#2092 - Mariana van Zeller
2024-01-25 02:12:12
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Stream by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day!
Hello, good to see you, my friend, how's things?
Great, thanks. so much for having me again.
I'm so happy every time I see you that you're alive and well. Because you do some wild stuff, lady. You get involved in some situations.
I do. This past year was crazy.
Yeah?
Yeah, we just had season four come out. And it's my favorite season, for many reasons. But also because it was quite the adventure.
What did you get involved with this season?
Well, it ended with a military coup in Africa, where my team and I got stuck. So that was sort of a kick off to all of it. It was in Niger, so it's in the Sahel region of Africa. The US has actually a military presence. Remember a few years ago when there were these four US marines that were killed in the Sahel in Niger.
And nobody even knew they were there. Well, there's actually over a thousand troop stations in Niger. And we were there in a little town called Agadez, which is in sort of the southern border of the Sahara Desert. And we were doing a story about gold mining. So the story itself was incredible.
We had a military convoy with us, because it's an incredibly dangerous part of the world. You've got terrorism, you've got ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram. You've got kidnappers, so it's very, very dangerous. So we'd gone there with the permission of the government, but only if we had to have a military convoy with us at all times. 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.
They were very well trained. A lot of them are actually trained by the American military. And we went out into the desert and visited these gold mines, which are crazy. It was an eight-hour off-roading into the desert to arrive at these illegal, unregulated mines. We're going down these tunnels, and it's 100 meters down, hand-dug tunnels with nothing to buttress them, no safety precautions or anything.
But we filmed it all, and we get to the end, and there's people basically mining for gold. And, again, constantly with the idea that the military is telling us, okay, we have to film fast, we have to do this fast, we can't be out at night. So we went to a sort of safety, more safe location to sleep that night under the stars. 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. And we arrived in Agadez, and we got word that there had been a military coup, and the president had been deposed.
And he was now being kidnapped inside the presidential palace, basically stuck there with his family. And that we were about to lose our military compounds and security. And they closed all the land borders and the airspace, and we were stuck with no way out, because you can't travel by road without security in that part of the world. And there were no planes leaving. So we were stuck.
Wow. How long were you stuck for?
It was about nine days. The military coup happened on a Wednesday, and we left on a Thursday. Sorry. So eight days. But it was eight incredibly scary days.
You know, I've been a journalist covering black markets and going to war zones and conflict areas all my life. But this was, I think, the most uncomfortable and scared I've ever been. Because, first of all, the uncertainty of not knowing. There were all these, the West African states were threatening invasion. The Wagner group, the Russian mercenary group, were saying that they were going to come and protect the new military coup leaders.
And so it was a power struggle between the United States and Russia. And that's sort of the last place. you want to be, right? And again, no protection. I'm there with my team.
I'm sort of the boss in that situation, because I'm the owner of the company that produces this. I'm the host of the show. I'm the executive producer. And I felt very responsible for my team as well. And, yeah, the clock is ticking.
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. And we're stuck with, again, no protection and no way out. So it was really, really scary.
How did it get resolved?
That's the interesting part. So the funny thing is that there was an American military base, actually, one of the biggest Air Force bases ever built. It cost over $100 million to build, just two miles from our little hotel in Agadez. We were the only foreigners there, apart from aid workers that sort of live behind barbed wire and in compounds. But we were the only foreigners staying in a hotel.
This hotel, interestingly enough, was actually built when Gaddafi came to visit in the 90s or late 80s. And it was a rundown hotel. We were there, again, no protection, nothing. And the military base is just two miles from us. And we tried to get inside the base to film, and we'd been denied access to the base.
But when the coup happened, we managed to get a contact inside and started asking them, we're here with no security. 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, our local guy, who was actually from Mali, but everybody else was American. 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.
And because the moment they called it a coup, they would have to remove the military, possibly remove military, remove their aid from the country. And that's the last thing you want to do. So they didn't want to evacuate us. They didn't want to call it a coup. They didn't want to get us out of there.
Their hands were sort of tied. That's how they told us. And we started seeing, slowly. as the days started passing and the situation was deteriorating, 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. And I'm on the phone with the ambassador for Portugal telling me, there's a plane for you.
There's like seats for you in the capital. The capital is eight hours away, or 12 hours away by land, and we can't go because it's too dangerous. And no airplanes would take us there. 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. 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.
That sounds like a Chuck Norris movie. Oh. An evacuation company.
It was actually Argo. Have you watched the movie Argo with Ben Affleck about the guys in Iran?
Oh, yeah, I did watch that, yeah.
And how. they don't know until the last minute if they're going to leave or not. It was exactly that situation. So we get to the airport in the middle of the night. 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. The police was supposed to show up. They never did. We arrive at the airport. It's sunrise, and the military is there waiting for us.
Yeah, it's one of those. And they start creating all sorts of problems, saying we don't have the right paperwork, they're not going to let us leave. Meanwhile, there's 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, which was partially not true. 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, performing arts, camp. And so I told him – sorry, this is a very long story.
No, no, it's good.
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. And then we see the plane land, and we see the pilot come out, and we see the military start walking towards the pilot to tell them that we didn't have the permission to leave. And my fear was that the pilot was immediately going to turn around because he had told us that we had 20 minutes. He was going to spend 20 minutes on the ground, and if we couldn't get into the plane, he was going to leave without us. And they get there, and he starts talking to them.
And I'm on the phone with the team in L.
A. and freaking out and telling them, this is horrible. This is happening. They don't want us to leave. And then my husband's on the phone with me as well.
He's telling me, I see the pilot's name, and I think he's Portuguese. Run to him. And I ran to him at the same time as the 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, so there was a secret communication happening between me and him. And he was Portuguese, and he decided to take the risk of getting us on the plane, and we managed to get out of it.
