Inside global black markets: Emmy-winning investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller

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She's an Emmy and Peabody award-winning correspondent, best known as host and executive producer of Traffic, the National Geographic series that recently earned a record-breaking number of Emmy nominations. There's a line in journalism that you should never cross, that you have to come back with chalk on your feet. She's also host of the new video podcast, The Hidden Third. In this conversation, we'll get into how these underground economies really work, the reporting that has shaped her career and the dangers of tracking global smuggling. These are the most stereotyped, stigmatized people in our society to people we consider the bad guys. What I hear a lot is that no one has ever wanted to sit down with them and listen to their stories and understand why they do what they do. Mariana, thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much. So just to start off, for those who don't know, what is The Hidden Third exactly? Yeah, it's a good question. I think, like you said, most people don't know this, but an estimated 30 to 35 percent of the global economy are black and gray markets. It's what economists call the Hidden Third. And yet, we know so very little about them, whether we're talking about immigration or scams or guns or, you know, the opiate crises, rugs, these are all issues that have a huge impact in every single one of us on a daily basis. And yet, we know very little about these industries, what have become, in many cases, massive industries. We have news organizations devoted to analyzing every up and down of the global economy, of the legal economy, but very little is known about the illegal economy. And that's what essentially I've spent the last 20 years of my life reporting on. Such a good point. And obviously, so much of this is sparked by sheer curiosity. For you, Mariana, growing up in Portugal, where did that spark of curiosity really come from, and whereabouts in Portugal, by the way, do you go? Yeah. So I grew up in a small town outside of Lisbon, called Keishkaish, sort of a beach town. And I think it all started, I was around 12 years old when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. So very, very young. But it started because it was mandatory in my household growing up. We had to watch the nightly news. We could watch the Brazilian soap operas, which were very, very popular in my house, or all over Portugal, but only after watching the nightly news. And I remember seeing these Portuguese anchors talking about what was happening all around the world with so much knowledge and so much sort of grasp of information. And I just thought these were the most incredibly smart people on Earth, and I realized I wanted to be like them. I had no idea they were reading from a teleprompter, so they weren't actually memorizing all the information like I thought they would. But that's when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. So I went to college, to school in Portugal, and I studied international relations. And then once I graduated that, I applied for an internship at a news station in Portugal, a TV, Portugal's largest TV news station at the time. And while working there, I knew that the sort of reporting journalism that I wanted to do was more global and wanted the opportunity to travel around the world. I still thought I was going to be an international correspondent perhaps, or international producer for a large organization, but I knew that Portugal was a small country and wouldn't have that opportunity there. So I started applying for Columbia's journalism school, and I applied the first year and I didn't get in. And then I applied the second year and I was put on a wait list and I was super excited, but I didn't get in again. And then it wasn't until the third year, I flew to New York, and I knocked on the Dean's door and introduced myself, and that year I was accepted. So it sort of taught me my first big lesson in journalism, which is persistence, right? You never, you never get up. I mean, talk about persistence and Hutzpah, right? I mean, like were you nervous, did you hesitate in making that ask, or how did that go for you? 100%. So I remember Columbia University actually discouraged international students from coming to visit, because they don't want to give there's thousands of people that apply every year and only if you get in. And so they don't want people to go all the way to New York and Columbia and then get rejected from the university, but I thought I don't have anything to lose. So I flew to New York with a friend of mine. We had another friend who lived there, so we were able to stay at her house. And I remember going up until the front door of the journalism school and being so nervous and thinking, maybe I shouldn't do this, this is ridiculous. Why would he even see me like this is a terrible idea? But then thinking, really, I have nothing to lose. You know, I've come all the way here, so I might as well do it. And I was very lucky, because at that time he was the Dean of Academic Studies, David Clay Tell, incredible man, since passed away, unfortunately. But I knocked on his door and he sat me down. We spoke for about an hour. He asked me all sorts of questions about why I wanted to be a journalist. And then yeah, I remember I was in the newsroom in Portugal, sort of unhappy, doing a story. I think I was working at a travel channel, a show at the time, which I hated, and got me traveling, which was fun, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. Wasn't it? Yeah. And then receiving an email saying that I'd been accepted and I started jumping up and down and crying and called my parents and they started crying. And I knew it was the beginning of something of a new life for me. Little did you know that you're going to go on to do that many, many times again all around the world banging down doors, right? Exactly. So this was back. I think I read. It was 2001. Yeah. And just a month into the program at Columbia, you said that you found yourself reporting back to Europe on the events of 9/11. That's right. So I've heard that that experience really kind of set the tone for the type of reporting that you'd like to do. What do you mean by that? Yeah. 