know um
a hundred and fourteen acquittals. Out of the hundred fourteen acquittals,
(27:48):
eighteen of them were murdered. One of them was murdered
within an hour of leaving the courtroom. On the way home.
I supposedly was going to like a surprise or not
a surprise party, but like a a celebration. I got
acquitted party, and then those are those are good parties.
He got off. And then a lot of successful appeals
after that, with the Maxi trial and what I got
(28:08):
is only sixty. By nine eighty nine, only sixty of
the original three sixty remained in prison. Wow. So the
Maxi trial kind of turned out to be the Mini
trial in the end. So it's not surprised that it's
no surprised that the Maxi trild didn't get rid of
the Sicilian mafia. In the Italian government sent seven thousand
(28:29):
troops to occupy Sicily for six years, and that apparently worked.
According to this article, they the Sicilian mafia is still around,
but is less violent than it was before. I didn't
know was that recent? You know? I didn't either, kind
of like, um, sudd war is sweet, odd, I don't
know that guy. I don't know if I've ever helped dumber.
(28:52):
By the way, in the podcast, I should have had
that cut out, but I was like, yeah, it was.
It was endearing. This is me. It's endearing warts and all.
The American mafia Josh. Yeah, the the Italians and Sicilians
came to the United States and the eighteen hundreds big
time in the twentieth century. Most of these were just
(29:13):
regular folks, not mafia, starting a good, honest life here. Nice.
Some of them weren't, uh, in in New Orleans. Specifically,
the first um I guess mafia incident Italian mafia incident
in the country happened right in the eighteen nineties. There
was um a mobster, Well, there was a there was
(29:34):
a group a family that was basically getting heat from
the local police chief. So they offered them right and
at trial, this this uh mafia family was they well
they all got off basically from blatantly bribing and intimidating witnesses.
And uh the people of New Orleans did not like this,
(29:57):
so they actually um formed a lynch mob and went
and killed sixteen and these these mobsters, and that was
the first mafia. That was the United States introduction to
the Italian mob crazy and they were defeated by Nola. Yeah,
look at him go at least temporarily. Who knows what
happened after that. Uh So, first half of the twentieth
(30:19):
century in New York City is where a lot of
it's happening because a lot of the immigrants poured into there. Obviously,
you had the Five Families, you had prohibition making everybody rich.
You had bosses and underbosses getting killed like monthly. Yeah,
the Luke Chase's right. They went through three three bosses
in nineteen thirty in one year, three different bosses. This
(30:41):
is the time when Lucky Lichiano was killing everybody. To
basically set up the structure this organization. And he defined
the five Families, and that's like literally is like this,
this is the name of your family. This is who
you are, this is this, this and this. There's five
families out component in Chicago, and then the Buffalo family
and that's the Commission, the little family. I love that.
And uh, the way they describe it here is they
(31:03):
were basically kind of like Senator so al Capone represented
like all of the West coast because he was, you know,
the closest one obviously, and uh, they had to you know,
the Commission had to approve things assassinations, kidnappings, big money
deals that had to all go through the Commission. And
they had meetings every five years, every five years committee
(31:25):
And probably the most famous meeting of all time was
their nineteen fifty seven meeting in Appalachian on the New
York Pennsylvania border. And apparently this state trooper was a
little suspicious of the scores of Lincoln Town cars. Yeah,
wise guys who were showing up, so he himself let
(31:46):
a raid on the Mobster convention. And basically this is
a time when the public and the government denied that
there was such thing as mafia nine fifties. It seems
like second nature now because of all the popular culture stuff,
But it was long before any of that, right, But
(32:07):
not only that, it seems it seems obvious now because
of the Appalachian rate. It was basically tantamount to us
rating convention of ghosts and being like, okay, well there
really are ghosts. Right, It's pretty much the same thing.
And it brought them mafia undeniably into the light. And
there really was mafia. Here's all their leaders. You know,
(32:30):
I just try. I like the ghost convention, things like
to go to that. Uh should we talk about Vegas
for a minute or Kennedy first? Either one? Alright, let's
go with Kennedy. Everyone knows that John F. Kennedy. Everyone
has long associated him with the mafia, partially because his dad, Joe,
was alleged bootlegger during Prohibition, involved with the mob obviously
(32:54):
if you're bootlegging in that part of the country. And
uh also had connections to people like Meyer land Ski,
who was a friend of Lucky lu Les. Yeah, Ben Kingsley,
he saw Bugsy right, great movie. One of the other
things that happened was JFK was assassinated and Jack Jack
(33:16):
Ruby killed. Lee. Harvey Oswald, who allegedly assassinated Kennedy was
an associate. He was a mob associate, so there's that tie.
Other people say that the mafia didn't like Castro kicking
them out of the Cuban casino business, so they think
the Bay of Pigs may had something to do with
the mafia because Kennedy didn't call in an airstrikes. Robert
(33:39):
Kennedy went after the mafia. He died by an assassin's bullet. Yeah,
I've stood at that very spot, have you really? The
kitchen was the deal with sir Han sier Han, I
don't know that weird. Yeah, we need to look all
that stuff up. Let's be a good podcast. And then
while the girlfriends go head Yeah, same gene Conna. It
(34:02):
was pretty cool, dude, as far as the mafia bosses go.
He uh supposedly set JFK up with all sorts of girlfriends,
including Marilyn Monroe, so he could record and basically get
dirt on the president. So Um, they think that Marilyn
(34:22):
Monroe possibly was murdered by hitman that Giancanna had hired,
and the Giancanna was going to testify about the Kennedy
connection to the mob and he gets murdered, which basically
just goes to show you that it's all mafia. Whether
they're Italian, legitimate, whatever, it's all mafia. Right. So those
are all the alleged links to the John F. Kennedy,
(34:44):
former President of the United States. Then there's the Vegas connection. Um,
you know, Vegas was just kind of started by by Bugsy.
It was the Jewish mobsters that were the first up
to Vegas. And then once it was set up, the
gambling was happening legally for the first time. They're already
running casinos, illegal casinos all over the country, but all
(35:05):
of a sudden, you got this haven in the desert.
It's legal where you can go out there and do
it for real. So the you know, they got in
on the action. So the uh that one of the
ways the Italian mob got in was through their um
leveraging of pensions like you said, uh, teamsters labor union pensions,
UH to underwrite casinos. A lot of construction going on exactly,
(35:29):
or they would just basically show up and be like,
I'm your partner now, right, Like Peschi showed up in Casino,
which I thought was every bit as good as Good Fellas.
I know people don't agree with that, but I thought
Casino was terrific. It was a good movie, but it
was not as good as as Good I'm giving it
a slight tier two, but I love I love Casino.
