with marianna van seller now on national geographic marianna welcome to the show thank you dennis wonderful to be here. i love the idea of sort of a reverse engineering of the socorro that brings an essence contre brown or off brand goods and through endo our world what a great conceit tell me more about the show yeah i mean you know i've been reporting on sort of the end of world in black markets my whole life and. i decided that i really wanted to do sort of a whole series about this and i approached national geographic with it and they were interested to me concerned about my security so the idea behind it is that in each episode of traffic that he needs episode i go around the world and i started again access into these criminal networks around the world and we explore a different theme with each episode one by one is spent and there's another one about him simple cane and guns and you go on and on and it's just these black

markets around the world and i get to sort of understand why they exist who are these black mighty operators and women also and really spend time inside these very hidden and dark warehouse thinking. i remember years ago there was that guy called the scud stud arthur i care remember his name but he was a court war correspondent it's only bosnia was the most dangerous place because a get get killed from 5 directions these are most places i have been in the world i could just chill from for directions is there but it was so dangerous there i could dip killed through that isone i generally macro or via. he told me he's a listen impose gotta get out there and i'll be honest with the i dig reaction it's so funny there is such a cuddly young lass's you would like to be in the middle of all this but i guess you dish reaction right. i didn't see action but most of all i did reporting

about these issues you know it's really interesting to me. this idea that you know we have entire networks and newspapers and magazines devoted to sort of analyzing the legal economy the formal economy and yet the informal economy actually makes up for over 60 percent of the global economy you know something like the drug trade for example alone is worth $300000000000.00 a year and there's not a lot of people or outlets out there really studying these these underworlds and that's that's really what fascinates me and yes i mean definitely the adrenaline and the knowing in a way and given access being given access to these wells that people usually don't get to see is pretty special. you know the such and huge sums of money and as you said often exist in the dark ether it's like that court all that stuff you go if you if you're savvy enough or deprived enough you can go off road on the

internet and find almost anything and pay for it anonymously but the fact is some of these delivery systems are the contraband they might as well be as precise as a wish for a film that's how much thought or some of the there are really systems in place out there are no it is incredible it's really truly incredible and you don't even need to go to the dark where to find any of this one of the episodes we did was about gun trafficking in the us a look at the flow of guns from the united states to mexico and how it's fueling the drug violence cartel violence there and i live in los angeles and we started out episode actually just 1015 minutes away from a house in a corner in los angeles right next to a big freeway where we saw guns a good 40 seven's another was about a dozen weapons being stored and hidden into a car that night transported them into mexico and it was all done in plains it was

up there in the open completely public with cars and families walking by and it blew me away i couldn't believe that this was just right there and since then if you like a lot of episodes that we've done shot so many scenes are happening i mean the majority of the scenes are happening right here we don't think of trafficking networks and these underworld are very far away and dark in places but what i found through this series is that more often than not they're right next door. i'm shocked at such access marianna to the is there you go involved on the purveyors part that they want like anybody they want to be proud of their their gig no matter how much various or how do you gain access absolutely i mean you hit the nail on the head it's exactly that it's a lot of ego it's also a lot of you know interviewing people who they do this this is their passion they do it it been doing it their whole lives for example making fake us dollars in lima

peru we interviewed a peruvian who makes who's like the best in the world at finishing these hand these dollars by hand it's the best $8.00 in the entire world and we managed to get ahold of him and interview him and any you know we don't we don't disguise there we don't we disguise identity we don't reveal his name or anything like that and it was for him an opportunity and i always ask this question why do you agree to talk to us and a lot of it again is like you said the you go but in some cases like this guy it's this opportunity this one time to talk about something that he is so passionate about that he is so good at doing and they get not even his family know he does because a lot of these cases these criminals operate in their own families all know what they're doing so here he was given a choice to talk to an international media station you know to national geographic which you know is associated with trust and and they trusted that we were going to sort of protect our sources and given this opportunity to talk about what he loves

and what he's really good at and so a lot of cases it's also driven by that yeah in you know the greatest. investigative journalism i have seen up to that point my life was truman capote is great in cold blood and at some point even sick puppies and prison feel the need to tell somebody about it now this man you're talking about it's an artist and it's more of a economic crime but even violent people get in behind and stir and they. the human need to brag on something even if it's the most perverse gesture is mind boggling to me it absolutely is it is yeah i had one would think it i don't think it's totally only bragging i think a lot of times they just really want to tell their stories you know they're these are the people that are sort of shunned and stereotyped in our society in a lot of times they just if you'll need to explain why they became who they are and you know they didn't grow up to be quick they didn't grow up criminals they don't

