Timesuck with Dan Cummins - BONUS 5 - Pablo Escobar: Coke, Power, Mayhem & So Much Money

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

How do you rise from being so poor your parents can't afford to buy you shoes for school to being the 7th richest man in the entire world? If you're Pablo Escobar you do it through violence, intimidation, and selling a crazy amount of cocaine. Eighty percent of America's 80's coke came from Pablo and at the height of his power it made him 420 million dollars... A WEEK. He had a fleet of yachts, hundreds of homes, even a personal zoo, but he still ended up dying essentially poor and alone with a bullet in his ear. Find out how on this week's Timesuck!

How does the lower middle-class son of a Colombian farmer and a schoolteacher become the first drug dealer to show up on Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people? With a net worth rumored to have been his highest 30 billion dollars. A dude making so much legal cash, Ola, he was spending over $2,500 a month on rubber bands just to wad it all together. A dude losing millions to literal rats. Actual rats eating his piles of cash in off the grid tropical forest warehouses full of American money he didn't care about losing because he had what seemed like a never ending supply coming back in. So much cash he was burying giant bags of it in farmers fields. He was hiding it in the walls of cartel members homes.

How do you like to have a lot of $100 bills instead of fiberglass for insulation? I wouldn't mind it. He once burned $2 million just to keep his daughter warm when they were on the run from the police. How does one man get that much fucking money? For Pablo, he got to buy supply in 80% of the world's cocaine supply at the height of his power in the 80s when everyone wanted to bump or align.

At one point, he was shipping 15 tons of coke into the United States a day. He was making $420 million a week. The 80s are known for an abundance of coqs and anyone who snorted it in the 80s had an 80% chance of snorting some of Pablo's powder and everyone knew who he was and what he was doing. So why did it take over a decade to bring him down?

Having more money than entire nations and his own paid army of assassins who killed hundreds of police officers didn't hurt. The men wage war against his government. And for a very long time, he won. He assassinated politicians who lobbied to have him brought to justice, killed journalists who tried to battle him in the court of public opinion.

And today, this cocaine king is getting sucked. So strap in and let's get into the violence, wealth, and power of a man who was a demon to some and an angel to others. This is TimeSuck. Happy Friday, everybody. I'm Dan Cummins. This is a special 500 review bonus edition of the Suck. Thanks to Brandon Reyes, George Knuckles, and others for sending Pablo my way. Glad you did.

I was super happy to suck him. Been sucking on Pablo, aka El Patron, aka aka Don Pablo aka Princess Peach all week okay that last one was not one of his nicknames as a shitty character in Mario Kart actually who plays with Princess Peach? People who don't care about winning on the goddamn mushroom cup that's who and as always I appreciate those of you who have booked marked time suck podcast.com use that Amazon button to do your Amazon shopping, and those of you who threw some bucks to the suck, clicking that PayPal donation button, thank you very much.

And thanks for all the first generation t-shirt purchases. The second t-shirt, still in the construction, but almost done. Just saw a new image, so excited. It's going to be a different look, very, very cool. The artist I commissioned it to make it is a dude with a long history of illustrations for that skate magazine thrasher and it, oh, he's fucking killing it. It's gonna be so good and and yeah, hopefully I'll be doing the third one soon after. I know I'm gonna get a lot of requests for what that should be and you can send those into admin at time suckpodcast.com. I feel like Nimrod and both jangles have been having shown up a lot and knows people asking for some new t-shirts.

This one is gonna involve a flat earth and a space lizard. So it's gonna be good, it's gonna be good. And I have more picks to put up on social media, people wearing that first one. And just so you know, Timesuck now has its own social media, a ran by Timesucker, Jordan Kasuzek. It's at TimesuckPod podcast on Twitter and Instagram, backslashtime suck on Facebook, and he is much more prompt on getting back than I am.

I've been using all my free time to research these things. I probably spend more time that I should. That I should. I just it truly does fascinating me all this shit. And I just keep like what? It's bound so from one web page to the next, to the next, to the next. Thanks for all the recent reviews on iTunes and elsewhere. A huge thanks for spreading the word. Just hit a million total downloads this week. I never thought that would happen as fast.

I didn't even know if that would happen at all when I started this. And it's all because of you guys spreading that suck. And it's thanks for continuing to listen. As I continue to try and give you the good suck, I know you crave. And by the way, in the email stuff, I will get back to all the emails and messages

that have been sent, like admin at timesockpodcast.com. Probably won't happen till mid next week, because I gotta turn right around and jump on Monday's episode. As soon as I'm done recording this. All right, so let's jump into some quick time sucker updates. More great email subject lines this week. Sorry, I haven't got back again on this. But I do read them all.

I do read them all. This week I got Hey Cocknibler from King Shit of Fuck Mountain. That is a fantastic handle. I also got Stick That in your juice box and suck it from Han. You are sucking awesome from Rich. Master's Sucker. Suck on this from AJ Adams. Keep sucking me in the bathroom. It work from Connoroy. Very specific with a location on that one. This podcast sucks from Doug Barnard and and Hale Fucknugget Arbiter to Nimrod God of the Universe from Johnny Rockets.

Well played, time suckers, well played. Has a Kai Abenitz wrote in, greetings great, grand sucker. I just wanted to chime in and say that movies, splice in bits from other movies all the time, especially special effects and establishing shots. And this is referencing the Marilyn Monroe episode when I couldn't believe that they used a scene of her singing in a nightclub that was shot specifically for one movie in a totally different movie that didn't even star her a couple of years later.

But I guess this goes on a lot. I did not know that. He says, but special mention goes to Deadpool, as that was coincidentally, the example you used while sucking Marilyn. The movie straight up steals a shot of the X jetjet taking off from X-men the last stand and covers it up with a new jet model. So your Logan hypothetical isn't as far off as you might think. Love the podcast, love here this. You can't wait for some pop-up on this Friday. That's, yeah, thank you, Haz. I fuck, I did not know that.

That's crazy. I guess for establishing shots, you know, it doesn't make sense, but it still kind of feels like cheating to me, that they just took it from another movie. Oh wow. Time's like a rich added to the Maryland episode as well. He said, listening to the Maryland Monroe episode, and I fully agree with you about women who have children at random leaving them to the system to take care of.

My wife, Brandi and I have been foster parents for seven years and have adopted two girls who have the same mother who does the same thing. We have inquired as well as to forced sterilization for people who habitually have children with no intention on raising their children and instead leaving the responsibility to the rest of society. We were scolded quite harshly that no matter what women are entitled to their rights, anyways, don't want to ramble about the struka nerve with me and I had to say something. Love the podcast and also glad you enjoyed the meme on Facebook about Facebook about the flat earth,

NASA wall. Slap a salmon punch bear, Rich. I love hearing that from somebody who's a foster parent. And by man, bless you man, geez foster parents, especially those who adopt some foster kids, fucking real life saints. We're an amazing gift you're given to some kid, you know, a stable home to grow up in. And yeah, and it's like, I can't believe you were,

you were lectured about taking rights away from people when you are literally the one fucking cleaning up the mess. Thank God that you are there, man. And by God, I mean, I don't fucking whatever. But then finally, Han wrote in regarding me, dismissing sack of dog shit.net as a potential sponsor. Because last I was making fun of sponsors you wouldn't want. And I referenced a made up place called

sackofdogshit.net, saying no one wants it. Some dog shit dropped off at their fucking door. But you know what, he disagrees. He says, don't say no one wants a dog shit drop off service. Neighbors being too loud at night, dog shit. Bad service at a smoothie bar? Dog shit. Anonymous dog shit drop off is a business I would invest in, I would donate my three

dog shit to the company. Revenge is a dish best served steaming. God damn it. You're right, Han, you're right. I shouldn't judge that made up company so quickly. Someone does want to purchase sack of dog shit.net, start a business about fucking drop and dog shit off on people's and porches and you want a sponsored time stock. You know what? I'm not gonna stop you. I'm into it now. And finally, why at Hawk wrote an incredibly thought provoking email regarding some comments

I made in the Maryland episode about why porn is judged so much more harshly than artistic nudity. And man, I really couldn't stop. This came in just a couple hours ago and it really just got me thinking. He says, hello, sir. In the Maryland Monroe episode, you stated your thought about not understanding the arbitrary difference between art nudity and pornographic nudity and how it is looked down upon. To me, that's a small example of a bigger idea. I feel like it comes from the intended purpose of art versus the purpose of pornography. With art, it's the whole connotation that civilized people are prudent and reserved and complex and low-brow people are unsophisticated unintelligent and live without shame of a life of indulgence. There is typically a

subtlety to the art and I agree it is all subjective, which makes people feel like there is meaning beyond the instinctual sexual imagery from seeing a nude woman compared to pornography which does not try to hide its intent. I don't know how I feel about this. I don't know if we are supposed to indulge in our instinctual feelings or if we are constantly supposed to fight them to live in our modern world. Isn't going against them the whole thing that separates us from non-conscious creatures if a wolf feels hungry, it looks for food.

If I feel hungry, I choose not to eat because I'm watching my weight. Not the exact same situation, but just an example. Is our human history of suppressing our desires, not just actual, but desires in general a symptom of society, or is it the reason society exists where it is now? Through evolution we are designed to be following our evolutionary impulses. Eat, sleep, love, hate, suck. Ha ha! Love that one.

Tell us what to feel and do. Or are we where we are now? Because humans can feel a certain way, but choose to do something different. To be honest, I really just don't know enough about psychology or brain functions or evolutionary mechanisms. All three of those might be the same thing, to figure out the right answer. I enjoy challenging myself to exercise self-control, especially in times of extreme emotion, and I constantly battle with my own philosophical outlook and the associated hypocrisy. Sorry if I sounded like a crazy person, thanks,

white. PS heard about your show recently through the BDM page on Tom and Dan. Introduce my roommate to the show and we both really enjoyed. So thank you for being spread in the suck, and thanks to mediocre time with Tom and Dan for spreading the suck as well. And that is fucking what a great email. I had never thought of it that way, where yeah, I guess that is kind of what makes us civilized. You know, if we just always indulge in our base desires,

you know, we'd just be fucking in the street and punch people in their faces. I mean, clearly, if you've heard my standup, you know that I think about our base about our bases, Iars a lot. I think a lot about fucking primal violence, but I don't do it. I don't walk around just punching fucking strangers in the face as much as I would like to.

Almost every day of my entire goddamn life. I guess that is, depressing desires. Is what's, fuck, I never had it. Fuckin' that's great, man. That is, that's one of the reasons I have the fucking time sucker updates. God, I'll be thinking about that all week. and I'm sure more people will now as well. Thank you so much, thanks all of you, and let's get into some Pablo.

