Inside the World of Assassins, Drug Lords, and the Woman Who Interviews Them - Mariana van Zeller

22:28Can you tell us about that? But yeah, so this was a meat assassins, by the way. Like, how do you set these interviews up? Yeah, so this was an episode of Traffic that we did. Traffic was my show on National Geographic about black markets around the world. Did your husband work on that show, by the way? No, he's the EP, but he's not traveling with me. He's a documentary filmmaker in his own right and does amazing documentary films. A lot of people think he's traveling with me around the world. He's not. He's one of the EPs on the show. We've worked together. We have a production company that does Trafficked and the podcast and a bunch of other amazing documentaries called Muck Media.

22:56And so that's it's in that capacity that we work together. Since Columbia University, so 20-something years. Yeah, it's crazy. You've been in love and working together for that life. Yeah, it's crazy. We started dating in 2003. Aw, congratulations. Sorry, 2002. Yeah, it's insane. It's been that long. Yeah. Does he get worried about you being in these scenarios? Sometimes. You know, I always tell a story that sort of really encapsulates our relationship and how he feels about me being in these situations. So I was in Sinaloa doing a story about fentanyl. We've reported both. We both have reported extensively on the opiate crisis.

23:32One of the first stories we did here in the United States was about the Oxycontin. It was called the Oxycontin Express. It was about the sort of pill trafficking in Florida and how Florida had become the state that was handing all these pills to half the country. And it was a story that won us a Peabody Award at the time. And so we covered the opiate crisis and did stories about heroin together and fentanyl later on. And I was back in Sinaloa doing another story about fentanyl. And I called him. And for years, we'd been trying to get into a lab, fentanyl lab, to film the inside of a lab. And I called him and I said, OK, I've got the OK, the green light from the Sinaloa cartel to go and film inside a lab.

24:13But this is the deal. They're coming in the middle of the night. They're not going to tell us what time. They're just going to show up to pick me up. and they're going to blindfold me and they're going to get me into a car and take me to an undisclosed location. And then I'm going to be able to film and I have no idea how long it's going to take, when I'll come back to safety and I won't have a phone with me. So there's no way of you knowing if I'm safe or not. What do you think? And he said, wow, sounds like incredible access. Make sure the cameraman is filming you while you're being blindfolded.

24:48Totally. I was like, this is why I love you. So there's no one in your life between your parents or your husband that is giving any sort of cautionary. Nobody gives a shit about me. Yeah, no, everybody hates you. Yeah. No, of course everybody loves me. No, of course he loves me very much. But this is the kind of relationship we have where we understand how, you know, how many years have you been trying to get access to that. Yeah, why this is important and why we've been dying to get in there and why there's this curiosity. And there's a context is king here, right? Which I think is why we shouldn't have access to anything anybody else is doing on Instagram.

25:25Because there's no, what's normal for you in that context is crazy to everybody else, right? But I'm sure you've been in many situations where you're like, yeah, someone's picking me up. I don't know where I'm going. Like you've been. Exactly. In many situations, being with the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, you are more protected than when you're not with the Sinaloa Cartel. Of course, yes. It takes us months to get that access. And once we have that access, we're in their territory. We have their sort of protection. And we're only telling the stories the way that they're allowing us or, you know, giving they're giving us the access and allowing us to show the parts of the story that they want to.

26:03Well, this is a through line of everybody that you're working with. Right. It's like these people doing these fucked up things ultimately are proud of what they're doing. They're doing. Yeah, exactly. You know, they're like, she's going to go tell the world what we're doing. Exactly. And ultimately, you know, we go through enormous, rigorous training, making sure that we're minimizing the risk. Obviously, no story is worth the life. And we take risk very seriously, particularly on traffic. Like we all got hostile environment training. Every single season we'd have hostile environment training.

26:33Well, they teach you what to do if somebody gets shot. They teach you what to do if you're being followed. I remember one of the first hostile environment trainings we did for traffic. I had done them before because I've been doing this work for 20 years. But when I hired this group that was this amazing team that was going to be with me, travel all around the world and tell these stories about these criminal groups and black markets around the world. And some of the camera team that we hired had worked on Anthony Bourdain's show, so very different show. So they didn't really have training in sort of hostile environments.

27:02And when we started, we hired them. We got this group together in L.A. and we spent a week sort of trying to figure out what cameras we were going to use, what the look of the show was going to be. And we're going to get this training. So you are prepared when we go in the field and, you know, make sure that we're minimizing the risk. And we hire this company that does these trainings. And it's this former military guy from the UK. He's amazing. He came and he comes sort of with all these gadgets and these videos that he's showing us and all these situations and preparing us and medical equipment and all that.

27:35And at one point he turns to us and says, OK, guys, let's talk about being kidnapped and what happens and what do you have to do if you're kidnapped? in one of these places in the world. Women, there is a strong chance, he looks at the women, she looks at me, and some of our women in the team insist, there's a strong chance that you, if you're kidnapped, that you might get raped. And if this happens, this is what you're going to have to do. And then he looks at the men, and I just see Fred Manu, who's our director of photography, who's French, who's like, you know, this is shit. This is hard, but at least it's not about us, men, you know?

