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If you build things online, you know the stack can get messy fast docs in one place, project tracking somewhere else, AI tools scattered everywhere. That's why I've been spending more time in Notion lately. It's become the one workspace where I can actually organize ideas, collaborate with people, and now build on top of it too. Notion just launched their new developer platform and it opens up a ton of possibilities for builders, startups and teams. You can create integrations, connect workflows, build AI powered experiences, and customize Notion in ways that fit how you actually work. What I like is that it doesn't feel overly technical or locked behind enterprise complexity. I was recently experimenting with automating some recurring workflow tasks and it was surprisingly easy to get something functional up and running without rebuilding my entire system from scratch. That's the sweet spot. Whether you're building internal tools, AI agents, automations, or entirely new products, the Notion Developer platform gives you a flexible foundation to work from. Learn more about Notion's developer platform today at notion.com amp that's all lowercase letters. Notion.com amp A M P to try Notions developer platform today notion.com amp so
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you're saying with Hilton Honors I can use points for a free night stay anywhere? Anywhere? What about fancy places like the canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad in Tulum? Hilton Honors baby. What about the five star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties when you want points that can take you anywhere anytime? It matters where you stay Hilton for
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C
The Stay Wednesday, June 3, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. A lot of elections last night. One I'm paying attention to, where the result is a bit in doubt is the LA Mayor. We know that Karen Bass has made it through to the next round. She is the current L A mayor, so perhaps she will be the next LA mayor. That usually happens. Fox News reports Spencer Pratt appears on track to advance to a November runoff against L A Mayor Karen Bass after no candidate cleared 50%. I wonder appears on track. You might say it as is the most likely other candidate to make it through. There's only a third choice and it's Nithya Raymond. And right now Nithya Raymond is trailing Spencer Pratt by 8 percentage points in the polls. Pratt has 30% of the vote and Raymond has 22. So the reason why we're saying that he appears on track is not just that there's this 8% gap and anything can happen. But that L A California allows for a lot of mail in ballots. And there is some thought, in fact pretty good thought, that mail in ballots tend to break against Republicans. Now it's a primary where they don't declare their allegiances, but everyone knows that Spencer Pratt, apart from being a reality show villain and a crystal salesman and someone whose house burnt down in the L A fires and a guy who is articulating a lot of the anger and angst of Angelenos over issues like homelessness, aside from all of that, he's the conservative. He' actually very MAGA like. And so maybe conservatives nationwide don't trust the mail because Donald Trump denigrated mail in ballots. And so maybe that will show up as well with Spencer Pratt. Then again, he's young, maybe his supporters are young. And younger people tend to go to the polls and older people tend to mail in their ballots. There's another aspect to this which is and was articulated as I was watching the Decision Desk specials that run on Twitter where Chuck Todd takes his old role as moderator from when he hosted Meet the Press and he has on Chris Cillizza. I'm going to be on Chris Culizza or he'll be on my substack tomorrow at 3. We're doing a substack live. Me and Chris and Chuck was saying this could be another red mirage. Remember the red mirage? That was the idea, which turned out to be true, that Republicans looked like they were going to have an early lead in the polls because of this mail in ballot phenomenon. But then Democrat votes would surge. But in that ma in the in period, people were going to tell you, oh, if a Republican doesn't win, it's because the election was stolen. And Chuck Todd said something along those lines. Remember, there's going to be many people who are claiming that the only reason the Republican who once had a lead and I'm saying Republican, but again with the asterisks of non declared party preference in these primaries. But because the conservative and I'm saying conservative but once again we know that Donald Trump has destroyed conservatism. So I'm saying the MAGA like guy, there you go. He had the lead. If he doesn't have the lead, it's chicanery. And I said to myself, do we really need this? Isn't that kind of a cliche? I know maybe some people will assert it, but how important is that assertion? How much is that going to be in your face? And I go to Twitter and the very first thing is Spencer Pratt's at 30. They are saying he might not sneak in. They're trying to steal the election from Spencer Pratt. No, they're just trying to. To have an election. And by the way, steal the election. We're talking about the guy who gets through to probably. And here I will quote some odds to probably lose to Karen Bass in the general. She is the incumbent. L. A is a democratic city, and even though she didn't do well in the fires being in Ghana, as she was his. Spencer Pratt, right. You know him from the hills. I don't, but I've heard bad things. So right now, the odds on Kalsheek, which I bet on full disclosure, in which they're going to do some advertising on the show, also full disclosure. It's not why I quote them. I quote