But the guy from the military was still yelling as the door closes, 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. So, in the midst of the craziness, there was also a beautiful moment of connection and humanity.
You've done so many of these boots on the ground, dangerous investigative journalist shows. At a certain point in time, do you say, OK, I've rolled the dice enough?
No. Wow. No, it's really what I love to do. 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, we kept stuck in this dilemma. Do we stay closed in our hotel, or do we go out and continue reporting on the story?
we decided to keep reporting?
There's a lot of sacrifice that goes into it, but it's what I love to do.
It's so sketchy.
Yeah, sometimes, sketchy, not always.
Well, the gold mine itself, just going down with no buttresses, hand-carved gold mines.
Yeah, and these guys do it every single day for hours on end.
And who are they digging gold for?
They sell it to middlemen. We then went and interviewed the middleman, a guy called Cleekley, super colorful character, who basically then sells it to the Gulf. The majority of the gold goes to Dubai. Really? Yeah.
Dubai loves that bling.
They love the bling.
They love the bling out there? They do. Have you ever seen the amount of gold that exists on Earth?
No.
The finite amount of gold that exists on Earth is shockingly small. Shockingly small. Jamie, see, if you can find that. The amount of gold that exists on Earth. Yeah.
I forget what, the exact unit of measurement that they used, but you go, what? What? That's it.
244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date. Most of that gold has come from three countries, China, Australia, and South Africa.
Wow.
Yeah.
I've seen it represented there. There it is. That's it. That's the whole- Yep. That's it.
No way.
Yep. That's it. It's all the gold. What we're seeing, folks, is a couple of large trucks and what looks like a half a football field of gold. Is that about right?
About a half a football field? Yeah. Yeah.
And it's stacked up about, looks like it's about five feet high. Wow. No, maybe a little higher. Maybe it's six feet high. That's it.
Yeah. It's all the gold.
Yeah. Which is why the price fluctuates.
Sort of, but I don't get it. I don't even like it.
Not particularly.
I don't like gold jewelry. I like silver. Silver looks prettier to me. Yeah. It's just like, I get it.
I get it that people like it. It's rare, but it's weird that it's rare. Not that it's rare, but it's weird that we care. Like, it doesn't even do anything. It's not like you can make a weapon out of it.
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? Yeah.
What? Yeah.
What is that? Yeah. Why are we obsessed with that stupid soft metal? It's pretty.
Because there's not a lot of it.
There's a lot of shit. that's pretty.
Absolutely. How come rubies aren't worth as much? Maybe they are. I don't know. But there's a lot of stuff that's pretty.
Why is that stuff the thing that everybody wants to trade?
Yeah. And diamonds as well is another one that I don't quite get.
Yeah. Diamonds are really weird, because diamonds, they can make now.
Yeah.
But women don't want the made ones. Isn't that crazy?
It is, but you can barely tell, apparently, the difference.
How can you tell? Yeah. What kind of psycho?
And why do you care?
Yeah. Are you going over your diamond with a magnifying glass before you decide whether or not it's worthy of you wearing it? Right. What's happening here?
Yeah. Great.
It's a rarity thing. Mm-hmm. You know?
Yeah.
And it's also, it's like there's something sick about it. Like you want the ones that were created by the earth, only that people had to risk their life to get, not like some really fascinating piece of innovation that has allowed them. I mean, they can make large diamonds now.
Yeah. And they look exactly like the real ones.
Yeah, but they're not. Yeah, I know. It's fake. It's stupid. It's not even fake.
It's a real diamond, but it's a diamond that's made by humans.
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.
Hmm. With somebody who said that?
Yeah, Mrs. Rogan.
I'm not going to criticize your wife.
She's not, she's just like, I'd rather have a real one. I'm like, that is a real one. This doesn't make any sense. I'm like, help me out. It wasn't an argument or anything, but I'm like, I don't get it.
I don't, why is that?
I don't either. You know, we had a, 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. 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.
And, you know, they killed 30 people, massacred and tortured lots of them. And it was horrible. And we went there and started investigating this. and we weren't married. He was my boyfriend at the time.
We were planning on getting married, 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. We thought about it, but we didn't. Yeah.
It doesn't seem like you should.
No.
Maybe if you found one.
We actually went to the mines, and I remember, that's what happens. We went to gold mines in the Amazon as well, for another story is that when you're in these places, you're, you can't stop looking at the ground. You find any chance, you find anything, but obviously.
Yeah. How difficult is it for them to find diamonds? Because that's the thing about the De Beers. They're so smart with what they've done. They basically have warehouses filled with diamonds.
I know. And they've elevated the price to pretend that they're rare, but they're not really rare anymore because of their mining abilities. The technology has increased. Right.
They control the price that way.
Yeah. Right. It's pretty smart.
Very smart. Yeah. It's difficult to find a diamond. It's really difficult. I mean, there's a lot of backbreaking work.
We went to Sierra Leone and did another story about that too. It's backbreaking work. It's not easy. And they make nothing. You know, the miners make nothing.
That's where it's really creepy. Well, that's why they revolted. Yeah. You should have paid those guys better. Yeah.
You wouldn't have lost your penis.
Sure.
Well, that's also the story of cell phones, right?
Yeah. The rare earth.
I mean, that's the Darth Kara that was on and he discussed his work in the Congo, where they were investigating these cobalt mines, and in 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 for basically slave wages. They have women with babies on their backs while they're doing it. They're hand digging this stuff. So you're inhaling these toxic fumes from this cobalt.
Yeah. And it's so,
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. That 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. Yeah. At the root of it is slave labor.
Right.
And it's unavoidable.
Yeah. I mean, yeah. But the same people that would probably never buy a diamond ring, right?
