Natural Born Killers Who Kiss Their Mum On The Mouth | The Mafia (Part 1)

0:28Push your limits, train with precision, see the results. The Colonel's cooked up a new$10 bucket of the day just for you. Monday, 10 wings for$10. Tuesday, 8-piece fried chicken for$10. Wednesday, 8 tenders for$10. Thursday, 10 wings for$10. Friday, 24 nuggets for... Ooh, you guessed it, didn't you? $10. The$10 bucket of the day deal. Every weekday, only at KFC. It's finger-lickin' good. Prices and participation vary while supplies last. Not available on third-party ordering platforms. Tax extra. I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED. Every week, Snap deals a new card, like the girl whose sister was a monkey, or the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or even the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate.

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1:43welcome back to finbler's history beside me is horatio gould for as long as i can remember i wanted to be a podcaster and today we're talking about the mafia

2:02um uh we are in sicily we are in italy's bin yes in uh the bin of the bin the bin of the bin and i'm a big fan of italy yes um because it is the it is so so racist so horny that it is imploded on itself and is racist against its own people interesting oh you mean the north south divide yeah so like northern it's upside down land right where the north the north yeah uh the educated civilized folk for us yes exactly the south barbarians and then sicily i guess is like the isle of white yes yeah in that the northern italians they was it scotland well this is what's amazing about it is that northern italians think that southern italians are a different race yes and then the southern italians think the sicilians are essentially african and the sicilians i mean they're the most racist africans of anyone probably exactly yeah so it's an astonishing it's a brilliant this whole time period we're in the sort of 19th century towards the the war second world war it's my favorite period it's got everything the story phrenology fascism those are the two things really that i care about and sicily is have you ever been to sicily i've never been to sicily i've never been but uh it sounds like 19th century sicily sounds pretty toilety it's too italian for the italians yes yeah already italian people going like well that's too fucking italian yeah that that is like italian ground zero in that it's you know no one's taking the placenta mother of italians it's from everything is taken but it's a 14 year old girl it's a teenage mom's placenta right right but it's you know the ground zero of not taking responsibility for your actions right of shrugging of uh ignoring driving laws of uh living with your mom to your 37 years old kissing your mom on the mouth what are the the boys uh they're called memorenes i think they're called memorene you know it's like a term for because italian men stay at home the longest of any country yeah and they're called memorenes right mummies mama's boys basically right uh and so like it's just a very natural thing that you won't leave you won't leave your mama's house until you have a house to buy so that can be like 37 38 years or your mom dies and then you live in the house that's that's it isn't it yeah so are our listeners memorenes yeah i guess so i guess no because what's amazing is there's like there's a bit of like a romance to it well but our listeners are fuck you mum maman fuck you maman yeah but maman can be still fuck you maman no because these mummies boys are kissing their mums in the mouth yeah yeah i guess so and then they're they're sexually harassing girls that could never be good enough to replace their mother right yeah so they're saying fuck you you're not my mom the only woman that they treat with any respect is their mum yes everyone else it's harassment Yeah, exactly.

4:43Yeah. So I guess the listeners are, fuck you, mamon. Fuck off, mamones. No, they're the opposite. Our listeners are saying, fuck you, mum, and then fuck you to other women. Yeah, right. Because you remind me of my mum, who I hate. So it's a very different thing. Yes. Yeah, they're mama's boys. The most flagrantly horny people maybe in the world, the Italians? Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. And it's such a young country. It's what I sort of forget. Found a friend, moved out to Italy like 20 years ago. She's lived there. Apparently a guy, an old man pinched her bum and then she... ran home you said this before yeah she was just he just held on yeah and he was clamped and he was just bent down the whole time and then she had to shut the door on his hand yeah because if you're if you're in this country and you leave a car in the wrong place it'll get clamped right in italy if you're even asked and then you have to you have to yeah you have to have a parking you know you have to buy the parking to have an ass exactly in naples uh but we're not in naples we are in sicily yeah um now in 1812 sicily was conquered by the brits i believe it's hard to remember is that italy you forget how new a country italy is right so new it's not even feels like it's because it because of the romans because the renaissance italy in our understanding has been a consistent thing it's hard to imagine the fact that it was a collection of kingdoms but it's still a it's a stupid country in many ways right it's barely was 180 years old something like that No, less than that.

