Great American Authors | The Enduring Message of James Baldwin | 7
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Imagine it's the summer of 1973. You're a 22-year-old correspondent for Time magazine, traveling through France to write a series of stories about African-American artists living abroad. Last week, you spent a glorious afternoon in the home of the expat writer James Baldwin, interviewing him and his friend, the singer and dancer Josephine Baker, over bottles of wine. You were practically moved to tears at being in the presence of the man who'd become a hero to young black writers of your generation.

You're proud of the story you turned in a few days ago, and you've been eagerly waiting a call from your editor. Hello? Hey, it's Tom calling from New York. I wanted to talk to you about this story. Great. I've been looking forward to hearing from you. I've been thinking, maybe I didn't do enough to capture the beauty of Baldwin's house in St. Paul, DeVos.

I mean, the light was spectacular. And all those rosemary hedges and strawberry fields and grape arbors. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down a second. What I wanted to tell you is that we've decided not to run the story. Wait, what? That's right. We're killing it. Sorry, kid. But why? We've decided Baldwin is a bit past his prime. He's passee.

I know you want the byline, but I'm not sure our readers think he's relevant anymore. Not relevant? Are you kidding me? After all he did for the civil rights movement, he's written some of the most powerful novels and essays about black life in America. Sure, but what's he done lately? We're a news magazine. What's new about Baldwin? And Josephine Baker, she hasn't been back to America in ages. Nobody knows them anymore.

You're stunned. On some level, you knew Baldwin's time as the fiery spokesman for black Americans was on the wane, that a new generation of writers was taking his place. Still, he recently published an essay collection, No Name in the Street, and his reflections on the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were especially poignant. You're making a mistake.

This man has borne witness to the struggles of the civil rights movement for the last decade. And he's still relevant. He's got plenty to say about race in America in the 70s, about Vietnam and Watergate and life for black Americans in Europe. I know you're disappointed, but hey, at least you got to see France. Don't worry, we'll find you another story.

You're crushed and confused. You can't help but see this as another reminder that black artists aren't valued the same as their white peers. What your editor probably wanted was some gossip or rumor, not an ode to a great American author.

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Shortly after graduating from Yale University, Henry Louis Gates Jr. spent time in Europe as a Life magazine correspondent and met his hero, James Baldwin, in the summer of 1973.

Though Gates' editors ultimately rejected his story, the meeting at Baldwin's home, which included Josephine Baker and the author Cecil Brown, would later become the foundation for one of Baldwin's final works, an unfinished play called The Welcome Table, named for the outdoor space where Baldwin entertained visitors at his home in France. Baldwin wrote the play just before his death in 1987.

Here with me now to discuss James Baldwin's legacy and the ways in which his message about race in America still resonates today is Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Dr. Glaude is the James S. MacDonald Professor of African American Studies at Princeton and the author of Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Dr. Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., welcome to American History Tellers. Thanks for having me. Excited for the conversation. Now, you began to write your book, Begin Again,

while you were experiencing a crisis of faith in America. What was that crisis and where did it stem from? Well, you know, we had just elected an African-American president in 2008, served two terms. There was this activism that we saw emerge with Black Lives Matter during those eight years. There was a kind of intensity of a kind of debate where we were grappling with the contradictions at the heart of

the American experiment. And then 2016 happened. And of course, there was a run-up to 2016 when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. We saw voting rights kind of roll back across states as we saw voter restriction laws passed across the U.S. And of course, there was a Tea Party, and the Tea Party had the kind of same DNA of what was to emerge in 2016. But it all

for me, came to a head when the nation decided to choose Donald Trump as its president. And I was just grappling with, how do we go from the first African-American president to this level of vitriol? And more importantly, Lindsay, I was trying to figure out, what should I say to all of those young folk, those young people who were in the streets, who had risked so much to try to hold the nation to account?

How would I speak to them? And lastly, how would I speak to myself? How could I find my footing in the face of this choice that the nation had made? And how did this drive you to review James Baldwin's work? Well, I've been teaching Baldwin for a while. The Fire Next Time and reading No Name in the Street, reading his nonfiction fairly closely for a while. And I knew that he had to struggle with the nation's betrayal. You know, what did it mean?

for the civil rights movement to collapse in front of him, for him to witness his friends murdered or lose their minds or leave the country. The radicalization of young people who had been so committed to nonviolence, but who decided to embrace black power. And then, of course, the nation elected Ronald Reagan. And so I knew that he had struggled with this sense, not just simply of deep disappointment,

but a fundamental questioning of faith in the country. And so I wanted to mine his work for resources to not only help the country and help young folk, but to help myself. So in James Baldwin's not only thinking, but perhaps his era, you found a mirror of your own? I found similarities, you know, continuities, echoes. The rock that I was grappling with, I think Jimmy was struggling with. He spoke to my spirit.

