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Tempest in a Teacup · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. All right, what do you want to start with?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: We have to start with green, just like if we
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: were doing wines would start with whites and then go
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: to reds. I don't think we should blow out our
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: palettes too early. I mean, do you want to get
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: to most of this? Do you have time?
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Not?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Long ago, a man named Tony Ghebli came to my apartment,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: young guy, dark hair, grew up in New Jersey. He
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: runs something called tea Epicure, which does for specialty tea
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: what Robert Parker did for wine, analyzes it and rates it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Tony had a big backpack with him and carefully unwrapped
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: its contents, a thermometer to make sure we didn't overheat
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the water. A mini Chinese teapot called a guy Wan,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: some special Norwegian teacups and tea, six kinds green, yellow, white, Oohlan,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: black and fermented oh and a seventh kinde. We'll get
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: to that. So this is called.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Lubell Luball, and it's from Guang Sea Province, and it
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: is this tea was produced in two thousand and nine.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Do you have to steep from ented tea for a
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: long time?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: No? Typically not. I mean it instantly colored. Look at that.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: You call that the liquor. The liquor, yes, And if
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: somebody put milk and sugar in his tea, you would
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you would shoot them.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I do not like tea snops like, I am against
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: tea snobbery.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: But I was gonna say, this tea is special. It
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: came from this famous collector. You're down to your last
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: little bits of it. If I would have walked in
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and pour, like, you know, a big, a big chunk
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: of half and half in it and a two two
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: sugar cubes, you would you would feel upset.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I would say, Malcolm, you're not fully appreciating this tea,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: but I respect your preferences.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Tony inhaled deeply into his teacup, then looked thoughtful.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: All right, I'll let you you both just lift up
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the liden and sniff that.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Ooh it's I'm getting a little bit of a spina
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: gea feel from that.
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, almost like a Swiss chart or something.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, never gotten that from a tea before. We had
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: had a lot of tea by this point, me my producer,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Jacob Tony. Tony says it's an actual phenomenon called being
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: tea drunk. Jacob and I were definitely tea drunk. Oh
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it is interesting. Okay, tell me Tony.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: There's like a forest leaves, like a you know, a
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: mat on the forest floor of brown leaves. I've that
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: bit of earthiness with a there's like a roasted carrot
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: going on in there. For me, that's the vegetable note
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I'm getting from it. And then a little bit of
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: like tire fire.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: That's like that proves you're from Jersey when you drink
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: some tea and you're reaching to tire fire. My name
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: is Malcolm Bladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is a special
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: production in honor of America's birthday, the fourth of July.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It's about the Boston Tea Party, one of the first
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and most critical steps on the path to American independence
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: December sixteenth, seventeen seventy three, when dozens of Bostonians dressed
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Mohawk Indians dumped three hundred and forty two chests of
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: tea into Boston Harbor. Wait wait, wait, hold on, hold on,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking. The Boston Tea Party was
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: a protest against British oppression. It was an act of principle.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: The gang that threw the tea overboard called themselves the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Sons of Liberty. No taxation without representation, blah blah blah.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: We'll get to that, but let's start with a fact
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: that is so glaringly obvious that it stuns me that
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: so many Americans have overlooked it. It was the Boston
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Tea Party, not the Molasses Party, not the Pewter Mug Party.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: The whole thing was about tea. Wait, so we're gonna
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: set the scene, Tony, I want you to be ready.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It is. It is seventeen seventy. We are in Boston.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: We're on like Newbury Street or I don't know if
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Newbury was still around then. But we are having our
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: We're at the home of like, you know, Governor Grove.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: We're having afternoon tea, and he's served up a little Boohee. Boohee,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the dominant tea of colonial New England shipped in from
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Fujan Province in China from the wu Yee Mountain range.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Boohee is what the Sons of Liberty dumped overboard on
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the night of the Boston Tea Party. Tony, like you
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: to tell us what is that experience for the people
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: in Governor Grovener's drawing room at three o'clock as they
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: have their boohee.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So everyone would be talking about the news of the
