#2092 - Mariana van Zeller

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day.

[3] Hello, good to see you, my friend.

[4] How's thanks?

[5] Great.

[6] Thanks so much for having me again.

[7] I'm so happy every time I see you that you're alive and well, because you do some wild stuff, lady.

[8] You get involved in some situations.

[9] I do.

[10] This past year was crazy.

[11] Yeah?

[12] Yeah.

[13] We just had season four come out, and it's my favorite season for many reasons, but also because it was quite the adventure.

[14] What did you get involved with this season?

[15] Well, it ended with a military coup in Africa where my team and I got stuck.

[16] So that was sort of a good kickoff to all of it.

[17] It was in Niger, so it's in the Sahel region of Africa.

[18] The U .S. has actually a military presence.

[19] Remember a few years ago when there were these four U .S. Marines that were killed in the Sahel in Niger, and nobody even knew they were there?

[20] Well, there's actually over 1 ,000 troops stationed in Niger.

[21] And we were there in a little town called Agadez, which is in sort of the southern border of the Sahara Desert.

[22] And we were doing a story about gold mining.

[23] So the story itself was incredible.

[24] We had to, you know, we had a military convoy with us because it's incredibly dangerous part of the world.

[25] You've got terrorism, you've got ISIS, Al -Qaeda, Boko Haram.

[26] You've got kidnappers, so it's very, very dangerous.

[27] We'd gone there with the permission of the government, but only if we had to have a military convoy with us at all time.

[28] So we're talking about four armored trucks with lots of trained soldiers that every time we stopped, they'd get out of the trucks and basically point their guns all around.

[29] They were very well trained.

[30] A lot of them are actually trained by the American military.

[31] And we went out into the desert and visited these gold mines, which are crazy.

[32] It was an eight -hour off -roading into the desert to arrive at these illegal, unregulated mines.

[33] We're going down these tunnels, and it's, you know, 100 meters down, hand -dug tunnels with nothing to buttress them, no safety precautions or anything where we filmed it all, and we get to the end, and there's people basically...

[34] Mining for gold.

[35] And again, constantly with the idea that the military is telling us, okay, we have to film fast.

[36] We have to do this fast.

[37] We can't be out at night.

[38] So we went to a sort of safety, more safe location to sleep that night under the stars.

[39] And then the next day, it's time to come back to Agadez, the town, which is about 100 miles but takes anywhere between like three to 12 hours to get because lots of things can happen along the way.

[40] And we arrived in Agadez and we got worried that there had been a military coup and the president had been deposed and he was now being kidnapped inside the presidential palace.

[41] Basically, he was stuck there with his family.

[42] And that we were about to lose our military compound and security.

[43] And they closed all the land borders and the airspace.

[44] And we were stuck with no way out because you can't travel by road without security in that part of the world.

[45] And there were no planes leaving.

[46] So we were stuck.

[47] Wow.

[48] How long are you stuck for?

[49] It was about nine days.

[50] The military coup happened on a Wednesday, and we left on a Thursday, sorry, so eight days.

[51] But it was eight incredibly scary days.

[52] You know, I've been a journalist covering black markets and going to war zones and conflict areas all my life.

[53] But this was, I think, the most uncomfortable and scared I've ever been because...

[54] First of all, the uncertainty of not knowing.

[55] There were all these, the West African states were threatening invasion.

[56] The Wagner group, the Russian mercenary group, were saying that they were going to come and protect the new military coup leaders.

[57] And so it was a power struggle between the United States and Russia.

[58] And that's sort of the last place you want to be, right?

[59] Wow.

[60] And again, no protection.

[61] I'm there with my team.

[62] I'm sort of the boss in that situation because I'm the owner of the company that produces this.

[63] I'm the host of the show.

[64] I'm the executive producer.

[65] And I felt very responsible for my team as well.

[66] And yeah, the clock is ticking.

[67] And they're telling us that in a few days we're going to invade and there's going to be a massive possibility of a massive war.

[68] And we're stuck with, again, no protection and no way out.

[69] So it was really, really scary.

[70] How did it get resolved?

[71] That's the interesting part.

[72] So the funny thing is that there was an American military base, actually, one of the biggest Air Force bases ever built.

[73] It costs over $100 million to build just two miles from our little hotel in Agadez.

[74] We were the only foreigners there, apart from aid workers that sort of live behind barbed wire and in compounds.

[75] But we were the only foreigners staying in a hotel.

[76] This hotel, interestingly enough, was actually built when Gaddafi came to visit in the 90s or late 80s.

[77] And it was a rundown hotel.

[78] We were there.

[79] Again, no protection, nothing.

[80] And the military base is just two miles from us.

[81] And we'd tried to get inside the base to film, and we'd been denied access to the base.

[82] But when the coup happened...

[83] We managed to get a contact inside and started asking them, we're here with no security.

[84] Can you guys come and help us and figure out, you know, take us into the base, something where all American citizens, except for our fixer, a local guy who was actually from Mali, but everybody else was American.

[85] And they were stuck in the situation that all the other countries had started calling this a coup, but the U .S. government did not.

[86] And because the moment they called it a coup, they would have to remove...

[87] the military, possibly remove military, removed their aid from the country.

[88] And that's the last thing you want to do.

[89] So they couldn't, they didn't want to evacuate us.

[90] They didn't want to call it a coup.

[91] They didn't want to get us out of their hands were sort of tight.

[92] That's how they told us.

[93] And we started seeing slowly as a day started passing and the situation was deteriorating.

[94] We started seeing, you know, the French were sending planes to take out all the French nationals, the British, the Portuguese, which is where I'm a double nationality where I'm from.

[95] And I'm on the phone with the ambassador for Portugal telling me there's a plane for you.

[96] There's like seats for you in the capital.

[97] But the capital is eight hours away or 12 hours away by land and we can't go because it's too dangerous.

[98] No airplanes would take us there.

[99] And eventually we realized that the only way that we'd be able to get out is if we took matters into our own hands.

[100] So actually my team in L .A. found an evacuation company willing to fly a plane in the middle of the night to get us out.

[101] That sounds like a Chuck Norris movie.

[102] Oh.

[103] The evacuation company?

[104] It was actually Argo.

[105] Have you watched the movie Argo?

[106] No. No. About the guys in Iran.

[107] Oh, yeah.

[108] I did watch that.

[109] Yeah.

[110] And how they don't know until the last minute if they're going to leave or not.

[111] It was exactly that situation.

[112] So we get to the airport in the middle of the night.

[113] So they told us that we had to be at the airport at this time, that we had to take security with us because the pilot was refusing to land unless we had security there, police.

[114] The police was supposed to show up.

[115] They never did.

[116] We arrive at the airport.

[117] It's sunrise and the military is there waiting for us.

[118] Yeah, it's one of those.

[119] And they start creating all sorts of problems saying we don't have the right paperwork.

[120] They're not going to let us leave.

[121] meanwhile there was this amazing man local man who worked at the airport that i'd met a few days before when i went there to try to see if there's any plane leaving let us know and so i stayed in touch with him and i had told him that it was my son's birthday um which was partially not sure it wasn't his birthday but he was about to leave camp and i've got this tradition as a working mother who travels all the time we have this tradition that i always pick him up from camp and it's performing arts camp.

[122] And so I told him, sorry, this is a very long story.

[123] No, no, it's good.

[124] So I told him, you know, so he was there to help us, but the military was also there, and they didn't want us to leave, and creating all sorts of problems.

[125] And then we see the plainland, and we see the pilot come out, and we see the military start.

[126] walking towards the pilot to tell them that we didn't have the permission to leave.

[127] And my fear was that the pilot was immediately going to turn around because he had told us that we had 20 minutes.

[128] He was going to spend 20 minutes on the ground and if we couldn't get into the plane, he's going to leave without us.

[129] And they get there and he starts talking to them.

[130] And I'm on the phone with the team in L .A. and I'm freaking out and telling them, this is horrible.

[131] This is happening.

[132] They don't want us to leave.

[133] And then my husband's on the phone with me as well.

[134] He's telling me, I see the pilot's name, and I think he's Portuguese.

[135] Run to him, and I ran to him at the same time as a military, and I started speaking to him in Portuguese and telling him the situation and that do whatever you can to get us out, and the military can't understand Portuguese.

[136] So there was a secret communication happening between me and him.

[137] And he was Portuguese, and he decided to take the risk of getting those on the plane, and we managed to get out of it.

[138] But the guy from the military was still yelling as the door closes.

[139] But so was the guy that I'd met at the airport, who turns to me, yells my name, and I look back, and he says, hey, Mariana, say happy birthday to your son.

[140] So in the midst of the craziness, it was also a beautiful moment of connection and humanity.

[141] You've done so many of these.

[142] boots on the ground, dangerous investigative journalist shows.

[143] Do you, at a certain point in time, do you, like, say, okay, I've rolled the dice enough?

[144] No. Wow.

[145] No, it's really, it's what I love to do.

[146] Obviously, that was a moment of a lot of uncertainty, but still when we spent a week on the ground and we still kept on reporting on the story we were there for.

[147] We were stuck in this dilemma.

[148] Do we stay closed in our hotel, or do we go out and continue reporting on the story we decided to keep reporting?

[149] But it is, it is, you know, there's a lot of sacrifice that goes into it, but I'm, it's what I love to do.

[150] It's so sketchy.

[151] Yeah, sometimes it's sketchy, not always, but sometimes.

[152] Well, the gold mine itself, just going down with these hand with no buttresses, hand -carved gold mines, like, oh.

[153] Yeah, and these guys do it every single day for hours on us.

[154] And who are they digging gold for?

[155] They sell it to middlemen.

[156] We then went and interviewed the middleman, a guy called Cleekly, super colorful character, who basically then sells it to the Gulf.

[157] The majority of the gold goes to Dubai.

[158] Really?

[159] Yeah.

[160] Dubai loves that bling.

[161] They love the bling.

[162] They love the bling out there.

[163] Have you ever seen the amount of gold that exists on Earth?

[164] No. The finite amount of gold that exists on Earth is shockingly small.

[165] Jamie, see if you could find that.

[166] The amount of gold that exists on Earth.

[167] I forget what the exact unit of measurement that they used, but you go, what?

[168] What?

[169] That's it.

[170] 24 ,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date.

[171] Most of that gold has come for three countries, China, Australia, and South Africa.

[172] Wow.

[173] Wow.

[174] Yeah.

[175] But if you, like, I've seen it represented.

[176] There, there it is.

[177] That's it.

[178] That's the whole.

[179] Yep.

[180] That's it.

[181] No way.

[182] Yep.

[183] It's it.

[184] It's all the gold.

[185] So what we're seeing, folks, is a couple of large trucks and what looks like a half a football field of gold.

[186] Yeah.

[187] Is that about right?

[188] About a half a football field?

[189] Yeah.

[190] Yeah.

[191] But a half a football field full of gold.

[192] And it's stacked up about, looks like it's about five feet high.

[193] Wow.

[194] No, maybe a little higher.

[195] Maybe it's six feet high.

[196] That's it.

[197] Yeah.

[198] It's all the gold.

[199] Yeah, which is why the price fluctuates.

[200] Sort of, but I don't get it.

[201] I don't even like it.

[202] I don't like gold jewelry.

[203] I like silver.

[204] Silver looks prettier to me. Yeah, it's just like, I get it.

[205] I get it that people like it, it's rare.

[206] It's weird that it's rare.

[207] Not that it's rare, but it's weird that we care.

[208] Like, it doesn't even do anything.

[209] It's not like you can make a weapon out of it.

[210] It's not like, how did that stuff ever become the thing that is universally regarded as the most valuable and was backed our currency forever until the 70s?

[211] Yeah.

[212] What?

[213] Yeah.

[214] What is that?

[215] Yeah.

[216] Why are we obsessed with that stupid soft metal?

[217] It's pretty.

[218] Because there's not a lot of it.

[219] There's a lot of shit that's pretty.

[220] You know, how come rubies aren't worth as much?

[221] You know, or maybe they are.

[222] I don't know.

[223] But like, there's a lot of stuff that's pretty.

[224] Why is that stuff?

[225] The thing that everybody wants to trade.

[226] Yeah.

[227] And diamonds as well is another one that I don't quite get.

[228] Yeah, diamonds are really weird because diamonds they can make now.

[229] Yeah.

[230] But women don't want the made ones.

[231] Isn't that crazy?

[232] It is, but you can barely tell, apparently, the difference.

[233] How can you tell?

[234] Yeah.

[235] What kind of psycho?

[236] And why do you care?

[237] Yeah.

[238] Are you going over your diamond with a magnifying glass before you decide whether or not is worthy of you wearing it?

[239] Right.

[240] What's happening here?

[241] Yeah, agreed.

[242] It's a rarity thing, you know?

[243] Yeah.

[244] It's also like there's something sick about it.

[245] Like you want the ones that are created by the earth only that people had to risk their life to get.

[246] Not like some really fascinating piece of innovation that has allowed them.

[247] I mean, they can make large diamonds now.

[248] Yeah.

[249] And they look exactly like the real ones.

[250] Yeah, but they're not.

[251] Yeah, I know.

[252] But they're not.

[253] It's fake.

[254] It's not even fake.

[255] It's a real diamond.

[256] But it's a diamond that's made by humans.

[257] But do you think women really don't – I haven't heard people really say I don't want this because it's not – Oh, yeah, I've had a conversation.

[258] With somebody who said that.

[259] Yeah, Mrs. Rogan.

[260] I'm not going to criticize your wife.

[261] She's not – she's just like, I'd rather that real one.

[262] I'm like, that is a real one.

[263] This doesn't make any sense.

[264] I'm like, help me out.

[265] It wasn't an argument or anything, but I'm like, I don't get it.

[266] I don't know.

[267] Why is that?

[268] I don't either.

[269] You know, we had when I was, one of the first stories I did with my husband back in the day when we were still traveling and reporting together was actually in the Brazilian Amazon and it was about this one of the biggest diamond mines they've ever found.

[270] And it was on Indian land and white miners came in and the Indians decided to revolt and killed and tortured and cut off the penises of 30 of them.

[271] Wow.

[272] They killed 30 people, massacred and tortured, lots of them.

[273] And it was horrible.

[274] And we went there and started investigating this.

[275] And we weren't married.

[276] He was my boyfriend at the time.

[277] We were planning on getting married.

[278] But we had, we were in these little tiny, you know, wild west towns in the Amazon and the amount of people that we had come up to us and actually with little paper bags, like rolled paper with little diamonds on the side, asking us if we wanted to buy it for nothing, like close to nothing.

[279] We thought about it, but we didn't.

[280] Yeah.

[281] It doesn't seem like you should.

[282] No. Maybe if you've found one.

[283] We actually went to the mines, and I remember that's what happens.

[284] We went to gold mines in the Amazon as well for another story, is that when you're in these places, you can't stop looking at the ground.

[285] If you find any chance you find anything, but obviously...

[286] Yeah.

[287] How difficult is it for them to find diamonds?

[288] Because that's the thing about the Debeers.

[289] They're so smart with what they've done.

[290] They basically have warehouses filled with diamonds.

[291] I know.

[292] And they've elevated the price to pretend that they're rare.

[293] But they're not really rare anymore because of their mining abilities.

[294] The technology has increased.

[295] Right.

[296] They control the price that way.

[297] Yeah.

[298] It's pretty smart.

[299] Very smart.

[300] Yeah.

[301] It's difficult to find a diamond.

[302] It's really difficult.

[303] I mean, there's a lot of backbreaking work.

[304] We went to Sierra Leona and did another story about that, too.

[305] It's backbreaking work.

[306] It's not easy.

[307] And they make nothing.

[308] You know, the miners make nothing.

[309] Yeah, that's where it's really creepy.

[310] Well, that's why they revolted.

[311] Yeah.

[312] Pay those guys better.

[313] Yeah.

[314] Wouldn't have lost your penis.

[315] Sure.

[316] Yeah.

[317] Well, that's also the story of cell phones, right?

[318] Yeah, the rare earth.

[319] Karah was on, and he discussed his work in the Congo, where they were investigating these cobalt mines.

[320] And everyone's cell phone is a piece of cobalt, and there's a very high likelihood that was pulled out of one of these artesian mines by people who are working...

[321] for basically slave wages.

[322] Women with babies on their backs while they're doing it.

[323] They're hand digging this stuff.

[324] So you're inhaling these toxic fumes from this cobalt.

[325] Yeah.

[326] And it's so...

[327] I mean, I want to say that we're capable of better, but what we are as a species, that is like one of the best indicators of how twisted we are.

[328] The very height of technology that is carried by all these social justice warriors and all these virtue signaling people online, you're literally doing it from a device that's made by slaves.

[329] At the root of it is slave labor.

[330] Right.

[331] And it's unavoidable.

