Paul Durica

speaker

288 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Paul Durica’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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American History Hit · Life in Mobland Chicago · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

Suddenly you've got men and women drinking, sharing spaces like speakeasies.

You've got older people, younger people,

Um, there's a letter to the Chicago Tribune of one guy who admits, you know, he enjoys a beer, but going into like a neighbor's, uh, beer flat and seeing like a, you know, high school girls like drinking beer there.

Uh, but it horrifies it, right?

Cause he's the older guy and he's fight with it.

And, and so you kind of see the sort of breakdown in, in the sort of moral order around drinking.

You think it's a bad thing and that's all kind of brought about by prohibition going into it.

No, I mean, there were honest people and honest public officials.

You know, there's a mayor kind of at the beginning of the period and sort of towards the end of it named William Thompson.

He's known as Big Bill.

And he was very kind of comfortable with violating the Olstead Act.

And in fact, if you've ever seen the Costner film, the Costner version of The Untouchables, like when they're like,

Looking through the contents of the pocket, I think Frank Nitti, played by Billy Drago, they find a card that has like, you know, basically it's the mayor's card, right?

And that's Thompson.

I mean, he was a real historic character.

But in between two of his terms, there's a reform mayor named William Deaver.

And Deaver really does make an honest effort to try to clean things up.

And that's when the Capone syndicate moves to Cicero.

And there were honest police officers as well, honest police superintendents, figures like Morgan Collins.

And then, you know, although it's largely fictional groups, prohibition agents like those led by Elliot Ness weren't on the take.

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