| Cool Mules | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by | Kasia Mychajlowycz |
| Genre | True crime |
| Production | |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Publication | |
| Original release | 2 March – 29 March 2020 |
| Provider | Canadaland |
| Related | |
| 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]