The Hidden Third

Mariana van Zeller
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  • Documentary
  • Updated weekly

From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all. New episodes drop every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. The Hidden Third is a co-production of Muck Media and The Roost Podcast Network.

  1. 4 days ago

    She Thought She Was Dating Jon Bon Jovi. Then He Asked for Money.

    Start your free trial of Perplexity Computer today at  https://pplx.ai/hiddenthird and experience the next phase of AI. #ad Go to http://Quince.com/hiddenthird for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. She thought she was in a relationship with Jon Bon Jovi. For almost a year, Leslie Pickett sent "Jon" almost all her money, until she was on the verge of losing her house to foreclosure. That's when she reached out to me. Leslie's story is featured in my new National Geographic documentary, SUPER SCAM ME.  Watch it now on Disney+ and Hulu. Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/browse/entity-3bf2735c-0983-47ea-b927-3ac38c2bf7efdisneyplus Hulu:  https://www.hulu.com/movie/super-scam-me-3bf2735c-0983-47ea-b927-3ac38c2bf7ef Leslie has been a Jon Bon Jovi fan since she was a teenager. She had just created a new Instagram profile when she commented on what she thought was a verified JBJ account. Soon she was talking to "him" every day, for months. It wasn't until several months into the relationship that "Jon" asked her for money so she could attend a meet and greet. The requests kept coming, and she kept sending money, until the moment she realized he might be a scammer. Leslie had been caught in a celebrity romance scam, where criminals pretend to be famous people to win a fan's trust and then their money. Leslie is far from alone. One in seven American adults say they've lost money to an online dating or romance scam. In 2025 alone, Americans reported losing nearly $1.5 billion to romance scams, which makes them one of the fastest-growing and most devastating forms of financial crime. When Leslie contacted me, I was in the middle of production on SUPER SCAM ME. With help from Arman the Cyber, a white hat hacker (an ethical hacker who uses his skills to protect people, not exploit them) I met at DEF CON, the giant hacker conference in Las Vegas, we were able to track down her scammer. In this conversation, Leslie and I talk about the shame so many victims carry, and why "how could anyone fall for that?" is the wrong question. We look at the videos "Jon" sent her that looked completely real, and how scammers are using technology and AI. Generative AI can now convincingly imitate celebrities and public figures, and that's making these scams harder and harder to spot. We also go through the warning signs everyone should know. For SUPER SCAM ME, I got a new nose. And new hair. And a full makeover. As Mary Zell, a woman looking for love online, I became the bait. Along the way I started dating a four-star general deployed to Syria, got wooed by "George Clooney," and teamed up with a hacker who helped me unmask several scammers, including my own. I wanted to understand their tactics and tools, and how they earn such deep trust. If you think you or someone you love is being scammed, stop sending money, save every message and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and IC3.gov. You can also contact me though my website. Join The Hidden Third on Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from SUPER SCAM ME: patreon.com/thehiddenthird 🎙️ From Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode, Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand: the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure and the profound ways they impact us all. 🔔 Subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday. THE HIDDEN THIRD: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoCiI8nJacn8gDiHxr6aQGA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehiddenthirdpodcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-third/id1845989117 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3n1BBoj3BgVuEYaiZ6SotF MARIANA: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mariana_vanzeller Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianavz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. 23 Sept