28:10And he looks at the men, and says, men, it's not if you are getting raped. So they like to rape the men more than the women. Apparently so. This is what we heard. And I saw I just saw like the man in particular. Like all the blood drained from his face is what the fuck am I getting myself into? This is the funniest, not funny thing I've ever heard in my fucking life. The men, you are getting raped. I think it's probably everybody being a little gay. power thing. I think it's a power move or something. Yeah. I didn't know this either until I heard this from this guy. And he has a ton of experience in these worlds.

28:48And at that moment, I was obviously worried for them. But I was also thinking, shit, my whole team is going to quit. And now I have no one to travel around the world with.

29:01I just would love the French commentary about this, too. I wish he was here to tell you. We retell this story sometimes where he tells it what it felt like when he did this. It's funny.

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33:12This is the hardest interview I've ever done because everything you're saying, I want to ask you a question and pivot to the other thing. No, because it's just everything you're saying is insane and incredible. And I want to ask a million things. The one thing that I'm sure must be so fascinating for you, you win a Peabody Award for your work on what is essentially like the biggest hub of fentanyl in America. Right. But then at the same time, aren't you like, hey, government, like I'm providing you with the information to like go shut this down. Yeah. So this was actually about sort of the Oxycontin being dispensed in Florida at the time.

33:44And they did. They changed the laws in Florida and they made it much harder for people to go there and get OxyContin. A bunch of the people that we were interviewing and investigating at the time that were part of our story were later indicted. The FBI, there were these guys. There's this crazy story that happened. We were in Florida, my husband and I at the time, filming outside this pain clinic that we found out was a massive distribution center for these OxyContin pills, for these pain pills. Not just OxyContin, but other pain pills. And there were people from all over the United States that were coming, mainly from Appalachia, that were coming to Florida.

34:17Appalachia? Yeah, to buy these prescription pills. And they would take them back to Appalachia and they would sell them and they would take them. So they were. Have you been to Appalachia? Yeah. So we did our reporting. This is how we found out about these pills. We were in West Virginia and Kentucky and we were interviewing a sheriff. I will never forget the sheriff from a small town in Kentucky, Green Up, Kentucky. And he was telling us, look, every day I'm getting calls and people are dying on my streets from these pill bottles next to these pill bottles overdosing and they're selling it. And this is a real problem.

34:48And it's now the number one cause of deaths in my town. And these pill bottles that I'm getting, they're all from Florida. And a lot of them are coming from this one pain clinic called American Pain. And it's not like he has the bandwidth to like to investigate all the way down to Florida. So he actually asked us, please go down to Florida and investigate this one pain clinic because I've reached out to the authorities there and we have to figure out what's happening. So my husband and I went back to Florida and we filmed outside this pain clinic. It's called American Pain. They had surveillance cameras.

35:17American Pain. American Pain, which is the best name for this situation. Then my husband actually ended up doing a documentary, which was a CNN Films documentary that was premiered at Tribeca Film Festival a couple of years ago, which if you haven't watched, you should. It's amazing. It's called American Pain. It's about this, the rise and fall of this pill operation run by these twins in South Florida. and they're like the Pablo Escobar of the United States at the time. They were making millions, tens of millions of dollars a year from these two pain clinics out of South Florida, like sort of strip mall clinics.

35:49And we arrive, Darren and I, my husband, we started filming outside and literally there's like surveillance cameras outside, guards outside protecting the place and lines and lines of people waiting to get in. Why is no one in Florida? Why is like the local police? Because they're probably all in bed with each other. And this is what happened that day. So people were overdosing in the parking lots, these pain clinics and a lot of out-of-state plates. Like, what the heck is happening? How is this possible? And so, yeah, so we're filming outside and we knew that these guys were dangerous. And there's been there was a lot of complaints about them and they were aggressive.

36:25And by the way, these guys looked like they were all that's, you know, roided out muscle gym rats, like big and sort of threatening. happening so we were filming from the across the street and as soon as we took the cameras out within like a few minutes we have two cars coming towards us and it's this suv and this like race car like speed car kind of thing and they basically like stop in front of us and say what the fuck are you guys filming and start yelling at us and really threatening uh somebody was like okay not that time we'll get back in the car we'll figure out a way to film this later and we asked them like what's the problem?

37:01It was like, you can't film here. And we're like, but we're in public space. But it was, you know, it wasn't good. So we got in the car and decided, okay, let's get out of here because these guys are scary. And we start driving down I-95. And this was the last thing we were filming in Fort Lauderdale that day. We were going to get back on the plane. We were going to return our rental car. And so we're driving to the airport and our tank is running really low. So I'm noticing that the gas is very low. And they start following down I-95. And I'm thinking, what do we do now? And we decided, OK, we'll just go into the gas station and put gas in the car because what are the chances they're going to do something?

