Stuff You Should Know - How the Mafia Works

Episode Date: January 19, 2011

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, Minnesota Fats Clark. There's Chuck, Butterface Bryant. Where's the couple of goons ready to break your thumbs, huh? Butterface. Yeah. I'm actually the opposite of Butterface. I'm a butterbody.

Those are what I came up with. That's good. I'll take it. Okay. Get the papers. Get the papers. This one is going to be lousy with Chuck's Italian impressions. Oh, man. I can't wait. I want to go ahead and apologize to the Italian American Anti-Defamation League. Actually, that is a serious COA, I wanted to say, because a lot of Italian Americans get upset about things like the Sopranos being portrayed as gangsters. We're not saying all Italian Americans are gangsters, but we're going to talk about the mafia. It's a real thing. And specifically, we're going to, when you say the mafia, even though it's used in all these different ways, right? It's specific to Italian organized crime groups. Or Sicilian. Yeah.

Well, Sicily's a part of Italy. Yeah. Sort of. That's Sicilians, and they probably would say not this much. Well, under 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 broadly, the Sicilian mafia is part of five total, right? Yes. Oh, we got going already. Did you know? Yeah. I was like, wow. Now, set up. Here we are. Yeah. You, I mean, should we name those or do you just want to get to those at the appropriate time? Did I throw you off? No, I'll name them right now. Sicilian mafia, the Camorra mafia from Naples, the Calabrian mafia from Calabria, right? The Sacrocorona Unita or Unita. They're recent. They are based in the Puglia region. Region.

It's getting out of hand already. And La Cosa Nostra, which is, 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? Cosa Nostra means our way, right? Yeah. Possibly our thing. Yeah. The FBI, and I think the 60s were wiretapping the American mafia. They mentioned Cosa Nostra. And the FBI came to use that as the term for the Italian mafia, adding law. So it means the our way. Yeah. The American mafia came up with. Yeah. The Italian mafia in the United States. But it's stuck, right? Yeah. When the FBI labels you, that label sticks. And La Cosa Nostra,

like you said, describes the American mafia, which is one of the five Italian mafia groups in the world today. Bam. I got a friend named Blasfeld. We call him Blas. And I call him La Cosa Nostra. That's a good nickname, I think. It is very La Cosa Nostra. There's some other terms we're going to throw about here. 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. Ta is the emphasis is on Ta. A made man is someone who has been, you know, inducted into the mafia family. Yeah. A capo originally was the head of the family in Sicily, but now there are lieutenants. Yeah. And the mafia, then the family, of course, is the gang within the mafia, like the family

is each individual gang. And then, of course, the wise guys. Let's break down the hierarchy, right? We're talking family is a gang within the mafia. Yes. And there can be usually, say, anywhere from 10 to 100, which strikes me as an incredibly arbitrary number. Yeah. But there are different families within a mafia. Yeah. And if you're talking about the Sicilian mafia, there's a lot of families there. Oh, yeah. A lot of families in the US, right? In the hierarchy, beneath the family, each family is headed by a boss, right? A don. A don. Or boss. Then you've got the under boss. Yeah. Possibly more than one, but usually just one. The boss is right hand man. Yeah. Sometimes under boss makes his own decisions based on the family way. Sometimes the under boss

will go to the boss, say, what should I do boss, then travel down to the lieutenants and let them know. And you know, Chuck, as I was reading this and reading about the structure of the mafia organization, it occurred to me that like a lot of this mirrors management and organizational styles found in corporations. 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 under boss is going to probably not be very, not be empowered. Just like in a company, right? If you have a hands on manager, the supervisor right below him is not going to have a lot of power authority. True. Okay. Well, let's just keep going. The capos are beneath the under boss. 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 certain racket only like I just deal in prostitution, prostitution, illegal gambling, illegal gambling, right? Or it could be like Tony owns, you know, everything west of 11th street. Yeah. Right. Sure. So that's how the capo capo. That's how the capo is a capo really. Yeah. Hats off to you. Capo off to you because I looked up for looking at the pronunciation. But that's how the what is it? The capo. The capo is defined, right? And I thought about this too. In Goodfellas, Pauly as you know, big and important as he seemed, yeah, was just a capo. Was he? He went in under boss. I don't think so. Who's the big daddy in that movie? They never

