''Cool Mules'' is a podcast by

Canadaland Canadaland is a Canadian podcast and also the name of a company founded by Jesse Brown in 2013. The original podcast covered Canadian media and media criticism. At one time the company produced other weekly or monthly podcasts covering a range ...

about a cocaine-smuggling ring led by

Slava Pastuk Yaroslav Pastukhov (born June 1990), more commonly known as Slava Pastuk, is a Ukrainian-born Canadian author, former prisoner, drug smuggler and music editor. He made national news in Canada in 2017 after drug smugglers that he recruited were ar ...

that operated within

Vice Media Vice Media Group LLC is a Canadian-American digital media and broadcasting company. Vice Media encompasses four main business areas: Vice Studios Group (film and TV production); Vice TV (a joint venture with A&E Networks, also known as Vicelan ...

. It won a

National Magazine Awards The National Magazine Awards, also known as the Ellie Awards, honor print and digital publications that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative techniques, noteworthy enterprise and imaginative design. Or ...

Gold Award for best podcast in 2021.

Production

Cool Mules was produced and co-written by Jesse Brown;

Kasia Mychajlowycz Kasia Mychajlowycz is a journalist and podcaster who hosted Canadaland, Canadaland's ''Cool Mules'' 2020 podcast. Education Mychajlowycz obtained an MA degree from the School of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, Ryerson University ...

was the host, reporter and producer,

Jonathan Goldsbie 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.'' He won a National Magazi ...

did research, Nathan Burley did the music, and Chandra Bulucon did the sound design and mixing. It was released in six parts, the first of which was released on March 2, 2020.

Synopsis

The podcast tells the story of Toronto-based Yaroslav Pastukhov/Slava Pastuk, a

music editor who goes by the pseudonym of Slava P. The story takes placed between 2014 and 2016, in which Slava P recruits younger Vice employees into an international cocaine-smuggling ring. Themes in the podcast include the gig-economy, worker exploitation, and the line between journalists reporting news and creating news.

Critical reception

In 2021, Cool Mules won a Digital Publishing Awards Gold Award for best podcast (arts & culture) from the

. Maxine Betteridge-Moes writing for Smack Media described the podcast as refreshing and fascinating. Lizzy Steiner, writing in CrimeReads writes "host Kasia Mychajlowycz painstaking unpacks a crime that seems custom-built for the millennial generation." US corporation Storied Media Group bought the rights to the story.

References

External links

Cool Mules podcast official website
* Sean Craig and Adrian Humphreys
''How a former editor allegedly used Vice Canada to recruit drug mules for a global smuggling ring''
''

The National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper and the flagship publication of the American-owned Postmedia Network. It is published Mondays through Saturdays, with Monday released as a digital e-edition only.

'', 2 February 2017 {{Authority control Canadian podcasts Crime podcasts Works about drug traffickers Works about the illegal drug trade 2020 podcast debuts

Production

Synopsis

Critical reception

See also

References

External links