(35:50):
I thought it was great. Sharon Stone good stuff in
that one. I thought she screwed that up, really she did.
I mean she was great actress. I think her character
got too much um emphasis in that movie. Yeah. I
liked James Woods in that slime Ball for the ex boyfriend. God,
he was slimy uh. Since the seventies, though, the Vegas
(36:13):
has supposedly been pretty clean, supposedly, and I think it
actually is. I think it's one of those ones where
it's not like, yeah, it's clean, Wing Queen, like, I
think it actually is pretty clean. Well, there's probably too
much money at stake, now, Yeah, you don't want to
lose your gambling license. If you're the Palms, you know
it's no good or Steve Winn or Steve win how
(36:34):
can we fight the mafia. How do we fight the mafia? Well, Chuck,
we fight the mafia through a little law that was
passed in nineteen seventies specifically to be used against the
mafia called the RICO. Yeah. They invented a charge. Yeah,
in the United States very smartly invented a charge. Um.
It's called the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act. The
(36:55):
RICO Act, which is Title eighteen in the United States Code,
section is nineteen six s one just top top my head.
And um. Basically, it's it's set up so that you
can go after an entire criminal enterprise and RICO. The
RICO Act has just about any felony associated with it,
(37:16):
but they have to be carried out by this enterprise
two i think two felonies within a fifteen year period
after that, right, and if it's the mafet, they're gonna
they're gonna break two laws, like you know, within fifteen years,
so that counts as racketeering. If two or more illegal
acts happened, then they say that's an organized family crime, right,
(37:37):
because a racket is you know, these different types of
illegal activities that the mafia used to make money racketeering
is this enterprise, right yea, and that an act of
making that. So what they can do is not only
can they attack a racketeering charge on which will give
you extra time in addition to your crime other crimes
like unloading the truck of cigarettes, it uh, it accomplished
(38:01):
a very important thing and that the mafia boss could
no longer sit behind a veil of safety because they're
not the trigger man. Right, all of a sudden, John
Gotti can be brought up in racketeering charges. And that's
even if they can't pin an order for the murder
on the boss. Because one of the things about the
couple of and the commission was that it brought peace
(38:25):
to the mafia among the families, but it also exposed
the bosses because they were the ones who were approving
murders and stuff. Now, right this with with the reco act,
I think you don't have to you don't have to.
You just have to say, this guy is the boss
of this organization. Everything flows up to him. Anything we
can pin on any other member can be pinned on
(38:47):
the boss. And like you said, it adds it's not
just bribery, it's bribery plus ten years because it was
bribery in the context of racketeering. It's a huge law.
But the the interesting thing to me is they almost
never used it for mafia anymore. It's for corporations. Oh, interesting,
corporate racketeering. Good. Yeah, that's what I say. Trump up
(39:11):
some charges. You can you can also go that's kind
of what it is. They created a loss so they
could trump up charges. Right. You can also go undercover,
like one Joe Pistone did. Yeah, the movie, The Great Movie.
Donnie Brasco told his story pretty well. Yeah, he was
undercover for what six years, like deep undercover, scarily undercover. Yeah,
(39:32):
to the point where even when he came out in trial, uh,
testifying against people, some of the mob guys were like,
how's he gonna turn it against us like that? Yeah,
they thought he was a rat. Yeah, they still didn't
think he was a cop, even though he's on the
stand saying I'm a cop. Yeah, I'm FBI. Yeah, Donnie Brasco.
Look for it in theaters near you in Pacino was
(39:54):
the Uh No, it was Johnny Depp And I'm sorry,
I thought I thought of Heshi when you said Paccino
and Johnny deppia one man's pesci is another man's peccino. No,
that's like one man's Casino is another man's good Fellows.
One man's Madden is another man's must Burger. Maybe okay, ah,
(40:15):
that's the mafia. There's so much there, Like this was
the structure, bare bones, very little flesh on it. Just
because there's so much to it. We could pole this
could be part one in a series of tin snuffed
out before the tenth though. Probably we were respectful. I
think so too. Where are we, hey, man? I mean,
(40:35):
if we weren't, just send us an email. Don't shoot
us now, please, So chuck. That's it. That's it, all right.
If you want to know more about mafia, including a
chart of the structure of a typical Sicilian mafia family
or Locosa Noster family, just type in mafia in the
handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which means
(40:56):
it's time now for listener, ma'am. And for God's sakes,
see The Godfather one and two and good Fellas and
good Fellas and Casino and Donni Brasco and My Blue Heaven.
That's a good one. And you can watch god Father three.
I'm a proponent of it. Even though most people poop
to it. Just take Sofia Coppola with a grain of
(41:17):
salt and realized that she had She's a brilliant director
in the making, and not a great actor. She's already
a brilliant director. Not when you make up other three
she wouldn't she made that movie up a few No
know that I'm saying she was in it was a
very poor actor. She went on to become a great
director actor. So I'm gonna call this. We asked for
sinking ship stories. We've got a couple that were okay,
(41:39):
but our best one was an airplane falling out of
the sky story. Hi guys, I know you called for
seeking boats stories, but I hope you'll consider this falling
airplane story and fall of oh seven. My boyfriend and
I were coming home to the US after he had
played some concerts in Germany. He was he in the scorpions.
I don't know, this might be Hasslehoff. The flight to
(42:00):
parted Cologne in the morning. We had been in the
air for a couple of hours when suddenly we felt
something akin to very violent turbulence. The plane dropped by out,
dropped an altitude by a lot enough to make me
feel like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out
like a roller coaster. The plane momentarily righted. The captain
got on the intercom said there was a there was
some difficulties. The next few minutes felt like ages. The
(42:22):
plane alternately banked from side to side, lost more altitude,
and shook some more. Lights flickered on and off. The
captain announced it was a fire in the first class cabin,
and it didn't help that he sounded panicked and was
nearly screaming. We were sitting in the back row, which,
as we know, is not proven, but it's probably one
of the best places to be if your plane is
going to crash. Flight attendant ran too our row and
(42:45):
threw open the overhead compartment looking for something. She hollered,
Oh my god, there's only one, she said, only one.
What we never found out? The lights went out for
a longer period. That's when we noticed that the oxygen
mask had deployed, but only for seats on the other
side of the plane. Our entire side did not have
oxygen masks deployed. My boyfriend was to my right, an
(43:07):
elder Russian woman on my left. I was squeezing both
of their hands and trying to stay calm. The Russian
woman had both of her eyes closed. She was rocking
back and forth and speaking softly under her voice. Suddenly
the ground was coming very fast. We had miraculously hit
the runway at Shannon Airport in Ireland, but we hit
it hard because of the weight of all the fuel
(43:29):
that was intended intended to fly us to Newark. The
plane bounced a couple of times on the miscovered runway,
lost all of the electrical power, air circulation shut down,
and we were towed to the gate. There were a
lot of tears, prayers and shaking up people, and the
airplane doors were eventually hand cranked open and we deplaned.
