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On September 2, 2025 the United States escalated its decades long War on Drugs with a tactic borrowed from the War on Terror. It used a drone to blow up a boat it said was full of drugs then said the 11 people killed in the strike were terrorists.

Is this legal? Does that matter?

On this week’s Angry Planet, journalist Mike LaSusa of InSight Crime comes on the show to walk us through the ins and outs of America’s long-running War on Drugs and how War on Terror tactics are shaping the fight.

• What’s Tren de Aragua?
• The real connections between Tren de Aragua and the government of Venezuela
• Is this legal?
• How America’s drug interdiction works
• Does violence deter?
• On narcoterrorism
• Cartel as misnomer
• Violence isn’t sustainable
• “We don’t even know these people’s names.”
• America’s partners in the War on Terror on Drugs
• “Motivations matter.”
• How do you solve a problem like illicit drugs?
• How the Trump admin hurt its own cause in the drug war
• Poppies in Afghanistan
• Drug use as a moral failing
• 11 is a lot people for a drug boat
• The Cartel of the Suns

How War-on-Terror Tactics Could Change the Fight Against Organized Crime

Boat Suspected of Smuggling Drugs Is Said to Have Turned Before U.S. Attacked It

Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike

Tren de Aragua: Fact vs. Fiction

How Trump’s Anti-Money Laundering Rollback Could Help LatAm Criminals

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The Pacific Northwest is known for its startling natural beauty, precocious rainfall, and propensity to birth serial killers. Why? Caroline Fraser has a theory and it’s a good one.

This week on Angry Planet, Fraser takes us on a journey through the American past and into the dark heart of the PNW. Her new book Murderland weaves together memoir, true crime, history, and science into a compelling narrative that’s as beautiful and deadly as the forests around Tacoma.

• Lead in the time of serial killers
• Crazywall as map
• America’s ultra-leaded 1970s
• The killer hubristic roadways of the Pacific Northwest
• The unique draw of Ted Bundy
• The beauty and horror of the PNW’s woods
• Lead poisoned psychos become pop culture geniuses
• Anne Rule and the different eras of true crime writing
• The Olympic–Wallowa lineament
• The current state of the true crime genre

Murdlerand: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Tacoma Smelter Plume project

Houses of Butterflies

A look back at the I-90 floating bridges before light-rail work begins

The Domesday Book

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All things move towards their end, even seemingly omnipotent political leaders, and authoritarian systems are shaped by the question of succession long before the leader dies. Xi Jinping is 72 years old and the Chinese Communist Party has started to consider what comes next. Those conversations are shaping the political reality of the country.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Brown University professor Tyler Jost comes on the show to explain China is navigating what life may look like after Xi.

• How succession shapes politics in an authoritarian system
• How does China’s government actually work?
• The path to the Chinese presidency
• As always, it’s all about who you know
• Princelings
• Xi’s path to power
• Corruption as influence
• When the eye of the leader lands upon you
• “Cyberpunk hellscape”
• Some parting notes on American Maoism

After Xi—The Succession Question Obscuring China’s Future—and Unsettling Its Present

Bureaucracies at War

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