"THE OUTFIT" Podcast Continues!
Just a quick update to let you know, yes, they have let me continue making my organized crime podcast "THE OUTFIT." Improbably, we have now released our second and (as of today) third episodes, each one telling a mob story which in some way explains America.
For our second episode, we explored the story of Ken Eto, the Japanese-American Chicago gambling kingpin about whom my Chicago Magazine article was written. I don't want to spoil anything, if you don't know the tale, but Eto's story--from WWII-era internment to the heights of underworld power--seems especially relevant at a time when scapegoating, racism, and coercive power seem to be running rampant.
For today's story, however, we move eastward, from Chicago to Cincinnati, just as our subject did: George Remus, flashy, high-profile criminal defense attorney saw, with the dawn of Prohibition, the business he really needed to be in. Poring over the statutes of the newly-passed Volstead Act, Remus felt he had found a way to traffic mass quantities of alcohol almost legally, drawing not on bathtubs of rotgut liquor, but padlocked warehouses full of the best Kentucky bourbon produced in this country.
It was a pretty sweet scheme, undone by Remus's sole weakness: his obsessive love for a woman who did not love him. George Remus--sweaty, bald, explosive--is our real Great Gatsby, and as such, much more violent and less preppie than his literary version.
Our video episodes on YouTube are of course not the only way to listen; please subscribe to The Outfit on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or wherever podcasts are found. And once you've subscribed, to make sure you get new episodes every Thursday, stuff the ballot box with a five star review! More to come...real soon...off the record...on the QT...and very...hush-hush.
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