(43:50):
That is from Ariadne and carry the boyfriend. Wow, sinking ship.
Who cares? Would you ever get on a plane again
at something like that happened to you? Uh? These days?
Yes you would, because you've kind of overcome that to
a large degree. Yeah. Um, But with what I've gotten
to the point now where I can I just sit
there and look out the window and make myself watch
(44:11):
take off and landing. Um, and I'm usually pretty good. Well,
we fly alight now I quit smoking and I got
over my fear of flying. Did you you've made so
many changes at something? Anybody? Look at you. I can
run two miles at a stretch now too. That's impressive.
Onward and upward, onward and upward. If you have a
story about a mail man you hated or who hated you,
(44:38):
or mafia stuff, Okay, all right, we'll go with that one.
Then if you have a story about the mafia, we
want to hear it. We want you to wrap it
up in an email and send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
(44:59):
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our
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Download it today on iTunes, Brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com and welcome to the podcast.
(00:20):
I'm Josh Minnesota, Fats Clark, There's Chuck, Butterface Bryant. Where's
a couple of goons ready to break your thumbs on Butterface.
I'm actually the opposite of butter Face. I'm a butter body.
Those are what I came up with. That's good, Okay,
you get the papers. Get the papers. This one is
going to be lousy. With Chuck's Italian impressive. I want
(00:44):
to go ahead and um apologize to the Italian American
Anti Defamation League. Actually that is a serious c o A.
I wanted to say because a lot of Italian Americans
get upset about things like the Sopranos being portrayed as
game bixters. We're not saying all Italian Americans and gangsters,
but we're gonna talk about the mafia. It's a real thing,
(01:05):
and specifically we're gonna when you say the mafia, even
though it's used in all these different ways, right, it's
it's specific to Italian organized crime groups or Sicilian. Yeah, well,
Sicily is a part of Italy. Yeah, sort of, that's Sicilians,
and they probably would say not so much. Well, under
(01:26):
modern geopolitics, it's a part of Italy, right, I just
wouldn't say that in Sicily. Well, if you want to
talk about the mafia, even even broadly, the Sicilian mafia
is part of five total right. Yes, Oh we got
going already, did you know? Yeah? I was like, wow,
that's set up here. We are you? I mean, should
(01:48):
we name those or you just want to get to
those at the appropriate time? Did I throw you off? No?
I'll name him right now. Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra Mafia
from nap the Calabrian mafia from Calabria, right, Uh, the
Sacra Corona, Yunita or Unita, they're recent, they are based
(02:11):
in the Puglia region region. He's getting out of hand already.
And look also Nostra, which is uh, that's a good
place to start, yeah, because that's what's been come to
be called the American mafia. That is exactly right, Chuck.
And that's our first bit of jargon we should cover.
I think it is grammatically incorrect. It is you know, uh,
(02:35):
cosin nostra means our way, right, Yeah, possibly our thing. Yeah,
the FBI and I think the sixties were wire tapping, um,
the American mafia. They mentioned cosin nostra and um the
FBI came to use that as the term for the
Italian mafia, adding law so it means the r way.
(02:58):
I came up with the Italian mafia in the United States.
But it's stuck, right when the FBI labels you, that
label sticks and black. Cosa nostra, like you said, describes
the American mafia, which is one of the five Italian
mafia groups in the world. Today. I got a friend
named Blastfeld. We call him Blass, and I call him
(03:20):
La Blasa nostra. It's a good nickname, I think. Uh,
there's some other terms we're gonna throw about here. Uh,
the Almerta. I did look up how to pronounce some
of these. Actually, the Almerta is the code of silence, really,
that's how you pronounce it. Yeah, tah is the and
(03:40):
fascists on top. A made man is someone who is been,
you know, inducted into the mafia family. A capo originally
was the head of the family in Sicily, but now
there are lieutenants in the mafia. Then the family, of
course is the gang within the mafia, like the family
(04:01):
is uh, each individual gang, and then of course the
wise guys. Let's let's break down the hierarchy. Right, we're
talking family is a gang within the mafia, and there
can be usually say anywhere from ten to a hundred,
which strikes me as an incredibly arbitrary number. But there
are different families within the mafia. And if you're talking
(04:22):
about the Sicilian mafia, there's there's a lot of families.
There a lot of families in the US, right, um,
and beneath the in the hierarchy, beneath the family, each
families is headed by a boss, right don a don
or boss. Then you've got the underboss, possibly more than one,
but usually just one. Uh. The boss is right hand man. Yes,
(04:46):
Sometimes underboss makes his own decisions based on the you know,
the family way. Sometimes the underboss will go to the
boss say what should I do? Boss? Then travel down
to the lieutenants and let the now and you know, Chuck.
As I was reading this and reading about the structure
of the mafia organization, it occurred to me that like
(05:09):
a lot of this mirrors management and organizational styles found incorporations.
That's why they call it organized crime. It is it
is very much like Okay, so you have a boss
who's real hands on, the underboss is going to probably
not be very uh not be empowered, just like right
(05:29):
if if you have a hands on manager, the supervisor
right below him is not going to have a lot
of power authority, right, Okay, Well let's just keep going.
The copos are beneath the underboss. They're like lieutenants, lieutenants,
and they will either control a part of the family
or maybe a geographical area, or maybe they run a
(05:50):
certain racket only like I just deal in uh, prostitution, prostitution,
illegal gambling, legal gambling, right, or it could be like um,
Tony owns you know, everything west of eleventh Street. Right.
So that's how the the capo um, that's how the
capo h is a cappo really hats off to you,
(06:14):
capo off to you at the pronunciation. But that's how
the the what is it the capo is defined? Right?
And I thought about this too, and good fellas, PAULI,
as you know, big and important as he seemed, was
just a capo, was he? He went in an under Boston.
