There are dirty lies and clean lies, according to Carlos “The Codfather” Rafael. The new season of GBH News’ “The Big Dig” podcast, titled “Catching the Codfather,” explores the nebulous terrain between the two, says the podcast’s host and creator, Ian Coss. “A dirty lie hurts someone else,” Coss recalls Rafael telling him, “and a clean lie gets you around an unnecessary obstacle.”
When Rafael was 16, he walked into a New Bedford textile mill to land his first job. The person behind the desk asked him his age, and he said, “I’m 16.” They turned him away, citing insurance reasons for not hiring anyone under 18 years old.
It’s at that moment, Coss says, that Rafael realized his mistake: he told the truth. So he waited until the person at the front desk went on their lunch break, and then walked in to apply for a job. This time, he didn’t hesitate when they asked him his age. “I’m 18.”
“That tells you what you need to know about Carlos,” says Ian Coss. “That was a clean lie, in his mind. It caught up with him, eventually — the mill found out his real age, and he lost his job. But he has no remorse about it,” Coss says. “Remorse isn’t one of Carlos’ main emotional states.”
We sat down with Coss to talk about the surprises that “Catching the Codfather” has in store for listeners, the video elements that accompany the six-episode third season of “The Big Dig”, and what the rise and fall of a fishing mogul can tell us about our region, our history, and our country.
How did you land on this story?
I got interested in the story about two and a half years ago. I came across this story about a man named Carlos Raphael who had been arrested about 10 years ago in an IRS sting operation. For people you know who live on the Massachusetts south coast, this was a very familiar story, but it wasn’t something I had heard of before.
It had all of these elements that are so intriguing. There’s the name — the Codfather — which is how he was known by the local press. There’s the investigation with undercover agents, sting operations, secret recordings. By December of 2023, he’d already been let out of prison, so I just decided, maybe I can get in touch with this guy and see what he has to say for himself. So I found his number and cold-called Carlos.
He picked up the phone and invited me down to his office to talk. The story ended up being a lot more complicated than I was expecting. It has all these sort of eye-grabbing True Crime elements, but there was also something much deeper going on: about history, culture, immigration, regulation, and politics.
What surprised you about this story?
Carlos. In some ways, he carries himself like a cartoon villain — he’s uses very crass language talking about other people, and his office is literally covered with pictures from the film Scarface — so he’s easy to flatten into this caricature who broke the law, exploited others, and the ocean just to enrich himself. And there’s definitely truth in that narrative.
But when I started talking to people in the fishing industry and around New Bedford, I would get this much more complicated view of Carlos. People would say, “Yeah, he broke the law, but he also did a lot of good for the community.” Or, “I think he was totally justified in what he did.”
There are people who hate his guts and people who admire him. There are people who think he got everything he deserved and people who think he was wrongfully prosecuted. The case seems pretty cut-and-dry, and in legal terms, it is, right? But in ethical-political terms, it’s a lot more complicated.
Every “Big Dig” season is populated with larger than life, dynamic characters. What about this season’s characters did you find so compelling?
This pair of characters — John Bullard and Carlos Rafael — captured my interest immediately. I spent the most time talking to them, and they’re who audiences will hear the most about in the show. They are mirror images of each other.
Carlos is an immigrant. He came here as a teenager, hungry to build something, make money, and prove himself in America. He has this really pure vision of the American dream — if you work hard and work for yourself, you can achieve anything in this country. He’s also a self- described “pirate-rogue” who makes his own rules and doesn’t like laws and regulation.
And then there’s this man named John Bullard. He’s of old New England stock. His family has been in New Bedford since the 1700s and helped build up the whaling industry there. Twelve of his ancestors went to Harvard University before him.
In literary terms, they’re foils. And they have these parallel journeys: while Carlos is working his way up in the fishing industry, John is advancing in local politics. [Bullard] becomes the mayor of New Bedford before moving into the federal government and becoming the top regulator for the fishing industry, just as Carlos is becoming a fishing tycoon. I found that dynamic so fascinating. It communicates so much about the region, that it is both of these things: the port that inspired Moby Dick, and also one of the country’s biggest hubs of Portuguese immigration.
All of these stories in “The Big Dig” series are quintessentially Massachusetts. How does “Catching the Codfather” fit into that mosaic?
Something I’ve been consciously trying to do with the series, after the first season, is create a tapestry wherein all the pieces fit together to tell a larger story about the region. My hope is that every season adds a new element to the series.
One is the history of fishing. People forget this, but the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded on fishing — the idea that the bounty of the ocean fuels our state — is very deeply ingrained.
The other piece is the history of Portuguese immigration. [Southern] New England is the focal point of Portuguese culture and immigration in the United States. That’s another window that I hope the show opens up for listeners.
And then the last piece is political. We typically think of New England as a democratic, left-leaning place that is pro-environmentalism and regulation. But there’s a deep counter-strain to that, wherein people prize their autonomy and want to do their own thing. I think fishermen really epitomize that ethos. There’s a great line an environmentalist said to me: the West has its cowboys, and the East has its fishermen. I think that’s so true in our mythology: the fisherman represents this desire to be your own person, autonomous, the captain of your own ship.
Central to this new season is the addition of video episodes of the podcast, available weekly on YouTube. Why was that so important for this season?
Going back to the first season of the series, one of the big inspirations was the GBH Archives and wanting to tell stories with historical material. This is such a rich visual story — with boats, water, fish, docks, and nets. There’s so much outstanding visual material that I’m really excited for people to be able to experience by watching along on YouTube.
What do you enjoy about storytelling in the format of long-form podcasts?
I like that it’s long. In a time when most digital media keeps getting shorter and more compressed, podcasting is a medium where you can spend six or eight hours on a topic and people will go there with you.
I also like that it really centers people telling their own stories in their own words, with their own voices. As a storyteller — I don’t even identify myself as a journalist, although I think what I do is journalism — I’ve never felt like what I’m doing is a search for absolute, objective truth. Rather, I’m interested in understanding people’s memories and reflections on the past, and through that, capturing their experience of the truth.
What about this season are you most excited for listeners to discover?
My hope with every season of “The Big Dig” is there will be some aspect of the story that challenges your thinking, complicates your view of the world, and makes something that seemed neat and tidy a little less comfortable.
What makes this story important or relevant for right now?
As a country, we’re deeply divided about what the role of the state should be in the economy and in people’s lives. I feel like this story speaks to that, and why people feel so strongly about these issues. In many ways, it’s a very small story — the fishing industry isn’t huge, and I won’t claim that this story directly touches the lives of most Americans. But I think there’s something very emblematic, and there’s lessons to be learned from the way fishermen relate to the government.
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Tune in to “Catching the Codfather,” the new season of “The Big Dig” on YouTube or your preferred podcast platform. New episodes air on Wednesdays through March 18.