    He Helped Save Thousands of Abused and Exploited Kids

    Join The Hidden Third Patreon today: https://patreon.com/TheHiddenThird Try ZipRecruiter for free at http://ZipRecruiter.com/HIDDENTHIRD  Jim Cole spent two decades as a Homeland Security Investigations special agent, working child-exploitation cases. Early in his career, he saw a problem. Investigators were focused on the people making, possessing, and distributing child sexual abuse material. But the children in the images often went unidentified. Jim helped change that. In 2010, he founded HSI’s Victim Identification Program from scratch, including the first dedicated Victim Identification Laboratory at HSI’s Cyber Crimes Center. Its purpose was to answer a different question: Who is the child in the image, where are they, and are they still in danger? Sometimes the answer begins with a clue most people would never notice: a window, a label, a piece of furniture, a blanket, something in the background that can lead investigators to a child. The program has helped identify and rescue thousands of children around the world, and it continues to operate today. When Jim began tracking victim identifications at HSI in 2011, the agency rescued 262 child victims that year. The following year, after the program’s methods and technology were put in place, that number rose to more than 1,000. This is not an easy subject for a podcast. But given the scale of this crime, and the people most affected by it, it is an important conversation to watch and share. In 2025, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline received 21.3 million reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation. Those reports contained 61.8 million images, videos, and other files. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Jim takes Mariana back to his early years, from his time in the U.S. Army to becoming a patrol officer and then a detective on a Native American reservation in Oregon, investigating everything from narcotics to violent crime. He explains how a series of seemingly accidental turns led him into the work that would define his career. Jim tells the story of one victim, abused by her father, whose case changed the course of his career and made him determined to focus on identifying children. He also tells Mariana about the schoolteacher who abused children for years before Jim’s team uncovered what he had done. They discuss the tactics offenders use to groom children and why the people posing the greatest danger are often not who a child or family expects. They also talk about how artificial intelligence is changing this crime, from the creation of new synthetic abuse material to the ways technology can make it harder for investigators to tell what is real, identify victims, and keep up with the volume of material online. Jim also reflects on the toll of doing this work for decades, what he has carried with him, and why he continues to fight for children who might otherwise never be rescued. Jim now serves as Senior Advisor for Cyber Strategy and Child Protection at Our Rescue, a nonprofit whose mission is to end human trafficking and child exploitation. He also co-hosts Unlikely Allies: Inside Our Fight with Sonny Von Cleveland, a previous guest on The Hidden Third. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. 2 Sept

    She Escaped Traffickers, Then Was Kidnapped Again

    https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/HIDDENTHIRD and use code HIDDENTHIRD and get $150 if you win your first $5 lineup!  Sex trafficking survivor Lurata Lyon was kidnapped twice. First, at 17, by a trafficking network in Bosnia while fleeing the Yugoslav Wars. Then, after escaping, by Serbian paramilitaries who held her captive for six months. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana van Zeller speaks with Lurata Lyon about surviving war, sex trafficking, human trafficking, kidnapping, captivity, trauma, and the long road to rebuilding a life after violence. Lurata was a teenager when the violence surrounding the breakup of former Yugoslavia forced her to flee her home in Serbia. She made her way to Bosnia, where she was kidnapped by a human trafficking and organ-harvesting network. She escaped. But after returning to her hometown, she was taken a second time by Serbian paramilitary forces. Held in solitary captivity for six months, Lurata survived abuse, torture, and the constant fear that she would not make it out alive. Her father ultimately arranged for her to be smuggled out of the country in the back of a truck. She arrived in the United Kingdom as a political refugee and began rebuilding her life from scratch. Today, Lurata Lyon is the author of Unbroken: Surviving Human Trafficking. She is an international speaker, public-speaking and presentation coach, and human trafficking advocate who uses her experience to raise awareness about sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, survivor recovery, resilience, and life after trauma. Sex trafficking is not rare, and it is not limited to conflict zones. The International Labour Organization estimates that 6.3 million people were living in forced commercial sexual exploitation worldwide in 2021, nearly four out of five of them women and girls. In the United States, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 50,123 signals in 2021, including calls, texts, online chats, and tips from people seeking help or reporting possible trafficking. Even though human trafficking is often discussed through statistics, headlines, and criminal cases, Lurata’s story helps us understand the human reality of sex trafficking and survival. It also shows how war, displacement, fear, isolation, and the search for safety can make people vulnerable to exploitation. #SexTrafficking #HumanTrafficking #SexTraffickingSurvivor #HumanTraffickingSurvivor #HumanTraffickingAwareness #SurvivingSexTrafficking #YugoslavWars #WarSurvivor #PoliticalRefugee #TraumaRecovery #LurataLyon #MarianaVanZeller #TheHiddenThird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. 19 Aug