6:07150 years old. You know, Mother Italy. It was brought together by a biscuit, right? Garibaldi. Yeah. I did that at A-level history. I did Garibaldi. Did you? Unification of Italy. Yeah. The disorgumento. Right. The reorganization. The 1812, Sicily was conquered by the Brits as part of the Napoleonic Wars. And when the Brits came in, they abolished feudalism and then just sort of left. And from that sewer, the mafia grows. Right. yes because and there's also sicily uh because it was all fragment kingdoms it wasn't one unified italy it sicily was disconnected from the renaissance yeah it was disconnected from the reformation northern europe yeah so it did just sort of it just skipped a lot of what was happening in europe and it would constantly being like conquered by various military you know the the arabs that they've got a lot of arab influence they have these big things in sicily these kind of like porcelain Arab heads.

7:04You see like in the shops, big Arab heads. Fattest Italian woman ever. My word. That's a lot of pasta. She's got some big old prosciutto hams there on her legs. If you're going to be fat anywhere, Italy probably is the best place to be fat. I mean, if you're going to stuff your face, it's great weather to stuff your face, great food. This is Teresina. Teresina. She's the fattest woman in the world born in Italy. 265 kilos. Colossus obese. I mean, yeah. Is Italy the greatest place for carbs in the world? Yes, it has to be. It's carb ground zero, it has to be. But I think of a kind of overweight Italian lady is maybe like the most beautiful woman who could be overweight.

7:41Like a fat Italian lady. You just give her mozzarella and you like... There's like a... Because there's like a... It's just something sweet about it. It's just tomatoey. It's lovely. There's like salami. La dolce vita. The beautiful life. It's milk central. Well, mozzarella is the fattest thing you can eat. Yeah. As in when we had to fatten our daughter up and I mean that in a medical sense she's underweight that we would we would prescribe mozzarella really? yeah so a pizza is the worst thing for weight you can eat because it's bread and mozzarella but Sicilians or Sardinians are the longest living people in the world up there so something what I don't understand is how the Mediterranean diet is seen as the healthiest diet but whenever we seem to eat it we become fat as fuck yeah because we're having like deep fried fucking like chocolate whereas they're having like lovely like cow's milk it's olive oil It's olive oil.

8:31Proper ingredients. It's fish as well. It's fish and mates. That's what it is. Fish and mates, yeah. Yeah, fish and mates is what makes you live long. Yeah, fair enough. Whereas we have chips and we're lonely. Yeah, we have chips and wanks. That's what we do. We eat chips and we wank and we die early. These guys, they're eating lemons, amazing lemons, tomatoes, big families, fish, mates. Pinching on arses, honking on arses. Honking on arses. Maybe that's what keeps you young. Kissing mummy on the mouth. Maybe that's what makes you live long. Yeah, maybe the secret is... And there's nothing wrong with that.

8:57Kissing your mum on the mouth. i mean if it makes you live longer it's a bit catholic i don't love it i mean maybe there should be a study into just honking a random woman's ass maybe fills you with who is brave enough to do that study it's in the ad breaks in six music were you here and a landmark study has found that honking goosing women leads to longevity god the chaos that would ensue after that yeah it's such a strange country it's only 160 70 years old or something and yet the north the north it's so like racist on itself that the the worst swear word you can say in it in italy is which generally our italian listeners will have turned off now that's how bad it is and it translates as god is a pig that's the word that that's you're slagging god off you're saying god's a pig and they have a gradation of swearing being racist to god yeah they have a gradation of swearing that's all pig based can you get this list up charlie right so this is italian it's Mediterranean, Middle Eastern as well.

