Away Days Podcast: Reporting from the Underbelly – Details, episodes & analysis

Away Days Podcast is an episodic documentary series focused on unreported stories from the fringes of society.  Journalist Jake Hanrahan, the host and creator of Away Days, has spent the last 10 years embedded in places he’s not meant to be. With unique access and a straightforward style of on-the-ground reporting, the listener will be taken deep into the places they didn’t know existed.

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

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Welcome to the world of ‘No Rules’, a new underground fighting subculture where anything goes. Biting, head stamping, eye gouging, hair pulling, elbows, headbutts—it’s all allowed. These fights are fought on concrete, with no gloves, and no rounds. It’s non-stop organized ultraviolence, and we’ve been allowed to see it first hand…

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We travel to the south of France to see if a new clandestine No Rules fight club is the real deal. The underground fighters who’ve supposedly set this one up claim it’s in the most luxurious city in France—Cannes.  Either we’ve been trolled or the No Rules scene really is spreading everywhere…

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We travel to a German border town to attend a hidden underground fight club in the heart of the underworld. Biker gangs, drug dealers, and hooligans all brush shoulders to watch the first ever female No Rules fight…

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After almost two years of working on access and devolving our project on the underground scene of No Rules fighting, an entryway into King of the Streets finally opens up.

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Red Command is Brazil’s oldest gang. Inside the shanty towns they control, there’s no police, no government, no rule of law. Street justice only. We spent a week with Red Command to see how a gang takes on the role of a government. Welcome to the favelas…

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We want to see what life is like for the civilians of the favela. So far we've only been around armed foot-soldiers and serious gang members. What we find in the heart of the favela is more incredible than we ever expected.

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Security in the favelas is impoverish young men with guns, who’re untrained and unscrupulous. We went on patrol with these armed foot-soldiers at the higher, more impoverished levels of the shanty town.

There we saw a different side to the favela, one of precarious living and environmental degradation.

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

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Our final episode of the Favela Government chapter shows first hand the cycle of never-ending-violence in Rio's favelas. People we met are dead, sewers are wide open, and the gang war continues to keep civilians living in fear.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We travel to Japan to find out how the next generation of illegal street racers are dodging police and keeping their counterculture alive.

Watch Away Days documentaries at youtube.com/@awaydaystv

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.