Joe Rogan Experience #1938 - Mariana van Zeller

Mariana van Zeller returns to talk about reporting on the world's black markets for her National Geographic series 'Trafficked.' She walks Joe through ghost guns, the U.S.-to-Mexico gun pipeline, psychedelics, the opioid crisis and Florida pill mills, and the trafficking of endangered apes to private zoos in the UAE. The conversation spans stolen oil financing terrorist groups in Nigeria and Lebanon, Ukrainian surrogacy, illegal bare-knuckle fight clubs and CTE, underground gambling, cyber/ID theft, and organ trafficking along the Darien Gap. Her recurring theme: most people in these markets are driven by poverty and lack of opportunity, and inequality is the root cause of the black markets she investigates.

• For her first guns story she bought an AK-47 out of a Taco Bell parking lot in Arizona via Backpage, then days later a .50 cal from a guy's garage.
  00:01:39
• A 'ghost gun' is simply an untraceable gun; 80% kits plus 3D printing make home-built firearms easy, and teens make drop-in auto-sears for 50 cents.
  00:05:17
• While reporting on Florida pill mills she and her husband were chased on I-95 by the George twins, who ran 'American Pain,' the biggest pill mill in U.S. history.
  00:25:04
• Baby gorillas and chimps sell for tens of thousands of dollars to private zoos, often in the UAE, with mothers killed to take the babies.
  00:53:08
• In Nigeria's Niger Delta 30-90% of oil is stolen ('bunkered'), refined in hellish barefoot conditions, and sold to groups like Boko Haram.
  01:26:03
• At a stolen-oil site workers picked up buckets of hot oil and threatened to throw it at her crew, thinking they were from an oil corporation.
  01:29:10
• Organ trafficking is real: a Colombian 'wrecker' for the clan cuts organs from living migrants, and a Mexican doctor defends black-market kidneys.
  02:46:37
• A Miami single mom buys stolen credit-card data on 'Vice City' with a money-back guarantee; a Crips member made over $1M off COVID unemployment fraud.
  02:31:35

• There are only five or six LSD chemists in the whole country; she interviewed a former one living out of a school bus in Montana who wept over losing his life's meaning.
  00:12:25
• Portugal decriminalized drugs with huge success: incarceration dropped, AIDS rates fell, and most people choose rehab over prison.
  00:14:39
• Only one pharma CEO went to prison over the opioid crisis, charged with bribing doctors to over-prescribe a fentanyl spray (Subsys).
  00:31:45
• There are more tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in the wild in the entire world.
  00:49:30
• Locals describe 'Bondo apes,' rumored six-foot, hundreds-of-pounds chimps that nest on the ground like gorillas and were filmed eating a leopard.
  01:00:28
• Bonobos use sex to resolve conflict, and the mother is the only family member who won't have sex with her son.
  01:03:04
• Ukraine became a global surrogacy hub, leaving American babies stuck in Ukrainian wombs when the war broke out.
  01:20:49
• CTE comes largely from sub-concussive blows; even soccer players get it from heading the ball.
  01:51:34
• Joe and a business partner once hit an 84% win rate betting on UFC fights, partly thanks to Anderson Silva's early dominance.
  02:24:17
• Gambling addiction is reportedly a leading cause of suicide, including among teens who get too far in the hole.
  02:35:43

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