00:00:09
Speaker 1: Y Bassa, Boston. How are you today?
00:00:12
Speaker 2: I have an amazing guest and you have no idea what he's dedicated his life too.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: But before I even introduce him, I want you to know that it was a very big goal of mine to have him here because he doesn't know, but I'm a big fan, a big fan that has watched all his documentaries that follows him on his gb H show, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at a panel and when I was there, I'll start stroke, but I didn't show you. So it's the re first way.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: Today I get to interview you, and I'm so happy and cas to have you at my show.
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Speaker 1: I was dying to ask you so many.
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Speaker 2: Questions, first and foremost because we're yeah, we share a.
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Speaker 1: Little bit of the mic on your end and I'm in my end. But I've been aiming to get a production like you have.
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Speaker 2: So tell me a little bit of how you got into the whole GBH thing before even that journalism.
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Speaker 1: How you start your career.
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Speaker 3: So the place it starts for me is music. I was if you go back to high school, I was, you know, the kid playing in bands, a kid with a microphone and a little studio in my bedroom, making tracks and beats and things.
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Speaker 4: So that's that's where I'm coming from.
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Speaker 3: And about ten years ago I had an opportunity to make like a radio news piece. I'd never done anything like. I never studied journalism, I've never worked in radio. I had no background in broadcasting. But I made this short, little documentary piece. It was for a class assignment. Actually I was in graduate school and I was assigned to make a radio.
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Speaker 4: Piece, okay, And I realized that, you know.
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Speaker 3: Coming from music, coming from making in my bedroom, I kind of knew.
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Speaker 4: My way around sound, you know.
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Speaker 3: I knew how to make stuff sound okay, how to edit, how to use you know, things you understand like compression. And it was really this eye opening moment of Wow, I can take my background in music and sound and I can apply it to the questions I have about the world, you know, about.
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Speaker 4: Our society, about politics, about culture history. And that's what I've been doing ever since.
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Speaker 2: Were you ever afraid of getting on the mic and asking the tough question?
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Speaker 4: So when I started out, I was off the mic.
00:02:32
Speaker 3: I was doing you know, produced, I was exactly for probably five ish years when I first started doing this work. I was always behind the scenes. I could send you a half a dozen podcasts.
00:02:44
Speaker 4: I made where you never hear my voice once.
00:02:47
Speaker 3: And the thing that ultimately got me in front of the mic was just one of the beauties of podcasting. Would you understand we're sitting in their rum, just the two of us hanging out. You don't need a big staff, yeah to do this, you can just do.
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Speaker 2: It and more with the technology and AI now forget about it exactly.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So for me, what got me behind the mic was like, I have all the skills, like I can do this entirely on my own, over the very small team and I and that's what got me into sort of telling my own stories.
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Speaker 2: So you started behind the scenes, Yeah, podcasting GBH is not behind the scenes and is not a small company. No, how did you get to that point? I mean it was that always your goal was that you're you know, were you excited about it?
00:03:33
Speaker 1: They approach you, and you approach them. How did it happen?
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Speaker 3: So there's a it feels kind of cosmic now, I told you ten years ago was twenty fifteen. I was given an assignment to make a three minute radio piece. I'd never done anything like it before. I was doing this workshop, like I mentioned, and the person leading the workshop said, Hey, I think I could help you pitch this to an actual radio show.
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Speaker 4: She pitched it to WGBH, to a show they have there that's still on the air called The World. And so literally the first thing I ever made, I go on this journey.
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Speaker 3: I do other shows and other things for other people, and then just a few years ago, I found myself, you know, doing some freelance work with w GBH, working on a few projects. I worked on as you were watch Antiques road shows. I helped launch the Antiques road Show podcasts. I worked on a Nova podcast and for their science show. So I knew some of the folks in the building, and I had the same feeling that you have, like this is a great historic radio station. They should have a documentary podcast that draws on the rich archives, the decades of history.
00:04:41
Speaker 4: In the stories about this place.
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Speaker 3: And so I pitched them this idea of doing a podcast about the Big Dig, which listeners here in Boston.
00:04:52
Speaker 4: Many of you will know, was this epic infrastructure project. And that's what started the relationship. Really was was that idea, And that was just a few years ago.