Well, let's talk about James Baldwin in general. When he wasn't in the United States, he lived in France and also Istanbul. How do you think being away from the United States helped him understand his home country better? Well, on a number of different levels, right? Personally, particularly after he acquired a level of fame, being out of the country allowed him the time, the space, the solitude, even though he liked to party a lot. But it allowed him the time and space and solitude to get his work done.

But I also think getting some distance, some critical distance from the nation, from the white noise, as it were, allowed him to understand the inner workings of the country, to see, you know, its interior self. And of course, exploration, examination of the interior life of the country meant for Baldwin and for me, an examination of one's own interior life. And I guess stepping out of the country, Lindsay, was so important because he didn't have to deal with

confront daily, right, the assault on one's standing, the sense of disregard. America could be seen a little bit more clearly from a distance, I think, yeah. Well, I guess then that there's another parallel between you and Baldwin, because in 2018, you were teaching in Heidelberg, Germany. And I suppose that allowed you to work on your book without the constant noise or the daily grind of headlines.

Yeah, and for me, it takes on a different register, right? Because I'm on television a lot, right? So I find myself repeatedly being asked to respond to the news cycle. I remember when we landed in Berlin and we made our way to Heidelberg and went to the old city or the Allstadt. And there, right in front of me, was a black man on the ground screaming for his life as German police officers had their knees in his back.

And I was like, wow. And I felt this sense of horror and relief simultaneously. The horror was, of course, you know, seeing what I'd been seeing in the U.S. for years. The relief is that I didn't have to say anything about it on camera. So I went back to my apartment and I just started writing. And it became clear to me in that moment what Begin Again would be about.

As I was in this small flat in Heidelberg, Germany, writing about an experience that I had just witnessed, reaching for Jimmy. And at that point, the book came into view. I'm interested by this event in Heidelberg. You say it was a relief not to have to dissect this, to relive this on camera and in a lens of being a Black American in America.

But I wonder, was there any other relief felt being in Germany as a black American? Well, I suspect looking back, perhaps there was a sense of relief. I didn't have to own or carry the burden of being black in a country with the particular history that ours has.

But of course, you know, you carry all of that stuff with you wherever you go. It's in your gut. And I think this is Baldwin's insight. You know, he talks about this in his book, Nobody Knows My Name, right? He thought he was running away from the U.S., but he was carrying it all with him. And what he had to do while he was in France and overseas was to figure out how to vomit it all up. And I think as a writer, that's what he was trying to do.

And what I think I was relieved to not have to teach classes, not have to go on television, and I have to travel the country and explain the current racial malaise. I could actually sit down at my study, look out the window, and it was some horrible 1970s architecture in terms of the apartment. So it wasn't this stunning view, right, in Heidelberg. But I could find myself on the page.

And I had the time and the solitude. I could be quiet because I didn't have language, because I didn't speak German. So it was just me in my head thinking about this place called America that's so central to who I take myself to be. Now, while you were there in Europe, you also took a trip from Heidelberg to see Baldwin's home in the south of France. What did you see when you got there? What stood out to you on the grounds of his home?

Oh my goodness, it was so amazing. You know, I land in France and, you know, I get into this taxi and my taxi cab driver looks like he's straight from South Jersey, slicked back hair, white jeans, and he's muscular. I say to him, he's practicing his English, I say to him what I'm in the country for, that I want to go to this famous writer's home. And he drove me. And I remember walking up the street

seeing the cranes. I knew that they were transforming Baldwin's home into apartments or high-end condominiums, but it was shocking to see the result, and only a little piece of it was left. And I remember Christoph saying, "'We should go see if someone's here.'" I was like, what? He says, "'What can we lose?' He just walks up and knocks on the door.'"