Thanks time-suckers, I need a net. We all did. Pablo Escobar, I may have heard of him as a kid, I don't remember. I feel like I had to have heard of him growing up, but I wasn't really introduced to him until I watched the first two seasons of Narcos on Netflix. If you haven't seen it, really well done show, very entertaining. And after researching Pablo this week, I feel like it's pretty factual. They may have taken a few liberties here and there, shows do, but they get the big stuff right. So I wondered as I started my research, like why Columbia,

out of all the countries in the world, why does so much Coke, why is so much Coke historically come from Columbia and not some other country? Well, first off, cocaine comes from a plant that's from South America. So, you know, cocaine comes from four varieties of a South American shrub called, this is a fucking big one,

erythrocylicei, erythrocylicei, fuck me. Erithro-Sy-Lessi. Fuck me. Whoever named that shrub should be brought back to life only to be killed again for forcing people to say that full sentence disguises one word. Fucking Latin. Well, indigenous tribes such as the Incas were chewing on its leaves for millennia before European settlement. But it wasn't until 1855 that a German chemist named Albert Neiman isolated the active alkaloid, alkaloid, Benzoil methalycanine.

Another fucking word that someone needs to be punched over. Cocaine quickly became known as a powerful anesthetic throughout Europe. Famously, Sigmund Freud promoted his use as a therapeutic tonic in 1884 with his paper Uber Koka, where he argued cocaine could cure depression and sexual impotence, which is hilarious to me, because one of the side effects of chronic cocaine use is impotence, and if you've ever done coke, which I didn't do like a crazy amount,

but I've done some, and when you're done with it, you feel kind of depressed, because you come down. So I feel like it didn't work for the one of those. Freud prescribed coke left and right, mistakenly believe it didn't have a toxic dosage as well. Whoops. He killed at least one patient by literally prescribing an overdose. You know, well, you live in your learn. Cocaine-based tonics and elixirs were sold in the US in the unregulated drug world of the late 19th century advertised to cure everything from headaches to toothaches, to a nervous stomach,

to a lot of other things that cocaine doesn't cure. It became fairly popular in Europe during the 19th century, in 1863, a Parisian chemist, Angelo Mariani. Sounds Italian. I guess you could be Italian from Paris. Combined coca and wine and started selling it, his vignet Marion became extremely popular. Coke wine. Fucking Coke wine. That sounds amazing actually. The wine you could just drink all night. Well, the active element of cocaine really was one of the ingredients of Coca-Cola in the US too, I'd heard that my whole life.

So Coke, it was around in the US long before Pablo Escobar. It was infused into the software in Coca-Cola from 1885 to 1903 and wasn't even removed because of any law. And we're gonna take a little deviation from the main narrative here, but this is very interesting to me. Check this silly shit out.

Cocaine wasn't even regulated in the United States until 1914. It was used in a variety of medicines, used recreationally. The Coke was then taken out of Coca-Cola because a good old fashioned Southern racism, the KKK, who fucking knew racism was actually what started Coca-Cola as well.

The Cluclas clan and other racist groups, lobbied for Atlanta and other southern towns to prohibit the sale of alcohol in the early 20th century because they felt it gave African Americans a little too much liquid courage. All right, I was actually in the late 19th century when they were doing this. Made them a little less, I'm sorry, I was actually in the late 19th century when they're doing this, you know, made them a little less willing to accept their lesser role in society.

Apparently they could push down the rage developed from pushing down chronic abuse to the hands of white devils, but after four or five drinks, a lot of African-Americans like fuck those motherfuckers, and that made whitey very nervous. And then the racist one, alcohol was no longer able to be sold, including some Coke wine that was being sold in the US. So in 1886, John Pemberton, the pharmacist founder of Coca-Cola was forced to reformulate his drink, which he was calling Pemberton's French wine Coca. It's a long fucking name.

Pemberton, do you want to have some Pemberton's French wine Coca? Or do you want some Coca-Cola? The fucking marketing people got to hold that in Switcher. Anyway, he replaced the alcohol with soda water do you want to have some Pemberton's French wine coca? Or do you want some Coca-Cola? The fucking marketing people got to hold that in Swisher. Anyway, he replaced the alcohol with soda water and called the new drink Coca-Cola. But then white supremacists soon became concerned

with the black man's use Coca-Cola. Felt like you got him too excited, right? Southern newspapers reported that Negro cocaine fiends, that's a quote, that's not my words. We're raping white women and that the police were powerless to stop them. By 1903, then manager of Coca-Cola, Assa Griggs, Chandler had bowed to white fears and a wave of anti-narcotics legislation removing the cocaine and adding more sugar and caffeine. Dr. Edward Williams described to the medical standard in 1914,

again, this is the quote, it's now me, the negro who has become a cocaine dopper is a constant menace to this community. His whole nature has changed for the worse. I wish I was making this shit up. Wow, what am I gonna learn next? That Santa used to be real until the white man found out

he was given black kids presents to, had him fucking killed. Ha! Well, anyway, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed in 1914, a United States federal law that regulated and taxed a production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocoa products. It began to be enforced in 1915, basically denying public use unless a doctor prescribed it. And then in 1920, cocaine was added to the list of narcotics to be outlawed completely by passing of the Dangerous Drug Act of 1920. And then it just kind of goes away.

Now it's a pain in the ass to get. It's a federal offense, not trending anymore. The man goes away, kind of face fades from popularity starting in the 1920s all the way throughout the 1960s. The market changes, Coke has replaced Largie with infetomines for a while. You know, infetomines first synthesized in 1887. The stimulant and fetamine was popular in 1920s in the medical community where it was used for raising blood pressure.

Yeah, I bet it did. Got some low blood pressure. Just fucking take some, take some meth. Let's get some, some crank in your system. And large in the nasal pastures and stimulating the central nervous system. Yeah, I think it bright does all that pretty well. Views to the drug began during the 1930s

when it was marketed under the name Benzadreen and sold in an over-the-counter inhaler. Oh, fucking sweet is that. Just go down to the fucking dime store, general store, the mercantile, get yourself an inhaler of fucking meth. Durant World War II and Fedamines were widely distributed to soldiers to combat fatigue, so I'm sure, and improve both mood and endurance.

Yeah, and after the war, physicians began to prescribe and Fedamines to fight depression. Okay, I don't know how that would work, but as legal user to defend fedamines increased, a black market emerged, common users of elisted and fedamines included truck drivers, on long commutes and athletes looking for a better performance. I remember hearing about that in baseball, actually,

that man just uppers were being used by ball players all the fucking time in like the 50s and stuff. I get it, man. Students referred to the drug as pet pills and use them to aid in studying. I could use some pet pills from time to time during some long stretches of research. Sounds great, actually.

When you call it a pet pill, it meth sounds so cute and harmless. Are you one fucking meth? You look like shit. No, no, no, I just been taking a lot of pep pills. I just been feeling super peppy. Peppy. Why are you missing so many teeth? I don't know. I just sometimes I smoke the pep. I like it to smoke at the pep.

Anyway, also in the 1950s the beatniks make marijuana cool and it moves in the middle class white America in the 1960s, increasing in cultural popularity. LSD was used here and there recreationally, starting the 40s, increasing in the psychedelic 60s. So there's other options for drugs. And then the 70s brought in the disco era. Oh yeah, all right, staying alive and shit. Young people didn't want to sit around a campfire,

listen to Simon and Garfunkel, traffic, Jefferson Airplane, and the doors, talking about social justice anymore. Okay, Fiat Nam was over, they wanted to head to a nightclub, they wanted to fucking party, they wanted to listen to some Donna Summers, and they wanted to stay up all goddamn night. And Coke was the perfect disco companion. And Yuppies were hitting their stride about this time too, you know. You're not going to kick it out fast on Wall Street, all fucking dope, dope, sleepy. You need to be up.

So the stage is set for Coke's grand reintroduction to the United States. What role did Pablo Escobar play in that reintroduction? Well, to understand Pablo, you got to first understand Colombia. But before we do that, I was wondering, is Coke really that bad for you? Is it really that bad?

Turns out it is. This is from WebMD. It says cocaine is the most powerful stimulant of natural origin. It's also a natural pain blocker. In occasional cocaine users, social or physical problems are rare. Yay!

Cokes good. However, scientists insist that there is no safe amount of cocaine. Boo! Cokes bad. Coking is a highly addictive drug. People who are addicted may eventually prefer taking cocaine to any other activity. Their lifestyles may alter completely as the addiction

takes hold. Scientists at the University of Cambridge, England identified abnormal brain structure in the frontal lobe of the brain of cocaine users due to cocaine using behavior. The teams scanned the brains of 120 individuals half of whom were addicted to cocaine. They found that cocaine users had widespread loss of gray matter. The longer the abuse, the greater the loss. Losing gray matter. That doesn't sound good at all to me. I am no neurologist or someone with any scientific training whatsoever, but I feel like it's best to keep as much of your gray matter as possible. I've always been pro-grey matter. I'm going to say that. Other negative effects of cocaine use, especially chronic, is constriction of blood vessels, elevated body temperature, accelerated heart rate, hypertension, high blood pressure,

headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, decreased appetite, regular snorting, contribute to loss of sense of smell, nose bleed, swallowing problems, persistent runny nose, horseness, regular ingestion of cocaine can cause severe bowel gangrene, caused by a reduction in blood flow. Holy fuck, severe bowel gangrene, sounds like the worst. Like, I don't care if you just won the lottery five minutes ago, if then five minutes later, someone's like, hey man, your bowels are rotting away inside of you. Your whole day is shit. Your whole your whole life is shit. Irritability, anxiety, restlessness, heart failure, strokes, severe paranoia, the individual may lose his or her sense of reality and hear things that are not there. Now I've never done a crazy amount of coke. I don't do coke anymore. I've never done enough to

experience hallucinations in paranoia, but I didn't witness that behavior firsthand and it is so fucking weird. So weird because it continues when the person is not high. I ran into this buddy of mine that I've known for years about a year and a half ago when I was hosting this show and he was going to be a guest on it and he just shows up and literally like the first words out of his mouth. I haven't seen him at this point in probably like six months and he just says, I think people are trying to kill me. And I thought he was joking at first and he was not joking.

And I was like, oh man, this is gonna be a weird show. Well, he kind of held it together during the show and then after the show we go grab coffee and he just talks to me for about an hour about how people are trying to kill him and about how he's hearing helicopters outside of his apartment. And then he just keep telling me all these mundane events,

but then asking out for it, like, that's weird, right? I mean, that's weird, right? Just over and over, he's saying that. But like the most innocuous thing, so you'd be like, and then this guy that I'd seen at a pizza place like two weeks ago, suddenly, he's hanging out in front of my apartment. I mean, that's weird, right?