[332] Yeah, I mean, yeah.

[333] But the same people that would probably never buy a diamond ring, right?

[334] Yeah.

[335] I guess.

[336] I don't know.

[337] Yeah.

[338] I mean, it's just weird.

[339] It's just weird that we know that that is where the stuff comes from.

[340] Well, it's also weird that we don't even manufacture a single cell phone in America with all parts sourced and put together in America.

[341] That's totally possible that you could buy a phone that is completely ethical that's made by people that were paid a fair wage.

[342] And they, you know, work normal hours and they have great health care and all that stuff.

[343] That's possible.

[344] And you would think that a device that is literally owned by every single human – there are more cell phones in this country than our human beings.

[345] Oh, wow.

[346] And yet, no, we don't make a single one over here because it's cheaper.

[347] It's cheaper.

[348] Yeah.

[349] I mean, even places like China where they make the cell phones where they have the Foxcon factory that's covered with nets to keep people from jumping off the roof.

[350] Because so many people were committing suicide because their life sucks so hard that instead of fixing their life, they just put nets up.

[351] That's insane.

[352] Have you ever seen that?

[353] No, I haven't.

[354] No. It's so dystopian.

[355] Really?

[356] They have nets at the bottom of the building?

[357] All around the building.

[358] All around the outside edge of the building to keep people from jumping.

[359] That's crazy.

[360] That is insane.

[361] I've tried to go to China so many times to report on almost impossible to get in.

[362] Yeah, they know you.

[363] That lady's not coming in.

[364] She's not going in.

[365] That lady spills the beans.

[366] Yeah.

[367] Congo is really interesting.

[368] We were there for an ape story.

[369] And, you know, one of the things that happened with rare earth minerals and all of that is that the U .S. used to control a lot of those mines.

[370] And then China, they sold them to China.

[371] And now a lot of the stuff we need for the future is in the hands of China.

[372] It's so stupid.

[373] That's very American.

[374] Yeah, very American.

[375] Yeah.

[376] Very, yeah.

[377] Yeah, it's dark.

[378] It's just crazy that there's so much exploitation in that country.

[379] You know, that continent is just flooded with exploitation.

[380] It's so, it's, and it's stunningly beautiful.

[381] We were doing a story about ape trafficking, and it really is, it's the second largest country in Africa in terms of land, and it's got the most beautiful parks and rivers is stunning.

[382] It could be, you know, a huge tourism destination.

[383] We had the opportunity of hiking up this Cahoozy Viega National Park that leads up to the gorillas where we saw gorillas in the wild.

[384] And it was beautiful, beautiful, stunningly beautiful.

[385] Who's trafficking in apes?

[386] Well, a lot of them are ending up in the Arabian Gulf in Dubai again.

[387] What do they do with them?

[388] They put them in private zoos that they then charge visitors to come and see.

[389] They put them in private homes, people that want to have exotic pets in their house.

[390] Someone has a gorilla in their house?

[391] Oh, they do.

[392] Gorillas go for $500 ,000 or more.

[393] Wow.

[394] It's a crazy gorilla that they catch in the wild.

[395] And the sad part about it is that to be able to catch that gorilla they then, and the same thing with chimpanzees, they have to kill the whole family because, you know, they're very social and, Baby apes being stolen for pets.

[396] Yeah.

[397] It was being done to stop it.

[398] Yeah.

[399] $550 ,000 was a trade been for Asian, African great eggs in China, Middle East, and Pakistan.

[400] Yeah.

[401] Wow.

[402] So they have to kill the whole family?

[403] They kill the whole family, Joe.

[404] It's horrible.

[405] Why do they have to kill the whole family?

[406] Because, for example, if baby chimps, you can't carry your life chimp, for example, because they're too dangerous.

[407] And so it's the Batwa Pygmies.

[408] We spoke, we did a whole chain of who hunts them, who kills them, who transports them, and then who buys them.

[409] And we started in the park with the Batwa Pygmies.

[410] You had a guest that I remember when I was doing research for the story I listened to.

[411] Didn't you have a guest here who talked?

[412] Yeah, who did a story about that.

[413] Yeah.

[414] Yeah.

[415] So the pygmies, you know, they've sort of lost their home, which is the forest.

[416] The Congolese government says they can't be there, and they have no money and no schools and no education and nothing, desperate situations.

[417] So these people come out and say, if you get us a baby chimp, we'll pay you $10, $10 for a baby chimp.

[418] And they go out, and the problem with baby chimps is that until they're five years old, five years old, they live at the hip of the mother, like always next to the mother.

[419] It's the way their family is.

[420] And so unable to be able to take and kidnap the child, they have to kill the whole family because the estimate the average is like 10 chimps have to be killed in order to be able to take away one baby.

[421] Because they'll attack?

[422] Because they'll attack, yeah.

[423] They won't let you leave with a baby.

[424] Yeah, it's very, very sad.

[425] So we're talking to these guys who have done this.

[426] How much of a market is there?

[427] Like how many are they trading?

[428] There's a lot, lots being sold.

[429] So we then went online and did this whole investigation and found that it's actually super easy.

[430] There are people online that you can reach out to and they will get you a chimpanzee.

[431] or baby gorilla.

[432] It's crazy.

[433] And then, yeah, and then they're transported in sometimes private planes to these places.

[434] And then, you know, tourists in Dubai can take photos with little baby chimps.

[435] Jesus Christ.

[436] Or baby gorillas.

[437] Yeah.

[438] I'm sure you know about that lady in Connecticut that had a full -grown chimpanzee in her home.

[439] And then her friend came over and the chimp decided didn't like her friend, so he ripped her face off, just tore apart.

[440] Yeah.

[441] Yeah.

[442] Yeah, they're ruthless.

[443] They are.

[444] Yeah, you shouldn't have one in your home.

[445] Yeah.

[446] For sure.

[447] And you're not going to stop them unless you shoot them.

[448] They're so powerful.

[449] There's not a damn thing you can do to stop them from ripping your face off.

[450] Right.

[451] Yeah.

[452] It's the docantle of it all, you know.

[453] Remember Doc Antle?

[454] Tiger King.

[455] Do you remember that guy?

[456] Yeah.

[457] A lot of them, it's basically people around the world wanting to be Docantle and having like a private safari that celebrities come to.

[458] What a bizarre need.

[459] What bizarre want.

[460] I have a bunch of locked up exotic primates in cages you can just stare at.

[461] But also what a bizarre need it is that we want to take photos on selfies with tigers and apes.

[462] Like why?

[463] I went to a tiger sanctuary in Thailand with my family a few years back.

[464] And, uh, The beginning is kind of cool because the beginning you're around the kittens and the cubs are like super energetic and they're jumping around and attacking things.

[465] These little tiny tigers, they're really cool.

[466] But it's just like, wow, and there's a lot of people in the room with make sure that the tigers don't go crazy and they're little.

[467] And then it gets to a slightly larger tiger and there's men with sticks and you could sit there.

[468] There's like a picture of my daughter when she was 10.

[469] She's like sitting there smiling.

[470] She's sitting next to a tiger.

[471] A small tiger.

[472] It's like 40 pounds or something like that.

[473] Then when they get bigger, they're drugged.

[474] So these people go in the cage with this massive tiger, and the tiger is just like, they're just all fucking heroined out.

[475] And these people take selfies.

[476] And it was so sad.

[477] I'm like, we have to leave.

[478] I'm so depressed.

[479] Do you remember the name of that place?

[480] I do not.

[481] It was in Chiang Mai.

[482] Yeah.

[483] Yeah, it's really sad.

[484] And the babies are also taken from their mothers.

[485] Yeah.

[486] You're not supposed to be handling baby cubs that young.

[487] All of it is bad.

[488] Exactly.

[489] It's all bad.

[490] But it's just like I didn't realize they were drugged.

[491] I thought they just fed them a lot and the tigers are cool.

[492] Nope.

[493] No. No, they're drugged.

[494] They're really drugged.

[495] Like you see them.

[496] They're just like not.

[497] They don't move at all.

[498] They just lay around.

[499] So they just get these tigers hooked on heroin.

[500] Is it heroin?

[501] I mean, it must be.

[502] It must be some sort of an opiate.

[503] Something like that, morphine, something, something that just conks them out.

[504] So they were just sitting there, like, nodding.

[505] And these is this massive, gorgeous apex predator.

[506] And it's all just so that people could take pictures with them.

[507] Right.

[508] And so you decided to leave?

[509] Yeah, I'm like, we're not going on there.

[510] I got weirded out when we got to the mid -sized cats because I was like, that cat is a little dangerous.

[511] Even though it's only like 40 pounds, they're still a little sketchy.

[512] Like, this is a little weird.

[513] And I went in there and I was like, it seems like it's okay.

[514] Let's just take a picture real quick.

[515] Let's get out of here.

[516] But then when you get to the big cats, it's like massive depression sets in.

[517] You're like, oh, no. Yeah, it's so terrible, yeah.

[518] Because I'm just enamored with cats, especially tigers.

[519] I just think...

[520] Nature created like the most beautiful, terrifying thing.

[521] I mean, if a tiger wasn't real, it's right out of Avatar.

[522] Mm -hmm.

[523] I mean, with their insane colorations and their fangs and the way they can leap, their capabilities.

[524] I'm sure you've seen that video of the guy who's on the elephant and the tiger leaps through the grass and gets him while he's on the elephant.

[525] You ever seen that?

[526] No. Oh, it's one of my favorites.

[527] Because this guy is in India and he's on this elephant and he's riding this elephant and you see the grass move ahead of him.

[528] And this tiger leaps like 15 feet in the air.

[529] and slashes at this guy.

[530] And he's just lucky he got out of it with just getting cut up.

[531] Watch this.

[532] So the guy's on the elephant.

[533] Look at this cat.

[534] Oh, my God.

[535] Look how it leaps.

[536] I mean, look at the size of this thing.

[537] But watch out, and he's like, all these guys are like a little stick.

[538] He's like, stop.

[539] Don't do this to me. Don't do it.

[540] Look at that thing.

[541] Just catch air.

[542] Look at it catch air.

[543] Like, oh, my God.

[544] It just flies at him.

[545] Holy shit.

[546] And swipes.

[547] and just ripped his arm apart that is insane yeah and ripped his arm apart yeah at the end of it his arms like half down that is insane oh my god oh such a terrifying creature that scares me to death when people always ask what if i'm scared of the work that i do meeting i'm much more scared of animals than i am of people well there's a place in india called the sunderbans and uh The problem with that area is that tigers have been actively targeting people there for over 100 years.

[548] And so I think the numbers over the last 100 years, 300 ,000 people there have been killed by tigers.

[549] Oh, my, that is insane.

[550] Yeah.

[551] People that just live there and work, probably farmers that are working in the farms and villagers.

[552] Well, there's a bunch of things that happens.

[553] One, the typhoons come in and people die and they drown and they wind up in the river and the tigers eat them.

[554] And then two, there's an issue, 300 people and 46 tigers have been killed since 2000 in human tiger conflicts and the Sunderbans.

[555] They've done a lot to mitigate it.

[556] That's only the last, that's since 2000.

[557] That's over the last 23 years.

[558] It used to be a lot worse.

[559] And also the problem is that the water is brackish.

[560] And so the tigers are drinking salt water.

[561] and apparently it irritates them.

[562] It's like very painful.

[563] So you got these angry, pissed off tigers that actively hunt humans.

[564] And so these guys that go out to try to survey, they're always trying to figure out how many tigers are there.

[565] They have to wear these helmets that protect the back of their heads and the helmet have a mask on the back of the head so that the tigers like to sneak up on you.

[566] And if they see your face, they're less likely to attack.

[567] They like to attack you when your back is turned.

[568] So they have these helmets with a mask on the back to confuse the tigers.

[569] And what are they doing to try and protect the villagers now?

[570] Guns, that's it.

[571] I mean, what are they going to do?

[572] There's so many of them.

[573] Right.

[574] I mean, it's where they live, and it's like a dense jungle.

[575] So good luck finding all of them.

[576] Oh, that's so crazy.

[577] You know, we did a story on tiger trafficking in season one, I think.

[578] And we spent a night in Thailand in one of these jungles where the last remaining tigers in Thailand are, and I mean, we were camping out with hammocks, and I didn't sleep at all because we've been spending the days, they're showing us videos of the little cameras that they have.

[579] activated all throughout the park, the jungle, so that when they step on it, it'll activates right, so you see the tigers in the wild, and they're beautiful.

[580] But then you have to sleep the son of the night there.

[581] I didn't sleep at all.

[582] It was the worst night of my life.

[583] Yeah.

[584] Yeah.

[585] God.

[586] It's an amazing animal, though.

[587] I mean, it's fascinating and incredible that they exist, but...

[588] this desire that people have to kidnap them and bring them to America and put them in a cage so they could just point to them and stare at them.

[589] It's crazy.

[590] Weird.

[591] Yeah.

[592] It's really weird.

[593] Yeah.

[594] It is very strange.

[595] Yeah.

[596] People, again, the people that go to these places as well to take photos.

[597] I don't get it.

[598] What else did you cover this season?

[599] The season was a good one.

[600] You know, we started the first episode.

[601] We went back to my hometown, Portugal.

[602] We did an episode on hash, hash trafficking.

[603] Most Americans don't know a lot about hash, actually.

[604] Most Americans, you don't know.

[605] But it's the first drug that people in Europe usually try.

[606] It's the marijuana of Europe, would say.

[607] Well, it is THC, right?

[608] It is, yeah.

[609] It's from the resin glands.

[610] Yeah, it's just super, super duper potent.

[611] Super potent, yeah.

[612] So it's the first drug I tried, the first drug that any of my friends in Portugal tried.

[613] And, you know, back then when I was a kid and trying hash for the first time, I always sort of wondered, where does this come from?

[614] And we knew that it was Morocco.

[615] Everybody knows that the majority of hash in the world comes from Morocco.

[616] But now I thought, wow, I'm the unique opportunity to actually go and try to figure out how it gets here.

[617] And so we started in Portugal, and I reached out to a bunch of my girlfriends in Portugal and said, hey, let's meet at this time in the rocks where we used to hang out and hide and smoke cash.

[618] And we'll film a scene of us talking about while we're smoking.

[619] So I actually smoked on camera for the first time, did drugs on camera.

[620] In Portugal, it's all decriminalized.

[621] Yeah, it's been decriminalized since 2001, so completely illegal to do.

[622] And it's an amazing success story.

[623] Amazing success story.

[624] In terms of addiction, crime, violence, everything went down.

[625] HIV rates, incarceration, all of it.

[626] Yeah.

[627] So what they did is, yeah, they decriminalized it.

[628] So.

[629] You can use if you're caught using any drug, even hard drugs, nothing happens to you.

[630] But you're not allowed to traffic or sell it.

[631] But if you're caught, they basically give you the option.

[632] If you're caught smoking or doing heroin, they'll ask you, you know, instead of they realize that they will pay much more by putting somebody in prison that they will by actually giving them treatment.

[633] So if you're – if they see that you're – Using heroin, they can go up to you and say, look, we'll give you the opportunity.

[634] Do you want to go to prison or do you want to go to treatment?

[635] The vast majority of people will say treatment.

[636] And the government actually pays less for treatment than they do for incarceration.

[637] So it's wild.

[638] It's wild.

[639] And you'd think that, you know, people would have used this example and it would have spread around the world.

[640] Well, the problem with America is the system is.

[641] It's so deeply unjust that there's privatized prisons.

[642] And there's union guards.

[643] So the guards union, the prison guards union, actively campaigned to stop drugs from being decriminalized and made legal because that would take them out of work.

[644] And the private prison complex, too.

[645] Yeah.

[646] It's a business.

[647] It is.

[648] They use human beings as batteries to generate money.

[649] Yeah.

[650] Just put them inside this box, and you can generate money with human beings.

[651] So you find reasons to put them in.

[652] I'm sure you heard about that.

[653] There was a judge in Pennsylvania that got arrested because he was sending children to prison.

[654] He was sending children to juvenile detention centers.

[655] They were innocent.

[656] And every kid that went through his court system, he just shipped away.

[657] He got a kickback?

[658] He got a kickback.

[659] Yeah.

[660] Right.

[661] Yeah, so this guy, how many lives did he ruin?

[662] Who knows?

[663] And how many lives did they ruin because of the abuse that they suffered and wound up having this tortured existence?

[664] And they went out and committed more crimes and ruined more lives.

[665] And it's one fucking judge.

[666] Yeah, it's sick.

[667] And it's the wrong people that end up going to prison.

[668] Well, that guy fortunately did go to prison, the judge.

[669] But how many similar situations are there out there?

[670] How many people have not been caught?

[671] How many people have more subtle about it?

[672] Yeah.

[673] Yeah.

[674] Yeah.

[675] It's pretty twisted.