showed. No, that's right. Because think about it like Henry Hill or what is his name? Ray Liotta. Henry. Yeah. And Jimmy and all they were really just soldiers. Yeah. Well, and Henry couldn't be made because remember he couldn't trace his bloodline back to the old country. Right. So he would have been an associate. Yeah. But Joe Pesci was made. No, he wasn't. Yeah, he was. No. Remember what happened to him when he went to go get made? Oh, well, he was he was set to be made. Right. Because his bloodline was was correct. Yeah. Okay, let's see what you mean. So beneath the capos, right? Yeah. Are soldiers and they're the lowest rank and file lowest level rank and file members of the mafia, but they are members. They have been

inducted into the family. Young guys who are probably trying to make their way up to at least capo. Right. 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 like somebody you work with who's good at safe cracking or hijacking or dealing drugs. Dirty cop. Somebody who works with the mob, but he's a member of the family. Yeah. 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 concilier. I like the, I like it with the hard G consigliati. Yeah. And that is, uh, if anyone's ever seen the movie Godfather, which you should, um,

obviously Robert Duvall is Tom Hagan. If you haven't seen the Godfather, press pause on this podcast. Go watch it. Go rent or buy it. Well, well, go buy one and two. Yeah. You need to see both of those. Uh, and then come back to this. Yes. And actually, while you're at it, go watch Goodfellas as well. And Casino and, um, apocalypse now. Yeah. So Robert Duvall played Tom Hagan, who was the, uh, consigliata in, uh, the Godfather. And the key here is that they're not a part of the family's hierarchy. They're not a, an actual family member. They're intentionally not supposed to be. Yeah. Because they are supposed to offer outside advice. They're advisors. They're supposed to rule on fairness rather than vendettas, personal feelings, that kind of thing. They're elected.

They're not appointed yet. Did you know that? Well, that's ideally how it goes. So ideally, all of these soldiers, the capos, the, um, the under boss, the boss, all these people, I guess, probably not the boss, but, um, elect this guy to basically say, I'm going to serve as the tiebreaker, the referee, you know, 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're appointed. They're not always impartial like they're supposed to be. Yeah. That's the real world mafia. Yeah. Not Tom Hagan in the movies. And Duvall was a great consigliata. 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 talking about the, uh, American mafia, the Sicilian mafia? Well, we're talking mafia as a whole. Largely about La Cosa Nostra. So if we're talking about La Cosa Nostra, there have been times when there were basically a head of the mafia before, I think the thirties, before the five families of New York were really established and defined. Uh-huh. There were people who were really running the show or trying to run the show in the country. Oh, for the whole thing? Yeah. 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. Uh, when it comes to naming the families, it's not a clear cut thing. Sometimes it was the region. Uh, in the case of New York, the, the, the main families were kind of accidentally named in, uh, the Senate subcommittee testimony of a Joe Velachi in 1962 and 63. Yeah. So once you say it in a subcommittee meeting, 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, uh, Bonanno, Genovese, Gambino, Lucezi, and Propachi. Very good. And some of those have been around before that. Um, I believe the Bonanno family was around for, well, since the thirties. Right. The, um, Propachi was around as well. Uh, the Genovese

was relatively new. Oh, I'm sorry. In the thirties, it was Scalese, Propachi, Luciano, Cagliano, and Bonanno. Okay. And then in the sixties, when Joe Velachi named them, that was what they were named as. They were named after the most powerful bosses or their current bosses. Well, yeah. And, and sometimes the family name would be transplanted if they were taken over, uh, like it almost happened with the, the Gambino's and John Gotti took over the Gambino family. Right. They were very close to being called the Gotti family, but Gotti, as everyone knows, was arrested for racketeering. Thanks to Sammy, the bull Gravano, and he's still behind bars today. So it never became the Gotti family. No, but the Propachi family did become the