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: day and sharing snacks various sweets and pastries, sweetmeats, preserved fruits, nuts, etc. Yeah,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: and sipping tea multiple cups of it.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Tell me about boohee.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: This particular boohie is very heavy on the smoke. I
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: do get in aroma of tea, though under that smoke,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: now that it's been steeped, I think I needed that
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: water to hit it that I wasn't getting in the
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: dry leaf after steeping it for that long, and I
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: put a lot of leaf in there. You saw how
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: much I put in this vessel. It's about half fool.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It's much smoother than I thought it was going to be.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be much more bitter
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: and astringent and really require some sort of addition of
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: milk or sugar.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Delicious, refreshing, addictive.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: There's a very deep leathery taste. And when I say leathery,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: I mean like that smell of like your mother's purse
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: or something, a very earthy leathery, smell like dirty almost.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So if you were drinking this Tony in seventy sixty,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: you're putting milk in it? Yeah, Are you putting sugar
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: in it? Because they're loading it up with sugar?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I yeah, back in that time, I would yes,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: if I was colonial Tony.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, colonial Tony drinks this with sugar. I don't know.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I somehow think colonial Tony even then, has his standards intact.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you this about colonial Tony. He would not
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: up put on war paint in the middle of a
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: December night and dumped three hundred and forty two chests
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: of Boohey into Boston Harbor. If you love tea, if
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: you yearned for that deep, leathery taste, fortified by milk
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and sugar, why would you throw it overboard? Well exactly.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It's for questions like these that we have revisionist history.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: You'll remember, I'm sure the history of the American Revolution
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: that you were taught in high school. The British were
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: spending a lot of money in North America. They had
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a big army defending their colonies against Native American and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a French. They wanted the colonists to help with at
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: least some of that burden, so they imposed a series
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of tariffs and duties over the course of the seventeen
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: sixties and early seventeen seventies, the Stamp Act, the Navigation Act,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and so on. But the colonists object, no taxation without representation.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: They start a boycott of all imported British products, principally tea.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Because tea is big business in the seventeen sixties, the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: colonists are drinking extraordinary amounts of it oolong soushong, lots
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of green tea, and of course boohee, that deep leathery taste.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: They are addicted to it. In Boston, the boycott is
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: led by some of the town's most prominent businessmen, and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a few years ago a historian named John Tyler wonders,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: who are these merchants leading the fight against British tea?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: What is the nature of their business? So he goes
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: to the Boston Athenaeum on Beacon Street, one of the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: oldest independent libraries in the United States, ornate, high ceiling,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: enormous leathered windows, founded in eighteen oh seven, full of
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: all sorts of treasures, and Tyler starts digging through old
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: insurance records in the Athenaeum archives. I mean, is this
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a bass set of boxes? I mean, what are we
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: talking about here?
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: We're talking about hundreds of policies that were written during
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: that period by a man named Ezekiel Price.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Tyler is an elegant, man cultivated patrician, just retired after
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: thirty six years teaching history at Groton, one of the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: exclusive private boarding schools of New England. His theory is
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that insurance records are a pretty good way of finding
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: out what someone's business really is, what they're buying, selling,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: where they're sourcing their goods, Because you may lie to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the government or your competitors, but you have no reason
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to lie to your insure about what you're up to.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So when you go in these insurance records, first of all,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: does this mean you're the first historian to have gone
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: through the insurance records?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Yes? Probably Yes.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: As Tyler works his way through Ezekiel price his policies,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: he notices something unusual at the time. If you were
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: a colony of the British Crown, you had to import
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: all of your products through England on English ships. But
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in Price's records it showed that a lot of the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: cargo coming into Boston hadn't stopped in England at all.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Other times, the customs records would say one thing, this
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: ship has all the right clearances, but the insurance records
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: on the same ship would say something completely different. And
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: sometimes the premiums were really high, way too high for
