In the late 1980s, a group of women connected through the mahjong parlors in Manhattan’s Chinatown were caught in a massive undercover drug bust. This bust was just the beginning of an even bigger case. Host Lidia Jean Kott and co-reporter Shuyu Wang interview sources who’ve never spoken on record before, including witnesses, defendants, and federal prosecutors, to reconstruct a case that still has repercussions today. The Chinatown Sting drops weekly on Tuesdays. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of The Chinatown Sting by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and...
Latest episodes
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40 min
Introducing: Agent Layla from CBC’s Personally
Here's a preview from a show we think you'll enjoy, Agent Layla. When she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna Luke. And for more than a decade, the truth of tha…
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34 min
The Good Cop | From Examined: The Backfire Effect
Lidia Jean's been working on a new project — Examined: The Backfire Effect. It asks what happens when a system decides it already has an answer, when admitting a mistake feels hard…
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40 min
Petra Mathers and Her Michael | From Death of an Artist
In February 2024, celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family memb…
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37 min
From Deep Cover: The Family Man
Deep Cover's new season, The Family Man, tells a story about how families can deceive each other and the lengths we’ll go to to protect our loved ones Elise and Marissa grew up in…
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5 min
Preview: The Pain of Others
Here’s an excerpt from a new Pushkin audiobook, The Pain of Others by Miguel Ángel Hernández. In a quiet town in the Spanish countryside, Miguel Ángel Hernández’s best friend murde…
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29 min
Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister: Elizabeth Plunkett
Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy, Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister, a special limited series from RTÉ. The story of Elizabeth Plunkett – a 23 year old woman from…
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32 min
From The Kink Machine: The Secret Power Behind Porn
Streamed by millions every day, porn is everywhere. It shapes our culture, our relationships, and even technology. Yet, nobody seems to know who really controls the business. The p…
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46 min
Introducing Valley of Shadows: Corruption in California’s Mojave Desert
Valley of Shadows is a new Pushkin true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dep…
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50 min
Introducing Deep Cover Presents: Snowball
We’re sharing a preview of another podcast we think you’ll enjoy, Deep Cover Presents: Snowball. Snowball follows journalist Ollie Wards as he unravels the wild story of how his ow…
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6 min
From Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders
Here's a preview from the new season of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast, The Alabama Murders. Florence, Alabama. 1988. A preacher has an affair. A woman is murdered.…
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30 min
Grandson of a Paper Son
Judge Denny Chin serves on the US Court of Appeals in New York and he’s an expert on Asian Americans and the law. Every year, he helps to stage reenactments of landmark cases in wh…
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29 min
Life as a Flying Dragon
Cowboy, now known as CB, was once a member of the powerful Flying Dragons gang, led by Johnny Eng, aka Onionhead. CB speaks with Lidia Jean Kott about why he joined the gang, about…
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32 min
Episode 6: A Sense of Order
After five days of deliberation, a jury finally returns a verdict in the case of Johnny Eng. Its ultimate meaning depends on whom you ask — and the lessons it taught the justice sy…
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34 min
Episode 5: The Mastermind
Flying Dragons gang leader Johnny Eng faces so many separate counts of heroin smuggling that prosecutors from various jurisdictions have to join forces. But Eng’s defense lawyers a…
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32 min
Episode 4: A Ghost Hand
Lidia Jean and Shuyu search for traces of Johnny Eng, aka “Onionhead,” the elusive leader of the Flying Dragons gang. He’s nowhere to be found in his former estate in rural Pennsyl…
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36 min
Episode 3: What’s a Friend?
Being only half Chinese, Tina Wong felt like an outsider growing up in Chinatown. But then she met another girl who was a natural leader and included her in the pack. After they gr…
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41 min
Episode 2: Onionhead
Tina Wong finds herself in handcuffs in the Brooklyn office of a new federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell. Beryl’s goal is to get Tina to tell her everything she knows about the people…
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39 min
Episode 1: Lucky Bird
After a major bust in 1988, DEA agents are in a race against time to find out who’s behind a scheme to import millions of dollars worth of heroin to the US. They stumble upon some…
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3 min
Introducing: The Chinatown Sting
In the late 1980s, federal authorities laid a trap. They’d gotten a tip that huge amounts of heroin were being mailed to New York City inside boxes filled with tea. The investigati…