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‘Ndrangheta: The History of Italy’s Most Powerful Organized Crime Syndicate
The word “mafia,” Sicilian in origin,[1] is synonymous with Italy, but Italy is home to several different mafias, with three being particularly notorious. While the Cosa Nostra of western Sicily is the most infamous, other powerful groups include the ferocious ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria and the Camorra, the third-largest mafia, which is active in Naples and the Campania region.[2] A “mafia” is loosely defined as a criminal organization that is interested in social, economic and political power, combining elements of a traditional secret society with those of a business, but further levels of nuance are necessary in order to understand these groups.[3] In a general sense, this is because each mafia creates a myth about the development of the organization, which becomes like an unquestionable truth. In essence, part of what makes its members so completely loyal to it is also what makes outsiders so utterly afraid of it.[4] The ‘Ndrangheta (pronounced an-drang-et-ah) is a close neighbor of the Cosa Nostra and currently considered the most powerful (and difficult to spell) criminal organization in Italy. The ‘Ndrangheta is centered around Calabria, the most southwestern region of Italy, almost touching the Sicilian city of Messina. Though it began as far back as the late 19th century, it was not until the 1950s that the ‘Ndrangheta started to spread its tentacles throughout Italy and then across the entire globe, forming an empire that now ranges from Australia and Turkey to Chile to Canada. The fact that the ‘Ndrangheta is overshadowed by the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, as well as by the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, allowed it to grow and develop outside of the public eye. For years, people actually considered the Calabrian mafia to be part of the Cosa Nostra as a mere appendage, rather than its own entity.
Charles River Editors (Author), Jim Johnston (Narrator)
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[Spanish] - Extraña Radio: Una colección de transmisiones de espionaje, estaciones no identificadas
Desde hace más de un siglo, la radio ha sido parte de la vida de las personas. Nadie que esté vivo hoy recuerda algún tiempo en el que no haya estado siempre ahí, como una fuente familiar y confiable de información y entretenimiento. Hoy en día parece algo mundana, sobrepasada por el Internet y la televisión satelital. Incluso en la década de 1980, el surgimiento y desarrollo de la televisión por cable (cincuenta canales en lugar de cinco) y el comienzo de MTV hicieron que la radio pareciera pintoresca o, como muchos afirmaran alguna vez, que “La radio está muerta”. No lo estaba, por supuesto. La radio es todavía muy popular, con tantas estaciones como siempre y sigue siendo una parte del mundo que se toma por sentada. Si bien aún no muere, su familiaridad la ha hecho parecer algo mundana, pero la gente no debería pensar de esa manera. De hecho, las ondas radiales siempre han sido un lugar de misterio, un campo de batalla de ideologías en competencia, y una fuente de voces anónimas. La radio se ha usado para apoyar esfuerzos de guerra, derrocar gobiernos, comunicarse en secreto, e incluso para intentar comunicarse con los muertos. Extraña radio: Una colección de transmisiones de espionaje, estaciones no identificadas y otros misterios de las ondas radiales incluye extrañas historias que harán que este familiar medio parezca un poco menos familiar, y mucho más interesante.
Charles River Editors (Author), Nina Reyes (Narrator)
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Zulu War and Boer War, The: The History and Legacy of the Conflicts that Cemented British Control of
The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event—known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885—galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa. The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would granted without evidence of a practical occupation, and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader, a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of Chartered Companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies. The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, to intimidate an already broken society, and to play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade.
Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)
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Zimbabwe under the British Empire: The History of Great Britain’s Colonization and Decolonization Be
The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismark, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event—known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885—galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa. The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would granted without evidence of a practical occupation, and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader, a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty. This began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of Chartered Companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies. The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, to intimidate an already broken society, and to play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade.
Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)
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Zebulon Pike: The Life and Legacy of One of Early America’s Most Important Explorers
Given that Lewis and Clark remain so famous, it was inevitable that the other American explorers would be overlooked, particularly William Eaton, the hero of the Battle of Derna in the Barnaby Wars, and Zebulon Montgomery Pike, the explorer of the Mississippi. In the case of Pike, Orsi suggests that the explorer is overlooked and in some cases slighted due to what the expeditions did and did not accomplish. Eaton and Pike represented “the first wave of Manifest Destiny, expanding the republican principles of liberty and citizenship in the world.”[1] Contrasted to that patriotic sentiment are caveats and questions. The career of Zebulon Pike was “dominated by ambiguously motivated explorations of the American West.”[2] With the procurement of the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the nation, Pike had the full force of American authority at his disposal, and his travels through the Colorado Rockies into New Mexico pushed the boundaries between America and Spain. Captured by Spanish officials for illegal entry, he was finally released back into American custody after a year’s time with a volume of new information on Spanish territory, its economy, and its military configuration. This sparked a debate about whether the capture was planned by the American government itself. Pike’s return is still debated, as is his relationship with General James Wilkinson and Aaron Burr. The controversy is relevant to Burr’s alleged conspiracy to establish a competing empire in the American Southwest, or perhaps as a way of conquering Spanish America without involving the White House. Pike’s papers, confiscated by the Spanish, have complicated the search for the truth, and any evidence of his complicity remains confidential, in part because of the unpredictable explorer’s unpredictable demise.
Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)
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Yuri Bezmenov: The Life and Legacy of the Influential KGB Informant Who Defected to the West
The KGB is one of the most famous abbreviations of the 20th century, and it has become synonymous with the shadowy and often violent actions of the Soviet Union’s secret police and internal security agencies. In fact, it is often used to refer to the Soviet state security agencies throughout its history, from the inception of the inception of the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission) in 1917 to the official elimination of the KGB in 1992. Whether it’s associated with the Russian Civil War’s excesses, Stalin’s purges, and even Vladimir Putin, the KGB has long been viewed as the West’s biggest bogeyman during the second half of the 20th century. Yuri Bezmenov was among the first Soviet whistleblowers to attract attention on a global scale, and interest in his story has recently been revived thanks to his surprising cameo in the teaser trailer for Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War in August 2020. This came despite the fact he was far from the first ex-KGB agent or Russian to pull back the curtains on the Russian government and reveal the harrowing “truths” they were once sworn to harbor, as well as the disconcerting covert operations of which they once allegedly partook. In fact, the history of Russian defectors who later emerged as informants in the name of public interest stretches back to the 16th century, when Andrey Kurbsky, a former boyar, high-ranking military commander, and trusted adviser to Tsar Ivan the Terrible, decamped to Lithuania on April 30, 1564.
Charles River Editors (Author), Daniel Houle (Narrator)
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Young Turks, The: The History and Legacy of the Political Movement that Attempted to Reform the Otto
In August 2017, Turkey's President Recip Tayyip Erdogan gave a directive to the Foreign Ministry to go into ravaged Syria and rescue an 87-year-old Turkish man stranded in Damascus by the civil war. The elderly gentleman lived his life simply and quietly. He disliked drawing attention to himself, and he was grieving for his wife who had just died. The man called himself Dundar Abdulkerim Osmanoglu, but many affixed the title Sehzade ("Prince") to his name, for he was Head of the imperial House of Osman and heir to the defunct throne of the Ottoman Empire. His ancestors had created an Empire that had lasted for over 600 years and caused the greatest rulers of both the Muslim East and the Christian West to tremble. When studying the fall of the Ottoman Empire, historians have argued over the breaking point that saw a leading global power slowly become a decadent empire, but to men like Erdogan, the long agony of the "sick man of Europe," an expression used by the Tsar of Russia to depict the falling Ottoman Empire, blinds people to its incredible power and history. Overall, the history of the dissolution of the empire can be defined as a race between the empire's growing "illness" on one side (the Ottomans' inability to appease and federate the various people within its territory) and constant attempts to find a cure in the form of broad reforms. As this all suggests, the story of the Young Turks and the last years of the Ottoman Sultanate is a complex and interesting one. It is the history of a state struggling to survive against seemingly impossible odds, featuring a long battle for the minds and souls of the inhabitants of a declining empire between nationalism and liberal imperialism. It is a struggle that has produced not only modern Turkey but several states in the Balkans and the Middle East as they exist today. The Young Turks were triumphant, but in many ways it was a Pyrrhic victory.
Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)
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Yakuza and the Triads, The: The History of Asia’s Most Notorious Transnational Criminal Organization
A pack of men in sharp, tailored suits and dark sunglasses strut down the street. Their eyes are shielded, but the icy scowl on their faces is a clear sign to stay out of their paths. A few of their collars hang open, showing off a glimpse of the vibrant and intricate ink work on their chests, and presumably, their entire bodies. Tattoos are the norm these days, but then one suddenly spots a man with a peculiarly pint-sized pinkie. Perhaps it is only a deformity, but upon a closer look, it appears that the entire upper half has been sliced cleanly off, almost as if it were done intentionally. Since the beginning of civilization, crime and injustice has existed. At the same time, gangs in all shapes and sizes have been around, from rebels, dissidents, and rogue soldiers to the average circle of miscreants loitering in alleys and behind convenience stores. In Japan, a gang of a different breed would arise – one underscored by honor, respect, family, and a code of ethics. They are the Yakuza. From running guns to white-collar crimes in cyberspace and illegal seafood, the Triads, the mafia of China, are potent figures in the world of organized crime. Going by enigmatic names like the 14K Triad and the United Bamboo Gang, these criminal groups are enormous, with some organizations boosting memberships ranging in the tens of thousands. A powerful factor in China and throughout Asia, Triads are entrenched in society and the masters of multiple enterprises ranging from extortion, narcotics, prostitution and white collar crime.