That's weird, like, why is he there? And then, you know, and then I heard this girl I dated, well, she came by to pick up some stuff yesterday. And that's weird. I mean, that's weird, right? Like, why would she come by? Like, you would so look and cartoonishly paranoid that just any normal thing that would happen around him was somehow part of some conspiracy in his head that he had tied to this drug dealer that he'd bought the coat from who he thought wanted to kill him. Because the guy like, you know, looked in weird. A few times in his mind.

I'm sure my buddy was the one looking fucking weird. Anyway, very entertaining, co- conduit's better than, luckily he's chilled out and now he's no longer like that. Yeah, because I'm once, I, after about half an hour, I was like, dude, how much fucking coke are you doing? And then he told me he was doing it like several times a day every day. I was like, well, yeah, you're out of your goddamn mind. Not all the stuff. No one's, no one's, no one's putting helicopters around your apartment to try

and get your fucking small amount of money that you may have. You're not a priority for anybody. Ah, fucking crazy. But anyway, not for my coke head friend. Let's learn about the man who put the coke in so many coke heads heads, more than any man in history before him actually. And let's learn about the country he lived in that provided such a perfect environment for a kingpin to thrive in with the time suck timeline.

Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time, time, time line. 1499, the Spanish arrive in modern day Colombia, and they do what Spaniards do. They fuck shit up. That's how they do you guys. That's just colonial Spaniards being colonial Spaniards, kicking off some death, exploitation and enslavement. For the glory of Spain, the Spaniards noticed that the locals, the indigenous people chew on some cucko leaves. For energy, soon after Explorance South America, the more cucko leaves they chew, the more work they can do, and the less they need to eat, sweet.

Spaniards are big fans of the results, but largely refrained from indulging themselves in these coquolees leaves. It's a fucking weird smile a little bit. Well the new kingdom of Grenada is formed in the 16th century. The Visoroi of Grenada is founded in 1711. The United States of, sorry, the United provinces of New Grenada are formed in 1810. And by 1819, independence from Spain is one in Grand Colombia. The precursor to modern-day Colombia is born. 1848, Colombia becomes not only independent nation in the mid-19th century, but one of the

strongest, most prominent nations in South America. Nation with old ties to the U.S. it was seen as a great example of democracy in South America, had the first constitutional government in South America. The liberal and conservative parties founded in 1848 and 1849 respectively are two of the oldest surviving political parties in all of the Americas. Slavery was abolished and in the country shortly before it was abolished in the US at 1851. It's a populated country. It soon has the third most Spanish-speaking people in the world after Mexico and the US.

Major cities, very modern, not all jungles and indigenous people, long ways from that, very first world in cosmopolitan, but also home to a lot of violence and conflicts over the years. So 1949 is when Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviera is born on December 1st, 1949, in the Colombian city of Rio Negro, 15 miles outside of Medellín during a very violent period of Colombia's history. Early in his childhood, his family moved to Envegado,

where he was raised. It's a suburb of Medellín. His father worked as a peasant farmer. His mother was a schoolteacher. And the violence he was born into was a civil war referred to just literally as the violence, the violence. The violence here was a 10-year period in Columbia's history where thousands of babies, thousands of babies were beaten to death with small wooden clubs known as Los Beatles the Babies Herdos on a daily basis.

No, of course not. It was a civil war in Columbia. The lasted from 1948 to 1958 between the Colombian Conservative Party, the Colombian Liberal Party, and various communist factions that began to appear in the jungles of Colombia in the mid-20th century. The war began with the April 9, 1948 assassination of the popular politician Jorge Alicia, Guy Tan, a Liberal Party presidential candidate for the election in November 1949. Now there's speculation that the CIA may have been involved in his assassination.

There's also speculation that the Russia, the USSR, may have been involved in his assassination in fair speculation, both ways actually. Internationally at this time, the Soviets were trying to spread communism internationally, pretty aggressively, and the US was trying to counter that and spread capitalism. In Colombia, like a lot of other countries around the world, in the mid-20th century, especially, they got caught in the middle. And the capitalists and communists were 100% trying to get the people who shared their ideology into positions of power.

Like absolutely a lot of those CIA rumors, I believe 100% are true about them fucking with this guy or messing with that guy Trying to get them into power of course. It just makes a you know a stable trading partner For the US to have a stable ally Well Guy Tans murder provoked the Bugataso Riding the last for 10 hours Killed some 5,000 people the viola the violencia is estimated to have cost the lives of at least 200,000 people. And the violence took place between the paramilitary forces of the Colombian Liberal Party and

the Colombian Conservative Party, which organized its armed self-defense groups and its guerrilla military units. Both also fought against the paramilitary forces of the PCC, the Colombian Communist Party, and not one of these groups even thought for a moment about fucking with bow jangles. This canine paramilitary band of bloodthirsty bloodhounds and pit bulls and because this story takes place in South America, his gang also included the only Latin dog I can currently think of, fuck future owls.

But seriously, the conflict caused millions of people to abandon their homes and property, media, and news services failed to cover events accurately for fear of revenge attacks, the lack of public order and civil authority prevented victims from laying charges against perpetrators. She was not fun. It was a little like Syria is now just replaced with religion with politics. So Pablo is born into a destabilized nation where various political factions use paramilitary forces to destabilize the government and try and take control. He's born to a place, you know, where politicians are assassinated on the regular.

And I think this is important to understand is Pablo would mimic these events later in his life. So 1957, ended the Civil War, sort of winding down May 10th, 1957 when General Gabriel Pari, Gordillo, along with two other generals of the army, Luis Ordonio Castillo, Rafael Navas-Pardo, General from the National Police, DeGracias, Fonseca Espanoza, and Rear Admiral of the Colombian National Armada, of the Colombian National Armada, Ruben Pedhita, Arango, took hold of the government squast, various rebellions, and held a general election for President in 1958, where everyone voted on whether or not they should have names that were easier to pronounce for Gringo's. Now, they restored democracy.

It was worth noting that General Gordillo had trained in the US at Fort Levinworth at one time, so I think it's safe to say that the US got their dude in power. In an effort to restore democracy to a nation, you know, there was in Civil War where one of the factions fighting for power was communist. They didn't want the commies to win. That was a big thing, a lot of central and South American places in the mid 19th century and late 20th century late 20th century. So maybe the CIA was involved again.

Again, I think it's likely, historically likely historically CIA involved in a lot of shit. So, I also remember on that, this is the time when McCarthyism is running rampant in the US, like the US is just super concerned about communism as we learned in actually last week's Marilyn Monroe episode. So by the time democracy's reestablished, probably would have been about nine years old. So the nation he lived in was embroiled in a bloody civil war. A lot of political ideologies being thrown around for the first decade of his life. Let's talk a little bit about those guys. 1964, FARC, after that, 1964, FARC is a group that gets going because the fighting still

hasn't actually stopped. The civil war is over but now there's little guerrilla factions out in the jungles of a Columbia that come into the cities and fuck shit up from time to time. One of these groups is FARC, Which is the revolutionary armed forces of Columbia the acronym makes sense when the words are in Spanish and they form in 1964 They're the military wing of the Columbia and Communist Party and the operations of FARC were funded by kidnapped and ransom illegal mining extortion

taxation of various forms of economic activity and the taxation and also production and distribution of illegal drugs. Now again, behavior Pablo would later adopt. Those guys never develop an vacuum. On August 25th, 2016, the Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos announced that four years after four years of negotiation, they had secured a peace deal with FARC and on February 18th, 2017. So just recently, FARC rebels moved into transition zones and began the process of disarmament. So we'll see how long that peace actually lasts. And even if they are peaceful, FARC is in Columbia's only

communist paramilitary group that exists currently as well. Also founded in 1964 was the ELN, the National Liberation Army. The ELN is smaller but pretty active, considered by the US to be an active terrorist group. The number under 10,000, like FARC, primarily a rural group of fighters and supporters fighting right wing paramilitary groups, holding people for ransom, etc. There's another communist group called the popular Liberation Army, founded in 1967, that

still operates in some form. Cuba, by the way, it officially became a communist nation in 1959 under Cheguer Eva and Fidel Castro. A lot of communist groups floating around central and South America, again at this time. Lots of ties to Cuba into their communist revolution. A lot of guerrilla warfare being fought over extreme political ideals. Pablo himself would grow up with strong opinions of social justice, because there was a lot of economic inequality going on in Colombia, you know, when he was growing up. And while he ultimately was a capitalist, hellbent and making a lot of money, he also had

communist sympathies, especially regarding the plight of those in extreme poverty. And he went out of his way to help them. Pablo would have been in his late teens when all this shit was really getting going. And he was 21. When M19 formed in 1970, a group he would later work with directly once he was a kingpin. Now why were Fark and all these groups really founded? Was it just people who wanted to spread communism? Not really. Again, Columbia has historically been a country where vast swathes of land are owned by a very small rich elite, especially true in the 1800s and 1900s when Columbia,

the state, the government sold off large tracks of land to private owners to pay for some international debts. Well, inspired by the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, these common groups, they demanded more rights and control over that land owned by the wealthy elite. They wanted to take it back and spread it around, you know, for the common man. They wanted more rights given to Columbia's vast population

of rural farmers who were kind of just looked down upon by people living in the city. And they continue to fight for the rights of the poor. And let's be honest, probably for their own power and money as well. And so all these rural, guerrilla fighting factions needed money in order to keep fighting. Sometimes they got funding from Cuba, sometimes they got it from Russia, but not enough to survive on. So that's why they got into kidnapping and ransom. They also got into drug smuggling, weed,

especially in the mid-20th century. Weed was easy to grow. Just as easy to grow as Columbia's main legal agricultural exports of coffee and bananas. And there was a lot of money in it. If you were able to work outside the law, which is paramilitary groups were already doing. There was a demand for weed in the US

and that counter-cultural revolution in the 1960s. And, you know, in Columbia was at that point, you know, one of several countries that supplied it. We'd also float in from Mexico, Central America, you know, other South American countries. So Pablo's growing up around all of this, a culture of smuggling, a culture of fighting with your own government, viewing the government as a vehicle of oppression for the poor, he was poor, and he's also smart. He's a smart kid. At 13 years old, he was elected president of his schools, Council for Student Wellness, which he demanded, which demanded transportation and food for the poor. Escobar learned anti-imperialist and anti-alligarchic phrases that he would repeat for the rest of his life at this time. Early in life, Escobar also understood the role

that the US had in Columbia, because there was rumors, going around the CIA had murdered Jorge, Alicia Gaitan, the leftist presidential candidate who saw social justice, Gaitan's death was an event that ignited the competitions if you remember of the Valencia. And so Escobar, he's hearing this, he's not a big fan of the US government,

intervening in his government. He loved Cuba. He loved Cuba. He's not a big fan of the US government, intervening in his government. He loved Cuba. He loved Cuba. He'd later want to make his own personal playground, but he really loved it. He dreamed of being president early on, something that he would actually, you know, try and accomplish later on. So, and Escobar became aware of all these societal injustices. He understood that poverty was an invitation from his fortune.

