1302: Mariana van Zeller | The Drug Cartels Running Small-Town America

21:24So it actually impacts all of us. But yeah, that was a really hard time. I also interviewed an assassin here. We did an episode on assassins in LA. Most of the episode was filmed in South Africa, which has the highest number of assassinations and one of some of the highest numbers in the world. But we started that episode interviewing an assassin in LA. And that was a really interesting one because that's not season five. That was season four. Okay, I gotta rewatch that. Yeah, that was an interesting one. Yeah. Did you lose your cool during that one? Is that why you bring it up? Yeah, because the whole point of the show is also to humanize people behind the mask and try to understand why they do what they do.

21:58And in that case, as soon as we arrived, we met him downtown at night. I connected with him through to another contact that I have here in the U.S., a guy that I really like that has given me access to a lot of underworlds in the U.S. And so as we're driving to meet the assassin, my contact tells me, hey, by the way, you have to be careful with this guy because I think he might be bipolar because he will be happy one moment and then really angry the next. I was like, dude, where are you taking me to, right? Anyway, we get out of the car. This guy is jittery already. And he's like, OK, so what's up?

22:28What do you guys want to ask? And I was like, OK, Hi, my name is Mariana. Here's the crew. I'm introducing everyone. He's like, just heads up. He takes out his gun from his belt and he's like, do you see this here? If the police shows up, this is a f***ing setup. You're all dead. And so the whole interview, I'm thinking, f***. If by chance the police shows up, not because I'm here, but if a police car drives by, he's going to think it's because of us. So I'm trying to make it quick, right? So I'm asking questions. Okay, are you really an assassin? What do you mean? How much do you get paid? All that stuff.

22:56And then I wanted to ask, my last question was about trying to humanize him. So he says he kills men, not women or children. And I asked him, do you have children? And what I was trying to get at is that if he was killed, his children would suffer. So even if you're just killing men, suffering is all around you. And as soon as I asked that, he jumped to very angry. And he was like, what the f*** are you asking me? Emotional question. I'm not going to get emotional here. What are you trying to do? I'm not good with this shit. And he wanted to f*** the interview. So that was... That dude is damaged.

23:28He is dismissed. It was a hard interview. Yikes. So if you're feeling uneasy hearing about cartel hit squads operating in towns with fewer cops than Starbucks, good news. Now's a perfect time to hear from our sponsor, who is dramatically less likely to murder you. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. I think one of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating cybersecurity like it lives in its own silo, because it really doesn't. It touches everything that keeps a business moving. That's a big reason I like the cybersecurity tapes. It takes all the stuff that can sound overly technical on paper and turns it into stories that make the stakes feel real.

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24:35What happened? What failed? What could have prevented it? And what leaders should be thinking about now? It's a smart listen for anybody who wants to understand how security issues become business issues and why getting ahead of them matters more than ever. Check out the cybersecurity tapes wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is also sponsored by Progressive. You chose to hit play on this podcast today, Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies.

25:04So you save time on the research and you can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing people for the show, It is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself for free over at 6minutenetworking.com. You might not be interviewing drug cartel members and human traffickers, but this will still help you with your work.

25:34It'll still help you with your social life. It'll still help you get ahead in the job market if that's where you're at in life. Six minutes a day is all it takes, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. It is not cheesy, very down to earth. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course, again, all free at 6minutenetworking.com. Now, back to Mariana Van Zeller. Are you ever worried about the safety of your crew? Because I would imagine, even though I am married and have kids, I would probably be thinking, if we die here, I'm going to feel really bad in the afterlife that I got her, him, and him all killed, and they're all younger than me, and they had their whole lives ahead of them.

26:10It's my fault we're here getting buried in the desert. Yeah, it's the biggest thing on my mind constantly, all our safety. I mean, we go through enormous lengths to make sure that we're minimizing the risk. We have hostile environment training. We consult security companies. We don't travel with security the majority of time because it's just I'm trying to get people to trust me. And if I show up with security, it means that I don't trust them. They trust me, right? Even no matter how much planning you put in place, it's like Mike Tyson says, plans are great until we get punched in the face. There's always stuff that's going to go wrong.

26:44And so we had that situation in Niger where I got stuck in a coup that was also season four. And we made that part of the story because we were there to do a story about illegal gold mining. And then there was a military coup. We got stuck. And there was an incoming war. We were in one of the most dangerous places on earth with terrorist groups all around us. And the whole time I'm thinking, I'm here. I'm stuck with six other guys. It was all men, but they all have families. all their wives and moms were calling my production company because I'm also the executive producer and owner of the company and asking what was happening and how can we get them back to safety.

27:19So it was the worst time of my life. I wasn't able to sleep. It was just nerve-wracking. How long were you stuck there? Ten days. Ten worst days of my life. That is a long time to be stuck in a military coup when you expected to be home a week or two, whatever, prior to that. We're going to be in and out in 48 hours. That's the only reason that you allowed us to go, because it is one of the most dangerous places on Earth. You've got Boko Haram and ISIS and Al-Qaeda all operating there. You've got kidnapping squads. And as an American, showing up with no security is not a good idea. So we'd been given the military, the local military or the government, gave us military escort that would follow us wherever we went.

27:58So we went out into the mines. We drove for eight hours and slept out in the desert, in the open desert, so that we could film inside the mines and interview the miners that are illegally mining for gold that is actually funding part of the terrorist groups. So when we came back from sleeping overnight in the desert, we came back to this town called Agadez. And when we arrived, we found out that there had been a coup, and immediately they removed the military security from us. So we were left with no protection in a run-down hotel with, again, no protection around us and no way out. So the borders were closed.

28:33The airspace was closed. And suddenly they started evacuating people from all over the world but from the capital. And we were a three-day drive to the capital. And we couldn't even go because it's too dangerous. So we were literally trapped in one of the most dangerous corners of the world. And it was scary as shit. That is awful. That's not fun. No, you're not stuck at a Four Seasons in the Capitol with a military surrounding it. And like, oh, we'll get out of here soon. It's like, no, we're at a Motel 6 equivalent. There's actually a building that was a rundown sort of house type thing that was built by Muammar Gaddafi when he'd visited in the 80s.

29:08And they'd left that building there and turned it into basically a rundown hotel. There's like one drop of water was the shower. And yeah, it was very hot. And we ate couscous morning, night and day. Yeah, oh gosh. I'm not sure what's worse, the couscous or the threat of being kidnapped by ISIS. But I have to say, beautiful part of the world, so beautiful, the desert and the landscape, so beautiful, and incredible people that were essential to figuring out how to get us out of their workplace. Yeah, how did you get out of there? How did that happen? So we had a couple of ticking time clocks. One was the incoming war.

29:41So other countries in Africa, the African group of nations that I cannot remember the name right now, but they were threatening to invade Niger and depose the military leaders. And then the Wagner group in Russia were saying that if they did that, they would come in and defend the military leaders. And so it was kind of like a proxy war happening in front of our eyes. And so that was one of the ticking time bombs happening. And the other one was I had promised my son, who had been his birthday while I was there, and he finished his camp. It's a performing arts camp. And every year my husband and I have a tradition where we go and pick him up.

30:15We see the play that he puts up, and it's a very important day for all of us. And I spend so much of my time on the road that I live with the guilt of spending so much time away from him. So this is a day that no matter what happens, we go and see his performance. It's an important day for him and for us. It's my favorite day of the year, quite frankly. I love it. and that was happening. So we were going to go to Niger, be there for four days, get out and come back to LA and then fly to New York and do the performing arts camp. And then we got stuck. And so I'm seeing the days go by and realizing, shit, I'm not going to be able to make it.

30:48And I'm the worst mother in the world. Plus, I have this incredible team around me whose families are suffering right now. And we might all die. We might all be kidnapped and die. So all of that was going through my head. And one of the first days of the coup, I went to the airport. because I wanted to see if there was any planes flying in or out, even though I knew the airspace was closed. And I met this amazing guy. He was the manager of the airport. His name was Kader. And I asked Kader, I'm asking, are there planes going in? Do you think there's anything coming in? He's nothing, nothing. Not until we get the permission from the government.

31:17It can take months until the airspace opens. You guys are going to be stuck here for a long time. And I'm on the verge of tears at this moment. And I ask him, do you have kids by chance? And he picks up his phone and shows me photos of his kids. He's like, yeah. And I showed him a photo of my son on the phone. And I was like, I told him it's his birthday next week. It was too complicated to explain, like, it's his birthday and I need to be there for his birthday. And it's next Friday. And this was like Saturday or Sunday. And it's next Friday. And so please, Kater, if you find out if there's any planes coming in or out, please let us know because I need to get my team out of here and I need to get to my son's birthday.