And lo and behold, there were these folks. And once they realized that we weren't shopping, that we weren't a couple, and that we weren't shopping for perhaps a scenic condominium, they got really nervous. And then they pointed to this kind of barren part of the old house that was going to be preserved. It was a ruin. And it was a ruin in the service of a certain kind of leisure.

Ironic, I think. Yeah, it was ironic. Describe that irony. It was a ruin in a certain sense of leisure. What does that mean? Baldwin has a critique of consumer culture. He has a critique of the way markets distort our sense of self, our sense of belonging, right? Where materialism disfigures our moral sense, or at least it changes, it affects the magnet of our moral compass, right?

And here I was in St. Paul de Vence at his former home, the place where he found some sense of peace, the place where he took his last breath. And it was being torn down for some scenic condominiums. And it's a stunning view because the old city is right above his head. And then he looks out on this valley. I can imagine him getting up late at night, smoking his cigarette with the glass of Johnny Walker Black in his hand, looking out and writing.

But here it was a commercial enterprise. In death, the place that provided him so much comfort had become in part the very thing he was criticizing when he was alive. Now, you mentioned this was the location where Baldwin spent his last days. But this is after he returned to the States and then again moved back to France. Why do you think he didn't stay in the U.S.? Why did he remain at the end in France? Oh, you know, to be honest, Lindsay, I think

He needed to be away in order to tend to himself. I don't think he ever turned, he never turned his back on America because his family was here. You know, he bought the building where all of the family lived. His mother lived on a floor, his brothers, nieces and nephews, right? He had a place to come back to. But America threatened to overrun Baldwin, it seems to me. And what I mean by that is that

its contradictions enraged him. And I think he knew that he had found a place where he could be fully himself without the baggage of America's hang-ups.

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Before his passing, Baldwin did return to the United States in 1957 and then returned at a time right in the middle of the emerging struggle for civil rights. What do you think he saw as his role as a black writer in the civil rights struggle? To bear witness. When he came back, you know, not only saw Little Rock and

the dawning of the modern civil rights movement. As an artist, his task is to, as a poet, is to bear witness to the complexity of human experience, to render it so that people can grab hold of it. And so here he is watching these babies, these spiritual aristocrats, he calls them, watching these babies face the crowds, the rabid mob,

And as a poet, he has to figure out what to do with that. Let's talk about two works that you say you often teach together, The Fire Next Time and No Name in the Street. What do you remember about reading the first one, The Fire Next Time, published in 1963? Oh my God, that book transformed my life. The Fire Next Time is this extraordinary book that offers, in so many ways, an account of the challenge that the nation faces with regards to race matters.

But Baldwin does this by way of his own biography and through an engagement with the Nation of Islam. And at the end, he offers us a remedy. Well, it's not really a remedy, but a response to the rage that emerges out of living in a country defined by white supremacy. And that answer is love. I remember the first essay, you know, The Letter to My Nephew, the intimate way in which he's trying to

Pass on a certain kind of knowledge, a certain kind of insight. Trust your experience. Trust your experience. Trust what you see. Trust what you know. Trying to impart a kind of wisdom knowledge.

That is so important, right? We can't become that which we hate. Understanding the importance of love. The language of love alongside the rage. The sentences were angry in that book. And then invoking love gave me a language, Lindsay, for the turmoil that was in me gave me a language to love and be angry at the same time.

Helped me orient myself to my father differently. It was a transformative book. Being angry and loving at the same time is probably something that many people need permission to allow themselves. Yeah, especially when you're catching hell. I just remember my dad being angry. You know, I'm old enough to have watched the first airing of the Eyes on the Prize series. It was an event. You know, I'm a country boy from Mississippi.

And I just remember my father just boiling over with rage. Maybe this rage is the reason why he's so difficult with me, with us. And I didn't know that he had deposited that rage in me. I've always been a kind of aware kid, always taking in the environment. But there's something about the Mississippi air, something about the soil. And so I get to Morehouse College in Atlanta, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr.,

And that rage just begins to bloom. I had to do something with it. And Baldwin just gave me resources, but also to love. Baldwin said we have to pay attention to the material conditions of Black life, but we also got to pay attention to the interior life of Black folk. And he's always concerned about what kind of human being we aspire to become.

And he has this wonderful line that almost brings me to tears. Every time I invoke it or every time I read it, you know, he says, I want us to create a self without the need for an enemy. And all of that has its beginnings in a robust understanding of love. For those who haven't read it, is the book biographical? I'm writing right now the introduction to the Everyman edition published by Vintage of all of his nonfiction books.