9:53Like, you're a motherfucker god. Yeah, you're a motherfucker pig here. We don't really have that in our... We love pigs. Quite a lot of the world has like goat fucker, pig fucker. It's like a huge part of the... So this is like... Whereas ours is you're a paedophile. That's like our kind of... God is a paedophile would be the worst thing you could say. Ours is just calling someone a bacon bunce. Yeah. So this is a list of swears in Italian that are all linked to pigs. Right. So, porca miseria. Pig misery. Pig misery. which is sort of the same as saying like for god's sake damn it right so if you're so self-pitying italian so if uh if you honk a woman's ass and she slaps your hand you go oh pig misery of course it happens to me i am a simple man just squeezing on the asshole yeah then you have um sort of mild moderate kind of like damn which would be um porca vaca pig cow right yeah yeah and then you porca putana is pig whore which is like fuck pig whore so this is when you you cat call a woman yeah she spits in your face and you call her a pig whore yeah porco mondo pig world right it's a bit of nihilism yeah so yeah our italian fans would be in the basement going oh pigo this is just a pig yeah they think they're like travis pickle yeah porca paletta pig shovel that's kind of you'd You'd say that in front of a kid, pig spade.

11:12Okay, so you're playful. And then porco canne, pig dog. Pig dog, I think Charlie's a pig dog. Yeah, you are a pig dog. And then this is a more humorous one, sort of like someone calling someone gay. Well, this is more like Italian Noel Fielding, right? Yeah, he would say porca trotta, pig trout. It's a bit like... Oh, what's going on there? The pig trout, what does that look like? What does that look like? And then porca misalacia, big pig misery, for heaven's sake. big pig misery and then then you get to Porco Dio which is so so strong because they have a thing called bestemia which is not bestiality it's blasphemy but about pigs pig blasphemy and this would get you if you're at like a football ground in Italy being racist at the players if you say Porco Dio everyone would stop look at you and say get out people would stop throwing the banana peel at their black centre back and be like get out decency here can you fucking rein it in we live in a society chill out mate go back to your monkey chance yeah and have some decorum have some decorum please pass a banana and wash your mouth out it's a crazy country the worst thing you could say is call god a pig and yet oh we're handing out banana skins to the black players at lazio it's fucking crazy like a baseball game handing out hot nuts they have a t-shirt cannon banana skin cannon in between at half time hey please it's not a bit of fun god is not pig no god is not a big god is not a pig um so it's a crazy country yeah but sicily uh sicily is is the kind of it's always been like an uncomfortable neighbor of the italians do you think the english have there's a there's a there seems to be an interesting in relation to in england and italy yes there's a real romanticization of italy with english because i think it represents a lot of our oppressed values do you know what i mean i think like i think because we're such a repressed country unlike finland germany who aren't repressed they're just like that yeah whereas i think inside we feel like italians stuck in germans bodies yes so i think the reason why we love going on holiday in italy the reason why shakespeare sets when he plays in Italy, fucking Byron going over there, Horatio Nelson going over there.

13:28We have this sort of like very romantic idea of it because it's like, it's the opposite of what it's like living here. Well, it's middle class Spain, isn't it? Yeah. Some people go to Spain to throw plastic chairs in the sea and then people who, you know, are more educated go to Italy. Yeah. Just the approach to sex, the whole thing. It feels like a, yes, it's a real holiday from your mind, I guess. Yes, it is. No, you're right. Ho, ho, ho, truthers oh slut slags i'm just hopping on to tell you about my christmas crackers this year unbelievable make christmas even more uncomfortable if you think christmas cracker jokes are weak which i do then your nan blush make your granddad come granddad will love them these are for the dads crackers for the dads now these are some of the jokes we had in past years have you heard the one about helen keller neither has she knowing her she was probably too busy fingering herself silly i guess if you're deaf dumb and blind how else are you meant to pass the time funniest word in that joke is probably yeah probably knowing her knowing her is my favorite bit put a bit of disguise on it no they need to know what they're buying we've done this the last two years and they sold out so quickly this year we've actually made the packaging ourselves lovely this is my wife has quit her job to make this a brand yeah so she's look at look she's poured her heart and soul into this you need to buy these to save my marriage yeah they're spicy jokes guaranteed to make your nan blush this is as spicy as white men get this is this is the white spice and a parlor game and an exclusive christmas video message yeah never mind the king's speech what about the furors yeah if you order now you they will guarantee arrive uh they'll guarantee to arrive by christmas hit the link here and be quick and please buy some because as i have said my marriage is dependent on it.