31:51Anyway, unlikely that anything will happen. And we start contacting. We have an evacuation company that we work with. We pay a lot of money to get us out in situations like this. We filmed us calling the evacuation company, and they are completely useless. There's a moment where they say, we have no plan. And I'm asking, do you have a plan? We don't have plans. It's ridiculous. You should watch this episode. It's insane. Why do I pay you$10 ,000 a month for this insurance? Oh, have you looked at our death and dismemberment policy? It's crazy. So they failed us. So then it was a team in L.A. led by executive producers on traffic, but also my husband, who's also an executive producer on traffic, who's in L.A., and they're like, we're going to have to figure this out because nobody's helping us.

32:30So they started contacting different evacuation companies and different groups out there that could possibly do this. And they found a group, amazing people, who had two pilots who were crazy enough to fly with a private jet in the middle of the night. And they told us they're going to land, they're going to be there for 20 minutes. You've got 20 minutes to get on the plane. The plane is coming from Ibiza. And it was a G5 plane. If people don't know, it's like the most luxurious of private jets. DJ Tiesto uses it to get to European gigs. Dude, it was insane. It was the biggest whiplash of my life.

33:01So basically, after a week of eating couscous and no AC and drip of water. And so this is happening. So we're following the plane as it's coming from Ibiza. And the plane's coming here, 20 minutes on the ground, and then it's going to Dubai. And it's going to drop as if in Dubai. And in Dubai, we're going to get our commercial planes to go back home. And that's a long story, but it's worth it, I promise. No, so far so good. I'm just imagining the pilot going, let me see the runway. And they're like, it's that soccer field down there. It wasn't a big runway. And they were very brave because it was an active sort of military, potentially at war country.

33:33We still have printed out, my partner in traffic, Jeff Plunkett, gave me a map when I came back. He printed out the map of what the plane radar thing map looked like at the time. And you can see it says you couldn't fly through Niger. Niger is a pretty big country in the middle of Africa, and it's a red box. And then there's one plane crossing, and it's our plane that's coming. And basically they figured out. So they're coming. We're seeing it coming from Ibiza. We are as nervous as you can imagine as we can be. We arrive at the airport. It was like 5 a.m. The sun was just starting to come up.

34:04And we are met by a group of military. They're all there and they don't want us to leave. They start creating problems. They start saying that we don't have the proper documentation. And then back and forth. And Kadar, my friend, the manager of the airport, is also there. And suddenly Kadar takes the reins and starts literally yelling at the military, which is very risky for him too. and trying to convince them that the papers are in order, that we need to leave, and basically doing us an enormous favor and trying to help us. And eventually they decide, okay, everybody can leave except for we had a fixer, the producer, local producer, who is actually from Mali, from the neighboring country, who is with us and helping us.

34:43And they said, everybody can leave except for the Malian guy. And that's when I called my husband and I said, hey, Darren, I'm so sorry, everybody's going, but I'm staying. I'm sending the team with the gear, everything, but I'm staying with this guy. And I'm in tears. I'm thinking, I get emotional still talking about this. But for me, it was the failure of me as a mother to making this decision. And it was really, really hard thinking, yeah, I'm not going to be there. Most important day of the year for my son. And again, I'm feeling him. And it was, I'm having all these gigantic guilt problems.

35:14And yet again, Kadar comes and is yelling at him. And then my husband is on the phone with me and says, hey, I'm looking at the flight report. And I think the pilots are Portuguese. Their names are Portuguese. I was like, what? OK, so at this point, the plane is landing. And I'm running as fast as I can. As soon as the plane lands, I run to where the plane landed. One of the pilots is coming out of the plane. And I go up to him before the military is able to get close to him. And I tell him, are you Portuguese? And he says, yes. And I said, oh, my God. and I explained everything in Portuguese, what was happening.

35:45And I said, they're saying that he doesn't have the right paperwork, but if you are okay, that I think you can convince them to let us into the plane because he didn't have the visa for Dubai and that was our next stop. A pilot could just bullshit that one maybe. The pilot could say, no, you can't take anyone on your plane if they don't have the visa to go to the next place. But because he's Portuguese, we spoke our language, I think in many ways that helped. And so anyway, fast forward, he starts talking to the military. Kyder is helping. Everybody gets on the plane. I'm the last one. I'm running to the plane.

36:17Happiest moment of my life. And I hear somebody call, Mariana, Mariana, Mariana. And I look back and it's Kyder and he turns to me and says, happy birthday to your son. And that's the moment that everything came out of it. I started crying. Did you kiss the ground in Dubai when you landed? I would imagine you guys must have. Kissed the ground in the US when I landed at JFK. Yeah. I would be like, Pilot, tell us the second we are out of missile range from Niger ground forces or out of this big red box? The whole team was crying. And the saddest part for us was like, I remember looking out the window and just thinking, it was a terrible 10 days for us.

36:50This is the future of a country with incredible promise and amazing people. Everyone from the gold miners, the gold traders, to the people working at our hotel, to Qatar. These are all amazing human beings who every chance they had were trying to help us and who are people just like you and I. They're mothers and fathers. and who now have their future fucked up because of politics and leadership. It's interesting. When that coup happened, a lot of people online were like, good, they're getting rid of the colonial French. Obviously, those people don't know anything about these kinds of things. They just believe whatever the sort of Russian, they're overthrowing the imperialist Americans.

37:27Look, the military is going to let people live free now. And it's like, that's not how any junta has ever worked in the history of military. No, and these countries have enormous promise and potential, but they need investment. And what we were doing up until that point was that there was actually a lot of investment. The United States invested, I think, over$100 million in building these military bases. They had two military bases there. No longer. It was money lost. But the idea behind those military bases was to prevent attacks from terrorist groups that would eventually possibly, what happened in Afghanistan, organize and attack the United States.

38:01Security in other countries matters ultimately for security here at home. And that's what was happening there and is not happening anymore, unfortunately. I was surprised to hear one of your sources said that commercial airlines in the U.S. transport the most drugs, not like truckers or secret network. It's like, no, that lady who has three bags on Delta Plus, two of them are closed and one of them is full of methamphetamine. And Delta, wasn't that interesting that he said this was our interview for Cartel USA. We interviewed a guy called El Gringo who's an American guy, doesn't speak a word of Spanish, yet is one of the biggest distributors for the cartel here in the U.S.

38:34Fascinating guy. And yeah, he says, when I asked him, how do you distribute drugs? And I was thinking, he was saying, I have these like four-wheel trucks. That's what I was thinking. He's like, no, Delta Airlines. Yeah, Delta Airlines. Delta Airlines. Got a million miles. Strippers. Strippers and Delta Airlines. I thought that was interesting. Why strippers? I think in his, women is always better, right? Because they're less, people suspect them less. And I think strippers, because they're more likely to do risky behavior, I'm not sure why. flirt their way out of a situation successfully. I don't know.

39:06Yeah, they know how to charm people. I think, yeah. Is it don't open that? It's full of adult toys. I don't know. I'm trying to think of what the advantage is there. I think, yeah, I think the way they dress too probably throws people nothing against strippers. No, I mean, it's a legal way to make money, except if you're transporting drugs for El Gringo. Then you're on the line. How long does it take to plan and shoot each episode of the show? A long time, months, sometimes even years. Like the Niger episode, we started pitching it on season two And it took us two and a half, three years to convince Nat Geo that it was safe for us to go to Nishan.

39:36So Nat Geo has to sign off on this. I thought maybe you made it and then you just sold them the episodes or something. No, it's very much a partnership where every story, we pitch them stories at the beginning of each season. And then they say yes to some and no to others. The majority of the stories they say yes to. But there are definitely stories that they're not interested in. And then once we start, before we hit the ground, we have weekly meetings with them and discussing everything. This is who we're interviewing. This is how the story is going to unfold or this is what we're hoping to get.

40:03And even when they're on the ground, we have to send them reports. And then they see when we get back, we start editing. They see rough cut one, rough cut two, all of the final cut, fine cut, all of it. Were they thrilled about your Niger experience after not wanting to do it for three seasons? And they're like, good thing we let you do that. And it cost us 100 grand in rescue fees or whatever. My first thought when I realized there had been a coup was, shit, Nagio is going to be so pissed. My thought was like, Netgeo, they're going to get their security people involved and they're going to want to pull us out of the country immediately and we haven't even finished our story.

