Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the 2024 documentary American the Five Families, and consider the vast influence the Mafia had on the 20th century in the United States.
Hello, welcome for the call like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man whose sharp takes can really hit like poisonous darts. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde. You're ready to show us why you're the Iron man of the podcast game?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I wasn't ready for that one. I was thinking about the poison dart frogs in the Amazon. So then he screwed me up with the Avengers thing. So
[00:00:51] Speaker A: going a few different directions.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, I asked if you. If you enjoy the show hit subscribe and like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. And recording on May 26, 2026. And Tunde, you and I recently checked out the 2024 documentary American the Five Families, which is actually based on the book Five Families the Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Robb. And the documentary, though, is currently airing on Netflix. And it did a good job of taking us from the origins of the culture behind the Mafia in Sicily to the. To its rise in America in the early 1900s, and also how it developed and evolved and then ultimately fell over the course of the 20th century. So, Tunde, just to get us started here, what stood out to you? Let's look at the origins part. Like, kind of at the beginning. What stood out to you about the origins of the Mafia in the U.S.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: man, I found it very interesting, actually, because first, what stood out to me was the history of Sicily.
I found that very interesting. I was ignorant to that history.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: And it's ignored the cultural factors that come in. Yeah.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: And also just the history of kind of the Italian peninsula, the city state. I kind of knew about all that, but I didn't know that Sicily was like the last holdout. Makes sense. It's an island, the last to be conquered by Italy.
And so I think it was 1860 when Italy, the nation, finally wrestled control of Sicily, the island, and brought it into its, you know, I guess under its umbrella as an actual part of the country.
But there was a fierce independent spirit within the Sicilian population. So that's what I mean. It's an interesting. Reminded me a little bit of our founding fathers and the American story of this kind of this idea of rebellion and that they wanted to throw off the yoke of this, you know, what they saw as an oppressor, you Know, the Italian state coming in, and then
[00:02:47] Speaker A: the fact that back, though, because, remember, they were controlled by the Spanish at one point.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: So, I mean, Greece, the Phoenicians, there had been foreign control at various points over a long period of time.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Correct. And I guess maybe that's a better way to put it, the fact that they were this island in the Mediterranean that was kind of in between a lot of other stuff. Right. It's like along the way to Rome, along the way to Egypt, along the way to all these places, you're probably stopping in Sicily, and it's very valuable land.
And then part of what came when the Italians came was the idea of a black market. Right.
One way to subvert the authority is to do things in the shadows. And so that kind of origin, I felt, was very interesting to me.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'd say the origin piece was very interesting in the sense that, you know, one of the things that stood out to me was the idea of absentee control of Sicily. And so, like this. This kind of like what you're talking about, like, you had these foreign powers coming in. And for a while it was Spain, later it was Italy. And so you had these people who were in charge, so to speak, but they were never around. And so people got used to relying on and doing things for themselves. And authorities from the outside coming in were seen as not helpful. You know, don't deal with them, don't say anything to them. You know, like, they're not here to help. They're only here to take away and exploit. And so if you transplant that kind of cultural, you know, muscle memory, so to speak, but just that. That kind of cultural into a urban environment like New York City, you know, it's like you can see how that creates contrast that can form or that creates pressures that can form something a little different, you know, than what exists, what existed in New York City, but. But also something that drew upon kind of those values. And so people that are, you know, they have this mass immigration coming from Europe, and I think it was 4 million from Italy. And a lot of those were from Sicily in the US In a short period of time, interestingly enough, you know, they're escaping war and oppression and all that stuff in Europe, which, you know, kind of rhymes with what we hear about now with immigrants coming from South America, Central America to the United States, are wanting to come here, trying to escape war, trying to escape oppression, you know, economic conditions, and then coming to their. Coming to America for opportunity, which is the same stuff that a lot of These European immigrants were coming for in the early 1900s, late 1800s. So. But yeah, I think that you. The transplant of what was the way things were there and the values that people developed. Because, you know, one of the things I said in the documentary was like, the grandma and the gangster had the same worldview. It's like, okay, God, that's pretty serious, you know, so. But you transparent those values and. And then stick them in, you know, this butt hustling, bustling city full of all these other ethnic groups. And everybody's kind of, you know, like there's authorities, but they can't really control everything because there's millions and millions and millions of people, you know, so it set the stage to kind of. To really understand how a lot of the values of the Mafia, that it was built on the pillars that they were built on, how those kind of evolved.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's such great history too, because as you talk about the transition, like you're saying, to kind of how these Italians, especially from Sicily, came to the United States in the early 20th century, like you said, it's amazing how many parallels there are to today and with how they were treated as immigrants in comparison to how some other groups are treated today. Like you said, the motivations to why people mass migrate, just in general throughout human history, it's usually people don't just get up and leave where they're born and raised and where their culture and their family and everything else is just because they felt like it, Right. It's usually they're being pushed out of there because of either famine or some or some other natural disaster like floods and stuff, or it's war.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: People.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: People generally don't make these huge migrations just because they woke up one day and felt like it. So all those parallels to me were very interesting.
