Introducing: The Chinatown Sting

Tina Wong finds herself in handcuffs in the Brooklyn office of a new federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell. Beryl’s goal is to get Tina to tell her everything she knows about the people who recruited her. But Chinatown is a dangerous place in the 1980s, and few low-level suspects want to talk. We hear from Chinatown author Henry Chang and former gang members Mike Moy and Peter Chin about the violence and impossible choices Chinatown residents faced in those days. For more, check out: Henry Chang’s series Detective Yu Investigations. Mike Moy’s Chinatown Gang Stories channel on YouTube.  Peter Chin’s book, In the Ghost Shadows.  Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a major bust in 1988, DEA agents are in a race against time to find out who’s behind a scheme to import millions of dollars worth of heroin to the US. They stumble upon some unlikely suspects: young mothers like Tina Wong, who were paid to accept packages in the mail. These women will have to make a choice between protecting or betraying their friends. Lurking behind it all: the history of American Chinatowns, which developed to protect immigrants from a hostile society. For more, check out: Ellen Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Michael Luo’s Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here's a preview of a new Pushkin podcast, The Chinatown Sting. Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing the series right here for Bad Women listeners to enjoy. In the late 1980s, federal authorities laid a trap. They’d gotten a tip that huge amounts of heroin were being mailed to New York City inside boxes filled with tea. The investigation would uncover a network of drug smugglers who used women recruited at mahjong parlors in Chinatown. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a years-long effort to bring down one of the most powerful gangsters in Chinatown. The Chinatown Sting drops weekly on Tuesdays starting September 16. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plus See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2020, the Financial Times exposed a 2 billion euro fraud at Wirecard, a high-flying German fintech. Many thought that was the end of the story. But for reporter Sam Jones, it was just the beginning. This season on Hot Money: Agent of Chaos, from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times, Jones investigates Wirecard’s chief operating officer who vanished just as Wirecard collapsed. And turned out to also be a Russian spy. Here’s episode 1. Listen to Hot Money: Agent of Chaos wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The new season of Deep Cover, a podcast about people who lead double lives, reveals a story of stolen valor and misplaced heroism. Sarah Cavanaugh was many things to the people who knew her: a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a young woman fighting cancer. Sarah was everything people wanted her to be—until she wasn’t. Turns out, no one knew the real Sarah. Not her comrades. Not her wife. No one. In Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jake Halpern and acclaimed investigative journalist Jess McHugh unravel an epic six-year deception that upended lives of countless people. Here’s a preview of episode 1. A mysterious letter arrives from Sarah. In it, she asks: What do you think of my crime? Listen to new episodes of Deep Cover on Mondays, available wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin+ subscribers can hear more ad-free episodes from this season of Deep Cover, before they’re released to the public, right now. Learn more on the Deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-cover/id1520478402Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6FJkQKT7bl2RvjMZUyDceF?si=06414c33150a40dbSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Detective Louis N. Scarcella was a legendary figure in New York City during the '90s. In a city overrun with violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. But the story changed when a group of convicted murderers-turned-jailhouse lawyers made a startling discovery that linked all their cases: Scarcella was the cop who helped put many of them away. They made a vow: Take down Scarcella. And with the help of a relentless New York Times reporter, they did just that. Thirty years later, 20 people who Scarcella helped put behind bars have since walked free. In the media, he’s known as the disgraced, rogue cop who hoodwinked an entire system. But was this really the workings of one person?  The team behind The Burden spent hundreds of hours talking with witnesses who were coerced, jailhouse lawyers, outraged attorneys, and righteous cops. Scarcella insists he didn’t do anything wrong. And after finally tracking him down, he agreed to take us into the belly of the beast... where justice is done (and undone). Listen to The Burden wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hallie Rubenhold joins Betwixt the Sheets host Kate Lister to discuss our culture’s fascination with serial killers. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper…. these violent people are famous, but we only know them for their horrific crimes. What role does misogyny play in how these serial killers are portrayed on our screens and in our newspapers? And how does it affect court cases? Hear more from Betwixt the Sheets, from our friends at History Hit, wherever you get podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The rich and famous leave many traces in the historical records, but how can you reconstruct the lives of ordinary people who lived decades and decades ago?  That was the challenge facing the team behind the Bad Women podcast. Hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes sit down with genealogist Kate Healy to discuss the detective work involved in scouring the archives for the scraps of information which - when gathered together -  created a richer picture of the women chronicled in seasons one and two. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Season Finale: Marjorie Cummins is certain that her husband is innocent - he's not the violent Blackout Ripper and he shouldn't hang for murder. She loyally supports him in court - refusing to believe the compelling evidence against him. Will the jury agree with her? In wartime London, it seems, men could murder some women and still escape the hangman. Some juries defied the directions of judges to reach 'not guilty' verdicts if the female murder victims were painted as being promiscuous, immoral or unfaithful.    One heavily-pregnant mother - Kathleen Patmore - was fatally stabbed by her soldier husband. Seemingly an open-and-shut case of murder, many instead felt that Kathleen deserved her fate and that her husband was the innocent party.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The murders of The Blackout Ripper - indeed many of the crimes committed against women in World War Two - aren't often spoken about by historians of the conflict. That's changing. The co-host of Bad Women Hallie Rubenhold and regular guest Dr Julia Laite recently appeared on the WW2 podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk to talk to James Holland about the wartime experiences of women. Here's chance to hear the conversation.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.