And I think to read his nonfiction from Notes of a Native Son all the way to The Evidence of Things Not Seen is to read Baldwin's memoir. You know, even when he's writing about social issues, his biography is implicated in the stories. And so it's a really insightful question, I think, to my mind.

to read all of his nonfiction is to read his story, which is a vexed journey. It's called The Fire Next Time. Where does that title come from? Oh, it comes out of a riff on a biblical passage out of the slave context, right? God gave a rainbow sign, next time fire, next time, right? You know, this is that preacher in him. Baldwin, he's, what, 14 years old when he becomes a preacher? You could tell that he was probably a really, really good preacher back then.

So that referenced the fire next time straight out of a biblical framework as well as how that framework was deployed in the context of those who were held in bondage. Well, speaking of preachers, Baldwin, while he was in the U.S., was in Selma. He saw the struggle and violence of the civil rights movement very close.

and he saw its leaders murdered. What do you think the impact of Dr. King's death was on Baldwin? It broke his heart. It was a powerful moment in No Name in the Street. Something broke in him, he says. In so many ways, he was grappling with the fact that

The country had killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the apostle of love. They killed King? Really? And then he offers that extraordinary formulation. It's a paraphrase, but, you know, human beings are these amazing miracles and SOBs at the same time. And you have to treat them as the miracles that they can be. So what does it mean that human beings can be sons of bitches and miracles at the same time?

You know, the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder of Malcolm X, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., along with the deaths of so many of his friends. What conclusion might he be forced to draw about the moral state, about the soul of America after that? Yeah, so it broke his heart. So this is the book then, No Name in the Street, in which Baldwin has a reaction to the violent repercussions of the civil rights movement.

What was your reaction to this new chapter in Baldwin's life and thinking? I've always been fascinated with No Name in the Street. There is a sense in which, as Baldwin tried to do in Fire Next Time with the Nation of Islam, he's doing with the Black Panther Party in No Name in the Street. But, you know, that book is an account of a moment that has collapsed or is collapsing. And...

He's trying to come to terms with what it means for a moment like the civil rights movement, like Black Power, to collapse in the face of white backlash. It's a book of wound, of pain, of trauma. And what's so fascinating about it, Lindsay, is that he's trying to figure out how to write that trauma, that wound, that pain. Memory is fragmented.

He tells you at the very beginning of the book, don't trust my memories. And then the book constantly falls back on itself, trying to account for this moment. In some ways, Lindsay, No Name in the Street is the spine of Begin Again. It anchors my book because I'm trying to grapple with the same things.

Now, in No Name in the Street, Baldwin also addresses his sexual orientation. Already he's a black man in America, but now he's a black gay man. How do you think he was received by members of the civil rights movement? Oh my goodness. Baldwin's sexuality in the context of the civil rights movement was always kind of viewed with suspicion. He was out, and so Dr. King wanted to keep him at arm's length.

Many of these preachers who were members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference wanted to keep him at arm's length. Then you think about the hyper-masculinist politics that defined black power. You know, there's this wonderful story. Baldwin's at an event for the Black Panther Party. And us, which is another organization, nationalist organization, and someone has an epileptic seizure and they have a gun and the gun starts firing off.

Now, on the stage is Malcolm X's widow, Betty Shabazz, and her children. Everybody runs for cover as the gunshots go off. Baldwin screams the babies, and he runs and he covers them. Everybody else, they run for cover. But this queer black man who was small and frail runs to cover the children. Gives you a sense of who he was, you know? His sexuality was just...

him. He didn't billboard it in any deliberate way. You know, he was always skeptical of a certain kind of identity politics. But Baldwin, you know, what, 1954, he writes Giovanni's Room. It's a love story, but it's a same-sex love story. And no U.S. publisher would publish it. 54. Can you imagine? In the 1950s, it had to be published in London. Baldwin's famous quip is like, you can't hold that over me. I told you.

But in No Name in the Street, he has this wonderful and extraordinary formulation about the relationship between race, sexual desire, and power. Where this white man whose power is such that he could save you from a lynching or cause you to be lynched, reaches in between his legs and grabs his member. And Baldwin describes his watery eyes. And that description, Lindsay, is an echo of

of a description that he used in Notes of a Native Son, in an early essay when he's talking about sentimentality. And here it is, 1972, and he's taking the same image, right? That there was something empty, something that this man could not say, could not feel, that he was trapped and it made him monstrous.