[676] It's horrible.

[677] It's really bad.

[678] So this, when they go and they kidnap these chimpanzees and kill their families, is there anything that's being done to stop this?

[679] Are there like organizations that go out and police?

[680] Is there anything?

[681] Yeah, there's definitely a bunch of organizations.

[682] We spent time with one called Conserve Congo, a local Congolese man who's trying to sort of investigate and stop it.

[683] We also spent one of the best days of filming was spent when we went to see the guerrillas.

[684] We spent time with these park rangers.

[685] This guy is incredible who's basically devoted his life to trying to protect these guerrillas.

[686] So they go out with AK -47s every day up in the mountains and go up and spend time with these families of gorillas to try and make sure that.

[687] No one is coming and hurting them.

[688] But it's really dangerous work.

[689] It takes resources.

[690] The hope is that they can sort of turn a little bit of this area of the Congo to what has Rwanda nowadays.

[691] You can go to Rwanda and you can go to Uganda and see guerrillas.

[692] And as tourists, you can pay a lot of money, but it provides jobs and helps the local economy.

[693] So basically the idea is that you dissuade poachers from coming in.

[694] Right.

[695] and you give up jobs to people who would otherwise perhaps become poachers.

[696] And so, yeah, that's being done.

[697] And, yeah, it was actually incredible when you, we spent, I don't know, like three hours hiking through very thick jungle and then suddenly, and you're seeing the signs that the guerrillas are there.

[698] You're seeing their poop is there.

[699] They nested here, and he's telling us along the way, but you're still unsure if you're actually going to see a gorilla.

[700] And suddenly they're completely nonchalantly, say, oh, it's right here.

[701] I was like, what?

[702] And there's this huge silverback gorilla just sitting there.

[703] And the whole family is there.

[704] They had had a baby.

[705] The mother had a baby just a week before.

[706] And this is, you know, animals that are being pushed to the brink of extinction.

[707] So it was really special.

[708] It was a week of celebration at the park.

[709] And we saw the little baby.

[710] And there was a moment that we're filming and my producer and my team is like next to me and then another huge gorilla comes jumping and rushes right by them.

[711] So they don't bother people at all?

[712] No. So I think that they have to become used to the presence of humans.

[713] So a lot of the park rangers job is actually to get them to get used to presence with the hope that they can bring in tourism again.

[714] So I think that's part of what they do.

[715] So this family of gorillas was used to people and they don't bother you at all.

[716] And we were this distance from the gorilla, me to you.

[717] What country the traffickers coming from?

[718] Most of them, the hunters are from the Congo.

[719] They're the Pygmies, the Batra Pygmies.

[720] The middlemen are Congolese men that see an opportunity.

[721] And then the buyers, which is the ball problem always lies on demand, right, are from the Gulf countries, the majority of them.

[722] But, you know, it's not very different from all the other trades and the tigers that you can see at Doc Hansel's facility and all that.

[723] So we blame ourselves as well here.

[724] Yeah.

[725] Yeah, I guess.

[726] People are so warm.

[727] Right.

[728] So weird and cruel.

[729] So weird.

[730] Wait, you talked about hash for a second.

[731] You've tried hash.

[732] Yep.

[733] And?

[734] It's great.

[735] Yeah.

[736] I like it.

[737] It's, it's, you think it is stronger than weed.

[738] Well, it's just concentrated.

[739] Yeah.

[740] You know, it's like high THC.

[741] It's resin.

[742] And if you saw how it's made, it's incredible.

[743] We went up to the, it's the Kif Mountains in Morocco.

[744] They basically, it's these like farmers.

[745] And they beat these drums so that the resin and the little seeds come out.

[746] And then they mix it all into like this paste.

[747] And yeah, it's actually a beautiful process.

[748] Very dangerous because obviously when there's a lot of money in black markets.

[749] Yeah.

[750] What do they do with the rest of the plant, the leaves and all that stuff?

[751] I think they don't use it.

[752] It was just there.

[753] They dry the whole plant and the leaves and then, yeah, it's this like drum process where the stuff they want falls to the bottom and then.

[754] I wonder why some countries gravitated towards that method of using cannabis and not just smoking it like they do in most of the country, most of the world.

[755] Yeah.

[756] And I wonder what came first.

[757] I don't know either.

[758] Yeah.

[759] But I'd probably think that hash came first and then the Americans came up with weed.

[760] I'm not sure.

[761] I don't know.

[762] I bet it was the opposite.

[763] I bet weed came first.

[764] It just, it's a strange thing that it's still illegal in so many parts of the world.

[765] And then, you know, fentanyl isn't.

[766] Right.

[767] Heroin isn't or opiates aren't.

[768] Yeah, oxy cotton.

[769] Yeah.

[770] Yep.

[771] I know.

[772] It's wild.

[773] Wow.

[774] Yeah.

[775] Yeah.

[776] Well, I mean, unfortunately, because of our prison industrial complex, I just don't see a mass decriminalization akin to what's happening in Portugal.

[777] Despite of what's going on on our southern border and the fentanyl trafficking and the fact that it's propping up these cartels and they're worth billions and billions of dollars.

[778] They are.

[779] And they're mixing it in all sorts of drugs, as you know.

[780] We're working on an episode on fentanyl.

[781] We've done the whole opiate crisis and everything.

[782] Smoking did not become common in old world until after the introduction of tobacco in the 1500s.

[783] Hashish was consumed as an edible in the Muslim world.

[784] Interesting.

[785] Yeah.

[786] Oh, the first, yeah, first attestation of the term hashish is a pamphlet published in Cairo in 1123 current era, accusing Nazari Muslims of being hashish eaters.

[787] The cult of Nazari militants, which emerged after the fall of the Fatimid caliphate, is commonly called the sect of the assassins, a corruption of hashishin.

[788] Persian for hashish smokers.

[789] Wow.

[790] So assassins?

[791] A corruption of the order of the assassins?

[792] Simply the assassins were Nazari.

[793] Is that the original term of assassin?

[794] Is that where it came from?

[795] I don't know.

[796] Let's see.

[797] I mean, this might take a little more.

[798] Yeah.

[799] How weird.

[800] Huh.

[801] Yeah.

[802] I mean, that would be like a...

[803] The modern term assassination is believed to stem from the tactics used by the assassins.

[804] Oh, wow.

[805] Wow, so it's all about hash.

[806] Assassin comes from hash.

[807] That's nuts.

[808] We did an episode on assassins this season as well.

[809] Oh, really?

[810] Yeah, that was fucking wild.

[811] I was insane.

[812] I mean, obviously, it's a subject matter that I've wanted to do for a long time.

[813] It's almost an impossible one to do for many reasons, as you could imagine.

[814] But we actually found all started with an interview that we did with an assassin in L .A., Yeah.

[815] About 15 minutes from my house in L .A. And we have a contact in L .A. that whenever we're looking at the black markets, we contact him and ask him, hey, do you know anyone who's basically making meth or drugs or guns or whatnot?

[816] And, you know, the off chance that he knew an assassin.

[817] We contacted him.

[818] And he said he actually did.

[819] He knew a guy.

[820] He didn't think he was going to talk to us, but maybe he did because he was close to him.

[821] And eventually this guy agreed to talk to us.

[822] And we met him in the corner.

[823] And as we're driving there, so we're driving there with our local contact is taking us to meet this guy.

[824] And he told us, hey, be very careful.

[825] This guy is like the way he said it is like he's bipolar, kind of.

[826] Like he acts as if he's bipolar.

[827] One moment he's happy and the next he can just freak out and nobody knows why.

[828] He's really hard, difficult to deal with.

[829] And I asked him, are you sure he's an assassin or is it possible that he's just boasting if that happens sometimes?

[830] And he said, no, no, no, I've seen this guy being offered $80 ,000 to go and kill someone.

[831] And I know this is what he does.

[832] Everybody knows this guy in his community, in his group.

[833] So he operates in America?

[834] He does, yeah.

[835] I asked him where.

[836] He's based in L .A., but he says it's all over the United States mainly.

[837] Wow.

[838] And he, yeah, as soon as I met him, he took out his gun and he said, you guys, if this is a fucking setup, you guys are all, it's going to be really easy to kill you all right now.

[839] And it was me and three or four other people.

[840] And my fear, we told him we're not a, it's not a setup.

[841] So I just came here because I trust my buddy, but, you know, you don't fuck me. If the police shows up, you guys are all dead.

[842] So we're in a corner of L .A., close to downtown, and I'm constantly looking at the end of the road thinking if the police shows up for any reason, he's going to think it's us.

[843] Yeah.

[844] And this is not good.

[845] So, yeah, it was a quick interview, but a chilling one.

[846] How many people does this guy whacked?

[847] He said more than 10.

[848] He didn't say exactly how many.

[849] I asked him.

[850] I also started asking him personal questions about, do you have a family?

[851] Because he was saying he doesn't kill women or children.

[852] I asked him, but do you have kids?

[853] And do you realize, like, what would it be like for your kids to live without you?

[854] If you're doing the same to other kids, right?

[855] He got really mad at my questions and said, don't fucking ask me emotional questions or something like that, personal questions.

[856] And this interview is over and left.

[857] What was his background?

[858] He said he came from a really tough family.

[859] And that, yeah, involved in drugs and guns and all of it.

[860] And he, I think, realized early on that he could do this.

[861] And a lot of other people can't.

[862] And he was able to do it and he gets well paid and he does it.

[863] How does one even apply to a job like that?

[864] Yeah.

[865] And you, I mean, that was my fear when we started looking into this story because it's a little bit of a Hollywood myth, right?

[866] Yeah.

[867] Like, this doesn't really exist.

[868] and all those stories that you can go on the dark web and find an assassin.

[869] Most of that is bullshit.

[870] So that was my fear.

[871] But I do trust this contact.

[872] And we actually then ended up going to South Africa that has one of the highest assassination rates in the world and spent time with a bunch of different Incabi, which are, as they are called in South Africa.

[873] And that was fucking crazy as well.

[874] So he spent time with one.

[875] His name is Jojo, young guy.

[876] And his story is insane.

[877] And that he was a lot nicer, a lot more approachable, but has killed like over 30 people and gets paid $1 ,500 per hit.

[878] And, you know, thousands of people have died in just the past few years at the hands of assassins in South Africa.

[879] Wow.

[880] And a lot of it happens in the taxi industry.

[881] So there's like 70 % I think of commuters in South Africa commute on these taxis.

[882] Basically it's like these vans and they're worth a lot of money and it's sort of a cash business.

[883] And the owners of these taxi companies are routinely being killed.

[884] So we spent time with a taxi owner who owns one of these companies.

[885] And he had a bullet for AK -47 on his head that he showed us.

[886] It was a $1 million prize for anyone who killed him.

[887] And this is a crazy guy.

[888] And his rivals were just across the street with all their taxis, the other company, that he says are trying to kill him.

[889] So he's surrounded by bodyguards with AK -47s at all time.

[890] AK -47s at all time.

[891] And he was like, do you want to go across the street with me and film me as I get close to the other guys and see what happens?

[892] It's like, sure.

[893] So we start walking towards the rivals.

[894] And immediately there's a group of heavily armed men walking towards us immediately within like seconds.

[895] And this happens every day.

[896] Like people are killed every day.

[897] So, yeah, and then back to the assassin and.

[898] And they don't have a hard time talking to about this?

[899] I would think that there's no upside to them discussing this with you, but potentially they could get caught.

[900] Yeah.

[901] We go through a lot to make sure that we protect their identities.

[902] But I think Jojo, this assassin, is a good example of why they talk to us.

[903] So we spent an hour and a half, more or less two hours talking to him.

[904] And he tells us a story of how he became an assassin.

[905] His parents were killed when he was young.

[906] He was by nine years old or something.

[907] He felt like he was left with no protection.

[908] He started carrying a knife.

[909] And his parents were killed by an assassin, by the way, as well.

[910] And he, and then eventually he got involved in the drug business, and then eventually people were paying him to go out, paying him much more money to go out and kill.

[911] And he says, yeah, at the beginning I had to get drugged and drunk to be able to do it.

[912] But now I'm used to it.

[913] I'm cold -blooded and I'm used to it.

[914] And we started talking about the cycle of violence, right?

[915] Because he also said he doesn't kill women and children.

[916] And I asked him, but do you realize...

[917] that you are traumatized from the experience that you had that your parents were killed.

[918] And now you're doing the same thing to other kids.

[919] He's like, I actually never thought of that.

[920] And then he started talking about, hey, really wants to quit.

[921] And he's been thinking, but he doesn't have, he can't get a job and all of that.

[922] So I think people talk to us for a variety of reasons.

[923] I think there's a lot of boasting, a lot of people that want to just talk about what they do.

[924] Sometimes their families don't even know they do what they do.

[925] I think in places like Sinaloa where I've spent a lot of time with a cartel, it's impunity.

[926] They don't see a downside because the authorities aren't really going to do anything, even if they know who they are.

[927] Wow.

[928] How do you feel safe in a place like that?

[929] Actually, I see it's, I sometimes feel in certain countries safer.

[930] In Sinaloa, for example, if you are, if you've been given the green light to go into the cartel, the territory controlled by the cartel, to talk to cartel members.

[931] And it takes, you know, weeks, months, sometimes years to get that access.

[932] Once we're under their protection, we're under their protection.

[933] Like, we have their protection to be there.

[934] But, you know, then certain things happen.

[935] Like, we were filming in Sinaloa once, and we're filming these Sikarios, and they had their walkie -talkies.

[936] And so they're communicating with the whole group, and they know everybody that comes in and out of their territory, and suddenly they started panicking because the Marines had a helicopter coming their way.

[937] And the Marines in Mexico are known to shoot first and ask questions after.

[938] And they started freaking out.

[939] And they basically jumped into the cars and left us.

[940] And we didn't know what to do.

[941] Should we go after them?

[942] And they're going to think we're part of the group and they can start shooting at us or should we stay behind.

[943] But we were in an open area and a sort of forested area.

[944] Should we try to hide?

[945] And then we're going to really look suspicious.

[946] So it was crazy.

[947] What did you do?

[948] We got into a car and followed them and then spent the day with them doing cocaine all day because it wasn't safe for us to leave until the night.

[949] So they just do cocaine all the time?

[950] They do a lot of cocaine.

[951] And funny story, my director of photography, Fred Manu, who was a director of photography for Bourdain on Parts and Known before.

[952] And he got, we were filming the scene and we driven into the Sierra Madre Mountains and then we had to walk for...

[953] a mile or two to a place where they felt comfortable showing us their guns and they were going to start shooting and give us the interview of why it was the story about the American guns flowing down south and how they're used in the violence.

[954] And he were walking there and suddenly Fred basically turns to us and says, I don't feel good.

[955] And he had a massive case of, what is it that you call it, the revenge?

[956] Oh, Montezuma's revenge.

[957] Yeah.

[958] Massive case.

[959] And so we walked to the place.

[960] Fred's on the floor.

[961] They managed to put like some sort of cloth on the floor for him.

[962] He's like walk on the floor.

[963] Can barely breathe is like puking and going to the bathroom and all of it is happening at the same time.

[964] And the guy is constantly offering him cocaine and telling him, dude.

[965] This will fix you, my friend.

[966] You have no idea.

[967] Do this.

[968] I am telling you.

[969] Fred did not take the cocaine.

[970] Would the cocaine have helped him, you think?

[971] He was absolutely sure the cocaine would have helped him.

[972] I don't know.

[973] What if it did?

[974] Yeah.

[975] That's the cure.

[976] What else is in the cocaine?

[977] We don't know.

[978] Well, these guys are probably getting pure cocaine.

[979] Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

[980] Why would they cut it?

[981] And they're snorting it all day long.

[982] Oh, my God.

[983] And then it wasn't actually a very good idea for us to stay with them for so long.

[984] It was a learning lesson for all of us because that night we were filming with them in a bunker where they kept a lot of their guns.

[985] And one of them had been snorting cocaine all day and basically pulled the trigger on the floor.

[986] And the bullet came out just like two inches from Fred's head because he was in the bunker right in that hole.

[987] And it could have been really bad.

[988] Oh, Jesus.

[989] Yeah.

[990] So don't stand up.

[991] Ciccarios.

[992] In Mexico.

[993] Oh, my goodness.

[994] Yeah.

[995] And how often are those guys killing people?

[996] Oh, very often.

[997] They also told us all.

[998] So they're not considered assassins per se.

[999] They're Sakaria's, they're hitmen, right?

[1000] Because they're not, it's part of what they do for the cartel amongst many other things, like transporting drugs and guns and all of it.

[1001] But, yeah, a lot of people.

[1002] And he also told me the story, you have the first person he ever killed.

[1003] And he was ordered to kill, and it was a friend of his.

[1004] He went to his house and knocked on the door, and the guy opens the door, and he shoots him.