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Speaker 2: So this show is the most important to me because it's my platform to share tools and resources where I work. It's a show that also gives them the opportunity to learn a little bit about who's the guest, but also of how they can accomplish their dreams and their goals.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, if you were that young ian behind you know the speakers, and just listening to this show, what was that turning point that made you decide that or made you think that you could do us?
00:05:32
Speaker 1: You know the poster syndrome. It's big, especially for us that we see so.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: Many podcasts nowadays, so many shows, so many channels, so.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: It can get overwhelming. What would you say to that young ian is starting.
00:05:48
Speaker 3: I think the lesson I had to learn that I would pass on to somebody in my same position years ago or my same position now would be there was a moment in my career where I think pretty good at doing the behind the scenes thing, and if I had just been if I just stayed sort of comfortable in that, I could still be doing that now. And then there's nothing against that work. I mean, it's great, fascinating work. We need to we need that too. But no one was ever going to push me out into No one ever came to me and said, wow, you're pretty good at making telling other people's stories, Like do you have a story you.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: Want to tell?
00:06:24
Speaker 3: There was usually that that opportunity that doesn't come to you, and so there was a moment.
00:06:30
Speaker 4: This was in around twenty twenty. It was actually during the pandemic.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: A lot of people were kind of re evaluating their you know, what they're doing, and so what it took for me is during that I had.
00:06:40
Speaker 4: A little free time.
00:06:41
Speaker 3: I did a totally self produced podcast. This is the first show that I ever hosted myself, and I a serious It was a series. There's a multi parts, a five part series. There was no budget, there was no it was I had a friend, Lacy Roberts was still are the editor for the work I do at GBH now, but she worked with me as my sort of my sounding board editor for it and it was a passion project. We did it together. I had no expectations.
00:07:12
Speaker 6: I had no institution behind me to market it, and I put that out in the world in twenty twenty one and it actually, to my great surprise, it went way further than I ever thought it would, and that was.
00:07:22
Speaker 4: Really what open the door for me. So I think especially in.
00:07:25
Speaker 3: A medium like this where you don't need anyone's permission, Yeah, and you don't really need much more technology than you can then most people can scrounge together.
00:07:35
Speaker 4: There's nothing stopping me from just doing it.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: It's funny to say that because it was very similar to me when I was brought into this project of Capaza Boston.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: I never even thought that I was going to be doing this.
00:07:47
Speaker 2: I was actually running the sales department on the on the side on the Cospatic market, and I was like, Okay, I'll figure it out. I didn't know how to press buttons, you see all these complex, you know, equipment, But I figure it out. And I've been figuring it out ever since, and I do everything, you know, from the editing to the everything. Even though it's a huge company, you know, I've been taking these projects.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: As a little baby, and I've been molding and.
00:08:13
Speaker 2: It was very scary, Yeah, because I did not know what was going to happen.
00:08:17
Speaker 1: On the other side. I was like, are they listening? Really?
00:08:19
Speaker 4: Are they?
00:08:19
Speaker 2: Am I doing this just for myself? Are they gonna like it? Are they judging? Isn't gonna be transcendent. Is it going to really convey the message that I want to share? And to my surprise, it's been an amazing journey. I would love for you to share that journey that you are experiencing right now because you have a great, great documentary about our fishing community here in Massachusetts.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about it.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So a couple of years ago, I was looking around for story ideas our first so just for contacts, our first season, the show about the Big dig and come out.
00:08:54
Speaker 4: I didn't know what would happen. It ended up.
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Speaker 3: Making you know, the Best of the Year list from the New York from Apple Podcasts, from Vulture, It won a Peabody Award, I was on the Apple Podcast charts.
00:09:06
Speaker 4: It was it was surreal.
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Speaker 3: I mean I had people who I had considered heroes reaching out to me to say like, hey, I listened to the show. I really appreciated it. I mean it was truly a life changing experience. And so I had done that one documentary without any conception of what will come after it, and just a couple of months after it came out, GBH came back to me and said, let's do another.
00:09:33
Speaker 4: What other ideas do you have And I really didn't have anything ready.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: I didn't have an idea queued up, so I was but I knew that was an opportunity, you know.
00:09:42
Speaker 4: I did not want to let that pass by.
00:09:44
Speaker 3: So I said, you know, give me a couple of weeks and I'll try and figure something out.
00:09:48
Speaker 4: So I was looking.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Around for story ideas, and part of what I wanted to do was, you know, we've done this story about infrastructure project in Boston.
