| Cool Mules | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by | Kasia Mychajlowycz |
| Genre | True crime |
| Production | |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Publication | |
| Original release | 2 March 2020 – 29 March 2020 |
| Provider | Canadaland |
| Website | www |
Cool Mules is a podcast by Canadaland about a cocaine-smuggling ring led by Slava Pastuk that operated within Vice Media.
It won a National Magazine Awards Gold Award for best podcast in 2021.
Cool Mules was produced and co-written by Jesse Brown; Kasia Mychajlowycz was the host, reporter and producer, Jonathan Goldsbie did research, Nathan Burley did the music, and Chandra Bulucon did the sound design and mixing. [1] [2]
It was released in six parts, the first of which was released on March 2, 2020. [3]
The podcast tells the story of Toronto-based [3] Yaroslav Pastukhov/Slava Pastuk, a Vice Media music editor who goes by the pseudonym of Slava P. [4] [5] The story takes placed between 2014 and 2016, [3] in which Slava P recruits younger Vice employees into an international cocaine-smuggling ring. [6]
Themes in the podcast include the gig-economy, worker exploitation, and the line between journalists reporting news and creating news. [4]
In 2021, Cool Mules won a Digital Publishing Awards Gold Award for best podcast (arts & culture) from the National Magazine Awards. [7]
Maxine Betteridge-Moes writing for Smack Media described the podcast as refreshing and fascinating. [4] Lizzy Steiner, writing in CrimeReads writes "host Kasia Mychajlowycz painstaking unpacks a crime that seems custom-built for the millennial generation." [3]
US corporation Storied Media Group bought the rights to the story. [6] [8]
Roger Roberts Avary is a Canadian-American murderer, film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction, for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Academy Awards. Avary directed Killing Zoe, The Rules of Attraction, Lucky Day, and wrote the screenplays for Silent Hill and Beowulf.
The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally and it remains very difficult for local authorities to thwart its popularity.
Elizabeth Anne Caplan is an American actress. Her first acting role was on the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000). She received wider recognition with roles in the films Mean Girls (2004) and Cloverfield (2008), the latter of which earned her a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. Caplan has also starred on the television shows Related (2005–2006), The Class (2006–2007), and Party Down (2009–2010).
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The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-platform newsroom, with investigations published on the Reveal website, public radio show and podcast, video pieces and documentaries and social media platforms, reaching over a million people weekly. The public radio show and podcast, “Reveal,” co-produced with PRX, is CIR’s flagship distribution platform, airing on 588 stations nationwide. The newsroom focuses on reporting that reveals inequities, abuse, and corruption, and holds those responsible accountable.
Vice News is Vice Media's current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of "under-reported stories". Vice News was created in December 2013 and is based in New York City, though it has bureaus worldwide.
Jesse Benjamin Brown is a Canadian journalist, media personality, and businessperson. In 2013, he founded the Canadaland podcast that grew into a podcasting company.
Canadaland is a Canadian company that operates a news site and a network of podcasts. It was founded by Jesse Brown in 2013. Canadaland has produced podcasts on Canadian media, art and culture, cooking, medicine, and politics. Podcasts include the original Canadaland podcast, Commons,Cool Mules, The White Saviors, and Thunder Bay.
Criminal is a podcast that focuses on true crime. It is recorded in the studios of WUNC in Chapel Hill, NC, and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show describes itself as telling "stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle."
Ashton Dumar Norwill Simmonds, known professionally as Daniel Caesar, is a Canadian singer and songwriter. After independently building a following through the release of two critically acclaimed EPs, Praise Break (2014) and Pilgrim's Paradise (2015), Caesar released his debut studio album, Freudian, in August 2017, which garnered widespread critical acclaim. He released his second studio album, Case Study 01, in June 2019. In March 2021, Caesar was featured alongside Giveon on Justin Bieber's single "Peaches", which serves as his first number-one song on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Kathleen Barber is an American writer and non-practicing lawyer. Television rights to her 2017 debut novel Are You Sleeping were sold to Hello Sunshine, and a series called "Truth Be Told", based on the book, was produced for Apple TV+ and debuted in December 2019.
Ryan McMahon is an Anishinaabe comedian, podcaster and writer from the Couchiching First Nation. McMahon was born in Fort Frances, Ontario, the oldest of three siblings. McMahon was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He attended the University of Minnesota on a full hockey scholarship and graduated from the Second City Training Center.
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Arshy Mann is a Canadian journalist who presents the Commons podcast for Canadaland.
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Jonathan Goldsbie is a Canadian journalist, and currently the news editor for Canadaland. He has previously worked as a performance artist and as columnist at The National Post, NOW Newspaper and Torontoist.
Bad Trips is a 2022 non-fiction book by Slava Pastuk. In the book Pastuk documents cocaine smuggling while working as a music editor at Vice Media.
Yaroslav Pastukhov, more commonly known as Slava Pastuk, is a Ukrainian-born Canadian author, former prisoner, drug smuggler and music editor.
Thunder Bay is 2018 podcast hosted by Ryan McMahon on the Canadaland network. The podcast critiques the government and police responses to systemic racism and violence directed toward Indigenous peoples in the northern Ontario town of Thunder Bay, in Canada.
Kasia Mychajlowycz is a journalist and podcaster who hosted Canadaland's Cool Mules 2020 podcast.