[1005] And the guy is yelling, don't kill me, don't kill him, and shoots him right in the face.

[1006] Oh, boy.

[1007] Yeah.

[1008] Terrible.

[1009] That's all what happens when you make drugs illegal.

[1010] Then the criminals are selling them.

[1011] Yeah.

[1012] So that we can consume them.

[1013] Let's not forget.

[1014] Yeah.

[1015] It's dirty.

[1016] Yeah, it is dirty.

[1017] And I don't, you know, I've had conversations with people about this.

[1018] Like, what is the solution in America?

[1019] Because if you legalize drugs, all drugs in America and sold them, like if pharmaceutical drug companies sold heroin, cocaine, all that.

[1020] I don't want the pharmaceutical companies involved in that.

[1021] Right.

[1022] Like who sells it if it's not them?

[1023] Yeah.

[1024] So either the cartel sells it or they sell it.

[1025] Or no one can sell it.

[1026] Well, that's not going to be the case.

[1027] Someone's going to sell it.

[1028] And if you make it legal, you're going to have more people doing it.

[1029] Like we're not accustomed to things being legal.

[1030] If you made cocaine legal in this country, a bunch of people would try it that wouldn't ordinarily try it because they wouldn't know who to get it from.

[1031] They wouldn't know how to do it.

[1032] If you could just walk into Walgreens and buy cocaine.

[1033] I guarantee you we'll have more overdoses, more addicts, more.

[1034] But what is the solution in that?

[1035] Is it education?

[1036] Does that even work?

[1037] Is it counseling?

[1038] Is it drug rehabilitation centers everywhere?

[1039] Is it Ibogaine?

[1040] Like, what is the solution to?

[1041] Yeah, I don't know.

[1042] But I think looking at the example of Portugal is a good idea.

[1043] Yeah, but we're not in Portugal.

[1044] The problem is like what we talked about, like prison guard unions, privatized prisons.

[1045] The state of the policing in this country and the way it's done and the amount of people that are in jail in this country is so insane.

[1046] Yeah.

[1047] Yeah, there's no easy answer, which is why we haven't, no one has tried to solve this.

[1048] And then there's this bizarre trend to let people out that have committed violent crimes in this country.

[1049] It's almost like someone's engineering the deterioration of the country and ensuring civil unrest.

[1050] So they're keeping the people that for minor crimes that shouldn't be there, like the guy selling weed on the corner.

[1051] Well, they're not even keeping them anymore.

[1052] Now.

[1053] No, I mean, it's like Los Angeles in particular is just nuts.

[1054] It's just nuts.

[1055] They have these district attorneys that are funded by George Soros, and they put them in, and their mandate is to let as many people out as possible.

[1056] And violent crime, whatever it is, no cash bail, they're just letting people out.

[1057] And they're letting people out of prison that are violent prisoners.

[1058] And what's the idea behind that?

[1059] That the prison system's unjust.

[1060] That's the narrative.

[1061] But the end result is people are unsafe because you've already created this environment with prisons and with a lifetime of crime.

[1062] These people are habitualized.

[1063] They're criminals.

[1064] And then they've committed violent crimes.

[1065] And then you let them right back out on the street.

[1066] Right.

[1067] Yeah, it's wrong.

[1068] I don't know enough about it.

[1069] But I do think that we tend to look at the problem the other way around.

[1070] I think that we tend to look at how to try to stop the problem when it's already a problem without actually tackling the root causes of what is happening and why it's happening.

[1071] Yeah, we've talked about that many times in this podcast.

[1072] Like if you wanted to solve the root cause, you would clean up in inner cities.

[1073] That's what you would do.

[1074] You'd take these crime -ridden, drug -ridden, gang -infested communities, and you'd invest in a massive amount of money and resources into fixing and rehabilitating them.

[1075] And the money that we have spent just in the Ukraine war could have done that many times over in this country.

[1076] And they've not lifted a finger to stop it.

[1077] It's almost like there's a formula to ensure control and power, and you need a certain amount of crime and violence.

[1078] You need a certain amount of people in prison.

[1079] You need a certain amount of despair in the inner cities to ensure that people don't rise up and figure out the system and realize they've been screwed over.

[1080] Yeah, also talking about security helps a lot of politicians, right?

[1081] Oh, yeah.

[1082] They have something that they're going to do to make it better, right?

[1083] Both of those things are true, yeah.

[1084] Yeah, prop up the problems and offer you as the solution.

[1085] Right, yeah.

[1086] But even outside of the U .S., I mean, these black markets, you know, so much of it, the lesson for me has always been when reporting on these black markets, it's all about inequality, right?

[1087] Mm -hmm.

[1088] Your choices are only as good as the opportunities you'll give them.

[1089] Sure.

[1090] If you don't have those opportunities, you're going to become, you know, first like a watcher for the cartel and then eventually climb the ladder and become a Sicario.

[1091] 100%.

[1092] It's the only job you have available for you.

[1093] Yeah, what else are you going to do?

[1094] And again, if you're living in the Congo and you're in the area where they're mining cobalt, what are you going to do?

[1095] Yeah.

[1096] You're going to start your own business?

[1097] What are you going to do?

[1098] Right.

[1099] And if your family doesn't have anything on the table to eat, and they offer you $10, which will feed your family for a week to go and kill the chimp, you're going to go and kill the chimp.

[1100] Exactly.

[1101] Right.

[1102] That's the biggest problem.

[1103] Yeah.

[1104] So what else did you investigate?

[1105] How many episodes did you do this year?

[1106] Ten.

[1107] Eight are now on Hulu.

[1108] Two more are coming soon.

[1109] But one of them, another one, cartel involvement, is about fake pharmaceutical pills.

[1110] That's really interesting.

[1111] We spent time with a group called La Union in Mexico City, where 80 % of their job, of their money right now comes from fake pharmaceutical pills.

[1112] And, yeah, I mean, they're making these pills.

[1113] And then we went to India as well, which is another source of pharmaceutical pills.

[1114] You have like 40 ,000 online pharmacies that you can go to and buy prescription drugs without a prescription.

[1115] So a lot of Americans are doing that because it's much cheaper.

[1116] I think it's something like 20 million Americans are using the black market for their bills, for their drugs because they can't afford them here, which is crazy.

[1117] 20 million.

[1118] It's crazy.

[1119] and people that can't afford that need these medications to survive, and they can't afford them here because we have the highest drug prices in the entire world.

[1120] And so when you say fake, is it, it's not manufactured by, you know, Pfizer or whatever, but is it the same components?

[1121] It looks exactly the same, but a lot of these pills don't actually have any active ingredients.

[1122] So we spent time with a guy making 20 ,000 pills a night out of this little, you know, back house with a machine, a pill presser.

[1123] And it was just calcium and food dye to make it look the color, whatever color he wanted.

[1124] And he was selling it as amoxicillin and, you know, very likely ending up in American homes because they ship it all around the world.

[1125] Wow.

[1126] And in that case, you know, the good luck of the buyer is that it was just calcium, but in many cases, it gets mixed with cement and rat poison and all sort of things.

[1127] They don't give a fuck.

[1128] They don't give a fuck.

[1129] And even worse, is the cartel in Mexico, we found out there's a great L .A. Times investigation on this, and then we sort of started doing our own investigation.

[1130] But they're mixing these drugs.

[1131] with fentanyl and meth.

[1132] So I think it was something like 70 % of the drugs that they bought and tested had actually had meth and fentanyl.

[1133] And Americans were crossing the border into Mexico to buy these drugs and then dying.

[1134] Jesus.

[1135] It's insane.

[1136] But it's all, again, it's like easy for us to blame the cartel and other people.

[1137] for doing this, but it's all our fault.

[1138] It's the broken system that we have in our country.

[1139] Why are we paying, you know, why are we, this woman that we filmed with, she was paying $700 for this medication that she needs and she couldn't afford it.

[1140] Her health insurance was uncovering it.

[1141] So she would go across the border and pay $60 for it in Mexico.

[1142] Of course.

[1143] Is any of it the real medication?

[1144] Yeah, some of it is.

[1145] Is there a way to tell?

[1146] And they're real pharmacies.

[1147] So some of the real pharmacies have fake drugs?

[1148] So that's what's so interesting is that even pharmacies that are real, that are completely authentic and legitimate, and that there's towns, there's a town that we filmed that called Algodonis, for example, that's on the other side of the Arizona border.

[1149] that has more hospitals and orthodontists and opticians, how do you say the doctor glasses?

[1150] Optometrists.

[1151] Optometrists than anywhere else in the world.

[1152] It's basically you drive around and it's like doctor's office, pharmacy.

[1153] optometrist, all of it.

[1154] And it's all catering to Americans, right?

[1155] And so vast numbers of Americans come every year and buy their drugs there.

[1156] And there are chained pharmacies that look, there could be a CVS, but in Mexico.

[1157] It's not a CVS, but it could be sort of brand name that you recognize in Mexico.

[1158] But what we did with the cartel is we were trying to figure out how they get their medications in these shelves.

[1159] And we filmed one cartel member.

[1160] He allowed us to film.

[1161] We couldn't go inside, but I had him.

[1162] He had a mic, so I was able to listen to everything from the car.

[1163] He goes into a pharmacy and basically tells the woman there like this.

[1164] And the meds look, we saw them making them.

[1165] They look exactly like the real thing, the packaging, everything.

[1166] Some of it actually comes from the legitimate places that they steal from the factories, like the packaging and all of it.

[1167] But they basically tell them, okay, you put this on your shelves, and if you don't, we're going to burn your pharmacy.

[1168] So we heard that.

[1169] We saw that.

[1170] And so a lot of them are forced to carry them.

[1171] And they're forced to carry fake drugs.

[1172] Yeah.

[1173] And do they have any idea what's in them when they're selling them or they're just...

[1174] I don't think they do.

[1175] No. I doubt that they knew, for example, that there was fentanyl and meth mixed in with some of their other medications because that creates a huge problem for them.

[1176] And so for the consumer, how do they find the legitimate stuff?

[1177] They don't, which is why it's so hard.

[1178] So this woman that we followed, she goes there, she buys her medication.

[1179] And I asked her, do you know what's in there?

[1180] Oh, no, but my friend told me that it's a legitimate pharmacy.

[1181] Of course, she has no idea that this is happening, that the cartel is actually threatening them to death if they don't stock their shelves with their fake pharmaceuticals.

[1182] Did you take any of that stuff and test it?

[1183] We did.

[1184] It's a lot more complicated than it seems.

[1185] The LA Times, again, did an amazing investigation where they did test it.

[1186] And again, I think it was something like seven or eight out of their 10 that they tested had fentanyl and meth, which was crazy.

[1187] Out of two pharmacies, I think.

[1188] And what kind of drugs are they talking about that have fentanyl and meth?

[1189] Oh, I can't remember.

[1190] But it was, I think it was Adderall maybe.

[1191] I can't remember exactly.

[1192] But it was a great investigation.

[1193] And, yeah, in our story, we sort of looked at how it ends up in the shelves and who's making it and how it's being produced.

[1194] There's an amazing doctor in Mexico City called Dr. Loco, who we spend time with, a crazy doctor, Dr. Loco.

[1195] who was a chemist himself, a doctor as well, and his father owned a pharmacy, so he sort of knew how to, and he showed us he's making, he's putting the little silicone pouch inside and the cotton ball that goes inside, and it looks exactly the same.

[1196] Like no one would have been able to tell.

[1197] God, that's so scary.

[1198] So scary.

[1199] Yeah.

[1200] Yeah.

[1201] Is there any evidence that that happens in America?

[1202] That it's being sold in America.

[1203] Yeah, we went with the raid with the LA Sheriff's Department where we saw a sort of a grocery store in the back that were selling these medications, mainly to underprivileged immigrant communities because they couldn't sell real stuff.

[1204] But they're not in legitimate pharmacies.

[1205] Not yet.

[1206] Not yet.

[1207] Not yet.

[1208] No. What we know of.

[1209] Not yet that we know of.

[1210] But, again, at the end, we went and visited a spokesperson for a group called Pharma that is a lobby group that represents the pharmaceutical companies.

[1211] And, yeah, she was very happy to talk about how counterfeit medications are very damaging for America, right?

[1212] Yeah, so is the real ones.

[1213] And that's why I asked her, but why is it that 20 million Americans have to resort to a black market?

[1214] Because they can't afford their medications here.

[1215] Yeah.

[1216] And that whole conversation, as you know, is fascinating.

[1217] Yeah, what did she say about that?

[1218] Well, she says that they need the money for innovation, R &D, right, research and development.

[1219] And that's how they can get new drugs that are important for Americans.

[1220] I said, that's all great.

[1221] But if the Americans can't afford these medications...

[1222] they're not going to be treated by them because they can't afford them.

[1223] And then I asked her, have you actually spent any time with any of these Americans that cannot afford their life -saving medications?

[1224] She said, no. That's the biggest problem, right?

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] Yeah.

[1227] But she keeps saying that without that expense, without that money, they wouldn't be able to look for all these new drugs.

[1228] which is also BS because I think it's something like 34 % or 35 % of the money that was spent, or it was 35 % more money spent on advertisement and, you know, trying to sell the drug than it was on actual R &D research and development.

[1229] Of course.

[1230] Not only that, to say that they're not profitable after all that.

[1231] Oh, I mean.

[1232] Those people are making.

[1233] Like $100 billion, the top ten companies in the last year alone or two years, something ridiculous like that.

[1234] Yeah, they make plenty.

[1235] Yeah.

[1236] It's greed.

[1237] It's pure greed.

[1238] And it's evil.

[1239] Especially, I mean, I'm sure, have you seen the Netflix series, Pain Killer, Peter Berg's documentary?

[1240] I mean, that's how I found out about you through the Oxycontin Express.

[1241] Yeah.

[1242] I mean, what year was that?

[1243] That was quite a long time ago.

[1244] That was 2008.

[1245] When did We's first talk?

[1246] I think 2008 or nine.

[1247] It had to be nine because the podcast didn't start until nine.

[1248] Okay, so it was nine.

[1249] It might have been ten.

[1250] 2010.

[1251] Oh, maybe, maybe.

[1252] You came to the studio.

[1253] I wasn't doing it at my house anymore.

[1254] No, you were doing it at your house.

[1255] Really?

[1256] The first time you did it was at my house?

[1257] I'm quite sure.

[1258] I'm quite sure I went to your house.

[1259] Now I'm thinking, yeah.

[1260] Yeah, you were one of my first guests, I think, then.

[1261] Yeah.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] Yeah, that OxyContin Express story was insane.

[1264] And I think part of the exposure from your work led to them changing the laws because they had no database.

[1265] So the way it would work, I'll explain it to people, is that there was no database.

[1266] So if you got a prescription from a doctor and you went in to get OxyContin...

[1267] you could go to another doctor down the street and get another prescription.

[1268] And they clearly had it set up like that so that there could be abuse because that was how to maximize profits.

[1269] And they have these pain management centers.

[1270] And I used to see them when I would do stand -up in Florida where you would go and it would be called a pain management center.

[1271] And it's essentially...

[1272] You would go to a doctor, and all the doctor was there is to write a prescription for Oxycontin.

[1273] And then you'd go right next door to their little pharmacy that they had on site, and all they had was Oxycontin.

[1274] And you had just a parking lot filled with zombies.

[1275] These people that were just like, just zonked out.

[1276] Overdosing in the front steps.

[1277] Like crazy.

[1278] So my husband did an amazing follow -up documentary.

[1279] If you remember the OxyContin Express, do you remember that we were investigating this one pain clinic called American Pain?

[1280] And the owners were identical twins, born identical twins, and they owned this pain clinic.

[1281] And they followed us down I -95 because they saw us filming outside their door.

[1282] And they followed us down 95.

[1283] And, you know, where I'm at the wheel and I'm seeing that the gas, we're running low on gas.

[1284] So I stop at the gas station and they park right behind us.

[1285] And these two big guys with...

[1286] You know, big muscles come out and start yelling at us.

[1287] And so I take off.

[1288] And they follow us and keep following us.

[1289] And at one point, I run out of gas.

[1290] And I go to the side of the – and we're on the freeway on the I -95.

[1291] And I had been calling contact in law enforcement DEA that we'd been talking to.

[1292] And she said, call 911 right now.

[1293] I know these guys are bad news.

[1294] Call 911 right now.

[1295] So we call 911, told them what was happening.

[1296] We were being chased down the freeway.

[1297] eventually ran out of gas, park on the side of the freeway, but they were so dumbfounded as to why we're parking on the side of the freeway that they just parked behind us and don't get out of the car for a few minutes, and then the police shows up.

[1298] And then they come up with a silly story that they thought I was an ex -girlfriend stalking them.

[1299] And then we took down their license plate, and my husband started looking into them.

