Noiser presents a brand-new podcast. Real Survival Stories brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary survival situations. In this taster episode, we’ll meet Mark Inglis the search & rescue mountaineer. It’s his job to save other people. But on a routine practice mission, he’ll find himself in deep trouble. Caught in a whiteout halfway up New Zealand’s highest peak, Mark and his colleague Phil take refuge in a tiny snow cave. But as the hours tick by into...

History That Doesn’t Suck is made by Prof. Greg Jackson - a friend of the Noiser podcast team. If you like the episode, follow History That Doesn’t Suck wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A desperate flight through a sewage pipe is not enough to deliver El Chapo to freedom. Arrested and extradited to the United States, his story closes in a packed Brooklyn courtroom, in front of the world’s media. But even as Chapo departs the stage, Mexico remains under siege from the cartels. Joaquín Guzmán may be behind bars in America, but even his story is only part of a much bigger saga - one with no clear end in sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s late 2014, and El Chapo is finally back behind bars. The prison he’s in has a reputation as a fortress - it’s even more secure than the last one. But if anyone’s going to have a crack at busting out, it’s Chapo Guzmán. Specially trained diggers hatch a plan for one of the most audacious prison breaks in history. Back at large, the sensible move is to lay low in the mountains. But Chapo can’t resist the limelight. He prepares for a sit-down. Not with his lawyers or the cops, but with the...

The DEA agents make a huge breakthrough in the investigation, when a routine wiretap in Arizona unexpectedly leads them to El Chapo’s personal cell phone. Monitoring his personal communications, they get to know their target intimately. The Mexican marines begin the process of rounding up Chapo’s henchmen. Each arrest gets them closer to the boss himself. Until, finally, a dawn raid in the resort town of Mazatlán yields the ultimate prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

It’s 2001, and Mexican drug baron Joaquín Guzmán Loera has spent nearly a decade behind bars. But now he becomes a fugitive once more, as he pulls off the most daring escape his super-max prison has ever seen. DEA agents wrangle a sit-down with a new, priceless informant. Meanwhile, Chapo finds love in the mountains. And his cartel branches out into a new market, with a product that has huge possibilities for financial reward: meth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After escaping a hit at Guadalajara Airport, El Chapo disappears from view. When he resurfaces, he’s in Guatemala - Mexico’s next-door neighbour. Acting on a tip-off, the authorities close in on a hotel in the border town of Tapachula. Returned home in handcuffs, Chapo can look forward to a lengthy stay at a top-security penitentiary. But by throwing money around, he’s able to win the prison guards over to his side. The flow of drugs into the United States continues, unhindered by Chapo’s...

In the early 1980s, Chapo Guzmán is still in his mid-20s. But he’s already done more than enough to grab the attention of the Guadalajara Kingpin. Pretty soon, he’s promoted into the Cartel's inner circle. He’s put in charge of logistics - using tunnels, ships and even submarines to transport contraband between South, Central and North America. As Chapo assumes personal control of Sinaloa State and the Pacific Coast, he turns his own operation into a supersized cartel. As a brutal drug war...

El Chapo: the scourge of Mexico and America’s most-wanted. Joaquín Guzmán Loera, to use his real name, escaped from custody multiple times and dodged death many more. For years, he rode roughshod over Mexican justice and evaded the long arm of the US Government. He became an A-list celebrity criminal - a subject of fascination and even reverence - despite a never-ending list of heinous crimes and innocent victims. But how did this semi-literate psychopath from the rural hinterland of Sinaloa...

With one of the Cartel leaders behind bars, the DEA have taken a big step in rounding up the killers of Agent Camarena. The search for the remaining fugitives is ramped up. The noose tightens around Félix Gallardo, as DEA agents stake out and raid properties all across Latin America. But the end of Gallardo will not close the curtain on the North American narcotics trade. Into Gallardo’s shoes will step his former understudy. He’s a fresh-faced, fearsome enemy for the authorities to deal with...