them because they offer some insight. Kalshee is saying that Karen bass is a 74% chance to be the next LA mayor. And then Pratt's at 18, Ramen's at 8. Kalshee also says that Pratt, I told you this has a 75% chance of getting through. And ramen has that 32 as of this recording percent chance to get through. They're not supposed to add up to 100. That's how Kalshee makes money. And how to how does Kelshi lose money or spend money? Like I told you and disclosed, they're going to be advertising on this show. Just so you know that and just so you know, no one's stealing the election. Although Spencer Pratt might be stealing our heart with his talk of crystals and the homeless as zombies on the show today. I want to give you, I think it's the best podcast I've listened to all year. It's certainly different from what you usually get from the public radio world, and I do so enjoy so much of the public radio world. But there are blind spots. And some of those blind spots include how the oppressive forces of sometimes not the best regulation interact with how we live our lives, is not how public radio really thinks of the world, but it is how Ian Koss has been thinking about the issue of fisheries. He's a guy from Boston. He goes down to New Bedford, which is the biggest fishing port in the east, and he does this huge story about a guy I've never heard of, a guy called the Codfather. He owned more fish. Really. He had the right to catch more fish than anyone in US History. But also he did exploit that. Right? And that's why he was called the Codfather. And that is why the podcast is called Catching the Codfather. For the full show, Ian Koss is up next. Summer always changes how I get dressed. Not really how, just what I wear. I want pieces that feel lighter and more breathable. Of course, that's why I keep coming back to quints. They are reliable. They are high quality. They look amazing. And the price, well, the price is also. Did I already say amazing? The price is transcendent. Quint's European linen pants and shirts are starting at $34. Their T shirts are soft and easy to wear. Lightweight cotton sweaters. I have a pair of quints. Kind of dressy pants, kind of of stretchy pants. They very much work for me. Everything at Quint is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quint.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com the gist for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com the gift the gist here's something I hate. I mean, I hate having to make a call to customer service. But these days, man, are you inviting on yourself. Just endless frustration. No one getting back to you. And then on the other side of it, if you do run a business and this isn't your strategy because I know a lot of businesses, mine included, want to be responsive to customers. They just know that missed calls or not following up, it's just a killer for businesses. That's how you leave money on the table. That is why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O the business communication system built so you never miss a call. Kuo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3,000 reviews. It's built for how modern teams work and more than 90,000 businesses, from just a guy working alone to really big teams, rely on it to stay connected and professional and consistently reachable. And don't you want that as a point of pride? Not just for the business case, but for who you are and how you represent yourself as a business. It works wherever you are, right from your phone or computer, keep your existing number and teammates in minutes, sync your CRM and let the call routing handle itself as you scale. It's so very, very easy. And they give you the voicemails and the transcripts and it's all in one clean view. You don't have to press a million codes to Chase it down. Money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com gist that's quo.com gist. The 2026 primaries are taking shape and you could trade the biggest political races on Kalshi. On Kalshi, you could trade major primaries, election outcomes, and the biggest political storylines as they happen. Will Spencer Pratt become the mayor of la? I don't know, probably not. But that probability has a number. And if the public's assessment of the probability is different from mine, I could have fun with it and not just sit thousands of miles away and say, how's this thing going? I could say, how's this thing going? And I'm making some off it. Hey, look, I don't want to talk about specific candidates in the presidential race. There are all these Democratic candidates who are like 2% and if you, quote, invest in them, they go up to 6% chance of winning and you feel great about yourself, right? So from two to six, a hundred dollar trade. If you put in $100, I mean, you're getting $300 right there at Kalshee. And let me tell you one other thing. This is a hedge against disappointment in a way. That's how I use it psychologically. If I see someone who I think is undervalued and just might win and it wouldn't necessarily please me, you know, making a couple bucks on it on the side is that silver lining that maybe gets me through election day? For a limited time, download the Kalshi app and use code gist to get $10. When you trade 10, you got to do that. There's no way. Why? Why would you leave $10 on the table? K A L S H I Kalshi trade on anything 18 and over. Only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshee.com/regulatory. So if you want to listen to the best podcast that I've heard in years. Years. Don't be an idiot. Listen to Catching the Codfather. It is by a master of the form, Ian Koss. He does it out of wgbh, which is a legendary Massachusetts public radio broadcaster. And this is a very Massachusetts story with elements of Portugal and the sea. Ian, welcome to the Gist.