So Baldwin is constantly thinking about the relationship between race, desire, sex, and power. This book's title, No Name in the Street, comes from the book of Job. His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off. His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street. What do you think Baldwin was trying to say with this title?

It's a warning. Part of what he's trying to suggest here is what does it mean to turn one's back on these things, right? What will be the consequence of one's failures? You say it's a warning, but what is it a warning of? What are these failures? Remember, the book is accounting for the collapse of the Black Freedom Movement of the mid-20th century. What is the nation doing? How has it responded to failure?

the sacrifice of these folk. What has it done to its babies? It is a prophetic declaration. Baldwin is in the middle of a betrayal. Nixon is ascending. Reagan is eight years away. The kind of mass incarceration of black folk, the infrastructure, the architecture is being built at this moment. His remembrance shall perish from the earth and he shall have no name. This is the shining city on the hill.

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Going back a few years from the publication of No Name in the Street, in February of 1965, James Baldwin debated William F. Buckley, a renowned political thinker at Cambridge University. Maybe give us a better description of who William F. Buckley was and what was the reason for their debate? Oh, William F. Buckley is the mastermind in so many ways, the theoretical mastermind of much of contemporary conservatism. He's a Yale graduate editor of the National Review.

is giving voice, at least at a certain level of sophistication, of the philosophical view that shapes Goldwater and the like. And so his understanding of conservatism is on the ascendance, you know, in this moment. So he's a very, very important figure who will help determine the frame of our living since 1980 and before.

So for him to debate Baldwin in this moment is actually quite remarkable. The topic was that the American dream exists at the expense of African Americans. And Baldwin answered in the affirmative. And Buckley, the negative. Buckley, in very interesting ways, offered language that we would hear throughout the 80s and 90s and even today today.

around victimization, around the greatness of the American project, about inevitable progress and the like. And Baldwin took us to the heart of the lie that animates America's self-conception. Now, James Baldwin is obviously an established and quite talented writer. But these debates, televised debates, illustrate to us how remarkable an orator he is, how eloquent and composed he is as a speaker. Absolutely. Remember, he comes out of the church.

As Albert Raboteau says, the black church is black America's first theater. There's a sense in which Baldwin's ability to turn a phrase, his obvious brilliance and his courage meant that he would say things and say them in such a way that it would cut to the heart of the matter. And of course, he would say it with his particular flair. Here's a clip from that debate with Buckley. It comes as a great shock.

around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. So there we hear like his prototypical poetry, even in speaking, he opposes two things. It's very easy to feel where he's going. It makes it attractive to listen to him. Yeah, yeah. And in that moment too, he's implicating himself, right?

He's rooting for the cowboys, not realizing that he's the Indian is another way in which he put it, right? In a different context. So there's a kind of revelation about the contradiction, the hypocrisy of the nation. And as a black man, as a black person,

This revelatory knowledge unsettles and places you in this extraordinarily complicated position in relation to the nation that has made you who you are. It's at once revelation and condemnation. Do you think you could characterize what Buckley's rebuttal was to Baldwin in this debate?

Oh, Buckley's rebuttal. Let me see if I can characterize it in a generous way. You should be grateful, Jimmy. Look at you. You would not be possible if it wasn't for the grandness of the American experiment. Look around the world. Look at the state of black people. And look at you. Look at the means, the wealth of black Americans, right? So I think his response is that of the paternalist

One could think about the paternalistic approach of Southern plantation owners. You should be thankful that we've given you the possibility to become James Baldwin. And you can see in Jimmy's eyes, he's seething with rage at the condescension. At the end of this debate, there was a vote held, I suppose, among the audience members, asking if the American dream does come at the expense of Black people in America. Do you recall the outcome of that vote?

Oh, yeah. They voted overwhelmingly in the affirmative and then gave Baldwin a standing ovation. Yeah. So Baldwin won the debate. Why are we still talking about this debate from 1965? Well, it's a couple of reasons, I think. One is because of the resurgence of Baldwin over the last few years. He's turned up in our political discourse and in a variety of ways. And in some ways, he's so prophetic that the nation or some of us have finally caught up with him.