100%. I was at home in the morning. I mean, it was around 9 a.m. I had been studying the night before until late, so I was still sleeping when it happened. And I started getting phone calls on both my landline and my cell phone. And eventually I picked up the landline and it was the TV channel that I'd worked for in Portugal telling me that turn on your TV, you know, the World Trade Center is under attack and I couldn't believe it. And they said, you are the only Portuguese journalist that we know in Manhattan at the time. Manhattan was closed off. You couldn't get in or out. And we need somebody to go to Midtown to the rooftop of this building and start reporting live on the events, on these events. And I had my mom on the other line who called me and was crying and begging me not to leave the house. We had no idea what was happening in New York at that day. I mean, it was a very scary and dangerous place to be in. And yeah, my mom was all the way in Portugal and had no control and was just begging me please don't leave the house. And but I did and I realized that this was an important moment, you know, if I wanted to be a journalist, this is this kind of story that you want to be on the ground for. And so I went up to the rooftop of this building in Midtown and I was surrounded by the biggest all my journalism heroes and people that I'd watched on television growing up, you know. They were doing their jobs. They were reporting live for their own countries. I was shaking, I was so so nervous, I had a terrible clothing on, I had like a nylon shirt that looked horrible. I had way too much makeup, I looked awful. But I was 24 years old and I ended up doing the live reporting. I remember being very, very excited with the fact that okay, I can do this, you know. And then walking down to the streets of Manhattan and seeing the first sort of signs of people looking for their loved ones, you know, you had mothers holding photos of their kids and wives with photos of their husbands and it was just such a traumatic event for everyone who was in New York that day. And for me, it changed the course of my life forever because I realized that yes, I wanted to pursue journalism, but it wasn't journalism where I would just answer the questions as to how and what I really wanted to go after the why. And so I wanted to understand why things like this, why events like this happen. And also who was behind these attacks and how can we understand what leads people to do this sort of attack. And so a year after graduating from Columbia University, I moved to Syria. The war in Iraq had just started. I wanted to sort of be close to the action and I wanted to learn Arabic and that began sort of my reporting on black markets and the underground. It sounds like it was great preparation for what you're going to do next and it really propelled you forward and gave you a sense of clarity, didn't it? Yeah. It was really incredible. It was, you know, being a freelance journalist, as you know, was an easy. I had to figure out a way to sustain myself because when I first got to Syria. I was an unexperienced, nobody was gonna buy stories for me. So I used to sell carpets. I'd buy carpets in Syria. I'd ship them to my mother. She would have these tea parties and sell the carpets and then she would send me back the money. I would sort of buy the carpets for like $100 to $150. She would sell them for like 300, 400, and with that money, I was able to sort of pay for my rent and my food in Syria. And then it was there that I first started hearing about jihadis, foreign jihadis, foreign fighters who were crossing from Syria into Iraq to fight against the Americans. And what they saw as the American invasion. And that was the first story that I ever did as a freelance journalist. And it was my entree into black markets. - Some story, yeah. And I had no idea about the carpets. That's actually a very charming detail of your backstory. I think, I love that fun fact. So fast forward, Mariana. You've now had a longstanding career, obviously, serving as a correspondent for various travel or documentary programs for outlets, including vice and fusion, obviously, nacho. And as journalists, we all seek to make an impact. But of course, with the realities of our industry, that's sadly not what everyone gets to do. How did you find your way into sticking with the investigative reporting and documentary space? And was it ever hard to stay committed to that space to your point earlier, especially when other paths might have felt more commercially stable or straightforward? - Yeah, I think it's still hard, even to this day. No matter how many awards you win, and no matter how well you do your work, I think it's still hard. I think there isn't a lot of people, a lot of news organizations out there clamoring to have investigative journalism stories on their airwaves or radio waves or out there. It's expensive, it's risky, it's particularly the kind of reporting that I do. There's a belief that there's no real audience for that. I disagree, I think that traffic, we've done five seasons of the show in Agio, has really proven that there is an audience out there. It was very popular show. I think we investigated some very important subject matters. So I think it's just about not giving up and keep going at it. Traffic just comes to an end. We did five seasons. I'm very proud of the work we put together. I'm working on another show now that's sort of semi-related to black markets, but not in the scope that traffic does it. But I still haven't given up on black markets and I'm still figuring out ways. I started my podcast that's called The Hidden Third that is about these black markets in a way or another. It's a way that I can have sort of long, raw, intimate, very difficult conversations sometimes with people that inhabit these black markets because I truly believe that this is a part of the world, again, a third of the world that is huge impact on us and that we really don't know anything about. And so I'm going to keep doing what I think is important and what I love to do. It's not a sacrifice either, I love doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, more on that later, many follow-ups to come. But just to that point, you've been reporting now on black and gray markets for more than 20 years. What was it that initially drew