And.
And the other thing is, is. Is then the response, right? It's. It's. This becomes kind of predictable in human kind of societies, which is, like you said, the response to the waves of Italian immigrants back in the early 20th century was at the time, what was seen as the most strict immigration laws in US History. And probably to this day, they are. They are the strictest. Which was in 1924, which banned people coming from that part of the world, Right. Eastern Europe and these parts of places, but also banned Chinese immigrants and people coming from places like that as well.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: So.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: So you see a lot of that kind of energy from. From the various angles here again, 100 years later. So that's what to me was. It was Part of an interesting contrast as well.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in the, the idea like in the US at the time, they talked about how, you know, obviously in a city like New York and then just in general, I mean, you know, the crime is going to be around anytime there's people around, you know, anytime there's rules, there's going to be people that are skirting the rules and so forth. But it wasn't very organized. And so when you, when you import this kind of. One other thing that really defined the kind of Sicilian culture and the values was it was very clannish.
And so you stick that in to this place like New York, then you can see kind of how you can have the green sprouts of something that is very family oriented and, and very inward looking in terms of how it operates to create ultimately to grow into something bigger. Because again, at that time, lots of crime, but it wasn't very organized. Like you'd have some gangs that would run a couple of streets, you know, they're shaking that down, but that's about it. It wasn't some massive organization with tentacles and all of these different things and making millions and millions of dollars and so forth. And so, you know, like we see through the documentary the growth of the Mafia and you know, like the how the growth and then what that necessitates. So when you look at, you know, kind of that, you know, like whether it be how prohibition ends up being, you know, like this, this galvanizing force because it infused by creating this large black market, it infuses so much money, so much available money into them. And also how that necessitated shortly after Prohibition, you start having, you know, the gangsters start organizing. You know, you got the Lucky Luciano and you creating or organizing as far as the five families to avoid war because war messes with the money and so forth. So any parts about that kind of really was something that jumped out to you?
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Yes. So to me, that, to me was again the fascinating part of this whole journey for the American Mafia for several reasons. One is, like you said, I think a couple of things come together here.
Some of it is the situations at hand, kind of where culture and technology, all that stuff was at the time. Some of it is the individual people, the players. And I think you're right, Lucky Luciano, whether people like him or not, seems to be a very instrumental human being of the 20th century, just in so many ways that weren't even talked about in this documentary. I mean, one of the things, just on a quick tangent for the audience to look up is the relationship between the US military and the Italian mafia during World War II with the longshoremen, Lucky Luciano specifically there to make sure that the German spies weren't able to mess up the Navy yards and the building of the ships and all that. So, you know, this was another example where here's a guy at the time who was younger, meaning Lucky, who. Yeah, he was a gangster. I mean, they talked about how he assassinated the two mob bosses at the time and all that stuff, one of
[00:10:28] Speaker A: which was his boss.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. I'm not trying to make out the other one, too.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, because they were having. That was part of. They remember they were the two biggest bootleggers, the other. Those other two bosses. And they were. But they were at war, which was creating all this heat, making it. Well, that's why.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Don't go too much. Let me. Let me. Let me go on my trajectory. Because you bring in the bootlegging, which is. I just want to make it the point that I'm not saying this to paint Luciano as a sympathetic figure. He was. He was a gangster for real.