[1300] They ended up in prison at federal time.

[1301] Part of it they were using the surveillance tapes they used was part of our conversations.

[1302] They were talking about us and our investigation into them and the OxyGotten Express.

[1303] Wow.

[1304] But my husband stayed in touch, basically wrote them a letter when they were in prison.

[1305] And we were deciding on whether he should say, hey, it was the guy who directed Oxigotin Express, but he didn't.

[1306] And he just said, hey, my name is Darren Foster.

[1307] I'm a documentary filmmaker.

[1308] I've been fascinated by your – they ran the biggest prescription pill operation in American history.

[1309] Like they were the Pablo Escobar of America, basically.

[1310] They were making millions and millions of dollars out of a couple of storefronts in Florida.

[1311] And so he contacted them, and they wrote back and said, yeah, I'm interested.

[1312] And by the way, say hi to your wife.

[1313] So they knew full well who he was.

[1314] And he ended up doing an amazing doc.

[1315] It's called American Pain.

[1316] You should watch it.

[1317] But it's about them, the rise and fall of these twin brothers, but also the complicity of the pharmaceutical companies.

[1318] And they full well knew exactly what was happening and did nothing about it.

[1319] It's a great way to maximize profits.

[1320] And the fact that they were taking these and buying them in bulk and buying them off all these people and then shipping them up north.

[1321] Yeah.

[1322] Yeah.

[1323] And then you see the trail of devastation everywhere these pharmaceutical drugs went and all these communities that got hooked on the pills.

[1324] And then when they changed the regulation, made them more difficult to get.

[1325] Then these people started doing heroin.

[1326] And then fentanyl.

[1327] Yeah.

[1328] And then the exact same thing happened.

[1329] We did another documentary called Death by Fentanyl, where we looked at the fentanyl, and we investigated this one pharmaceutical company called Insys Pharmaceuticals, or Insys Therapeutics, where they were selling subsis, which was a fentanyl product.

[1330] And they were doing the exact same thing that Purdue had done just, you know, a few years before where they were paying doctors for fees to basically prescribe.

[1331] They were prescribing fentanyl to people with headaches and like shoulder pain.

[1332] And we got a whistleblower to tell us exactly how it was happening and how they were, you know, calling because the pills or this product was really, really expensive.

[1333] So insurance companies were paying for it.

[1334] So she would call insurance companies and say, oh, and they would ask.

[1335] But, you know, this is only supposed to be prescribed to cancer patients.

[1336] Does this patient have cancer?

[1337] And they knew how to answer in a way that the person would believe they did, even though they didn't.

[1338] Yeah.

[1339] They were making millions of dollars.

[1340] It was the only executive that has ever gone to trial and been found guilty.

[1341] Yeah.

[1342] Yeah, it's sick.

[1343] Are those two twins still in jail?

[1344] No, one of them still is.

[1345] The other one left, and my husband Darren was there.

[1346] How did one get out?

[1347] They had different sentences.

[1348] And I think the other one is still in federal prison.

[1349] But it's George, Jeff and Chris George, the last name.

[1350] And, yeah, Darren was there, filmed him the day he came out.

[1351] What's he doing now?

[1352] They're involved in other businesses.

[1353] They were involved in real estate before with their father.

[1354] And then they started a, I think it was a steroids.

[1355] They were selling growth hormone.

[1356] And then they realized, wait a second, we can be selling oxygotten and making a lot more money from this.

[1357] And literally, they had like stash of cash hidden in their mother's basement.

[1358] It was millions of dollars.

[1359] It was insane how much money they were making.

[1360] Yeah, it's a good, it's a good doc.

[1361] I mean, it really shows you like the complicity.

[1362] How much do you worry about your safety uncovering all these things?

[1363] Sometimes, a little bit.

[1364] Funnily enough, I worry more when we're going after people in high positions of power than I do after, you know, months of trying to get access to the cartel, for example, and when they say yes.

[1365] It's a yes, it's a yes.

[1366] But in some situations, yeah, I mean, we've gotten lots of...

[1367] hate emails and the guy that owned that insists therapeutics, for example, threatened to sue us when he saw, because we compared him to El Chapo and said basically he saw an opportunity in fentanyl just like El Chapo from the Sinole saw an opportunity in selling fentanyl and how they were sort of the same in different parts.

[1368] And they threatened to sue you for that, for the truth?

[1369] Yeah, he didn't like the fact that we were comparing him to El Chapo.

[1370] How can you see someone for that?

[1371] It seems like that's a Yeah, he didn't go far.

[1372] Nothing happened.

[1373] Yeah.

[1374] Get that in front of a jury.

[1375] Yeah, exactly.

[1376] I don't like the comparison.

[1377] Yeah, well.

[1378] He didn't like to be called a drug dealer.

[1379] But guess what?

[1380] How weird.

[1381] That's exactly what he was.

[1382] You're dealing drugs.

[1383] You don't like being called a drug dealer.

[1384] Maybe stop dealing drugs.

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] What do you think is the most dangerous thing that you've ever investigated?

[1387] I was terrified for you when you were in the cocaine laboratories.

[1388] That to me, I know you were there.

[1389] You were right here telling me about it, but I was like, oh my God, she's going to die.

[1390] Like when I watched that.

[1391] Even though I knew that you were okay.

[1392] It's just like, this is so insane that you did that and that you went through the jungle with the people that were carting out the cocaine.

[1393] Like you could have easily gotten killed.

[1394] Yeah.

[1395] Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of situations like that on the show.

[1396] Like almost every episode, there's a crazy situation where we find ourselves.

[1397] Are you addicted to the thrill?

[1398] No, not at all.

[1399] I don't do it at all.

[1400] People think I'm adrenaline junkie.

[1401] Not at all.

[1402] I don't do it for the adrenaline.

[1403] I really, I'm very curious.

[1404] I think as a journalist, if you tell you there's a part of the world that you can never see, that's exactly where you want to go.

[1405] I also find these black markets fascinating.

[1406] That's like something like half of the world's economy are these black and gray markets.

[1407] And yet we know...

[1408] Half of the world's economy is black and gray markets?

[1409] Yeah.

[1410] Half?

[1411] Mm -hmm.

[1412] Almost half.

[1413] I mean, less, but it's like these black and gray markets.

[1414] And gray markets can be anything from people selling counterfeit goods or anything that's basically not like gray markets, basically.

[1415] Cash in hand and you're not actually, you know, working in an office.

[1416] But...

[1417] So, yeah, so it's a lot.

[1418] And no one knows anything about these worlds.

[1419] And I'm fascinated not by the pointing of the finger of these guys are the bad guys and we're spending time with the bad guys, but more about what is the motivation and why, how is the system broken that got us to this place?

[1420] Because, again, it's trying to figure out the root cause instead of the enforcement side of it.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] I did not know it was that much.

[1423] Yeah, it is crazy.

[1424] And I think this is the only show that is devoted only to black markets out there.

[1425] Yeah.

[1426] But one of the other things you did that was terrifying was, and just terrifying to know this, was that Los Angeles police were confiscating weapons and then selling them to the cartels in Mexico and that you could just go to Mexico easy.

[1427] It's easy to go straight across the border into Mexico.

[1428] So you can go to Mexico with a trunk full of weapons.

[1429] Mm -hmm.

[1430] And no one stops you.

[1431] No, there's no control whatsoever going south, only coming north.

[1432] Which is wild.

[1433] Which is wild.

[1434] I know.

[1435] Yeah.

[1436] And guess what?

[1437] These are the same guns that are being used to create the violence that create the reason why many people want to leave Mexico and come to the United States.

[1438] Yeah.

[1439] Sort of a cycle, right?

[1440] God.

[1441] Yeah.

[1442] Do you think you'll ever run out of topics?

[1443] No, we have so many.

[1444] We have such a long list that you think people think.

[1445] Are there any that you look at and you go, that's too much?

[1446] That's too heavy.

[1447] No, not yet.

[1448] Not yet.

[1449] Like Taliban and Afghanistan.

[1450] Oh, yeah.

[1451] Terrorism.

[1452] You don't fuck with terrorism.

[1453] That's for sure.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] And that's why when we went to Niger, we only went because we knew that we were going to have military convoy with us and people protecting us because we knew.

[1456] But yet, I mean, it was months of planning because we were all, yeah, you don't.

[1457] And you still get caught in a coup.

[1458] And we got caught in a coup.

[1459] That's the thing.

[1460] It's like you can plan.

[1461] What is there?

[1462] There's like that Mark, Mike Tyson.

[1463] Everyone has a plan to get punched in their face.

[1464] Yes, I love that.

[1465] I love that.

[1466] Because that is exactly what happens with us.

[1467] It's months and months of planning for shit that never happens.

[1468] Yeah.

[1469] And what happens is always the thing you didn't prepare for.

[1470] We weren't ready for.

[1471] Yeah.

[1472] Wow.

[1473] Yeah.

[1474] What else did you cover this year?

[1475] What else we did?

[1476] We did.

[1477] Apes, Sextortion.

[1478] Have you heard of Sextortion?

[1479] Sexstortion?

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] How's that work?

[1482] I won't Zaireing tonight, actually.

[1483] But it's out on Hulu already.

[1484] But it's a horrible crime.

[1485] It's a crime that's growing.

[1486] And it's basically you...

[1487] start chatting with somebody online.

[1488] That person eventually asks you to send a photo of yourself, a compromising photo or a video of yourself, and they'll send you a photo or video back.

[1489] And it's mainly targeting teens, which is really sad, American teenagers.

[1490] And then once you do send those photos or videos, the person says, well, I have all the contact information on Facebook of all your friends and your work and your parents and your school, whatever.

[1491] And I'm going to send this to everyone if you don't send those money right now.

[1492] And the really sad part of that is that we spent time with parents whose kids committed suicide and within the span of like a couple of days.

[1493] So they started chatting online.

[1494] There was this kid called Jake in Utah.

[1495] So sad.

[1496] He was contacted by what looked like a beautiful girl on a Sunday night.

[1497] By Thursday or Friday, he'd committed suicide because he was too embarrassed that his friends and his family would see those photos.

[1498] Oh, yeah.

[1499] It is horrible.

[1500] But amazingly, he left behind a letter for his mother and instructions on how to access his phone so she could see what had happened to him and also who he had sent money to in the hopes that she would be able to investigate or send people to investigate.

[1501] And the American authorities did.

[1502] They found that the people that he was sending money to were in the Philippines, but that was it.

[1503] Like there was nothing else they could do because it was a foreign country.

[1504] And so we set out to the Philippines and tried to figure out who it was behind this scam.

[1505] And we found the whole community of people involved in the scam and scamming millions out of Americans.

[1506] And do they just use stock photos of girls?

[1507] Yeah, stock photos of girls.

[1508] A lot of them, interestingly enough, are actually trans people.

[1509] In the trans community, we spoke to a drag queen, for example, who was scamming a lot of people.

[1510] And during COVID, what happened is that they usually do drag queen contests.

[1511] They make money that way or work at clubs or...

[1512] And a lot of them lost their jobs during COVID, and they had no government assistance.

[1513] And so they found a way to make some money this way by sex -storting Americans.

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] Wow.

[1516] And that was super a crazy journey too.

[1517] Just one of the scenes we filmed was we spent time in a prison with a guy that was in prison for extorting Filipino women.

[1518] And it was sort of the beginning of our investigation.

[1519] We were trying to figure out if he was connected to anyone else thinking he was like sort of small fish, just extorting people in the Philippines.

[1520] And then by talking to him, he basically admits on camera while talking to me. But actually, I've done this to many, many Americans and one of them.

[1521] And I asked him, do you know anyone who's committed suicide?

[1522] Because it's a huge problem in the U .S. He was like, yes.

[1523] There was one man who was married.

[1524] He was an engineer, I believe.

[1525] And he committed suicide after we extorted him.

[1526] And I said, how do you know?

[1527] He says, because his camera, laptop was on and we could see it.

[1528] I was like, wait, did you not try to stop him?

[1529] I was like, no, because we heard people saying that they were going to commit suicide, but they never did, so we thought he was bluffing.

[1530] And then we saw him as he dies on camera.

[1531] I know.

[1532] I'm sorry.

[1533] This is the most depressing podcast you've ever done.

[1534] No, it's not, unfortunately.

[1535] But it's horrifying.

[1536] It's just horrifying the cruelty that people are capable of that they would do to strangers just for money.

[1537] Yeah.

[1538] And especially for young kids to take some teenager, some easily manipulated young kid, trick them into doing something.

[1539] Yeah.

[1540] Or the desperation also that leads to it.

[1541] Yeah.

[1542] Yeah, exactly, right?

[1543] Like, that's your only option to do that?

[1544] Yeah.

[1545] Yeah.

[1546] Right.

[1547] Yeah, that was a, that was a heavy one.

[1548] Yeah, but...

[1549] But I mean, sextortion is essentially the whole theme behind this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.

[1550] That was just a massive intelligence operation to compromise very wealthy and powerful people and to, I mean, probably influence all sorts of things.

[1551] If you have a bunch of information on someone, videotapes of someone.

[1552] You think that's what he was doing?

[1553] 100%.

[1554] That he was filming, powerful people, having sex with girls and then...

[1555] Probably underage girls.

[1556] Really?

[1557] Is this out?

[1558] This public information?

[1559] This is what the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing is about.

[1560] Yeah, you didn't know that?

[1561] I mean, I knew that he was flying people, powerful people, to an island.

[1562] But I didn't know that he was filming without their knowledge.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] Yeah, that's the story.

[1565] The story was that the whole thing was an intelligence operation and that what they were doing was compromising these people.

[1566] You get them to go there.

[1567] A bunch of celebrities are going to be there.

[1568] A bunch of wealthy people are going to be there.

[1569] A bunch of famous scientists are going to be there.

[1570] Everyone's having a wonderful time.

[1571] And you figure like, oh, look, all these.

[1572] Nobel Prize winning scientists and Nobel laureates and actors and singers, all these people are going to be there.

[1573] This sounds like a great place to be.

[1574] This guy, he gets endorsed by all these other people.

[1575] Oh, Jeffrey Epstein is this wonderful billionaire philanthropist and he's just very eccentric and he loves to have these incredible parties and all the most interesting people.

[1576] And then you go there and next thing you know, you're doing drugs and You lose your little inhibitions, and there's a bunch of lovely young ladies.

[1577] You don't know how old they are, and they take you into a room and film you, and now he's got the goods on you.

[1578] Wait, this lasts it so long.

[1579] Do you think people would have talked about it to each other?

[1580] Like, say, don't go to that island because this guy's...

[1581] I think the opposite.

[1582] I think once they have information on you, they get you to talk to other people.

[1583] We would like to meet this guy.

[1584] Why don't you bring him?

[1585] Come get him to come hang out with us.

[1586] And then now you've got that guy and say maybe you've got some guy who's on a television show and, you know, a news channel and he's talking.

[1587] And then you've got some guy who's a scientist and he's talking to other people.

[1588] And then they're all going to this island.

[1589] And you go there and you're like, look, Bill Clinton's here.

[1590] This has got to be fine to be here.

[1591] There's all these incredible powerful people here.

[1592] Oh, I found a place where they all get together and, you know, where they can be protected.

[1593] And so you feel safe.

[1594] Right.

[1595] Yeah.

[1596] And then they have you.

[1597] Wasn't everybody expecting some big names to come out of the documents?

[1598] They were just, but there wasn't really.

[1599] They still haven't released all of them.

[1600] And what I understand is the list is only one victim's encounters with people.

[1601] And she's relaying the list of the people.

[1602] The list of people that were at the eye.

[1603] That she interacted with and that she knows of and that she either had sex with or knows people that had sex with and that knows that they were all filmed.

[1604] Right.

[1605] And do you also think that he was killed?

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] That he didn't commit suicide.

[1608] 100%.

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] A lot of people do.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] Well, Michael Badden, the famous forensic doctor that was in that HBO series Autopsy.

[1613] Did you ever see that show?

[1614] It's a fascinating show that was on...

[1615] a while back that it was basically how this guy, Michael Badden, who's this brilliant forensic specialist, would examine these bodies and find evidence of them being murdered when, you know, they'd said they'd fell down a flight of stairs or this or that and...

[1616] When he examined Jeffrey Epstein's neck, he said that the injuries were indicative of someone being strangled, ligature strangulation, not hanging.

[1617] Right.

[1618] And that it was at the base of his neck, which is not where you get strangled if you hang yourself.

[1619] If you hang yourself, oh, your weight goes up here and he gets strangled up like near where your jaw line is.

[1620] But this was down the base of his neck indicating like someone strangled him from behind.

[1621] and his bones in his neck were fractured, which is also indicative of someone who's strangled to death, not being hung.

[1622] And why was it this made public?

[1623] Or was it?