(06:35):
I don't think so. Who was a big daddy in
that movie? They never showed because think about it, like
Henry hill Um or what is his name, Leiota Hendry, Yeah,
and Jimmy and all they were really just soldiers, yeah,
well made. And Hendry couldn't be made because remember he
couldn't trace his bloodline back to the old country, right,
(06:57):
so he would have been an associate. Yeah, but Joe
Pesci was made. No, he wasn't. No, remember what happened
to him when he went to go get made. Well
he was, he was set to be made because his
bloodline was was correct. Yeah, okay, that's so. Beneath the Coppos, right,
are soldiers and they're the lowest rank and file, lowest
(07:20):
level rank and file members of the mafia, but they
are members. They have been inducted into the family, young
guys who are are probably trying to make their way
up to at least Cappo. And then you've got associates,
which are anybody from an investment banker, an accountant, the
accountant in Untouchables, he would have been an associate to,
(07:42):
like somebody who work with who's good at safe cracking
or hijacking or dealing drug, dirty cop, somebody who works
with the mob, but I remember the family. That's an
associate and Josh, then there's one more very important part
of the mafia family. Yeah. And there's a couple of
ways to pronounce this, the Conciliada, I like the the
(08:03):
hard g Consigliati. Yeah, and that is If anyone's ever
seen the movie Godfather, which you should, um obviously, Robert
Duval is Tom Hagen. If you haven't seen The Godfather,
press Paul Is on this podcast, rent or buy it. Well,
we'll go buy one and two. Yeah, you need to
see both of those. Uh, and and then come back
(08:24):
to this. And actually, while you're at it, go watch
Good Fellows as well and Casino and um Apocalypse. Now. So,
Robert Duval played Tom Hagen, who is the council YadA
and the Godfather, And the key here is that they're
not a part of the family's hierarchy. They're not an
actual family member, not supposed to be. Yeah, because they're
(08:46):
supposed to offer outside advice their advisors. They're supposed to
rule on fairness rather than Vendetta's personal feelings, that kind
of thing. They're elected they're not appointed. Yeah, did you
know that. Well, that's ideally how it goes. So I
really all of the soldiers, the copos, the the under boss,
the boss, all these people, I guess probably not the boss,
(09:07):
but UM elect this guy to basically say, I'm going
to serve as the tiebreaker the referee probably obviously a
very trusted, wise person. But the problem is most of
the time they're just appointed by the boss. Well, yeah,
that's what it says. In reality, a lot of times
they are appointed, they're not always impartial like they're supposed
(09:28):
to be. That's the real world mafia, not Tom Hagen
in the movies. And Duval was a great consulada. He
was excellent. He's just a class act. He is all
the way around. Um, there's no head of the mafia.
It is not a group, a single organization. It's not
like that. It depends. What do you mean. Are you
(09:48):
talking about the American mafia, the Sicilian mafia. Well, we're
talking to as a whole, largely about last So if
we're talking about Lakosa Nostra, there have been times when
there were basically ahead of the mafia before I think
the thirties, before the five families of New York were
really established and defined. There were people who were really
(10:12):
running the show or trying to run the show in
the country for the whole thing. Yeah, but for the
most part, you're absolutely right. It's there's nobody running the head.
There's a commission. I guess you could say, is the
head of the mafia. Right. Yeah, we'll get to the
commission in a minute. That's good stuff. When it comes
to naming the families, it's not a clear cut thing.
Sometimes it was the region. Uh. In the case of
(10:34):
New York, the main families were kind of accidentally named
in the Senate subcommittee testimony of A. Joe Alacchi in
nine sixty three. So once you say it in a
subcommittee meeting and then all of a sudden, it's sort
of the family names kind of stuck. And those names, Josh,
you want to go for those? Uh? Yeah, there were
(10:57):
the Banana, Jenna, Vasi, Gambino, Luches, and Profacci, very good
and some of those have been around before that. Um.
I believe the Bonano family was around for well since
the thirties, right, the um Profacci was around as well. Uh.
(11:18):
The gene Vase was relatively new oh, I'm sorry. In
the thirties it was Scalazi, Profacci, Luciano, Gagliano, and Banano. Okay,
and then in the sixties when Joe Volacci named him,
that was what they were named as they were named
after the most powerful bosses for their current bosses. Well yeah,
and and sometimes the family name would be transplanted if
(11:40):
they were taken over, like it almost happened with the
Gambinos and John Gotti took over the Gambino family. They
were very close to being called the Gotti family. But Gotti,
as everyone knows, was arrested for racketeering thanks to Sammy
the Bulgravano, and he's still behind bars today, so it
never became the Gotti family. No, the Profacci family did
(12:01):
become the Colombo crime family. So it does happen. There
are changes, that's right, But like we said, no hard
infest rules. That's that's the five families of New York
and those are the ones. They are most prominent. You
don't hear about the Buffalo family or the San Francisco
family or the Cleveland family, but these families exist. Uh.
(12:22):
Most of the time. They're named after the city that
they're running. Yeah, except in New York because so there
were just too many of them. Yeah, you couldn't call
the New York family because all five of them would
be like, oh what about the meat? It does happen
elsewhere though, Like there's the Patriarch crime family they run
New England apparently. Yeah. Nice, Well I'll talk about them
in a second. Right, where are we What which we
(12:44):
hit next? There's so much goodness in here. Well, let's
just go with the flow. How do you become a
member of the mafia. Let's say you're a um, you're
a low level safe cracker. Right, they'd be exciting, right,
but h and you've really proven your work. You've made
a lot of money. You're like, look, I want to
move on up. I like safe cracking, but I also
want to run numbers and horses and kids exactly. Um,
(13:08):
I want to become a member of the family. I
am Italian. I got to prove that my father at
least as Italian. Yeah. Most most of the time, it's
got to be both, but sometimes you can slip by it.
Just the old man is Italian, which is what kept
Henry Hill out of mafia because his father was Irish.
That's right, Um, I want to be inducted. What happens
(13:28):
well at an induction ceremony? It was really like most
induction ceremonies were pretty quiet and secret for a long time.
But as we said, Joe Valachi's testimony in the sixties
kind of blew the lid on a lot of this
stuff and this was one of them. Uh, what happens
is you sit down at at a table, you get
you're told to get dressed up or get dressed taken
(13:50):
to a private place. At your long table, you sit
next to the boss other mafio, so guys are gonna
be there, recite some oaths, promises of loyalty. Then you've
got to burn a piece of pay hold it. Here's
where the patriarchal family comes in. So in October, the
FBI managed to tap an entire induction ceremony and with
(14:10):
the card that piece of paper they talk about, it's
actually an image of a saint, like a family may have,
like a patron saying or whatever. So it's an image
of that and the the inductee holds it and says
something like well, in the patriarchal family, they were made
to say, as burns this saint, so we'll burn my soul.