40:36And then I realized, oh, no. Even if we wanted to get out of the country, we can't. No, the Netgeo security people were like, we got to get them out of there. Oh, it's impossible? It's impossible. All right, I'm going on vacation then because there's nothing I can do from here. They were lovely. They tried. They were also having sleepless nights trying to figure out how to help us. This is going to be a bad look if they all get murdered. Yeah, it's not good. How do we figure this out? Which episode made you feel the most unsafe when filming, except for, of course, that one? Yeah. The assassins one in season four.

41:05Yeah, that was scary. Some moments, obviously, we're not talking about drugs or scams. It's actual assassins. So there were moments that weren't so comfortable. I've been in situations with the cartel several where sort of the Marines are showing up and trying to see who can save themselves, you know, free for all, where everybody just tries to get out of there as fast as they can. And when you're with the cartel, there's always a dilemma. What do I do? Do I pretend I'm with them and just follow them? Or do we try to hide if the Marines show up? It's just always complicated. What do you do? What do you decide?

41:37Oh, my gosh. You need like a white surrender Nat Geo flag that says like... Yellow in that case, because it's Nat Geo. Yeah, we're here just interviewing these people. Yeah, we always carry press passes with us. And in some situations like in Niger, we also have press things on the side of the trucks that we travel with. and that's always important too. But that unfortunately matters less and less in the world we live today. It does, yeah. I remember back in the day, I used to go out and take photos of things and then it was like, now you need a bulletproof vest with the press Velcro to take photos of things.

42:07And it was like, and you should probably get a helmet and goggles to do this. And then it was like, oh no, the cops are still going to shoot you in the head with a rubber bullet anyway because they just don't care. And then I was like, all right, maybe I should get a different job. Is that how you find yourself here? That's right, exactly. Exactly. Is there anything you learned while planning these episodes that almost got you into trouble? Thank God we have a satellite tracker. You mentioned you have the hostile environment training, but what do you do with that knowledge? They teach us what to do if somebody gets shot, how to use a tourniquet.

42:36First responder. Yeah, first responders, but also then real scenarios. They show us videos of situations where there are shootings, but also if you're being followed, what to do to evade surveillance, telecommunications, how to make sure that you're not being listened, how to protect your sources. You learn everything. I remember an interesting, funny story about this is for season one, when we first started shooting traffic, I'd been reporting on black markets for years at that point. But I had just hired a team of camera folks that hadn't. They, in fact, had been working with Anthony Bourdain on his show.

43:09And then that came to an end. And I reached out and I asked if they wanted to work on my show. I loved Bourdain's show and I loved how it looked. And I had spent a lot of time doing these stories, but doing them with like handheld cameras and not the best quality. And with Trafficked, we wanted to combine gonzo journalism or boots on the ground journalism with beautiful imagery, Nagio style, right? And so we hired these guys. And so it was one of the first hostile environment training of this type where we're actually going to hang out with the cartel and the criminal underworld. And I remember the guy that was teaching us at the time.

43:45He's a British military, former military dude. Really fun guy. And he turns to us and he says, OK, so now what do we do if you get kidnapped? Ladies, there is a chance you will be raped. And so if this explains what to do in those situations, I look at the guys and they're like, yes, my God, this is not happening. And then he looks at the guys and says, gentlemen, it's not an if, you are going to get raped. So this is what you have to do. Oh, my God. And I see all of their faces like, what? Yeah. I don't know if we should be doing this show. And they were brave and they did it. But we still talk about that.

44:21I was filming old Vietnamese ladies cooking pho on the side of a street in Hanoi last season. And what the hell did you get me into? That's right. Yeah. Jeez. Oh, my God. But they did it. And no one got raped. Yeah. No. So far. Season five. Yeah. I thought it was interesting to see a Loa cartel is murdering the fentanyl cooks now or recently. Can you explain why that is? Because I thought you explained well in the show, but I think people are going to be confused. There's tons of fentanyl here in the United States. It's coming from the cartel or it was coming from the cartel. Now there's bodies piling up on top of 20 ,000 fentanyl pills under an overpass.

44:52What's going on? So the American authorities started going really heavy on the Chapo family, right? The Chapitos, as they call it. The sons of El Chapo was caught, brought to the United States. And then the Sinaloa cartel was run by the Chapitos on one side, El Mayo, who's the legendary shadow partner of El Chapo. Everybody knows El Chapo, but nobody knows El Mayo. But he was the equal partner for the Sinaloa cartel and in many ways sort of more crucial to the operations of the cartel. He was the whole corruption that had the liaison, the partnerships with governments and law enforcement around the world in order to be able to move his drugs at the scale that they did.

45:27And once El Chapo was brought to the United States, the government started really going after, particularly the Chapitos, because they were in charge of a lot of the fentanyl production. And I don't know if you remember, there was a thing called the Culiacanazzo, where the Mexican Marines went and detained, apprehended Ovidio Guzman, who was one of the Chapo's sons. Oh, was this when they surrounded the barracks? Yeah, exactly. Said, we're going to kill all your families if you don't let him go. So the military detains this dude, the son of El Chapo, and immediately all the different factions of the Sinaloa cartel got together and said, no, we're not going to let this happen.

46:01So they brought the whole of the Culiacán, which is the capital of Sinaloa, down to its knees and demanded the release of Ovidio Guzman, El Chapo son. They released him. A few years later, they released him because they had to. It was so embarrassing for the government, the Mexican government. And it empowered the American government in this pursuit, too, because what they were saying, you guys aren't going to be able to bring them to justice. So we are going to work with you and we're going to be much more involved in making sure that we're bringing them to justice and stopping the production of fentanyl.

46:33And so there started to be more and more pressure because now they're dealing with the American government wanting to come there and take them and arrest them. And so when it started getting heated, they realized, OK, we have to do something about it because nobody wants to end up in prison. So they asked, let's stop production of fentanyl because that will get the authorities off our backs, the American authorities off our backs. And they did, and they stopped production for a while. But because there's not just one or two chemists, there's hundreds or thousands of chemists, and they all depend on this now for a living, a lot of chemists decided to not abide by the rules, the new rules of the cartel, and they kept making fentanyl.

47:10So those were the ones who started being killed. What I heard when we were doing that story, because it made no sense because I knew that there was still fentanyl coming across, was that they already had large deposits, So they were going to move those deposits of fentanyl to the United States and stop the production in the hopes that would prevent the American government from coming after them. So like, oh, we're going to stop producing it. Great. What we didn't tell them was we have 15 million pills in a warehouse somewhere. Yeah. And we went to one of those labs where it was still being produced.

47:40But then we also went to an underground lab with a guy showing us that he was a chemist and he did everything in an underground lab under his house, which was insane. That was insane. That was a drainage tunnel. Yeah, that happened to pass under his house. And then he figured that out. He was like, I have the best lab situation in the world. Nobody's ever going to find me. Concrete bunker. So we went under and he wasn't producing fentanyl anymore because he was visited by two cartel members who basically threatened to kill him if he continued. Jeez, that's crazy to me. We'll get back to human trafficking, cartel violence, and why commercial airlines are apparently the world's most efficient drug meals.

48:14But first, a quick word from a company whose business model does not involve cutting anyone's leg tendons. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. March includes International Women's Day, and it's had me thinking about how much women carry that most of us don't fully see. I look at my wife, Jen. She's the architect of fun in our house, birthday parties, little adventures, special outings that make life feel bright. She's also running the behind-the-scenes operations, schedules, school logistics, all the moving pieces that keep everything from falling apart. There's an invisible mental load that's basically always on.

48:44And because she makes it look effortless, it's easy to forget it still has weight. I think a lot of women operate like that, capable, organized, steady, while quietly carrying more than anyone realizes. Therapy can be a space where you don't have to hold everything together. You can talk through what you're carrying, set boundaries, find some balance. BetterHelp connects you with licensed therapists who follow a strict professional code of conduct. You take a short questionnaire. They match you based on your needs, and you can switch any time. With over 30 ,000 therapists, 6 million people served, and a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 1.7 million reviews, it's helped a whole lot of people.

49:14Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash Jordan. That's better, H-E-L-P dot com slash Jordan. This episode is also sponsored by ButcherBox. Protein is a big part of our diet in our house. We track macros, we try to eat intentionally, and when you're paying that much attention to what goes into your body, quality matters. You don't want to do all that work and then just grab whatever random protein happens to be at the store. That's a big reason ButcherBox makes so much sense for us. They deliver over 100 premium protein options straight to your door, including 100 % grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, crate-free pork, wild-caught seafood.