    The Man Governments Send to Negotiate with Terrorists | Tom Gregg

    Hostage negotiator and UN mediator Tom Gregg on Afghanistan, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange. He has spent more than twenty years in rooms most of us will never see. Tom Gregg is a conflict and hostage mediator — the man governments send when they need to talk to people they officially refuse to communicate with. He was the UN's man in eastern Afghanistan, the most dangerous corner of the country, when a full-blown insurgency against America took hold. In September 2006 a suicide bomber assassinated Governor Hakim Taniwal, the man he worked alongside — a former university professor who'd come home from exile in Australia to try to rebuild his homeland. The next day a second bomber walked into the funeral and blew himself up among the mourners who'd come to bury him. He has mediated in Somalia, Nigeria and the Sahel, negotiated with kidnappers to bring hostages home, and run back channels for the United Nations, the U.S. government and the World Health Organization. When Kabul fell in August 2021, the UN sent him in to open the first face-to-face talks between the United Nations and the Taliban leadership. He almost never gives interviews, because almost none of his work can be discussed. This is one of the very few long conversations he has ever done. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Tom Gregg sits down with me to explain how the invisible business of negotiation actually works. We talk about: The 2014 Bowe Bergdahl exchange: five Guantánamo prisoners for one American soldier, and how a deal that big actually gets done Flying into Kabul days after the Taliban takeover to open the UN's first face-to-face talks with the new regime The Haqqanis: how the family America armed to fight the Soviets became the deadliest enemy the U.S. faced in Afghanistan Washington armed the father. The son now runs the police. How Sirajuddin Haqqani went from a ten-million-dollar FBI bounty to Afghanistan's interior minister The morning a suicide bomber killed Governor Hakim Taniwal, who he worked alongside in Gardez, and the second bomb that hit the funeral the next day Why those two attacks were the first sign that America's plan for Afghanistan was already failing How a kid from Australia ended up as a UN Political Affairs Officer in the most dangerous corner of Afghanistan The backpacking trip that changed his life, and the time he almost got mugged in Mexico City — the strangest night of his life Negotiating vaccine access with armed groups, and what it takes to get a nurse safely into a war zone Private diplomacy at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, and what an NGO can do that no government can What Afghanistan looks like in 2026, with Pakistan now bombing the same provinces the insurgency once crossed from How Bono once told him he was against Bill Clinton engaging Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader the U.S. had banned for twenty years — and how watching that gamble help deliver the Good Friday Agreement changed his mind about talking to your enemy Why the most consequential work in the world is done by people whose names you will never learn His PTSD, how he got better, and why he believes communication is the only thing that ever really ends a war If you're interested in war, hostage negotiation, Afghanistan, the Taliban, intelligence, diplomacy, or the hidden systems that decide who lives and who comes home, this conversation goes somewhere almost no interview does. Subscribe to The Hidden Third on YouTube, and follow, rate and comment on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. It genuinely helps. Get exclusive episodes, behind-the-scenes conversations, and unaired footage from stories we couldn't tell anywhere else at Patreon.com/thehiddenthird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. 12 Aug