Yeah. I guess. I guess.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just weird. It's just weird that we know that that is where the stuff comes from. Right. 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. 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 and they work normal hours and they have great healthcare and all that stuff. That's possible. Mm-hmm. And you would think that a device that is literally owned by every single human... There are more cell phones in this country than there are human beings.
Oh, wow.
And yet, no, we don't make a single one over here.
Because it's cheaper. Because it's microchip and self-explanatory. It's cheaper. Yeah.
I mean, even places like China where they make the cell phones, where they have the Foxconn factory that's covered with nets to keep people from jumping off the roof. Because so many people are committing suicide because their life sucks so hard that instead of fixing their life, they just put nets up.
That's insane.
Have you ever seen that? No, I haven't. The Foxconn building?
No.
It's so dystopian.
Really? They have nets at the bottom of the building?
All around the building. All around the outside edge of the building, to keep people from jumping.
That's crazy. That is insane. I've tried to go to China so many times to report on it. It's almost impossible to get in.
Yeah, they know you. That lady's not coming in.
Yeah, she's not going in.
That lady spills the beans.
Yeah. Congo is really interesting. We were there for an ape story. And, you know, one of the things that happened with the rare earth minerals and all of that is that the US used to control a lot of those mines. And then China, they sold them to China.
And now a lot of the stuff we need for the future is in the hands of China. It's so stupid. That's very American. Very American. Yeah.
Very. Yeah.
Yeah. It's dark. It's just crazy that there's so much exploitation in that country. You know, that continent is just flooded with exploitation.
And it's stunningly beautiful. 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.
It's stunning. It could be, you know, a huge tourism destination. We had the opportunity of hiking up this Cahuzi Viega National Park that leads up to the gorillas, where we saw gorillas in the wild. And it was beautiful, beautiful, stunningly beautiful.
Who is trafficking in apes?
Well, a lot of them are ending up in the Arabian Gulf, in Dubai.
What do they do with them?
They put them in private zoos that they then charge visitors to come and see. They put them in private homes. People that want to have exotic pets in their house.
Someone has a gorilla in their house?
Oh, they do. Gorillas go for $500,000 or more. Wow. And it's a crazy gorilla that they catch in the wild. 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.
Baby apes are being stolen for pets. Yeah. People's being done to stop it.
Yeah.
$550,000 trade ban for Asian, African, Greek apes in China, Middle East, and Pakistan. Wow. So they have to kill the whole family?
They kill the whole family, Joe. It's horrible.
Why do they have to kill the whole family?
Because, for example, it's baby chimps. You can't carry your live chimp, for example, because they're too dangerous. And so it's the Batwa pygmies. We spoke, we did a whole chain of who hunts them, who kills them, who transports them, and then who bites them. And we started with, in the park, with the Batwa pygmies.
You had a guest that I remember when I was doing research for the story I listened to. Didn't you have a guest?
Justin Ray.
Yeah, who did a story about that. Fight for the Forgotten. Yeah. So the pygmies, you know, they've sort of lost their home, which is the forest. The Hong Kong government says they can't be there, and they have no money, and no schools, and no education, and nothing.
Just desperate situations. So these people come out and say, if you get us a baby chimp, we'll pay you $10.. $10 for a baby chimp. And they go out, and the problem with baby chimps is that until they're five years old, they live at the hip of the mother, like always, next to the mother. It's the way they, their family.
And so 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.
Because they'll attack?
Because they'll attack, yeah. They won't let you leave with a baby. Yeah, it's very, very sad. So we're talking to these guys who have done this.
How much of a market is there? Like, how many are they trading?
There's a lot, lots being sold. So we then went online and did this whole investigation, and found that it's actually super easy. There are people online that you can reach out to, and they will get you a chimpanzee or a baby gorilla. It's crazy. And then they're transported in sometimes private planes to these places.
And then tourists in Dubai can take photos with little baby chimps. Jesus Christ. Or baby gorillas.
I'm sure you know about that lady in Connecticut that had a full-grown chimpanzee in her home, and then her friend came over and the chimp decided he didn't like her friend, so he ripped her face off, tore her apart.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they're ruthless.
They are. You should have one in your home.
Yeah. That's for sure. And you're not going to stop them unless you shoot them. They're so powerful. There's not a damn thing you can do to stop them from ripping your face off.
Yeah. It's the Doc Antle of it all, you know? Remember Doc Antle? Tiger King? Mm-hmm.
Remember that guy? Yeah.
A lot of them, it's basically people around the world wanting to be Doc Antle and having a private safari that celebrities come to.
What a bizarre need. A bizarre want. A bunch of locked-up, exotic primates in cages you just stare at.
But also what a bizarre need it is that we want to take photos and selfies with tigers and apes. Like, why?
I went to a tiger sanctuary in Thailand with my family a few years back, and 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, these little tiny tigers. They're really cool. But it's just like, wow, and there's a lot of people in the room to make sure that the tigers don't go crazy, and they're little. And then it gets to a slightly larger tiger, and there's men with sticks, and you could sit there. There's, like, a picture of my daughter when she was 10..
She's, like, sitting there smiling. She's sitting next to our tiger, a small tiger. It's, like, 40 pounds or something like that. Then, when they get bigger, they're drugged. So these people go in the cage with this massive tiger, and the tiger is just like.
. . They're just all fucking heroined out, and these people take selfies. And it was so sad. I'm like, we have to leave.
I'm so depressed.
Do you remember the name of that place?
I do not. It was in Chiang Mai.
Yeah, it's really sad. And the babies are also taken from their mothers. You're not supposed to be handling baby cubs that young.
Yes. All of it is bad. Exactly. It's all bad. But it's just, like, I didn't realize they were drugged.
I thought they just fed them a lot and the tigers are cool. Nope. No. No, they're drugged. They're really drugged.
Like, you see them there, just, like, nod. They don't move at all. They just lay around. So they just get these tigers hooked on heroin.