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50:20That's right, your choice of organic ground beef, chicken breast or shrimp in every box for an entire year, plus$20 off your first box. Free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash Jordan. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support our amazing sponsors. They do make this show possible. It's all searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email us jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

50:48We are happy to surface codes for you. It really is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Mariana Van Zeller. The dope thing is disgusting, by the way. So dope mixed with xylozine, which I think is a veterinary tranquilizer. Yeah, that's right. An animal tranquilizer. So the whole, I mean, forget just say no to drugs like that whole campaign. Just show that lady's arm from the harm reduction clinic. This looked like someone took hamburger meat, shoved it into a bag of human skin and then soaked it in a sink for three days and then just stabbed like a hundred little holes in it with a needle.

51:22It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen on TV. And I can imagine it must have smelled terrible because it looked like she just had a rotten arm. It was like a zombie. Yeah. So we were there in a small clinic in Kensington, Pennsylvania, which is ground zero for trancto. Trancto, what it does is it's fentanyl mixed with the animal tranquilizer. And what it does is that fentanyl gives you a really high, but unlike heroin, the high goes away very fast. So they figured out a new drug that they could mix there, which is a tranquilizer that allows that high to stay high longer, which is ultimately what every user, drug user, usually is after.

51:55And so they started using it and they didn't even know there was tranquilizer in it. They just realized, oh, this is a good high, let's keep using this, right? But what they didn't know, most people didn't, it's a new sort of medical phenomenon. Nobody has studied this because it's so new and it's never shown up anywhere because nobody is willingly using horse tranquilizer on themselves, is that it creates these horrible wounds that look like leprosy. Essentially, I don't know if you've seen films of like leprosy back in the day when it was still big in India. It looks like that. It's like big open wounds with like pus coming out.

52:28And it's just one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. In this case, we were in this clinic run by these sort of volunteers, amazing people, who are dressing the wounds and unwrapping. And we were seeing them doing this to dozens of people and asking if we could film. This woman agreed to be filmed. And we see this amazing guy who is doing, again, volunteering his time and opening up this wound. He's not no medical training, but he's learned himself how to do it. And he's treating this woman's arm. And the moment he unwraps the gauze, the smell is everything you can imagine. It's super powerful.

53:01But yet this is a human being who's being treated. The worst thing I could do is start talking about how much this smelled, right? And what that taught me, and the guy said so well, as somebody who's been covering the drug epidemic for so long, is that we're approaching it all wrong. This is a public health crisis that's happening in America. We essentially have thousands of people in the streets of America nowadays hooked on this drug. You might think that they're there because they want and they're doing the drugs because they want to. Nobody wants to be out there like this. Nobody willingly do this.

53:32It's a public health crisis. It's like leprosy. It's so many other diseases that we've been able to combat and fight against. And here for some reason, because we think that they have a choice, we allow it to happen. And the reason also why they're being treated in this like roadside clinic instead of going to hospitals. We spoke to a lot of these users and they were all saying, we go to the hospitals. There's so much stereotyping and they're immediately, they're stigmatized and they're treated as junkies, not treated as human beings. And that's what with our episode we try to do is really humanize these people and try to show this other side that they're human beings just like us and need help.

54:09It's a scary path, right? Because I had a friend who had a back injury. So he got Oxycontin. And then he got hooked on Oxycontin. And then he couldn't get it anymore. So he started doing heroin. But now you can't get heroin. So you do fentanyl. Now you can't get fentanyl. You're doing drank dope. So it's like you end up with a guy who's like a construction worker. This guy was an MMA fighter. You know, you get a back injury and it's like dot, dot, dot. Five years later, they're in an alley covered in open sores. And it's like disgusting. Every conversation, every time I bring up the opiate epidemic, somebody has a story like that.

54:43And the vast majority of them starts with an injury. I had an EP, I'm not going to name him, but I had an executive producer on television that worked with me for some time who had seen my coverage on the opiate epidemic and called me one day and says, hey, you have no idea what just happened to me. I went in for like a tooth surgery and they gave me opiates and I had no idea. Some people have the brain chemistry that makes them all hooked. You never had an addictive personality or anything. And he was like, I spent two months doing these opiates. Weaning off those opiates was the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.

55:15And he said, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Just talking about how this normal person goes and in two months is super hooked. He doesn't know still how he managed to get off the other way. But for a lot of people, they don't. And so that's what I mean when I say it's not a choice. Yeah, it isn't a choice. I'm curious. You're clearly careful not to touch any of this stuff. If you go to a drug lab, I don't know, what kind of precautions do you take? Because that stuff is in the air and it's on the bag and it's on the table. You put your elbow down and now you've got, I don't know, xylozine on your elbow.

55:44As long as you don't put it on your mouth or your eyes or you ingest it. We were in Miami where they had bags and bags of trank dope and they were mixing the fentanyl with the xylozine. And we used gloves, which is the appropriate thing to do. And they were using gloves too. But when I was in a lab in Mexico and saw them making fentanyl, this was for season one of fentanyl. That was insane. We went in with like hazmat suits and like big masks and respirators. And we look like those movies about epidemics where the scientists walk in there and they can barely move. That's what we looked like when we were filming.

56:19So it's me and my team. My guys are holding their cameras through their masks and we can barely move with these gigantic suits. And these dudes, two dudes from the Sinaloa cartel that made the chemists for Sinaloa cartel making fentanyl, they had gloves and they had one of those just COVID masks. Yeah, it's like a scarf wrapped around his face. And I was like, aren't you scared? He was like, no, this is actually great because I know the fentanyl is potent. I know I've got it. I know I've made it. He's making it. I know I've got the end product. When I start feeling through my skin because it comes in through the skin, you see the fumes are everywhere.

56:51This is why we're using these sort of respirator masks. But I know I start getting, my heart starts beating really fast. And that's when I know I've got the good shit. These people are bananas. These guys are crazy. They're insane. One of the saddest episodes, I think, was the Hmong women in Vietnam getting kidnapped, essentially, and sold to Chinese men. Tell us how they get snatched and scanned, because it's really extra disturbing. It's not better if their family sells them, don't get me wrong. But it's really scary to think you're going shopping and your friend's like, hey, let's go get something to drink.

57:21And then your friend sells you to a Chinese guy and you just vanish. Yeah, it's essentially what's happening there. We heard dozens, we talked to dozens of women who told similar stories. These are Hmong villages, so it's impoverished communities in the mountains of northern Vietnam. And not a lot of job opportunities, not a lot of education. And a lot of times they would meet people that foreigners or Chinese people or more wealthy Vietnamese people that would come through. And they'd start charming them. It's a lot what happens here, actually, with pimps. And then say, hey, do you want to go for dinner with me?

57:55And then the next thing they know, they're being handcuffed and blindfolded and taken across the border to China and sold to men. And one of the most horrific stories I heard there was this woman, something similar to her happened. She was kidnapped, sold. She found herself living in a small apartment with a Chinese man and his parents all living in the same apartment. And this is happening in China, by the way, because of the one-child policy. For people who don't know, there's not enough women to marry in China because they had a one-child policy. you wanted a son. If you could only have one, you aborted or got rid of the girls.

58:28And now there's one girl for every, I don't know, three men or something, two men or something. It's not as big, but there's a lot of single men. And in China, it's incredibly important culturally, very important to get married. You're seen as a failure if you don't get married and if you don't have children. Your parents will be the biggest sort of sadness of their lives if your kids don't give you grandkids. Basically, it's very important culturally in China. So there's enormous pressure on these men and they can't find Chinese women. So they're going and paying people to go find them wives elsewhere.

58:56So this case of this Vietnamese woman shows up. She was young. I'm not sure if she was a teenager, but she was young. And she shows up at this small, tiny apartment, this guy. They lock her in a room. And the parents live there too, but they lock her in a room. The guy comes in just to have sex with her. She eventually gets pregnant, is forced to give birth to this child. They take away the child from her and let her see the child once in a while, let the child go into the room to be with her. She gives birth to a second child. And then after they want two kids, give them two kids. And then they say, OK, if you want, you can go back to Vietnam.

59:27And she says, will I be able to see my kids again? And says, no, you can either go back to Vietnam and be with your family or you stay here, live your rest of your life locked in a room, but you'll be able to see your kids. So she had to make this decision. It was terrible. It was devastating. You forgot that they sterilized her before she left because they didn't want her to start another family. For what reason, I don't really understand. Yeah, I didn't even remember that part. There were parts of it that I think... That was particularly horrifying. If they're going to let her go back and see the kids only on FaceTime, what's the difference if she has more kids?

59:58They just didn't want her to? I don't know. It seemed extra evil. It's extra evil when I started talking about her kids and how often does she get to talk to them? Because it's not just that she is not able to live with the kids or ever see them again. is the fact that she has to live with the guilt of having made that choice. She abandoned her children and that it's her fault. The whole thing was so disgusting. And I think, was she the one, she was like 12 when she got taken there by her friend? They blur together in my mind, but her friend asked her to go hang out or something. And then she woke up in a car.