37:40So we go. And as soon as we park, they come out of the car. By the way, was your training about being followed? Like, I don't think in this situation, I have no idea what we were supposed to be doing. I thought it's like what I mean, they're going to see that we're going to go to the gas station and they're going to see that we're leaving. and maybe, and really there was no other way. I had to stop in the gas station because we were running out of gas. And the worst thing that happened is that I'd actually watched, we'd been watching The Sopranos the night before. And so the whole time, as I'm stopping in the gas station, when they come out of the car, I'm thinking, okay, they're going to just pull up, put out their guns and they're going to shoot me right here.

38:15And so I said, no, fuck, let's get out of here. So we got out of there and then we continued down 9.85. And at this point, we had interviewed a woman, a law enforcement agent the night, the day before. and I called her and I said, hey, we're being followed by these guys from American Pain. And her response is, oh no, this is not good news. Call 911 right now. I know who they are. I can't tell you more, but I know who they are. Call 911 right now. So we call 911 and I say, look, I'm being followed. Please send help. I'm a journalist. We're journalists. Please send help. And as I'm doing on this call, we basically ran out of gas.

38:54and I sort of make my way slowly to the side and I stop and within minutes the police shows up they stop next behind us and they don't get out of the car this time and I'm we're puzzled and I think they're puzzled too this is why later we found out they didn't get out of the car because they were what the fuck are these people doing they didn't know we had ran out of gas so they just thought why are they stopped on the side of the street oh they thought maybe you were doing sort And so the police shows up and they come up to us and ask us what's happening. We tell them and then they go to them and ask them at the same time.

39:26And they say that they are being that they thought I was the ex-girlfriend and they'd been chased by the ex-girlfriend. And they come up with the bullshit story. Meanwhile, we found out that the FBI was in the DEA at the time were investigating these guys. And they were later indicted and did a lot of time in federal prison. and my husband reached them when they were in prison, sent them a letter. And he wanted to see if they were they want. He wanted to do a story about the rise and fall of these twin brothers and the crazy massive operation that they ran. And so he sent them a letter in prison and decided not to say that he was the guy that was chased out of that thing.

40:03And he just said, hey, my name is Darren Foster. I'm a journalist, filmmaker, want to do a story. And the guy wrote back and said, hey, great to hear from you again. Say hi to your wife. friends so he knew exactly who but they agreed and so they ended up being part of this documentary so it was crazy but it's funny you never know what's diabolical they knew exactly who you were they probably know everything about you i remember i called say hi to your wife i called yeah i called them because there's a moment where as part of the oxycontin express the story we did where i called them and i said hey we filmed outside your clinic you guys chased us now down i-95 we've been investigating your clinic and this is what we found about you um giving you a platform to respond to these these are serious chance that they're going to i would either just be like we're just going to kill her so she stops doing this or yeah you know what let's give this beautiful blonde woman a chance to like tell their story yeah but eventually they did after they did time in prison they did tell our story at the time when i called them they said one of them it wasn't the brothers.

41:07It was somebody that works with them that was also featured in Doc that answered the phone and says, he's called me a lady or girl or something. You're chasing a wrong story. I don't know what you're after, but you're chasing a wrong story, something like that. And then they hung up the phone. It's crazy you have a hundred percent success rate with these people. And one of the charges they had against them was actually murder for hire. So there was a reason for us to be scared. Although, quite frankly, I don't think they would have come after us journalists, but But you never know. And this is all addressed in the documentary.

41:36There must also be a lot of things that they're worried about on a daily basis. You know, like you're just one thing. Oh, but it must be combating like a million things. Yeah, there was local press. There was an amazing local journalist covering them at the time. You know, I think they knew that they were somewhat being investigated. They didn't know that their phones were being tapped. Part of the FBI tapes and the investigation that followed was that they heard them talking about us. this girl and this guy who like chased, who was like trying to film our operation. So it all came out in the investigation, which was really interesting.

42:11Wait, let's get back to this assassin. Yeah. Sorry. The detours. I have raging ADD. And so, but everything you're saying is incredible. So this is like a real hard for me. Okay. The assassin. The assassin. Yeah. So one of the episodes we did for Trafficked on Nat Geo was that I wanted to do an episode about assassins. So the premise of the show is about black markets. Most people don't know this, but about a third of the global economy are these black and gray markets. And yet we know very little about them. A third of our global economy? Yeah, an estimated 35 percent of a global economy are these black and gray markets.

42:46Black markets is more sort of drugs and assassinations and scams and everything that's sort of illegal. And gray markets are more sort of unregulated sort of the guy selling fruit on the side of the street, right? It's unregulated. It's a regulated job. It's not taxed. It's taking money away from, you know, schools and building of schools and hospitals and all that sort of thing. So it's stuff that we should be concerned about, black and gray markets. And it has a direct impact on our daily lives, every single one of us. And yet we know very little about it. Can you explain more about having a direct impact on our daily life?