Charles River Editors (Author), Scott Clem (Narrator)
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Wovoka: The Life and Legacy of the Prophet of the Ghost Dance Movement
Wovoka (1867-1932), the Ghost Dance Prophet, was a member of the Walker River band of Paiutes, in western Nevada. The Walker River Reservation was established in 1859 and was Wokova’s home off and on for years. Wovoka was also known as Jack Wilson, a name he acquired while he was, for some years, employed on the David Wilson family ranch in the Mason Valley. At that time in Nevada, Indians not living on a reservation often lived on a ranch. Wovoka was exposed to the pious Wilson family’s daily Bible readings, and that may have helped shape his own beliefs. His father was a traditional medicine man, himself a devotee of an earlier prophet. In 1889, Wovoka followed his father in also becoming a medicine man. The year, Wovoka had a series of visions that led to what is sometimes called the Ghost Dance religion, which spread like wildfire across much of the West in 1889 and 1890. Wovoka’s 1889 visions grew into a new religion that gripped the hopes and imaginations of dozens of tribal groups, and it eventually extended over much of the West. It was a kind of antidote for defeat and cultural dislocation. The Lakota Sioux in particular were so caught up in the Ghost Dance and their adaptation of Wovoka’s revelations that they remain strongly associated with the Ghost Dance more than a century later.
Charles River Editors (Author), Jim D. Johnston (Narrator)
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World War II in 1940: The History of the Fighting that Culminated with the German Conquest of Wester
One of the most famous people in the world came to tour the city of Paris for the first time on June 28, 1940. Over the next three hours, he rode through the city’s streets, stopping to tour L’Opéra Paris. He rode down the Champs-Élysées toward the Trocadero and the Eiffel Tower, where he had his picture taken. After passing through the Arc de Triomphe, he toured the Pantheon and old medieval churches, though he did not manage to see the Louvre or the Palace of Justice. Heading back to the airport, he told his staff, “It was the dream of my life to be permitted to see Paris. I cannot say how happy I am to have that dream fulfilled today.” Four years after his tour, Adolf Hitler would order the city’s garrison commander, General Dietrich von Choltitz, to destroy Paris, warning his subordinate that the city 'must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris.' Of course, Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than 4 years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940. The surrender of more than 1,200,000 isolated troops followed quickly in June 1940, yet in the midst of this disaster, the Allies contrived one coup that took even the victorious Wehrmacht aback: the evacuation of over 300,000 soldiers from the port of Dunkirk. This escape, hailed as “miraculous” at the time, provided England with a solid defensive force, the French with the kernel of a “Free French” army for the future, and the Western Allies with an invaluable boost to their morale during one of the war's darkest moments. With the clarity of historical hindsight, events proved Churchill correct. Operation Dynamo, as the British named the Dunkirk evacuation mission, bolstered British morale and defenses sufficiently to keep the “Sceptered Isle” in the war.
Charles River Editors (Author), Bill Caufield (Narrator)
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World War I on the Ground: The History and Legacy of Life in the Trenches
World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Tens of millions of artillery shells and untold hundreds of millions of rifle and machine gun bullets were fired in a conflict that demonstrated man’s capacity to kill each other on a heretofore unprecedented scale, and as always, such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant. The enduring image of World War I is of men stuck in muddy trenches, and of vast armies deadlocked in a fight neither could win. It was a war of barbed wire, poison gas, and horrific losses as officers led their troops on mass charges across No Man’s Land and into a hail of bullets. While these impressions are all too true, they hide the fact that trench warfare was dynamic and constantly evolving throughout the war as all armies struggled to find a way to break through the opposing lines. There was another war going on beneath the trenches, a war of tunnels and mines fought by men who didn’t see sunlight for days at a time and who lived in constant fear of cave-ins and enemy detection. These men, who had mostly been miners in civilian life, lived a twilight existence, working long hours in silence and near darkness while great battles raged overhead. They suffered from fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that they could be killed at any time by an unseen enemy. Despite this, they persevered, and the mines they laid under enemy trench systems turned the tide of at least one major battle.
Charles River Editors (Author), Arthur Armstrong (Narrator)
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World Health Organization, The: The History and Legacy of the UN’s Top International Public Health A
April 7 is World Health Organization Day, in honor of the day that the World Health Organization held the first World Health Assembly in 1948. International health conferences had been held nearly a century before this date, and international health organizations had been established in the half-century prior to the creation of the World Health Organization, but 1948 marked the year that a formal institution was created to direct and implement a concerted and truly global effort to investigate, prevent, control, and cure disease. As the world recovered from the Second World War, which included the reconstruction of Europe, the emergence of the United States as a world superpower, the spread of Communism in large parts of the world, and the end of European colonial empires, the World Health Organization had to respond to these economic and political challenges in order to coordinate international health policy. Since the inception of the World Health Organization (WHO), the nature of public health issues has evolved greatly. An initial focus on preventing the spread of communicable diseases led to addressing poor health outcomes as a result of poverty, population growth, lifestyle changes, and globalization which meant that diseases could spread around the world faster than ever before. The WHO has also had to adopt mechanisms to respond to rapidly to major outbreaks of disease which can lead to negative economic outcomes and severe strains on health care systems in the affected regions. Economic and political changes over the last 72 years have altered the WHO’s global authority, its funding model, and the manner in which it carries out its mandate. Although medical science has advanced greatly since the WHO was established, newly emerging diseases have tested the WHO’s ability to understand the epidemiology of these diseases and to combat them.
Charles River Editors (Author), Colin Fluxman (Narrator)
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