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Speaker 4: I wanted to.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: Tell different stories about different corners of Greater Boston to sort of fill fill out the whole world of this city in this region, you know, different industries, different communities, different pockets of culture. And so I was looking there for stories and I stumbled on this article from about a decade ago about this fishing mogul in New Bedford who is known as the Codfather. And I'll admit that just the name caught my attention, right, And so just on a whim, I didn't really know what the story was, but I just you know, I found a phone number online and I called him up. His name is Carlos Raphael. He still lives down in the New Bedford area. He's Portuguese yeah, and he picked up the phone. How surprised, and he said, sure, why should come down and talk?
00:10:50
Speaker 2: Now?
00:10:50
Speaker 3: I should say, for context, Carlos, this is not a spoiler to say that Carlos goes to prison at the end of this story. He is a these you know, convicted of twenty seven felony crimes involving his fishing business. He has turned down a lot of interview requests over the.
00:11:07
Speaker 4: Years, and I don't know why. I think I just caught him at a good time.
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Speaker 3: I asked him the same question of like, why did you agree to this interview? Because I've met other people since who were like man, I would have loved to talk to Carls. I tried to talk to her, and so he invited me down. We sat in his office, which just to paint the scene. You know, he's right by the waterfront in New Bedford, which you know if you.
00:11:29
Speaker 4: Haven't spent time there, to gorgeous waterfront city.
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Speaker 3: It is the most valuable commercial fishing port in more so than Gloucester, more so than any port in Alaska, you know, Seattle anything, there's millions and millions of dollars of seafood comes through that port. So there's big warehouses, concrete docks, you know, loading boats everywhere. It's a real kind of industrial place. And Carlos he come into his office and all around the walls are posters from the movie's Scarface.
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Speaker 1: Cut fut so that and in a way, you know, if you.
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Speaker 3: Know that the movie, if you know the story of Tony Montana, Carlos is a bit like that. He's an immigrant. He came here as a young man, a risk taker, looking for opportunities, all or nothing, when all in on the fishing business, built an empire, truly, you know, one of the biggest commercial fishing empires in the country, and then had this very dramatic downfall where he was arrested in undercover I R sting operation.
00:12:31
Speaker 4: And that was the story you told me.
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Speaker 7: And how is it for you to be part of such a moment, right, Because it's not just about the story you're telling, is how you're playing an intricate part of telling the story.
00:12:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you're editing, when you're putting the.
00:12:49
Speaker 2: Pieces of the postle together, you're like, okay, should I share these parts?
00:12:54
Speaker 1: Because that's a trick.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: When you're editing, you can record all day long and then He's like, Okay, what real is a story that I want to tell him?
00:13:02
Speaker 1: How am I going to tell it? What was that journey for you? Yeah?
00:13:05
Speaker 3: I mean when we do these documentaries, you know, different than a podcast where you just you know, turn on the mic and talk. You know, we're recording sometimes fifty sixty seventy five interviews. Each interview could be an hour and a half, two hours long. We're finding hundreds of archival news clips from the back in time, sifting through all so really hundreds and hundreds of hours of material that we then condense down into this documentary.
00:13:31
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, the challenging.
00:13:33
Speaker 3: Thing about telling the story of Carlos is that as I described, you know, the scarface posters, the codfather, the felony charges.
00:13:41
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a guy he is. He's a rough character. A lot of people don't like him.
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Speaker 3: He has broken the law, he has hurt people, not physically, not violently.
00:13:51
Speaker 4: But you know, and the way he ran his business.
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Speaker 3: And so my goal with the series is but I also don't want to paint him as just a villain, because I think it's attempting to see him as just oh.
00:14:02
Speaker 4: You know, this crooked fisherman who you know sometimes.
00:14:05
Speaker 1: Right where where does he fit? Is the you know, bad mafia guy or.
00:14:11
Speaker 2: Is he the one that produced a lot of revenue for a lot of people for a lot of years, because you know, you're feeding families exactly.
00:14:17
Speaker 3: And that's the complexity that I was And it was very delicate because I want to present him as in a human way, and he is. You know, when you talk to people around New Bedford you ask him about Carlos Raphael.
00:14:29
Speaker 4: Some people will tell you he is a hero.
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Speaker 3: You know that, like he kept this port working, he kept people employed, He put you know, food on people's tables.
