Episode 39

Unthreading the Silk Road: A Conversation With Author Nick Bilton

A marketplace of drugs, guns and murder for hire. Journalist and author Nick Bilton explored the illicit web-based market the Silk Road in his page-turner, American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road.

In this engaging episode, he joins host Matt Adams to dig into how he conceptualized, researched and wrote this book. They also forecast where internet-based crimes are potentially headed thanks to artificial intelligence.

Nick and Matt’s conversation takes listeners back in time to the early 2000s—the early days of internet-based crime—and provides a legal and practical perspective on how federal agencies altered their tried-and-true processes to confront and catch criminals committing crimes via the web.

The episode also explores how the acceptance of responsibility—or lack thereof—by a defendant can affect sentencing decisions.