15:13Another year in the basement, my love. If she just doesn't sell well, genuinely, she's going to get her old job back and I'm going to have to do more childcare. You don't want to see that kid until they're 18. I don't want to see him. I've been shaking their hand for six months and it's been glorious and I don't want to have to get back in the actual mucky business apparently. No, you're an officer. You're not a soldier in the trenches. Please. Please let me stay. You're pushing men to the depth. I'm pushing babies to the toilet. You go there. You go there. I'm not going to change a nappy. I run a business.

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16:29So feudalism is abolished in 1812. Land is redistributed and into this vacuum step the Gabilotti. And the problem is as well, i think because of the dominance of italian cuisine globally it does mean that a lot of italian words don't sound scary they sound like a pasta and this will be a series this will be a problem throughout this series is a lot of people will meet a lot of characters don bolognese it's like basically it's hard he's a terrifying guy yeah he'll like he'll like blow your kneecaps out but he's called fucking rigatoni yeah exactly the most terrifying man who ever lived john margaretta john cheesy pizza not tony mozzarella yeah so um not john bruschetta please save me from the dice tomatoes on the ciabatta i actually when i did i had to do a best man speech at an italian wedding right i didn't as you probably guess i don't really know italian but it doesn't stop me from having a go of course you're a you're a have a go guy you're a have a go in english this is in north italy by the way so they see themselves as arian they see think anyone below rome is like a barbarian the middle belt yeah but then but then north italy say we're italian yeah south of that they go i don't know who those people are and there's some very funny phrenology which we'll get into the next century but i so i was in northern italy and i basically said i know i i knew that putan putan putan is like a whore not putanesca which is a fish pasta so i said i said when my friend who i was best man for when he met his wife yeah my my first thought was, which is like, who is this fish pasta?

18:06I thought it was like a funny pun. Right. But it turns out that fish pasta is named that because whores used to eat it. And in Italian, it's called whores pasta. So I called her, who is whores? Who's this plate of whores pasta? In front of everyone, in front of the entire wedding. Is that why it's called puta? Yeah. Damn. So it's pijanesca because that's what they used to serve in the brothels for the whores. Is it seen as a bad thing? It's called whores pasta. Because now it's quite a middle-class dish, isn't it? I guess it's like us calling spag bowl prozzy pasta. Yeah. It's not far off. Brass.

18:39Spag, spag, spag. Yes, spag brass. Get us a bowl of spag brass, would you? But I don't think British prostitutes eat spag bowl. No. Why not? I just, I imagine they're eating... They're just having pork pies. Pork pies, scotch eggs and sausage and chips. They're in full English, aren't they? They're in Monster Munch, right? Yeah. Yeah. Monster Munch, Derry Lee Dunkers. Yeah. there's lunch boxes anyway so the gabby lottee uh which is not a pasta sauce local entrepreneurs and they lease estates from landlords and manage them using private armed guard private armed guards so yeah in the early 19th century you already have this system yes kind of corrupt it's quite a lawless place yeah and but yeah basically the the old medieval system had been just destroyed with nothing to replace yeah and so uh the italy is unified in 1860 garibaldi a biscuit manufacturer um he bounces about italy and because it's been this it'd been you know at this point you've got the renaissance you've got all these um city states provinces and he realizes we all we all are as problematic to women as each other that's yeah we all do it under a tricolor flag come on we all we all want to go down on our nonna let's put this under one Our differences aside.

19:56We've got more in common than divides us. Is that Italian Hitler? Yeah, basically.