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D
So good to be here. Thank you.
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C
So this is a story out of New Bedford. And New Bedford is a town about 60 miles south of Boston. Yep. And it deals with a guy named Carlos, who, I think you have a stat early on in the story, owned a quarter of the fish from Long Island Sound to the northern tip of Maine. How does that happen?
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D
And, ah, wow. It happens by building up an empire slowly over many years. Carlos is somebody who. He came to this country as a teenager with nothing, barely speaking any English, came to avoid the draft because at the time, Portugal was tied up in these colonial wars in Angola and elsewhere. So he came here and he found a job down at the waterfront as a fish cutter. And Carlos is somebody who works extremely hard, is extremely smart, and extremely cunning. And so from a pretty young age, he started wheeling and dealing on the docks. He started buying boats, he started buying permits, he started buying fish processing facilities. And just over decades, he built up this empire to the point where, like you said, the currency of this realm is the quota, is the permits. It's sort of like. You can think of it like a taxi medallion. You know, the car is worth nothing. It's a medallion.
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C
Right back when Uber didn't exist.
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D
Or maybe a liquor license is the more relevant example.
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C
These things were gold because the government had a tight supply on them and they could trade in private markets. But they became.
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D
Exactly.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And that's how fish quota works. The fishing permits work. And Carlos was just very aggressive in buying out other fishermen. You know, when. When the times were tough, when the catches were bad, he would come in and scoop up boats, scoop up permits to the point where, like you said, a quarter of the ground fish. You know, we're talking cod, haddock, flounder, the white flaky fish and chips fish. If you were getting it in New England in the 2010s, 2000s, you were probably eating something off of one of Carlos's boats.
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C
Now, he's a colorful character. He painted fish, which is something that you get to entitle one of the episodes, but in your time, because I listened to the Big Dig, I listened to Scratch and Win all these other very Massachusetts stories with great accents and people who've been around since the 70s and pronounce words in ways that we New Yorkers marvel at. Is he as colorful a character as you've come across?
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D
Wow. Yeah. And there's something particular there about the New England accent meets the Portuguese accent. It's its own funky thing. There's some vowels down there. I doubt you'll find anyone.
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C
He has his own slang for things, which, of course, got in the way of federal investigators at times.
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D
Yeah. Carlos is hard to top. I mean, this is something I love about covering. As you mentioned, I've done a number of these documentaries about these sort of wonky, arcane topics up in Boston and New England, where I live. And there are just. There is a. Even in the, you know, the state bureaucrats and things. You find these very peculiar, colorful characters up here. But Carlos really is in a class by himself. I'm trying to think, to give you a sense. So you walk into his office, right? And if you've listened to the series, you remember this covered in Scarface memorabilia. He idolizes Tony Montana, Scarface. He's got like an actual cigar from the set of the movie up on the wall. He's got this hand drawn sketch of Tony in the bathtub. On his desk he keeps a rock, like a rock the size of a fist that a striking fisherman once threw through the glass top of his Firebird.
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C
Of course, a Firebird.