1:00:31And the other one, she said they brought her to a room. There was a bunch of Vietnamese people in there. Two of them or three of them tried to run away. And they cut their leg tendons so they couldn't run away. This is like a really large organized crime operation that's able to smuggle people across the border. And that nobody's talking about it because it's not in the interest of either China or Vietnam to expose this. And journalism is very heavily surveilled in those countries. And our whole experience in Vietnam was insane. It was at the moment we landed, we knew we were under surveillance.

1:01:00We had a government minder that would follow us everywhere. I had to show him my list of questions. So we pretend like wrote fake questions and he'd give me OK. And then I'd sit down and start interviewing people. And the first person I interviewed, I started asking them the questions I wanted to ask. And these were people that had gotten in trouble for trafficking. They'd done time in prison and they were out. So they'd agreed to talk to us. So we're asking them questions. But then I start asking the questions that I wanted to ask. And immediately we get stopped from the government minder, who, by the way, is also traveling with the police officers.

1:01:31We have a government minder and a police officer checking every single interview and listening and they are with us. And then our van one day disappears for hours. And it's our production van that we rented, but the government minder and the police decide to disappear with our van. So we know that it was either checked and bugged and probably both. That's when we realized, oh my God, they're not just listening in on our interviews. They're actually listening in on our private conversations in the van. And then there were situations in the hotel where I truly believe my phone was bugged at the hotel because it was a crazy light situation and conversations that I were having that I knew that there was no other way they would know unless they were listening.

1:02:09So the whole situation was crazy. And we started going out in the middle of the night when they weren't watching and trying to figure out ways to do this story. It's a creepy feeling to have the government spy on you. I went to North Korea, just a tourism-ish trip. But I remember going, I went 2012, 13, 14, and 15, I think. You went every single year? Yeah. For three, For four years? For four years, yeah. And then it became illegal, actually, after that to go. So I had to sell the tour company. Was your tour company you would bring people? Yeah, I was bringing people. So it was like we had a partner in Beijing that was a British company running in China that would bring people.

1:02:44And they're like 20 years behind. So I was like, you need a website. And they're like, yeah, we have this URL slash North Korea dash trips. And I'm like, how about how to go to North Korea dot com? And they're like, oh, that's a good idea. And then you would have to like email them on a form that was broken half the time or call China and leave a message. And they would call you back during business hours. And I was like, how about a chat bot in the corner where people ask questions? And then it says, we don't know, we'll email you back, put your email in and a squeeze and newsletters. And they were just like, wow.

1:03:13Yeah. So we're like, wait, we're going to run this and we'll sell you the leads. And so that was the company. And then I would get all these free trips. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go. And I talk about it on the show and people go, I want to go with, so we would go and then it would fill up another one and another one. I just kept going for free. That's fun. But I remember being in the hotel and there's like the hotel phone and it was on a desk. And when you're at a hotel, there's a wire for the lamp and a wire for the phone. This desk had a hundred wires coming out of the back. And I'm thinking, one of these is for the phone.

1:03:45One of these is for the lamp. What are the other gazillion wires? And then you'd be talking with a friend in there and the phone light would turn on a little bit and then turn off when you're done. That's right. That's what was happening in my, but I kept thinking like, maybe I'm imagining this because that's what I thought too. How technically inept must they be to not figure out how to not make that light go on when they're on? Well, Soviet era wiretapping technology from this North Korea slash China. And I remember things like that. And I remember being in the bathroom and people were like, do you think they're filming us?

1:04:16And I was like, don't be ridiculous. And then I remember taking a really long shower and all the steam went on the mirror except for this circle. And I was like, Like, why would that be there? And it was like, only if that's a different temperature than the rest of the mirror. And it's, what's a circle? Why would it be right there? And I was like, guys, turn on your shower. Tell me if you have a circle. And they're like, yeah, we have a circle. And it's not in the exact same spot. So it's not like the mirror was made and there's a glass thing there. It was like, somebody's circle was a little bit over here.

1:04:41And another person's circle was a little bit up here. And I was like, there's something behind the mirror. Have you watched the Apple Show silo, by the way? If you watch it, that's exactly where they hid. All the cameras is behind the mirror. Oh, my gosh. So there's a hidden floor in the hotel where you stay. And we walked through that floor. This is where Otto Warmbier actually walked through that floor, the kid who got arrested and ended up dying there. So we would walk through that floor and they would catch us there. But I remember going and we'd just say, oh, we're looking for the bathroom.

1:05:08Why is it a secret? It's a secret floor because it's employees only and they have meeting rooms and there's propaganda posters all over the walls and everything. And he stole one of those posters. That's why he went to jail. But we walked around there and when they would catch us, we would just say, we're looking for the bathroom and pretend to be really drunk or actually be really drunk, as the case was, happened to be. And I remember one time we were walking around and we walked to dead end in the hallway on one of the hallways and there was a pile of cameras on the floor. And it was like, why do they have a pile of cameras?

1:05:36Where would those go? They obviously go in the rooms or in the public area. And it's, I remember looking at the little circle lens and the camera and going, I wonder how big that is exactly. And I wanted to go and touch it and be like, okay. And then I didn't have a chance to do that. But I was just thinking, like, they are filming us in the freaking bathroom. Oh, my God. Yeah. I didn't think about it in the bathroom. You question your sanity, though, right? You're like, I'm being paranoid. Why would they care? And weird things do happen. Like, year one, you go in there, you tell them what you do, you run a podcast.

1:06:07And then three years later, you have the same guide. And he goes, Jordan, how's your podcast going? And you're like, OK. There's no way he remembers. You either have the best memory of anybody I've ever met, or there's a file on me that you read before I get here and you're like, oh, that's the podcast guy. Because what the hell? Even though it's North Korea, you've still had 300 people come in per year besides me. So what the heck, Lee? It's unnerving. And you start gaslighting yourself. No, that can't be. Can it? No, I'm being paranoid. I'm not that important. That he did know that thing. It's just bizarre being watched like that.

1:06:38Yeah, there was a moment where we all decided we were going to get. So we're in the northern Vietnam. And again, we're being followed and everything we're doing, we're thinking, oh my god this is crazy they know everything all our moves and everything and because they do a lot of tailoring in vietnam you can get your suits done for like a hundred bucks you get the most beautiful custom-made suit so my whole team decide we're all going to get suits made so we do and then that night we kind of like left the hotel without telling our government minder and went to good vietnamese food and there we are and who shows up but the tailor and he's sitting at a table right next to us and he's like that's this one yeah and this is like a big town with lots of restaurants and we're thinking, the tailor is also a spy.

1:07:17Tinker Tailor. What's that thing? Sailor Spot. Yeah. And then it's like, no, it's just a coincidence. Is it though? Or did the government minder go like, hey, they think I'm not following them. You have to go follow them and pretend that you're just seeing them there. Yeah. We don't know. I mean, it could be a level of paranoia. It could be actually real. Exactly. Just because you're, what's that phrase? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Yeah. Yeah. This might actually be the case. You mentioned in that Vietnam episode that in some of the villages, something like 10 % of the people are missing.

1:07:45Yeah, some of the smaller villages. And some of them, trafficking organizations that work there believe that a lot of them were in fact kidnapped and taken to China. Some of them take jobs in big cities and don't come back, but it's still an enormous number. And you have families all over Vietnam looking for their daughters, having no idea what happened to them. If you take a job, don't you call your parents and say, by the way, I'm alive. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah, maybe they took a job, but then you're not missing. You're just not at home. That's different. They kidnap these people off and off the street.

1:08:16And I think you'd mentioned something like the witnesses, bystanders don't intervene because there's a ritual. So that's what's so unfortunate about all this too, is that in the Hmong culture, the way that people get engaged or one of the cultural traditions that they have there is that for a man to ask for a woman's hand to get married, he actually, there's some strange cultural tradition where they go and kidnap them from a public street, take them on the back of their bike or take them in the car, wherever. And it's sort of a thing that they do. And then they go and present them to the parents and they get engaged.

1:08:51The problem is that this is also how traffickers are kidnapping women. So they're actually using the cultural tradition as a disguise to actually kidnap women. It's very unfortunate. I grew up in Detroit and there's a lot of Hamong there from after the Vietnam War. It's like one of our ethnic minorities that no one else has ever heard of. And that's why you're so comfortable saying their name back and forth. I was like, no one knows about the Hamong. Everyone says Hamong or something. It's wrong. Anyway, so my friend was dating one of these girls and they ended up getting engaged. And she's like, so here's the thing.