43:23Yeah. I mean, you talk about immigration. You talk about drugs. You talk about fake pharmaceuticals that many times land in our homes. You talk about the opiate crisis and the impact that that's had. My dad was addicted to Oxycontin from he had he's had 20 before he passed away. He had 20 surgeries. He was a football player. Yeah. He was like the perfect AI story, you know, where it's just like man plays football, man gets injured, man gets Vicodin, Vicodin stops working. It just was like the weed be. I remember we were at like dinner one time. My father was a dentist. My father was a brilliant man, like a brilliant man, like was all American at USC, started football, straight A's, ran an amazing dental practice for a long time.

44:07And his pain level was a thousand every day. Like he had like bone on bone in his hips and his knees and his shoulders. He was miserable, miserable the last 10 years of his life. and I remember being at dinner one time and he went pale and started sweating and I was old enough at this you know I think it was like visiting home from college and I was like you are going through withdrawal right now and he's like yeah I'm trying to take he's like I'm trying to lay off my all the pills I'm taking they have me on so many pills and I was like 170 pills no but he would take no he used to take I remember he would take four vicodin to get out of bed in the morning.

44:43That was like a baseline. And he was a big guy. So I can having that minor tinge of it in like my middle class upbringing, I just cannot imagine what it's like in the rest of the country on a daily basis when you are just addicted to these drugs. And, you know, I know a lot of people need them and their doctors are giving them. I mean, it's just really I can't imagine. Yeah, I don't think there's a single family out there in the United States that doesn't know somebody who's been affected by the opiate crisis in some way or another. And it was a problem that was created by an American pharmaceutical company, you know, by Purdue Pharma, by pushing out these medications and saying they were safe and basically telling people that it was okay to take them when it was not.

45:25It was incredibly addictive. A lot of people need pain medication, but it should be done by doctors who are pain management doctors. And you, I mean, when we were at the height of this problem, It's still happening now that I had guys telling me how men would go to the gynecologist to get their pills. Gynecologists were dispensing Oxycontin to addicted to addicted, you know, people that were coming from all over the country. So it's it's and making millions of dollars from it. And we created this gigantic problem on our hands. So when I talk about black markets, yes, I'm talking about the opiate crisis.

46:02I'm talking about the immigration problem. I'm talking about all these issues, fake pharmaceuticals. It's a huge problem. And, you know, even organ trafficking. We don't know, but there's, I think it was something, we did a story about this, but like 17 Americans who every day die because they can't find the organs that they need to be able to survive. and it was like 50 million Americans that have to look for their medication, sometimes life-saving medication online or going down to Mexico in order, you know, because they're too expensive here in the United States or their insurance doesn't cover.

46:36So black markets are illegal gambling. It's a huge thing. And it's everyone, you know, from the lowest to the... I just interviewed a guy who was a former USC football player as well. His name is Owen Hanson. And he was telling me, and he ran a big betting, legal betting book as well. And he told me how Paris Hilton was one of his customers. So there's black markets are all around us. We've all been, are all affected by them. So this is the premise of the show. Anyway, so fast forward to the assassins. One of the episodes we decided to do, I really wanted to do, was about assassins because it's not every day you meet with an assassin and you get to understand where they do what they do.

47:16Where's the majority of assassinations happening, by the way? So we found out that a lot, The number one country right now or one of the countries where most of the assassinations happen is South Africa. So we want we in our research decided we wanted to go to South Africa and understand why that was happening here there. But we also started the episode with interviewing an assassin here in Los Angeles. Are people getting assassinated like on a daily basis here? I don't think no, it's not on a daily basis, but I think it's shocking to know that there are people out there. I don't know. I live in Los Angeles and I had no idea that a couple of miles from my home in Los Angeles, there was a person that you can hire.

47:51You can make a call or go and meet him and hire. And for I think it was something like$100 ,000, you can hire to go and kill somebody. That to me was shocking. The ease in which this all happens. I don't think these assassinations are happening every day, but that there are people being assassinated 100 percent. And that I will never know if this guy told me the truth. I met him through a contact, somebody that we used a lot on traffic to connect us with people in the underworld, somebody who has a lot of connections in the underworld. And the episode actually starts with me and my contacts, the guy I call T.

48:30It's not his real name. And T and I are in a car and he is driving me to meet the assassin that he knows. And he is involved in all sorts of underground businesses and has been for a long time and has known this guy. He knows this guy is sort of a guy that you can hire to go and kill somebody. And I was asking him, what do we know? Do we know, is this guy for real? Because it's not every day, but you can film an assassin. And he said, look, this is the guy that everybody in my circles, we all call when we need somebody killed. And you don't mess with this guy. And by the way, he has a terrible, terrible sort of mood swings.

49:05And I think he's bipolar, perhaps. So make sure you don't piss him off. This is what he told me on the drive to meet this guy. And I come out of the car with my team. And it's night. And we're in a dark neighborhood, undisclosed location, but not too far from my own home in Los Angeles. and I start asking him questions and you can see he's sort of jittery and he's doing this as a favor to his friend and he's, you know, he's, when I met him, he was already all covered. His face was covered so that I would never even know his own identity and I don't know his real name or anything. But the first thing he says is he's like, okay, listen up.

