Oh, your fixer

...

the other country, my fixer.

And this is the moment I'm on the phone with my husband, and I tell him, "Look," um, and we can start seeing the plane coming in.

And I'm sa- I said, "Look, um, this guy, I t- I'm the owner, co-owner of the company.

I'm the executive producer of the show.

I'm gonna let everybody else leave, but I'm not leaving without, without Baba, so I'm staying behind." And it was really hard for me.

Sure

What do you mean by that?

Yeah, 100%.

I was at home in the morning.

I mean, it was around 9 AM.

I had been studying the night before until late, so I was still sleeping when it happened.

And I started getting phone calls on both my landline and my cell phone.

And eventually, I picked up the landline.

Firstly, in terms of restrictions, and second, just personally as a human being.

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Both my parents are Portuguese from Portugal, both from big families.

My dad has 10 brothers and sisters.

Uh, my mother has, uh, five brothers and sisters.

Very Catholic family.

They met in the town where I grew up, which is, uh, Cascais.

It's a small beach community just outside of Lisbon, and, uh, it's a beautiful place.

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Mm-hmm

... day of the year for my son, and again, I'm failing, I'm failing him.

And it was-- I'm ha- having all these gigantic guilt problems.

And, um, and yet again, Kader comes and is yelling at him.

And then my husband is on the phone with me and says, "Hey, I'm seeing-- I'm looking at the flight report, and I think the pilots are Portuguese.

Their names are Portuguese." I was like, "What?" Okay, so at this point, the plane is landing, and I'm running as fast as I can.

As soon as the plane lands, I run to where the plane landed.

Yeah.

And did you lose your military escort because they had to go to fight?

As soon as we landed in town, we found out there had been a military coup.

We lost our escort, and that was not fun.

Immediately started getting calls from my team here in L.A., from National Geographic, who I was working with at the time, and everybody was very worried for us, but there was nothing they could do.

It was nine days.

Thankfully, it was only nine days.

And in the end, what happened was that we had an evacuation company, which is why the work we do is not cheap, because we have high insurance rates.

Can you explain a little bit what is happening with the billions of dollars that circulate related to human bodies?

What'd you do for nine days?

Oh, uh, we kept reporting, actually.

We interviewed a human, a gold trafficker who was one of the people responsible for getting the gold out of Niger.

And, uh, and he was also a human trafficker, so I asked him if I paid him a little bit of money, or a lot of money, [laughs] if he'd get us out of the country.

[laughs] He said we were American, so we were high-value targets, so no thanks.

So he declined our offer.

But we also interviewed a former Al-Qaeda member during that time.

Can you explain a little bit what is happening with the billions of dollars that circulate related to human bodies?

Do they talk to you? [laughs] Yeah.

I think three main reasons.

It's ego.

You know, a lot of these people work in these black markets.

They're the best counterfeiters and traffickers and scammers, and sometimes their families don't even know what they do.

And they have an opportunity behind a mask to sort of boast about what they're so good at doing.

I think it's impunity.

Do you ever feel like you're just chronicling the slow decline of civilization [laughs] here?

Mm.

And it was, you know, persistence for me, determination and persistence has really been important, uh, in everything I do in life.

And, you know, knocking on the dean's door on my third attempt, I wouldn't have gotten into Columbia.

They discourage international students from visiting the school.

It wouldn't have happened to me if I actually hadn't taken that extra step and, you know, and, and gone to New York and, and met the, the, the dean.

Um, in storytelling, the same thing.

When I started as a freelance journalist, I would go around and send emails to everybody I knew in journalism to try and get my stories bought from them as a freelance journalist.

Yeah.

... that are having to make a lot of tough decisions

decisionsI am not, but we spend months, sometimes even years, trying to get people to talk to us.

So once we're inside that group, so exam- for example, the Sinaloa cartel, right? You just don't show up in Sinaloa and knock on a door or show up at the, you know, where we know the, the fentanyl labs are and knock on the door and say, "Hey, we wanna film this." It takes us months, years of connections and trying to build trust and trying to get them to believe us and trust us, and only then can we go inside.

And so once that happens, there is a certain level of protection.

But when I, when I, when I talk about shit hitting the fan is that you can be with the Sinaloa cartel and sort of be protected by them, but I've been in many situations where the Marines show up or they're close by, and then sort of full panic ensues, and, and you have to make a quick decision of what do you do.

Do you stay here? Do you follow them? Um, I'll give you an example.

We were doing a story about gun trafficking, how American guns are ending up in, in Mexico and, uh, being used for the violence that's happening down there.

And we're back on the Bobby Cast.