00:14:38
Speaker 4: And you talk to other people and they said, Carlos Rafael is the worst thing that ever happened to the city of New Bedford. You get that whole r.
00:14:48
Speaker 2: So he could be a hero because he won so many championships, and at the same time, like you know, I think everybody has their ups and for you, what is it a hero?
00:15:00
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not one or the other. I think what I tried to convey in the series is that.
00:15:07
Speaker 3: Carlos and all the whole fishing industry are caught up in a system, you know, and this is going to sound a little nerdy and wonky, but it's a system of regulations, government rules, science, this whole complex web that determines, you know, how much fish you are allowed to catch, what kinds of fish you were allowed to catch. And I truly believe that everyone in that system, the government, scientists, the federal regulators, the politicians, the fishermen, the fish buyers, everybody wants what's best. Everybody wants to feed people and have a healthy fishing industry. But everybody has different and competing interests, and so it is a really complicated situation with a lot of strong feelings.
00:15:51
Speaker 4: And I truly don't believe anyone is a villain.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Well, I think everybody has their own opinion. There's villains and there's heroes. To me, I'm very great for all that I hear. I like you is here sharing all the story, all the hours, all the hard work that you've been putting into sharing part of the history of Massachusetts. I'm very glad that you took the opportunity, or it gave me the opportunity to ask the real questions to you.
00:16:16
Speaker 8: Behind the scenes, most of the time you don't see it right. That's why it's so popular to have social media, you know, running along with a person behind the scenes. What would be besides this documentary your next goal, your next step? Because where and where can we find this documentary too?
00:16:35
Speaker 3: So if you're listening on any podcast app, the iHeart app, you can find us.
00:16:41
Speaker 4: Just look for The Big Dig from GBH News.
00:16:44
Speaker 3: So if you look for the Big Dig, you'll find that original series about the Highway project. You'll also find Catching the Codfather, the story about Carlol. You'll find everything that we're working on in there. And the goal is to keep going. We've got a new documentary coming out in the fall that we had a chance to talk about a.
00:17:02
Speaker 4: Little bit when we first met. It's going to be all about the politics.
00:17:05
Speaker 3: Of healthcare, which you know, if you're reading the news or if you're reading your bills right now, you know that healthcare, the cost of health care is just a huge, huge issue for the state, for this country, and we're going to dig into that history.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: I love it.
00:17:19
Speaker 2: I just actually had lunch with Tiffany Joseph yesterday because of her book and the amazing story that she's telling us with immigration and how it's affected healthcare. I have also a podcast coming up that it's my personal story with the healthcare system and how it's been a struggle to get my mother on Medicaid, and how she's fallen through the cracks of the health care system, and how a person like you and I that have the access to the big wags into the people that.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: Actually understand kind of like what's happening.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: It's such a hard journey to figure out because nobody knows what's happening right, It's so complicated. But I also try to create a tool. It's called Accessive, and it's just the same. I'm not an app developer, I'm not an you know, an extravagant engineer, but I have a tool that actually gives you a guide in a process of what to do, what to where to go, who.
00:18:19
Speaker 1: To call from my personal experience.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: So I'm looking very much so forward to what you're putting together. Let me know if there's anything that I can do to help appreciate, And I can wait to share that information with my audience because I think that here can.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: Pass a bossom. We need more information, like what you're putting together.
00:18:37
Speaker 3: I mean, part of what I'm trying to do across all these projects is take these topics that can feel kind of impenetrable, hard to understand, like healthcare, like phishing, regulation, like you know, infrastructure, and it really convey it to people in a personal way in a.
00:18:54
Speaker 4: Story that they can understand. So that is what we're going to try and do well.
00:18:58
Speaker 2: And thank you very much for being here with me. I can wait again to share your information to hear. Where can we find you on social media?
00:19:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can find me at ian KOs that's c O s S on pretty much all the platforms.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: So another thank you, Dello Salmon.
00:19:15
Speaker 2: Download that iHeart app and selected pass post and as your favorite podcast, and don't forget to listen every Sunday.
00:19:21
Speaker 1: Stories like Ian that can change your life as well. Thank you Ian very much
Speaker 1: Y Bassa, Boston. How are you today?
00:00:12
Speaker 2: I have an amazing guest and you have no idea what he's dedicated his life too.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: But before I even introduce him, I want you to know that it was a very big goal of mine to have him here because he doesn't know, but I'm a big fan, a big fan that has watched all his documentaries that follows him on his gb H show, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at a panel and when I was there, I'll start stroke, but I didn't show you. So it's the re first way.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: Today I get to interview you, and I'm so happy and cas to have you at my show.