Offal things happen mainly to the poor. He understood Colombia was ruled by this rich oligarchy who owned the majority of the country's land and wealth while more than half the population lived in horrible poverty. And so Escobar, he despised Columbian society, elites. He hated poverty intensely. He wanted to prove a poor kid from a poor neighborhood

could make even more money than the current elites had. Now you tell his mom how he's, you know, don't even worry about not being able to pay for things. I'm gonna get us so much money. He was he was that kid you know he's gonna he's gonna make everything right. He wanted to prove he was better than those people who were smarter than they were. He even told me he people he was so committed to making a lot of money and really doing some of his life. He told people he would kill himself if he didn't have a million pesos by the age of 30. Well in school, a young Pablo and his active mind grew restless. He just trusted authority figures.

He joined neighborhood gangs early on, and he made a little money hustling. He realized school was a waste of time for him that he could make more money hustling, and he dropped out. He stopped 10 in classes for about two years, period mainly spent on the streets. The ruthless urban jungle of Medellin

offered the real education of Pablo Craves. They provided all the knowledge, all the tricks that he was looking for. All the things he thought it would be essential to him succeeding in getting to where he wanted to go. And that actually was when Pablo decided to become South America's most famous magician. He probably didn't know that.

He studied magic day and night. He read books on Houdini. He became pen pals with a young David Copperfield. Start awareness only ruffled silk blouses, top hats. You know, fancy steel-toed shoes and then once he conquered Magic, he moved into tap dancing. He already had the shoes. He just added the metal underneath and he moved into rhythm gymnastics, conquered that, leaped from there to a cordian plane, uh... uh... the polka circuit and and really just got himself into anything and everything that you get him ridiculed uh... wait what the fuck am i even talking about most that was made up

but by the age of sixteen nineteen sixty two after given school one more shot to make his mom happy Pablo totally commits to the life of a bandito he is a bandit. And he partners up with another bandit, Bojangles, three legs, one eye, a hundred percent ass-kicking pit bull revolutionary who takes shit from no one. For the past six months, Bojangles has been hiding the jungles of Central Columbia, living on bananas, coffee beans, leading a small band of gorilla, paramilitary,

feral dogs, as I fucking told you earlier, including Chihuahua's, preparing to take over all of South America and turn it into a canine paradise full of everything he loved, peanut butter, poodles, dirty socks, the chew on hide, and or play Toth of War with. But then, all of this ends when he snorts Coke for the first time and cares nothing about anything

if it was not fucking disco and titties. Wait, sorry. Ooh, I got really into that one. I got really into that one, got a lot of lost again. Okay, for real this time, for real this time, you guys. Pablo's 16, 96-2. He idolizes Al Capone, not fucking with you. Now I feel like you don't trust me.

He desperately wants to become a big time gangster. He sells fake lottery tickets, contraband cigarettes, run street scams, steals cars, muggles random goods, assault people, etc. And again, not joking. He apparently wants to become a well-rounded thug. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. He and the other criminals he worked with early on

kind of become the basis for what will soon become one of the biggest crimes into kids the world has ever known, the Medellin cartel. So by the late 1960s, young known, the Medellin cartel. So by the late 1960s, young Pablo would focus his energies on stolen cars. In the late, sorry, I'm, I'm trying so hard to be fucking serious right now.

I have been serious for a little while. I got so into the boat jangles thing a few minutes ago, the now I just wanna be talking about it, but I'm not going to. I'm gonna wait a little bit at least. Okay, in late 1960s, the most profitable business in Medellin was to steal cars. I wouldn't have guessed that.

I would have thought of it again. I just think of like drugs because of Narcos. But apparently in the 60s stolen cars, that's where the money was. So, Escobar got into that. He stole cars, took them apart, and ordered to sell their parts. He recruited a large gang,

and it kind of tied him to organize, organize, you know, become like a little crime city kit and he did organize. So well, he didn't even have to get his hands dirty after a little while. So he's teaching himself how to be a crime boss. All he does is smoke pot from a lot of things and just run shit pot. By the way, one of his favorite pastimes would be for the rest of his life. Coke was just economics for Pablo. Pot was his love.

So kind of funny to me that the dude was actually a pothead. Escobar dictated orders from the comfort of his own home, collected all the revenues, and also started gaining a reputation for violence in the late 60s, fucking slapping people around who gave him a problem. He developed also this motto of Plato or plomo, which translates to silver or lead.

You either accept the silver, you accept a bribe or you die by a lead bullet. While building this reputation, he finds it's a great investment because it makes his job easier. The further his reputation expands, the easier it is to make profits. Early on, Escobar became curious about how popular he had become, how far his reputation had spread, and he found an easy way to test it. He gave his friend's property car titles for brand new cars coming right out of the factory. He told his friends, just go to the factory and pick them up.

When the factory workers noticed the titles were forged, Pablo's friends said these titles were made by Pablo. And apparently the fearful factory workers that just gave them the keys. How fucking awesome is that? We don't want to fuck with Pablo. Just take this brand new car, fresh gave them the keys. How fucking awesome is that? We don't wanna fuck it up, Pablo. Just take this brand new car, fresh out of the factory. So they already had heard,

they hit a violent reputation. So soon, people owning cars paid Escobar a fee to prevent their cars from being stolen. What a fucking sweet rack of that is. So now he's making money off of stolen cars and he's making even more money off of cars that just owned by people who don't want them to be stolen. Ah, that's, he really is studying his compound, man.

He's done some fucking racketeering or whatever that mafia shit is when they steal from you or they make you pay them to ensure that you're not stolen from. Wow, okay. So he and his gang also began kidnapping wealthy people around mid of the unit this time. And I guess apparently his gang developed a reputation for they would receive the ransom money and then just fucking killed the victims anyway. And these murders were committed just to make a point. Pablo's leftist and childhood revolutionary rhetoric re-emerged. And there's a great quote where he

says in this country, where only the poor die murder, the only thing that I have democratized is death. It's pretty fucked up. Way to justify just random murders, but also kind of a badass quote. Well, 1971, the legend of the Robin Hood begins with Pablo. He starts building his reputation as this defender of the poor. The Medellin Poor had heard about a just man, named Pablo Escamar, who was willing to redress injustices.

And in the oligarchal Columbia Society, there were plenty of injustices. For example, Diego, Chavarria, Chavarria, there we go, Chavarria. It was a powerful industrialist in Columbia, widely respected in the high social circles at Chavarria, also wanted to be regarded as a great philanthropist. He had inaugurated schools and hospitals and rural areas, but the reality was that Chavarilla

didn't give a shit about the impoverished. The poor people of Medellin hated this dude. The workers and textile mills worked long hours amidst inhumane conditions, received slave-like wages. He would lay off hundreds of workers, whenever it made him a little bit more money with no severance pay, just fucking destroy their families. Achavaria was also a violent man,

expanding his land holdings by forcefully, evicting various peasant communities. The peasants who rebelled were either imprisoned or murdered the rest were forced to settle in Medellin slums, and then in 1971, Pablo, he's been hearing enough about this shit, besides takes some action. So one day, it became news that Diego, a settle in Medellin slums, and then in 1971, Pablo, he's been hearing enough about this shit. Besides, it takes some action.

So one day, it became news that Diego, if a chavaria had been kidnapped, his captors were asking for 50,000 pesos to release him. His family quickly pays the money to the captors, and then a chavaria's family, you know, they expect to see Diego alive. Well, six weeks later, a chavaria's body is found in a hole not far from the place where Pablo was born. He'd been tortured, beaten, and strangled. And the Medellin poor rejoiced.

Everyone knew Pablo had done it. And the poor of Medellin worshiped Pablo. Whenever he went, they'd find him that shake his hand. Apparently, sometimes they would bow down to him, almost like pray to him, like he's a living God, like a living saint, began calling him Dr. Eskobar or simply the doctor. And this is when he's only 22 years old. So he's developing a reputation quickly and he clearly has some fucking powerful charisma.

And that's one thing I noticed when I watched this, like Pada Eskobar, devil or saint, I believe I don't have the note in front of me at this exact moment, just popped in my head. But I watched this documentary, it's on Netflix. I'm not gonna say it's great. It's like it's a Columbia documentary. It's all subtitled. It's not very captivating, but it has lots,

it's just like interviews. But the best interviewer with this guy named, he called himself Popeye. And he was, Pablo's like main hitman for many years. And then when you went to prison for a long time, I think he's actually out now. But anyway, he's talking about like, when he met Pablo and just the charisma Pablo had

and how he was able to do things, he never thought he would be capable of doing. I'm assuming like murder, because this is a guy who, you know, I think had a reputation for killing like 300 or 400 people. But he said like, you know, even if he got nervous or he got scared, he would just think of Pablo and he'd be able to do it.

Like almost like like, almost like he's wearing like a WW, you know, PD bracelet, you know, what would Pablo do? And he said that the guy just had like this crazy energy about him where you just wanted, you wanted him to like you, you wanted to make him happy. You trusted what he said when he told you, we were all gonna have a great time and make a lot of money, you believed him. You followed him, you'd follow him into hell, kind of thing. He told a story too about Pablo that I just thought was awesome,

and I wanted just before I move on to this narrative, I don't wanna forget it, where he said that when Pablo was on the run one time later in Pablo's life from the police, now people are looking for him all over Medellin and then him, Pablo and Popeye are just like walking down the street and all of a sudden these police officers get near them and Popeye gets really nervous and he goes to reach for his gun back in his belt.