you to that space in particular? Because you were doing the complex zone reporting. So obviously, used to that gritty environment. But what drew you to the underbelly and the underground network side of that? When I started, I didn't even realize that that's what I was doing. But the stories that I was always attracted to, whether it was in Syria with the foreign fighters or right after that, I did a story about these illegal gold mines in Brazil. And then after that, it was one on the death train that carries immigrants from Central America all the way to the north of Mexico who are trying to get it to the United States. So all these stories, if you combine them and the more and more of these stories are started telling, I realized that these are all black market stories. These are all a huge chunk of our world, of our economy. And they, again, have an impact on our world. This is this kind of story that I am most attracted to, that I'm most interested and curious about. I think that as journalists, I say this often, but as journalists, if you tell people that there is a door and you cannot open that door and see what's behind it, that's exactly what you want to do, right? And in general, as people, that's what we want to do. And particularly if you're a journalist. And so for me, it's that sort of wanting to see what's behind those closed doors and realizing that by shining a light, I can actually make a difference in an impact in these black markets. - Probably because those stories are the most untold. - Absolutely, absolutely. And there's victims in all these black markets. And many times it's voiceless victims, people that don't have a platform. So being able to give people that platform is fantastic. It's, again, it's a real privilege. - So take us behind the scenes of traffic. I think a huge reason you've resonated so much is that you often show a lot of the process to your viewers, right? Whether it's on how hard it is to get access. If somebody flakes on you, when you're trying to still find context on the ground, what does it actually take to bring a single episode to air? You know, from research to filming to legal and standards? - Yeah, oh my god, it's forever. We do 10 episodes a year, which is a little insane 'cause these are all many films. Every single one of them takes. It's about like three to four months of pre-production. Most of that time is spending just trying to get access 'cause we're getting access to fentanyl labs and cocaine labs in the jungles of Peru and Asian scam compounds and illegal street racing and fight clubs. And these are all places and worlds where people don't really want cameras inside, right? So gaining that access is what takes a long time. And then once we were on the ground, we filmed for about two to three weeks on average per story. And then it's about three to four months after to put each story together because it's not just about crafting and the editing of it. It's like you said, it's the standards and practices, it's the legal reviews. We have dozens and dozens of legal reviews both by our own team at MacMedia, MacMedia is the production company I own that also that makes traffic for NGEO and by NGEO's legal team. So we have to make sure that everything we put out there is factual, that it's fair, and that we're telling a story that is contextualized as well. So yeah, it takes forever. And all these 10 stories that we're doing a year, they're sort of being done at the same time. So while I might be out in the field filming one, but at the same time, my team and I, I'm also watching the cuts of the stories that are coming in or I'm helping plan the next story that we're going out into the field to film. So it's all happening a lot once. - 10 episodes a year is a lot, especially when you consider the amount of time that goes into each one. I know that you film for like two, three weeks at a time in each country. - It's crazy. - I mean, it's all over and you're going obviously on the ground and you've gone. Obviously also like NGEO is backed by Disney, right? So you're gonna be lowered up to the hill so I can only imagine how many nights you wanted to pull out your hair going through the process. - Yes, you have no idea. You have no idea. It is, I have to say, I'm happy we have lawyers and there's legal team to protect us, but at the same time, it is the most frustrating part of the job for sure. - Has there ever been a time? I'm sure there are many actually, but has there ever been a specific moment that like, they kind of advise you not to do something and you kind of just really pushed them on for it anyway? I'm sure that's cool. - Yeah, I think we have a little bit of a logo. I think we, a motto, sorry, that we say in our team that just do it and ask for forgiveness later, right? I mean, we go to these places, we spend months and months trying to get access and yeah, there have been situations where NGEO has asked us, oh, maybe it's better not to do this and we still, we go and do it because at the end of the day, none of us wants to get hurt, right? We're not going out there because we want to die and I don't want anyone on my team to get hurt. No stories worth the life, obviously. But we are the ones on the ground and we are the ones who have the best judgment to understand what's safe to do and what's not. And I think a journalism teacher once told me and I love this so much, which one of my favorite lines in journalism that I tell journalism students all the time, which is there's a line in journalism that you should never cross, right? But you have to make sure you come back with chalk on your feet, right? So you have to make sure that you go as close as possible to that to crossing that line without crossing it. - Yeah, that's good. - And the reporting that I do has always been about that, right? Going really taking it as far as I can while keeping the, the, my team and myself safe, but as close as we can get to reality. - I think that's really defined your style of. - Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting. It's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. - Maybe it's Mabeliein. - Warning, I recently watched your episode on the sale of brides in Vietnam where you were followed by local minors relentlessly. - Yeah. - As someone who comes from Asia, that's kind of not really unfamiliar to many