I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead
(14:33):
and you go drop the burning scene. Yeah, and all
of them are thinking probably in the next few years. Yeah,
we'll give you six months. Uh so, yeah, you burn
the thing holding your hand. Is there any kind of
like feet of strength that you're supposed to hold it
till it burns your fingers or anything like that that
I saw a lot of times. The the new soldier
is paired with a more experienced dude, who is your
(14:54):
godfather guide you through the whole mafia things. I did
not know that. I just thought godfather was like another
name for like a coppo or a boss or the Don. Well,
I thought I thought in The Godfather it was Don
Corleone was the Godfather, wouldn't he interesting? Uh, the inductee
has to say, you know, I'm gonna be a got
a pledge for life, take a drop of blood from
the trigger finger, which I love that obviously, and uh boom,
(15:20):
you're a made man. Yeah. Well, some the rumor has
it is that you have to prove afterward by taking
part in a murder, is the long standing rumor. But
I think it's before before. Yeah, like you have to
show that you're loyal enough to to kill when ordered
to or at least help out in a killing. You're loyal,
(15:41):
you can keep your mouth shut, you have the stomach
for it. Allegedly, Allegedly, we need to say that we
don't want to get sued by the mafia. And then
the final thing you gotta do before you can become
a made man is you have to face the commission.
And uh, in the twenties and thirties, we mentioned the
commission a second ago. There was so much activity, mob
activity going on that they were recruiting soldiers left and
(16:04):
right just to kind of like claim to two bodies
and say, well, we've got all these guys, and it
became confusing. I gottauld infiltrate and assassinate pretty easily. So
they literally formed a commission that's like all right, you
gotta it's like a registry almost. So remember I was saying,
like there were heads of the mafia, like in the US,
there were people vying for it, and this is what
(16:24):
it was creating, this hugely violent point in mafia history. Right.
So not only that, Chuck, it was prohibition as well. Well.
That was a huge time of the mafia very much
was right. So there's a lot a lot of money
to be made, an unprecedented amount of money to be made.
It was relatively new turf for the Italian mob in
(16:45):
the US. They've only been here for like maybe thirty
four years, right, um and the uh. There is a
lot of wars going on. And the guy who basically
brought ordered all this chaos through murder and structure was
k Luciano. Yeah, he was the one that had the
idea for the commission. And he also murdered the two
guys who were like the rivals for the boss of
(17:07):
bosses and then set up the five families. Now did he?
The commission is different now, The commission is the same
as as the committee meetings. Right, that's the same thing. Okay,
Well they grew out of the committee meetings, so the
commission got a register. That's the last thing you have
to do is literally be like, all right, my name
is Josh the the I Clark. No, it's just Minnesota
(17:28):
Fats clients. So the Fats Clark and I'm with the
Gambino family and I live in Bayonne, New Jersey, and
Kate and Long walks on the beach at night and
drown people with my bare hands. Right, So, um, you
can finally your made man. You're in the commission, you're registered,
you're the dude, right Well, the commission passes you, they
(17:48):
say that's okay. Well, well this guy is okay with
me to be in your family, because part of the
reason of passing lists of prospective members around is it
weeds out guys who another family has a beef with.
Who if it becomes part of your family, that's gonna
lead to war. Yeah, you don't want that to happen. Plus,
it brings them out of anonymity so that they can't
(18:11):
just walk up and shoot somebody in the face, right right, right,
because you can't do that unless you're made right right. Well,
this good stuff it is. It's just amazing. Middle class
white dudes like us are fascinated by the mafia. Where
we all want to be in the mafia. Uh So
let's talk about how the mafia makes money, because that's
what the mafia is. Let's I mean, let's get real.
(18:32):
The mafia is there to make money, and uh they
have a history of doing it through illegal means. Otherwise
they wouldn't be the mafia. They'd just be corporations. Right.
One of the way is one of the classic ways
you'll see in movies, which is actually a very real thing,
is extortion protection fees happens all the time, or it
did happen. Imagine it still does in some cases. Still.
(18:54):
Jerry was telling us about kiding Guatemala, who's who's killed
because the family couldn't pay for protection. Oh is that why? Man?
That's awful. Wow, I realized that was a reason. So
you know, that's the scene from the movie where they
go into the and rough up the shop owner and
say you gotta pay for protection. Basically to protect you
from us. Is sort of what it boils down to. Yeah,
(19:15):
although imagine sometimes it might have been some legitimate protections.
But the impression I have of it is like, yeah,
they're saying, if you don't pay, then you're not going
to be protected from us. But I think if you
do pay, you kind of enter into this fold where
other people can't mess with you, and if they do,
you can go to the capo or whoever is running
(19:36):
the show that you're paying tribute to um and say
I've got this problem I need you to take care of.
Like I think it gives you access if you're like
a regular paying person. And we'll see when we talk
about mafia history how closely this mirrors, you know, sicily
and the under the feudal system, any feudal system. Really well,
(19:56):
remember in The Departed when Leo just went house on
those two guys that were extorting the shop owner and
he thought he did this guy favor, and then the
shop owner was all ticked off. Afterwards, He's like, thanks
a lot, man, you know you you brought down this
a reign of terror on me. Oh that's right, he
killed you can kill him. But he mutilated their faces
in the shop. Um. That was such a good movie.
(20:19):
It was. It was great. So alcohol. We talked about prohibition,
illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling. Those are extortion, and that's just
the illegal stuff they can also they also managed to
make money off stuff that would otherwise be illegal if
they hadn't hijacked it, or would otherwise be legal. I
mean yeah, like importing and exporting stuff like that. It
(20:39):
was stealing things that other people important. Next, well, that's
what I mean. But Gotti was like, was he the
one that was into women's apparel? That man had taste?
I wonder if that's they probably modeled that DeNiro thing
at the end on him, the end of Good Fellows
where DeNiro has the the Ladies Clothing warehouse. Yeah, but
that was on Gotti. But I don't know if it
was because I think Jimmy was an actual person because
(21:00):
that was all Henry Hill like real life stuff. Yeah,
but they could have borrowed who knows, or maybe whoever
he was based on was into women's clothing. Maybe. So,
like you said, they want to make lots of money.
So while there are like muggings and stupid things like that,
they generally would rather hijack a boat and pay off
a dock worker or steal a semi truck full of
(21:21):
cigarettes instead of knocking off a store or something like that.
They want the big dough or they could, say, I
don't know, infiltrate a labor union and threatened to have
their workers slow or stop construction if they don't get
additional money. Yeah, that happened in New York for decades.