want foreign criminals and a lot of times they want to explain sort of their lack of opportunities that lead them to into these trafficking worlds so that's what's always super fascinating to listen to as well. we're talking to marianna van zeller and the show is called trafficked with marianna van zeller i can't believe they didn't have a veteran war with white what device for that it's on that geo but you would think that well this is right up both of their alleys and i am i'm really i'm i'm absolutely. put it this way i've been in things of my life where people traditionally say are is scared to go speaking in front of a crowd as a stand up comedian that must be so secure and i was like a regular i'd like to tell you. but at the end of the day i'm not getting shot at it's not arms or legs it's a little unnerving at 1st and you get better at it when you're out there are you able to completely distance yourself from the potential danger you're in or does it

loom like a k 47 of damocles over your. you know it's funny to me because for me this being interviewed and certainly being on stage is 100 percent scarier than being with us and you'll see our character in mexico for example you know there are situations where it's definitely get scary i'm not going to i always the thing with me i think that the korean city always gets the best part of me you know there is one situation in mexico we were sort of given access to hang out with the sick arias these gunmen in the scene a lawyer and as we're going in and they tell us point blank look we can sort of protect you while you're here in our territory but if the marines show up or if you know the the other cartel shows up if the enemy shows up essentially they're going to start shooting at us there's going to be a fight a war and we can't protect you there and then you know it's you just do what you can to survive and there was a moment of obviously in these cases where we don't turn to my team and we talked

about this you know we're all aware of what's involved in this shooting of the series and we decided you know we felt comfortable enough with going and we did it and towards the end of our filming we've spent a few hours there interviewing some of the security is the government and towards the end you know they always carry these walkie talkies and you hear the chatter all the time they can't turn them off even $13.00 interview that because they're being given certain information of what's happening and they know exactly who's walking going in was driving in and out of their territory and all of that and suddenly you start hearing these sort of alarm voices and something is happening and they start yelling ok we have to cut this we have to cut this the marines are coming in there and we start running up to our car and we saw there was a marine helicopter coming towards us and it was a small no where we thought it was this was the stupidest i have you're our lives and we were caught in the city and what we do do we sort of hide and in that case they're going to if they find if they see if they're going to think that we have something to hide do we openly start you know waving our hands and saying

journalist journalist. but there were 2 folks too far away from us or do we just try to sort of drive off and where in this middle of this very suspicious territory that is known to be controlled by the city by you know look our town it was tough and now it's yeah it's the moments like this that you think defeat is this way that is a story with that. you know nothing about any less i it was it's what happened. we will and once again the show is trafficked with marianne events eller it's on national geographic to talk about that being tough but imagine one other thing would be tough when i hear guys like robert shapiro or gerry spence cats talk about the founding guys who they are maybe you don't want to ask the final question did you murder this person because you don't want to know the answer because they deserve according to our system a invigorated defense as they say when you're with somebody who's not telling you a tale about how possibly their their upbringing or weird twist in life brings

them to being the best guy they the picasso of crafting the final overlay on a dollar bill that's fake what about when you're talking to somebody who has a product that leads inevitably to the death of youngsters are you able to do i know there's that 5 w. party you that wants to get the story the information are you repulsed by that maria able to view them objective lee or do you can you hate them and still do the story. hate is a very strong word and it's one that i i'm not truly i'm not there to judge and there to try to understand i think that by understanding and showing what's happening these worlds is really a much better service and much better time for me spent time for me you know ultimately what we want is to see how the why these situations happen and what leads a person to do what they do you know there was one case for example where we were

one of the episodes was about fans and 11 covering the opiate crisis for many many years and i spent a lot of time with mothers of lost their sons and daughters to the opiate epidemic and there was one situation where we were filming with a new a drug mule in this case are actually happened to be a woman and was pregnant and she was transporting 5 kilos offense now into the united states and had a allowed us to sort of film her as she was crossing the border from mexico into the united states and it was tough i mean it was really tough for me to watch her do it and to feel at the moment you know that i was thinking about all the women in the mothers that i've interviewed who lost loved ones and they mean that if they were here and see me report on this how would they judge me and on the one hand obviously i didn't want the drugs to go across because i know what happens and i'm the on the other hand and also spent a whole day with this woman in which i always ask in all my interviews is do you

know the harm that you are doing and how do you live with that with knowing that and how do you live with that you had you feel any guilt. you know it's definitely it's always a question that i ask you know it was super interesting in a very difficult from moment for me as a journalist to sort of how moral leader this up. we are talking to marianna been selling the show is trafficked with marianna bound seller it's on national geographic going to take a break when we come back well i know that earlier one of her one of her big big pieces of work is the oxycontin express recently produced farm pharmaceuticals i believe an 8000000 payment by the sackler family i want to talk to her about that also want to talk about chasing el chapo death by not all the oxycontin express it is an appreciable it is a 1st of all at tesh a case of work she's done for such a young age and will explore more right after this on dennis miller plus one.

