Danny Gold

Welcome back to the New World Podcast, an audiovisual experience program that takes the listeners on a journey through international organized crime, past, present, and future, around the globe and back, hosted by two journalists who spent their careers traveling all over reporting on stories like this and only partially regret it.

I'm Danny Gold, and I'm joined as always by Sean, the steroid queen Williams in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who has been dabbling in performance-enhancing drugs so he can keep pace with the young Argentines in his Sunday football league.

How's that working out for you, big guy?

God, it's so demeaning as a start.

I mean, I would only do one after a while.

But yeah, so I spent three months doing Muay Thai at a Thai Muay Thai camp in 2009, right before I went back to school for journalism at CUNY.

And if we get enough Patreon members, Danny will go back and fight

in the ring.

Sadly, no alliteration there.

And I'm joined by Danny Gold in New York City.

I just went to Uruguay for the first time.

It was very nice.

And I also have eaten so much meat, more than a liver king.

And I have perpetual meat sweats, which you might even be able to see on the video.

Danny, what is new with you? Yeah, did you get over the Yankees season yet? I think I have.

Yeah, and the Giants.

This is the Underworld Podcast.

welcome back to the underworld podcast an audio visual program that takes the listeners on a journey through international organized crime past present and future around the globe and back hosted by two journalists who spent their careers traveling all over reporting on stories just like this one meet danny gold and my british libertine partner sean williams who is now based in argentina where he is single-handedly trying to reignite a new falcons war especially when he's been drinking for at least five hours in buenos aires pubs

Yeah, we do not say the F word out here.

You are definitely going to get me killed if anyone I know listens to this.

Hello, this is the Underworld Podcast, the weekly crime show that pits two illusory reporters and disillusioned men against the endless morass of drugs, violence, and political tomfoolery that is organized crime.

I am Sean Williams, a magazine writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I am joined as ever by my podcast wife and sometimes psychological counselor, Danny Gold in New York City.

Yeah, I kind of like that.

I think of you more though as a guy at a bar who is like forced to listen to me complain, but you're my psychological counselor as well.

It's huge.

As Danny just said, I went pretty, uh, yeah, just lost my mind out there actually, and it shows.

And plus, uh, I reported on a murder that happened while I was there that sort of occurred a couple of blocks away while I was losing my mind.

So this whole story is like a noir whodunit mixed with memoir and good old-fashioned reportage.

All of which is to say, I was quoted prices of up to 500 bucks to get across the island, so I decided I would stay in and around Havana, and even within that, the mad poor neighborhood of Centro Havana, which is a grid of 18th century townhouses.

It's kind of like flyover state between Old Havana and the upscale district of Vedado, which is still today where all the rich kids and diplomats go dancing.

Centro, by the way, was where that murder I just mentioned happened, but it also allowed me, accidentally I should add, to experience the crisis like a local, which as Danny can testify to-

[chuckles]