    Secret Service Interrogator: How He Got Killers to Talk | Brad Beeler

    Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MARIANA at⁠ https://www.oneskin.co/MARIANA⁠  #oneskinpod Brad Beeler is one of the most experienced criminal polygraph examiners in U.S. Secret Service history — a 25-year federal agent who has sat across the table from counterfeiters, child predators, killers, and fraudsters, and gotten a remarkable number of them to tell him the truth. What looks in the movies like pressure, threats, and Reid-technique interrogation is, in his telling, almost the opposite: a science-backed set of trust-building, deception-detection, and interview techniques that he says a parent, a teacher, or a business leader can learn to use just as effectively as a federal agent. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Brad sits down with me to walk through the cases that shaped his career — from a years-long hunt for a master counterfeiter, to child-exploitation investigations, to a homicide confession he still calls the most transformative moment of his life — and to break down what actually gets people who don't want to talk to tell you the truth. We dig into: – Growing up in Union, Missouri, and how a childhood best friend who was deaf became the origin of the way he now thinks about communication.– His path into the Secret Service. – How he became a federal polygraph examiner and ended up conducting more criminal polygraph exams than anyone in Secret Service history.– The real story of how polygraphs work - why people "beat the examiner, not the instrument," how false confessions happen, and where confirmation bias becomes dangerous. – The King of Counterfeit case: the multi-year hunt for a master counterfeiter, and how the suspect's own ego became the interview lever.– His child-exploitation work with local ICAC task forces and homicide detectives — the cases that earned him U.S. Secret Service Special Agent of the Year in 2015. – The homicide confession he describes as "transformative," and how silence, presence, and empathy did what pressure never could. – Four years on the protective detail of former President George H. W. Bush in Maine and Houston, including what the Bushes did every Christmas so agents could be with their families. – His final post as instructor and Secret Service liaison at the National Center for Credibility Assessment, the federal government's polygraph school at Fort Jackson. – The tradecraft behind his new book, Tell Me Everything: A Secret Service Agent's Proven Strategies for Earning Trust, Revealing the Truth, and Communicating with Anyone — and why the same techniques that get a suspect to confess can also get a scared kid to text his parents at 2 a.m. If you're interested in true crime, interrogation techniques, deception detection, lie detector tests, Secret Service stories, child-exploitation investigations, or how the best interviewers in federal law enforcement actually get people to talk, this interview goes far beyond the headlines and tells the story in Brad's own words. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. 8 Jul

    How an LAPD Captain Solved a 30-Year-Old Cold Case Murder

    Nearly 30 years after 15‑year‑old Danielle “Danni” Houchins was murdered in Montana, former LAPD captain Tom Elfmont helped finally bring her family answers. Drawing on more than 25 years running gang and narcotics operations in South Los Angeles, Tom has turned his skills to cold cases and long‑forgotten victims. In this episode, he takes us inside policing during some of the most volatile moments in modern U.S. history — from Vietnam and the protest years in Berkeley to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the notorious 39th and Dalton drug raid that put his LAPD career on trial. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MARIANA at https://www.oneskin.co/MARIANA #oneskinpod Timeline’s clinically proven formula, Mitopure, now starts at $79, when you subscribe at http://timeline.com/MARIANA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. 22 Apr

    The American Captive Inside Venezuela's Deadliest Prison

    Join The Hidden Third Patreon today! patreon.com/thehiddenthird Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on my video. Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/hiddenthird! #squarepod James Luckey-Lange had one country left to visit in the continental Americas: Venezuela. He'd survived Haiti, Nicaragua, a husky he buried in Patagonia, and the loss of both his parents — including his mother, the late Q Lazzarus, the singer behind "Goodbye Horses" from The Silence of the Lambs. He crossed into Venezuela on the back of a motorcycle taxi from Brazil on December 7th. He was detained the next day. What followed was more than a month of beatings, starvation, a sham trial, and solitary confinement in Rodeo I — one of the most notorious prisons in the world — where he scraped the alphabet onto a wall to teach his cellmate to read, and carved the names of fellow prisoners into a bar of soap he smuggled out in his underwear. His release came only after the U.S. military captured Maduro — news he learned six days late, through prison whispers and an unexpected serving of chocolate cake. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana van Zeller sits down with James to hear the full story — and find out what he's doing with that soap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. 8 Apr

    Chosen by Aliens: The Kidnapping of Jan Broberg

    Jan Broberg was kidnapped at 12 by a family friend who convinced her it was an alien mission. Then kidnapped again at 14. Her story — the basis for Netflix's Abducted in Plain Sight — is one of the most shocking grooming cases ever documented. Today she tells it in her own words, and breaks down the predator tactics that are still happening — from family friends to online platforms like Roblox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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About

From Emmy and Peabody Award–winning journalist Mariana van Zeller comes THE HIDDEN THIRD, a weekly dive into the underground markets that quietly power a third of the global economy. Every episode Mariana sits down with people who know these worlds firsthand - the hustlers, smugglers, scammers, kingpins, and those trying to shut them down. The series reveals how they function, why they endure, and the profound ways they impact us all. New episodes drop every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts. The Hidden Third is a co-production of Muck Media and The Roost Podcast Network.

Information

  • Creator
    Mariana van Zeller
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    54
  • Show Website
    The Hidden Third

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