[1624] Well, his findings were made public.

[1625] This is, without doubt, a bunch of incredibly powerful people who are using their influence to make sure that this information doesn't get out or that the impact of this information getting out is very minimal.

[1626] and that it just gets swept under the rug.

[1627] And every time more information comes out, there's a brief little burst of outrage, but no one goes to jail, no one gets caught.

[1628] Galane Maxwell is in jail for sex trafficking, right?

[1629] But to who?

[1630] To who?

[1631] You have to sex traffic to someone to be arrested for sex trafficking.

[1632] And when there's no one that's being listed as the people that you sex trafficked, but the implication is that these people who you're sex trafficking to are the most powerful people in the world, that these powerful, influential people are the ones that were the ones that were using this, the ones that were there, the ones that were victimized by the scheme.

[1633] or I wouldn't say victimized.

[1634] They were caught by this scheme.

[1635] None of them are arrested.

[1636] None of them are going to jail.

[1637] But wasn't she trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein?

[1638] Wasn't that whole thing?

[1639] She was trafficking girls for Jeffrey Epstein, but to who?

[1640] To who?

[1641] Wasn't she recruiting girls to come and have sex?

[1642] Who were the men?

[1643] Oh, because if it's not just Jeffrey.

[1644] It's not like Jeffrey Epstein is having sex with all of them.

[1645] It was a bunch of other people.

[1646] So who are those people?

[1647] And how come there's zero effort in the media to uncover this?

[1648] Yeah, I don't know.

[1649] It's kind of insane.

[1650] It is insane.

[1651] It's really insane.

[1652] But there was a doc done about it, a documentary done, right?

[1653] I believe so.

[1654] Yeah, I remember seeing it.

[1655] Yeah, but it's like just goes in and out of the news.

[1656] The news cycle today is so weird.

[1657] It's like something comes in and comes out.

[1658] It's gone.

[1659] Right.

[1660] It's very bizarre.

[1661] It's very, very, very bizarre.

[1662] But the findings of this expert didn't make it to the final report on how he got killed?

[1663] No, this was post the, look, there was an official autopsy, so he hung himself.

[1664] And then they brought in, the family brought in Dr. Michael Badden to examine it.

[1665] I think it was Jeffrey Epstein's brother brought him in.

[1666] I forget who brought him in.

[1667] But Dr. Michael Badden goes in there and he's like, no, this guy was killed.

[1668] Right.

[1669] And nothing changed in the official report.

[1670] They didn't change it.

[1671] No, why would they do that?

[1672] I mean, everything about it is so crazy.

[1673] First of all, the cameras didn't work.

[1674] How convenient.

[1675] Right.

[1676] How convenient.

[1677] And this guy is not being watched 24 hours a day.

[1678] He's one of the most important witnesses.

[1679] And he, though the person wasn't there something about the person supposed to be watching him had just gone to the bathroom or something.

[1680] There was sleep or something.

[1681] Yeah.

[1682] I don't know what happened, but those people kind of shut the fuck up.

[1683] And then it just whew, whew, Just get swept away.

[1684] That's insane.

[1685] Yeah, but the idea is...

[1686] that he was either, you know, intelligence agency from America or Mossad, and that this was a long -term tactic to control people and to get influence over them.

[1687] You mean, you take these men, and most of these men that are in these positions of power, these politicians and heads of enormous corporations.

[1688] And, I mean, look, the guy who is the CEO of Victoria Secrets donated a $60 million house to him in Manhattan.

[1689] And there was another guy who was a big CEO who won up giving him over $100 million.

[1690] There was a bunch of people that gave him sizable chunks of money.

[1691] Out of the kindness of their heart.

[1692] And, you know, some of them had to step down from their corporations because there was insinuation.

[1693] They were attached to him.

[1694] Like what happened?

[1695] No one's in jail.

[1696] No one went to jail for it.

[1697] It's so crazy.

[1698] Yeah, it's high -level extortion.

[1699] Yeah.

[1700] If that's the case.

[1701] But I think that's what they've always done.

[1702] Look, if I was an intelligence agent, and if I was the head of an intelligence agency, it was like, well, how do you manipulate people?

[1703] You got all these powerful people.

[1704] How do we get them under our control?

[1705] Like, that is all the best ways.

[1706] Especially if you can get loose in their inhibitions, get them drunk, give them coke.

[1707] And then, you know, all of a sudden, some beautiful girls giving them a back massage.

[1708] And, you know, you're told, it's fine.

[1709] Don't worry about it.

[1710] Don't worry.

[1711] Have a good time on the island.

[1712] You're my guest.

[1713] Okay.

[1714] And then you're in some room and there's, you know, cameras everywhere.

[1715] You know, realize it.

[1716] And then they go, we have to talk.

[1717] That is so much.

[1718] I want to show you something.

[1719] This doesn't have to get out, but, you know, we need something from you.

[1720] Yeah.

[1721] It is, it is crazy that it's not a bigger thing.

[1722] It's crazy.

[1723] Yeah.

[1724] It's crazy.

[1725] It's also crazy that that is probably going on right now somewhere else.

[1726] There's probably another version of that happening, whether it's in other countries or other sort of similar situations.

[1727] Like, intelligence agencies have always infiltrated shady groups and for a good reason.

[1728] You know, I mean, like this is my argument about what people are saying, you know, all these feds and instigated January 6th.

[1729] I'm sure they did.

[1730] But also, you would want like legitimate good intelligence agents on the ground January 6th just so that things don't go south so that you know what the fuck is happening.

[1731] If you got a bunch of people that are like some crazy militia group and they're planning on detonating a nuclear bomb in the Capitol, the only way to find out is have people on the ground, right?

[1732] What happens is those people then have a vested interest in getting people to do things so that they can arrest them, which is like the Governor Whitmer case, where the 14 people that kidnapped government or were planning to kidnap government, 12 of them.

[1733] were FBI informants, and two of them were FBI agents.

[1734] The one who was the fake demolition expert was going to blow up the bridge, and the other one who's the getaway driver.

[1735] They're federal agents.

[1736] Like, it's all fake.

[1737] The whole thing was fake.

[1738] There was two dummies.

[1739] They were like, what are we doing?

[1740] And those guys were the ones who wound up going to jail.

[1741] Do you think that they weren't actually planning?

[1742] It wasn't their idea.

[1743] They were just dopes.

[1744] They were convinced by somebody who was.

[1745] They got roped into this thing.

[1746] And the next thing, you know, they're being talked into some crazy plan where they're, you know, kidnapping the governor.

[1747] And the guys who were doing, they were like, we never thought it was really going to happen.

[1748] Like, they were just losers.

[1749] who all of a sudden they're a part of like some crazy rebellious organization that's supposed to do something that's going to, you know, we're going to stand up against tyranny and we're going to arrest that bitch.

[1750] And what they were really doing was being tricked by federal informants.

[1751] I don't know enough about that case, but I would say, the only thing I would say is that there is some responsibility on the, I mean, they can be dummies, but that's not self -defense for not being found guilty of doing, committing a crime.

[1752] That's true.

[1753] But also, there's a sizable percent of this population that has an IQ lower than 85.

[1754] It's pretty big.

[1755] All of which vote.

[1756] I think it's, what is the number?

[1757] What's the number of people?

[1758] I know we've looked this up before, but it's pretty confusing.

[1759] Like the number of people that are under 85 IQ is pretty high.

[1760] And if you can get one of them and tell them that you're gonna kid the governor, the next thing you know, they have nothing going on in your life.

[1761] Your life is meaningless and also it's exciting and you think you're a part of a good group.

[1762] Like this is, we're doing the right thing because you're fucking dumb.

[1763] You have an 85 IQ.

[1764] Right.

[1765] You're incapable of seeing big pictures.

[1766] You have a 9 -volt brain, you know.

[1767] And there's a lot of people out there like that, a lot.

[1768] And that's the problem with, you know, incentivizing people to arrest people.

[1769] Like, well, you've got to get them to do something to arrest them.

[1770] Right.

[1771] The same thing happened right after 9 -11, right?

[1772] All these people were...

[1773] contacted by undercover agents who pretended and and then be jihadists yeah and said we let's join our plot to mom did it and all these people said yes but it wasn't their plan and it was a famous story in Dallas there was a 19 year old kid who was again not very smart and they convinced him they radicalized him and convinced him they gave him a bomb and gave him a cell phone to detonate the bomb and then arrested him.

[1774] There was no real bomb.

[1775] Cell phone didn't do shit.

[1776] It didn't really activate the bomb, but that guy's in jail.

[1777] And they talked him into the whole thing.

[1778] They provided him with the materials.

[1779] They gave him the plan.

[1780] I do wonder, is there something that we don't know?

[1781] Is it possible that the, I mean, what led them to that kid or to those people that were wanting to kidnap the governor?

[1782] Like, is it, were there any pre -planning?

[1783] Maybe they knew that they were doing something and in order to catch them.

[1784] They had to sort of give them a little bit of fuel or, Yeah, they're probably radical.

[1785] They were probably online talking a lot of shit.

[1786] And then someone contacted them and, you know, took it to the next level.

[1787] You know, but there's a lot of people that say things.

[1788] They talk shit online.

[1789] There's a lot of death to America people out there that don't actually do anything.

[1790] Right.

[1791] You know.

[1792] It is a difficult, I have to say, and I'm playing the devil's advocate here.

[1793] But if you're law enforcement and you're constantly being accused of showing up after the crime happens, if you're trying to prevent crime, then that's what you do.

[1794] You're monitoring chat groups and trying to figure out how you can stop.

[1795] And they should happen in the future.

[1796] Absolutely.

[1797] And I fully support that.

[1798] The problem is law enforcement agents are just like everything else, just like plumbers or mechanics.

[1799] Some of them are really good.

[1800] And some of them are fucking terrible.

[1801] And some of them are corrupt.

[1802] And some of them are jaded.

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] And at the end of the day, all they give a shit about is catching people.

[1805] And they have a career.

[1806] And their career is all about catching people.

[1807] And so if you can trick people and doing something and then catch them, that counts as a catch.

[1808] Right.

[1809] You know?

[1810] And so if there's not enough going on, you make something happen.

[1811] Yeah.

[1812] Trying to climb the ladder over here, Mariana.

[1813] I'm no time for fucking ethics and morals and these little finer details.

[1814] This is all bullshit.

[1815] I'm trying to address people.

[1816] Yeah, they are like everybody else, but they should be held to a higher standard.

[1817] Yes, they should.

[1818] But, you know, it's like all their businesses.

[1819] It's just like the pharmaceutical drug business.

[1820] Like we need pharmaceutical drugs.

[1821] They help people.

[1822] They save lives.

[1823] They enhance people's life.

[1824] I fully support the...

[1825] the creation of pharmaceutical drugs for the most part.

[1826] The problem is you have the people that create them, which are these scientists that are working and doing these studies and tests to try to figure out drugs that are beneficial and help people.

[1827] And then you get the money people.

[1828] And the money people are not scientists.

[1829] They're just like, how can I make more?

[1830] You know, it's like the story of the Sackler family.

[1831] How can I make more?

[1832] Absolutely.

[1833] Yeah.

[1834] Yeah.

[1835] It's a profit, profit, profit.

[1836] Let's twist this narrative into like, this is what you're going to take, and it's going to make you better.

[1837] Right.

[1838] And you're going to keep taking it forever.

[1839] Yeah.

[1840] Yeah.

[1841] Yeah.

[1842] It's an interesting conversation, right?

[1843] I don't want to get into politics at all, but it's an interesting conversation about how much do we want the government to regulate more or less, right?

[1844] It's all about regulation and so many of these.

[1845] And for my investigations, a lot of what happens actually happens because of lack of regulation.

[1846] Right.

[1847] We did an episode on body parts, not organs, but this time it was actually body parts.

[1848] So most people think that when you die, you have a say in what happens to your body, right?

[1849] You can be cremated, you can be buried or donated to science.

[1850] But actually, the U .S. is pretty much the wild west of the body parts business.

[1851] And there's people who are selling, chopping up your body and selling them from the back door without any of your knowledge, which is crazy.

[1852] And a lot of it is legal.

[1853] A lot of it is illegal and it's being done and people are being caught.

[1854] There was a mother and daughter, mother and daughter in Colorado who had a funeral home.

[1855] and they also had a donation center on the side.

[1856] And they had people come in and say they wanted their loved ones to be cremated.

[1857] And instead of cremating them, they were, again, chopping up body parts and selling them to donations, to biogenetics and scientific centers around the world.

[1858] And they were caught, but they were actually not charged for chopping up bodies.

[1859] They were charged for fraud because it is very complicated, and there aren't enough laws in this country that regulate what happens to your body after you die.

[1860] I had heard of this story where this one family, their grandmother died, and they found out that she was used as like a crash test dummy.

[1861] Yeah.

[1862] And they had no idea that that was going to happen.

[1863] But they had donated her body for science.

[1864] Yeah, that is science.

[1865] Right, it is.

[1866] And, you know, having surgeons operate on your hip, practicing with a hip.

[1867] All of that is science.

[1868] But that's better, I think, because at least you're aware that you donated the body.

[1869] In these cases, they thought they'd received ashes that contained their loved ones, and instead there was like batteries, burnt batteries and other bodies mixed in.

[1870] Oh, God.

[1871] People would go, this is such a crazy story, people would go into this funeral home.

[1872] And as they're signing the paperwork for the cremation, they would hear a chainsaw in the back.

[1873] Oh, God.

[1874] For real.

[1875] And it was the mother whose job it was to cut up the body parts.

[1876] Oh, my God, with a chainsaw.

[1877] It's like a welder's goggle on.

[1878] People look, exactly, and complain that, and they would say that they were building something in the back, but this lasted like months or years, and there's constantly building something in the back.

[1879] Oh, my God, they're just hacking up bodies.

[1880] Fucking up bodies.

[1881] Isn't it crazy?

[1882] It's so insane.

[1883] But that all happens a lot of this of the for -profit body trade because of lack of regulations.

[1884] And there's not enough, there are not enough laws out there.

[1885] Where the Wild West, every other country has these laws, and we don't, because it's all about money.

[1886] How can we make money out of people's donating, people's, you know, wanting to donate?

[1887] How much money is involved in donating bodies?

[1888] Oh, a lot.

[1889] We heard of skulls being sold for $5 ,000.

[1890] Oh.

[1891] We met with a funeral director that brought us a pen like this, and inside the pen there was a little human skull.

[1892] And he told us all about how it works, like how they were...

[1893] selling, again, instead of cremating the bodies, they were selling their parts.

[1894] There was a skin wallets being sold online for $2 ,500.

[1895] A tongue can go for $1 ,000.

[1896] A human tongue?

[1897] A human tongue.

[1898] This is part of the oddities market where people like to have human parts.

[1899] Also, like, have it in formaldehyde on their mantelpiece or something?

[1900] Yeah.

[1901] And make wallets out of skin, tattooed skin goes for more money.

[1902] Jesus Christ.

[1903] Wallets out of skin, really.

[1904] You could buy those in America?

[1905] You can buy them online.

[1906] You can find them.

[1907] They're groups.

[1908] Why don't I want to look right now?

[1909] I'm looking at a story.

[1910] Before you even said it, I saw it, so now I'm seeing the context.

[1911] On the video, I'm not even listening to the words, but this Harvard morgue manager.

[1912] Yeah, that's true.

[1913] That was a case.

[1914] And then just showing these oddities.

[1915] What is that?

[1916] Is that a real body?

[1917] Look, cats creepy creations?

[1918] No, I don't think so.

[1919] No?

[1920] I mean, I think the skulls are definitely real, but a lot of it is, like, mixed with other things.

[1921] But it's interesting.

[1922] So the Facebook groups that we got access to were sort of secret.

[1923] That's one of the guys we tried researching out to, the guy with the...

[1924] Allegedly trafficking stolen human remains.

[1925] Yep.

[1926] And that's the Harvard Medical School.

[1927] The person working at the morgue was selling some of their body parts and procuring also buying from that other guy.

[1928] Yeah.

[1929] People are so creepy.

[1930] So strange.

[1931] And so these groups, you would see the tongues and wombs.

[1932] There was one that had a uterus in a formaldehyde.

[1933] And they're being sold, but it's these secretive groups that you need somebody who's been accepted into the group.

[1934] But we saw all the listings.

[1935] Have you ever looked into the bodies exhibit?

[1936] So that was made with like prisoners from China, I heard, right?

[1937] Yeah.

[1938] Yeah.

[1939] If you Google the definition or the explanation of where the bodies come from, it's Chinese unclaimed bodies, which may include political prisoners.

[1940] That's what it says.

[1941] It actually says that, which may include political prisoners.

[1942] Right, but here's the problem.

[1943] The process that they use to turn people into statues for the exhibit, it's called plasticination.