Is it heroin?
I mean, it must be. It must be some sort of an opiate, something like that, morphine, something. Something that just conks them out. So they're just sitting there, like, nodding. And there's this massive, gorgeous apex predator.
And it's all just so that people can take pictures with them. Right.
And so you decided to leave?
Yeah. I'm like, no, we're not going there. I got weirded out when we got to the mid-sized cats. Because I was like, that cat is a little dangerous. Even though it's only, like, 40 pounds, they're still a little sketchy.
Like, this is a little weird. And I went in there and I was like, it seems like it's okay. Let's just take a picture real quick and let's get out of here. But then when you get to the big cats, it's, like, massive depression sets in. You're like, oh, no.
So terrible, yeah.
Because I'm just enamored with cats, especially tigers. I just think nature created, like, the most beautiful, terrifying thing. I mean, if a tiger wasn't real, it's right out of Avatar. I mean, with their insane colorations and their fangs and the way they can leap, their capabilities. I'm sure you've seen that video of the guy who was on the elephant.
And the tiger leaps through the grass and gets him while he's on the elephant. You ever seen that? No. Oh, it's one of my favorites. 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. And this tiger leaps, like, 15 feet in the air and slashes at this guy. And he's just lucky he got out of it with just getting cut up.
Watch this.
That is a nightmare. So the guy's on the elephant. Look at this cat. Oh, my God. Look how it leaps.
I mean, look at the size of this thing. But watch out. And all these guys are like a little stick. Oh, my God. Like, stop.
Don't do this to me. Don't do it. Look at that thing, just catch air. Oh, my God. Look at it.
catch air. Like, oh, my God. It just flies at him. Holy shit. And swipes.
And just ripped his arm apart.
That is insane. Yeah. And ripped his arm apart?
That's what happened. At the end of it, his arm's like half dead.
That is insane. Oh, my God. Oh.
Such a terrifying creature.
That scares me to death. When people always ask, 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 Sundarbans. Mm-hmm. And the problem with that area is that tigers have been actively targeting people there for over 100 years. And so I think the numbers over the last 100 years, 300,000 people there have been killed by tigers.
Oh, my God. That is insane.
Yeah.
And people that just live there and work, probably farmers that are working there. Just villagers.
Villagers. Well, there's a bunch of things that happens. One, the typhoons come in, and people die, and they drown, and they wind up in the river, and the tigers eat them. And then, two, there's an issue, 300 people and 46 tigers have been killed since 2000 in human-tiger conflicts in the Sundarbans. They've done a lot to mitigate it.
That's only in the last, that's since 2000.
. Mm-hmm. That's over the last 23 years. It used to be a lot worse. And also, the problem is that the water is brackish.
And so the tigers are drinking salt water. And apparently, it irritates them. It's very painful. So you got these angry, pissed-off tigers that actively hunt humans. And so these guys that go out to try to survey, they're always trying to figure out how many tigers are there.
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. And if they see your face, they're less likely to attack. They like to attack you when your back is turned. So they have these helmets with a mask on the back to confuse the tigers.
And what are they doing to try and protect the villagers now?
Guns, that's it. I mean, what are they going to do? There's so many of them. I mean, it's where they live. And it's like a dense jungle.
So good luck finding all of them.
It's so crazy. We did a story on tiger trafficking in season one, I think. 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 activated all throughout the park, the jungle, so that when they step on it, it activates, right, so you see the tigers in the wild. And they're beautiful. But then you have to sleep.
I didn't sleep at all. It was the worst night of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
It's an amazing animal, though. I mean, it's fascinating and incredible that they exist. But this desire that people have to kidnap them and bring them to America and put them in a cage so they can just point to them and stare at them.
It's crazy.
Weird.
Yeah. It's really weird. Yeah. It is very strange. Yeah.
People, again, the people that go to these places as well to take photos. I don't get it.
What else did you cover this season?
This season was a good one. You know, we started the first episode, we went back to my hometown, Portugal. We did an episode on hash, hash trafficking. Oh.
Most Americans don't know a lot about hash, actually.
Most Americans? You don't know.
But it's the first drug that people in Europe usually try. Yeah. It's the marijuana of Europe, I would say, or the rest of the world, actually.
Well, it is THC, right?
It is, yeah. Yeah. It's from the resin glands.
Yeah. It's just super, super-duper potent.
Super potent. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the first drug I tried and the first drug that any of my friends in Portugal tried. 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?
And we knew that it was Morocco. Everybody knows that the majority of hash in the world comes from Morocco. But now I thought, well, the unique opportunity to actually go and try to figure out how it gets here. 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, like, hang out and hide and smoke hash.
And we'll film a scene of us talking about while we're smoking. So I actually smoked on camera for the first time, did drugs on camera.
In Portugal, it's all decriminalized, correct?
It's been decriminalized since 2001.
. So completely illegal to do.
And it's an amazing success story.
Amazing success story.
In terms of addiction, crime, violence, everything went down.
HIV rates, incarceration. Amazing. All of it. Yeah. So what they did is, yeah, they decriminalized it.
So you can use, if you're caught using any drug, even hard drugs, nothing happens to you. But you're not allowed to traffic or sell it. But if you're caught, they basically give you the option. 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 than they will by actually giving them treatment. So if they see that you're using heroin, they can go up to you and say, look, we'll give you the opportunity.
Do you want to go to prison or do you want to go to treatment? The vast majority of people will say treatment. And the government actually pays less for treatment than they do for incarceration.
Isn't that wild?
It's wild. And you'd think that, you know, people would have used this example and it would have spread around the world.
Well, the problem with America is the system is it's so deeply unjust that there's privatized prisons and there's union guards. 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.
And the private prison complex, too.
Yeah. It's a business. It is. It uses human beings as batteries to generate money.
Yeah.