00:00:54
Speaker 1: I was dying to ask you so many.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Questions, first and foremost because we're yeah, we share a.
00:01:01
Speaker 1: Little bit of the mic on your end and I'm in my end. But I've been aiming to get a production like you have.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: So tell me a little bit of how you got into the whole GBH thing before even that journalism.
00:01:17
Speaker 1: How you start your career.
00:01:19
Speaker 3: So the place it starts for me is music. I was if you go back to high school, I was, you know, the kid playing in bands, a kid with a microphone and a little studio in my bedroom, making tracks and beats and things.
00:01:31
Speaker 4: So that's that's where I'm coming from.
00:01:34
Speaker 3: And about ten years ago I had an opportunity to make like a radio news piece. I'd never done anything like. I never studied journalism, I've never worked in radio. I had no background in broadcasting. But I made this short, little documentary piece. It was for a class assignment. Actually I was in graduate school and I was assigned to make a radio.
00:01:55
Speaker 4: Piece, okay, And I realized that, you know.
00:01:57
Speaker 3: Coming from music, coming from making in my bedroom, I kind of knew.
00:02:01
Speaker 4: My way around sound, you know.
00:02:03
Speaker 3: I knew how to make stuff sound okay, how to edit, how to use you know, things you understand like compression. And it was really this eye opening moment of Wow, I can take my background in music and sound and I can apply it to the questions I have about the world, you know, about.
00:02:19
Speaker 4: Our society, about politics, about culture history. And that's what I've been doing ever since.
00:02:24
Speaker 2: Were you ever afraid of getting on the mic and asking the tough question?
00:02:29
Speaker 4: So when I started out, I was off the mic.
00:02:32
Speaker 3: I was doing you know, produced, I was exactly for probably five ish years when I first started doing this work. I was always behind the scenes. I could send you a half a dozen podcasts.
00:02:44
Speaker 4: I made where you never hear my voice once.
00:02:47
Speaker 3: And the thing that ultimately got me in front of the mic was just one of the beauties of podcasting. Would you understand we're sitting in their rum, just the two of us hanging out. You don't need a big staff, yeah to do this, you can just do.
00:03:01
Speaker 2: It and more with the technology and AI now forget about it exactly.
00:03:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:03:05
Speaker 3: So for me, what got me behind the mic was like, I have all the skills, like I can do this entirely on my own, over the very small team and I and that's what got me into sort of telling my own stories.
00:03:17
Speaker 2: So you started behind the scenes, Yeah, podcasting GBH is not behind the scenes and is not a small company. No, how did you get to that point? I mean it was that always your goal was that you're you know, were you excited about it?
00:03:33
Speaker 1: They approach you, and you approach them. How did it happen?
00:03:36
Speaker 3: So there's a it feels kind of cosmic now, I told you ten years ago was twenty fifteen. I was given an assignment to make a three minute radio piece. I'd never done anything like it before. I was doing this workshop, like I mentioned, and the person leading the workshop said, Hey, I think I could help you pitch this to an actual radio show.
00:03:57
Speaker 4: She pitched it to WGBH, to a show they have there that's still on the air called The World. And so literally the first thing I ever made, I go on this journey.
00:04:05
Speaker 3: I do other shows and other things for other people, and then just a few years ago, I found myself, you know, doing some freelance work with w GBH, working on a few projects. I worked on as you were watch Antiques road shows. I helped launch the Antiques road Show podcasts. I worked on a Nova podcast and for their science show. So I knew some of the folks in the building, and I had the same feeling that you have, like this is a great historic radio station. They should have a documentary podcast that draws on the rich archives, the decades of history.
00:04:41
Speaker 4: In the stories about this place.
00:04:44
Speaker 3: And so I pitched them this idea of doing a podcast about the Big Dig, which listeners here in Boston.
00:04:52
Speaker 4: Many of you will know, was this epic infrastructure project. And that's what started the relationship. Really was was that idea, And that was just a few years ago.
00:05:00
Speaker 2: So this show is the most important to me because it's my platform to share tools and resources where I work. It's a show that also gives them the opportunity to learn a little bit about who's the guest, but also of how they can accomplish their dreams and their goals.