The Mafia infiltrated the Team Stretch union specifically, and they
(21:44):
said in this article, at one point the Mafia could
have nearly brought all construction and shipping into the US
to a halt that they wanted to write that was
thanks in large part to a guy named Jimmy Hoffa,
who actually it turned out, you know, he was a
labor organ eys are in the thirties and that was
like when the cops used to crack the heads of
labor organizers on behalf of guys like Henry Ford. Right, Um,
(22:07):
so he was like the real deal, but he was
also super crooked too. Yeah, he's buried in Oakland Cemetery
right here in Atlanta, is all right? Now, he's famous
for not knowing where he was buried. Really, Yeah, he disappeared, Okay, Well,
the rumor was he's buried under Giant Stadium and I've
heard that one before too. But you know, you know,
(22:27):
they finally pinched him and he went to prison for
a while, and Nixon pardoned him, supposedly because half of
the teamsters and like a bunch of gangsters like gave
a lot of money to Nixon's campaign. Interesting, that's allegedly,
but Halfa gets out and starts campaigning for prison reform.
Five years after that. Four years after that, he goes
(22:49):
to lunch in Michigan. Never seen from again has declared
legally dead in nineteen eight three, but he was the
head of the Teamsters, but he was finally pinched for fraud.
And the whole point of being of controlling a labor
union was you controlled labor, but you also add access
to their pension which everybody is paying into. Well, they
(23:11):
used the pension to underwrite huge contracts in Vegas at
one point to control until the seventies. Alright, we're getting
all that. Uh, let's go back to the history. You
were talking about how it mirrored Sicily, and I think
that's one of the most fascinating parts about this. So
go yeah, because extortion is another way of extracting tribute.
It's another way of saying extracting tribute. Right in Sicily.
(23:33):
Sicily lived under the feudal system long after the rest
of Europe. Look to other forms of governance, right, and
the feudal system is basically like, I'm a landowner. I
control all this land, but I can't possibly work all
of it. I'll let you guys live on this land.
I'll let you live and you give me some of
your grain, most of your grain, however, much of your
(23:53):
green I want. That was an early model for what
the mafia did, right, and if you don't do this,
I'm going to have this other class of society. Basically
my foot soldiers kill you or kill your wife or
whatever until you do what I want you to. That's
the feudal system. Yeah. And the reason that Sicily was
kind of the birthplace, not kind of, was the birth
birthplace of the mafia. It was because Sicily is out
(24:14):
there in the med It's very accessible and because of that,
it was invaded a lot. It's very strategic, controlled by
a lot of different people over the years, and that
led to instability such that the people of Sicily didn't
look too and sometimes it was just lawlessness, but they
regardless even if there were laws, they didn't look to
the state to solve their problems. It became very much
a family thing, a local thing. Yeah, you solved it locally.
(24:37):
Your family took care of business. They took care of
things outside the law. And that kind of is what
birth the mafia. So basically you can look at that
capo's territory or the capos racket as the land, the
feudal land, the capos the feudal lord, right, yeah, and
(24:58):
and it mirrors it almost identically. There's extortion, there's tribute, um,
there's there's the threat of violence, there's the use of violence.
All of it is based out of this feudal system
that collapsed in the nineteenth century in Sicily, but was
immediately replaced after this bout of lawlessness by the mafia
following pretty much the same thing. And then they came
(25:19):
to America. Then they came to it. Well, yeah, this
is actually interesting how this happened to and um, Mussolini
had a big crack down on the mafia. It's very
harsh on the mafia, put a lot of them in prison,
and then the U. S troops occupied Sicily during World
War Two. They thought a lot of these jailed people
were political prisoners, so not only did they set a
(25:41):
lot of them free, they made the mayors and police
chiefs and that was they were like, hey, I really
appreciate that we're back on the streets now. Thanks for
quashing Mussolini. We're in more control than we ever was
yea who was a real thorn in our side for
a long time. So uh. In the postwar Sicily, there
was a group there was a ceasefire because there was
so much warring going on within the families, and they
(26:03):
formed the Cupola and the Coppola basically oversaw all of
the families commission. Yeah, it's an early version of the
commission that would happen years later. And Um, the American mafia,
the tactics that like casinostri uses mirrors the Sicilian mafia
in a lot of ways, like recruiting young guys to
(26:23):
like do the dirty work and eventually inducting them. Um,
the the whole extracting tribute in the form of extortionmarta,
the code of silence, right, Um, yeah, the whole lifestyle
of the mobster is reflected in the Sicily right. Yeah,
so that's the birthplace. Yeah, and it was going pretty
well in Sicily until the eighties and nineteen eighties, so
(26:44):
not even that long ago. And uh, they had a
big trial called the Maxi Trial, right because, uh, the
the government went after the Sicilian mafia, and the Sicilian
mafia was like, okay, well, these two big prosecutors are
coming after are both gonna dyeing car bombs. And I
think they underestimated the response to the public, which turned
(27:05):
against him. So they had this Maxi Trial, which they've
built a special courthouse, which is essentially a bunker. Try
four hundred Sicilian mobsters, and I think three hundred, three
hundred and thirty eight were found guilty. I got a
different number. I got three hundred and sixty convictions. It's
a two year trial. They had three judges. They had
one judge and two alternates that literally sat in on
(27:27):
the whole trial. Just in case something happened to the
one judge, like a car bomb, they wouldn't have to
start all over declare mistrial. The second one would step up.
Somebody killed the second guy, the third guy would step up.
Nothing happened to the first guy. He made it all
the way through. I can't believe that. I know um
a hundred and fourteen acquittals. Out of the hundred fourteen acquittals,
(27:48):
eighteen of them were murdered. One of them was murdered
within an hour of leaving the courtroom. On the way home.
I supposedly was going to like a surprise or not
a surprise party, but like a a celebration. I got
acquitted party, and then those are those are good parties.
He got off. And then a lot of successful appeals
after that, with the Maxi trial and what I got
(28:08):
is only sixty. By nine eighty nine, only sixty of
the original three sixty remained in prison. Wow. So the
Maxi trial kind of turned out to be the Mini
trial in the end. So it's not surprised that it's
no surprised that the Maxi trild didn't get rid of
the Sicilian mafia. In the Italian government sent seven thousand
(28:29):
troops to occupy Sicily for six years, and that apparently worked.
According to this article, they the Sicilian mafia is still around,
but is less violent than it was before. I didn't
know was that recent? You know? I didn't either, kind
of like, um, sudd war is sweet, odd, I don't
know that guy. I don't know if I've ever helped dumber.
(28:52):
By the way, in the podcast, I should have had
that cut out, but I was like, yeah, it was.
It was endearing. This is me. It's endearing warts and all.
The American mafia Josh. Yeah, the the Italians and Sicilians
came to the United States and the eighteen hundreds big
time in the twentieth century. Most of these were just
(29:13):
regular folks, not mafia, starting a good, honest life here. Nice.
