Brace Belden and Liz of True Adon—joined by son Young Chomsky—welcome Matt from Ghost Stories from the End of the World to dissect Cosa Nostra’s shadowy ties to U.S. intelligence (CIA, MI6, NATO) and JFK’s assassination, a topic teased but never examined in past episodes. This "101-style" deep dive blends history with geopolitical intrigue, exposing how mafias manipulate state power while jokingly rejecting their own Mafia Qua Mafia branding. [Automatically generated summary]
Do you remember, like, it must have been the second or third episode that we did.
I know exactly what you're referring to, yes.
And it was, I think it was the opening.
We were sitting in Jung Chomsky's little studio on the very couch that Brace would soon lose his phone inside of.
Yeah, that's not my fault that couch was made like that.
Which we then could not get it out of because we couldn't lift the cushions out of it.
Anyway, that's a separate.
That's a separate couple.
The cushions were attached to, it was not.
It was a psycho couch.
I've never seen a couch like that.
Very comfortable.
However, we were sitting on that couch, that very couch.
And you were like, I know how we're going to start the episode.
And you proceeded to, well, do you want to do it?
You come to me.
You come to me on the day of my daughter's molesting.
You really want me to do?
You come to me on the day of my daughter's molesting when I offer her up to this older gentleman.
You come to me and you ask me to do a podcast episode.
Well, what are you a fukazoo?
What are you smoking some sopransetta?
And so on and so on.
Unfortunately, I've had jowl removal surgery since then and can no longer do it.
But that's right.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're taking a trip to Italy.
Buongiorno, cocksuckers.
My name is Brace Belden.
Hello, everyone.
Dawn of Yawns.
And I am joined by my beautiful princess.
No, don't ever call me that.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Liz.
And we're joined by my darling young son, Young Chomsky.
And together we make a family called.
This is True Adon.
Hello, everyone.
Hi.
We have.
You're acting a little shy today.
I'm the shy Dawn.
I don't want to extort him.
He would be yelling at me.
I don't want to be the boss of all bosses.
Do I have to hit him in the kneecaps?
What if he's taller than me?
Actually, I guess that would make it easier.
We're so excited because we're having on Matt from Ghost Stories from the End of the World, which is a podcast we both really love, to talk about something that, okay, we have in many, many episodes Referred to the mafia in the past, the Italian mafia.
We've talked about their relationship with the U.S., we've talked about their relationship with the CIA.
What other intelligence agencies have we done with MI6?
We've talked about how deeply embedded the mafia is in intelligence agencies.
We've talked about the intelligence agencies embedding themselves in Italian politics with the help of the mob, right?
Yeah.
In our episodes about the years of lead, in our episodes about the history of NATO.
I'm just like thinking off the top of my head, but we have never ever.
JFK.
Of course, JFK.
How could I forget?
But we've never ever talked about the mafia itself.
We've never given them their own episodes.
Would that be Mafia Quo Mafia?
Is that would that be?
Qua, I think.
Qua.
It'd be Mafia Qua Mafia.
Yeah.
That's the name of, should that be the episode name?
Mafia Qua Mafia.
Yeah.
That's a horrible episode name.
Really bad episode name.
Yeah.
Let's, we can, we can workshop that a little bit.
Okay.
But we've never really done it.
And so we thought we should have Matt on because this is a huge fucking topic.
We're doing a kind of 101 style, right?
Brace, can you explain?
So sometimes on the little podcast we like to call True Anon, we do, we're a sort of general audience podcast.
And we like to do a little, like, you know, we did a little deep state 101.
We do like sort of, I guess, these Vox style explainer episodes, but to really explainer.
This is actually literally what Liz calls these behind the scenes.
They were called that, Splaners.
We do a little Splainer episode and we figured, why not?
Let's do a motherfucking Cosa Nostra Splainer, but also not just a Splaner, a little bit of a case study for how mafias writ large tend to operate in relation to the state.