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: what should have been routine voyages. The patriots of Boston,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Tyler realizes, are smugglers tea smugglers. Historians had always suspected
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: as much because there was a lot of smuggling in
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: those days, but Tyler shows that it's everywhere everyone. Some
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of the biggest names in Boston. John Hancock is in
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the middle of it. They're shipping in tea from China
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: via Amsterdam and then onto America through some circuitous route.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: You could touch at some remote port in the British Ailese. Oftentimes,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: when they're coming from Amsterdam they go to the Orkney Islands.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: They allege that they have declared their cargo there and
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: so therefore it's now legal. They've found some obliging customs
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: officer in the Orkneys who's willing to stamp it as okay.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: In a trove of old documents at Harvard business school,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Tyler stumbled across another gold mine, a list made up
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: by a big colonial era shipping company of every bribe
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and ruse they used to get tea into Massachusetts. In
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that case, they landed the cargo in Plymouth, just down
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the coast from Boston. Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: was powerless to stop it.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: They run it ashore there and then bring it in
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: into Boston. And there's really no way of telling them.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: The same thing happens if you could import things through
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: RhoD Island, where Hutchinson refers to Rhode Island as that
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: abandoned little colony still is where there's no regulation at all,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: and therefore it's this porous place where all sorts of
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: spuggle goods can trick it in.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Then came the big boycott of British imports. It was
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: called the non importation movement, supposedly a principled stand against
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: taxation without representation. But who's behind that many the same
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: group of smugglers. And if I'm a smuggler, I'm delighted
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: with non importation.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, because you can sell more spuggle tea.
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: So during non importation, the amount of legit British tea
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: must be shrinking to almost nothing, correct, so the smugglers
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: have free reign at this point. Yes, the British are
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: trying to raise money to defend the colonies by taxing
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the tea the colonists drink. But the colonists aren't paying attacks.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: They're all drinking cheaper illegal tea. So the British do
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: the logical thing. They passed the Tea Act of seventeen
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: seventy three, which cuts the cost of the tea imported
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: through proper channels. Now the legal stuff is as affordable
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: as the illegal stuff. So what do the Patriots do.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: They dress up as Mohawk Indians, sneak out into Boston
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Harbor and throw three hundred and forty two chests of
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: perfectly good Boohey into the water. The Tea Act was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: an attempt to put the smugglers out of business. The
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Boston Tea Party was the smuggler's attempt to stay in business.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Let me spell it out for you. Underneath the lofty
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: rhetoric of the Patriots of New England was a criminal enterprise,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: a vast smuggling operation, illicitly so applying to residents of
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the New World with their drug of choice boohee, that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: deliciously addictive tea varietyl with a dark liquor and a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: deep leathery taste. The foundational myth of the American Republic
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: is not righteous, freedom loving citizens rising up against oppression. No,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: it's drug dealers defending their turf. You know why this
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: episode is airing July fourth, that day when Americans jump
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: up and down and detonate explosives to celebrate their independence
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: from Britain. It's airing July fourth because you Americans have
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a problem. The story you tell each other about your
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: nation's independence is full of holes. You need a new story.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: to give you one. But first, I'm curious about whether
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: in that era, in that sort of those first few
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: generations and people are getting to know tea? Yeah, are
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: they given instructions about how to make it? Are they
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: how are they? Do we know how they're steeping it
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and how.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: They're so One account I read was that someone steeped
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: the tea and threw out the liquor and then use
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the leaves and put butter and salt on them and
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: eat them as a salad that was in like one
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: of the prominent families diaries of the time.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Really, yeah, have you ever tried that? That tastes good?
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So many questions? All right, I think we need to
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: start over take two on the real meaning of the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: American Revolution. Let me introduce you to Francis Iani, an
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: academic who had a theory about Americans and their criminal enterprises.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Although calling Iyani an academic seems a little limiting.
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: He decided, I guess this is after we've been there
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: about six months. He decided to drive to Nairobi, and
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: he it's I think I can't remember the exact eff.