49:41If this is a fucking setup, you guys, this is my gun. He pulls out his gun and shows it to me and says, you guys, you're all dead. I'm going to kill you all immediately if this is a fucking setup. If the police shows up, this is it. You're done. And what's stopping the police from trailing you? Are there moments where you're like, aren't the police watching where I'm going? We're also trained on that, actually. So we take a lot of measures to make sure that we're not being tracked or followed, including in our communications and the phones we use and the way that we communicate. Amazing. OK. And your next question might be, why wouldn't you want the police to know, you know, where an assassin is?

50:17For many reasons. First of all, I think the police in a lot of cases know who they are or where a lot of these things happen. And they have their own ways of investigating it. My job as a journalist is to raise awareness and to show how this is done, why it's done, and hoping that instead of putting somebody behind bars, which in this case, if he's actually the person he says he is, I hope he ends up behind bars, obviously. And you snitching is not going to be the means to that happening. I want to show sort of a larger picture and how can we stop this as a problem? How can we stop drugs from coming into the United States instead of stopping one drug trafficker, you know, and stop putting one drug trafficker that the police probably knows exists behind bars?

50:59How can I actually show the whole picture and try to create a awareness that will lead to preventing these crimes from existing? And that's what I'm thinking when I'm going to interview these people. So I get out of the car. He says this. And the whole time I'm thinking, holy shit, if the police by chance, we're, you know, close to in a neighborhood where there's movement. If the police shows up just because they're around and a car, police car, I can't stop that. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And he's going to think it's we brought the police here and we might be. So I'm thinking, OK, we have to make this fast and do this interview as fast as possible.

51:33So I started asking him, OK, why did you become an assassin? How do you do it? Who hires you? Sort of how much do you get paid? And then there's a part of me always at the end of every interview or throughout the interview that I try to humanize, no matter who I'm sitting across. I try to understand why, you know, try to bring the human being out of this person. Well, this is what makes you the outlier from every other journalist, by the way. Yeah. Truly. Or at least in this space, it's very important to me because I have a hard time seeing people as just black and white. I don't think the world is black and white.

52:02And I really want to understand. I want to place myself in their shoes and try to understand how does a person who grew up in the city that I now live, you know, who doesn't come across as a very warm human being, but nonetheless, what's the story that led him here? Because you're not born an assassin. You know, you're not born as a criminal. So what led you here? As a child goes, I can't wait to kill people when I get older. So he, much like the assassin later that I interviewed in South Africa, I asked him why you don't, he says, I don't kill children and women. I only kill men and the only sort of bad men, you know, this is how they moralize it.

52:34And so I was asking him, do you have kids? and trying to understand from his standpoint how that affected him personally and his family life. And he was not happy with that line of questions. The rest of the questions he was fine answering. He said, yes, I have kids. You're not going to get this fucking bullshit, emotional shit out of me. Or he said something to this effect. And he says, I don't like this line of questioning. We're going to stop this right now. And that's where the interview eventually ended. But when we went to South Africa and sat across a very different type of assassin, a guy called Jojo.

53:04And this is a kid who was brought up. You think he was orphaned when he was about eight years old. His parents were also assassinated. And then he was on the streets for most of his life and entered the drug business because that's the only way he could afford to make business, to make money to survive. And eventually realized that and eventually became an assassin, essentially. He would make more money killing people in a team. He had a team of people that he would go out and he was a hired killer. He'd make more money from that than from selling drugs. And I asked him, do you and he said the same thing.

53:34I don't kill women and children, only men. and only bad men. The idea, the concept of what a bad man is, is interesting, right? And then, but do you realize that you're doing to these kids exactly what was done to you? Your parents were assassinated when you were eight years old and you're essentially doing the same thing. You're traumatizing them in the same way. And he stopped and he said, I'd never thought about this. And we filmed a little bit more. It was over an hour conversation. And when we finished, he came up to me and said, wow, I had never, first of all, I'd never had anyone interested in my life or my story and curious about who I was or why I do what I do.

54:10And I'd never realized this sort of cycle of violence, right? The traumatization that I'm enforcing on other people. He never realized that, yeah, that he's, yeah, that he's doing the same to these other kids that was done to him. And yeah, he never, that's what he told me. And he said, this has been like a therapy for me. And I really want to, you know, not be involved in this world anymore. and all of this has had an impact on me. I don't know if he stopped being an assassin. One of the saddest things about situations like this is that a lot of times it's the upbringing, right? You know, T, for example, is a good example.

54:46My contact here in the United States, his family were drug runners and gun runners. This is the life that he grew up in. And so I remember interviewing a pimp once in LA who told me, I asked him like, how'd you become a pimp? and he was telling me about the horrendous things he does to women. And he said, look, in my neighborhood in L.A., the people, we weren't looking up to lawyers or doctors. The people that were bringing back the money were the pimps. We used pimps as a compliment in Los Angeles growing up. Those were the heroes. Yeah, you looked like a pimp. Yeah, those were the heroes. They were driving into the neighborhood with the fancy cars.