So I'm not saying he's a guy I want to go have dinner with and that kind of stuff that I want him watching my kids. But the idea is that.
You're right, that's where I was gonna go. The idea of prohibition, that seems to have been. That was another good thing of the documentary that they've stuck on it.
And that's another thing I thought of the law of unintended consequences. This push to ban alcohol in the United States then led to, like you said, the bootlegging was so profitable that by the mid-20s and the late 20s, Luciano, like you say, gets rid of the current bosses because he has vision, which is. Let me copy what's happened in the last, you know, 100 years, the industrial age and what America seems to have perfected, which is capitalism. And he used a corporate structure, and you're right, he brought to the underworld a lot of parts of the overworld that worked. And. And. And the other reason. And then I hand it back. Why I think he was a pretty unique and interesting person, is someone from the underworld who saw the benefit of not fighting. Right, and said, hey, this war stuff, us killing each other is actually bad for business.
So if we actually can get together and collude and create kind of a cartel, and we just make sure our families are running things, and we kind of stop anyone who gets in our way, we'll be able to have more Power, more control and a smoother operation and make more money. And it worked. That's what I mean, it was pretty profound.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when, as the documentary laid it out, you know, you're talking 30 years of, of relative, amongst mobsters, of relative peace, you know, in a way that allows them to maximize money and minimize the heat that they get from law enforcement, you know, because if people aren't, when people are dead in the streets, then you get more attention from law enforcement. When they're not, then, you know, you get less and you're able to make money. And I think that, yes, you look at Prohibition and I think the documentary does a good job of showing how that's the galvanizing force. Like when there's that much money at stake, then that enterprising mind will be like, you know, hey, we can actually, we can do bigger than just a couple of blocks and but in order to do bigger than a couple of blocks, we need to bring in a larger organization structure. But what also stood out to me, remember Prohibition didn't last that whole time is that Prohibition might have been the galvanizing force behind the organization and you know, like the going multi state interstate and all that, making connections in Buffalo, Chicago and then to, to Italian immigrants all over United States. But once prohibition goes away, they seem to be very nimble also into what else they would get into. You know, like they got in, they would get into extortion, they would get into, to start controlling labor unions, they would get into, you know, other types of things and quickly though, you know, like they would quickly, you know, jump here, jump here, jump here. And it really to me revealed kind of a, because the way they're able to operate with impunity in this sense, you know, it really did reveal like we look at, oh, United States first world developed and everything like that. This was like a wild, wild west kind of thing. Like they're showing up at people's doors like, all right, you know, we need X number, X amount of dollars every, you know, week or else, you know, we're gonna come break your windows. And that's just the way that's this is on a large scale or hey, we need a couple of, we need, we got a couple of guys that need, need to be on payroll and they're never going to show up. And they're doing this, you know, by the thousands and, and keeping all this stuff, organization or organized and going. I don't even look at it to romanticize it. It's just like this, it's staggering. The scale. Scale, when they're talking about. People are making, you know, one of. The. One, I think, but not one of the bosses of the five families. Bonanno, I believe was. Had a gambling operation that's bringing 4 million in a week, which is like 100 million a week today.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: That's crazy. Yeah.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: You know, so the scale of what they're able to do beyond just prohibition was just jarring to me. And, you know, I did want to ask you, though, like, they had their code, you know, and the documentary, at several points, puts out their code. You had to have Sicilian roots. You had to obey the boss code of honor, which is like, no drugs, different things. Like, no messing with the other guy's wife. You know, it's a lifetime membership. And then omerta, you know, which is like the code of silence and so forth.