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: It might be six seven hundred miles. But back then
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: there were places where there literally wasn't a road. There
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: were I don't think there was any paved road, and
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: you'd be driving along and all of a sudden, the
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: road would.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Just Standjaniani that's Francis Eani's eldest son, talking about how
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: his father moved his family to Ethiopia in the early
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and decided one day to drive to Nairobi.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: All they had was a Volkswagen minibus, which isn't exactly
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: built for off road adventures. Back then, people who made
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the journey did it in a convoy. Eanni was like,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: why bother, Let's go solo. This is a tangent because
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Francis Iani is one of my favorite people that I've
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: never met. We'll get back to Tea, I promise.
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: So you'd have to go by dead reckoning to figure
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: out where you were to come out on the other side.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And so you wait a second, your dad has your
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: parents have how many children? At this point? I have
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: two brothers, so the three of you, you're the eldest.
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: I'm the eldest. My brothers are eight and ten years
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: younger than I am. At the time there were this
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: was nineteen sixty, so they were five and three, And
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: of course my mother was true, go ahead, No.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just imagining this in my mind. So
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a young couple with a twelve year old of five
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: year old and a three year old, yeah, set across,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: set out to drive in a Volkswagen minibus from Addis
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: to Nairobi in nineteen sixty. Yeah, it's like the most
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: hilarious I've ever heard. Francis Eanni ended up as a
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: professor at Columbia University. What he was a professor of
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: is slightly unclear, since he was the kind of person
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: who did whatever he wanted, but some combination of anthropology
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and sociology and stuff Francis Ianni thought was interesting.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: He had two wolves, well, he had several wolves, but
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: he had two, and I think.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I said actual the actual wolf.
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: Did I sent you some pictures yesterday? There's one with
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: him with the wolves.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Actually, he called his wolves Romulus and Remus.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: In his apartment in New York, he had a monkey,
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: a pet ofsalot, a baby alligator, and it used to
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: be a huge point of contention between my parents because
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: he would just bring these animals home anyway.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: One day in nineteen sixty four, Eanni is in Washington, DC.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: He's working for the Department of Education at that point,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: doing Francis Eanni kinds of things, and he runs into
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: a man in a congressional waiting room who he would
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: later call Uncle Phil, Philip Alcamo, a very wealthy, sophisticated
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: man in his sixties. They start chatting. Uncle Phil tells
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Eanni that he's a lobbyist representing a group of Italian
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: businessmen out of New York. Uncle Phil and Eanni become friends.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: They start spending time together, Uncle Phil introduces him to
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: some of his clients, and Ianni realizes, Oh, the group
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of Italian businessmen out of New York that Uncle Phil
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: is talking about is actually one of the big mafia families.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Ianni is the man who drove his family from Ethiopia
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: tonight Arobi on a whim, and who later kept wolves,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: ocelots and alligators in his apartment. Ten guesses what he
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: did next. He said to Uncle Phil, can I meet
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: your mafia clients? In fact, do you think that mind
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: if I studied them, like join the family for a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: few years? And because Francis Eanni is Francis Ianni, Uncle
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Phil says, sure. He convinces, he convinces essentially a perfect
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: stranger to let him infiltrate essentially, I mean iffilciate. Maybe
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: he's too strong a word a crime family.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: And I don't know how he did it, but as
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: I say, he could talk his way into or out
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: of anything.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: And by the way, in the middle of his time
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: hanging out with the mafia, Ianni talked his way onto
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the New York City Organized Crime Task Force.