55:20They were giving money to all the women and to the families. And so what do you think? I'm going to look up to a person that I've never met or a profession that I've never heard about. I'm going to look up to the pimps. So of course, all my life, I've wanted to be a pimp. So there's this part of the understanding of the growing up that is very important to me. And then I want to, in traffic, and in my reporting in general, in the podcast as well, that I want to sort of shine a light on and see the human being behind the criminal that I think is very important. So that's the baseline. I mean, the common denominator, I'm sure, amongst a lot of these interviews are that all these people just like really want to be like seen and heard.

55:58Yeah, or these people are not as lucky as we are. You know, I always saw the reporting that I do as a great conversation starter for the opportunities that we've been given in life ourselves. I'm very, very privileged. I grew up in a very warm and kind and loving family with the means to give me a great education, to send me to the United States and go to Columbia University, which is not cheap. And I had great opportunities in life. And the vast majority of the people that I interviewed didn't have that. And, you know, I will never forget some of the most poignant conversations that I've had and people that I've met and stories that I've heard.

56:34You know, the 16-year-old kid who carries kilos of cocaine on his backpack in the really dangerous terrain in the Andes in Peru and, you know, has seen many of his friends being killed by rival gangs in front of him. and it's backbreaking work and really dangerous. When I ask him why he does what he does, he says, look, I come from a very, very poor family. I've always wanted to go to college. I want to be a dentist and my family will never be able to afford that. So the only job that is offered to me that I'd be able to save money to go to college one day is carrying cocaine on my back. And I know that I might be killed, but at least I have a chance at achieving my dreams.

57:13And I asked him, why a dentist? Like you just made a face, like when I said dentist, exactly my face too. when I heard that. I was like, why a dentist? I was like, look, there are all these posters around my town for dentists, these dentist ads where you see people smiling. It seems like dentists make people happy. And I want to make people happy too. Yeah.

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1:00:06How are you absorbing this information and maintaining sanity? I'm an empath. Like, I cry looking at my phone every day. Like, if I see an old person on a bench by themselves, I'm hysterical. I can't stop thinking about it. So how are you absorbing all of this really heavy information and letting it not just destroy you? I think it's exactly because I'm able to create these connections with these people. with people and understand the humanity in almost every single person I interview. I think that has given me a really hopeful perspective about human beings. I think that if you see the world as sort of there are people who are born and they're bad and they're always going to be bad and do bad things, then that leads you to a very dark, right, cynical perspective of the world.

1:00:57But if you realize that even when you're sitting across from some of the people that we consider the worst of the worst, that you can still find humanity in them and that you can realize that if they had been given the opportunities and they're, you know, they'd grown up in a place with more jobs and more economic prosperity, that they would have ended up a very different person. Then you realize that it's the system that's broken and it's not the human being or human beings and that there is a way to create a better world. I mean, it's very cheesy to say this, but if we create a more equitable world if there's less disparity and inequality.

1:01:34I mean, we live in a world, I say this a lot in my interviews, but it's just mind blowing to me that we live in a world where half of the world's population lives with less than $7 a day, you know, and for a lot of these people, the only jobs that are offered are jobs in black markets or in gray markets, you know. And so, yeah, I would be I would. And a lot of times it is actually the most entrepreneurial and the smartest and the most hardworking that end up in those jobs because. Well, I've always said that, like these are people who are so successful at what they're doing and probably very charismatic.

1:02:12Because if you're going to run drugs for somebody, there must be something that you idolize about the person or it's threat and intimidation. But either way, he's good at that. Right. He's really good. I always thought jails should be recovery centers because these people are so good at what they're doing. And I'm not like a soft on crime kind of gal because I've just had so many bad things happen. You know, I've lived between L.A. and New York my entire life and I've seen horrible things happen to people who shouldn't be on the streets. And so, you know, there's a balance between it. But if you're going to send somebody away, it's pretty easy to assess whether or not they can be rehabbed.

1:02:45And jail, instead of rotting in a cell all day long, these people should be rehabbed. Yeah, absolutely. We had an amazing podcast guest called Michael Santos, who's exactly that. He was doing, I think it was 45 years. He was sentenced to 45 years for cocaine trafficking. And as soon as he went into prison, I mean, he was looking at 45 years in prison and he realized, I'm going to have to make something of myself and I have to figure out how to have an impact on the people around me as well. So he started learning and educating himself. He took all these degrees and everything and he started writing books and he started using the learnings that he had to impact people around them.

1:03:20And he would say to people around him who would spend their days like doing pushups, you'd say, look, are those pushups when you leave prison, is that going to get you anywhere? It's not. Educating yourself, learning about the world, sort of becoming a better human being than you came out because the prison system is not going to give you this. So it's up to us. And I'm sad that it doesn't. And it should. And that's what Michael Santos now is doing. He's going around and talking about prison reform. But he said one One of the biggest mistakes people make is when you go into prison, they'll tell prisoners, forget about the world outside.

1:03:49You'll only survive in here if you focus on the world inside. And he says it is actually the exact opposite. What I tell everybody who comes into prison when they would come into prison or when I meet new people is focus on the world outside. Forget about the world in here. So Michael would wake up at 4 a.m. every morning. he would go and start researching and doing his reading and doing his learning and writing books and, you know, and spend his whole day on trying to figure out how he could become a better person and impact others around him. And that's what he's been doing. He ended up doing, I think, 25 or 26 years in prison.