Just put them inside this box and you can generate money, human beings. So you find reasons to put them in. I'm sure you heard about that. There was a judge in Pennsylvania that got arrested because he was sending children to prison. He was sending children to juvenile detention centers that were innocent.
And, just like every kid that went through his court system, he just shipped away.
He got a kickback? He got a kickback.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So this guy, how many lives did he ruin? Who knows? And how many lives did they ruin because of the abuse that they suffered and wound up having this tortured existence? And they went out and committed more crimes and ruined more lives.
It's one fucking judge.
Yeah. It's sick. And it's the wrong people that end up going to prison.
Well, that guy, fortunately, did go to prison, the judge. But how many similar situations are there out there? How many people have not been caught? How many people are more subtle about it?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's pretty twisted.
It's horrible. It's really bad.
So when they go and they kidnap these chimpanzees and kill their families, is there anything that's being done to stop this? Are there, like, organizations that go out and police? Is there anything?
Yeah. There's definitely a bunch of organizations. We spent time with one called Conserve Congo. It's a local Congolese man who's trying to sort of investigate and stop it. We also spent one of the best days of filming was spent when we went to see the gorillas.
We spent time with these park rangers. This guy is incredible, who's basically devoted his life to trying to protect these gorillas. So they go out with AK-47s every day up in the mountains and go up and spend time with this family or these families of gorillas to try and make sure that no one is coming. And hurting them. But it's really dangerous work.
It takes resources. The hope is that they can sort of turn a little bit of this area of the Congo to what has Rwanda nowadays. You can go to Rwanda and you can go to Uganda and see gorillas. And as tourists, you can pay a lot of money, but it provides jobs and helps the local economy. So, basically, the idea is that you dissuade poachers from coming in.
And you give up jobs to people who would otherwise perhaps become poachers. And so yeah, that's being done. It was actually incredible. We spent, I don't know, like three hours hiking through very thick jungle. And you're seeing the signs that the gorillas are there.
You're seeing, their poop is there. 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. And suddenly they're completely nonchalant. They say, oh, it's right here.
I was like, what? And there's this huge silverback gorilla just sitting there. And the whole family is there. They had had a baby. The mother had had a baby just the week before.
And this is animals that are being pushed to the brink of extinction. So it was really special. It was a week of celebration at the park. And we saw the little baby. 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, rushes right by them.
So they don't bother people at all?
No. So I think that they have to become used to the presence of humans. So a lot of the park ranger's job is actually to get them to get used to presence, with the hope that they can bring in tourism again. So I think that's part of what they do. So this family of gorillas was used to people, and they don't bother you at all.
And we were this distance from the gorilla, me to you.
What country are the traffickers coming from?
Most of them, the hunters are from the Congo. They're the pygmies, the Batra pygmies. The middlemen are Congolese men that see an opportunity. And then the buyers, which is the problem, always lies on demand, right, are from the Gulf countries, the majority of them. 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.
So we blame ourselves as well here.
Yeah, I guess.
People are so weird. Right.
So weird and cruel.
So weird. Wait, you talked about hash for a second. You've tried hash, yeah?
Yep.
And? It's great. Yeah.
I like it.
You think it is stronger than weed?
Well, it's just concentrated. Yeah. You know, it's like high THC. It's resin.
And if you saw how it's made, it's incredible. We went up to the Kif mountains in Morocco. They basically, it's these like farmers, and they beat these drums so that the resin and the little seeds come out. And then they mix it all into like this paste. And, yeah, it's actually a beautiful process, very dangerous, because obviously there's a lot of money in black markets.
Yeah. What do they do with the rest of the plant, the leaves and all that stuff?
I think they don't use it. It was just there. They dry the whole plant and the leaves. And then, yeah, it's just like a grum process where the stuff they want falls to the bottom.
I wonder why some countries gravitated towards that method of using cannabis. Right. And not just smoking it, like they do in most of the country, most of the world.
Yeah. And I wonder what came first. I don't know either. Yeah. But I'd probably think that hash came first.
Really? And then the Americans came up with weed. I'm not sure. I don't know.
I bet it was the opposite. I bet weed came first. It just, it's a strange thing that it's still illegal in so many parts of the world. And then, you know, fentanyl isn't. Right.
Heroin isn't. Or opiates aren't.
Yeah. Oxycontin.
Yeah.
Yep. I know. It's wild.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, unfortunately, because of our prison industrial complex, I don't, I just don't see a mass decriminalization akin to what's happening in Portugal, 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. They are.
Because of that. And they're mixing it in all sorts of drugs, as you know. Yeah. Working on an episode on fentanyl, we've got the whole opiate crisis and everything.
Smoking did not become common in old world. until after the introduction of tobacco in the 1500s. Hashish was consumed as an edible in the Muslim world. Interesting.
Oh, the first, yeah, first attestation of the term hashish is a pamphlet published in Cairo in 1123, current era, accusing Nizari Muslims of being hashish eaters. The cult of Nizari militants, which emerged after the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate, is commonly called the sect of the assassins, a corruption of hashishin, Persian for hashish smokers. Wow. So, assassins? A corruption of the order of the assassins.
Simply, the assassins were Nizari. Is that the original term of assassin? Is that where it came from?
I don't know. I mean, this might take a little more.
Yeah. How weird.
Huh.
I mean, that would be like. The modern term. assassination is believed to stem from the tactics used by the assassins. Oh, wow. Wow.
So it's all about hash.
Assassin comes from hash. That's nuts.
We did an episode on assassins this season as well.
Oh, really?
Yeah. That was wild. That was insane. It's big. I mean, obviously it's a subject matter that I've wanted to do for a long time.
It's almost an impossible one to do for many reasons, as you can imagine. But we actually found, all started with an interview that we did with an assassin in LA. Yeah. About 15 minutes from my house in LA. And we have a contact in LA 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?