20:02So Garibaldi marches through Sicily and even they are like, fuck me, it's a fucking desert out here. They don't know what's going on. Sicilians don't trust the new laws or the new government. So they turn to these local power brokers who could guarantee protection. So the mafia is essentially a kind of, it's a sort of proxy state in a country where there isn't one. Well, yeah, I think throughout this series, we do also want to talk about what is the mystique of the mafia why is it so prevalent in film and tv why does it make such good dramas and i do think a huge part of it is the feeling of taking justice into your own hands yeah there's a huge part of like you watch it and it sort of fires you up because it feels like you're sort of the romanticization right is that you you you take control of your own life you set your own rules and you're not gonna be you're not gonna be beholden to any sort of state essentially it's like a just a violent local council yeah so the equivalent is like jackie weaver but is jackie weaver had like a fucked up code of ethics yes like family is everything but i'm also going to kill loads of innocent people i'm just gonna you know you don't have the authority here commandant i'm just gonna kill you so cosa nostra is the name of the mafia which means our thing again this is our italian really does add so much romance to pretty boring terms uh and this uh they call themselves men of honor women can't be honorable because they're fallen creatures right well they go they ate the apple she's doomed to sin right but they can be loyal to the honorable men yeah they can shut up and be loyal right so they can only do loyalty they can't do honor they can cook so the honorable men can eat um that's what the yeah yeah uh anyway that's what they're saying that's what they're saying also what we happen to think but that's irrelevant that's irrelevant i'm trying not to put my own views into this podcast but um no there's a lot going for them uh essentially the mafia run protection rackets uh but they also arbitrate disputes um they oversee illegal agreement transactions what they're very good at is killing people not getting caught yeah that's basically the skill that they have right the mafia but there's also no one catching them right because it's sicily but it's lawless yeah there's no state really so they kind of grow they become the state and it's lots of different sort of um tribes with rural things at this point but we should probably talk about the uh the initiation ceremony to give a mystique.

22:19The hazing ritual. Sort of. Yeah. So they don't have any kind of application forms. But it's not like a rugby hazing ritual. Soggy biscotti. Not soggy biscotti. No, they're not playing soggy biscotti. Which is actually probably top tier soggy biscuit level. Yeah, that's a very dry biscuit. Very, very hard biscuit. You need the whole team involved in that one. Italian sailors. Lads, we're going to need more men. We need the whole rugby team. Come on. And the subs. And the coaching staff. Get Clive Woodward in here. It's got almonds in it. How are we going to penetrate the almonds with cum? Yeah, we need Clive in.

22:51He shoots ropes. Woodward's shooting ropes for a biscotti. That's got to take, like, the erosion needed. Yeah. Yeah. You know that exercise at the gym where you've got the two ropes? That's Clive Woodward. Fucking. So the Mafia's initiation ceremony. They are deliberately bizarre and specific and sort of painful. Ooh. Ooh. So early 19th century police reports show this initiation. A guy called Bruschetta, not Bruschetta, John Tomatoes on Post. It just doesn't sound the same, does he? Old Johnny Tomatoes, Giovanni Bruschetta. He's initiated in the 1970s. He describes a ceremony that was the same from, you know, taking all the way back.

23:39So they all gather in a room. He gets questioned. His finger gets pricked. The blood is smeared onto an image of the Virgin Mary, the one version that's allowed to be in Italy and the saint's image is then placed in his cupped hands and set on fire by the mafia boss and then the mafia boss tell him if you betray Cosa Nostra your flesh will burn like this saint. She is not pig do not call this saint a pig or I put you in the bin so this initiates and swears sort of lifelong loyalty and the key rules to Cosa Nostra are a man of honour never lies to another made man. Yes. And a made man is when you're like officially confirmed as someone who cannot be killed by the mafia.