1:04:21He was released and he's a big advocate for prison reform. And to sort of understand, yeah, it's an amazing opportunity to get somebody who has incredible skills. A lot of these people are very talented. Very talented, yeah. And reform them and have them become good members of our society. Well, and the transition, you always hear that the transition from prison to real life is back into real life is unmanageable and they almost prefer to go back. That's why they don't really care about if they commit a crime again, right? Because they felt really comfortable. Yeah. Yeah, at least they knew the world there, right?

1:04:51And at least there was other people that were like them and they weren't judged for being the criminals only. Instead, they were looked as fellow human beings instead of just criminals. Was there like one story in particular that was like the most gut-wrenching moment for you that where it kind of like broke you a little bit that was like emotionally really hard? All the drug stories for me are very, very hard. I've spoken to so many mothers who've lost their kids to the opiate crisis. As a mother myself, hearing stories of mothers losing their loved ones. You're a mom, so I can't imagine how.

1:05:22Is really, really hard. Yeah, that's always gut wrenching. I mean, there's nothing worse in the world than hearing, you know, somebody's story about losing their child. I just started watching The Pit. I'm not, I don't like watching, I don't watch a lot of TV, especially I need like happy, happy, joy, joy things before I go to sleep because I just get so much anxiety. Which means you watch Trafficked every night. I, I, by the way, so my cousin has a show called Stalked on Discovery about stalkers. She's a criminal psychologist. So I love, you know, I watch her show and I've seen your show many times, but I need, it needs to be, I need to feel so safe afterwards.

1:05:58I need like my husband and I watch it with him. I can't watch it by myself and we need to talk about how. So I watched, I was like, I'm just going to watch The Pit and like, which riddled me with anxiety. And it was the first or second episode, the boy died from a fentanyl. And I have a one and a half year old boy and I couldn't, it took me like two hours to recover because I was like, there's what is stopping him. I could send him to whatever fucking school. Yeah. By the way, the fanciest school in LA Loyola, which I have many siblings and family members that went there or school that I would love my child to go to if I can afford it one day is riddled with fucking drugs.

1:06:31Yeah. Riddled with drugs. They all are. They all are. Right. And so I just I my husband was like, why are you like get like he's down there sleeping in his bed. He's safe. And I was like, there's nothing from stopping him one day. Like I was like, what do you say to prevent your child? Do I say like if you ever need a Xanax, I have it like ask me. I mean, I was like literally like I has to come down to something like that where you're not shaming them. They don't keep it a secret. Yeah. How do you know what I mean? Demystifying the whole thing. Constantly talking to your child about this. I, you know, getting your kids to watch traffic.

1:06:59I probably, right? I mean, I've gone to Voskos, my son's school, uh, and shown episodes of traffic before, including the fentanyl episode and had all the high schoolers and some of the middle schoolers there. And, uh, and, and they were fascinated. And they asked me a ton of questions and it was sort of awareness campaign about the drugs and how dangerous they are. And I constantly talked to my son about it, but I also share with him when he started becoming more of a teenager, I started sharing some of my stories. You know, this is the first time I did weed. This is how it felt for me. The only I've actually I've never tried hard drugs.

1:07:30I've done weed and I microdose on mushrooms. That's that's it. But I share those experiences with him. And I think that's really, really important. It's the way that my parents raised me as well. And I think that sort of creates the connections that now every experience he's had, he's come and told me and he knows that. That's how my family operates. Like my nephew will be like, oh, I did this or like I smoked weed or like I've smoked like we all talk about it. But yeah, but as a tactic to make sure that there's no like, I'm going to rebel against this. They're going to get mad at me. Right. Thank God I grew up that way.

1:08:01And you did, too. Right. Because if you feel like you can't tell your parents anything, it's I just feel like it's a straight line. Telling your kids don't do drugs is not going to do it. Right. You have to do more than that. And sort of giving a little bit of yourself in the process is going to allow them to then feel comfortable sharing their experiences with you. I think that's super important. How do you not have a mental breakdown about politics all day long? because I'm sure you also, and I love your opinion on this. Obviously, we're very, I hate talking about politics and I purposely don't.

1:08:30But what I am very comfortable talking about is that you just see the two sides just screaming at each other all day long and they're both saying the most far-fetched topic they can on each side. And it bothers me immensely. And it's so irrational to me because I feel like the more that somebody screams, like if we use abortion, for example, like I'm never going to convince a lifelong Christian that abortion is not murder. what I can do is show them examples of women dying and when it's really important and build empathy between them to hope that they change their mind from that perspective. But if I scream at somebody all day long or say like, I love abortion that a lot of liberals do, they're going to be like these disgusting people and they're going to hate the other side more.