In Guadalajara, DEA agents search frantically for their missing friend and colleague, Kiki Camarena. The US-Mexico border is almost shut down as 50% of all cars crossing at San Ysidro are searched for leads. The massive effort soon pays off. Meanwhile, on the runway at Guadalajara Airport, in the shadow of a luxury private jet, DEA agents are caught in a Mexican stand-off with the Godfather’s right-hand man. And out in the remote countryside, a farmer makes a gruesome discovery. Learn more...

In 1981, DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena lands in Mexico. His task is to bring down the man known as El Padrino (The Godfather). This drug lord's real name is Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. Gallardo sits atop an industrial scale cocaine and marijuana trafficking operation, propped up by millions of dollars’ worth of bribes. He’s a man intertwined with the upper echelons of the Mexican establishment, a deadly spider at the centre of a web of corruption. Agent Camarena is only supposed to be...

Everyone assumed Matta Ballesteros was just a low-level pusher. But it turns out he’s the shady mastermind behind an overland supply route funnelling eye-watering quantities of cocaine into the southern United States. After a long and gruelling pursuit across multiple borders, the US agents on his tail hatch a plan to snatch Matta off the street. Finally, Mike Vigil of the DEA comes face to face with the man he’s chased halfway across Latin America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

The drug lords in this series tend to be larger than life. This guy is a little different. The man they call ‘El Negro’ – ‘The Black One’ – is an elusive, faceless phantom. Hunting him is like trying to catch smoke. But in September 1981, the DEA make a huge cocaine bust in Los Angeles, California. The raid throws up clues that point the agents towards a Honduran cocaine chemist. The hunt for Matta Ballesteros begins... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Griselda Blanco outhustled and outwitted the men in her orbit to rise from desperate poverty on the streets of Colombia to remarkable wealth on Miami Beach. In Bogotá, a domestic dispute between Griselda and her husband snowballs into a shootout in a nightclub parking lot. In Miami, a rookie cop is called to a homicide bearing all the hallmarks of a Godmother hit. An informant is planted at the heart of Griselda’s family network. And DEA agents come face to face with the Godmother...

In the early 1980s, the US Coast Guard are inundated with speedboats, propeller planes, helicopters and even submarines loaded with ton upon ton of high-grade cocaine. Sleepy towns find themselves on the front line of the war on drugs. Miami goes from quiet southern resort, to international front-page news. Behind this tidal wave of white powder washing up on the beaches of south Florida? The world’s first female narco-terrorist - a fearsome woman they call The Godmother. Learn more about...

Kim Jong-il built a volatile rogue state with nuclear missiles trained on its enemies – all while living a life of the utmost luxury. In the first episode of Real Dictators, we piece together the early life of this tyrant and that of the country he came to rule. Kim Jong-il is born during World War Two. His father – Kim Il-sung – fights the Japanese and helps found the state of North Korea. After the War, son and nation grow up together, as Kim Jong-il begins his own rise to power. Historians...

Barry Seal has gone from smuggler to informant, and now penetrates further into the heart of the Medellin Cartel than any American before or since. But this daredevil pilot flies too close to the wind… As Seal’s identity is exposed, the tables are turned. Can he disappear into the ether before the Cartel track him down?

Tom Cruise played him in a Hollywood blockbuster movie… his name is Barry Seal, and his ego is bigger than his waistline... In this episode of REAL NARCOS, Barry Seal flips. The world class smuggler becomes the DEA’s most highly prized informant. With a mission brief from his handlers, Seal embarks on a death-defying mission into the mountains of Colombia.

Pablo Escobar couldn’t have reached the heights he did without smugglers willing to traffic cocaine by land, sea… and air. The story of Barry Seal starts in a bar in Baton Rouge in 1981 and will take us flying over the Gulf of Mexico to South America, then back again to the South Louisiana swamps. This is the tale of the over-sized American airline pilot who gave up the dream of the white-picket fence… to become the biggest home-grown narco-trafficker the United States had ever seen.

The DEA agents finally discover Escobar’s whereabouts. Pablo’s empire comes crashing down. Shot dead on a Medellin rooftop, the most powerful cocaine smuggler of all time meets a grisly end. The agents reflect on their journey, and where the death of their number one target leaves the war on drugs.