Back in his, above his ass there behind him. Pablo takes his hand and is like, no, no, no, no, don't worry about it. And just kind of like motions like, come on, come on over here and they walk over to this parking lot and just strike up a conversation, just real casual. And then I guess the police officers just kind of like, you know, look at over here. And they walk over to this parking lot of tenant and just strike up a conversation, just real casual. And then I guess the police officers just kind of like, you know, looking them and then everything kind of seems

normal and then just walk away. And Papa, I couldn't believe it. Cause I guess at this time, like there was a huge man hunt on for him. And he couldn't believe that Pablo wasn't like losing a shit. And then Pablo like grabbed his hand and put it on his chest, on Pablo's chest, so that this, uh, Papa, you could feel his heartbeat, and he wanted to let

just show him that his heartbeat was like totally fucking chill. That just shit did not get to him. He was just, yeah, he's a villain for sure. He ended up killing a lot of innocent people, but man, there really was something fucking different about this guy. Okay, so again, he does all this shit that I've already said before now by 22

years old. And then now we're in the early 70s. Columbia's geographical location is what made a prominent in North American marijuana trade. Let's talk about that for a second. Smugglers from the rest of South America had to get through Columbia to get to North America and they had to dance to do it. It's called the old Bogota jig. Columbia and Smugglers would shoot around your feet as you jigged your way through the jungle to get out of their fucking country. And even if you love a dance, you fucking hated the Bogotagik. Okay, the dance stuff is obviously bullshit, but the location part is real. And all those paramilitary groups relying on illegal income give rise to this drug industry and Pablo through his various criminal

dealings gets into Samarice where I want smuggling, working for some other traffickers. He's also smuggling cigarettes, whiskey, clothing, housing, appliances, you know, whatever kind of contraband he can make money off that come down from Panama. By the time he's 25, because yeah, things are going back and forth between Panama, down to South America, and then from South America through Colombia, up through Panama, you know, into like Central America, Mexico, North America, U.S. and all that blah, blah, blah. And so he has all these trucks that are just, you know, taking goods back and forth.

And in 1975, Pablo's Panamanian smuggling connections began to ask his dudes about cocaine. They can't believe Pablo's not smuggling cocaine. They start telling him, the Americans are suddenly fucking crazy about it, and willing to pay a lot of money for Coke. So suddenly, Escobar realizes, he's been making business in the wrong field. These big volume of shipments of whiskey and cigarettes and fucking appliances. Now, that's just expensive to carry. You can only fit so much of it in

the truck. It's a pain to gather, load, unload. Well, the same amount of money can be made by shipping like a few pounds of cocaine as could be made by shipping a giant truck of this other stuff So then one of his main lieutenants Caracho the cockroach Cucaracho the cockroach tells Escobar about the existence of the Huaga Valley The upper Huaga Valley in the jungles of northern Peru was a major area of cocoa cultivation Huaga peasant communities have grown cocoa leaves for decades a major area of cocoa cultivation. Hwagga peasant communities have grown cocoa leaves for decades.

If not even longer, there were experts that produced cocaine like crispy cream, fucking produces donuts. And that's what they told him, and he didn't make sense because crispy cream wasn't around yet, especially in Colombia, but still the analogy holds up. Well, each night the Hwagga peasant's hands would turn green after collecting cocoa leaves all day. These people fucking worth, they were the cocoa people. And populous who were recognized that these huaga fields

were more profitable than a gold mine, than an actual gold mine. So soon, Pablo, he starts using his cargo trucks to bring cocaine from Peru. He gets through his trucks to the Peru Ecuador border zone. And then in this border city of Nareño, the trucks are loaded with potato sacks for camouflage. The trucks pass inspection point, reach the town of Balene, Colombia, and that's where

he rents a house and fills it with laboratory equipment, and here's where he starts taking this cocaine base. He's getting from Peru and crystallizing it into the pure powder that would be sold in America. And then the truck was initially packed into luggage bags. The initially would use human mules, you know, people fucking swallowing little condoms and baggies full of coke, taking them to the US on commercial flights where they would shit them out and hopefully not have them burst inside of them and fucking die of a massive overdose. Also in 1975, 25-year-old Pablo has Fabio, with a stepo, murdered his main rival in the

emerging cocaine business, and then Fabio's men a stepo, a murdered, his main rival in the emerging cocaine business, and then Fabio's men are told they're working for Pablo now. And now Pablo is the main man at 25 years old when it comes to Coke and Medellin. And this is basically how he'd handle threats to his business the rest of his life. Somebody's in his way, they're gonna fucking die. And then also in 1975, another huge event occurs

that has nothing to do with Pablo initially, but would affect him greatly As far as his fortune very very soon Criminal associate Carlos later a young Colombian American who'd been picked up in the US for stealing cars cars He would shift him back to Medellin to be sold to his family's dealership remember the the whole fucking smug black market for cars there Well, this guy shares a jail cell with American George Young, who'd been transporting weed and heavy amounts to the US out of Mexico. Now, if you've ever seen the Johnny Depp movie Blow,

Johnny Depp plays George Young, known as Boston George. And basically in the early 70s, George, Boston George had grown a marijuana smuggling business to start it with his stewardess girlfriend, taken weed from LA to Boston, in her luggage, to flying weed straight from the farms that was growing on a Mexico to the US in single engine cessness.

He kind of pioneered that smuggling method. So once Carlos heard about George's smuggling infrastructure, a light bulb goes off, and he knew he's like, oh, fuck, we could fit way more coke in a plane than weed. And the Coke, which wasn't well known in the state yet, but was seen as prestigious in the US by those who were in the know, way more expensive in the US than weed. Even though it didn't cost him more to produce coke

and Columbia than it did to grow weed. And for this guy, Carlos, it's just math. He's like, I'll give you some math right here. We're a gram of high quality pure Colombian Coke in the early 80s sold for about 125 bucks. At that same time, weed sold for 300 to $600 a pound. Well now, there's roughly 453 grams in a pound. So one pound of weed up to 600 bucks.

One pound of Coke, $56,000. Now you're not gonna sell a wholesale at that price, you know, at the grand price, but even if you sold it at 10% of its $56,000. Now you're not going to sell a wholesale at that price, you know, at the grand price, but even if you sold it at 10% of its street value, that's still $56,000 a pound. And you know they sold it for way fucking more than that. And that's way, way, way more than 300 to 600 bucks. And a pound of Coke is way more compact than a pound of wheat. So you get the idea. infinitely more money could be made selling a plane load of Coke than a plane load of wheat. So you get the idea. infinitely more money could be made selling a plane load of coke than a plane load of wheat. All right, well Boston, George and Carlos get out of jail in 1976. They do a test run to see if the coke really will sell and fucking boy does it ever.

Carlos sends a telegram to Boston, George, his parents house, Massachusetts. Right when he gets that a present telling him to find two women, send them to Antigua with Samsonite's two cases. They do that. They come back and George uses some of his old weed connections to test the market and the shit sells out almost overnight. They make hundreds of thousands of dollars almost instantaneously. And then from their old car stealing days,

Carlos knew Pablo Escobar. And he knew that Pablo was building a massive Coke manufacturing infrastructure. He also knew that what Pablo lacked was the right contacts in the US and a more efficient method of getting coke into the US. Boston, George could solve both of those problems and they could all make a lot of money. So Carlos introduces Boston, George to Pablo and millions flow into everyone's pockets. Everyone's pockets accept both jangles, who between being a dog and having only three fucking legs has one hell of a time wearing pants

All right also in 1976 Pablo gets married to 15 year old Maria Victoria and I'll Hanna and the fucking god damn it. These all these names H&AO however the fuck you want to say that. Anyway, powerful men and young brides, I feel like that was such a thing for most of the world's history. I guess a 15 year old isn't gonna ask as many questions as a 25 year old about where all the money is coming from.

To their credit, they remain married until his death, and they'd have to kid, so, you know, it's not like he just messed around with her and then just toss her aside. Well, in May of 1976, Es Escobar and some of his men are arrested coming back from Ecuador with a shipment of cocaine paced. After unsuccessfully attempting to bribe the judges,

he succeeded in bribeing the arresting officers and the case was dropped. He would not be arrested again for 15 years. Silverlead, it works. 1978, just for being the liaison between Pablo and Boston George's American contacts, Carlos makes enough money to buy an island off the coast of the Bahamas called Norman's Kay in 1978.

Just buys the whole fucking island. Constructs a 3,300 foot long runway for a new fleet of drug smuggling aircraft. And now planes are taken off from Pablo's cocaine plants in Colombia, stopping at Norman's Kay to refuel, and then they head there to private airstrips around Miami. In order to protect the island, armed guards and attack dogs, real attack dogs, dogs not led by both jangles, patrol the beaches and run away.

They even had radar, any pilot foolish enough to land there. By accident, it was quickly warmed off by heavily armed guards. And the island became kind of like a modern day Tortuga, if you remember that from the Black Beard episode, like a lawless land. A lawless land for smugglers, in this case, and not pirates.

Carlos Toro, a Medellin cartel member who'd later turned DEA in formant remembers, he says this, this is fucking crazy, he goes, Normans K was a playground. I have a vivid picture of being picked up in a land rover with a top down and naked women driving to come and welcome me from my airplane. And there we partied.

It was Sodom and Gamora, drugs, sex, no police. You made the rules, and it was fun. I bet it was fun. Can you fucking imagine being single on a Coke party island where you're all making millions? Oh my god, I bet it was an insane amount of fun. It's like they were living in a never ending porno that a Hollywood blockbuster budget and no studio execs to tell them how to do fucking anything. They were living in the best

cheesy 80s beach movie of all time and it wasn't even the 80s yet. And so now Pablo and his Medellin cartel are making insane money. And also now there are too many side roads to explore from here on out to stay in this timeline. Good job soldier, you made it back. Barely. So jump ahead a few years 1980 and Pablo is crushing it. Between 1978 and 1981, a period that became known as the cocaine wars, the Medellins sent dozens of hired guns to eliminate the Cubans as well as other rival South American groups. Like Chicago and the 20s and Pablo's idol Al Capone, gang wars become an almost daily occurrence and hundreds are killed. And just like

a poem, Pablo emerges at the top of the pile. And then unlike a poem, he gets to enjoy it a while and doesn't have to fucking rot away in prison while his brain disintegrates from syphilis. So actually quite a bit better than a poem. Well, Pablo has built several airstrips on various properties in central Columbia and is flying commercial jets he's purchased in Norman's K, loaded with literally tons of cocaine. His operation is moving 15 tons of cocaine a day into the US alone. He's making $420 million a week, a week supplying 80% of the nation's

increasing demand for coke. And apparently he made really, really good coke, like really pure, barely cut down. Now I never did coke in the 80s. But you know who did? I'm almost positive. Michael, mother fucking McDonald, that's right, triple M. The five time Grammy winner had admitted numerous times

to quitting drug and alcohol abuse in 1985. That means in 1984 he's doing drugs. And if you're doing drugs in 1984, you're fucking doing blow. All right, and most likely, you're doing Pablo's blow. So there's like a 99% chance Michael McDonald's snorted Colombian cocaine in 1984 and two years before Pablo's death in 1991

There is a 100% chance that Michael McDonald's saying in a diet coke commercial another coke fucking reference Because I found that little clip on YouTube. Let's a taste of real refreshment just for the taste of it Diet coke Fucking nailed it nailed it you listen to that and then you go on YouTube and you listen to that goddamn commercial and you tell me if you can fucking tell any difference All right, you listen to him at the same time with my volume turned way low and his volume turned max. And you tell me if you can hear me, you listen to both the same time with my volume turned

off and his volume turned as high as you can get it. And you tell me if that doesn't sound like Michael fucking McDonald. When will the McDonald's end? Only your hate mail will let me know. But seriously, Pablo is crushing it Even when the island Normans K is shut down by authorities 1982 Pablo doesn't slow down. He just gets more creative He taps a legitimate cargo shipments

Replaces insulation and refrigerators in size of TV sets from Panama with cocaine I can just naked in everywhere man They also makes the highly solvable drug into Guatemalan fruit pulp, Ecuadorian cocoa, Chilean wine, Peruvian dried fish, even soaked into blue jeans. And then it was removed by chemists upon arrival in the United States. So they fucking, where there's a will, there's a way I guess.