Colombo crime family. That's right. Yeah. So it does happen. There are changes. Yeah. That's right. But like we said, no hard and fast rules. That's, that's the five families of New York. And those are the ones that are most prominent. You don't hear about the Buffalo family or the San Francisco family or the Cleveland family, but these families exist. Oh yeah. Uh, most of the time they're named after, uh, the city that they're running. Yeah. Except in New York because there were just too many of them. Yeah. Couldn't call it the New York family because all five of them would be like, what about the me? It does happen elsewhere though. Like there's the patriarchal crime family. They run New England apparently. Oh really? Yeah. Nice. I'll talk about that in a

second. All right. Uh, where are we? Which we 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? That'd be exciting. Right. But, uh, and you've really proven your worth. You've made a lot of money and you're like, look, I want to move on up. I like safe cracking, but I also want to run numbers and horses and crack heads. Exactly. Um, I want to become a member of the family. I am Italian. Got to prove that. My father at least is Italian. Yeah. Most of the time it's got to be both, but sometimes you can slip by if just the old man is Italian, which is what kept Henry Hill out of the mafia. Yeah. Because his father was Irish.

That's right. Um, I want to be inducted. What happens? 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 Bellacci'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 the table. You get, you're told to get dressed up or get dressed, taken to a private place at your long table. You sit next to the boss, other mafioso guys are going to be there. Recite some oaths, promises of loyalty. Then you get to burn a piece of paper. Yeah. Hold it. Here's where the patriarchy family comes in. So in 1989, in October, the FBI managed to tap an entire induction ceremony and with the card that piece

of paper they talk about. Yeah. It's actually an image of a saint. Oh, really? It was like a family may have like a patron saint or whatever. Right. So it's an image of that. And the, the inductee holds it and says something like, well, in the patriarchy 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. And then you go, drop the burning stain. Yeah. And all of them are thinking probably in the next few years. Right. Yeah. We'll give you six months. Uh, so yeah, you burn the thing, hold it in 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? Not that I saw. A lot of times the new soldier is paired with

a more experienced dude who is your godfather, guide you through the whole mafia thing. I did not know that. I just thought godfather was like another name for like a capo or a boss or the Don. Yeah. Well, I thought, I thought in the godfather, it was Don Corleone was the godfather, wouldn't he? Yeah. Interesting. The inductee has to say, you know, I'm going to be the guy to pledge for life, take a drop of blood from the trigger finger, which I love that obviously. Yeah. And boom, 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 longstanding rumor. I think it's before induction. Oh, before? Yeah. Like you have to show that you're loyal enough to kill when ordered to

or at least help out in a killing. Okay. You're loyal. 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 got to do before you can become a made man is you have to face the commission. And in the 20s and 30s, we mentioned the commission a second ago. There was so much activity mob activity going on that they were recruiting soldiers left and right just to kind of lay claim to, to bodies and say, well, we've got all these guys and it became confusing. I got to infiltrate and assassinate pretty easily. So they literally formed a commission that's like, all right, you got to, 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 it was creating this hugely violent point in mafia history. Right? Yeah. So not only that, Chuck, it was prohibition as well. Well, that was a huge time for the mafia. It very much was, right? So there was 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 the US. They'd only been here for like maybe 34 years, right? Right. And the there is a lot of wars going on. And the guy who basically brought order, all this chaos through murder and structure was lucky 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 bosses and then set up the five families. Now, did he, the commission is different? No, the commission's the same as the committee meetings, right? Yes. That's the same thing. Okay. Well, they grew out of the committee meetings. Okay. So the commission, you got a register. That's the last thing you have to do is literally be like, all right, my name is Josh, the I, Clark. No, it's Josh, Minnesota, Fats, Clark, Minnesota, Fats, Clark. And I'm with the Gambino family and I live in Bayonne, New Jersey. And I like to roller skate and long walks on the beach at night and drown people with my bare hands. So you can finally, you're a maid man, you're in the commission, you're registered, you're the dude, right? Well, the commission passes you.