reporters there, right? There certainly limits on press freedom. I was curious if there's anywhere that's, you know, ever. been completely off limits to you or where you've really felt you've hit hard walls a journalist? Oh, yeah. China. I mean, so much of the reporting I've done in the past, they're Chinese ties. I mean, talk about fentanyl, reporting on the opiate crises for 15 years now. I've done dozens of stories on fentanyl, and it would make total sense just like I've spent so much time in Mexico, the precursor chemicals for fentanyl that are being made, the fentanyl that's being made in Mexico comes from China. A lot of the fentanyl being consumed and used and abused in the United States comes from China. And so for me, it would make absolute sense to be able to go to China report on this and yet we, you know, very well like I do, that's not something that's possible for us journalists to report freely in China. And in the bright trafficking story, it was super interesting. We were in Vietnam, we had, like you said, a government minder and law enforcement following us, they were, you know, checking every single question we asked, they would give us notes after because I always asked the questions they didn't want us to ask. And then we found out that they were, they were bugging our phones and our van and possibly even our hotel rooms. And so we got very sort of strange and kind of dangerous also to be reporting there. But we did. And we got around and we figured out ways to report on, on bright trafficking. It's really under reported issue. It's horrible. We're talking about girls being trafficked and snatched from their families and taken into brothels and to family homes in China. But we knew that we wanted part of the reporting because all of these victims are ending up in China. Or many of them are. We knew we wanted to do some reporting in China too. So what we did was we teamed up with a group of undercover Chinese journalists who are really the heroes of this story and who went to, who went across the border into China and reported from there with using undercover cameras. And we use that as part of the investigation, which is something we would have never been able to do. Yeah. So often there's these unsung heroes, right? And I'm so glad you lift the bail on that. The fact that, you know, even if you can't say their names for their protection, you know, there are so many amazing local contacts or journalists that you guys work with that really help open those doors. Absolutely. And I show like traffic and I believe like international investigative journalism wouldn't be possible without the unsung heroes. Like you said, the fixers, the producers, the local journalists who really have so much more to lose and very little to gain at times, you know, particularly if they're doing undercover work. Their names are not going to be, you know, in bylines. They're not going to be in awards nights, winning awards on stage because many times they're nameless and they have to remain so in order to be able to keep doing their work. And they're the ones that have the most to risk because we have the privilege of coming back to our homes and they're the ones that are staying behind and if anything goes wrong and if the government finds out that what they've done, you know, or cartel, I mean, that's not just about governments, it's about the cartel, anyone who's reporting out there on crime in general and whether it's lack of press freedom. Yes, they have the most to lose and the least amount to gain. So I really, I'm constantly, you know, of the people that I work with in these countries. Do you still have a dream story or white whale that you have many more crack yet? You obviously talk about China. Like is there a specific story that you really want to go there for or in general? More countries. I've always wanted to go to Iran. We've been trying to figure out a way to do the Iran story for traffic for a long time, and it's really hard to get visas and we've gone through that process. So that hasn't worked yet. And then I've always wanted to go. There was a story that I really wanted to tell for a long time. It's about dino bones, dinosaur bones, which exist a lot in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. And Nageo just never was never interested in doing that story. So I was going to say that sounds very Nageo dino bones in Mongolia. There's a motto at Nageo which is bones and stones, stories that people aren't interested in. That's so funny. I didn't know that. Okay. Well, looking back, what is this hardest story you've ever had to do? I'm sure your ass is all the time, firstly in terms of restrictions and second, just personally as a human being. Yeah. Restrictions, I would say, Vietnam was very, very hard. We already work in sort of a high-risk environment, right, myself and my team. You know, when we're meeting with cartel and assassins and traffickers, it's already hard enough as is. And then you add to that the fact that you have the government on top of you listening and spying on you the whole time really made it hard. And obviously, we depend on these sources that operate in these black markets to talk to us. And no one wanted to talk to us because they knew they were being watched too. And in fact, the police showed up at the homes of some of the people that I'd agreed to talk to was and threatened them, so they ended up not showing up. And then in terms of sort of the emotional side of it all, for me, was really Niger, was getting stuck. We were doing a Niger, doing a story about illegal gold mining and how it's funding these large terrorist organizations. And it's in an area where there's Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda and ISIS, they're all operating out of this region, the southern Sahel. And we were there doing the story and it was going very well. And we'd spent a night in the desert camping out and filming inside these very deep mines. And it was amazing. I was on cloud nine because for years, I've been trying to convince Nadia that this was a safe story to tell and that it was important. And so we were there. We had a military escort service, we had like four cars, trucks with military guys, with AK-47s, a military convoy with us, protecting us. It was the only way that Nadia allowed us to go. And quite frankly, it was the