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D
He's of course, a Firebir. He's got model boats all over the walls, which he always named for Greek figures. He's got the Apollo and the Hera, Right? So he really is this larger than life character. And you mentioned Catching the Codfather is the title. So he's known as the Codfather. And this isn't something that people painted him with. And he's like, okay, fine. No, he loved it. He embraced this image of the Codfather of New Bedford, the scar face post. Yeah, he lives it, he loves it. That's Carlos.
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C
And when he says, say hello to my little friend. It's a cod, it's a scallop. Who's his little friend?
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D
The thing you have to understand about Carlos is that he is not a fisherman. His tool and trade is the telephone is not a net. It is not a hook or a line. Carlos told me he went out on a boat once, just once, in 1980, when he bought his first fishing boat. And he felt like maybe I should understand what the people who work for me are actually going to go through. And he'd barely gotten out of port and he got so violently seasick that he told the captain to turn the boat around and he would cover all the cost of the fuel just to get him to the closest dock. And he said when they approached the dock, he jumped off the boat. He could not get back on land fast enough. He has never been out on a commercial fishing boat again. So when. When he says hello to my little friend, it is. You got a picture? It's Carlos. It's actually the COVID of our podcast. You can picture him. It's him at the desk, you know, with the calendar on behind him, the ashtray before him, the charts and everything. And he's on the phone. He's always, always on the phone.
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C
So Carlos is also a criminal, a convicted criminal. And you talk about his criminal enterprise and how he did it without criminality. Probably couldn't have gotten to place that he was worth, even from jail, $100 million.
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D
Yeah.
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C
But you also take us through the taxi medallion esque, golden valuable permits to fish these fish, because you take us through the history of ecology of the region. And once it was thought that the fisheries, the areas off the east coast of the United States would be abundant for hundreds of years. And then ecologists and people who actually, which you also detail, did surveys of the area, found that the fish was being depleted. So government had to do something to balance the interests of the fishermen and I guess the fish eating public and the fish themselves. So there are a lot of. A lot of trade offs detailed in this series. And I do find that all your series are about a number of things, but they're also about trade offs. The Big Dig, the inconvenience and maybe the graft versus what would happen when that infrastructure project was completed, the legalization of the lottery in Massachusetts. And this was a ecological trade off as well that compels you.
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D
Yeah, I think, first of all, I appreciate that framing. It's not quite how I've thought about it in the past, but it absolutely resonates with the way I see the story. I think if the thing that I have in mind as I go out and I look for stories and as I do the interviews and craft them, is I am looking for stories that challenge my own assumptions, that challenge my thinking in some way that are just. That there is something I am genuinely conflicted about within the story. I don't like to do stories that just feel simple and preaching to the choir or kind of reinforcing something that I or my audience already believes and already knows is true.
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C
So if Carlos was just a colorful bad guy, that'd be okay, but not a story that Ian's into.
- [21:07]
D
Yeah. And that's why maybe I mentioned this in the show. I'm not sure. I interviewed Carlos in December of 2023. It was two years ago now, at this point, more than two years ago. And at the time, I was just looking for story ideas. I reached out. Amazingly, he picked up, he invited me down. And after that conversation, I wasn't quite sure what the story Was that I wanted to tell. On its surface, it seemed like just a true crime, like, this guy's a crook. Colorful, yes, but not really that meaningful. And it wasn't until I started interviewing other people around the port and realized just how divisive Carlos was, you know, And I would talk to some people who would tell me he was a hero, you know, that he had saved the port, that he kept people employed, that he had stood up to the government. And then I would meet some people who would tell me he was the worst thing that ever happened to the city of New Bedford. And these were all people who I wanted to like, who I wanted to relate with. It was fishermen, it was scientists, it was civil servants. It was all people who cared about the fishery, about the city, about the fish. And we're just so deeply divided about Carlos. That was really the signal to me that there was, you know, a more complicated story here, My kind of story.
- [22:36]
C
Well, you also, very explicitly, at a couple of times in a couple of episodes, say, this is a story about regulation.
- [22:45]
D
Yeah.