[1944] You must do it within 48 hours of death.

[1945] But a Chinese unclaimed body is only unclaimed when it's been sitting there for 30 days.

[1946] Wow.

[1947] So that means all those people got murdered.

[1948] Oh, my God.

[1949] Not only that, one of the wildest stories was there was a mayor in a city in China that was having an affair with a local television anchor.

[1950] The wife found out about it.

[1951] The woman went missing.

[1952] Her name was scrubbed off the internet.

[1953] Months later, a new exhibit.

[1954] was in the body's exhibit of a pregnant woman who's exactly the same size and exactly the same amount pregnant that was when she went lady when she went missing.

[1955] She was eight months pregnant when she went missing.

[1956] And the woman who is the wife, who is married to the mayor who is having an affair, was the manager of the plasticination factory.

[1957] So she killed the lady that her husband was having an affair with, allegedly, and then turned that lady and her eight -month -old fetus into a fucking statue, which is still on display.

[1958] No, it is not.

[1959] Yes, it is.

[1960] It's part of that exhibition?

[1961] Yes, it's part of that exhibition.

[1962] And they've resisted all attempts to do DNA tests?

[1963] No way.

[1964] And the woman is essentially scrubbed for the internet.

[1965] The woman that was murdered, you can't find her.

[1966] But the woman who was the wife who was accused of murdering the pregnant lady also got arrested for murdering an English businessman after that.

[1967] So she poisoned this English businessman.

[1968] Mm -hmm.

[1969] and then was tried, but in her place in the trial was another woman.

[1970] So she hired someone.

[1971] She probably went to some poor family, got their daughter, and paid them, we'll give you X amount of money, your daughter's going to stand trial for me. Like your buddy double, pretend it's me. Didn't even look anything like her.

[1972] But this woman's on the stand, she said she did it, and that lady went to jail.

[1973] No way.

[1974] 100%.

[1975] How do you know all this?

[1976] Because I did a deep dive in it.

[1977] I have a bit in my act about the bodies exhibit.

[1978] It's fucking crazy because there's a shitload of these exhibits.

[1979] Oh, there's a permanent one at the Luxor in Las Vegas that is almost definitely filled with murdered people.

[1980] That is so good.

[1981] And people pay money to go and look at these photos.

[1982] It's science.

[1983] It's science.

[1984] You go there, it's science.

[1985] Look, it's science.

[1986] Yeah.

[1987] The placination is interesting because that's what these family members thought was happening to their loved ones' bodies.

[1988] And they cut them up, right?

[1989] It's cut into a lot of versions of it.

[1990] There's some where the muscles are completely stripped off the body and they're hovering above the body.

[1991] So you have like the frame of the bones and then you see all the individual muscles that are removed and like elevated.

[1992] And then you have other ones where...

[1993] The arm is sectioned into pieces, so an arm is stretched out like 10 feet long, and it's like sections of it.

[1994] They leave their genitals on, which is very strange, like that one.

[1995] Look at that one.

[1996] The person's sectioned.

[1997] I mean, this is like serial killer freak shit.

[1998] Oh my God.

[1999] And if you see like what they do, they remove all of the blood vessels and they have them on display.

[2000] There's also like these bizarre erotic ones where they have people having sex.

[2001] It's like super serial killer vibes that you get from this.

[2002] Like look how this person split down the middle.

[2003] The heart is in the center.

[2004] The head is on both sides.

[2005] Holy shit.

[2006] It's complete macabre serial.

[2007] Look at that one down there.

[2008] Those are the people having sex.

[2009] So there's people having sex, including like penises inserted into vaginas, breast tissue still on.

[2010] So it's indicative of a woman that you know that it's a woman.

[2011] There's people wrestling.

[2012] There's people playing basketball.

[2013] People having sex over there, yeah.

[2014] It's very fucking strange.

[2015] I've never been to one of these.

[2016] I mean, I've heard all about them, but I didn't know there were people having sex.

[2017] Yeah, I've been to it three times.

[2018] The reason why I looked into it is because my daughter asked me where they get the bodies from.

[2019] Huh.

[2020] Is that how it all started for you?

[2021] Yeah.

[2022] My daughter was 10.

[2023] She was like, where did they get these bodies?

[2024] And I was like, my first thought was why didn't I ask that question?

[2025] And then I started doing a deep dive.

[2026] I believe they pulled it from Australia because of concern.

[2027] Is that what it says?

[2028] Yeah, I think they pulled the exhibit from Australia.

[2029] Yeah, call to shut real bodies exhibition over fears it uses executed prisoners.

[2030] Organizers of Sydney exhibit deny human rights groups claims that the bodies are from Chinese political prisoners.

[2031] Yeah, I'm sure you'd deny it.

[2032] But there's bullet holes in some of them.

[2033] So if they're not, who are they from?

[2034] Like have the people that organize this or came up with this idea said who they come from?

[2035] Well, they've done investigative journalist reports on this.

[2036] And one of the things they did is they went to one of the plastication factories and you see on the ground they have bodies laid out with pillow covers over their heads with blood on them.

[2037] So these people are tied up.

[2038] They're executed.

[2039] There's a bullet hole in their head.

[2040] And they're all laid out.

[2041] And then the factory's right there.

[2042] So they're taking these people because they have to do this within 48 hours of death.

[2043] They take them.

[2044] They skin them.

[2045] They put them in this fluid.

[2046] I don't know exactly what the process is.

[2047] But essentially they use this process to stop the body from decaying.

[2048] And they're selling them.

[2049] They're making money out of it.

[2050] Oh, yeah.

[2051] Of course.

[2052] They sell them.

[2053] And then also these exhibits generate a lot of money because they're fascinating.

[2054] When I went in Los Angeles, there's a giant line.

[2055] Look at this.

[2056] They keep their penis on.

[2057] This guy's holding his skin to the right.

[2058] That is so insane.

[2059] It's so insane that that is science.

[2060] That's a guy that was executed and they turned him into a statue.

[2061] Yeah.

[2062] And now people go and pay to the...

[2063] How many of the...

[2064] Look at that.

[2065] There's a bunch of these.

[2066] So look at it.

[2067] He's got his penis still on, but he's holding his skin.

[2068] It's fucking creepy.

[2069] And how many of them are there worldwide?

[2070] I think there's a ton of them.

[2071] Really?

[2072] So hundreds and hundreds?

[2073] Thousands of these bodies.

[2074] Yeah.

[2075] A bunch of different cities.

[2076] Probably thousands of bodies.

[2077] I've never been to one.

[2078] Yeah.

[2079] Well, if you're in Vegas, go to the Luxor before they pull it, before people realize it's a fucking murder exhibit.

[2080] It's a Chinese murder exhibit.

[2081] Do you think they're going to realize and shut it down it?

[2082] No. They haven't fucking arrested anybody for Jeffrey Epstein's Island.

[2083] They're not going to arrest anybody for this.

[2084] These are prisoners.

[2085] They're already dead.

[2086] What are you going to do?

[2087] We're trying to make money over here.

[2088] Shut the fuck up.

[2089] This has been on for, what, 15 years or more?

[2090] Forever.

[2091] I don't remember the first time I went to one, but it was in the 2000s.

[2092] I remember it came to Los Angeles and me and my buddies went.

[2093] We were like, what the fuck?

[2094] And we were really high.

[2095] So we're really high walking around this exhibit of all these dead people like, this is fucking twisted.

[2096] Because it doesn't, it's not just the anatomy.

[2097] It'd be one thing if it was these bodies and they remove the skin and you see all of the muscle doing all the different.

[2098] It's fascinating, right?

[2099] But it's weird what they're doing to these bodies.

[2100] Like, you know, the guy holding his skin, the people's head split in half, and the brain is floating in the air above it.

[2101] Like, what are you doing?

[2102] Right, having sex, all of that.

[2103] Yeah, having sex.

[2104] There's, in the middle of sex, two dead people.

[2105] Fucking bizarre.

[2106] Do you think they kill them first and then got the bodies to have sex and then cut them up and...

[2107] Yeah, they probably, you know, stuck something in the penis to keep it erect and then put it inside the girl's body and then...

[2108] And then there's ones of women where they split them right down the middle.

[2109] And so they split them through their vagina and they cut them in half.

[2110] And you see like the ovaries and the womb and you see all that.

[2111] That is fucking crazy.

[2112] It's fucking crazy.

[2113] But go find the pregnant woman one because that's the most bizarre one.

[2114] See if you can find this story.

[2115] Because the story of the pregnant woman is really horrible.

[2116] And these were journalists that were able to track her back and figure out who she was.

[2117] Yes.

[2118] So this is the woman.

[2119] Oh, my God.

[2120] That's also so disturbing.

[2121] That is the woman, allegedly, who was having the affair with the man who is the mayor of this Chinese city.

[2122] Oh.

[2123] That's so sad.

[2124] Oh, another one.

[2125] Well, found another buddy who fucked up.

[2126] It's like they're just killing people.

[2127] They kill people and turn them into fucking statues and then put it in a museum.

[2128] And it's okay because it's at a museum.

[2129] Right.

[2130] Right.

[2131] And it's science.

[2132] It's a science museum.

[2133] This has to be legitimate.

[2134] So because of this like appeal to authority that you get from being at a science museum, nobody questions it, except Sydney.

[2135] Australia is only, they're like, hey, mate, what the fuck?

[2136] Why the fuck did you get this body, mate?

[2137] Like, I don't know.

[2138] I don't know how this is okay, but...

[2139] I think this is the only link that exists.

[2140] So that's the woman.

[2141] She was a TV news anchor, rumored to have been Bo Gilles' mistress during his term as Dahlion Mayor.

[2142] Buxent speculates that her pregnant body may have been plastinated in a body world exhibit.

[2143] Yeah.

[2144] They obviously deny it.

[2145] Of course they deny it.

[2146] Hold on.

[2147] Stop right there.

[2148] The skull shape and other features of the pregnant woman's body at the body world exhibit are said to resemble those of Zhang.

[2149] Also, the nearly mature fetus inside the pregnant woman suggests the woman had been the victim of an officially sanctioned execution.

[2150] The bodies displayed by Body Works were prepared by Voss Hagen's Plastination Company and Dalian.

[2151] Some Nizzen's have suggested that Bo himself, they have approved the company's registration in 1999 by the mayor of Dalian.

[2152] All the bodies used for the exhibitor said to be from Dalian.

[2153] Gunther von Huggins, the company founder, is rumored to have special connection with Bo.

[2154] Now, you have to see the guy who invented...

[2155] The Body Works exhibit.

[2156] Because he's right out of a fucking Indiana Jones movie.

[2157] He wears creepy hats.

[2158] He looks very bizarre.

[2159] Yeah, see if you can see like some of the other images of me. He always wears that fucking creepy hat.

[2160] Where is he from?

[2161] Gunther von Huggins.

[2162] I think he's from Austria, German.

[2163] German anatomist.

[2164] anatomist and businessman, but he always wears that fucking creepy hat.

[2165] He looks like the kind of guy who would be selling executed people on display.

[2166] That's him.

[2167] I mean, he looks fucking creepy as shit.

[2168] That fucking hat alone.

[2169] That is not the kind of hat you want to wear if you want to tell me you've got a legitimate business of selling dead people.

[2170] Look, he looks evil.

[2171] Doesn't he?

[2172] A little bit.

[2173] See if we find some other pictures of them.

[2174] Because there's some pictures of him that are like ultra creepy.

[2175] Has he been interviewed?

[2176] Has anyone asked him about the bodies?

[2177] I think he probably shuts the fuck up.

[2178] He did say that he's donating his body when he dies.

[2179] He wants to be a part of the exhibit.

[2180] Yeah.

[2181] He probably feels guilty.

[2182] Yeah.

[2183] You know?

[2184] Yeah.

[2185] Yeah.

[2186] I think some of them have come from Russian prisoners as well.

[2187] It's not just Chinese prisoners, but some of them are from Russian prisoners.

[2188] But I mean, probably none of them are actually people that, oh, we have this body.

[2189] What are we going to do with it?

[2190] It's been sitting around for 30 days.

[2191] You can't.

[2192] It's literally not possible because it has to take place within 48 hours of death.

[2193] Just the process alone would lead people to be very suspicious.

[2194] What the fuck are you doing over here?

[2195] Yeah, zero consent.

[2196] Yeah, but meanwhile, it's science.

[2197] It's science.

[2198] I mean, that's what I saw.

[2199] When I first saw it, they're like, the bodies exhibit.

[2200] Like, oh, this is amazing.

[2201] Von Hagen's faces investigation over use of bodies without consent.

[2202] Gunther von Hogan is a pioneer of body plasticination and technique preserving bodies using saturating them with polymer resin, who was criticized for his televised autopsy in London is under investigation in the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan.

[2203] and in Heidelberg, Germany.

[2204] He's accused of using bodies without permission and falsely carrying the title of professor.

[2205] Oh, I like that.

[2206] Oh, great.

[2207] He's a fake professor, too.

[2208] He's one of those.

[2209] Creepy hat from Heidelberg University.

[2210] However, in both cases, he denies any illegal acts and accuses the other side of misinformation.

[2211] Oh, the old misinformation term.

[2212] He'd make for a great documentary subject.

[2213] Oh, yeah, he would.

[2214] I wonder if you let you talk to him.

[2215] After about 200 bodies of unexplained origin were recently found in his institute, a Kyrgyzik, how do you say that?

[2216] Kyrgyz.

[2217] Kyrgyz, member of the parliament.

[2218] Abakhan Tashktan Beko, accused Professor von Hagen, illegally abducted several hundred bodies from former Soviet prisoners, hospitals, and psychiatric asylums.

[2219] abducted.

[2220] How many bodies exhibits are there worldwide?

[2221] They're not all the same company or whatever.

[2222] They started copying it, of course.

[2223] One company says they have nine with more coming.

[2224] Yeah, there's a lot.

[2225] I think there's more than 100.

[2226] I think there's more than 100 exhibits worldwide.

[2227] I'm not sure about that, though.

[2228] They're various companies.

[2229] We could start one if we found some of their old bodies, you know.

[2230] Ooh, J .R .E. Body Works.

[2231] But that's the thing.

[2232] It might not be just Russian and Chinese.

[2233] There might be American bodies.

[2234] Oh, for sure.

[2235] That's what they thought that their family members' bodies were ending up in placination companies.

[2236] Yeah.

[2237] It's fucking crazy.

[2238] Well, if they can get it within 48 hours.

[2239] Yeah.

[2240] They just got to get you to sign papers within 48 hours of death.

[2241] Yeah, I wonder if there's a placination.

[2242] There has to be a placination company here as well, right?

[2243] That does it?

[2244] I don't know.

[2245] In the U .S. Because I know they exist.

[2246] Boy, I don't know.

[2247] Fucking sketchy, though.

[2248] Yeah.

[2249] So sketchy.

[2250] Yeah.

[2251] The whole body parts, all of it was just sketchy as shit.

[2252] Yeah.

[2253] We went to a cemetery in the middle of the night, grave digging.

[2254] Oh, yeah.

[2255] And saw them, like, picking out parts of a body and sisal.

[2256] Whoa, did you get creeped out?

[2257] Yeah, absolutely.

[2258] I mean, shit that you didn't think existed, but it does.

[2259] Ghosts and shit?

[2260] No, I'm not afraid of ghosts.

[2261] I'm not afraid of ghosts.

[2262] I would be afraid of ghosts if I was at a cemetery digging up bodies.

[2263] I mean, that's when they come.

[2264] I wasn't the one digging, though.

[2265] I know, but you're there.

[2266] You get caught.

[2267] It was a crazy scene.

[2268] It was like middle of the night, totally pitch dark, and we're going in with the digger and his team.

[2269] Did you investigate it all in organ harvesting?

[2270] We did, yeah.

[2271] Illegal organs.

[2272] Like, they do that with prisoners, too, right?

[2273] Yes, perhaps.

[2274] The ones we found were telling is that they were doing it with immigrants, which is very sad.

[2275] immigrants that were trying to come doing the journey to make it to the U .S., and so the most desperate and vulnerable people.

[2276] And we spent time with the cartel in Colombia and then in Mexico, and they were saying, yeah, they're going out to even like homeless camps with immigrants.

[2277] in all parts of Mexico.

[2278] It's very, very hard to prove that what they're saying is right.

[2279] We interviewed a guy called the wrecker.

[2280] He calls himself the wrecker.

[2281] He works for this cartel, the Gulf cartel in Colombia.

[2282] And he basically told us the most horrific story.

[2283] Like he's in charge of basically killing people and gathering all the stuff, the organs and all that with a doctor that comes that they pay.

[2284] But it's, it was one of those interviews that when he left, I was like, uh, I'm not sure how much of this is actually true.

[2285] And I talk about it on camera and talk about how it's so hard to verify.