And, you know, in the off chance that he knew an assassin, we contacted him and he said he actually did. He knew a guy. He didn't think he was going to talk to us, but maybe he did because he was close to him. And eventually this guy agreed to talk to us and we met him in the corner. And as we're driving there, so we're driving there with our local contact is taking us to meet this guy.
And he told us, hey, be very careful. This guy is like the way he said. it is like he's bipolar, kind of like he acts as if he's bipolar. One moment he's happy and the next he can just freak out and nobody knows why. He's really hard, difficult to deal with.
And I asked him, are you sure he's an assassin? Is it possible that he's just posting? That happens sometimes. And he said, no, no, no. I've seen this guy being offered $80,000 to go and kill someone.
And I know this is what he does. Everybody knows this guy in his community, in his group.
So he operates in America?
He does. Yeah. I asked him where. He's based in L.A., but he says it's all over the United States.
Wow.
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. And it was me and three or four other people. And my fear, we told him we're not, it's not a setup. So I just came here because I trust my, my buddy, but you know, you don't fuck me. If the police shows up, you guys are all dead.
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, but for any reason, he's going to think it's up. Yeah. And this is not good.
So yeah, it was a quick interview, but chilling one.
How many people has this guy whacked?
He said, he said more than 10.
. He didn't say exactly how many I asked him. I also asked, started asking him personal questions about, do you have a family? Cause? he was saying he doesn't kill women or children.
I asked him, but do you have kids? And do you realize like, what would it be like for your kids to live without you? If you're doing the same to other kids, right? He got really mad at my questions. He said, don't fucking ask me emotional questions or something like that, personal questions.
And this interview is over and left.
What was his background?
He said, uh, he came from a really tough family, um, and that, yeah, involved in drugs and guns and all of it. And he, I think, realized early on that he could do this. And a lot of other people can't. He was able to do it and he gets well paid and he does it.
How does one even apply to a job like that?
Yeah. And, 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? Yeah. Like this doesn't really exist. And all those stories that you can go on the dark web and find an assassin, most of that is bullshit.
So that was my fear, but I do trust this contact. And, 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, um, in Kabi, which are, they're cold in South Africa. Um, and that was fucking crazy as well. So we spent time with one, his name's Jojo, young guy, and his story is insane. And that, that he was a lot nicer, a lot more approachable, but has killed like over 30 people and, uh, and gets paid a thousand, $500 per hit.
And, you know, thousands of people have died in just the past few years at the hands of assassins in South Africa. And a lot of it is, happens in the taxi industry. So there's like 70%, I think, of commuters in South Africa commute on these taxis. Basically it's like these vans and they're worth a lot of money and it's sort of a cash business. And the owners of these taxi companies are routinely being killed.
So we spent time with a taxi owner who owns one of these companies and he had a bullet from AK-47 on his head that he showed us. It was a $1 million, um, prize for anyone who killed him. And this is a crazy guy. And his rivals are just across the street with all their taxis, the other company that he says are trying to kill him. So he's surrounded by bodyguards with AK-47 at all times, AK-47s at all times.
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? Like, sure. So we start walking towards the rivals and immediately there's a group of heavily armed men walking towards us immediately, within like seconds. And this happens every day. Like people are killed every day.
So yeah. And then back to the assassin.
And they don't have a hard time talking to you about this. I would think that there's no upside to them discussing this with you, but potentially they could get caught.
Yeah. Um, we go through a lot of, you know, to make sure that we protect their identities. But I think Jojo, this assassin, is a good example of why they talk to us. So we spent an hour and a half, more or less, two hours talking to him. And he tells us a story of how he became an assassin.
His parents were killed when he was young. He was like nine years old, or something. He felt like. he was left with no protection. He started carrying a knife and his parents were killed by an assassin, by the way, as well.
Um, 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. And he says, yeah, at the beginning I had to get drugged and drunk to be able to do it. Um, but now I'm used to it. I'm cold blooded and I'm used to it.
And we started talking about the cycle of violence, right? Because he also said he doesn't kill women and children. And I asked him, but do you realize that you are traumatized from the experience that you had, that your parents were killed, and now you're doing the same thing to other kids? It's like, I actually never thought of that. And then he started talking about, Hey, really wants to quit.
And he's been thinking, but he doesn't have, can't get a job and all of that. So I think people talk to us for a variety of reasons. I think there's a lot of boasting, a lot of people that want to just talk about what they do. Sometimes their families don't even know they do what they do. I think in places like Sinaloa, where I've spent a lot of time with a cartel, it's impunity.
They don't see a downside because the authorities aren't really going to do anything, even if they know who they are.
How do you feel safe in a place like that?
Actually, I sometimes feel in certain countries,
safer in Sinaloa, for example,
if you've been given the green light to go into the cartel, the territory controlled by the cartel, to talk to cartel members. And it takes weeks, months, sometimes years to get that access. Once we're under their protection, we're under their protection. We have their protection to be there. But then certain things happen.
We were filming in Sinaloa once, and we were filming these sicarios, and they had their walkie-talkies. 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. And the Marines in Mexico are known to shoot first and ask questions after. And they started freaking out, and they basically jumped into the cars and left us, and we didn't know what to do.
Should we go after them, and they're going to think we're part of the group, and they can start shooting at us, or should we stay behind? But we were in an open area, in a sort of forested area. Should we try to hide? And then we're going to really look suspicious. So it was crazy.
What did you do? We got in 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.
So they just do cocaine all the time.
They do a lot of cocaine. And funny story, my director of photography, Fred Manu, who was the director of photography for Bourdain on Parts Unknown before, and we were filming the scene, and we'd driven into the Sierra Madre Mountains, and then we had to walk for a mile or two to a place where they felt comfortable showing us their guns, and they were going to start shooting, and they would give us the interview. It was the story about American guns flowing down south and how they're used in the violence. And we were walking there, and suddenly Fred basically turns to us and says, I don't feel good. And he had a massive case of, what is it that you call it?
