wbur.org
support wbur today!
Listen to this show
The Once and Future Mafia
photo

By host Tom Ashbrook:

Last Tuesday morning, in the Sicilian town of Corleone no less, Italian police moved in on Italy’s most wanted man, top boss of the Cosa Nostra, the chief of chiefs, the “capo di capi.”

After forty-three years of eluding capture, Bernardo Provenzano was grabbed, in a farmhouse a mile outside the town that gave Hollywood’s Godfather movies their family name.

Yesterday, the Corleone town council declared April 11th “Liberation Day,” the “end of a long dark night.” But the Mafia story is not over in Italy, and globally organized crime now has many faces.

Hear about the Mafia and organized crime in an era of globalization and terror.

Guests:

Gabe Kahn, Rome Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal;
Simonetta Agnello-Hornby, author of novels “The Almond Picker” and “Zia Marquesa”;
Letizia Paoli, Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, author of “Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style,” and a consultant to the Italian Organized Crime Task Force

Peter Reuter, Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland, Senior Economist at the Rand Corporation in Washington and author of “Disorganized Crime: The Economics of the Visible Hand”;
Federico Varese, Lecturer in Criminology at Oxford University and author of “The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy.”

 
 

Comments are closed.

Recent Shows
The Future of Aging
Thursday, November 5, 2009 image

A surge of new strategies to “manage” aging — from diets to testosterone. We’ll get the story.

Comments [31]
 
Climate, Congress & Copenhagen
Thursday, November 5, 2009 image

The Copenhagen climate conference is one month away. US climate action is going nowhere in Congress. We’ll look at the global implications of America’s domestic climate politics.

Comments [73]
On Point Blog
California, here we come! And we need your questions!

On Point is headed west!
No, no. Not for good. Only for one show. But it’s a very special show!  The NPR station in Thousand Oaks, California – KCLU – is celebrating their 15th anniversary. We’re lucky to have been on their airwaves for nearly seven years, and they invited us out west to host a live [...]

More » | Comments [7]
 
For Love of Science – or Money?

A new study supports the idea that U.S. dominance in engineering and science is threatened — but not for lack of training and education. It has more to do with a lack of social and economic incentives.

More » | Comments [5]
 
Matthew Hoh’s Resignation Letter

Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain, became the first foreign service official to publicly resign in protest over the war in Afghanistan. The move has generated a lot of reaction. You can read Hoh’s resignation letter, posted by The Washington Post, which reported on it here.
It’s a topic for our news roundtable today. What [...]

More » | Comments [4]