24:22Which I guess like the most popular imagining of the made man is Goodfellas. Joe Pesci being a made man. Which we'll be dealing with on the Patreon. There's Omerta, which is the, you don't talk. Don't talk to anybody. You don't talk to police. You don't rat. And then you obey the capo who is the head of the family. It's all about the fucking family. so the brotherhood of favada again sounds like it's a beanie dish yeah um uh they're kind of proto-mafia in the 1880s a guy is forced to choose between killing his nephew or killing himself so because his nephew had done something to talk to someone and so he chooses to kill the nephew and then he hangs himself which i feel he probably just said kill me yeah it worked out bad both him and the nephew's got to know yeah he's got to learn yeah honor as it says here is an exclusively male quality yeah initiation is exclusively male i do think it's funny these sort of codes of honor it's similar in japan when honor sort of goes in on itself and it ends up basically everyone ends up dying yes like it's the most honorable thing yeah just emptying out towns of men through this kind of honor vendetta scheme yeah it just means that everyone's being honorable as opposed to killing yourself you just have to it's just tit for tat kill him kill him he killed me so my brothers are going to kill you and you have to kill them and then so it's basically a long-running blood feud and uh the the first i think the first big kind of um mafia murder the first time it enters the sort of lexicon of uh italians is in 1893 uh the not a battle murder so this guy he He's been mayor of Palermo, maybe, which is where all the...

26:03It's all Lemon Groves in Palermo. Right. And the mafia are basically running... Limoncello. Yeah, they're running Lemon Groves, and they're making a lot of money. So he, I think, runs one of the banks in Palermo. He then leaves because the mafia want to sort of take it over and do some fraud. He then investigates the corruption on the bank, and then he gets on a train in 1893, and someone stabs him to death 27 times. Right. Because he's being un-Italian. he's not being italian enough yeah he's not allowing corruption uh so people go what are you german what are you doing this is italy we break the rules yeah um so this kind of is the first time this sparks the realization that the mafia is deeply embedded in politics it could have been like an urban myth or like people would often say it's overplayed because they worked in the shadows a lot but also the the word mafia is like a it sort of means vibe in sicilian before it became the crime family.

26:58It was like Sicilians would call, yeah, we're a bit mafia. We're a bit of a, we're a bit like animalistic. We're a bit unruly. We're a bit mad. We're a bit mad us. We're mafia. Cowboys. We're cowboys. Yeah. We can't be tamed. And then eventually that became the name of the actual crime family. Yeah. So he gets stabbed and then his son tries to take a mafia family to court. It takes 10 years. Eventually the guy, the don or whatever, he gets banged up. But then a month later, takes to the appeal court and they just quash it of course no one will testify because obviously it's just mafia because they bought they bought the courts yes and so this is where you start to get things like the san georgy report which is when it's confirmed the mafia existence and this is where we get to one of my favorite points in this story which is italian phrenology wow so phrenologico um now phrenology as i don't need to explain is a uh discredited 19th century science that I entirely believe.

27:54You're trying to recredit it. I'm trying to recredit it. Give it its dues. Not its dues. Yeah. Dues. There's a leading criminologist, Cesare Lombroso. Sounds trustworthy. Yes. He believes that anyone born south of Rome is born to be a criminal. So he does this post-mortem of a notorious bandit named Viennetta. Viennetta. And when he opens Viennetta's skull, he finds an unusual hollow, which is similar to features found in some animals and he thinks, brilliant this means criminals are biologically different. Do you have any Italian in you Charlie? No I haven't got any Italian A phrenologist would have an absolute field day open that thing up.