Well, actually where there's a lot of fucking money, there's a way. So he begins moving cocaine through poverty, stricken Haiti, instead of the tourists, enclaves to the Bahamas. I don't got a good police force there. Profits were so big pilots would make one way trips off the floor to coast, dropping sacks of cocaine and then ditching their planes into the sea, swimming to waiting escape

ships. You know you're making a lot of fucking money when you can just ride off dumping perfectly good planes into the ocean. Well, in 1982, Pablo also enters Colombian politics. He dreamed of being president as a kid, and now it's seen possible to him. In 1982, Eskabar was for a brief period elected to the House of Representatives of Columbia's Congress.

His political leanings were to the left, but he also expressed admiration for British Prime Minister of Market thatcher among other conservatives. He was able to get elected, because he was enormously popular with the nation's poor. He bought popularity by building football fields and sports facilities supporting health and education programs and even building a whole neighborhood that still exists to this

day. Barrio Pablo Escobar just gave it to the city's poor. Well his political ambitions also showed the seats for his ultimate downfall. He was no longer just some member of the underworld now, right? Now he's in the public eye. Now he's trying to be a legitimate fucking public, you know, personality. And he learns that you can't handle things in the political arena the same way you do in the drug world. And the drug world, if someone got in Pablo's way, they were fucking dead.

Between ordered assassinations, personal killings and terrorist attacks, Pablo would ultimately be responsible for over 4,000 deaths. When Columbia's Minister of Justice, Roderigo Lara, went after him, leading to him being expelled from Congress for his criminal ties, even though Pablo hadn't been officially charged anything, Pablo has him killed in 1984. Lara was gunned down in his car on the night of April 30, 1984 on 127th Street in Bogota by a dude on a motorcycle with an arm machine gun. Riding in the motorcycle sidecar that night was Bojangles. God damn it. That mangy munches keeps getting this filthy pausing

to everything. Bojangles used his one good front paw to knock on Roderigo's window. So we'd look over and provide an easy target for the assassin. Bad dog Bojangles. You're bad dog. Well, the government retaliates by signing an extradition

treaty with the United States. This is a big thing probably in a fucking bad way He might be able to bribe Colombian officials. He might be able to do the fucking Silver led with them, but the DEA. No, they're not gonna care about the silver all right There's gonna take him and his associates out of the country out of Colombia's hair and just let him rot in the US prison Well, Pablo isn't happy about having his political ambitions thwarted, but he does console himself

on this time by indulging in insane amount of wealth. Let's check out some crazy shit. Pablo did with his money in the 80s. This is fucking unbelievable. And I'm not making these ones up. In 1981, he bought four hippos from the San Diego Zoo, from a private zoo, sorry, from the San Diego Zoo, for his private zoo and

one of his estates in Puerto Triunfuel, 93 miles east of Medellín. He also had antelope elephants, exotic birds, giraffes, ostriches, ponies, dislocation de jacienda, napales. He also had a fucking bullring. He had a go-cart track, sculpture garden, large collection of private cars. And then fun side note, I found some national geographic articles about this. The hippos are still there.

Like when they confiscated all his stuff, the hippos, they kind of let the zoo just became dilapidated and then the fucking animals escaped and the hippos are still around. I guess there's about 40 of them there. And to keep them from spreading, the government's actually worried about it. They've been trying to castrate some of the males because they feel that if they don't do that in a few decades, there could be like hundreds of hippos

fucking roaming around. They're fucking up villages. He bought a leered jet specifically for flying around his cash to various banks and the hideouts. That's insane, man, a jet for just your cash. At one point, if Columbia agreed to lift its extradition treaty with the US, which was a huge thing he kept focusing on, because he's not just worried about himself with that extradition treaty. A lot of his buddies, a lot of his cartel associates are getting caught, fucking bounced down into the US, and he can't help him there. Well, if they'll lift that, he'll pay off the nation's debt, which was $10 billion. So he's like, I'll pay the fucking $10 billion dollar debt if he'll change the law. In the nation's debt, which was 10 billion. So he's like, I'll pay the fucking 10 billion dollar debt if he'll change the law.

And the late 1980s, Columbia, and authority sees some of Eskabars enormous fleet. 142 planes, 20 helicopters, 32 yachts, and 141 homes in offices. That was some of his assets, 141 homes, some of his homes. That's more homes than exist in the entirety of my hometown of Reagan's Idaho. I'm not even joking. Pablo could have just bought my fucking hometown and it would have been a

very minor investment for him. He bought two submarines to ship more cocaine with hit fucking submarines. The dude had cartoonish, screwage McDuck giant building full of gold coins money. He bought and funded a Medellin soccer team at Letico National, or National, and turned it from a joke into a South American powerhouse. Eskobar operated in the soccer world the same way he did in his personal business. When he found out an opponent bought off a referee, he had that man hunted down and killed. Probably loved football, by the way. He built 70 soccer fields, roughly 70 soccer fields and poor neighborhoods around Medein and I think

and some surrounding neighborhoods. Escobar made the Forbes a billionaire's list of the world's richest people. Seven years in a row started in 1997, peaked at number 7 in 1989. Next to the estimated wealth of each person on this list, they reference what industry they're in. It's hilarious. I found the original article and it says it'll be like real estate, banking, petroleum, electronics, next to pop-ups, it just says cocaine, estimates of his wealth, the height of his power, run as high as $30 billion.

And it could have been a lot more. It's not like he had this shit in his stock market, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. I almost called him Warren Buffet. Fuck, I so close. I don't know why I'm calling myself out. So close. I would've got some serious time-socker fucking emails if I'm like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. Mr. Buffet, how did you get your money? Lots of food, lots of food, casino food.

It can never be verified how much money Pablo had though, because it was liquid. You know, he had it in cash, fucking stored in weird warehouses and hidden in farms and cartel members walls and shit. I think it's possible, probably even that for a while, he had more cash than any dude in the world. I mean, he once burned $2 million to keep his daughter warm when they were on the run, she was sick.

His immense wealth became problematic when he couldn't launder his cash quickly enough, you know, and that's when he started putting in like the fields, warehouses and all that stuff. Roberto Escobar, the chief accountant and the kingpin's brother in his book, The Accounting Story, inside the violent world of the Medellin cartel,

wrote that Pablo was earning so much each year, we could write off 10% of the money because the rats would eat it in storage or it'd be damaged by water or loss. The fucking rats just always seem ridiculous to me. That's what he wrote. And he wrote that would roughly be 2.1 billion annually based on how much the cartel was making overall. I mean, he had so fucking much money.

He's like, yeah, whatever. We're gonna lose $2 billion this year to mold and rats. Ah, fuck it, whatever. I'm buying another zoo. Not only was Pablo insanely wealthy, he was also insanely violent. In addition to having the minister of justice killed for signing an extradition treaty with the US who wanted to shut down the Columbia to American Coke pipeline, Pablo also had

the American embassy car bombed in 1924. Now they missed the embassy, the bomb went off near it, but they did kill an innocent clumpy woman wounded several others. Then there was the M19 palace of justice siege in 935 when he paid the Communist paramilitary group M19, if we talked about earlier, to raid the palace of justice, clonby a supreme court, and destroy evidence the country had stored

their regarding drug trafficking. It was like during this trial, when the extradition stuff he wanted to fucking just wipe out all records of medine, cartel, criminal activity, to make some stuff easy for him easier for him politically He also hoped that holding the judges just hostage would force Columbia's hand in removing that extradition agreement Well, it didn't but this siege did lead to the death of a bunch of people 48 Colombian soldiers 35 M19 members and 11 Supreme Court Justices ended up getting killed can you fucking imagine if some US drug lord killed even one Supreme Court judge, especially

by walking into the Supreme Court and fucking executing them? American media and public would go bananas. There was a assassination of attorney general, the cartel killed, attorney general Carlos Moro, Hoyos, Yomenes. Why do these people have to have four fucking names? Seriously, God damn it. I wish in this episode, I wish one person was named like fucking Jim John.

The name of the nation's leading prosecutor against Pablo killed him in a kidnapping attempt near Medellin in January 1988. assassination of presidential candidate Galon in 1989 when Colombian journalist and former minister of national education and current senator, the Wies Carlos Galan announced that he would run for president and that one of his key objectives

was extra-riding drug lords, big mistake to say that publicly. Pablo had him gunned down in a political rally. You can actually fucking watch it on YouTube and see this guy getting a fucking murdered. It's crazy. Blows up Aveonka Flight 203 on November 27th, 1999. He killed 107 passengers of avianca flight 203 when he was trying to kill a presidential candidate in the 1999, 1990 election.

Caesar, uh, Guevara, Toreo, Toreo. Uh, again, imagine if this happened today in any western nation. People would lose their shit. If one criminal was responsible for killing a bunch of politicians, a good chunk of the Supreme Court and then blows a passenger jet out of the air in another political assassination attempt. It's like a Vosama bin Laden had not only brought down the twin towers, but also orchestrated multiple assassinations of high ranking politicians.

You probably just fucking nuke Afghanistan. There was a D.A.S. bombing month after the avianca flight, 7.30 a.m. December 6, 1989, a Pablo ordered truck bomb targeting the administrative department of security, DAS, and what it translates in Spanish, their headquarters, it kills 52 people, injures about 1,000, the bomb blast, which was roughly 500 kilograms of dynamite, leveled several city blocks, destroyed more than 300 commercial properties. All in an attempt to assassinate this D.A.S. director, Miguel Mazza Marquez, who actually escaped unharmed.