00:05:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you were that young ian behind you know the speakers, and just listening to this show, what was that turning point that made you decide that or made you think that you could do us?
00:05:32
Speaker 1: You know the poster syndrome. It's big, especially for us that we see so.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: Many podcasts nowadays, so many shows, so many channels, so.
00:05:42
Speaker 1: It can get overwhelming. What would you say to that young ian is starting.
00:05:48
Speaker 3: I think the lesson I had to learn that I would pass on to somebody in my same position years ago or my same position now would be there was a moment in my career where I think pretty good at doing the behind the scenes thing, and if I had just been if I just stayed sort of comfortable in that, I could still be doing that now. And then there's nothing against that work. I mean, it's great, fascinating work. We need to we need that too. But no one was ever going to push me out into No one ever came to me and said, wow, you're pretty good at making telling other people's stories, Like do you have a story you.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: Want to tell?
00:06:24
Speaker 3: There was usually that that opportunity that doesn't come to you, and so there was a moment.
00:06:30
Speaker 4: This was in around twenty twenty. It was actually during the pandemic.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: A lot of people were kind of re evaluating their you know, what they're doing, and so what it took for me is during that I had.
00:06:40
Speaker 4: A little free time.
00:06:41
Speaker 3: I did a totally self produced podcast. This is the first show that I ever hosted myself, and I a serious It was a series. There's a multi parts, a five part series. There was no budget, there was no it was I had a friend, Lacy Roberts was still are the editor for the work I do at GBH now, but she worked with me as my sort of my sounding board editor for it and it was a passion project. We did it together. I had no expectations.
00:07:12
Speaker 6: I had no institution behind me to market it, and I put that out in the world in twenty twenty one and it actually, to my great surprise, it went way further than I ever thought it would, and that was.
00:07:22
Speaker 4: Really what open the door for me. So I think especially in.
00:07:25
Speaker 3: A medium like this where you don't need anyone's permission, Yeah, and you don't really need much more technology than you can then most people can scrounge together.
00:07:35
Speaker 4: There's nothing stopping me from just doing it.
00:07:37
Speaker 2: It's funny to say that because it was very similar to me when I was brought into this project of Capaza Boston.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: I never even thought that I was going to be doing this.
00:07:47
Speaker 2: I was actually running the sales department on the on the side on the Cospatic market, and I was like, Okay, I'll figure it out. I didn't know how to press buttons, you see all these complex, you know, equipment, But I figure it out. And I've been figuring it out ever since, and I do everything, you know, from the editing to the everything. Even though it's a huge company, you know, I've been taking these projects.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: As a little baby, and I've been molding and.
00:08:13
Speaker 2: It was very scary, Yeah, because I did not know what was going to happen.
00:08:17
Speaker 1: On the other side. I was like, are they listening? Really?
00:08:19
Speaker 4: Are they?
00:08:19
Speaker 2: Am I doing this just for myself? Are they gonna like it? Are they judging? Isn't gonna be transcendent. Is it going to really convey the message that I want to share? And to my surprise, it's been an amazing journey. I would love for you to share that journey that you are experiencing right now because you have a great, great documentary about our fishing community here in Massachusetts.
00:08:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me about it.
00:08:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:08:45
Speaker 3: So a couple of years ago, I was looking around for story ideas our first so just for contacts, our first season, the show about the Big dig and come out.
00:08:54
Speaker 4: I didn't know what would happen. It ended up.
00:08:56
Speaker 3: Making you know, the Best of the Year list from the New York from Apple Podcasts, from Vulture, It won a Peabody Award, I was on the Apple Podcast charts.
00:09:06
Speaker 4: It was it was surreal.
00:09:08
Speaker 3: I mean I had people who I had considered heroes reaching out to me to say like, hey, I listened to the show. I really appreciated it. I mean it was truly a life changing experience. And so I had done that one documentary without any conception of what will come after it, and just a couple of months after it came out, GBH came back to me and said, let's do another.
00:09:33
Speaker 4: What other ideas do you have And I really didn't have anything ready.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: I didn't have an idea queued up, so I was but I knew that was an opportunity, you know.
00:09:42
Speaker 4: I did not want to let that pass by.
00:09:44
Speaker 3: So I said, you know, give me a couple of weeks and I'll try and figure something out.
00:09:48
Speaker 4: So I was looking.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: Around for story ideas, and part of what I wanted to do was, you know, we've done this story about infrastructure project in Boston.