28:34There's got to be something in here, surely. It's the gold mine of 21st century phrenology is Charlie's head So he identifies physical traits that are believed to be signs of a criminal type, facial asymmetry, jug handle ears, Gary Linico, low foreheads long arms i got long arms yeah so he claims that um these people are kind of obviously primitive humans apes non-europeans are stationed at the lower rung in the ladder of racial development you know he's got a lot of stuff right yeah uh and he basically thinks that by extension all animals are criminal too interesting so you think take away so northern northern italians so dogs are naughty they're thugs dogs are thugs yeah yeah well i guess they you know they'll eat anything don't they yeah i guess so so as you move up from africa up towards the so set the rome is where civilized man starts in his in his mind right so everything else is a criminal yes and also in the mediterranean i think a big cult shock is how they treat dogs yes they're like footballs they're all just out there because i think here we've got crafts they don't have crafts over there no like here we treat our dogs better than any of our family members yes and it's all of our our love and affection we're italian towards our dogs oh yeah we kiss the dogs on the mat you're right actually you're right the british men are their italian their dogs are italian yeah yeah and then to your actual wife you won't you're sleeping separate beds yeah separate beds i want to in the mediterranean dogs are treated like like rodents yes they are they're big rats essentially so i guess it's a similar quite italian view of animals being it makes sense that they think they're criminals.

30:12Yes, that does make sense. He has a museum of criminal phonology in Italy, I think. So that's still open. Yeah. It's like you, Finn. Yeah, well, what do you mean he looks like me? Fuck off. He does have it like you. That's a guy that thinks Sicilian, that thinks Southern Italians are... He looks learned. He does look learned. But for people listening, he's cross-eyed wearing pasne, which is one of the most deadly combinations, I think. At this time. If you're cross-eyed wearing pasne, You're using your mind to do devastating things. You're writing the most problematic paper of all time. He's also, he's looking side on, cross-eyed with Pasne.

30:50I mean, it's so unintentionally funny. I'm a scholar and a racist, you know. Anyway, there's a guy who takes it further called Niseforo. So he writes a book in 1898 called Contemporary Barbarian Italy, which is the name of my work, working title of my current book contemporary barbarian england um he becomes a leading figure in the eugenics movement he divides italy into two civilizational zones this is top stuff this is a guy in his shed looking at a map with a pen he's in a he's in a flow state he's just like right what's going on northern italians are aryan rational and industrious southern italian southern italians especially sicilians have mediterranean slash african blood which makes them more emotional violent incapable of civic life and prone to vendetta culture i feel like what i like is i don't think you spent much time on this before going for a nap as well i think this was like a 20 minute session although the pen is the pen is falling off his hands

31:53five five courses for lunch little sleep he also believed women who looked masculine are more likely to be criminals again you know let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater

32:05so he thinks the mafia are attributed to a variety of causes including the race their race the weather and the fact that monasteries have promoted idleness by doling out soup right so the welfare state basically creates a mafia so that's the kind of context now Sicilians are sort of always fighting against this fact that we're not we're not you know a different race and by the 1870s a government report states violence is the only prosperous industry in Sicily yeah it's not there's lemons they love lemons and sulfur there's sulfur mines really fucking smelly stuff really? in terms of the mafia you know you get made what would it take for me to get are you made men?

32:45well I want to Joe Pesci one day where we're like Charlie you no longer have to do the edits you're going to be a co-host of the podcast meet you here yeah we're going to have a ceremony where you welcome you and then you walk into the studio no no no he's in his best suit he's in his best suit you can't wait you've kissed your mum you're really proud then you walk in here and no one's here then you realise immediately you go oh no shot in the back of the head yeah so I'll never get made no but you'll think you will no because up until the last two seconds because you are born a criminal right yeah because of my hollow head because you're a hollow head because you're a dog you're a dog you're a pig dog you're a pig dog Charlie is a pig Porco Charlie Porco Carlo we are going to have to let at least George and Lenny at the end this is the only way this ends.

33:32Only way this ends. Because I think we can't fire Charlie because that means you let him it's irresponsible to let him out. We can't he knows too much we can't let him out. Yeah exactly. So we will have to tell you about the rabbits and shoot you in the back of the head. Push your limits train with precision see the results at Equinox that's high performance loving everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox start today at equinox.com I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED. Every week, Snap deals a new card, like the girl whose sister was a monkey, or the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or even the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate.

34:23Pick a card, any card. Tap to listen now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify. A burst pipe. A dead water heater. The AC calling it quits. Who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs. With plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now. Go to homeserve.com slash podcast for 50 % less your first year. That's homeserve.com slash podcast. Savings compared to renewal price. Void in Florida. So the San Giorno report was in 1898.