And this is all the kind of values that are brought in when Luciano organizes it and organizes it around five families that meet, you know, and they have this commission and so forth.
What do you think as far as how they were able to maintain that for so long? You know, like, because this goes until basically, Joe Valachi, who is the former mobster, who testifies in front of Congress in 1963. So, you know, like Luciano, we're talking early 30s, late 20s, early 30s. And so until then, the mob is almost like a myth, because people hear about it and know about it or have some firsthand experiments, but nobody talks about it. And so they're able to maintain this code for that long. Like, what do you think about that? Like, is that. Is that as unbelievable to you as it is to me?
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Yes. But in one thing, I'm gonna stop this serious conversation and say that gives me hope that I may find the headquarters for Antifa one day, because it's another example of something I keep hearing about. But I never see him. I never. You know, there's no way to identify him. So maybe. You got me. Maybe in 30 years, we'll find out who's really running that thing. But in any case, since, I don't
[00:16:07] Speaker A: know, you gotta make sure it's not a Russian spy that's doing the testifying at the congressional hearings.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Listen, man, I'm not even going to entertain who it is. I'm just saying that since I can't figure out that one and I can figure out this Mafia thing, we'll get back to it.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: All right? All right. All right. So back to the documentary, my friend.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yes.
So all of that I find fascinating. And here's the thing that I'll tie in, which is interesting to throw back to another show we did. People want to go look at our library. The book Amusing Ourselves to Death and the idea, the influence of the medium of television onto our culture. And that's really where I'm getting at, because I'm going to start before I get to Valachi in 63.
In 1950 was the first televised hearings of any discussion on the Mafia. And this whole thing, what I found interesting, the documentary site said 31 million Americans Tunde in, but they didn't say it was what the population was. So I went to Google and I looked at what was the population of the United States in 1950, and it was 151,325,798 people. I mean, they were very exact.
But the bottom line is I was like, okay, so that's actually a lot of percentage. That said one in five, that's around 20% of the country, which is.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: And then a lot of those people are like kids. So it's. In terms of adults, it's even a higher percentage.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah, well, well. And yeah, good point. And I just thought about what's the most recent thing like that. It would have been maybe the January 6th hearings, which I think had 20 million out of 330 million people watched. So meaning as something in terms of a collective, that's like the amount of Americans that almost watched the super bowl today, like one fifth of the population. So it is a big number now. And that's why I say, I was thinking about that book amusing Ourselves to Death, because it seems like once the television exposed the Mafia, like you're saying that it was no longer an unknown thing, that it was like, wow, not only is it real, but I can put a face to it. And at the time, think about what we're talking about here, right?
The way that Americans felt about Italian immigrants just a generation prior. Like I said, the 1924 law on immigration specifically targeted that part of the world. So then you got. By 1950, the country, like you said, is beginning to see that these Italians are behaving a certain way. And it becomes, and they even said in the documentary began, that culture that we have today, which is the cities versus the rural areas. And some people in this country begin to say that, hey, the cities are where all the bad stuff is happening, you know, and all these, all these, the immigrants and the poor people and all this, all this kind of the way that, you know, they're not the real Americans in those Cities. So I found that interesting that it's kind of like television allowed a certain way of people seeing into it, but then it also created these new myths around the country about who these people were, who are these Italian Americans, what are they so prone to criminality and all these things that followed the Italian American community around for then the next couple generations. So I found all that very interesting about that period.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, I think that the two are related a lot of times because marginalized groups oftentimes are more prone. Like people seek opportunity. And when groups are marginalized a lot of times the opportunity is, isn't in the upper world.
