She Spent 20 Years Inside Cartels, Scam Factories & Black Markets. Investigative Journalist Mariana van Zeller On The $12 Billion Industry Stealing From Americans & Why Everybody Is Scammable

About this episode

Mariana van Zeller discusses her experiences in the dangerous world of underground economies and the importance of understanding these systems to create change.

What really happens inside the world’s most dangerous underground economies? And why do the people running them trust a journalist enough to talk? Mariana van Zeller — Emmy- and Peabody Award–winning investigative journalist, host and executive producer of Trafficked on National Geographic, and host of The Hidden Third podcast — has spent years embedded with scammers, smugglers, cartel members, assassins, and black-market power brokers. In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, she pulls back the curtain on the shadow systems that quietly shape the global economy. Mariana breaks down the difference between the black market vs. the grey market, why understanding these hidden economies is the only way to create real change, and how she manages to gain access to some of the most secretive and dangerous players in the world. She explains how empathy, not judgment, is often the key to getting people labeled “the worst of the worst” to open up, and why many of them speak with her because of something surprisingly simple: a deep human need to be heard and understood. She also addresses critics who say she shouldn’t give criminals a platform, revealing why listening to these voices is…

People in this episode

Host: Mayim Bialik

Guest: Mariana van Zeller

Topics covered

• underground economies
• investigative journalism
• black market
• grey market
• global crime
• empathy in journalism

Keywords

• cartels
• scammers
• black markets
• global economy
• empathy
• journalism
• crime

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: National Geographic

Books & works: Trafficked, The Hidden Third

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