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C
And if you. And I think you're anticipating the default setting of most public radio listeners, if you think regulation is mostly a good thing and the people who are against anti regulation are trying to get one over, think again, because I've been rethinking this. Now tell me about that decision to make it so explicit that this was a story about the trade offs of regulation.
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D
Yeah. I mean, first off, just as a storyteller, I felt like I had to be careful of the word regulation because that's one of those, like, instant eye glaze words for a lot of people. Like, you know, okay, this is a
- [23:23]
C
podcast about regulation, fishing regulation, One that elicits even polarization. Right.
- [23:27]
D
But is also highly polarizing. Yeah, yeah. Early on, when I was working on the show, I reached out to a scholar at George Washington University named Susan Dudley, who worked in. I think she worked in the George W. Bush administration in regulation broadly, and now is an academic. And she was the one who really got me thinking about how back in the 80s and the 90s, you could have constructive debates about regulation and the trade offs of regulation that any rule the government makes is gonna have some consequences that are good by design, but it's also usually gonna have some unintended consequences. There are going to be people who bear the brunt of it, and then people who aren't affected at all. It's this very contested space with all these inherent trade offs. And she found, you know, in more recent years, the 2000 and tens and on that it was like you couldn't even have that conversation anymore. That the idea of regulation, the idea of the regulatory state, the administrative state, had become itself a kind of political identity that you were like, for it or against it in a way that made it very hard to actually see the nuances anymore of any individual regulation.
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C
And.
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D
And the story of Carlos Rafael and the New Bedford fishing industry just to me captured that dynamic so clearly that there are not clear good guys and bad guys here. That there are deep trade offs, deep uncertainties, deep and profound unintended consequences. So it was just something I wanted to really flag for listeners kind of in transparency, that this is, you know, and I try not to beat people over the head with it, but at some point early on in the series kind of say, this is how I'm coming at it. Not necessarily trying to change your mind or convince you of anything, but I'm hopefully trying to, like, complicate the picture a little bit.
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C
Right. And when you talk to your editors or people at people who were in the editorial structure of the show, this is not the sort of thing that gets really examined in public radio. Yeah, I remember listening to a series on KQED that was called Sold out, and it was about housing. There was maybe a few. A few paragraphs, and they're on three seasons now, a few paragraphs in one episode about how overregulation may have hurt the supply of housing, which most good economists will say, actually, that is the very crux of the issue. So on the one hand, I just. I just think from being in public radio that it's just not the orientation of why people get into public radio and how they think of the world. And they think of the person who doesn't have the wherewithal to tell their own story. But that person usually isn't a business owner. So I would guess there wouldn't necessarily be pushback. But what was the reaction to I am going to tell a story where the regulators are often the bad guys and do get it wrong sometimes.
- [26:50]
D
I mean, no one at GBH or in the newsroom ever raised an explicit concern of why we feel this show is too tilted in one direction or the other. I have folks who fact check the show. I have an editor, a story editor, as well as a newsroom editor who reviews everything. And we have conversations about it. And there were some angles that folks encouraged me to push on more. But the overall posture of the show was never something that I had to fight hard to justify, which is great. And I'VE talked with some of the people who I interviewed for the show or people in New Bedford who do not listen to public radio, who have a very dim view of public radio. And Carlos Rafael would probably put in that category, who listened to the show and really appreciated it. And so, you know, and I'll just say, at the same time, I've also gotten criticism and pushback, I guess, broadly speaking, from the left for this show in a way that I have not for the Big Dig story or the lottery story, even though I think those in their own ways try to at least complicate orthodoxy or kind of simplistic ways of thinking about issues. So it's been an interesting experience. I've gotten harsher criticism for this show than anything I've ever done, but also really deep gratitude, and not just gratitude from fishermen. One of my favorite emails that I've gotten after the show came out was from one of the top scientists for New England who did the ground fish, the cod assessments for many years, you know, assessing the population of codfish. And for folks who listen to the show, you'll understand that the science of how many codfish are out in the ocean is incredibly divisive and has everything to do with the crimes of Carlos Raphael. But I heard from the scientist who said, you know, it was amazing to, like, hear that perspective of the story, to hear laid out in this way. So that really meant a lot of.