They say that's okay. Well, well, this guy's 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. Yeah. Who if it becomes part of your family, that's going to lead to war. Yeah. You don't want that to happen. Plus, it brings them out of anonymity. Sure. So that they can't just walk up and shoot somebody in the face. Right. Right. Right. Because you can't do that unless you're made. Right. Right. This is good stuff. It is just amazing. Middle class white dudes like us are fascinated by the mafia. We all want to be in the mafia. Mafia Delta Force. So let's talk about how the mafia makes money. Because that's what the mafia is. I mean, let's

get real. The mafia is there to make money. And 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 ways, one of the classic ways you'll see in movies, which is actually a very real thing, is extortion, protection fees. Right. Happens all the time. Or it did happen. I imagine it still does in some cases. Still does Jerry was telling us about a kid in Guatemala who was killed because his family couldn't pay for protection. Oh, is that why? Oh man, that's awful. Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize that was a reason. So, you know, that's the scene from the movie where they go in rough up the shop owner and say, yeah, you got to pay for protection basically to protect you from us.

Right. It's sort of what it boils down to. Yeah. Although I 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's running the show that you're paying tribute to. Right. 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 under the feudal system, any feudal system,

really. Well, remember in the departed when Leo just went house on those two guys that were extorting that the shop owner and he thought he did this guy favor and then the shop owner was all ticked off afterward. He's like, thanks a lot, man. You know, you brought down this it's a reign of terror on me. Oh, that's right. He killed the, you can kill him, but he mutilated their faces in the shop. That was such a good move. 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. Stealing things that other people import and export. 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 De Niro thing at the end on him. The end of Goodfellas where De Niro has the ladies clothing warehouse. Yeah. Yeah. But that was on Gotti. But I don't know if it was because I think Jimmy was an actual person because 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 too. Maybe so. 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 cigarettes instead of knocking off a store or something like that. They want the big dough. Right. Or they could say, I don't know, infiltrate a labor union and threaten 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 Teamsters Union specifically and they said in this article at one point, the mafia could have nearly brought all construction and shipping into the U.S. to a halt that they wanted to. That was thanks in large part to a guy named Jimmy Hoffa who actually, it turned out, you know, he was a labor organizer in the 30s and that was like when the cops used

to crack the heads of labor organizers on behalf of guys like Henry Ford, right? 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 that right? No. He's famous for not knowing where he was buried. Remember? Really? Yeah. He disappeared. I'm kidding. Okay. Well, the rumor was he's buried under Giant Stadium in his own. I've heard that one before too. But you know, they finally pinched him and he went to prison for a while. He did. And Nixon pardoned him supposedly because Hoffa, the Teamsters and like a bunch of gangsters like gave a lot of money to Nixon's campaign. Interesting. That's allegedly. They have a lot of sway. That's for sure. But Hoffa gets out and

starts campaigning for prison reform. Five years after that, four years after that, he goes to lunch in Michigan, never seen from again, is declared legally dead in 1983. But he was the head of the Teamsters. Yeah. 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 had access to their pension, which everybody's paying into. Well, yeah. They use the pension to underwrite huge contracts in Vegas at 1.2. Yeah, until the 70s. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to

distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival

the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're getting all that. 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, Sicily lived under the feudal system long after the rest of Europe looked at 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 grain 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 birthplace of the mafia, was because Sicily is out there in the mid, 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 to, and sometimes it was just lawlessness. But 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. Your family took care of business. They took care of things outside the law. And that kind of is what birthed the mafia. So basically you can look at that capo's territory or the capo's racket as the feudal land, the capo's the feudal lord, right? Yeah. And it mirrors it almost identically. There's extortion. There's tribute. 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 19th century in Sicily but was immediately replaced after this bout of lawlessness

