Radio Mano, Papa Tchango

Radio Mano.

Hello everybody

This episode is with a guy named Charles who was helping to run one of the biggest marijuana smuggling operations into the US in the 70s and early 80s.

Very interesting cat, a friend of a friend. He just wanted to be known as Charles. We won't be using any last names in this episode for obvious reasons.

Although he has paid his debt to society, he did some time in prison as you'll hear. Luckily he got busted just before the minimum mandatory sentencing laws went into effect.

So he was able to get in and out relatively quickly. You'll hear all the details of that in the episode. You'll hear that he and his compadres started in Columbia.

They took a shrimp boat down to Columbia and loaded it up in the early 70s with some weed and then it moved on to military transport planes and all sorts of stuff before they were done.

They ran drugs out of Jamaica, Columbia and Belize over the years, mostly marijuana, a little coke, but mostly marijuana.

Now he is still working with marijuana. He and his wife make salves and creams and medicines and edibles and stuff.

So I guess I can't really tell you I'd love to put you in touch so you can buy some stuff from him because I was there. We recorded in his little laboratory area there.

And man, the guy really knows what he's doing, but I don't think I can put you in touch with him because that would sort of, you know, blow his cover, I guess. So we won't do that.

Just a quick shout out to a guy I went to high school with. I got a Facebook thing today from Jim. Hey, Jim.

I haven't seen Jim since 1980 probably or 79. We went to high school together in Connecticut. And we're Facebook friends, but haven't interacted for a long time. And anyway, today I got a thing saying, yeah, I just listened to that episode with pre and, you know, just wanted to tell you, you know, how interesting it was.

You know, it's like, Jim Jim from high school listens to the podcast. Man, that's strange. So hi, Jim. Long time no see, buddy.

Okay. So I was thinking, speaking of Jim, another friend of mine on Facebook wrote something recently where she, she said to people, hey, you know, okay, I've got a friend who's famous, but that doesn't mean I'll put you in touch with him.

And I was reading it thinking, what's all this about? It's kind of strange. And then I realized that I'm the person she's referring to. I guess people have been asking her to put them in touch with me for some reason. And she was telling them like, hey, back off, he's my friend. That doesn't mean, you know, I'm going to like put him in touch with everybody. And it just made me, it really struck me how strange that whole thing is.

Because I think that anybody who is in any way famous or extremely wealthy or extremely beautiful or whatever it is, if they're not complete assholes, then there's a big part of them that feels like a fraud.

I used to live with these fashion models as you've heard me talk about in the past. And the ones who were cool were funny. And I think, you know, pretty much that's, you could say that about anybody, but especially about people who are in some sort of, you know, extra ordinary, meaning that literally non ordinary situation.

They have to be funny because they realize that it's such bullshit. And if they take it seriously, then they buy into something that is very, very toxic because they know in their hearts that they're no different from anybody else.

I was watching the European soccer championships last night. And there's this guy, Cristiano Ronaldo, sports, a yeast guy. He's actually from a couple of air day, I believe, found the middle of the Atlantic.

As am I at the moment out in the middle of the Atlantic? And this guy is such a dick. He's such a whiny piece of shit. He's a very good soccer player, of course. And he's super good looking.

...