- [29:11]
C
To fill the listeners in. This one guy raises the issue of the nets that they use to trawl the bottom of the sea. They're doing a census, and he lays the nets out and he's like, these nets don't work. These nets are improperly weighted. You're not getting the right count. And the counter is, aha. But they've never been proper, so we have to be consistent. So if they weren't getting the right count in 1963, we hope they're are in the same way not getting the right count today. I don't know. That seems like a crazy assumption, but at least we laid out what the government thinking was. It just, I would say, does not put the regulators in the best possible light if they're doing an accurate census.
- [29:54]
D
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's so hard. Like I said already, like, I really don't believe there are good guys and bad guys. I really, I mean, I tried to also tell the story of the regulators and where they're coming from. And I believe there are, for the most part, their hearts are in the right place with this and they're not just out to punish the fishermen out of spite, although some fishermen feel that way. And it's just, it is a very complicated world involving, as you said, very difficult trade offs. And I just felt coming into this series and this story that I guess, and this comes back to what you're saying about being in public media. I have a rough sense of who the public media audience is and that probably most of them don't need convincing that science is valid and that science is important to society and worth supporting and worth celebrating. And I imagine for a lot of my listeners, they don't need to be reminded that the government can do good, that the environment needs to be protected, that natural resources need to be managed, the public commons need to be managed. Right. To me, those points are broadly going to be broadly accepted, probably by my audience. And so I'm much more interested in providing empathy, or not necessarily sympathy, but at least empathy with the person who feels that the science is flawed, the regulation is overbearing, and that he was justified in breaking the law and defying those things. I'm interested in trying to understand that worldview and helping my listeners understand that, because that's not a perspective I hear every day.
- [31:51]
C
We'll be back with more of Ian Coss as we consider how they went and caught the Codfather. Live. Shopping on Whatnot is exploding right now. Exploding in the good way. I've seen the shows, I've seen the rankings, I've seen the revenue numbers. The numbers of sellers making over $1 million on whatnot has doubled in the last year. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, which they still have full time side hustle, you know how hard it is. You're hoping that someone somehow finds your listing. You wait for them to walk in. Whatnot flips that. On Whatnot, you go live, you sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got, they ask questions, they keep coming back. My producer, Corey, loves whatnot and he's always selling and acquiring collectibles. Let us even call them collectibles. I don't want to use brand names, but they are a fun company. Anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small or yet to exist. Across whatnot, the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year has doubled. Some make more. This is how averages work. Some make less. But consistency pays off. Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search for Whatnot W H a T N o T Whatnot in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the long standing advice show and Ambie Award nominated best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host, here's the reveal. It's me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics, how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course, how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions, we'll find the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with Ian Koss talking about his podcast Catching the Codfather. And Ian, do you think that there is an actual best way to regulate fisheries or, or do you think that the fishermen were just going to have to take it on the chin? It was inevitable because there simply wasn't the stock of fish out there from the heydays of the 50s or 60s.
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D
Yeah, no, it's a really good question. I try not to offer, I try to be humble about the fact that this is a big complicated subject and I, I am not the person to fix the fishery or offer up the solution. In my understanding of talking to a lot of people studying this story, there were too many boats, there were too many fishermen for the fish docks that existed. And so there was almost certainly going to be some kind of correction. And as many fishermen would point out, I mean, there were too many boats because the government, you know, the federal government back in the 70s and 80s really encouraged people to buy, you know, to build boats. Really, they made it very cheap. They provided these government backed loans. So, you know, no one's hands are clean in this. But there was, there was going to be some kind of correction. And so I think the where we can learn from it, hopefully is, you know, even if there was going to be some immiseration, as you said, there was going to be people put out of work, I think the process of how that was phased in, you know, how it was communicated, it could have been done a lot better. And I think everyone would agree with that.