1:09:23You have to kidnap me with your friends. So you know this too. Yeah. And I remember being like, how are we doing this? And he's like, yeah, I have to plan a kidnapping. I didn't end up being part of it. It would have been awesome, but because he ended up postponing it and stuff and I moved. But basically he had to stage a kidnapping where it was like a bunch of buddies and him had to go when her and her friends were hanging out unexpectedly. I mean, it was all planned. And then go and kidnap her and then basically show up with her to the parents and be like, I'm marrying your daughter. And it's pretty cool when it's not actually human trafficking.

1:09:55And it was really hard actually, because there's a ton of footage out there on YouTube of real kidnappings and of these traditions. So even for us, like our archival producer lost their mind trying to figure out what's real and what's just a marriage proposal. I'm so happy you mentioned that even we're reporting, we make, we fact check, but it's good to have this corroborated. This is actually the case and happens even outside of the country. It's unusual. And I remember being like, she's messing with you, dude, don't do that. You're going to get arrested. And it was like, you have to plan it carefully because if your neighbors see you yanking a girl out of the house, they're going to call the police and you're going to get shot or arrested.

1:10:30No, here's the thing, officer. I love this woman. It's a ritual. We've been dating for a while. Oh, yeah. Okay. Tell it to the judge. Tell it to the judge. I was so frustrated for you during these Vietnam interviews, though. Hey, do you know anyone who's human trafficking? And they like look over to the cop and the government minder and they're like, no. Not me. Meanwhile, I know that he was a human trafficker. Bro, you just got out of prison for human trafficking. We all know that you're guilty. You did your time. What's the deal? I don't know. Nothing. Don't worry about it. And it's all for God's sake.

1:10:57Why did we show up and do this? And we had people who agreed to talk to us. The police showed up at their house and told them not to talk to us. It was really hard. And it wasn't really until we partnered with that Asian undercover group of journalists. They were amazing. And they were the ones who went into some of these brothels using undercover footage. And they were actually able to get all the stuff that we needed because until that point, we thought we didn't have a story. And then we met them and they started doing this incredible work. Like, so this, at least we have footage of this actually happening because nobody wanted to talk to us.

1:11:28The brothel thing is extra gross. So you think, oh, they're getting married off to guys in China. All right, they're starting a family. It's definitely not ideal. It's definitely still human trafficking. And then you find out, oh, not all of them get married. Some of them just get locked in a storage unit so that they can get raped over and over. The ones that don't get married. You'd think the worst of the worst is living in the situation that that woman lived, right, in the house with the family, Chinese family locked in the room and forced to give birth to kids. But in this case, there's even worse, which are those that don't get married, they're put in brothels because the traffickers have to figure out how to make money out of this commodity.

1:12:02For them, these women are just commodities. And yeah, being locked in those rooms. And this undercover journalist, it's this incredible work where he shows up at this brothel and he says he's like this long corridor and every single door on both sides are women that are locked and forced to have sex with men, and they're not making any money. And they're in the dark. In the dark. And so he goes into one of the rooms. It's complete darkness in there. Once he gets in, at one point, I think he turns on the light, and they tell him, no, no, no, turn off the light, because he wants to see what's happening.

1:12:33It's the madam that runs the brothel that takes him there. As soon as he gets in, she locks the door from the outside. So then he's in there. He says he saw there was three women, and they start whispering to him and saying, OK, what can we do for you? And he's like, nothing, because he was just filming undercover. Nothing. I don't want anything from you. And trying to figure out how you can get out of there. And they start saying, look, if you don't have sex with one of us, you have to pick one because if you don't have sex with one of us, they're going to beat us. So you have to pick one. And it's this moment for him where he's trying to figure out what to do.

1:13:05And then he just starts knocking on the door and comes up with an excuse that he doesn't like the darkness or something. I can't remember exactly what his excuse to get out of there, but he got the footage of that whole situation. If you're listening to this thinking, man, I need a shower, a nap, and maybe some therapy, same. Now, how about a discount on that therapy and or a mattress? We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Fundera, powered by NerdWallet. Running a small business is tough, and when it's time to get a loan, it can feel impossible to find a lender you actually trust.

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1:15:36It's a two-minute read, comes out every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. it is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Mariana Van Zeller. You know, like in my house watching this in my office, comfortable, a beverage in my hand. I'm just like, oh my God, the only real difference is I just happen to not be born in a village in the mountains of Vietnam. That's like the dice roll. The biggest learning that I've had from all these years covering black markets is that I usually use this line that I read once that I love, which is the wheel of history turns on where and when you were born determines whether you get crushed or raised by you.

1:16:16And we are the lucky ones. We got the lottery ticket, right? We were born where we were. We got opportunities that we did. We got access to greater education. And so what I wanted traffic to be also is a great conversation starter for all of us. What are we doing with these opportunities that we've given? Because we're not the girl in Vietnam or even some of these traffickers, even some sicarios in Sinaloa, where this is the environment they grew up in. This is all that's offered to them. This is all they know. And I will never forget this interview that I did with a 16, 17-year-old kid in Peru who's carrying cocaine on his back, like kilos and kilos of cocaine, backbreaking work through the mountains of Peru, seeing some of his friends being killed in front of him by rival groups.

1:17:00At this point, has seen dozens of people being killed, extreme violence, really difficult work, really dangerous. And when I asked him, why are you doing this? He says, look, I've always wanted to be a dentist. I've always wanted to go to college. My parents can't afford it. And so this is the only work that I will allow me to go to college. And I say, why college? What do you want to do? He says, I want to be a dentist. And I asked him, why do you want to be a dentist? Because in my little town, all the posters that I see for dentists is posters of people with big smiles. So I want to people smile.

1:17:30You're going to make me cry on my own show. That's so sad. I know. So instead he's humping cocaine through the jungle. Exactly. Hoping that one day he can become a dentist. So that's what I want the show to be. I want people to see many of these traffickers. Again, we do not condone what they do. It's difficult to even empathize. But the majority of the people that I talk to are people just like you and me that don't have the opportunities or the luck that we have. Yeah, you do a good job of not glamorizing it, but humanizing the people involved, but not making excuses for the people who are doing criminal activity.

1:17:59And I ask all of them hard questions. It's my job as a journalist. I'm not there to then have fun with them. No, I'm trying to connect on a human level and treat people with respect and try to find the humanity out of them. Because by finding the humanity, then you really get the depth of the reporting that you need to understand why things like this happen. But at the same time, I'm also holding them accountable for what they do. So even the cartel, like you're always told their questions that you don't ask the cartel, I will always ask those questions of the cartel. What's a question you don't ask the cartel?

1:18:29One of the first ones is what cartel they belong to. They don't like being asked that. Bosses and structures or names and things like that. I try to always do my job as a journalist, which is to hold people accountable. Props, by the way, to whoever does the music on the show, because whoever they are, they find like the best Vietnamese rap with an electronic music dance beat behind it. And I'm like, Whoever picked that is fire. I think that was actually our director on that episode. Rob Muraskin is really good with music. I was like, where do you even find something like that? You don't type that into Spotify and find that as a hit.

1:19:01We also have an amazing music supervisor, Dan Wilcox. He's an amazing supervisor. He also finds really good music, yeah. It's pretty cool to have something like that. Someone is just spending hours finding the perfect track or gets really lucky here and there and finds a track or finds a track and goes, one day I'm going to use this. And then when they're looking for music, it's, ah, Vietnamese rap from the 90s. I'm doing it. I love that you notice it. Thank you. Yeah. It's part of the production thing. And it's like, if I did a TV show, I would do traffic. It's already taken. But very rarely do I envy someone else's job because I have a pretty cool one, too.

1:19:34I talk to smart people, interesting people all day. But traffic, I'm like, would I trade? Maybe. I mean, it's a little scary getting stuck in Niger after a coup. I do have little kids. My wife would not be interested in me trading. But I could probably do a couple seasons of traffic. Yeah. It came to an end. We did five seasons. This was the last season. Yeah. I did not know that. My final question was, what do we expect next season? Okay, screw that. See, I told you not to have questions. Ruined it. Yeah. Now I'm paying the price for that. What's your favorite part of the job, you think? Or what was your favorite part of the job?

1:20:03So what comes next? Let me tell you what comes next. Because I'm still working in black markets. I have a podcast that I love. Started doing this a few months ago. And I think the way I describe it is, in many ways, trafficked with sort of the map of these black markets. And the podcast is a little bit like the diary, right? It's where I actually get to sit with people and have intimate conversations. On traffic, you'd see these people have incredible, fascinating stories, and yet you'd hear two, three, four minutes of their lives. And here I have a platform where we can talk, and I can understand who they are, why they do what they do.

