The Mysterious Story of Russia's "Shadow Fleet"
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 10.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Russia and the West escalate their tensions, the world enacts sanctions mean to cripple the Russian economy -- "you can't sell oil," says the West. Ordinarily, a sanctioned country would have no recourse. Yet, as Ben, Dylan, Matt and Noel discover in tonight's episode, Russia took a different route: a secret navy of ragtag vessels sailing under fake papers, moving fossil fuels -- a genuine Ghost Fleet, immune from international law.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. |
| 0:06.5 | You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. |
| 0:12.0 | A production of IHeartRadie. Ahoy, welcome back to the show. |
| 0:28.1 | My name is Matt. |
| 0:29.0 | My name is Noel. |
| 0:30.1 | They call me, Ben. |
| 0:31.4 | We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan, the Tennessee pal Fagan. |
| 0:35.8 | Most importantly, you are you, you are here. That makes |
| 0:39.8 | this the stuff they don't want you to know. Ah, we're returning to the seas. It's the wide world of cargo |
| 0:47.4 | shipping. Guys, do you remember several years ago when we learned that you can travel the world |
| 0:53.4 | as a passenger on cargo ships? |
| 0:56.5 | Yes, and we talked about the varying ways you could end up in that position. |
| 1:01.0 | Some legal, some above board, if you will. |
| 1:05.3 | Yes, some above deck for sure. |
| 1:07.6 | The catch is, even if you're traveling legally, you have to be flexible with your |
| 1:13.0 | arrival dates. So you want to leave Los Angeles and you want to get to Hong Kong. You can get |
| 1:22.4 | there, you know, as long as you have a three-month window of arrival. These boys are big, these cargo ships, and they don't go that fast. |
| 1:32.5 | No, they don't. |
| 1:34.0 | And they're pooping pollutants through the sea the entire time. |
| 1:38.4 | And they're holding a lot of poop in there, too. |
| 1:40.9 | And they're holding a lot. |
| 1:42.0 | I think a lot of times they flush it. |
... |
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