1:09:09Right. So I'm sure that you have seen like the levels and layers of the deep, intense politics. Right. You know that there's like not going to be this like one answer that fixes everything and that these big, bold statements that people make. I'm also seeing that people are making money from this anger, right? They want the divisiveness. And it's very sad. I've spent my whole life trying to do the exact opposite, which is see nuance in things and try to understand the other side. And it seems like we've lost all nuance. I was at the farmer's market yesterday with a couple of friends. The craziest thing happened.

1:09:42It's so sweet. Lots of families, lots of kids in carriages, all of that. I was there with two friends. We were walking around. And as we're leaving, we see that there's these two guys with these phones, but with sort of a whole rig where they're using the phones as cameras. They have a tripod and an audio boom mic and everything. And they're filming this. There's this guy. I don't know. Do you know, have you seen this sort of older guy with a mustache who plays a guitar? Not a great voice. Yeah. Very sweet. And yeah. So there I can see that they're filming this guy and they're yelling and he's the guys just stopped doing his music and he's just trying to avoid them and they're just yelling at them.

1:10:19And a bunch of us got interested in what's happening here. And they start turning the cameras around and started filming us. And there's a group of us. It's me, my two friends, and then other people were pedestrians trying to cross, waiting for the green light to cross the street. And they start with these two cameras, two guys. Oh, by the way, fully masked. I've seen these guys and they try to get you to get a reaction and they tell you they're going to blackmail you by putting it on the internet. Yeah. They start yelling at you and calling you a Karen. And I knew this was happening. Which, by the way, if that goes on the internet, then you're fucked.

1:10:48Yeah. And they're making money. Because nobody will listen to context or nuance if you are called a Karen online. So there's this woman, this poor woman, who I knew, I realized what was happening. So I was trying to not give these guys anything. I was just trying to ignore them, even though they have their cameras like two feet away from us. It's so horrible. They've been doing this a lot in Los Angeles, by the way. It is horrible. And then there's this woman next to me that has her baby in her care, the stroller. And she's like, can you guys please stop filming, please? I mean, I have a three I have my baby here, my three month old or whatever.

1:11:16And they're like, here you go, Karen, and start following her. And it's just horror. And this is that darling sweet fucking farmer's market and views. And this is what people want to watch or enjoy watching. And yeah, it's the sort of let's see the world as these are all Karens and these are all, you know, crazy liberals and we have every right to be filming here. And it's really, really disturbing. And it's disturbing to me on both sides, by the way, because I think that this is happening on the other side as well. And yeah, it's very, very sad. And it goes against every that I try to do with my report.

1:11:50I'm not saying that I'm not trying to say that I'm better than anyone else. You are and you can say that because these guys are these guys are the scum of the earth. Oh, those people I have no. I mean, there's very little. You do, you know, have chosen a path that is incredibly challenging. Particularly these days, I think it's very important for there to be at least trying to understand the other side, nuance about it all. And even if you disagree one million percent with the other person, we're allowed to have our own opinions. We're allowed to disagree without calling each other names and hating each other.

1:12:23Killing each other. And killing each other. Yeah. Okay, we'll end on this. Is there any topic that you haven't done a deep dive in that you are like itching to research? I have a long list of stories that I still want to do related to sort of the criminal underworld. Traffic came to an end. So we did five seasons, which was amazing. Part of what I'm doing with the podcast, I have other projects that I'm working on with Nat Geo and other places. And what I'm trying to do with the podcast is grow it into something that I can do, sit down interviews with people, fascinating human beings that can tell us a lot about this sort of hidden worlds, but also sort of grow into doing more of the reporting that I also love doing, which is being out on the field reporting.

1:13:06So there's no one particular subject. There's there's many. I have a long list. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's like such an honor. When we were emailing about this, I like emailed Olivia and I was like, I can't have somebody this esteemed on a podcast of mine. Esteemed. Yeah, and Olivia was like, no, no, she's so amazing. You have to have her on. Like, please, please, please. I love her so much. She was like, please. And so, but it was so intimidating for me because, you know, to be on a podcast and interview like a journalist who's a Peabody award winning. You're so good at this.

1:13:41I'm learning all these lessons from you interviewing. I was like, okay, I like that she talks about this. I'm going to repeat this on my podcast. What I'd really love to do is like have cocktails with you and have you tell me stories. 100%. Every time we do a podcast, I'm like, there's to be alcohol involved because it just seems like I can't imagine what it's like to be one of your friends and go to dinner with you and you're like, listen to what I learned at work today. Or like, really, I was just at home taking care of my children. Wow. I used to talk to my friends. They always joke about how they're, I'm like in the far-fetched place of the world and they're texting me and asking me like organizing like play dates or whatever.

1:14:16with our kids. And then I'm like, oh, and by the way, I'm about to go into like a and they're like, what the fuck? And they're like, so are we on for one o 'clock on Saturday at the park? See you at the farmer's market. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks for having me.

1:14:37And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this week's episode of Everything is the Best. I hope you enjoyed it. Please rate, review, subscribe, all that stuff, maybe leave a comment. Go ahead and follow me on Instagram at Pia Barancini, and I hope you have a fabulous, fabulous rest of your day. Love you. Ciao.

1:15:16episode.