00:09:57
Speaker 4: I wanted to.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: Tell different stories about different corners of Greater Boston to sort of fill fill out the whole world of this city in this region, you know, different industries, different communities, different pockets of culture. And so I was looking there for stories and I stumbled on this article from about a decade ago about this fishing mogul in New Bedford who is known as the Codfather. And I'll admit that just the name caught my attention, right, And so just on a whim, I didn't really know what the story was, but I just you know, I found a phone number online and I called him up. His name is Carlos Raphael. He still lives down in the New Bedford area. He's Portuguese yeah, and he picked up the phone. How surprised, and he said, sure, why should come down and talk?
00:10:50
Speaker 2: Now?
00:10:50
Speaker 3: I should say, for context, Carlos, this is not a spoiler to say that Carlos goes to prison at the end of this story. He is a these you know, convicted of twenty seven felony crimes involving his fishing business. He has turned down a lot of interview requests over the.
00:11:07
Speaker 4: Years, and I don't know why. I think I just caught him at a good time.
00:11:11
Speaker 3: I asked him the same question of like, why did you agree to this interview? Because I've met other people since who were like man, I would have loved to talk to Carls. I tried to talk to her, and so he invited me down. We sat in his office, which just to paint the scene. You know, he's right by the waterfront in New Bedford, which you know if you.
00:11:29
Speaker 4: Haven't spent time there, to gorgeous waterfront city.
00:11:32
Speaker 3: It is the most valuable commercial fishing port in more so than Gloucester, more so than any port in Alaska, you know, Seattle anything, there's millions and millions of dollars of seafood comes through that port. So there's big warehouses, concrete docks, you know, loading boats everywhere. It's a real kind of industrial place. And Carlos he come into his office and all around the walls are posters from the movie's Scarface.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Cut fut so that and in a way, you know, if you.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: Know that the movie, if you know the story of Tony Montana, Carlos is a bit like that. He's an immigrant. He came here as a young man, a risk taker, looking for opportunities, all or nothing, when all in on the fishing business, built an empire, truly, you know, one of the biggest commercial fishing empires in the country, and then had this very dramatic downfall where he was arrested in undercover I R sting operation.
00:12:31
Speaker 4: And that was the story you told me.
00:12:33
Speaker 7: And how is it for you to be part of such a moment, right, Because it's not just about the story you're telling, is how you're playing an intricate part of telling the story.
00:12:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you're editing, when you're putting the.
00:12:49
Speaker 2: Pieces of the postle together, you're like, okay, should I share these parts?
00:12:54
Speaker 1: Because that's a trick.
00:12:55
Speaker 2: When you're editing, you can record all day long and then He's like, Okay, what real is a story that I want to tell him?
00:13:02
Speaker 1: How am I going to tell it? What was that journey for you? Yeah?
00:13:05
Speaker 3: I mean when we do these documentaries, you know, different than a podcast where you just you know, turn on the mic and talk. You know, we're recording sometimes fifty sixty seventy five interviews. Each interview could be an hour and a half, two hours long. We're finding hundreds of archival news clips from the back in time, sifting through all so really hundreds and hundreds of hours of material that we then condense down into this documentary.
00:13:31
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, the challenging.
00:13:33
Speaker 3: Thing about telling the story of Carlos is that as I described, you know, the scarface posters, the codfather, the felony charges.
00:13:41
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a guy he is. He's a rough character. A lot of people don't like him.
00:13:47
Speaker 3: He has broken the law, he has hurt people, not physically, not violently.
00:13:51
Speaker 4: But you know, and the way he ran his business.
00:13:54
Speaker 3: And so my goal with the series is but I also don't want to paint him as just a villain, because I think it's attempting to see him as just oh.
00:14:02
Speaker 4: You know, this crooked fisherman who you know sometimes.
00:14:05
Speaker 1: Right where where does he fit? Is the you know, bad mafia guy or.
00:14:11
Speaker 2: Is he the one that produced a lot of revenue for a lot of people for a lot of years, because you know, you're feeding families exactly.
00:14:17
Speaker 3: And that's the complexity that I was And it was very delicate because I want to present him as in a human way, and he is. You know, when you talk to people around New Bedford you ask him about Carlos Raphael.
00:14:29
Speaker 4: Some people will tell you he is a hero.