only way that the Nigerian government allowed us to go out there. And then we're coming back with the goods we had filmed our story. We were so happy and we came back to the town to Agadiz and we found out that there'd been a military coup, so they'd closed down all the borders and airspace. And we were stuck. And there was an incoming war, possible war, western African countries were saying that they were going to invade and depose the military government, the Russian government, through the Wagner group, were saying that they were going to protect the military government. So there was a proxy war that was about to start in the country. And we were again in the middle of this very dangerous part of the world with all these terrorist organizations and even kidnapping squads and we lost our military protection. So we had no protection whatsoever. And that started 10 days of just terror and yeah, really hard. And then in the end we've managed, my team here in LA managed to find these crazy pilots that were willing to come and rescue us and we were evacuated. No, they came. They were in Europe at the time. It was through an evacuation company and we were evacuated. All the other foreign nationals and majority of other foreign nationals were being evacuated from the capital. So the French evacuated the British, even the Portuguese, Spanish, everyone. But we were very far from the capital and we had no way to get to the capital. So yeah, so we were sort of left and abandoned there for 10 days, isn't a lot, but for us it was very, very scary. 10 days sounds very long in that situation. Yeah. It was. Certainly in an emergency like that. Was that the scariest situation you've ever been in? Absolutely. I hands down. I think that often, even when I'm with the cartel, I have never been shot at, but I have witnessed shootouts. I've been in places where people were shot at the doorstep of my hotel after we were doing an investigation. Like I've been in situation where I've seen bodies and violence and I've been threatened before. We've been with the cartel in Mexico when the Marines were coming and we had to sort of run and flee, you know, for safety. So there have been a lot of hairy situations throughout my life. And my career, but in general, there's a sense of control that you have or that I usually have, that I know that there's something I can do to extricate myself from that situation. And in this case, I had no control, no matter what we did, there was no way out. And no one was coming to rescue us. And that was really scary because, yeah, it was just a feeling of abandonment, not by my team in LA who worked tirelessly to get us out, but we just felt like this, you know, just yeah, we had no control over the situation. It was very, very scary. So serious question, was that when you truly feared for your life? Yeah. It wasn't, I didn't think that people were going to come in and start shooting at us, but I knew that we were high targets, being Americans. We actually filmed an interview with a gold and human smuggler. And we did it for our story because we kept reporting on the ground even after we lost our military compound even after the coup. But I remember asking him, look, we're desperately trying to get out of here. If we pay, you can smuggle us out of the country. And he said, oh, and he said, absolutely not. You guys are the highest targets right now. You are Americans. You know, there's a lot of people that would stand to make a lot of money from you guys. So yeah, so I wouldn't go to bed thinking people are going to come in and shoot us, but But there is a chance. that they'll come in and kidnap us. And if there isn't a war coming and war breaks out in agadas, we have nothing, we have no protection, we're not prepared for a war. And again, yeah, high value targets. So it was scary, it was nerve-wracking more than anything. Compounding this is the fact that you're also a mother. Yeah. You've spoken about how you've tried to balance that while working in the field. I'm sure you got asked us all the time, but did that change the equation for you whatsoever when it came to thinking about the risk you're willing to take or even redefining personal success more broadly? I am a mother. I have an amazing 15-year-old son who I adore. We have a very, very close relationship. I think in many ways, I live with this guilt as a mother of having to travel around the world and spending so much time away from my son. But I also think that there is a different expectation for men than there is for women, right? My husband also travels around the world and is a filmmaker. And I get asked all the time, as a mother, how are you able to do the work you do? My husband does the same work and doesn't get asked that question, right? Men as fathers don't get asked those questions. So I think Larissa Ward talks about that a lot as well. Yeah, and I think what I have provided and given my son is the knowledge that I can be a good mother, but I can also be a good professional, that if you have a dream that you can achieve that dream, if you work hard, that there are things that are worth believing in and working hard for. I think in many ways I'm an example for him of that. And I have to say that I've been the luckiest person in the world because he is the perfect child for me. I remember listening to this interview where this mother had lost one of the kids that was kidnapped during the music festival in Israel by Hamas. And the mother gave an interview the next few days after her son was kidnapped. And she was talking about the journalist asked, "Tell me about your son." And she said, "He's the perfect son for me." And that always stuck to me. And in many ways my son is the perfect son for me because he has never shown that he's sad when I leave in a way. He's sort of been used to it because I've been doing it all my life. And we talk about the stories that I investigate. And he watches my shows and listens to my podcasts. And I think is very proud of the work that I do. And I'm incredibly proud of him and the man he's becoming. That's really beautiful. And for what it's worth to be fair, if your husband were here, I would have asked the same thing. And this wasn't on you, like I expect you to ask that question. And I'm so happy to talk about my son because I love him so much. But it is, there's a dual