1:20:34And these are people with some of the most fascinating lives, right? People that work and have operated somehow in these black markets. So I've got that, and I'm working on other shows. It's just the privilege of a lifetime, right? Being able to see things that nobody else sees and connecting with people, you know, becoming friends with victims of human trafficking in Vietnam or with the kid that's carrying cocaine or Jamaican scammer Tweety that I'll never forget. There's all these people, again, not condoning what a lot of them do, but creating connections with them and feeling like the privilege of walking in their shoes for a little bit and understanding their lives is amazing.

1:21:13It just expands your mind in a way that I think we all should be exposed to. I agree. We did five amazing seasons. We got nominated for 29 Emmys. Last year was the most Emmy-nominated, unscripted show in the history of the Emmys, which is crazy. And we're going to be up for a bunch, hopefully. Oh, my God. I'm jinxing it already. We're applying. We're submitting to the Emmys this year for season five. And I'm going to figure out a way to keep doing what I do elsewhere. Yeah, I was going to say, if you can do it on YouTube or there's so many apps and streaming services now. It's kind of like with podcasting.

1:21:43When I was younger, I wanted to be on the radio. And then I got on satellite radio. And it was like the station manager would go, what if you do this really lame thing that makes your show exactly like everyone else's show? And then we cancel it because it's just like everyone else's show, but not. And it's no thanks. I'm going to do this podcasting thing. And I remember everybody was like, what a loser. Podcasting is for losers. Now all those radio guys are doing podcasts because it makes more money and you don't have to listen to some knucklehead station manager who doesn't understand what you do.

1:22:10Yeah, that's exactly it. So that's my plan for the future is that I can figure out how to grow the YouTube channel that I have. I mean, it's a good show and it was very successful, very popular for five seasons. A lot of people love it. I remember when I left satellite radio, the station manager goes, you guys are just on fire. It's really something. Anyway, we're not going to continue. And I was like, what did I misunderstand about this is fire? Like, repeat the last rewind. That's so Hollywood, though, right? You are beloved. Anyway, that was our last season. What are you talking about? How does that follow?

1:22:43By the way, South Africa looks so cool and beautiful. But holy crap, that place is the Wild West. Your armored car heist thing. Yeah, that was a crazy story, right? The heist. Yeah. The heist crews blowing up armored cars. And then they're like, oh, how do we keep these people secure? and it's like helicopter chase and escort thing. And I'm like, can't you just have more guards? And they're like, oh, that sounds expensive. We're not doing that. It's a war game between the security companies and the robbers and the heist gangs. And they're all trying to one-up each other and they're all one-upping each other constantly.

1:23:15So now you've got like a war on the highways of South Africa. It's insane, in Johannesburg particularly and Durban. Yeah, it's crazy. And this woman's like, oh, our plan, since they're shooting these, is to make them bomb-proof. Proof, uh-huh. It's like maybe there's another solution. So first is like make them bulletproof, which they did. And then the heist crews were like, oh, yeah, take a look at that. This rifle that shoots through bulletproof. Yeah. And they started using explosives to open these things up. And now we're going to make them bomb proof. And they're going to come up with something else.

1:23:44It's a cat and mouse game. You could not pay me enough to be an armored car driver in South Africa after seeing that episode. The guy who's been shot multiple times who thought he was dead. He'd been robbed like 14 times. And then there's a video, which is insane, where he looks like an act of war. Essentially, he's being shot at from all sides. He's wounded. He thinks he's about to die. He's like trying to radio to call for help. And then he gets back on a truck a couple months later and is back doing that armored truck driving job. That was the guy who's like, oh, he's going to kill me. So he's shot the guy through like a hole in the truck.

1:24:20He was able to shoot the guy shooting at him. This is like a story from Iraq. Yeah. Or Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like an old dude who looks like he should be a mall security guard. Yeah. So this is the part that made me feel bad, is that this guy, obviously, I asked him, why is he need retiring? Because he can't afford to retire. He's taken bullets for the security company. Just give this guy his full pay and let him retire. Seriously. And I don't know what wages are like in South Africa, but I'm going to go ahead and guess he's not making a six-figure salary. No, not at all. These guys are making nothing, and they're risking their lives.

1:24:52I notice you're emotional at times with interviewees, people who've lost children or simply saying insane things like the pastor we talked about before, like gay people should be executed and stuff. How do you decide when to blur the line between like 60 minutes journalist who shows absolutely no emotion and being more human with the person in front of you? That line doesn't exist for me because I believe journalism is not just about holding people accountable and it's not about objectivity. I think perhaps one of the most important jobs is connecting people, creating connections between us, the viewers, the listeners, and people on the other side of the world that we think we have nothing in common with.

1:25:30I think that's one of the most powerful tools in journalism. I also think that in many situations that work, the job of a journalist is very much like a caretaker. When I'm interviewing the victims and even some of the really sad stories behind some of the traffickers and people involved in these black markets, I am almost their therapist. These are people who have never shared their stories. There's a very important caretaking part of the journalism profession that people usually don't talk about that I think is very important. And it's the only way that you can show the complete picture. And I am also a human being.

1:26:01So if I am going to get emotional, I am going to show that I am emotional. And I'm hoping that the viewers and listeners will feel that and will feel what I'm feeling at the time and will care. Ultimately, it's all about making people care about these issues in the world. Yeah. Would you let your son do trafficked on that geo or would you talk him out of it? I've never been asked that. I would love for him to be a journalist because I love my job so much. And I think he's 15 years old now. I think that I've led such a fascinating life that I wouldn't want him not to have it. I would be worried.

1:26:34But one of the things that my parents taught me, and I think part of the reason why I am the way I am, is that they were never fearful. They were never helicopter parents. They allowed me to explore the world. If I wanted to go up trees, if I wanted to move to Syria, which I did right after. Yeah, I moved to Syria right after Columbia University. The war in Iraq had just started. I wanted to be close to the action. I wanted to be reporting from the Middle East at the time. I didn't know anyone in Syria. I didn't know Arabic. I was basically next door to a huge war. And my parents never told me, don't go.

1:27:05They were always supporters and trusted my common sense sometimes to their detriment. Yeah, wow. But that's the kind of parent I am too with my son is I want him to explore the world. I want him to make mistakes. I want him to sometimes feel uncomfortable, get outside his comfort zone. I think that's very important. And I think there's a instinct or not an instinct, but usually parents try to protect their kids to their detriment in a way sometimes too much. I'm not saying that, yes, my son, go out and hang out with drug traffickers, but do something every day that makes you feel a little uncomfortable because that's the way that you evolve and you become a better human being.

1:27:45I agree with that. It's easy for us to say, and then it's, Mom, I'm going to go to Venezuela, and I'm going to meet up with these people who are human traffickers that also sell cocaine. And you're like, I come from zero credibility telling you not to do that because it's too dangerous, so have fun. He's 15 right now, so obviously he wouldn't go now. But later in life, when I went to Syria, I was like 26 or 27 years old. And when I started doing these sort of stories, yeah, I was around that age. And I think at that point I had a little bit of experience. I was a little bit more mature. I had conversations with my parents about it.

1:28:16And I think that I would prepare him and tell him everything that I know and hope that he would make good decisions and have the training that he needs to have. Although I didn't have any training when I went to this place. That's kind of bullshit. Yeah, exactly. But I would try to get him to help. Hold on. Mommy's coming with you. Probably. I'd be with, like, binoculars. I won't say anything. I swear. I'll just hang out in the van. No, Mom. Yeah. Although it would be great to have your mom be your EP if your mom is Mariana Vanzilla. Is there any place that's been just impossible to film in so far but is on the top of your list?

1:28:49Oh, North Korea would be one of them. I would love to get North Korea. And Iran. We've had plans to go to Iran. We've been pitching a story on Iran since season one of Trafficked, and so far it hasn't worked out for us. Now might not be the best time to go to Iran. No, I know. Although it possibly would be the best time to go. This is when we want to be there. Yeah, that's true. Although getting stuck there now. Yeah, it's just, it's very dangerous. And particularly as a journalist, and yeah, there's all reasons not to go. I was trying to go there with my Portuguese passport, so just to fly under the radar.

1:29:18Right, yeah, a little bit. Until they realize, because you have to apply for a journalism permit to film, and they're going to at least Google you, and then it doesn't matter what color your passport is at that point. Have you ever had to scrap anything because footage didn't work out or it got lost or your camera got stolen or something? Not like that, but we had a story we were going to do once about uranium and nuclear weapons and the trafficking of nuclear weapons and uranium. And we were going to Ukraine. and this was way before the war. It was, again, I think it was season one of Traffic.