The revenge?
Oh, monotonous, revenge.
Massive case. And so we walked to the place. Fred's on the floor. They managed to put some sort of cloth on the floor for him. He's on the floor, can barely breathe, is puking and going to the bathroom, and all of it is happening at the same time.
And the guy is constantly offering him cocaine and telling him,
Dude, this will fix you, my friend.
You have no idea. Do this. I am telling you. Fred did not take the cocaine.
Would the cocaine have helped him, he thinks?
He was absolutely sure the cocaine would have helped him. I don't know.
It would have. Oh, it did?
Yeah.
That's the cure.
What else is in the cocaine, we don't know.
These guys are probably getting pure cocaine.
Oh, yeah. I'm sure.
Why would they cut it?
And they're snorting it all day long.
Oh, my God.
And then it wasn't actually a very good idea for us to stay with them for so long. 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.
And one of them had been snorting cocaine all day and basically pulled the trigger on the floor. And the bullet came out just like two inches from Fred's head, because he was in the bunker right in that hole. And it could have been really bad.
Oh, Jesus.
Yeah.
Coped up sicarios in Mexico. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah.
And how often are those guys killing people?
Oh, very often. They also told us all. So they're not considered assassins per se. They're sicarios. They're hitmen, right, 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. But, yeah, a lot of people. And he also told me the story of the first person he ever killed. And he was ordered to kill, and it was a friend of his. He went to his house and knocked on the door, and the guy opens the door, and he shoots him.
And the guy is yelling, don't kill me, don't kill me, and shoots him right in the face.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Terrible. That's all what happens when you make drugs illegal. Then the criminals are selling them.
Yeah. So that we can consume them. Yeah. Let's not forget.
Yeah.
It's dirty.
Yeah, it is dirty.
And I don't, you know, I've had conversations with people about this, like what is the solution in America? Because if you legalize drugs, all drugs in America, and sold them, like if pharmaceutical drug companies sold heroin, cocaine, all that.
I don't want the pharmaceutical companies involved in that.
Right. Like, who sells it if it's not them? Yeah. So either the cartel sells it, or they sell it. Or no one can sell it.
Well, that's not going to be the case. Someone is going to sell it. And if you make it legal, you're going to have more people doing it. Like, we're not accustomed to things being legal. 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. They wouldn't know how to do it. If you could just walk into Walgreens and buy cocaine, I guarantee you we'll have more overdoses, more addicts, more. But what is the solution to that? Is it education?
Does that even work? Is it counseling? Is it drug rehabilitation centers everywhere? Is it Ibogaine? Like?
what's the solution to it? Yeah.
I don't know. But I think looking at the example of Portugal is a good idea.
Yeah, but we're not in Portugal. The problem is like what we talked about, like prison guard unions, privatized prisons, 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.
Yeah. Yeah, there's no easy answer, which is why we haven't, no one has tried to solve this.
And then there's this bizarre trend to let people out that have committed violent crimes in this country. It's almost like someone's engineering the deterioration of the country and like ensuring civil unrest.
So they're keeping the people that for minor crimes that shouldn't be there, like the guy selling weed on the corner.
Well, they're not even keeping them anymore. Now. Now, I mean it's like Los Angeles in particular, is just nuts. It's just nuts. 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.
And violent crime, whatever, it is, no cash bail, they're just letting people out. And they're letting people out of prison that are violent prisoners.
What's the idea behind that?
That the prison system is unjust. That's the narrative. But the end result is people are unsafe because you've already created this environment with prisons and with a lifetime of crime. These people are habitualized. They're criminals.
And then they've committed violent crimes. And then you let them right back out on the street.
Yeah, it's wrong. I don't know enough about it. But I do think that we tend to look at the problem the other way around. 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.
Yeah, we've talked about that many times in this podcast. If you wanted to solve the root cause, you would clean up inner cities. That's what you would do. You'd take these crime-ridden, drug-ridden, gang-infested communities and you'd invest a massive amount of money and resources into fixing and rehabilitating them. And the money that we have spent just in the Ukraine war could have done that many times over in this country.
And they have not lifted a finger to stop it. It's almost like there's a formula to ensure control and power, and you need a certain amount of crime and violence. You need a certain amount of people in prison. 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.
Yeah, also talking about security helps a lot of politicians, right? Oh, yeah. Because they have something that they're going to do to make it better.
Both of those things are true, yeah. Prop up the problems and offer you as the solution.
Right, yeah. 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? Your choices are only as good as the opportunities you're given.
Sure.
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.
100%.
It's the only job you have available for you.
Yeah, what else are you going to do? 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?
Yeah.
Are you going to start your own business? What are you going to do? Right.
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 a chimp.
Exactly. Right.
That's the biggest problem.
So what else did you investigate? How many episodes did you do this year?
Ten. Eight are now on Hulu. Two more are coming soon. But one of them, another one cartel involvement is about fake pharmaceutical pills. It's really interesting.
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. And yeah, I mean, they're making these pills. And then we went to India as well, which is another source of pharmaceutical pills. You have like 40,000 online pharmacies that you can go to and buy prescription drugs without a prescription. So a lot of Americans are doing that because it's much cheaper.
I think it's something like 20 million Americans are using the black market for their pills, for their drugs, because they can't afford them here, which is crazy. 20 million. 20 million. It's crazy. 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.
And so when you say fake, is it, it's not manufactured by, you know, Pfizer or whatever, but is it the same components?
It looks exactly the same, but a lot of these pills don't actually have any active ingredients. 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. And it was just calcium and food dye to make it look the color, whatever color he wanted. 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. Wow.
Yeah.
