Olive Yang—or Miss Hairy Legs, or Two-Gun Mulan, or any number of nicknames folks gave her—was the gunslinging princess of Kokang who bucked the royal yolk to become one of the Golden Triangle’s biggest narco traffickers. With DC’s backing she built an empire all over Asia, and did some pretty impressive spycraft on the side.
Part one of this crazy two-parte ... Show More
Oct 6
Cuba: From Lansky’s Casinos to Castro’s Guns
Sean got beaten up in Cuba! To celebrate this, we’ve thrown together a biopoly of crime in the tropics, beginning with the story of how American organized crime flocked to Havana in the 1920s as a Prohibition rum-runner’s paradise. After World War II, mobsters then executed a tak ... Show More
59m 13s
Sep 29
Stash House: Cartel Wars, Coke Boats, and Gangs Gone Global
Danny and Sean take another lap around the criminal world, where somehow everything is getting bigger, stranger, and more international. Sinaloa’s cartel war grinds on, Romanian crews allegedly drain millions from American food-benefit accounts, and South Africa confronts organiz ... Show More
1h 3m
Sep 22
Assassination Nation: The Balkan Clan War that Took Over Europe
In the picturesque Montenegrin port of Kotor, a cocaine trafficking partnership fractured into one of Europe’s bloodiest gang wars. A dispute over a drug shipment in Spain in 2014 split the organization into two rival clans, the Kavač and Škaljari, turning former allies into swor ... Show More
1h 15m
Mar 2021
Femme Fatales Pt. 4: Shi Pei Pu
In espionage terms, honeytraps are the stuff of legend: a beautiful temptress so seductive that she can convince even the most cunning of men to reveal state secrets. But in the case of Shi Pei Pu and the affair known as M. Butterfly, seduction would turn to love, and a decades-l ... Show More
48m 18s
May 2021
“Soho Grifter” Anna Sorokin Pt. 1
A con artist storms New York’s social scene in the 2010s, cementing her place in high society as a German heiress worth millions. Anna Delvey masterfully swindled banks, hotels, airlines, even her own friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her past was murky, but her pe ... Show More
42m 11s
Jan 2024
Empress Dowager Cixi of China Part 2: Villain Era | 5
<p>In Part One, Cixi went from concubine to all-powerful Regent, thanks to her bestie and a savvy political coup. But while she was wielding her new found power, Cixi’s enemies were plotting her demise. Now that they’ve executed the man she loved, Cixi wants to even the scor ... Show More
44m 50s