standard for sure. I know what you mean. I mean, how do you protect yourself though, I guess, when you're exposing all these powerful networks long after the camera stopped rolling? A lot of people asked us when we didn't audience call up for this interview, how does she protect herself? How does she try to stay safe? Are there any certain, obviously, without giving everything away? Certain safeguards you like to turn to? I think, I know that Disney would much prefer. And Agio would much prefer if we travel around the world with bodyguards. It is a constant fight that I have because I don't want to travel with bodyguards. And we don't. The majority of times, except in cases like Niger, where there is a high risk of terrorism and kidnapping. And the only way to possibly do it is with a military conflict. But in general, we do not travel with bodyguards. And there's a reason why is because when we're approaching, these traffickers and smugglers and scammers we're essentially telling them, look, trust us. We are not going to disclose your location or your identity you can trust us. If I show up with bodyguards, I'm essentially telling them, I don't trust you. Why should you trust me? We see the world, I think, in different ways. I'm trying to see the world with an empathetic viewpoint and I'm trying to understand why people do what they do. And bodyguards and security personnel are usually seeing the world as more of threats. So it often doesn't work in our favor, I think, quite the contrary. That's a great point. I mean, because if you go in there, you're obviously trying to build trust. And it kind of looks like, I already know you could be a bad guy. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I'm already qualifying that person as a bad guy. That is the exact opposite of what I want to do. I do not condone what they do, obviously. But I am very curious about how they become who they are. Because I think that understanding the root causes to crime is the only way that we're going to combat crime. Totally. And we've seen your sources open up massively. Maybe in some cases more than you would have even expected from trained assassins, to cartel members, to people smuggling animals or human organs. Why do you think people are willing to open up so much, even if it could implicate them? First of all, it's ego, right? People want to boast. These are some of the best of the best of what they do. And yet, sometimes their own families don't know they do it. And so we give them a platform and a possibility of doing so with a mask and a distorted voice, where they can really talk about how they're the best fentanyl makers in the world, or counterfeit dollar makers, or whatever it is that they make. And there's an ego about that. That goes with it. And then impunity in many of the places that I report from in the world, such as Loa, Mexico, they don't really see a downside to talking to journalists. There's a lot of corruption. It's not as if the military and the police doesn't know where they are, or the government doesn't know what they are. They do. But there's just a lot of impunity. And then I think the third and most important reason is this wish that we all have of wanting to be understood. No one has ever, or in my experience, what I hear a lot, is that no one has ever wanted to sit down with them and listen to their stories and understand why they do what they do. When I sit across a 16-year-old kid who carries cocaine on his back for days and nights, risking his life, seen many of his friends being killed by rival groups. And I ask him, why are you doing this backbreaking, really dangerous work that's paying you very little? And he tells me, because I want to go to college and my family can't afford college. And it's my dream to become a dentist one day. And there is no work in this part of the country in Peru. And this is the only work that's provided for me. You know, when I hear these stories, then I ask him, why a dentist? And he tells me, because all the ads in my town are about dentists, and they all have a big smile, all the people in these ads have a big smile. And it seems that dentists are making people happy. And so I want to make people happy, too. You hear these stories, it is impossible not to empathize and not to understand that perhaps it could have been us. We could have been in that same exact position making those decisions. And it's actually the lack of opportunities, the lack of options that leads to these, to people that leads people to a world of crime. And the vast majority of cases, not always, but in the vast majority of cases. And I've heard you talk about this point. I think it gets so overlooked, right? That black markets usually exist because there aren't better economic opportunities for these people. So from your experience after decades of reporting on this now, what actually works in terms of creating a sustainable way out? Jobs, opportunities. I mean, we live in the biggest inequality is happening right now, right? When 10% of the world lives with less than $2 a day, way below the poverty line. Like people, you've got 10% of the world that's 700 and something million people that every day have to worry and have to figure out a way to bring food for themselves and their families. I mean, this is not sustainable. All these millions of people then have to find jobs and have to find a way to feed their families somehow, right? And they are the easy prey. They're the ones that then turn to black markets, and to the lives of crime. They're not the ones really making money, you know? They're still at the end of the day, the exploited. And so if you really want to make a change in the world, instead of building big walls and militarizing our borders or going after drug traffickers by exploding fishermen's boats in the Pacific Ocean, you know, the only way to do it is really by creating jobs and opportunities and by sort of ending the incredibly horrible inequality that exists in the world. Yeah, it's just, I can go on and on about this. But it's, yeah. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting. It's even theirs. Meet new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Just plump, dewy hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. On a lighter note, are there any favorite stories that have really stayed with you? You know, we've done some interesting ones, some less depressing ones. We've done someone car racing, street racing. That was really fun. We spent a lot of time in New York and LA and then in the Dominican Republic, seeing these incredible bike and car racing. Also dangerous because people actually do die, but it was really fun to see something. There's a lot of, you know, really interesting characters around it, a lot of adrenaline. Fight clubs was also really interesting. You hear a lot about fight clubs, but you never get to see what's, you know, the reality and who are the people. So we were in all these backyard fights. You know, people go go after each other. I'm a big MMA fan, so that was fun to see. So yeah, so yeah, there's there. I don't know if they're my favorite stories, but they were fun to do. I was going to ask if there you have any rituals or routines that you like to keep to kind of stay sane and like, you know, positive while reporting on what can be really heavy, heavy stories. A wine? That's a good universal one, I think. I love my wine. We have a, we do have a ritual on traffic when we're reporting in the field, which is I sort of force everyone to go out for a drink or dinner at the end of the night. And I think that's very important because it's our opportunity of talking about what we just saw. A lot of times it's, you know, stuff that's hard to digest and it's really important. It's sort of our little therapy session. We talk about work, but we also talk not about work. We talk about things that aren't related to work. We spend so much time in the field together as a crew that becomes part of your family, right? And many times some of your closest friends. So I think it's important to, yeah, just share and talk. Yeah, decompress. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned obviously traffic just had its final season. And in our audience call out, a lot of our questions were about why lamenting this fact and wondering when we'll get to see you back on Linear TV again. So you kind of tease this just now. But what can you share about obviously the end of this chapter as well as the new one? Yeah, so I'm working on a new, a different show for National Geographic. I can't say much about it, but I can tell you it's about scams, which is part of a black market as well. But it's a very different take on it. So it's going to look and feel very different from traffic. And I'm excited about that. I also, like I said, I started my, my own podcast. You know, I think we had 50 episodes of traffic, which was incredible. I, you know, I'm so proud of the my team and the work that we put out there. It's some of the best years of my life. Filming traffic, the opportunity to speak to the people and meet the people that I met all around the world was pretty incredible. But like all good things. It comes to an end. And I think at the end of the day, it was a risky show. It's a very costly show. And it doesn't mean that I will stop reporting on black markets because I'll keep, I'll keep doing it. Yeah, was that what you had planned? You had always planned to kind of, you know, end at a certain point and then maybe move on to the next type of format, but the same. No, I think I would have kept doing it if they would have renewed us. It was Ned Geo's choice not to renew it. And partly it's because of the risk and the cost involved in producing it and making it. But you go as a lot of grey hairs after a knee jar. For sure. And we're living in very unfortunately political times, right? So, you know, we talked about fake pharmaceuticals and the growth of militias and white supremacy. And these are all issues that can become very political at times. The hidden third has been a bright spot, I would assume, in your past year. How has that process been for you? And can you tell viewers, you know, what really led you to really dive into this format as well? Yeah, so we started the podcast in October. So just a few months old, we have, I think, 15 episodes out already. And I had reported on black markets for so long, right? But I hadn't, and all these interviews and people that I meet around the world had fascinating stories. And yet, you know, we'd air like two, three, four minutes of my conversations with them on television. And I realized that I really wanted a platform where I could have long format, intimate conversations with people about the worlds that they inhabit that most people don't know anything about. And they're, again, fascinating stories. And I always say that I see sort of traffic that's being a little bit more of a map of what's happening in black markets around the world. And the hidden third being a little bit of the diary, right? Where we actually sit down, we have very long conversations where we understand, you know, everything from the background of this person to the crimes or the worlds that they're involved in. And also, it's very much about its redemption stories. Because in many cases, we talk to people who have gone through those worlds and have managed to get out. So there's a hope at the end in most of the stories we tell, or they're sort of a, yeah, redemption storyline. I'm really enjoying the series. The Anna Delvie episode where you are. And I was really probing her was especially interesting to watch. Oh, it was one of the hardest interviews of my life, but even a nut. Looking further ahead, Mariana, what would be the end game for you here? You know, if we were to sit back down in 15, 20 years, where would you want to be? I think there's a big space out there and a big market out there for the reporting on black markets, from field reporting. Unfortunately, you see even with the closing of the, with the firing of so many journalists at the Washington Post, you know, you see that there is less and less people willing or companies willing to invest in international journalism and boots on the ground journalism. But I do think that there is an enormous market for it. I mean, you see even without vice, vice used to do that very well, right? Fusion, where I worked at current TV, which I worked, it was first job I had in television here in the United States. These are all platforms that really double down on boots on the ground journalism and investigative journalism. And we don't have a lot of that left nowadays. So I do think there's a space for that. And