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C
Yeah, some of the people who are most central to making. The mistakes are fleshed out in your story as real people who you actually like and identify and think they have an all but impossible task.
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D
Yeah, yeah. And something I like to point out is that not every fishery in the United States is like codfish in New England. I mean, this is, as one person described it to me, like a car crash in slow motion over several decades. It's really. It's a cautionary tale of what happens when that circuit of trust between an industry and the science and the regulators, when that circuit breaks down completely. Not every fishery is like this. Not every extractive industry is like this. But once that trust breaks down so completely as it has around ground fish, so called the cod and so forth in New England, it's very hard. It's very hard to rebuild.
- [37:32]
C
There was also a moment, I think it might have been in episode three, where I don't know how intentional this was, but within two minutes of Showtime, there were two examples of people acting in their short term interests, but not their long term interests. And each of those examples were on either side of this debate. There was a mayor, a politician who basically knew there needed to be. This wasn't a fishing issue.
- [38:01]
D
They knew there the wastewater treatment plant.
- [38:04]
C
Wastewater treatment plant. And like it had to happen long term. And he gets voted out of office because he sticks to his convictions. And no one likes that short term. And the same thing is going on in the other side. This is the same guy who becomes an administrator who tries to impose some of these, quote is on fishes, fishes where the short term interest overwhelms long term health of the fisheries. That's another theme that government and industry and everyone else will almost always prioritize the immediate. For the long term.
- [38:38]
D
Yeah. And I mean, the thing about fishing is that for even a state like Massachusetts that, you know, has a lot of history around fishing and it's a big part of the mythology. The vast majority of the people in this state do not care at all about fishing policy or regulation. They don't follow it at all. However, there are a few thousand extremely motivated voters in a handful of port cities and, you know, Gloucester and New Bedford and elsewhere for whom this is a defining issue of their lives. And so you do see, you know, there's a very sharp politics around this issue. And there are people you've heard of, like, you remember Barney Frank, the longtime Massachusetts congressman, He fought tooth and nail to stop fishing regulation. Right. Elizabeth Warren has been very. She comes up in this series at some point, very protective of the fishing industry, it has this power to it where if you want to reach those clusters of voters in New Bedford and elsewhere, you want to appeal to them. And so there is. The politics of it are very treacherous. You have these civil servants who are in theory federal employees, empowered, given this task and responsibility to protect the fish. You have the congresspeople who represent those districts breathing down their necks about how they're killing jobs and squashing the economy. You've got all kinds of pressures from the administration. It's really, you have to feel for the bureaucrats who are handling fishing regulation. It is a very, very difficult job. And underneath all that, something I try and remind myself is my wife is a scientist. She's a biologist, researcher. And I've talked about this with her and she's like, gosh, the idea of my research having that kind of stakes attached to it is terrifying. I mean, there's always uncertainty. You know, if you're talking about like counting how many codfish spawned in the last year in the entire Gulf of Maine, like nobody can identify that precisely. There's always this uncertainty. And so just imagine you are that researcher, you know, knowing that the, the results of your experiments, your data is literally going to decide the livelihood of a fifth generation family fishing boat out of New Bedford, you know.
- [41:20]
C
Yeah. Well, also, even if the scientist gets it right, oh, the cod stocks are very low. All right, let's design a way out of that. And one design might be some sort of quota, but then you or fishermen trawl the bottom of the sea, they pull up, all these fish, if caught, are over, over the quota. What's a fisherman going to do? You throw out the cod because you don't want to go over the quota. But they don't live after going through that trauma. And so you have this scene of, you know, all these codfish belly up. So these fishermen won't, or fishers won't violate the law, but they don't save any fish. And you know, another example is when they go down to. Was it New Zealand? They went down to. Yeah, yeah, tell, tell us that story. That's another interesting example of good intentions. And probably somewhere in some journal, people who are very into fisheries said, pointed to the New Zealand example is the way forward. Tell me a little about that.