35:06Chief of Police, Hermano San Giorgi, investigates Palermo's mafia for about two years. And his reports revealed that there are individual families controlling whole neighborhoods. There are these extortion networks. Protection racket is a very funny thing. It's great. Give me some money or I'm going to punch you in the face. Yeah, you need protection from me. I'll protect you from me. From this fist now. Give me some money. It's brilliant. It's genius. They have a whole system of internal courts. They have cooperation across the different clans on the island. And it's the first official description of the mafia as an organization.

35:39So 1900. But he tries to bring a trial against them. It fails because the witnesses recant. Everything denies everyone. They've got the courts in their pocket. Yeah. He died of kidney failure in 1908. Suspicuous. So from 1900 to 1910, one and a quarter million people leave southern Italy to New York. Which is Godfather Part 2. Yeah. The beginning of that. And this is where we get the word WAP and SPIC, although that's more Spanish. Yeah, Goomba, Guineas. Dago. Yeah. Dago's British, actually. It turns out Dago's been, we've been using Dago since the 1700s. Well, Italian racism, it's right on the line of acceptability, right?

36:17Well, yeah, because it's like... Literally, because it's interesting how bit by bit, racism has been taken away. From us. And one of the last acceptable lines, well where it is at the moment yes you know i think probably brits are going to be the last to go when it when you can be racist to british people look at that poster look what what just an italian man in a mafia suit scoffing his face yeah it's hard to feel like you're being racist to italians but i imagine in new york there was racist well a hundred years ago the italians were lynched yeah really in like in like 1890s italians got lynched in like new orleans because they basically thought italians were black gangs of new york thought about that is it similar to how like no blacks no dogs no irish would it have been in america well the irish were the first wave with a wave before the italians in and so they established earlier in more official civic positions what's funny we'll get to in the next episode but when prohibition comes in a large part of the panic of prohibition is that you're letting in immigrants who's drink who have a drinking culture and obviously eastern seaboard of america is all oliver cromwell teetotas yes so they it's like it's like the flip reverse of where we are now with muslim immigration they don't get the culture they're drinking all the time they're drinking too much booze we don't drink any of it over here yeah it's a flip right right and they don't treat their women well enough would they cover up it's like we want to harass them you know yes flip reverse would italians and the irish have sort of allied there was a bit of a line yeah because i think italians and jews may be allied but irish they they were they're holding on to what their small foothold in america themselves in the in the 19th century and the early 20th century italians irish and jews were all competing for who was the biggest victim yeah of the era and i think you'd have to say the jews and won that fight quite comprehensively yeah allegedly so my favorite uh term racist term is spic which is more spanish yeah it's more mexican right yeah but that comes from me no speak english me no speak yeah that's what that comes from did you know that I mean, I speak English.

38:22Speak. I think what what comes from Guapo? The etymology of what, please, derived from the Southern Italian dialect where Guapo means swagger or dandy. Dandy. So, yeah, I guess they're all dandyish Italians. So basically call them gay? I guess so. Yeah. But this is the last acceptable racism. As you've said, racism has been taken away from us as our sport. It's like when they banned fox hunting. It's tradition. It is. It's our culture is denigrating yours. But WAP and Dago and Spick, they don't have the same flinch. Yes, no. No one's saying, should I say WAP with a hard P? Anyway, a lot of people start leaving Sicily for New York.

39:07Mainly economic reasons, right? Yeah, and it's just a sort of big toilet that sells lemons. The lemon groves are like the toilet duck. They're like those cakes. The urinal cakes. The urinal cakes. The lemon groves in Sicily. Oh, you final cakes. Anyway, so World War I weakens the Italian state further. And there isn't really much of a state at all on the mainland. Because World War I, there was a huge war in Northern Italy, right? Which we don't really talk about. But it was like a really bloody fucking front of the war. So the mafia fills the vacuum because a lot of police and soldiers, they leave for the front line.