00:14:32
Speaker 3: You know that, like he kept this port working, he kept people employed, He put you know, food on people's tables.
00:14:38
Speaker 4: And you talk to other people and they said, Carlos Rafael is the worst thing that ever happened to the city of New Bedford. You get that whole r.
00:14:48
Speaker 2: So he could be a hero because he won so many championships, and at the same time, like you know, I think everybody has their ups and for you, what is it a hero?
00:15:00
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not one or the other. I think what I tried to convey in the series is that.
00:15:07
Speaker 3: Carlos and all the whole fishing industry are caught up in a system, you know, and this is going to sound a little nerdy and wonky, but it's a system of regulations, government rules, science, this whole complex web that determines, you know, how much fish you are allowed to catch, what kinds of fish you were allowed to catch. And I truly believe that everyone in that system, the government, scientists, the federal regulators, the politicians, the fishermen, the fish buyers, everybody wants what's best. Everybody wants to feed people and have a healthy fishing industry. But everybody has different and competing interests, and so it is a really complicated situation with a lot of strong feelings.
00:15:51
Speaker 4: And I truly don't believe anyone is a villain.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Well, I think everybody has their own opinion. There's villains and there's heroes. To me, I'm very great for all that I hear. I like you is here sharing all the story, all the hours, all the hard work that you've been putting into sharing part of the history of Massachusetts. I'm very glad that you took the opportunity, or it gave me the opportunity to ask the real questions to you.
00:16:16
Speaker 8: Behind the scenes, most of the time you don't see it right. That's why it's so popular to have social media, you know, running along with a person behind the scenes. What would be besides this documentary your next goal, your next step? Because where and where can we find this documentary too?
00:16:35
Speaker 3: So if you're listening on any podcast app, the iHeart app, you can find us.
00:16:41
Speaker 4: Just look for The Big Dig from GBH News.
00:16:44
Speaker 3: So if you look for the Big Dig, you'll find that original series about the Highway project. You'll also find Catching the Codfather, the story about Carlol. You'll find everything that we're working on in there. And the goal is to keep going. We've got a new documentary coming out in the fall that we had a chance to talk about a.
00:17:02
Speaker 4: Little bit when we first met. It's going to be all about the politics.
00:17:05
Speaker 3: Of healthcare, which you know, if you're reading the news or if you're reading your bills right now, you know that healthcare, the cost of health care is just a huge, huge issue for the state, for this country, and we're going to dig into that history.
00:17:19
Speaker 1: I love it.
00:17:19
Speaker 2: I just actually had lunch with Tiffany Joseph yesterday because of her book and the amazing story that she's telling us with immigration and how it's affected healthcare. I have also a podcast coming up that it's my personal story with the healthcare system and how it's been a struggle to get my mother on Medicaid, and how she's fallen through the cracks of the health care system, and how a person like you and I that have the access to the big wags into the people that.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: Actually understand kind of like what's happening.
00:17:52
Speaker 2: It's such a hard journey to figure out because nobody knows what's happening right, It's so complicated. But I also try to create a tool. It's called Accessive, and it's just the same. I'm not an app developer, I'm not an you know, an extravagant engineer, but I have a tool that actually gives you a guide in a process of what to do, what to where to go, who.
00:18:19
Speaker 1: To call from my personal experience.
00:18:21
Speaker 2: So I'm looking very much so forward to what you're putting together. Let me know if there's anything that I can do to help appreciate, And I can wait to share that information with my audience because I think that here can.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: Pass a bossom. We need more information, like what you're putting together.
00:18:37
Speaker 3: I mean, part of what I'm trying to do across all these projects is take these topics that can feel kind of impenetrable, hard to understand, like healthcare, like phishing, regulation, like you know, infrastructure, and it really convey it to people in a personal way in a.
00:18:54
Speaker 4: Story that they can understand. So that is what we're going to try and do well.
00:18:58
Speaker 2: And thank you very much for being here with me. I can wait again to share your information to hear. Where can we find you on social media?
00:19:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can find me at ian KOs that's c O s S on pretty much all the platforms.
00:19:12
Speaker 1: So another thank you, Dello Salmon.
00:19:15
Speaker 2: Download that iHeart app and selected pass post and as your favorite podcast, and don't forget to listen every Sunday.
00:19:21
Speaker 1: Stories like Ian that can change your life as well. Thank you Ian very much