means become more extreme in which he needs to know when this isn't breaking norms not wrists are leaning in way becomes more of a dream as the fictional transmitting right screen is the reality of. being closely anky hang on they can. make happy in a way that. the. market would if he does much good enough to pose a problem enough to cause a good little tongue it is lunatic it is. you can go

google me a hand let me get close to some kind of fact if you come we're going to think that . one that can handle the job center built as a semi on suitable day and that's going to need to get added. to diplomatic efforts . like bottles. what's going to undock from now on in the actual bad was it left out on the way you'll. get enough out of the. illegible to kill an economy to have to buy anything are you going to get some of that by. losing. actually has a slight chance of survival done stacey let's learn. let's say i'm the troika and you're a police response thanks for the fight. thank you for taking. on

the story 6 that's right well actually that's slavery. thank folks welcome back to dennis miller plus one talking to a real reporter hair off times people ascribe reporter status to so hopes and at some point i think of them as prompter readers but somebody is going to go out in a field and these these truffles up and mary ann is out there rotting away mary and i've been seller and the show is trafficked with marianne a bad seller we talked about in the 1st segment if you're just joining us now though it's a very cool idea to look into this so crowed sort of those old indiana jones maps of where it starts where it goes but what about for contraband items that are off the off the grid and i find it fascinating and i know she got her start

doing some documentaries an emmy nominated documentary series and in 2010 you won the esteemed peabody award for your documentary the oxy cotton express in the news again tell me about that report 1st before we go back chat about the sackler family and their recent payment. yeah absolutely i mean i had never heard much about oxycontin before that and i was we were reading there was this not small snippet in the miami herald about these pain clinics in florida there are essentially distributing and doling out these pain pills and there were people from all over the united states coming and to buy these spills and there wasn't a lot about information about you know the sort of the opiate crisis was in its infancy at the time and so we set out and head to my husband and i who was my work partner at the time producer and cameramen at the time and director of the film and

we set out to miami and south florida not my himself florida 2 broward county and spent time looking into these pain clinics and there it was i mean it was cars from all over the eastern seaboard as far away as west virginia and kentucky and ohio and they'd come even bus loads of people may come and see these parking lot full of chorus from out of state and these bodyguards outside his pain clinics and these lines of people waiting outside these pain clinics and inside you get in and then i went in with us a camera super camera and i just was able to see how easy it was to get your hands on you know a bottle of oxy carton and percocet and whatever it was you needed and i mean it was as easy as me going in and talking to the receptionist and telling them you know i'd love to see the doctor i'd love to get some have my hands on some prescriptions i have a back pain and she's like yeah we can give you this this this and this and gave me the whole list of prescriptions that i was going to be able to get and then we followed the trail of prescriptions and saw sort of the trail of devastation and

death all the way up to kentucky and west virginia and yeah it was it was incredible it was one of those stories that you know as a reporter you set out with this idea that you want to tell the story and then when you hit the ground you realize that the story so much bigger than you and in. you know how you know your suddenly thought you find yourself in the midst of this incredible story. and then yeah it was it was amazing and then after that we sort of followed a few years from there we did harris documentary on heroin abuse because oxy partly came more difficult to get a handle on subpoena started moving on to heroin and then sentinel a few years ago but it's just been crazy to see what started as sort of a smaller story become this you know horrific epidemic the worst epidemic in american history. purdue pharmaceuticals who i believe is on maybe in toto or

predominantly by the sackler family for her pain and in $1000000000.00 settlement what would you say their most egregious offense was they must anon they were caught red handed were they selling it as something that is what you tell me what you that we're you know there are many i mean there were they knew full well that it was addictive incredibly dangerous and there were i mean their commercial their t.v. ads from the climb out there where you see them you know advertising this as something completely addiction free great for anyone and then also i mean it's known that they paid doctors around the country to go on what they call these talking conferences which really was you know will give you an amazing week at a las vegas hotel now they're all expenses paid for and you you have to prescribe oxy cotton so doctors you know some of them willingly knowing that they were doing

something wrong something wrong but a lot of them actually it was a change at the time that doctors believed that the best way to treat pain patients was by giving them pain medication and i think a lot of doctors didn't realize at the time that these things were incredibly addictive but of course as time went by and the doctor started realizing that these were addictive there were some that kept on giving because you know it made them money and produce pharma was on in on all of that they knew it was addictive they knew exactly what was being used for their e-mail exchanges between the top executive producer talking about how they wanted to target areas that they knew would they would get you know addicts and people who were more prone to buying this stuff stuff medication it was a rethink i mean they have blood all over their hands for exactly horrific and if it's possible. to get off cheaply at $8000000000.00 that family did that i would