He had child assassins. During the mid-late 80s, he had a public built a violent army of assassins from the ghettos of Medellin who would kill, who ever, who ever, who ever he told them to. He had a legion of hired guns, secarios, as young as 14, paid him $100 to $3,000 to kill Colombian cops. Huge amount of money in a city where kids from the

slums had fucking almost no other options. Uh, DEA agent Pena, uh, remembers secarios telling him our life expectancy is 22. If we have some money to give our mama some money for sneakers and drinking, what else do we want I mean, these are the fucking population is dealing with also a median cartel member Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha built the cartels military arm hiring British and Israeli mercenaries to train his men Uniting with right-wing death squads and paramilitary paramilitary groups fuck

By his death hit an army by his death, Pablo Sicarios would kill over 1,000 Colombian police officers, over 1,000. One drug cartel is bringing one of the biggest nations in the Americas to its fucking knees. Well, not surprisingly, all this violence escalating throughout the 80s turns Pablo's Medellin into the world's most dangerous city by far. Peaking in the early 90s shortly before Pablo's capture,

here's some fucking crazy numbers for you. Medellin witnessed 6,349 murders in 1991. That's a murder rate of 380 per 100,000 people. Let's put that in some context. By comparison, the city with the highest murder rate right now is Caracas, Venezuela with 119 murders per 100,000. He had fucking over three times that back in Medellin by comparison the most dangerous neighborhood in the US is East St. Louis with 59 murders per 100,000 Chicago, Shairac. It's a lot of

media coverage just under 28 murders per 100,000. Medean had 7,000, and yeah, just under 7,000 fucking murders in 1991, with a population of roughly two million. Sorry, there was a different number there, through me for a second. Chicago had 762 murders in 2016, with a population of 2.7 million. Murder was, it was off the fucking chart.

They were averaging almost 20 murders a day That's insane. Today Medin's murder rate some around 20 murders per 100,000 So no longer shows up on the charts from From all those fucking murders before us. Oh my god so much murder Well, all this murder and violence backfires on Pablo and there is now an increasing A public pressure to end it people are sick of this fucking all the murders and who can blame 200-man task force called Search Block is formed in 1989 by Columbia President Caesar,

Gaviera to capture Pablo, headed by Colonel Hugo Martinez of La Policia, National, De Colombia, the United States has the DEA system, the cartel fight back, 30 of Colonel Martinez's men are killed in the first 15 days. But they do make some headway with Pablo. He's forced into hiding. He has to buy his own taxi firm to whisk him

around from fucking one hideout to the next. Also to get a feel for who else's traveling around the city looking for him. His son later say he and his family removed every two days between 15 hideaways. They had all over the city. Anyone visiting Pablo was blindfolded so they wouldn't know where they had met. And while search block is unable to capture Pablo, Pablo is getting the fucking sick. I've not been able to enjoy his wealth. He's sick. I haven't had to move around all the time.

And the clumping government, they're sick of chasing him. You know, his men are killing more search block members almost every day. More explosions are rock in the city. And so then Pablo tries bribing search blocks commander. The colonel with $6 million, but Martinez won't budge. So then Pablo has his lawyers approach, you know, the Colombian government with the deal. He'll end the violence, he'll turn himself in and serve a few years in prison. If Colombia will end its extradition treaty and not send him to the US and not send

his men to the US, will Colombia pass his new legislation in 1991 eliminating extradition to the US. It was suspected, Pabloribed, several officials to get it passed. And then on June 19, 1991, he and several of his lieutenants turned themselves in, kind of, checked this shit out. Escobar would go to jail in 1991 for five years under the conditions of his surrender. It would just happen to be a jail that he was able to build his specifications on land he owned. This prison, which can be known as Lacatidral, the cathedral was built on Medellin, in Medellin on three hectakers, hectars of land that had he bought in preparation of this possible

agreement with the state. As part of the arrangement, he would also have the right to choose his guards. The location also allowed him a direct sight line to his family's primary home in the hill below. And he even had a telescope mounted so he could see his wife and kid while I talked to them on the phone. They could also visit him several times a week, almost as much as they wanted to, just short of living there with him.

On June 19, 1991, Escobar arrives at this prison and a helicopter to serve his time. The name Cathedral, by the way, was a nod towards its grandeur, not an even religious affiliation. Unofficially, it was called Club Medellin or Hotel Escobar. Resort would have been an app description as well. Escobar's designs featured a bathroom with a jacuzzi, a bed, a circular rotating bed. The compound included soccer field, a disco tech, Where I'm sure they're doing lots of this fucking blow a dollhouse for his daughter had its own bar There was waterfall sell either phones radio transmitters fax machine to allow him to continue with his cartel business While Escobar was living in the cathedral his friends would drop by professional soccer players would be helicopter to end to come play with Pablo and his personal soccer field

prostitutes will be brought in by the fucking Van Lode for crazy orgy like parties. Uh, you didn't have to hide from search block anymore. No more worries about assassinations. It's actually kind of better for him. Uh, he and his fellow inmates, uh, even had their own guns, the people who witnessed them, you just fucking walking around in the prison with the inmates are carrying machine guns. Just openly carried around the guards, uh, as part of the deal.

And you know, you know, you know those guards that he picked are on the fucking payroll. So really they're just on his team as well. As part of the deal, the Columbia National Police, who Pablo was worried about, he thought they were gonna try and kill him. They weren't permitted within a 12 mile radius. All these guards were military. He basically had his own luxurious clubhouse,

the government could call a prison. And why did they allow this? Why did Columbia allow this? Because Escobar's bombings and bribes had pushed the country to the fucking brink of collapse in the in the 1980s. They just wanted it to be over. His imprisonment would be a landmark victory for them, even if his imprisonment was largely symbolic. The arrangement also brought an end to the state's costs and time invested in the endless pursuit of this dude. And Pablo could have easily

rode out the five-year sentence if you didn't have such a fucking gigantic drug lord ego. A year in in 1992, Escobar summoned four of his top lieutenants to the cathedral, whom he had suspected of smuggling money away from him, of stealing some money, and then he has him tortured and killed, right there, in the fucking prison. That causes the Colombian government, once public, here's about this, and they realize this place

is fucking joke, to insist that Escobar be transferred to a regular prison for the remainder of his sentence, and for being a criminal mastermind, the dude's a fucking idiot. Man, he really fucked up a good thing here. He still had literally more money than he knew what to do with. He's worth over 10 billion at least at this point. And, you know, he still losing millions to rats, eating his cash and shitty fucking jungle warehouses. Oh, but he can't take just the possibility that a couple of those tenants might be taking a little money,

but he's skimming a little bit off the top while he's in there. Fuckin' let it go, dude. You're makin' billions, man. It's ego, fuckin' ego. Ruin' so many golden opportunities for people. So now the government sends it an army to take Pablo to a proper prison, right? They're like, nope, they're fucking storming in there.

They're going to storm his prison with that in and of itself is so weird that they have to storm what's technically should be their own prison. But they don't catch him. After 13 months at his scenic palace in the mountains, Escobar fled in June of 1922 and one Pablo Escobar's son many years later revealed how his father escaped He anticipated that one day he might need to flee and so when when he has the place built He orders that one of the Structures perimeter walls like a section of it is mortared with a weak mix of concrete

So that all it would take was a couple kicks to fucking just break it down. How genius is that? The old fake prison wall trick. Who fucking thinks of that? I'm asked to mind, that's you. Well, when the army comes to the hill to get him, he just said, how has his fucking boys kicked down the back prison wall? And they sneak into the jungle, you know? They got all their fucking guns and off they go.

You know, it took the soldiers who stormed Escobar's prison around 12 hours to even fucking fully realize that he'd escaped. So once he leaves the cathedral, Escobar's prison, around 12 hours to even fucking fully realize he'd escaped. So once he leaves the cathedral, Escobar is never taken into custody again. Well, if he thought that the Colombian government was after him before, now they really want to get a hold of this motherfucker. The search block unit is brought back, still run by Martinez and boosted from 200 to 600 men. The US Delta Force sends members to join the team,

Navy SEALs joined the team. The country places a bounty on Escobar of $6 million. Also, a rival cartel, the Cately cartel, which would take over after his death, they wanna finish him off. They formed a vigilante group called Los Pepez, a name derived from the Spanish phrase, perseguidos por Pablo Escobar,

persecuted by Pablo Escobar. While Los Pepez never killed Pablo, they did eviscerate his fucking cartel. Los Pepez carried out a bloody campaign in which more than 300 of Escobar's associates as lawyer, various relatives are murdered, and a large amount of the Median cartel's property is taken by the Cali cartel during all of that.

Well, after fleet is cushy prison, Pablo desperately tries to get his family out of the country because he's afraid those pepies is gonna fucking kill him, which, you know, is a good possible that is, they're trying to do that. Pablo knows that his wife, mother, and kids are in serious danger. And so he's hiding in various safe houses around Medellin,

but he's also trying to get them out of the country, but no country will take him. At one point, his family does make it to Germany, but then the Germany sends him back to Columbia, and then 16 months after escaping from his clubhouse on December 2, 1993, the search block finally finds him. They've been tracing his calls for months, right? Because he can't just stay off the phone.

He's got to fucking try and get his family out of the country. But he also knew that if he could hang up, before three minutes, they wouldn't be able to pinpoint his exact location, but he's getting sick of hiding. He's having a harder and harder time accessing his money. He can't effectively run his cartel anymore. His cartel is being fucking decimated. He's separate from his family, you know, it's the day after his 44th birthday, he's missing his kids and talks to his son for too long. Now, he knew, he knew he's supposed to keep on a three minutes, but he just didn't give a shit anymore. That's fucking Pablo. He's still got that ego. Still think he can get around, you know, anybody's rules.

And then the son of search blocks commander traces his call to an exact location, a rooftop chase ensues, and then depending on whether you believe the police or his son, he's either shot in the ear by one of these police officers from search block or he shoots himself in the ear. Something he allegedly told people he'd rather do than be captured and sent to an American prison.

He'd always said he'd rather lie in a Colombian grave than rot in an American prison. Well, in the minutes after his death, Colombian commandos posed like big game hunters over Escobar's corpse. I actually just found that picture. Pretty even though he did a lot of bad shit, it's a weird fucking picture.

Like they're so happy. It really is like a big game photo. It's like they're over like a fucking giant elk or something or like like, it's fucking kind of creepy. Viva Columbia, we've just killed Pablo Escobar, a Colombian policeman shouted over his radio as he broke the news.

But then, despite all the violence in Mayhem, he had caused for the last two decades 25,000 people, actually over 25,000 people attended his funeral. Many people still loved him because Escobar had rallied support among Colombians, poor citizens by stepping in when the government wouldn't. You know, he built that apartment complex and that neighborhood of Medellin, it still bears his name.

Where, you know, even today, I found on some documentary, people still praise him for what he did, you know, for their families in the community. You know, one person said like, there were swam. So what we call houses of cardboard and wood, remembers a community leader who lived in the Barrio Pablo Escobar. And Escobar, he said, paid to build homes, hundreds of homes in the Apoverished area where there previously just been like a garbage dump.