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: He became friends with a lot of the police who
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: working on this stuff.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: He knew a lot of cops in New York, spent
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: a lot of time with them, and he would manage
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: to talk to both sides and convince both sides he
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: was on their side.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Iani ended up writing a book about his experience, called
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: A Family Business. He called the Family he was embedded
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: with the Loopolos, a pseudonym. All identifying names in the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: book were changed. Back in the day, there was a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: lot of speculation among mafia experts about who the Lopolos
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: really were. After a lot of digging, I'm now convinced
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: that it was the Lucases, one of the largest of
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the five major New York crime families. Serious gangsters. They
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: had a lock on the trucking unions, particularly those were
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: in Kennedy Airport. Iani spent a lot of time out
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: on Long Island with the patriarch of the family, a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: man he called Giuseppe. I'm pretty sure that's his pseudonym
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: for the legendary mob boss Tommy Lucasey, who came to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: America as a young man in nightnineteen eleven from Palermo.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: A Family Business came out in nineteen seventy two. Nineteen
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: seventy two by the Way is the same year that
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the Godfather movie comes out. It's like the high watermark
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: of America mafia fascination. But Iani's book is nothing like
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: The Godfather. Nobody gets whacked, nobody goes to jail, nobody
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: goes to the mattresses, nobody betrays anyone. It's not a
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: crime book. It's a book about business. By nineteen seventy,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Iyani calculated that there were forty two fourth generation members
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: of the family, and only four of those forty two
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: were still involved in the family's crime businesses. The rest
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: were all respectable members of the upper middle class. The
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: kids went to fancy colleges. One daughter was married to
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a judge's son, another to a dentist. One was completing
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a master's degree in psychology. Another was a member of
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the English department at a liberal arts college. There were
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: several lawyers, a physician, a stockbroker. Uncle Phil's son was
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: an accountant who lived on an estate in the posh
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Old Westbury section of Long Island's north shore. His granddaughter
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: rode horses and was a show jumper. His grandson was
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: an up and coming yachtsman, and Uncle Phil himself lived
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan collected art and was a regular at the opera.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: The Lucases had gone legit. Now does that surprise you.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: The signature line in The Godfather is Michael Coleone saying,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: just when I thought I was out, they pulled me
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: back in. He wants to go legit and he can't.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of the mythology around crime says that's the pattern.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Crime is addictive. Once you're in the underworld, you lose
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: contact with the real world, you reject its values. But
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Iyanni's point is that the far more typical trajectory is
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the one he described with the Lucases. Here's another example
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: of the lure of going legit. Salvatore Sammy the Bull Gravano,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: notorious mobster underboss of the Gambino family. Here he is
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: being interviewed by Diane Sawyer in nineteen ninety seven on
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: ABC Primetime.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Look over the list of the murders you were involved in?
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Are there?
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: How many nineteen serial killers don't have? Nineteen? Way worse
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: than them.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Gravano is totally matter of fact. You're half expecting him
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to count off all nineteen one by one on his fingers.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Diane Sayer does the full double take then comes back
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: at him again. One of the people on that list
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: was Gravano's brother in law. How could you face yourself?
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: She asks, how could you face your wife? Did you say?
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: What have I become?
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: What with that blood on my hand?
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: What am I?
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I'm a gangster?
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what I am.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Gravano's not just a gangster. He's on TV admitting he's
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: a gangster. Gravano had ratted out his boss, John Gotti
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: in exchange for immunity for his crimes. He went into
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: witness protection, but then he left witness protection and started
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: up a drug trafficking ring with his wife, his daughter Karen,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: and his son. They grossed five hundred thousand dollars a
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: week before it all came crashing down. In the middle
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: of this, his daughter Karen meets a man named David Seabrook.
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: So it was ninety six. I was at the China Club.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: This is Seabrook remembering the moment in an interview on
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the New York radio station Hot ninety seven.
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: Was at the China Club when it was popping, and
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: I've seen Karen, Jennifer Graziano, Drita and a couple of
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: her friends. So you know, Karen was giving me the eye.
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: Jennifer Number was looking at you know, Jay or whatever,
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: reckless eyeball me.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Karen Seabrook is a convicted felon.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: Well, my first case I was fourteen attempted murder. So
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: back and forth from Regazzana and juvenile sis from New
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: York State Division for Youth, and then I finally went
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: to prison in eighty seven. I was nineteen. I came
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: home as twenty six. I went back I was thirty two.
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: I came on as forty one.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Lord have mercy.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Seabrook and Karen Gravano get engaged, have a daughter together
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: named Karina, but before they can get married, David gets
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: sent away in the last of those convictions for a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: drug dealing operation with his baby mama's father, Sammy the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Bull Gravano. This is a serious crime family, except they
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: all want to go to legit. Karen Gravano got probation
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: on the drug charge and ended up on the VH
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: one reality show Mob Wives, where Sammy the Bull got
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to play doting granddad.