by the mafia following pretty much the same thing. Right. And then they came to America. Then they came to, well, yeah, this is actually interesting how this happened too. And Mussolini had a big crack down on the mafia. It was very harsh on the mafia. Right. Put a lot of them in prison. And then the U.S. troops occupy Sicily during World War II. They thought a lot of these jailed people were political prisoners. Right. So not only did they set a lot of them free, they made the mayors and police chiefs. And 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 were. Yeah, who was a real thorn in our side for a long time. So in the post-war Sicily,

there was a group, there was a ceasefire because there was so much warring going on within the families. And they formed the capola. And the capola basically oversaw all of the families. It's the commission. Yeah, it's an early version of the commission that would happen years later. And the American mafia, the tactics that La Cosa Nostra uses, mirrors the Sicilian mafia in a lot of ways, like recruiting young guys to do the dirty work and eventually inducting them. The whole extracting tribute in the form of extortion. The Omerta, the code of silence. Right. Yeah, the whole lifestyle of the mobster is reflected in Sicily. Right? Yeah. So it's the birthplace. Yeah. And it was going pretty well in Sicily until the 80s, 1980s. So not even that

long ago. And they had a big trial called the Maxi Trial. Right. Because the government went after the Sicilian mafia. And the Sicilian mafia was like, okay, well, these two big prosecutors are coming after us. They're both going to die in car bombs. Right. And I think they underestimated the response of the public, which turned against them. Yeah, big time. So they had this Maxi Trial, which they built a special courthouse, which is essentially a bunker. Yeah, it was a bomb shelter. To try 400 Sicilian mobsters. And I think 338 were found guilty. I got a different number. I got 360 convictions. Nice. The two-year trial, they had three judges. They had one judge and two alternates that literally sat in on the whole trial just in case something happened

to the one judge. Yeah. Like a car bomb. Right. They wouldn't have to start all over to clear a mistrial. The second one would step up. Somebody killed the second guy. The third guy would step up. Wow. Nothing happened to the first guy. He made it all the way through. I can't believe that. I know. 114 acquittals. Out of the 114 acquittals, 18 of them were murdered. One of them was murdered within an hour of leaving the courtroom on the way home. Wow. Supposedly he's going to like a surprise or not a surprise party, but like a celebration. I got acquitted party. And then those are good parties. He got offed. And then a lot of successful appeals after that with the Maxi Trial. And what I got is only 60. By 1989, only 60 of the original 360 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 surprise that the Maxi Trial didn't get rid of the Sicilian mafia. No. In 1992, the Italian government sent 7,000 troops to occupy Sicily for six years. Crazy. And that apparently worked according to this article. The Sicilian mafia is still around, but is less violent than it was before. I didn't know it was that recent, you know. I didn't either. It's kind of like the late 90s. I don't know that guy. I don't know if I've ever helped Dumber, by the way, in a 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. The Italians and Sicilians came to the United States in the 1800s. Big time in the 20th century. Most of these were just regular folks, not mafia, starting a good honest life here. Nice. Some of them weren't. In New Orleans specifically, the first, I guess, mafia incident, Italian mafia incident in the country happened, right? In the 1890s. There was a mobster. Well, there was a group, a family that was basically getting heat from the local police chief. So they offed them, right? And at trial, this mafia family was, well, they all got off basically from blatantly bribing and intimidating witnesses. And the people of New Orleans did not like this.