[singing] It's a Bobby Bones Show.

For example, the Sinaloa Cartel, right? You just don't show up in Sinaloa and knock on a door or show up at the, you know, where we know the, the fentanyl labs are and knock on the door and say, "Hey, we want to film this." It takes us months, years of connections and trying to build trust and trying to get them to believe us and trust us, and only then can we go inside.

And so once that happens, there is a certain level of protection.

But I've been in many situations where the Marines show up or they're close by and then sort of full panic ensues and you have to make a quick decision of what do you do? Do you stay here? Do you follow them? I'll give you an example.

We were doing a story about gun trafficking, how American guns are ending up in, in Mexico and being used for the violence that's happening down there.

And we were with the Sinaloa Cartel.

We actually with a bunch of sicarios, with gunmen, and they were showing us how they use the American g- the guns and how they train.

Mariana Van Zeller.

... that are having to make a lot of tough decisions.

I am not, but we spend months, sometimes even years, trying to get people to talk to us.

So once we're inside that group, so exam- for example, the Sinaloa cartel, right? You just don't show up in Sinaloa and knock on a door or show up at the, you know, where we know the, the fentanyl labs are and knock on the door and say, "Hey, we wanna film this." It takes us months, years of connections and trying to build trust and trying to get them to believe us and trust us, and only then can we go inside.

And so once that happens, there is a l- certain level of protection, but when I, when I, when I talk about shit hitting the fan is that you can be with the Sinaloa cartel and sort of be protected by them.

But I've been in many situations where the Marines show up, or they're close by, and then sort of full panic ensues, and, and you have to make a quick decision of what do you do.

Do you stay here? Do you follow them? Um, I'll give you an example.

We were doing a story about gun trafficking, how American guns are ending up in, in Mexico, and-... uh, being used for the violence that's happening down there.

Can you explain who Anna Delvey is? Sorry.

talk to you? Yeah.

I think three main reasons.

It's ego.

You know, a lot of these people work in these black markets.

They're the best counterfeiters and traffickers and scammers.

And sometimes their families don't even know what they do.

And they have an opportunity behind a mask to sort of boast about what they're so good at doing.

Do you ever feel like you're just chronicling the slow decline of civilization here?

talk to you?

I think three main reasons.

It's ego.

You know, a lot of these people work in these black markets.

They're the best counterfeiters and traffickers and scammers.

And sometimes their families don't even know what they do.

And they have an opportunity behind a mask to sort of boast about what they're so good at doing.

Do you ever feel like you're just chronicling the slow decline of civilization here?

... do they talk to you? [chuckles] Yeah.

I think three main reasons: it's ego.

You know, a lot of these people work in these black markets.

They're the best counterfeiters, and traffickers, and scammers, and sometimes their families don't even know what they do, and they have an opportunity behind a mask to sort of boast about what they're so good at doing.

I think it's impunity.

In a lot of these places in the world, corruption is king, and so they don't really see a downside to talking to an international journalist that comes in from National Geographic and wants to talk to them.

And then I think the most important reason is a very human characteristic that we all share of wanting to be understood, and I think I give people that opportunity.

Do you ever feel like you're just chronicling the slow decline of civilization here? [chuckles]

What is that?

It's an i-...

It's a term applied, that applies to, uh, rehab scams.

So rehab scams is basically the, the, uh, buying and selling of addicts (laughs) in this billion dollar market, right? So it's, um, um, these...

They create these fake, uh, rehab centers that bill insurance for treatments that they are not actually giving people.

Um, so, uh, for example, i- it's a huge problem in Arizona.

That's where we started...

Yeah.

For sure.

... how it gets out of this, this valley, this region.

We then spent the night with these kids, 16, 17-year-old kids who are backpacking and taking these, you know, 20, 30 pounds of cocaine or 20 something kilos of cocaine on their backs for days on end, for a whole week on, uh, in the middle of, uh, in, you know, really rough terrain, seeing some of their friends being killed in front of them by rival groups.

Um, one of the ones I interviewed, I will never forget this interview, it sort of very much changed the show, uh, this interview that we did- that I did with him.

It was the second episode we ever did of Trafficked and it was- I'm talking to this kid and I'm asking, like, "Why, why, uh, why do you do this? I mean, you're- you've seen friends being killed, it's back-breaking work, y- you know, they get insects all over, it's- they're sleeping out in the open for days, it's just horrible.

Terrible conditions." And he's saying, "Look, I've always wanted to go to college and I wanna be a dentist, and my family is super, super poor and they're never gonna be able to afford, um, my education.

And so this is the only job that's afforded to me.

In the sun?