The upper world is turning its back on you. And so the opportunity might be the underworld. And so it's one of those things that, okay, well, there's lucrative opportunity there. And so the people around you are doing that. And so you can understand how there's a draw. People have observed that more recently in terms of why the Mafia may not be as big anymore. It's like, well, Italian Americans are kind of integrated into normal society now. There's a lot of other places.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: I like that part at the end too. Yeah, I like the way they said that.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: But yeah, there's a lot of other things that people are doing, you know, that it's like that's not a primary or a super lucrative option for people now. So people aren't gravitating towards that anymore.
I thought that the ability to maintain the code of silence and that it's mythical, so to speak, for people. Like even in the initial hearings, remember, people are up there pleading the Fifth, you know, I don't, you know, I respectfully, I'm not going to say anything about that or anything like that. And so it wasn't, it still wasn't concrete, you know. And so either people with a vested interest or the more skeptical people, like, oh, well, you know, they're still exaggerating the scale of this because the US Government and really seeing how large it was, it illustrates why local governments were so overmatched in trying to deal with something like this. And so it was when the feds really start directing their attention here that you start to see the start being more hiccups with the operation of the mob in that sense. And a lot of that dealt with how they got their fingers in and their tentacles in to organize labor and then also just commerce in general. They're skimming off, you know, the top of so many different industries that the US Government's like, hey, we gotta try to Come up with some, something to do with this. And the government is big enough to take some. A national organization like that on. And so that's when you see the tide starting to turn. But to the ability to make so much money in the 30s, in the 40s, being a ghost is just like, that's so mind boggling to me. And I imagine that kind of stuff happens now, but now a lot of things happen without face to face contact. You know, like so much commerce happens without face to face comment. That's not how it was then. People weren't just selling money around, you know, like you, you wanted to get the cash, you got to show up and put your hands on the cash, you know, like it wasn't like. So you got that much cash changing hands. And this thing, this organization is a myth that people in middle America are like, oh yeah, that's not even real, you know, so it's amazing to me. And that's that level of organization and how you get that many people to stick to some code until, you know, with Joe Valachi. Joe Valachi is again the guy who used to be a mobster, who then turns the first one to then testify. And he's the one that gives up all the goods. He's the one that starts disclose. Okay? There's five families, you know, their leaders meet. It's called the commission. This is how everything is organized. These are the leaders, you know, yada, yada, yada. He puts all of that stuff in the public view. And then it become, then it's really open season on these guys. And that really fundamentally changed how. And I know you, you want to get to this part how not just the boss, many of the bosses dealt with the public. You start seeing bosses becoming more public at that time, but also how the public and how the feds are, how aggressively they're going after them because he exposes how huge of an organization this is. So, I mean, I thought that part was fascinating, you know, and then also piece with this just real quick was at this point also you started having the second generation guys, the guys who weren't born in Sicily and immigrated, but who were born in America, who, a lot of them had different values, you know, a lot of them. You know, we're, we're, we're okay with more publicity. We're okay with a different approach necessarily than the dads had and the granddads had and so forth. So you started seeing all that come together, you know, in that mid-1900, mid, you know, 1960s so forth, which Changed the character of it completely. Even where the code, you know, those codes kind of becoming more and more marginalized.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I think all of that makes this whole experience of the Cosa Nostra and the Italian American Mafia very unique and also dedicated and a sign of the. Yeah. And it may not happen again like that, at least, you know, like. Like you're saying because you had so many of these, like we talked about at the beginning, the culture of Sicily and all that. And it's a good point you make about like anything else. Like, obviously once those guys are here and have kids a generation or two later, you're not gonna have the same type of men. Right. They're not guys from Sicily, from this old school culture of this like we talked about at the beginning. And so. And then. And then with the medium of television, this to me is what's very interest.