• 25:57
  Speaker 7: And you know, even my father's very honest with the kids,
• 26:00
  Speaker 7: and it's like, don't be like me, be better than me.
• 26:03
  Speaker 7: Learn from me. You know, my my nephew is great
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: in baseball. My father's like every day go to you know,
• 26:09
  Speaker 7: be a gangster. In another way, I whacked people. You
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: can whack balls.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: My wives ran for six seasons. Karen gave up a
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: thriving career as a drug dealer for reality TV. David
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Seabrook meanwhile, got a bachelor's degree in prison and finished
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: a business degree after his sentence. Then found a company
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that would hire him despite five felony convictions.
• 26:31
  Speaker 6: Mind you, I started at the bottom. Well, lo and behold.
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: I run the company now sixty employees. I'm the quality manager.
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: So and we're looking to expand to about one hundred
• 26:40
  Speaker 6: twenty employees within the next six months. So, I mean,
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: in my opinion, that's a success story. In my opinion, considering,
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: I think it's a I don't think. Yeah, I don't
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: think anybody would ever question whether or not you.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: So, how long would the Gravano's actually a crime family. Well,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Sammy the Boll's parents were dressmakers in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. They
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: were legit. Sammy went bad as a teenager and stayed
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: bad for his whole life. That's one generation. Then came
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Karen and David, but they were only crooked until they
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: saw middle age approaching. It's one and a half generations.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: That's it. It stops there.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to stay on Staten Island.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Karen and Davids's daughter, Karina, wants nothing to do with
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the crooked life.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I have so much bigger dreams and bigger plans that
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: I have to keep my head straight and I want
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: to break the pattern of my family.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Karina was actually briefly on a reality show herself made
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: in Staten Island. In the first episode, she takes a
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: call from her grandfather.
• 27:39
  Speaker 7: When you go to college, where you're going to go,
• 27:40
  Speaker 7: it's going to stay in New York.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Send me the bull has been out of prison on
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the drug trafficking wrap for two years.
• 27:46
  Speaker 7: You never know what can happen for me on the
• 27:48
  Speaker 7: East Coast.
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: I could do one this. You're at an age now
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: that you know you've got to look at possible mistakes
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: that change your whole future.
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: No, you're right, I know in New York you could
• 27:57
  Speaker 7: get on the road track really easy.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: This was the great insight of Francis Eanni's work. Organized
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: crime is not what people do when they have rejected
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the American dream. It's the opposite. People like the Lukeses
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and the Gravano's desperately believed in the American dream, but
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: they felt marginalized, locked out, so they took a temporary detour.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: There's even a wonderful phrase coined by the sociologist James
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: O'Kaine for that temporary detour, the crooked ladder. You climb
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the crooked ladder until you get high enough to get
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to the straight part of the ladder.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: The greatest example of it was he was talking to
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Sandra Lanski, Mayor Lansky's order.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: This is Nick Poleggi, the mob expert who wrote the
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: book on which the movie Goodfellows was based. Mayor Lansky
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: was a legend in organized crime, and Pelegi asked Mayor
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Lansky's daughter Sandra about her dad's happiest moment.
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: She said, we drove up to West Point to see
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: my brother Paul graduate from West Point. Now this had
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: to be like the fifties, but Meyer Lansky was about
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: as famous.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: As you can get.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's the world the worst bad guy. And
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: she said, I looked over and my father was crying,
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: Oh my god. His son was graduating from West Point.