So they actually formed a lynch mob and went and killed 16 of these mobsters. Yeah. 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 them go. At least temporarily. Who knows what happened after that? So first half of the 20th century, 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 Luchasis, right? They went through three bosses in 1930 in one year. Three different bosses. This is the time when Lucky Luchiano was killing everybody to basically

set up this structure, this organization. And he defined the five families. And that's like literally like, this is the name of your family. This is who you are. This is this, this and this. There's five families out component Chicago and then the Buffalo family. And that's the commission. The Buffalo family. I love that. Yeah. And the way they describe it here is they were basically kind of like senators. So Al Capone represented like all of the West Coast. Yeah. Because he was, you know, the closest one, obviously. And 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. And probably the most famous

meeting of all time was their 1957 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 led 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. This is 1950s. It seems like second nature now because of all the popular culture stuff. But it was long before any of that. Right. But not only that, it seems obvious now because of the Appalachian raid. It was basically tantamount to us raiding a convention of ghosts and being like, Oh, okay. Well, there really are ghosts, right? It's pretty much the same thing.

It brought the mafia undeniably into the light and there really was mafia. And here's all their leaders, right? You know, I just tried. I like the ghost convention. I'd like to go to that. Should we talk about Vegas for a minute or Kennedy first? Either way, let's go with Kennedy. Okay. Everyone knows that John F. Kennedy, everyone has long associated him with the mafia partially because his dad Joe was a alleged bootlegger during prohibition. Yeah. Involved with the mob. Obviously if you're bootlegging in that part of the country and also had connections to people like Meyer Lansky, who was a friend of Lucky Lucians. Yeah. Ben Kingsley. He saw Bugsy, right? Mm-hmm. Great movie. One of the other things that happened was JFK was assassinated.

Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, who allegedly assassinated Kennedy. Ruby 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. Right. So they think the Bay of Pigs may have something to do with the mafia because Kennedy didn't call in an airstrike on Havana. Robert Kennedy went after the mafia. He died by an assassin's bullet. Yeah. I've stood at that very spot. Heavy, really? Yeah. The kitchen. What was the deal with Sirhan Sirhan? I don't know. Isn't that weird? Yeah. We need to look all that stuff up. Let's do it. It would be a good podcast. And while the girlfriends, go ahead. Yeah. Sam Giancana. He was a pretty cool dude as

far as the mafia bosses go. He supposedly set JFK up with all sorts of girlfriends, including Marilyn Monroe, so he could record and basically get dirt on the president. Allegedly. So they think that Marilyn Monroe possibly was murdered by Hitman that Giancana had hired. And that Giancana 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 John F. Kennedy, former president of the United States. Then there's the Vegas connection. Vegas was kind of started by Bugsy, Siegel. Yeah. It was the Jewish mob, so they

were the first up to Vegas. Yeah. 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 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 they got in on the action. So one of the ways the Italian mob got in was through their leveraging of pensions. Right. Like you said, teamsters, labor union pensions to underwrite casinos. Yeah. A lot of construction going on. Exactly. Or they would just basically show up and be like, I'm your partner now. Right. Like Pesci 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 it is. It was good fellas. I'm giving it a slight tier two. I love casino. 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 a great actress. I think her character got too much emphasis in that movie. Yeah. I liked James Woods in that slime ball for an ex-boyfriend. God, he was slimy. Yeah. Since the 70s though, the Vegas 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, wink, wink. Right. 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. Yeah. It's no good. Or Steve Wynn. Or Steve Wynn. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as

guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you

remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How 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 1970 specifically to be used against the mafia called RICO. Yeah, they invented a charge. Yeah. In the United States. Very smartly invented a charge. It's called the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt

Organizations Act, the RICO Act, which is Title 18 of the United States Code. Section is 1961 to 1968. Just off the top of my head. And basically it's set up so that you can go after an entire criminal enterprise. And the RICO Act has just about any felony associated with it, but they have to be carried out by this enterprise to, I think, two felonies within a 15-year period. After that, right, and if it's the mafia, they're going to break two laws within 15 years. So that counts as racketeering. If two or more illegal acts happen, then they say that's an organized family crime. Right, because a racket is these different types of illegal activities that the mafia used to make money. Racketeering is this enterprise, right? Yeah. It's the active

making of doing 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 other crimes, like unloading the truck of cigarettes, it accomplished a very important thing in that the mafia boss could no longer sit behind a veil of safety because they're not the trigger man. 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 cupola and the commission was that it brought peace to the mafia among the families. But it also exposed the bosses because they were the ones who were approving orders and stuff now, right? Right. With the

RICO Act, I think you just have to say, this guy is the boss of this organization, so everything flows up to him. Anything we can pin on any other member can be pinned on the boss. And, like you said, it adds, it's not just bribery. It's bribery plus 10 years because it was bribery in the context of racketeering. It's a huge law. But the interesting thing to me is they almost never use it for mafia anymore. It's all for corporations. Oh, interesting. Corporate racketeering. Good. That's what I say. Trump ups in charges. That's kind of what it is. They created a law 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? Yes. Like deep undercover. Yeah. Scarily undercover. Yeah. To the point where even when he came out in trial testifying against people, some of the mob guys were like, how's it going to turn 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 1992. Who's that? Pacino was the, uh, no, it was, uh, Johnny Depp and Pacino. And I'm sorry, I thought you meant, I thought of Pesci when you said Pacino and Johnny Depp. Yeah. One man's Pesci is another man's Pacino. That's the old saying. That's true. No. That's like one man's Casino

is another man's good fellas. One man's Madden is another man's Musburger. Maybe. Okay. Uh, 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 probably, this could be part one in a series of 10. Maybe it will be. We get snuffed out before the 10th though. Probably. I think we were respectful. I think so too. Where are we? Amen. I mean, if we weren't, just send us an email. Yeah. Don't shoot us. No, 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 La Cosa Nostra family,

just type in mafia in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time now for Listener Man. And for God's sakes, see the Godfather one and two and good fellas and good fellas and Casino and Donnie Brasco and My Blue Heaven. That's a good one. And you can watch Godfather 3. I'm a proponent of it, even though most people poo poo it. Just take Sophia Coppola with a grain of salt and realize that she had, she's a brilliant director in the making and not a great actor. She's already a brilliant director. Not when she make up other three, she wouldn't. She made that movie up a few. No, no, that's what I'm saying. She was in it and was a very

poor actor. She went on to become a great director. Okay. So I'm going to call this, we asked for sinking ship stories. Got a couple that were okay, but our best one was an airplane falling out of the sky story. Okay. Hi guys. I know you called for seeking boat stories, but I hope you'll consider this falling airplane story. In fall of 07, my boyfriend and I were coming home to the U.S. after he had played some concerts in Germany. Was he in the Scorpions? I don't know. This might be Hasselhoff. The flight departed 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 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 to our row and threw open the overhead compartment looking for something. She hollered, Oh my God, there's only one. She said only one

light. 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 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 that was intended to fly us to Newark. The plane bounced a couple of times on the miscovered runway,

lost all of electrical power, air circulation shut down, and we were towed to the gate. There were a lot of tears, prayers and shaken up people and the airplane doors were eventually hand cranked open and we de-plane. That is from Ariadne and Carrie, the boyfriend. Wow. Sinking ship, who cares? Would you ever get on a plane again if something like that happened to you? These days, yes. You would because you've kind of overcome that to a large degree? Yeah, but with... Well, I've gotten to the point now where I just sit there and lick out the window and make myself watch, take off and landing. Really? And I'm usually pretty good. Well, we fly a lot now. I quit smoking and I got over my fear of flying. Did you...

You've made so many changes since I've known you, buddy. Look at you. I can run two miles at a stretch now, too. That's impressive. Yeah. Onward and upward. Onward and upward. If you have a story about a mailman, you hate it, or who hated you. 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 stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012

Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Michael Talks to everybody on Monday, Wednesday, Friday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.