- [42:18]
D
Yeah, so the basic idea is that in the, say or in the 2000s, sort of like Obama administration era, there was a big trend towards what are called market based environmental solutions. I think the most famous example of this is cap and trade for carbon. Right. We Know, we need to release less carbon dioxide if we just put a price on all the pollution. And then everybody can buy and sell the right to pollute and the free market will do its magic. Right? And there are a number of examples of this. And so, well, the version of that for fishing was what's called catch shares. And it's just like cap and trade, you say, except swap the right to catch fish for the right to pollute. You divide up, okay, here's how many fish that we believe can be sustainably caught in the whole region this year. We're going to divide it up into these individual pieces. We're going to divvy up those shares to everyone who has a permit, all the fishermen, and then they can buy and sell and swap and trade and lease amongst themselves. Let the market do its work. So that was the system that was developed and tried in a number of other countries first. And New Zealand was a prominent example. And so there's a story that a fisherman told me. This is a fisherman out of New Hampshire who's a real. You can think of him as sort of like the family farmer equivalent of a fisherman.
- [43:52]
C
Think of the small coastline of New Hampshire. That's the proportional power that this fisherman,
- [43:59]
D
one guy, one boat, he goes out for just the day and catches what he can catch. Real independent guy. He goes there to New Zealand because he's a member of this fishery management group. All of them take this trip over.
- [44:16]
C
Yeah, they take him on a junket there to sell them.
- [44:18]
D
They take him on a junket to
- [44:19]
C
sell them on fish shares.
- [44:21]
D
And the way he describes it is there was a minder, he called him the KGB minder, who would follow the visiting fishermen around and make sure that they would talk to the owners of the boats or talk to the approved people in the industry who would give the approved line of how the system is balanced. All the free market has done its magic and everything is more sustainable. Everyone's making more money. But this fisherman would tell me how he'd have these weird interactions where he'd be out at a pub at night and would go to the men's room and some guy would come up to him at the urinal and be like, you know, they're not giving you the whole story, right? You know, you know, there's more going on.
- [45:04]
C
Exactly.
- [45:06]
D
And so what he comes to realize is that while this catch share system is very efficient, just like free markets are at kind of, you know, balancing, you know, finding the most efficient way, right, to catch this amount of fish, what it also produced was just incredible consolidation because it was very easy for a handful of big players to buy up other people's quota. And what would happen is if you had a bad season, in terms of the science was not so good and the numbers of the fish out there are not so good, your quota might shrink to an amount that it's just not economically viable for you to go catch your own quota. It would be like loading up your boat with nets and diesel and everything, and you're steaming way offshore and you can only catch a few pounds of fish. It doesn't make sense. And so what do you do? You sell. You sell at your quota. And so it tends to just concentrate in the bigger players who have the economies of scale to make it worthwhile. And so that's what he realizes. There weren't the family owned, owner operator fishing vessels in New Zealand like him. And if you know anything about New England, if you've ever been down to a lobster shack by the water that is sort of, you know, the fishing vessels here are not huge, huge boats. They are more this small. You know, family owned boats is a lot of what you see. And so when that system was implemented, and it ultimately was implemented in New England, you saw exactly what this guy had feared, this wave of consolidation. Which of course brings us back to Carlos Rafael the Codfather. He is the beneficiary of that. He is the one who is able to swoop in and buy out the little guys and amass this huge amount of quota.
- [47:11]
C
Ian Coss is the host, is the writer of Catching the Codfather. I guess you might have to look at it for the Big Dig presents Catching the Godfather. Catch it wherever you get your podcast and I do recommend you catch it. Ian, thank you so much.
- [47:27]
D
Thank you for doing it. Appreciate it.
- [47:34]
C
And that's it for today's show. Corey War is the producer of the Gist, but not today. Jeff Craig produced today's show. Well, Corey helped. I don't want to get into all the inner dynamics, but it was, let's just call it a tandem job. Jeff usually produces how to. Ben Astaire is the booking producer of the Gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist list and Michelle Pesca oversaw that palace coup as the coo. She knows about coups. And thanks for listening.