He said while he was alive, everyone respected him, everyone managed themselves well in his neighborhood. The man left a twisted legacy, for all the murders he committed, or had committed on his behalf, he also by all accounts also loved his wife, his mom and kids, you know, he truly did help a lot of those in need. I mean, he did cheat on his wife, but he also, you know, he loved her too. Even his drug empire, not that I'm saying that's right,

by the way, no one getting a fucking worked up, you know, to send me fucking crazy letters, even his drug empire, you know, provided jobs to like tens of thousands of people overall. Who otherwise wouldn't have made the money he was able to pay him. He spoiled a hell out of his son. Juan Pablo grew up with everything a boy could fucking want. The family lived in a Hacienda, Nopales, a vast and Tony ranch, you know, they had 27 artificial lakes, 27 swimming pools zoo I talked about an airstrip gas station 1700 employees live in there one time But the time his son was 11 he owned 30 high-speed motorbikes 30 water scooters ATVs go carts dune buckets 13 he had his own bachelor pad with two large bedrooms zebra skin fucking rug futuristic bar

His son also remembers the tender side of his father, saying to him every night, bedtime, promise him in the world, told me if I wanted to be a doctor, he would give me the best hospital one, Pablo said. He never wanted me to follow in his footsteps. But still, even if his son didn't understand the choices his father made, or I'm sorry, but still, his son didn't understand the choices his father made. He did think in reference to an interview, he said, what's the point in having all that fucking wealth if you're constantly living in fear of being captured and having it all taken away? And that is strange. You know, why make all that money? If you don't get to enjoy it, he could have walked away many times, but according to the interviews of Hitman, I watched like Papa, he,

he enjoyed being an outlaw. It was his identity, you know, for him, a straight life wasn't worth living. And now before I get into my final final thoughts on Pablo, some of you listeners referenced a possible CIA connection with him, and I looked into it, and here's what I found. Basically, their speculation is the CIA turn to blind eye towards cocaine shipments, coming out of countries like Nicaragua and Colombia as long as the people and or governments make money,

use that money to fight communism in those areas, like I talked about earlier. They allowed the sale of cocaine to fund communism, resistance efforts in South and Central America. The newspaper San Jose Mercury actually ran an expose on this possibility in the mid 90s. Saying on August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published the first installment of a three-part series of articles concerning crack cocaine, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Nicaraguan Contra Army. The introduction to the first installment of the series reads,

For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the crypts and blood street gangs of Los Angeles, and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American gorilla army run by the US CIA, our Mercury News investigation has found. This drug network opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the crack capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America and provided the cash and connections to the LA's gangs to buy automatic weapons. So there's some other weird gang stuff there too. And I know people actually written and asked about the CIA drug connection. So

there's a little tip of the iceberg for it. And his son, Juan Pablo, also confirmed that he felt like his dad was working with the CIA. He said he was doing it again to help fight communism, Central America. I said his father also funded many leave-like activities and countries deemed hostile to the United States under the supervision of the CIA. He said the drug business is very different than what we dreamed. What the CIA was doing was buying the controls to get the drug into their country and getting a wonderful deal. Escobar did not make the money alone,

but with US agencies that allowed him to access his money. He had direct relations with the CIA. The person who sold the most drug to the CIA was Pablo Escobar, and that's his son, saying that in a documentary called Sins of My Father. And his son also discussed how the US government agencies include in the CIA, where his father's partners in the drug trade, which I just kind of already said.

According to him, this kind of allowed his father to defy the law with a little more aggression, giving him kind of similar powers to those in the Colombian government. And yeah, then when he also said that when the CIA felt his dad was no longer useful and just kind of too violent, that's when they kind of gave the go ahead like, let's fucking give her to this guy. Now do I believe all this?

Yeah, maybe, I mean, maybe, sure. Maybe the CIA figured the drugs were going to make it to the US anyway, so why not make a little money and use it to fund some kind of lesser of several evils, kind of paramilitary group, who would work with the US if they claimed whatever throne they were chasing. I think she liked that, claimed whatever throne they were chasing. I think she liked that. That's happens quite a bit. Nothing I, before we end here, after all this research, I wanted like, what happened

to all his money after he died? Did it go to his wife and kids? What happened to them? Well, no one knows exactly what happened to all the money. But the various international banks probably took some where he had it deposited. Kelly Cartel probably took a lot from his hidden fucking locations, governments of the countries that held those international banks took some US and Colombian governments.

I'm sure took some. And yeah, and then maybe his family got a little bit. Juan Pablo, his sister and his mom, fled Colombia to Mozambique in Africa after his death. They obtained a tourist visa from there to enter Argentina. And then there they lived a quiet middle class life in a Buenos Aires apartment equipped with multiple housekeepers

until 1999. So they must have found some of the money. And then five years into their new life where it got out in Argentina, of who they really were and in 2000, Maria Victoria and her son were arrested on money, laundering charges. That was the new name she took.

Escabar's widow was allegedly receiving illegally earned money from Colombian drug lords in Uruguay and they were held in jail for 15 months, which was actually longer than Pablo. Escobar's widow was allegedly receiving illegally earned money from Colombian drug lords in your way. And they were held in jail for 15 months, which is actually longer than Pablo was ever incarcerated, or about the same time he spent in his fucking palace. And the authorities released them based on insufficient evidence. And then the son, in Argentina, he went to school, became an architect, was in a documentary in 2009 called Sens of My Father.

He spent a lot of his last couple of years trying to apologize to victims of his father, show that violence doesn't have to be transmitted from one generation to the next. Little is not about pop-ups daughter, born in 1984, Manuela's life, with her father was cut short, Escobar's acquaintances, survivors,

recall Manuela as her father's spoiled little princess, when Eskabar took this out. When Eskabar's daughter wanted a unicorn, for example, he bought her a horse and fucking stapled a cone to its head and wings to its back. And then the horse later died of an infection caused by all this. So, you know, his unicorn surgery was unsuccessful. When Manuela asked her dad how much a billion dollars was, he responded to the value of your eyes, my princess. Escobar even forced one of his mistresses to get an abortion when she became pregnant because the drug lord had promised his daughter to be the last of his line. You know, whatever she wanted she got except for a life of peace and safety and a dad who wouldn't get shot to death.

And then nobody really knows where she is now. And fucking crazy shit. Born poor became one of, if not the wealthiest man in the world and then died essentially with nothing cut off from his family at 44. You know, research in his life kept thinking about how surreal it all sounded, but that it was totally real. Like, he actually led that life. Can you imagine waking up his Pablo

with the height of his power in the mid 80s when your organization that you created making half a billion dollars a week, you know? When for all intents and purposes, your country answers to you. When you own a fleet of planes, a fleet of jets, you fucking own zoo. I wonder if you ever in a private moment just thought,

get the fuck out of here. Is this shit really happening? Am I really this rich and powerful, little o' me? Stunt of a farmer and a schoolteacher, a poor kid from Medellin, who once went to school barefoot because my parents couldn't afford to buy me goddamn shoes. And now I decide who lives, who fucking dies?

You know, but he also had to always watch his back. Had to make sure someone was gonna pull a bullet in his head, make sure someone was gonna bump him off the throne. You know, and so much hiding from people trying to capture him. How fun was that? Could've been, must've been horrible, especially when you got a family, man, it's complicated.

Too complicated for me. Maybe I'm just not as, that ambitious, but it did make for an interesting life, you know? One we still wanna hear about. Fuck, I'm sure this is the longest time I've done at this point, and it could be four times as long with all this shit out there about him. I'm sure more movies and shows are going to be made about him.

And now before I'm done with him, let's suck on him just a bit more with some top five takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, after killing numerous government officials blowing up a plane and having over a thousand police officers killed, Pablo turns himself in to serve a five-year prison sentence. In a prison he built, God of himself in to serve a five year prison sentence. In a prison he built, God of Amen, he chose, visited by prostutes, he also chose, fucked up, but also fucking impressive, to be able to pull that off.

Number two, he stapled a horn to a horse's head and wings to its back to give his daughter a unicorn. Again, fucked up, but also fucking impressive in a stick way. In a very demanded way, his dad game was pretty on point. Well, little girl doesn't daughter a unicorn. Again, fucked up, but also fucking impressive in a sick way. In a very demanded way, his dad game was pretty on point. Well, little girl doesn't want a unicorn. Number three, he had a lear jet specifically used to transport giant piles of cash and he still ended up losing millions to rats when he ran out of places to put it.

You might be ballin' in your life, but unless you have a flyin', but unless you're flying a plane of cash to a rat-infested cash warehouse, You're not Pablo Ballon, alright? Number four, to me the most impressive number that surrounds Paola had nothing to do with money. It's the 25,000 people came to his funeral. How many other career criminals can claim that? Evil or not, the man clearly had some serious fucking charisma. Number five, Coca-Cola is a product of racism. How where is that?

At least one good thing came from horrible bigotry, I guess. Because Coke is fucking delicious, especially cherry coke. All right, can we agree on that? And without Coke, we wouldn't have Diet Coke. And without Diet Coke, we wouldn't have Michael McDonald's jingle. What's the cool going down? What's the cherishing through me? What's that all that takes your breath away? Time suck tough, right takeaway.

Thanks a listen everybody. Hope you enjoyed that sweet suck as much as I did. Not sure if that episode made me ever want to do Coke again or if it made me want to do Coke every fucking day Probably gonna stick with never again. Why are so many fun things bad for you? I got some upcoming shows on a mention. I'm gonna be at the University Inn in Moscow, Idaho for two shows next Saturday May 6th 6 and 9 p.m. You can call 208882 0550 for tickets If you want it comes gonna be a good time. It's gonna be a fun show and a fun college town If you want to come, it's going to be a good time. It's going to be a fun show and a fun college town.

I'm also going to be the historic punchline comedy club in San Francisco, May 10th through the 13th, and I will be just north of Los Angeles at Levitie Live in Oxnard, California, May 26th, 27th and 28th. And very excited for Monday's episode. It's going to be designer babies, genetic modification. What brave new world are we entering? What Pandora's Box are we about to open? The science they've been able to choose your babies,

eye color, height, health, intelligence, et cetera, et cetera has already begun. Geneticists are working right now on the genetic modification of human embryos. Sounds kind of good on the surface, right? To guarantee new parents a healthy, well-adjusted, beautiful child, what fucking shit storm is that going to lead us into? You know, could a rogue nation create a race of superhuman soldiers?

Maybe? Could our nation truly enter a new phase of the haz and have knots where the wealthy are able to scientifically evolve their kin, right? And eventually themselves, and then the poor are just completely left behind, truly unable to bridge the gap because they literally don't have what it takes inside of them to compete with these new super-humans. Crazy, crazy shit.

Find out how close we are to the possibility of a very, very new reality, and so much more this Monday on TimeSuck, and until then, keep both eyes peeled for Bojangles One Eye, and you keep on sucking.