And I realized, because part of it, I mean, I'm going to say some things that aren't directly from. From the documentary, but just understanding, what do you call it, the kind of Italian Mafia culture that we've grown up with, people our age at least, you know, movies like Casino, Goodfellas, and, you know, like when Robert De Niro's character in Casino had his TV show, you know, and then. And then the old bosses hated it. Right? Like they were like, nah, man, they bring in too much heat, you know, and that's what I mean, like this tension. Like you're saying this Joe Colombo was on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, and they showed that in the documentary. And it's like the old bosses hated that because you still had some old bosses from the Sicily days, but the new, again, that's what I mean by the book. Amusing ourselves to death. This culture of television and entertainment and the media in America is so also unique. There's like the Hollywoodization of everything. And so it's like this thing that just traps everybody that gets close to it like a moth to a flame. And the Mafia was no different once those guys started engaging the public through, like being celebrities, you know, you could draw a line between Joe Colombo in 1971 and John Gotti, you know, when we were kids in the nineties in New York and so. And so. But what did that do, to your point? That gave a target. It's like Frank Lucas sitting in the front row of the Muhammad Ali fight with a big mink coat. Yeah, right. That's apparently when the feds show up and, oh, who's this guy?
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: And so once you make Yourself public, then the feds also are watching you. And so it's this weird tension. But eventually, by being public, they were brought down. So, you know, well, it's not just
[00:25:29] Speaker A: being public, but it definitely creates. It increases the target on your back. But I wonder if that, you know, again, was the sign of the times. And just briefly, before we get too far away from it, one of the things that really surprised me about this is like, yes, we. Those 80s 90s, I guess you can go all the way back to the Godfather, but, you know, the 80s 90s mob movies that were, you know, they were very popular at that time, they drew heavily off of this stuff.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: I'm watching this, like, oh, man, I remember that storyline from this movie. Oh, I remember that storyline.
So it was interesting to me to see, like, many of the kind of storylines that we saw were, like, true. Yeah, yeah. I was like, oh, okay. Well, that's where they got that from, you know, so it was familiar. And I'm watching now. But this is a real thing. This is the documentary with real images of the real guys and so forth. So, you know.
But back to where I was going to go with that, though. Just the sign of the times piece, you know, like. And this is where you bring up the television and how that affects things, because it seemed like many of the guys, not all of them, some of them still thrived in the shadows and survived in the shadows, but many of them were drawn to the appeal of the. Of the idea of the celebrity. You know, like, even the first couple of, you know, like, from those hearings, a couple times, there would be, like, guys that. They looked cool, you know, they got the glasses on, you know, and, you know, Crazy Joe Gallo, and he's got the sunglasses on. He's chains smoking on tv. And then the culture is like, oh, this guy's amazing. This guy's so cool. And so other mob bosses are like, Some of them are like, yo, I'm cooler than him.
I need to get out there and show people how cool I am. So it's like you have this divergence of what people think it means to be like. Initially, it seemed like there was a. There was one way to be a mob boss, so to speak, or one kind of. One kind of way, you know, like, there. There's. This is what you do. This is how you behave and so forth. But the idea of what it meant to be a my mob boss expanded over time, and so other people took different routes that kind of fit with their personalities. And so the Question really is, is that like, because of the nature of what they're trying to do, which is inherently there's criminality involved, is that like, you know, kind of just does that. That signals. It kind of like this is going to have to go in a different direction now because you can't be a celebrity in the same sense if your business involves keeping quiet. The stuff that, you know, like the real stuff that you're doing, you. You make your. The more notoriety you give yourself, the easier it is for people who don't want you to do what you do to try to connect you to different things. And then the other thing I'll mention just briefly is the change in law, you know, the bringing up of the RICO laws that allow, you know, once you show that one person is doing a crime, if you can show that they're connected to somebody else, then both of them can go down for that crime. You know, like, that seemed. That's what it seemed like the feds got for real. Like, yep, this is. This is going to end. And so you look in the 80s and, you know, they're able to bring down bosses and lots of people, you know, just being able to find criminality in one area. So that was the other thing I'll mention. Any last thoughts you want to get to before we get out of here?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I remember there was a part of the. When I talked about the 80s and 90s, about how every construction job in New York City, basically all the different layers that went through the Mafia.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: So you didn't make me appreciate an individual until you just went on your rant. And it made me think of one person who beat that system. And I'm gonna say this, and it's gonna make you laugh, but I'm being dead serious, which is we have a president that used to do business in New York City and was shown to be involved with a lot of guys like this, and he figured it out, which is, I'm just gonna run for office and I'm gonna win. And when I get in there, I'll just change thing. Is Supreme Court going to give me immunity, and that way I can be public and do my stuff and do.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: You know.