[2286] But then we went to Mexico and actually interviewed a doctor who was basically threatened by the cartel if he didn't do some of these operations.

[2287] So he had no interest in lying to us and told us how this whole thing worked.

[2288] And then we interviewed an American that went and got an organ in Mexico.

[2289] And so this American, did he know that it came from a murdered immigrant?

[2290] Yeah, I asked him that.

[2291] I mean, we don't, there's no way of verifying that it came from, but that it came from the black market.

[2292] So we don't know where the source is.

[2293] And he said, basically, you can judge me all you want.

[2294] But if you were dying or if your son or daughter was dying and you knew that the only way you could get this organ was on the black market when you do it.

[2295] Oh.

[2296] And it's a really good question.

[2297] Yeah, I mean, right?

[2298] Depends on who they're killing.

[2299] Right, but he, yes, of course.

[2300] Show me a bad guy?

[2301] Can I get a bad guy's liver, you know?

[2302] Yeah.

[2303] You know what I mean?

[2304] If you know someone's evil.

[2305] Depends if it's healthy or not.

[2306] Yeah, right.

[2307] Probably not.

[2308] Yeah, it's horrible.

[2309] But again, broken system.

[2310] 17 Americans die every day waiting for an organ.

[2311] And the system is broken, so people have to go and look in the black market.

[2312] And I do think that if you go, you know, most people don't probably think that this is coming from vulnerable, poor immigrants.

[2313] They probably don't want to know.

[2314] No. And there's plenty of people out there that are willing to sell their organs, you know, in places like India and even Mexico.

[2315] the organs that they can live without.

[2316] Do you know when they do like a liver donation, like say if you needed a liver and you and I were the same blood type, they could take half my liver and give it to you and my body would regenerate that liver to full size than six to eight weeks?

[2317] No. Yeah.

[2318] That's why I love to come to your shows.

[2319] I'm here doing this reporting, and I had no idea that was the case.

[2320] We have this wealth of knowledge about this show.

[2321] Livers are fascinating.

[2322] You could donate part of your liver, and I could save you with my liver, and my liver would go back to full size in two months.

[2323] Why aren't we all donating half of our livers then?

[2324] Well, it's not...

[2325] You know, if by the time your liver's failing, there's a lot going on.

[2326] Like, you're probably on the death's door anyway.

[2327] You probably have a host of problems.

[2328] It's usually, other than, you know, obviously genetic issues and cancer and all sorts of other stuff.

[2329] Like some people just, it's abuse.

[2330] It's, you know, you're drinking.

[2331] You know, I know a guy who died of liver failure.

[2332] He died of liver failure from drinking.

[2333] It's just drinking constantly.

[2334] And he was on the wait list for a new liver?

[2335] I don't think he was.

[2336] Just died of liver failure.

[2337] Mm -hmm.

[2338] So have they tried that?

[2339] They've actually given people half a liver.

[2340] Oh, yeah, that's a real thing.

[2341] They do that.

[2342] Yeah.

[2343] And your body regenerates it.

[2344] Liver is the only organ in the body that can replace loss or injured tissue regenerate.

[2345] Donors' liver will soon go back to normal size after surgery.

[2346] The part that you receive is part of the new liver will also grow to normal size in a few weeks.

[2347] So if you take half of my liver, I still have half, I'll have a full one in a few weeks, and so will you.

[2348] Wow.

[2349] I had no idea.

[2350] Yeah.

[2351] It's incredible.

[2352] It's pretty crazy.

[2353] Liver is a pretty amazing organ.

[2354] Yeah, that's amazing.

[2355] Yeah.

[2356] Are you on the donors list?

[2357] That's a good question.

[2358] I think when I signed up for my driver's license, I did that.

[2359] Yeah.

[2360] Yeah, I am too.

[2361] And even with this body parts episode, just knowing what happens out there.

[2362] Look, a friend of mine has a heart from someone.

[2363] He had a heart transplant.

[2364] He had a heart attack, and his heart was deteriorating, and they gave him, and he's still alive.

[2365] He's got a heart of some other person.

[2366] Right.

[2367] Yeah.

[2368] It's amazing.

[2369] He thinks it's an Asian woman.

[2370] That's like his feeling.

[2371] Really?

[2372] Yeah.

[2373] And they haven't told him.

[2374] I don't think they'll tell you, no. I think if the donor wants the person that gets it to know, they can know, right?

[2375] I believe so.

[2376] Because I've seen stories of people reunite, like a donor are.

[2377] Yeah, that's got to be crazy.

[2378] Like someone's carrying around your.

[2379] Heart.

[2380] Your loved ones.

[2381] Your loved one's heart.

[2382] That was the story I saw.

[2383] Exactly that.

[2384] The daughter had died and the mother wanted to meet the person whose heart.

[2385] Well, that's noble.

[2386] Yeah.

[2387] That's beautiful.

[2388] Yeah, I think there's a place.

[2389] I mean, I definitely am encouraged donations.

[2390] Well, they're going to be able to regenerate tissue independently in labs.

[2391] They've already done that with skin cells where they've recreated bladders and they've recreated...

[2392] different organ parts.

[2393] They're going to be able to do that and just swap you out for a new body.

[2394] Like, Mariana, it's about time.

[2395] Swap you out for a 20 -year -old version of yourself.

[2396] Oh, it'll be great.

[2397] Your brain and stick it in a 20 -year -old body.

[2398] Like, wow, wake up in the morning.

[2399] Oh, nothing hurts.

[2400] That was great.

[2401] Yes, please.

[2402] Yeah.

[2403] Well, that's probably going to happen.

[2404] It's probably in our future.

[2405] Or an AI version of ourselves.

[2406] Yeah, that's more likely.

[2407] Yeah, that's more likely.

[2408] More likely it will be integrated with AI.

[2409] That's what I think.

[2410] Yeah.

[2411] I think that's definitely happening.

[2412] Yeah.

[2413] Have you had people on this show talking about AI?

[2414] Oh, yeah, quite a few.

[2415] Yeah, quite a few.

[2416] It's kind of a constant conversation because, you know, Sam Altman was on.

[2417] Oh, right.

[2418] I love Sam.

[2419] Yes.

[2420] It's great.

[2421] And then I had the gentleman from Tristan Harrison.

[2422] What was the other guy's name again?

[2423] Aza Raskin.

[2424] Yes, from the social dilemma.

[2425] And they came on, and they are extremely concerned about AI and the race to sentient AI and who controls it and what happens when it gets released and what it does.

[2426] And it also seems inevitable.

[2427] It seems like it's just going to happen.

[2428] And China is involved in it, and Russia is involved, the United States is involved, and who knows that when any other countries are involved in this research as well.

[2429] And they're getting really close.

[2430] Yeah, it's how do you fight against progress, right?

[2431] That's, I think, the hard thing.

[2432] Right.

[2433] I think it's happening.

[2434] Yeah, I just think we are the last biological people.

[2435] That's what I think.

[2436] Yeah.

[2437] I think we're the last.

[2438] I think we're going to be integrated.

[2439] While we're alive still?

[2440] Yeah.

[2441] Within our lifetime, I think there's going to be artificial people.

[2442] Yeah.

[2443] Yeah.

[2444] You know, that's one of the big speculations that people have about these aliens and that what we're seeing is an alternative dimension or an alternative timeline and what these things are is us in the future.

[2445] Oh, yeah, exactly.

[2446] That we are a creation of them and they're watching us and we are creation of something that was done in the future.

[2447] And we become that.

[2448] Right.

[2449] And the likelihood mathematically is much more likely, right, that we are that.

[2450] Yeah.

[2451] Right.

[2452] That we're sort of a video game for people in the future that are playing our characters.

[2453] Or that were some sort of a farm.

[2454] Right.

[2455] You know, that this is how they develop intelligent life.

[2456] Right.

[2457] Right.

[2458] Yeah.

[2459] Yeah.

[2460] Yeah, I don't know.

[2461] Have you ever seen anything crazy when you're out in any of these?

[2462] Have you ever seen anything weird in the sky or anything?

[2463] Not in the sky.

[2464] I see so much crazy shit right here.

[2465] Right on the crowd.

[2466] I don't really need to be looking at the sky.

[2467] What else have you?

[2468] What else did you study this year?

[2469] This one, a really good one.

[2470] It's an episode I'm really proud of, I mean, all of them, but this one started with a DM, a direct message from a woman in Minnesota who told me that her father was in prison in Mozambique, Africa.

[2471] and that she was absolutely sure he was not guilty.

[2472] And it started a huge investigation into Mozambique used to be Portuguese.

[2473] They speak Portuguese.

[2474] I have friends that live in Mozambique, so immediately you piqued my curiosity.

[2475] Why is an older American guy stuck in prison, and his daughter is...

[2476] desperate enough to contact me because she wants to try to figure out how to free her dead.

[2477] And so he started investigation.

[2478] Turns out this guy was scammed, terrible scam.

[2479] He was told he was a retired truck driver, former military.

[2480] He was told that he had gotten, his wife had just died.

[2481] He was told he had gotten an inheritance and that the inheritance was in Europe.

[2482] His wife had connections to families in Europe.

[2483] So it was totally believable according to him.

[2484] But in order to get the inheritance, he would have to do a pit stop in Africa.

[2485] But they would pay for everything.

[2486] His flights, his hotels, everything.

[2487] So it was a free ride to go to Africa, pick up the documents, and then take them to Europe.

[2488] And in the bag with the documents were some chocolates that he was to take to Europe to the people he was meeting.

[2489] And as he's in the airport about to board his flight to Europe, he was stopped by the authorities, and he was carrying five kilos of heroin inside these chocolates that he was completely anywhere.

[2490] And I completely believe he had no idea.

[2491] So he's sent to prison.

[2492] He's given one -day trial, 17 -year sentence.

[2493] He's almost 70 years old, so he's probably going to die in prison.

[2494] And it turns out he wasn't the only American there.

[2495] There was another American from California and a Canadian, all victims of the same scam and within two, three days, all three of them.

[2496] And this is just one high security prison in Mozambique out of all prisons around the world.

[2497] So we went, we visited him, we saw him, we brought his daughter to see him, she had seen him in four years.

[2498] super emotional.

[2499] And then we went to South Africa.

[2500] We basically investigated the trail of money and who had paid for what, the hotel, the flights, everything.

[2501] And we came face to face with one of his cameras.

[2502] We filmed undercover in a hotel in South Africa where I basically confronted this guy who scammed him.

[2503] I pretended that I was a friend and I was looking for that inheritance as well and that I had...

[2504] You know, that I was willing to travel and do whatever for that money.

[2505] I pretended I was a what they call a MAGA, which is a dumb, gullible American, call them MAGAs.

[2506] Like Make America Good Again MAGA?

[2507] Yeah, it's interestingly the same name, but I don't think it comes from that.

[2508] It has to be.

[2509] It's a Nigerian saying for a gullible person.

[2510] I don't think it's new.

[2511] So it predates MAGA?

[2512] I think so.

[2513] Wow.

[2514] It's interestingly the same, yeah.

[2515] The first thing I thought when I saw it as well when they said it to me. But I pretended I was a maga.

[2516] And then, yeah, came face to face with this guy.

[2517] It was crazy.

[2518] What was that like?

[2519] It was interesting because at first we sat down and he was, I was saying that, you know, the Rodney Baldess, which is this man's name, the Rodney Baldness name, and do you have his inheritance?

[2520] And I said, I think it's $2 .7 million and is that money still available?

[2521] And he was like, actually, it's 2 .4, 2 .5.

[2522] I was like, okay, so he's corroborating what I'm saying.

[2523] So I started talking with him a little bit more.

[2524] But then...

[2525] He got a little suspicious, and he was asking to see my ID.

[2526] He said, okay, great, but in order to be able to continue talking to you, I have to your ID.

[2527] I couldn't show him my ID because I haven't given him my real name, obviously.

[2528] So at that point, I decided to get to leave, pretend I was going to my room to get my ID, and then I came back and decided to confront him and tell him, look, I'm a journalist.

[2529] I really like to talk to you on camera.

[2530] And he was like, pretended that he had no idea what I was talking about, that he didn't know, that he had called me Zoe.

[2531] And then he was like, no, no, no, I'm here to meet.

[2532] What's her name?

[2533] Catherine.

[2534] I was like, wait, aren't you Mr. Wilson, the man that I just spoke to?

[2535] And he was like, oh, no, no, I'm not Mr. Wilson.

[2536] My name is Robert or whatever.

[2537] I was like, dude, I have your own camera.

[2538] I'm filming.

[2539] He's like, We're doing what?

[2540] I'm filming.

[2541] I filmed this whole interaction.

[2542] And then he stands up and left.

[2543] And it was a whole thing because, you know, he's part of this bigger group that is a criminal group and kind of scary and dangerous.

[2544] But we presented this.

[2545] We reached out to the State Department to see if they could investigate because they have done very little for Rodney.

[2546] And if they could investigate his case and crickets.

[2547] Like they don't refuse to talk to us.

[2548] They say they're doing that what they can.

[2549] to help him, but he's in completely substandard conditions in this prison with no real access to good health care.

[2550] And the guy's going to die in prison.

[2551] And there's no way to get him out.

[2552] That's what we're trying.

[2553] I hope that when this stock is aired, it's not on Hulu yet.

[2554] It will be on Hulu and it will be on NGio soon.

[2555] But when it airs that, you know, the government will take another look and try to do something for this guy.

[2556] It's like former military guy, you know, he's like, it's so obvious that he's innocent.

[2557] And they're not even trying, like, that's what upset us is that.

[2558] there isn't real help there in getting him his medication.

[2559] His food has to be paid, has to be brought from the outside because they don't give him actual food in prison.

[2560] So his daughter has to send money via me. to a friend of mine who lives in Mozambique.

[2561] So it's his whole bank exchange in order to provide food for this guy in prison.

[2562] They give you like a really bad porridge once a day or something like that, not something that's any good for your health.

[2563] And he has diabetes and has a bunch of other.

[2564] So they hire this woman to cook food and bring him to prison every day.

[2565] God.

[2566] What a way to end your life.

[2567] It's so crazy, right?

[2568] Scammed like that.

[2569] Just uses a drug mule.

[2570] And abandoned by your government.

[2571] No one's doing anything.

[2572] At least that's my, yeah.

[2573] And realizing that this is actually big and is happening all around.

[2574] How do you maintain your faith in humanity?

[2575] I do.

[2576] I know you do.

[2577] You're a very friendly, nice, smiling person.

[2578] I'm very, very optimistic, very optimistic about the world.

[2579] Which is crazy considering what you've seen.

[2580] But it's not, because when you're able to sit down with a cartel member or a scammer in the Philippines or all these people that I meet around the world, and I'm able to find humanity in them, I'm able to find commonalities between me and him, I'm able to see that if this person in the majority of cases was given in other opportunities that he wouldn't be the person he turned out to be.

[2581] that shows me that it's not entirely humanity that's broken.

[2582] It's the system.

[2583] It's the systems that we've human beings have created.

[2584] But the accountability at the end of the day lies in the people of power, the people that are able to make a difference in that system and not in the drug dealers or the coyotes smugglers or the scammers, you know.

[2585] It's amazing that you can maintain that perspective, and that just really is an amazing testament to your character, that you're able to see that for what it is and not lose faith in people.

[2586] Yeah.

[2587] Because you were confronted constantly with these scenarios, but that is the one thing they have in common is desperate people.

[2588] Absolutely.

[2589] It's always the most vulnerable people.

[2590] Nobody is born wanting to be a criminal, right?

[2591] You are put in that position, and that's what I see again and again.

[2592] Listen, Mariana, what you do is amazing.

[2593] I mean, I'm stunned by your courage.

[2594] You're one of the real last boots on the ground journalists who goes into terrifying places and consistently exposes these incredibly fascinating, horrific scenes.

[2595] And if it wasn't for you, a lot of people wouldn't know about a lot of these things.

[2596] So thank you.

[2597] Thank you for everything you do.

[2598] Thank you so much for having me and for you're such a supporter of my work.

[2599] I really appreciate you.

[2600] I appreciate you, too.

[2601] Stay safe.

[2602] I will.

[2603] And tell everybody trafficked.

[2604] It's available on Hulu.

[2605] How many episodes are available right now?

[2606] 10 episodes.

[2607] Eight are out on Hulu, too.

[2608] We'll come on very soon.

[2609] And you can watch it also on at Gio every Wednesday at 9 p .m. And you have how many previous seasons?

[2610] This is a fourth season, so we have three more.

[2611] Wow.

[2612] And they're all awesome.

[2613] Trafficked Marjana Van Zeller.

[2614] Yeah, that's season three right there.

[2615] Go watch it, folks.

[2616] Thank you very much.

[2617] Appreciate you.

[2618] Bye, everybody.