But I also think it's important because the content of that exchange in so many ways reflects the political landscape of our current days, of our current troubles. Baldwin may have won the debate, but Buckley won the war. Buckley's views through the Reagan administration defined the political landscape since 1980. And by 1987, when Baldwin takes his last breath,

Black America's more interested in what kind of sweater Bill Cosby's wearing than what Baldwin has to say. So there's something strikingly familiar about what is being debated then and what we're struggling with now. We're approaching the 100th anniversary of Baldwin's birth in August of next year. We've returned to a theme over and over that he was struggling with themes or topics that are very similar to what we may be struggling with today. And I wonder then if you think ultimately he lost his faith in America because

And that was the end of it. No, I don't think he lost his faith in America. No, no, no, no, no. Let me say it differently. He didn't lose his faith in us, right? America is an argument. It is not a fact. You know, America is more than an idea. It's a fight. It's a battle waged daily. So he didn't give up on that fight. He didn't give up on the idea that we could be different, that we could be better. He didn't give up on that. But he was very clear that

by the end of his days, that the country, that a certain segment of the country, that clung, had a white knuckle grip on a certain set of fantasies about who mattered more than others. You know, who mattered and who didn't.

This notion of whiteness, as he put it, has choked the life out of many of the human being here. The price of the ticket, as he put it. What is the price of the ticket? It's to become white, to leave the particularity of who you are at the door. And in becoming white means that you have to deny the standing, the equal regard of another. So he did not lose faith in us to be otherwise. He didn't lose hope. But, you know, as he said in Istanbul in an interview in Ebony magazine, you know,

Hope is invented every day. I love that formulation. Hope is invented every day. In your book, you include a quote of Baldwin's summation of his life. Would you share it with us? Sure. This is actually from the documentary, James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket.

And it's his brother, David, who's trying to remember or he's recounting Jimmy's summation of his life. And he says, I pray I've done my work. When I've gone from here and all the turmoil, through the wreckage and rubble and through whatever, when someone finds themselves digging through the ruins, I pray that somewhere in that wreckage, they'll find me. Somewhere in that wreckage, that they use something I've left behind.

And I suppose it's a good closing question to ask you how you've used what Baldwin has left behind. Oh my goodness, Lindsay. The old man has helped save my life. How I've used what he's left behind. I've used the words as a salve. His urging to love my father unconditionally. To imagine myself in the most expansive of terms. That's just me.

But I've used his words also to speak to the nation, to try to tell the truth unvarnished, straight no chaser, to insist that America grow, that the country grow up, to leave behind the myths and the fantasies, and to confront who and what it is so that it might discover who we really are. You know, we can't choose our inheritance, but we can definitely choose our ancestors. And he is an ancestor who is, in so many ways, the wind beneath my wings.

Well, Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., thank you so much for speaking with me today on American History Tellers. Thank you. It was such a wonderful conversation. That was my conversation with Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. His New York Times bestselling book, Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, is available now from Crown Publishing. Thank you.

From Wondery, this is our seventh and final episode of Great American Authors from American History Tellers. In our next season, in December of 1938, two German physicists achieved a scientific feat previously thought impossible, splitting the nucleus of a uranium atom. Scientists around the world immediately knew that a powerful new form of energy was on the verge of being harnessed by mankind.

The United States quickly launched a Manhattan Project, assembling the greatest minds on Earth in a race to build the first atomic bomb, which they believed could not only win World War II, but possibly end all future wars.

Senior Managing Producer, Ryan Moore. Senior Producer, Andy Herman.

Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis for Wondery. It's 1978 in Miami, and the infamous Mutiny Club is the hottest spot in town and the epicenter of the cocaine trade. But behind the glamorous parties and opulent lifestyles, a violent drug war to own the booming industry is raging.

Business Wars is a podcast about the biggest rivalries of all time, and our new three-part series, Drug Cartels, dives into the war between the top two cartels in Colombia, combining the complex business acumen of a corporation with the calculated violence of the mafia.

The Cali and Medellin cartels ignited a ruthless fight to extinguish the other and dominate the growing cocaine trade in the U.S., which in 1984 was estimated to be over 70 tons of cocaine each year. Follow Business Wars on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Business Wars drug cartels exclusively and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus and binge the new TV series that inspired this season, Hotel Cocaine, right now only on MGM+.