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 sorts of things. They don't give a fuck. They don't give a fuck. 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. But they're mixing these drugs with fentanyl and meth. So I think it was something like 70% of the drugs that they bought and tested had actually had meth and fentanyl, and Americans were crossing the border into Mexico to buy these drugs and then dying. Jesus. It's insane.
But it's all, again, it's like easy for us to blame the cartel and other people for doing this, but it's all our fault. It's the broken system that we have in our country. 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. Her health insurance wasn't covering it. So she would go across the border and pay $60 for it in Mexico, of course.
Is any of it the real medication?
Yeah, some of it is. Is there a way to tell? And they're real pharmacies.
So some of the real pharmacies have fake drugs?
So that's what's so interesting is that even pharmacies that are real, they're completely authentic and legitimate, and that there's towns, there's a town that we filmed at, called Algodones, for example, that's on the other side of the Arizona border, that has more hospitals and orthodontists and opticians. How do you say the doctor's glasses?
Optometrists.
Optometrists than anywhere else in the world. It's basically you drive around, and it's like doctor's office, pharmacy, optometrists, all of it. And it's all catering to Americans, right? And so vast numbers of Americans come every year and buy their drugs there. And there are pharmacies that are chained pharmacies that look, that could be a CVS, but in Mexico it's not a CVS, but it could be sort of brand name that you recognize in Mexico.
But what we did with the cartel is we were trying to figure out how they get their medications in these shelves. And we filmed one cartel member. He allowed us to film. We couldn't go inside, but I had him. He had a mic, so I was able to listen to everything from the car.
He goes into a pharmacy and basically tells the woman they're like this. And the meds look, we saw them making them. They look exactly like the real thing, the packaging, everything. Some of it actually comes from the legitimate places that they steal from the factories, like the packaging and all of it. But they basically tell them, OK, put this on your shelves.
And if you don't, we're going to burn your pharmacy. So we heard that. We saw that. And so a lot of them are forced to carry them.
And they're forced to carry fake drugs. Yeah. And do they have any idea what's in them when they're selling them?
I don't think they do. No. I doubt that they knew, for example, there was fentanyl and meth mixed in with some of their other medications, because it creates a huge problem for them.
And so for the consumer, how do they find the legitimate stuff?
They don't, which is why it's so hard. So, this woman that we followed, she goes there. She buys her medication. And I asked her, do you know what's in there? Oh, no, but it's.
my friend told me that it's a legitimate pharmacy. 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.
Did you take any of that stuff and test it?
We did. It's a lot more complicated than it seems. The LA Times, again, did an amazing investigation where they did test it. 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, out of two pharmacies, I think.
And what kind of drugs are they talking about that have fentanyl and meth in it?
Oh, I can't remember. But I think it was Adderall, maybe. I can't remember exactly. But it was a great investigation. 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.
There's an amazing doctor in Mexico City called Dr. Local, who we spent time with. Dr. Crazy Doctor, Dr. Local, 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 putting the little silicone pouch inside and the cotton ball that goes inside. And it looks exactly the same.
No one would have been able to tell.
God, that's so scary.
So scary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is there any evidence that happens in America?
That it's being sold in America? In America, yeah. We went with a raid with the L.A. Sheriff's Department where we saw a sort of a grocery store in the back. They were selling these medications mainly to underprivileged immigrant communities because they couldn't sell the real stuff.
But they're not in legitimate pharmacies?
Not that we know. Not yet. Not yet. No. Not that we know of.
No, not yet that we know of. 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. And she was very happy to talk about how counterfeit medications are very damaging for America, right?
Yeah, so are the real ones.
And that's why I asked her, but why is it that 20 million Americans have to resort to a black market? Because they can't afford their medications here. Yeah. And that whole conversation, as you know, is fascinating.
Yeah, what did she say about that?
Well, she says that they need the money for innovation, R&D, right, research and development. And that's how they can get new drugs that are important for Americans. I said, that's all great, but if the Americans can't afford these medications, they're not going to be treated by them because they can't afford them. And then I asked her, have you actually spent any time with any of these Americans that cannot afford their lifesaving medications? She said, no.
That's the biggest problem, right? Yeah. Yeah. She keeps saying that without that expense, without that money, they wouldn't be able to look for all these new drugs, 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.
Of course. Yeah.
Not only that, to say that they're not profitable after all that.
Oh, I mean.
Those people are amazing.
Like $100 billion at top 10 companies in the last year alone or two years. Yeah. Something ridiculous like that.
Yeah, they make plenty. Yeah. It's greed.
It's pure greed.
And it's evil. Yeah. Especially, I mean, I'm sure, have you seen the Netflix series, Painkiller, Peter Berg's documentary? Yeah. I mean, that's how I found out about you through the Oxycontin Express.
Yeah. I mean, what year was that? That was quite a long time ago.
Mm-hmm. That was 2008..
When did we first talk?
I think 2008 or 9.
It had to be 9, because the podcast didn't start until 9.
. Okay, so it was 9.. So it might have been 10, 2010..
Oh, maybe. Maybe.
Because you came to the studio. I wasn't doing it at my house anymore.
No, you were doing it at your house.
Really? The first time you did it, it was at my house?
I'm quite sure. No kidding. Didn't you live, like, in Sherman Oaks or something?
Woodland Hills.
Woodland Hills, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm quite sure I went to your house.
That's, now I'm thinking, yeah. Yeah. You were one of my first guests, I think, then.
Yeah.
Yeah, that OxyContin Express story was insane. And I think part of the exposure from your work led to them changing the laws, because they had no database. So the way it would work, I'll explain it to people, is that there was no database. So if you got a prescription from a doctor and you went in to get OxyContin, you could go to another doctor down the street and get another prescription. And they clearly had it set up like that so that there could be abuse, because that was how to maximize profits.
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