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: He was so, this is Meyer Lansky in the middle
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: of West Point with all those guys throwing up their
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: gloves crime. It was so he was so happy. And
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: so when Paul, the son, Paul came over, everybody hugged
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: and kissed Meyer. She said, my father reached in his
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: pocket and gave Paul the keys to a brand new
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: fair Lane convertible, and Paul would not take it, gave
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: him the keys back, Sokapa. I know he would not
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: take the car because he knew what the car came from.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: The Lanski's were a one generation crime family. So what
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: are the sons of Liberty back in the seventeen seventies. Well,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the criminals, there's no question about that. During the non
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: importation movement in particular, they get very nasty with anyone
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: who dares to defy them. John Tyler lays it all out, intimidation, blackmail, violence.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: When someone fies them, they retaliate with hot tar and feathers.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: It's interesting that in American history textbooks, turing feathering comes
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: out of some sort of cute little thing the patriots do.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: But it's a.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Really hideous thing to have hot tar poured all over you,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: and they'd have second or third degree burns as a result.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: You'll be scarf for a life and then have to
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: have this tar removed from your skin, from your hair
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: from it. I mean, it was a hideous thing to do,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: to say nothinking of these people were terrified of their
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: lives when the mob got hold of them.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the mob. That's where the mob came from, the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: streets of colonial Boston. But if they are mobsters, they
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: are mobsters in the same sense as the Lucases and
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the Gravano's and the Lanskis, because the minute they can
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: go straight, they do. I mean, what's the signing of
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence? It's a bunch of criminals dressing
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: up in wigs and front coats and rebranding themselves as
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the founding fathers. Isn't this the real lesson of the
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: great American experiment, that the promise of the American dream
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: is so powerful, so enthralling, that even the most hardened
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: criminals want nothing more than to climb the ladder to respectability.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, after the birth of the
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: American Republic, what do you think the newly formed Congress
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and State governments did with imported tea. They taxed it
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: higher than before, because what looks like oppression when you're
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: climbing the crooked ladder looks totally legitimate once you're on
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the straight and narrow. Here is my suggestion for July fourth.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Enough with the fireworks and the parades in lot of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: everything we've just heard, that would be a little unseemly.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Do they have a big holiday in Miami to celebrate
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the anniversary of the first cocaine shipment from Columbia, No,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: they don't. And the whole beer by the barbecue situation. Personally,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I would rethink that too. If you're going to be
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: drinking anything this July fourth, it should be tea.
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: Me.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of some Lapsang Sushan, which is a super
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: smoky black tea that I love, or at least I
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: did until I talked to Tony Gebli about this and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: he said, I'm quoting. Hopefully I can change that notion
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: of yours. What's your You have a you have an
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: issue with smoky With smoky teas.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: An issue, I don't know if it's an issue you.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: You gave me that look when I said I like
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: lap saying, and then I'll.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Be frank with you. There's a real like bro thing
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: about Lapsang sush going on in especially tea world right
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: now because they know it.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: But you are a T bro.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: You're a t bro. That's what I'm That's what I'm saying.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: You mean it's like for it's like the it's the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: macho choice.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Is that what you mean? It's the macho choice?
• 33:05
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: I like a smoky you know, like oh, like a
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Scotch Like oh gosh, yeah, like a powerful smoky punch,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: like akin to like I like to grill a lot
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: kind of thing.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Stop right there, Tony, as it happens, I do like
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: to grill a lot. And I'll be grilling some steaks
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: this July fourth, with a steaming cup of Lapsang soushung
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: in my hand as I toast the drugs smugglers, thugs
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and mobsters who saw in the promise of these United
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: States a chance to go li chair. Happy Birthday America.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Vision's History is produced by Meelabel and Jacob Smith with
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Luis Giera. Special thanks to Carle Migliori, Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, and el Hefe. Jacob Iceber. Revision's history is
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Battler.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: The reason I said Lapsang Soushong is a bit of
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: a bro tea, it's because I feel like males really
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: took to that style of tea. And when that happened,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: when when the tea producers saw that happening, the level
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: of smoke kept getting more and more extreme, to the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: point where like it's just all smoke.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It's out of control. But I I'm intrigued by the
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: notion that people like me are ruining tea. That's kind
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of that's it. I'm not feeling a little guilty.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Ruining t I don't want to look like a bad guy, a.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Part of the bro, A part of the bro over smoking.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: No, it's it's all right. And and and I don't
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: know what type of lap thanks to showing you're drinking,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: it could be great.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.