Some of them weren't, uh, in in New Orleans. Specifically,
the first um I guess mafia incident Italian mafia incident
in the country happened right in the eighteen nineties. There
was um a mobster, Well, there was a there was
(29:34):
a group a family that was basically getting heat from
the local police chief. So they offered them right and
at trial, this this uh mafia family was they well
they all got off basically from blatantly bribing and intimidating witnesses.
And uh the people of New Orleans did not like this,
(29:57):
so they actually um formed a lynch mob and went
and killed sixteen and these these mobsters, and that was
the first mafia. That was the United States introduction to
the Italian mob crazy and they were defeated by Nola. Yeah,
look at him go at least temporarily. Who knows what
happened after that. Uh So, first half of the twentieth
(30:19):
century in New York City is where a lot of
it's happening because a lot of the immigrants poured into there. Obviously,
you had the Five Families, you had prohibition making everybody rich.
You had bosses and underbosses getting killed like monthly. Yeah,
the Luke Chase's right. They went through three three bosses
in nineteen thirty in one year, three different bosses. This
(30:41):
is the time when Lucky Lichiano was killing everybody. To
basically set up the structure this organization. And he defined
the five Families, and that's like literally is like this,
this is the name of your family. This is who
you are, this is this, this and this. There's five
families out component in Chicago, and then the Buffalo family
and that's the Commission, the little family. I love that.
And uh, the way they describe it here is they
(31:03):
were basically kind of like Senator so al Capone represented
like all of the West coast because he was, you know,
the closest one obviously, and uh, they had to you know,
the Commission had to approve things assassinations, kidnappings, big money
deals that had to all go through the Commission. And
they had meetings every five years, every five years committee
(31:25):
And probably the most famous meeting of all time was
their nineteen fifty seven meeting in Appalachian on the New
York Pennsylvania border. And apparently this state trooper was a
little suspicious of the scores of Lincoln Town cars. Yeah,
wise guys who were showing up, so he himself let
(31:46):
a raid on the Mobster convention. And basically this is
a time when the public and the government denied that
there was such thing as mafia nine fifties. It seems
like second nature now because of all the popular culture stuff,
But it was long before any of that, right, But
(32:07):
not only that, it seems it seems obvious now because
of the Appalachian rate. It was basically tantamount to us
rating convention of ghosts and being like, okay, well there
really are ghosts. Right, It's pretty much the same thing.
And it brought them mafia undeniably into the light. And
there really was mafia. Here's all their leaders. You know,
(32:30):
I just try. I like the ghost convention, things like
to go to that. Uh should we talk about Vegas
for a minute or Kennedy first? Either one? Alright, let's
go with Kennedy. Everyone knows that John F. Kennedy. Everyone
has long associated him with the mafia, partially because his dad, Joe,
was alleged bootlegger during Prohibition, involved with the mob obviously
(32:54):
if you're bootlegging in that part of the country. And
uh also had connections to people like Meyer land Ski,
who was a friend of Lucky lu Les. Yeah, Ben Kingsley,
he saw Bugsy right, great movie. One of the other
things that happened was JFK was assassinated and Jack Jack
(33:16):
Ruby killed. Lee. Harvey Oswald, who allegedly assassinated Kennedy was
an associate. He was a mob associate, so there's that tie.
Other people say that the mafia didn't like Castro kicking
them out of the Cuban casino business, so they think
the Bay of Pigs may had something to do with
the mafia because Kennedy didn't call in an airstrikes. Robert
(33:39):
Kennedy went after the mafia. He died by an assassin's bullet. Yeah,
I've stood at that very spot, have you really? The
kitchen was the deal with sir Han sier Han, I
don't know that weird. Yeah, we need to look all
that stuff up. Let's be a good podcast. And then
while the girlfriends go head Yeah, same gene Conna. It
(34:02):
was pretty cool, dude, as far as the mafia bosses go.
He uh supposedly set JFK up with all sorts of girlfriends,
including Marilyn Monroe, so he could record and basically get
dirt on the president. So Um, they think that Marilyn
(34:22):
Monroe possibly was murdered by hitman that Giancanna had hired,
and the Giancanna was going to testify about the Kennedy
connection to the mob and he gets murdered, which basically
just goes to show you that it's all mafia. Whether
they're Italian, legitimate, whatever, it's all mafia. Right. So those
are all the alleged links to the John F. Kennedy,
(34:44):
former President of the United States. Then there's the Vegas connection. Um,
you know, Vegas was just kind of started by by Bugsy.
It was the Jewish mobsters that were the first up
to Vegas. And then once it was set up, the
gambling was happening legally for the first time. They're already
running casinos, illegal casinos all over the country, but all
(35:05):
of a sudden, you got this haven in the desert.
It's legal where you can go out there and do
it for real. So the you know, they got in
on the action. So the uh that one of the
ways the Italian mob got in was through their um
leveraging of pensions like you said, uh, teamsters labor union pensions,
UH to underwrite casinos. A lot of construction going on exactly,
(35:29):
or they would just basically show up and be like,
I'm your partner now, right, Like Peschi showed up in Casino,
which I thought was every bit as good as Good Fellas.
I know people don't agree with that, but I thought
Casino was terrific. It was a good movie, but it
was not as good as as Good I'm giving it
a slight tier two, but I love I love Casino.
(35:50):
I thought it was great. Sharon Stone good stuff in
that one. I thought she screwed that up, really she did.
I mean she was great actress. I think her character
got too much um emphasis in that movie. Yeah. I
liked James Woods in that slime Ball for the ex boyfriend. God,
he was slimy uh. Since the seventies, though, the Vegas
(36:13):
has supposedly been pretty clean, supposedly, and I think it
actually is. I think it's one of those ones where
it's not like, yeah, it's clean, Wing Queen, like, I
think it actually is pretty clean. Well, there's probably too
much money at stake, now, Yeah, you don't want to
lose your gambling license. If you're the Palms, you know
it's no good or Steve Winn or Steve win how
(36:34):
can we fight the mafia. How do we fight the mafia? Well, Chuck,
we fight the mafia through a little law that was
passed in nineteen seventies specifically to be used against the
mafia called the RICO. Yeah. They invented a charge. Yeah,
in the United States very smartly invented a charge. Um.
It's called the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act. The
(36:55):
RICO Act, which is Title eighteen in the United States Code,
section is nineteen six s one just top top my head.
