Podcast Bull

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Podcast Bull

Browsing history podcasts on YouTube Music the other day, I saw Our Thing Podcast with Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. “That’s a familiar name,” I thought, “from my teen and young adult years. I’ll give it a try.” I give this podcast a 5 out of 5.

The podcast’s internet homepage is here.

Season 1, Episode 1, on Apple Podcasts 9 (Dec. 16, 2020)—starting point:

I’ll start by saying that, in spite of his assertion that he’s giving listeners “the truth,” we have to treat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano as an unreliable narrator. He’s a mobster, a murderer … and now, an entertainer. There are events in his life that are verifiably true, covered in the newspapers, testified under oath, but I think it’s reasonable to consider that, when it comes to events with no other witnesses on record, listeners should use caution regarding believing everything.

According to himself, Sammy Gravano was a bad kid: disobedient, a fighter, disruptive … a trial to his hardworking, Italian immigrant parents. He was also dyslexic in the 1950s, which meant it was assumed, when he couldn’t learn to read or do math like other children, that he was stupid and incorrigible. Since he was in the military in the 1960s, I assume he got enough book learning to satisfy a draft board, but it’s clear from his story that he processes knowledge aurally and physically, not by reading.

Sammy is a brilliant storyteller in the tradition of pre-literate societies, the kind of guy who could keep a cave-dwelling clan spellbound through long, winter nights. He’s got narrative pacing. He’s got snappy, evocative dialogue. He’s got well-chosen exemplary anecdotes. He’s got character sketches. He has the audience in the palm of his hand.

He grew up in Brooklyn knowing the Mafia — Cosa Nostra, Our Thing — existed, but he had no family connection. He started his life of crime independently and was recruited into the Colombo crime family as an “associate”: an employee rather than “family.” After a few years, he was traded, like a spare second baseman, to the Gambino family, where he worked for Salvatore “Toddo” Aurelio, an experienced captain.

Toddo was Sammy’s first significant mentor; he is vividly described in the podcast. Sammy, who is clearly very intelligent, took to the role of disciple to the thoughtful and pragmatic boss. He learned to understand people’s motives, to inspire respect from followers, to focus on goals rather than distractions. Under Toddo’s mentorship, Sammy became a “made man,” “a friend of ours,” a blood brother, in effect, and a sworn member of Our Thing.

Sammy Gravano presents himself as a 100% bought-in true believer in the concept and traditions of Cosa Nostra. He judges himself and others against a consistent code that includes obedience to authority, effectiveness, loyalty to subordinates, and a sort of criminal noblesse oblige that has harsh penalties for, as I would say, acting tacky. One of his stories involves the murder of John “Johnny Keys” Simone, a figure from the Philadelphia mob who was killed on the orders of the New York City Mafia’s “Commission”. After luring Simone into an ambush, Sammy spent a long day with his intended victim and ended up respecting Simone’s Cosa Nostra values so much that he tried — and failed — to get the hit cancelled.

Much criminality and murdering occurred over many years, until, in 1992, Gravano testified against John Gotti, then boss of the Gambino family. Gotti got a long sentence, while Gravano was released in a few years and entered the Witness Protection Program. Then more criminality and jail time, before he was (most recently) released in 2017. The podcast premiered in 2020; several seasons have been released.

Sammy the Bull lives in a culture and practices a value system very different from those of what we could call “ordinary Americans.” As a presenter, he seems to have very little awareness of this. It’s a very interesting dynamic and a reminder that other people can be incomprehensible.

In the mid-1980s, fantasy writer Steven Brust started a series — the first title is Jhereg — about an organized crime assassin named Vlad Taltos. The dynamics of “the Jhereg,” which is both an ethnic group and a membership society, are sufficiently similar to the functions of the Cosa Nostra, as described by Gravano, that I think the contemporaneous news must have inspired the author. I recommend the series, which you might find in your local library.

Here’s the Goodreads page.