So I don't know if I saw that part in the documentary.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So no, that wasn't in the documentary. You just made me appreciate. That's how you beat it. Because you're right, James, as you're talking about, I'm thinking like, you're right, and that's why I bring up. And just to finish off here, the, the, the serious thing I said about the television and the medium of entertainment, because in a sense, you're right, that began to hollow out the quality of leadership in the Italian American Mafia.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: The priorities of the leadership.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: That's what I'm getting at, the quality. What I mean is that those who focused on business versus those who found it attractive. An attractive way like a narcissism way, like, oh, well, I can be like you said about Joe Gallo. I can sit and look cool with sunglasses and smoke a cigarette in front of the, the congressional hearing and tell all these guys to go f themselves. But also the girls will think I'm cool and the guys on the block will think I'm cool and all this. So what happens is, and that's what I mean, James, it's kind of the television has done that to our entire society. You can look at businesses, you can look at politicians, right? We used to have a time when politics was occupied by boring people that wanted to go and do wonky stuff like figure out how to make trains run on time. And since the last 20 years, because of social media, it's now made up of people who want to go in there and be seen, right? I just want to talk, right, and, and say things to get clicks and likes.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: So, yeah, a lot of self aggrandizing. That's a good parallel.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: That's what I mean. So it's interesting that the Mafia may have gotten kind of killed by something that may end up killing the whole country, right? Like our whole culture, which is this, like you say, self aggrandizement and the type of people that are ascending to all aspects of leadership.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: But it really, it happens incrementally though, because remember like with Joe, crazy Joe Gallo, he didn't go like that wasn't his objective. He just, that was just his, his dick. And then. But other people saw the reaction he got, okay? And so he expanded without he unwittingly expanded what people thought was possible. And so, and you can, you can draw that parallel elsewhere. You know what's possible here. In order to be a, a leader, do you have to be a public servant? Do you have to put the country first? And it's like, well, people have shown that, no, actually you can be an entertainer and you know, like, and that can be, you can be an entertainer first. And that works at least as far as to get you where you want to go, you know, and so it expands what people think is possible and it changes the character and the values of the people that are filling these roles. And so ultimately, when you got too many of the bosses of the five families more worried about publicity and celebrity, then the ability to do business and keep it all secret, you know, is severely hampered. And so. And then again, that combine that with the changes in laws, the changes in technology and so forth, and, you know, you get to see this whole arc, you know, and I. Tying the. The culture that arrived with the time, you know, like the. The kind of modern times that it was in, I thought was really a part of the story, you know, like, you have that same kind of. Those people show up in 1820. I don't think it unfolds the way that it does. Or if they show up in 2020, that unfold the way now, it may still become something, but it really seemed like the Italian mafia in America becoming so big really seemed like a marriage between a particular time period and a particular group of people that, you know, that happened simultaneously. So, yeah, so, yeah, man, it was a good, though. I mean, I definitely would recommend people check it out, especially if you were interested in any, you know, if you liked Casino like you said, or if you like goodfellas back in the day, then check this out, because it was really interesting in terms of. You'll see some of those parallel story lines, you know, that. That. That were the. The were fictionalized, so to speak. But you could say, okay, yeah, clearly this was based on people who had read a lot of these. These stories about the real people, so. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. I can see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review
[00:32:55] Speaker B: it, tell us what you think.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: I'm Tunder Golana.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: All right, We'.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: It.