And um. Basically, it's it's set up so that you
can go after an entire criminal enterprise and RICO. The
RICO Act has just about any felony associated with it,
(37:16):
but they have to be carried out by this enterprise
two i think two felonies within a fifteen year period
after that, right, and if it's the mafet, they're gonna
they're gonna break two laws, like you know, within fifteen years,
so that counts as racketeering. If two or more illegal
acts happened, then they say that's an organized family crime, right,
(37:37):
because a racket is you know, these different types of
illegal activities that the mafia used to make money racketeering
is this enterprise, right yea, and that an act of
making that. So what they can do is not only
can they attack a racketeering charge on which will give
you extra time in addition to your crime other crimes
like unloading the truck of cigarettes, it uh, it accomplished
(38:01):
a very important thing and that the mafia boss could
no longer sit behind a veil of safety because they're
not the trigger man. Right, all of a sudden, John
Gotti can be brought up in racketeering charges. And that's
even if they can't pin an order for the murder
on the boss. Because one of the things about the
couple of and the commission was that it brought peace
(38:25):
to the mafia among the families, but it also exposed
the bosses because they were the ones who were approving
murders and stuff. Now, right this with with the reco act,
I think you don't have to you don't have to.
You just have to say, this guy is the boss
of this organization. Everything flows up to him. Anything we
can pin on any other member can be pinned on
(38:47):
the boss. And like you said, it adds it's not
just bribery, it's bribery plus ten years because it was
bribery in the context of racketeering. It's a huge law.
But the the interesting thing to me is they almost
never used it for mafia anymore. It's for corporations. Oh, interesting,
corporate racketeering. Good. Yeah, that's what I say. Trump up
(39:11):
some charges. You can you can also go that's kind
of what it is. They created a loss so they
could trump up charges. Right. You can also go undercover,
like one Joe Pistone did. Yeah, the movie, The Great Movie.
Donnie Brasco told his story pretty well. Yeah, he was
undercover for what six years, like deep undercover, scarily undercover. Yeah,
(39:32):
to the point where even when he came out in trial, uh,
testifying against people, some of the mob guys were like,
how's he gonna turn it against us like that? Yeah,
they thought he was a rat. Yeah, they still didn't
think he was a cop, even though he's on the
stand saying I'm a cop. Yeah, I'm FBI. Yeah, Donnie Brasco.
Look for it in theaters near you in Pacino was
(39:54):
the Uh No, it was Johnny Depp And I'm sorry,
I thought I thought of Heshi when you said Paccino
and Johnny deppia one man's pesci is another man's peccino. No,
that's like one man's Casino is another man's good Fellows.
One man's Madden is another man's must Burger. Maybe okay, ah,
(40:15):
that's the mafia. There's so much there, Like this was
the structure, bare bones, very little flesh on it. Just
because there's so much to it. We could pole this
could be part one in a series of tin snuffed
out before the tenth though. Probably we were respectful. I
think so too. Where are we, hey, man? I mean,
(40:35):
if we weren't, just send us an email. Don't shoot
us now, please, So chuck. That's it. That's it, all right.
If you want to know more about mafia, including a
chart of the structure of a typical Sicilian mafia family
or Locosa Noster family, just type in mafia in the
handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which means
(40:56):
it's time now for listener, ma'am. And for God's sakes,
see The Godfather one and two and good Fellas and
good Fellas and Casino and Donni Brasco and My Blue Heaven.
That's a good one. And you can watch god Father three.
I'm a proponent of it. Even though most people poop
to it. Just take Sofia Coppola with a grain of
(41:17):
salt and realized that she had She's a brilliant director
in the making, and not a great actor. She's already
a brilliant director. Not when you make up other three
she wouldn't she made that movie up a few No
know that I'm saying she was in it was a
very poor actor. She went on to become a great
director actor. So I'm gonna call this. We asked for
sinking ship stories. We've got a couple that were okay,
(41:39):
but our best one was an airplane falling out of
the sky story. Hi guys, I know you called for
seeking boats stories, but I hope you'll consider this falling
airplane story and fall of oh seven. My boyfriend and
I were coming home to the US after he had
played some concerts in Germany. He was he in the scorpions.
I don't know, this might be Hasslehoff. The flight to
(42:00):
parted Cologne in the morning. We had been in the
air for a couple of hours when suddenly we felt
something akin to very violent turbulence. The plane dropped by out,
dropped an altitude by a lot enough to make me
feel like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out
like a roller coaster. The plane momentarily righted. The captain
got on the intercom said there was a there was
some difficulties. The next few minutes felt like ages. The
(42:22):
plane alternately banked from side to side, lost more altitude,
and shook some more. Lights flickered on and off. The
captain announced it was a fire in the first class cabin,
and it didn't help that he sounded panicked and was
nearly screaming. We were sitting in the back row, which,
as we know, is not proven, but it's probably one
of the best places to be if your plane is
going to crash. Flight attendant ran too our row and
(42:45):
threw open the overhead compartment looking for something. She hollered,
Oh my god, there's only one, she said, only one.
What we never found out? The lights went out for
a longer period. That's when we noticed that the oxygen
mask had deployed, but only for seats on the other
side of the plane. Our entire side did not have
oxygen masks deployed. My boyfriend was to my right, an
(43:07):
elder Russian woman on my left. I was squeezing both
of their hands and trying to stay calm. The Russian
woman had both of her eyes closed. She was rocking
back and forth and speaking softly under her voice. Suddenly
the ground was coming very fast. We had miraculously hit
the runway at Shannon Airport in Ireland, but we hit
it hard because of the weight of all the fuel
(43:29):
that was intended intended to fly us to Newark. The
plane bounced a couple of times on the miscovered runway,
lost all of the electrical power, air circulation shut down,
and we were towed to the gate. There were a
lot of tears, prayers and shaking up people, and the
airplane doors were eventually hand cranked open and we deplaned.
(43:50):
That is from Ariadne and carry the boyfriend. Wow, sinking ship.
Who cares? Would you ever get on a plane again
at something like that happened to you? Uh? These days?
Yes you would, because you've kind of overcome that to
a large degree. Yeah. Um, But with what I've gotten
to the point now where I can I just sit
there and look out the window and make myself watch
(44:11):
take off and landing. Um, and I'm usually pretty good. Well,
we fly alight now I quit smoking and I got
over my fear of flying. Did you you've made so
many changes at something? Anybody? Look at you. I can
run two miles at a stretch now too. That's impressive.
Onward and upward, onward and upward. If you have a
story about a mail man you hated or who hated you,
(44:38):
or mafia stuff, Okay, all right, we'll go with that one.
Then if you have a story about the mafia, we
want to hear it. We want you to wrap it
up in an email and send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
(44:59):
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our
home page. The House stuff Work's iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes, Brought to you by the
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