what I am trying to build with the hidden third is a place not just for in-depth conversations, but it's really to build a media brand around the world of the hidden third. Yeah, let's watch the space. All right, this brings me to a segment. We're calling what it takes, where an audience member gets to hear more on what it takes to get where you are. Today, Bagonia, a journalist based in Hong Kong, asks, "With a limited amount of time and attention span, what would distinguish a great story over a good one? What boxes must tick for you?" Yeah, it's interesting. People talk a lot about attention span and thinking that folks out they are only interested in a few minutes of programming or stories, but that's actually not the case. You're seeing one of the things that you're seeing on YouTube is the success of long form podcast, right? That they're not even listening to, they're watching. So I do think that if the story is captivating, people will watch. And what makes good stories? I mean, I think, again, boots on the ground, like as close as you can be to the reality is more access. I think what made traffic pretty unique was the access, was unprecedented access into these worlds that we hear so much about when we don't actually get to see. And so that's what I keep striving for is, how do we get access into these worlds? Thank you, Mariana. Now we're going to do a quick rapid fire round. So, ready? What was the craziest item you ever saw traffic? Body parts. Oh my god, I just watched that last night. Yeah, and it wasn't even organs, which I knew organ trafficking is well known, but body parts is pretty crazy. I have to say I have to erase from my brain the scene with the brain. Yes, I literally watched it last night. Yeah, yeah. So it was a scene with a pen with a little piece of brain inside the pen. It was pretty. It boggles the mind. Who was the nicest crook you ever met? Is that the audience question, too? I would say one of the best stories we at Tweety, who was a female scammer in Jamaica, who started scamming because she lost her grandfather and they couldn't afford the $2,000 surgery that he needed to stay alive. And I really empathize with her story. We spent a couple of days together, and I still think about her a lot. Well, do you ever get survivor's guilt leaving these places? Because I know a lot of correspondents talk about that. Oh, yeah, all the time. You know, it's I think there was a famous Andrew Lloyd, I think the British journalist who once said what we journalists do is a journey into some day trip into somebody's nightmare, right? So we go there, we tell their story, but then again, we have the privilege of leaving that story behind. And so there's always guilt associated to that. And what I do with that guilt is I try my best to do stories that are compelling that make people want to watch so that I can give voice to those people to a voiceless, you know. Dream interview subject. I would love to interview El Chapo. I knew you were going to say a lot. I just knew you were going to say a lot. Or any of his sons. I would love to interview them. I think they're pretty high up on my list. Yeah. Favorite filming location so far. I loved Vietnam. I loved Vietnam so much that when I realized that there was a chance I'd be banned from the country once our story aired, I actually took my husband and my son there on a trip because I wanted them to experience it. I wanted to travel around the country with them. I don't know if it's if it if I have been banned, but I know that we reported on things that they didn't want us to report. So it is a possibility. I haven't tried to go back. What is something people will be surprised to learn about you? I think it's that I I don't take myself too seriously or the work that I do even though the work I do is serious. I think that people think that maybe I am a very sort of that I'm kind of a downer. She must be such a downer reporting in these black market worlds. - Serious and punchy, yeah. - And I'm not. I love to have fun. I-- - Yeah, I don't take myself or my work too seriously. And I have a very positive view of the worlds. I think that's surprising to people as well. I think that knowing that for the majority of the people that I interview, that I can find redemption, and that I can find things that connect us, even when interviewing the people that we consider the worst of the worst in our society, I think that's pretty special. And I think gives me hope in the world. - One piece of advice that you come back to often. - I think it's my own advice, which is always try to put yourself in somebody else's issues. And I do this always. Even when I receive like negative feedback or hateful comments on the work that I do, I always try to instead, you know, your instinct is to reply back with anger, if somebody sends you an angry message, but I try to understand, wait, I don't know anything about this person. Maybe they've got problems of their own. Maybe they're going through a really horrible day. They probably have way bigger problems than I do. And so how can I find empathy within me to respond to this person in a compassionate way? And maybe give them the only way of sunshine they'll have that day, you know? And more often than you'd expect, I get messages back from people saying that are way nicer than the first message that they sent. And that's, again, has made me realize, yeah, that we shouldn't be immediately angry and we shouldn't be fast to judge, that we should all take a beat and try to understand the other person. - Well said. Mariana, thank you so much. I've enjoyed our conversation. - Oh, I've had so much fun. Thanks for having me, Michelle. - Thanks for tuning in. If you like watching business stories, my journalist friend, Fernanda Portado, has a fascinating look at the largest baking company in the world that you've probably never heard of. His channel in the hyphen covers US Latino culture and you can check it out at the link in description down below. - Thanks for joining us on Behind the Business. For more stories on business and leadership, follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next week. - Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new, grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. Try new, grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. - Maybe it's Mabling.