assume they do not sleep the sleep of angels at night you know when you look at heroin when i was a youngster i'm 67 now when i was young heroin was for jazz cats and paris or that in the village i made it was so far out there that you know but i think the talking about traffic i think if you reverse engineer the chain of events in a world of prescribed anxiety drugs that have a half life on them prescription wise kids would get dumped out from. a regimen of a desire to drugs and actually the next thing they get as you said. oxy would get too expensive unbelievably they get dumped out heroine's doorstep is a my making that too simple as that how we've gotten to this point of madness in the culture now it's see it's an opiate as well it sort of satisfies the same cravings as oxycontin you know you got started for a lot of these kids as something that they would do it parties with their friends

and never in a 1000000 years that they think that they one day would be shooting up heroin and they do and it's truly sad and i remember interviewing one kid who was sort of the all star wrestler in football player at his high school had gotten all of these. scholarships to go to all these different colleges great kid and got injured in his last year of. high school was sent to the hospital and was given by the doctors are just a few months x. 3 or 4 months later he was shooting heroin. isn't sent and you hear they hear the stories again and again when i lived in new york city for a while i had one friend who was a homicide detective. he told me once in candor that he had he had almost seen too much. i mean the man's inhumanity to man was part of him clocking in were you at on that scale now are you still. woman or did having seen the dark

side of it has it worn on you or is your head. so you question i don't know i think it hasn't worn out i have to have love what i do i get so excited with every story you know going out in the field and being able to tell the stories it's such a privilege i don't i don't i don't i feel like i could do this forever but talk to me in 10 years you see roma you studied international relations in university i studied journalism in an odd way i became a comedian on a t.v. show s n l where i did this but it was never part of my studies do you find that your international relations degree has helped you at all in the real down and dirty world of journalism sometimes oh absolutely you know just learning all about the world and having sort of different perspective on different countries how they were born what was happening at these countries how borders were made oh absolutely yeah

it's interesting people always ask me if doing a mass of journalism masters is worth it or doing a journalism degree at all is worth it i'm very happy with having done international relations but i would say that for me ylem university was sort of my window it's of american journalism you know i knew nothing about how things work here and it really helped me but i'm not sure if it's necessary for everyone even though it's calm here is me say this they're probably going to kill me but i think that helps me a lot so whole of about i don't think loco you but they might hit you up twice for a donation coming up they're interesting or you know. raise a couple checks. or listen you seem like a woman and full are you are just so you're married your husband is also in the business you know as well as they all are he's a documentary mentor country director and he owned a production company called much media that is producing traffic for national geographic and a bunch of documentaries. now. i'm

a big documentary fan i'm on our own morris fair and barbara kopple i could watch documentaries all night quite frankly i'm very near her dog is one of the best or at best you know it's interesting she had her view their own morris once and i once saw a nervous it was 8 or 9 years ago i was literally shaking because i obviously have watched all his documentaries and he's such a good interviewer and i was so nervous i thought he's going to look straight through me and see that i suck at this and i should not be in this business at all so shaking all over and i had written all my questions beforehand which is something that i actually usually don't do i hate writing down questions i like sitting down having more of a conversation than being stuck to questions but with him just because i didn't i was nervous i'd written down all my questions and i started asking him all this questions and so as the end of the interview i asked him so you know and you know you're such a good interviewer for people who want to be more like you what advice would you give and he said well never do what you just did which is read a. book like

a film. you've written months it's got to me and once again i will be going getting a season to the show on national geographic trafficked with marianna van zeller the the wish kid from portugal now living in l.a. at doing god's work good to talk to you could all thank you so much senator lucretia all right this is dennis miller plus one. extra. thank. always be polite never engage with a negative aided or confrontational also. don't get into any conversation or start answering questions just ask for an attorney.

to survive and charities. definitely don't want to be going to try to jump on cops. you're more likely to walk free if you're rich and guilty or if you're poor and. you've got 2 eyes and 2 ears and one mouth. so you should be seen in here and a whole lot more than you're saying if you don't take that advice easy going to dig yourself will. make no sense you know born. to nationalities. as a murder people to be wheedled of the black sea world if you. come in a crisis like this. we can do better we should.

everyone is contributing way but we also know that this crisis not go on forever challenges create the response has been so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we are in it together. continuity or change this is what are you considering a potential. point to obama's legacy when fighting do the same thing. or is this all only for continuity. not the occupant in the.

phone is a burden. and france are going through a very dangerous period actually the turkish president urges friends to get rid of it's a leader as relations between the countries hit new lows. drugs giant pfizer prepares it to roll out its vaccine in britain and seeks approval in the us its chief executive admits it might not stop those who take it from spreading the virus . and moscow slams what it calls fabricated accusations against journalists to russia affiliated news agencies charged with violating a new sanctions.