1:29:53So this was 2019. Our producer and director was already on the ground, and they called us and was like, do not come. We have to get out of the country. There's shit happening. And so we never did that story, and that's one that I'm sad. We were really looking forward to doing that story. That was before the war. So the shit happening was what, organized crime or something? Or you can't even say what it was? I think it was a mix of paranoia and the government talking to people that we would get in trouble if we did it. And then the people that were going to take us and give us some of this access, deciding they didn't want to do it.

1:30:24So it was a combination of things. So what other shows are you working on or what other documentaries are you working on? So I'm working on The Hidden Third, the podcast. You can catch it on YouTube. We'll link to it in the show. Pay those bills. Pay those bills. I need some of your viewers, Jordan, or listeners. And then I'm also working on a really fun show. I can't tell a lot about it, but it's a really fun show for Nagio about scams. I can tell you a little bit about it. It's essentially the idea. It's called Super Scam Me, and it's a show I pitched them, which is I've reported on scams extensively.

1:30:54I've been all around the world talking to scam victims, but I've never felt what it's like to be a scam victim myself. So for a limited time, period of time, I say yes to every single scam that comes my way. I answer every phone call, reply to every email. I create this persona that I put out online, and I open myself up to romance dating, romance scams, crypto, all the scams you can think of. It's an experiment. So right now you have dudes from Bangladesh messaging you and telling you how beautiful you are or whatever. Just you should invest in their secret crypto platform that's made them 100 % return?

1:31:28You have no idea. I am talking to three Brad Pitt's, a couple of Keanu Reeves, I think four George Clooney's, because celebrity scams are huge right now. I'm romantically involved with a couple of men. I have all these amazing scams happening right now. It's funny when you are a willing participant and knowing it's a scam. So we covered those pig butchering scams and scam centers and things. Also, you covered in Trafficked. And one of the things I was wondering about is what if I just started talking to these people knowing it was a scam? Because before I used to berate them in Chinese and be like, I'm a Chinese party official.

1:32:03And they'd be like, I'm sorry, we'll take you off of our list. And then when I found out they were being held there captive and they weren't willingly doing it a lot of the time, I started messaging back and being like, hey, are you okay? And they're like, oh, what do you mean? And I'm like, are you in a Cambodian or Burmese scam center and you can't escape? And some of them will reply and go, yes. And is there anything I could do to help you thinking they're going to go, yeah, just deposit crypto. And they're like, can you tell someone that I'm here? And I've had people send me like their family's phone number and they're like, I'm deleting this account, but just please tell me you did that.

1:32:36Oh my God, that's so sad. It was a guy in Dubai told me, he reached out to me because he heard the podcast or saw the podcast on YouTube that I did covering this. And he said, I'm trapped in Dubai in the UAE. And he drew a map of the scam center and he called me and we recorded the calls and everything. And I called a prosecutor in Santa Clara who covers a lot of crypto scams, Erin West. Erin West. I love Erin. We worked with her for this story. So she said, there's no evidence that this is happening in Dubai. This is a couple of years ago. And then about last year, she called me back and she goes, so you're right.

1:33:07There is a huge organized crime connection. There's a Chinese gang working there. We think that the guy you talk to may be a part of this thing. So he ended up escaping and like deleting all of his media. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, we interviewed a lot of victims from these scam compounds who had just been able to flee the scam compounds and were in Thailand on our story, Scam City. And some of the Indians that had just fled to the scam compounds went through Dubai. They applied for a job in Dubai. They got to Dubai and they met a woman who lured them for a job in Myanmar. and then they got stuck in these compounds and these kids were beat and tortured with electric shocks.

1:33:39It was the whole thing. That's what this guy told me that. And I thought, oh, is this real? Someone's winding me up. But it all got corroborated. I mean, not his particular stories, but it was all like, yeah, they're getting shocked with batons. And then he sent me all of the personnel with all the photos of everybody who worked there. I ended up giving it to the FBI. So I have all these guys from Sierra Leone who work for the security. This is the chief enforcer. This is the guy who beats us. This is the boss. Here's a photo of the boss. Here's his nickname in Chinese. I don't know his real name.

1:34:05And so the FBI was like going through all these files and they're like, oh, yeah, OK, interesting. This totally makes sense. Did you meet with the FBI? Yeah, they came to my house. My wife was thrilled about that. She's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh, they want the information. They were actually interested in knowing? They were interested. So do you think they were investigating this because no one has done anything? Well, what they were mostly interested in, this same guy said there were scams and they didn't seem to care about that. The FBI agent in Tennessee cared about it because it was his beat or whatever.

1:34:33But what really got their attention was this guy on the recorded call had said, they meet with Russians all the time and they have an insider at a U.S. bank and they're going to do some kind of thing at the U.S. bank and steal all of the money and the personal data. And then the FBI came over like that night. Oh, wow. Because they were like, we want to know if there's going to be a terrorist attack on a bank in the United States. They were really interested in that. So I asked that guy for more information about that. And he told me who the Russians were and how they changed all of the IP address.

1:35:01he just knew who they were. He didn't have their full names or anything. But there's a company that comes in and installs VPNs so that they can change their IP addresses every week. So he gave off all of the vendor information. And I think the FBI was like, I'm speculating here. I think they were thinking, if we can find out who that VPN company is, we can monitor that VPN company and find out which bank it is and what they're going to do, which is probably a good way to investigate that. I should have talked to you when we filmed two summers ago. But all of this would have been good information for us, even for our story, yeah.

1:35:31Next time. Yeah, next time. I need you as my soul. That's right. I would happily join the Van Zeller crew. Thanks for coming in. This has been super fascinating. Oh, I've had such a fun time. Thanks for having me, Jordan. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Amanda Catarzi, who was raised in a cult and later sex and labor trafficked. The women were trained to be insanely submissive. Like you could never say no to any man. And then the men were trained in a very military way. These people are well-armed and well-trained. And it's a whole group that thinks that the world is evil and they need to repopulate the world with their people to bring the kingdom of God.

1:36:12When you turn 13 in that culture, you're an adult. So to be 13 years old, being courted by men twice my age, three times my age, to see if I would make a good wife, it was just kind of outrageous. So I moved to California to go to school, and I start training MMA. And my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches. Then he's like, you know, I like you, and so now we're dating. So this is my first adult relationship. He's twice my age at this point. And then he would always take me up to his cabin on the mountain, which was really far away from everybody else. No phone service, isolation, and it was on a Native American reservation.

1:36:57so whatever they wanted to do to me they could oops you accidentally got gang raped that was very common of going to go train and then all of a sudden now that you fought 12 rounds now you're gonna be raped a girl ran a red light and t-boned my truck so i pull out my phone and i text my trafficker and i say hey i almost just died in a car accident he said is your face fucked up And I'm like, no. And he said, well, you're still f***able then. Something isn't right here. This isn't who I want to be. This isn't what I want. And it was like I was coming out of water. I had this moment of clarity, and I knew something wasn't right, and I knew this wasn't what I wanted.

1:37:42And I knew I needed to act fast in order to get out of that situation, because I knew I'd get sucked back in. To hear how she escaped her dire situation, check out episode 631 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. If this episode stuck with you, good, it should. Because behind the cartels, the trafficking, the scams, and the violence are systems that don't look like movie villains. They look like paperwork. They look like airline luggage. They look like fake rehab centers set up in a house that would otherwise be an Airbnb. They look like government silence. and people who learn to look the other way because it's safer than speaking up.

1:38:19Mariana has seen this world up close, armed guards, surveillance, intimidation, and moments where everything could have gone sideways fast, and she still keeps going because if nobody tells these stories, the silence wins. Check out Mariana's podcast, The Hidden Third, wherever you're listening now. Of course, all things Mariana Van Zeller will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support this show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com.

1:38:49And I'm Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn where the sane people are. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Tata Sidlouskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's into a little bit of the dark side of stuff, loves the show Trafficked, is into kind of this true crimey stuff, definitely share this episode with them.

1:39:19In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

1:39:42telling the most surreal moments of their lives, and they're not just giving you the highlights, they're walking you through it from the inside as the person who actually lived it, which means you're basically getting a front row seat to the chaos. One episode is about Scott getting locked up in a foreign jail for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, Scott. Another is Sue's parachute failing. Wow, I'm surprised. She was around to tell that story. And then there's Michael who was stabbed on a bus, which makes your commute instantly feel a little bit more relaxing. Don't you think? So if you want to hear some wild and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out What Was That Like?

1:40:11Every story is verified. Their site even has photos, so you know even the most bizarre stuff you're hearing is somebody's real life. Listen to What Was That Like on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever app you're using right now.