The Hidden Third
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.
Episodes
April 29, 2026 • 124 mins
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Amanda Knox was 20 years old when she went to Italy for a study abroad year. Weeks later, her roommate Meredith Kercher was murdered — and Amanda became the story. She was wrongfully convicted, sentenced to 26 years, and imprisoned for four years while the global media treated her...
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April 22, 2026 • 123 mins
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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 h...
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April 15, 2026 • 128 mins
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Shaka Senghor went to prison for murder at 19 and spent seven of his 19 years in solitary confinement. But his imprisonment started long before that. Today, Mariana sits down with Shaka and has an intimate conversation about life’s hidden prisons, the moment in solitary confinement that changed his life, and the work he is passionate about now - speaking to young ...
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April 8, 2026 • 128 mins
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.
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April 1, 2026 • 104 mins
This week on The Hidden Third, Mariana sits down with Coss Marte — a former drug dealer who, at 17, was running what he claims was New York City's first 24/7 drug delivery business, pulling in over $2 million. A betrayal within his own team brought it all crashing down, and he was suddenly facing up to 25 years in prison. Behind bars, a doctor told him he wouldn't survive to 30. What happened next changed everything. Coss lost 70 p...
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March 25, 2026 • 85 mins
Marta Barreto survived years of sexual abuse, addiction, exploitation, and prison. She became a mother, got sober, went back to school, and eventually landed her childhood dream — working on rocket propulsion at Virgin Orbit. In this episode, Marta talks about the psychological grip of trauma and exploitation, the barriers that keep so many victims trapped, and what it really takes to rebuild a life from zero. One of the most power...
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March 18, 2026 • 104 mins
Britt Elmore, former undercover narcotics detective, spent years embedded inside the operations most people only see in crime dramas — building cases against dealers, managing informants, and navigating the moral gray zones that define modern drug enforcement.
In this episode, he pulls back the curtain on how undercover operations really work: the mechanics of infiltrating criminal networks, the fragile trust between officers and...
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March 11, 2026 • 103 mins
Sonny Von Cleveland survived years of childhood sexual abuse, 18 years in prison, and 19 months in solitary confinement. But it was in that isolation cell where everything changed — through daily conversations with a Muslim mentor in the cell across from his, Sonny found accountability, forgiveness, and a reason to live differently.
Today he mentors at-risk youth in juvenile detention centers across Southern California, serves on ...
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March 4, 2026 • 122 mins
Between 4,000 and 6,000 cartel trespass growers take to the woods of California every year. They arrive armed, they stay for months, and they are ready to defend their cash crop at any cost. They divert waterways, deploy pesticides and fertilizers so toxic they were banned by the EPA over a decade ago, and leave behind environmental disasters that may take generations to repair. And they do all of this not in some remote foreign co...
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February 25, 2026 • 102 mins
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What happens when one of the most powerful corporations in the world – Amazon – decides your family is a threat? Amy Nelson, attorney, mother of four, and founder of The Riveter, found out the hard way: frozen bank accounts, FBI raids, federal subpoenas, and the full weight of the Department of Justice dep...
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February 18, 2026 • 88 mins
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At 14, Christian Picciolini was a lonely kid from an Italian immigrant family in Chicago when he was recruited into the Chicago Area Skinheads — one of America's first neo-Nazi skinhead groups. By 16, he was leading it. He fronted white power punk bands, helped merge his group with the violent Hammerskin Nation, opened a record st...
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February 13, 2026 • 32 mins
On The Hidden Third, we explore the underground worlds and shadowy figures that drive much of the global economy—so today I’m excited to share an excerpt from a new audiobook about one of our culture’s most taboo, most-watched, and least-understood industries: porn. It’s the most watched business in the world. And the least understood. Streamed by millions every day, porn is everywhere. It shapes our culture, our relationships, and...
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February 11, 2026 • 129 mins
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Kari Ferrell became known as “The Hipster Grifter” after her cons went viral. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Kari joins me to talk about how her scams worked — from bad checks to stealing from friends and lying about being a cancer survivor — and how things escalated after she moved from Salt Lake City to New York City, where she landed a jo...
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February 4, 2026 • 131 mins
Eric Balliet spent 25 years with the Department of Homeland Security - first with the CBP and then with ICE - arresting dozens of human traffickers, smugglers, and child predators. He led the wiretap strategy that resulted in the arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán—not once, but twice—and was named Federal Law Enforcement Association's Agent of the Year.
In this episode, we dive deep into:
- His time as a border patrol agent
- ...
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In this episode, I sit down with MS NOW correspondent and bestselling author Jacob Soboroff for a candid conversation about what it takes to report on the stories that shape our country, and the personal cost that comes with it.
Jacob shares why he became a journa...
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January 21, 2026 • 106 mins
In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana sits down with Arman, an underground hacker involved in the infamous Xbox Underground case -- an alleged conspiracy federal investigators said targeted Microsoft and its partners and was valued by the FBI at more than $100 million.
Arman says he’s been hacking since he could type. Diagnosed with ADD, he found an early obsession and talent in computer programming, spending months in grad...
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January 14, 2026 • 99 mins
This week on The Hidden Third, I sit down with Owen Hanson, known as “O-Dog” — a former USC athlete whose hunger to win at all costs spiraled into a criminal operation spanning sports betting, drug trafficking, and money laundering.
Hanson’s story was recently featured in Mark Wahlberg’s docu-series Cocaine Quarterback. But this conversation goes deeper than the headlines. He tells me how it started with his own performance-enhanc...
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January 7, 2026 • 88 mins
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This week on The Hidden Third, I speak to Anna Sorokin, better known as “Anna Delvey”, the infamous “fake heiress” whose real-life story was later dramatized in Netflix’s “Inventing Anna”.
Anna posed as a wealthy German socialite, worked her way into New York’s elite circles, and used deception and manipulation to get banks, luxury hotels, and even f...
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December 17, 2025 • 131 mins
Justin Paperny is a former stockbroker turned convicted felon. In this episode, he takes Mariana from the schemes that landed him in federal prison to how he now coaches white-collar criminals on surviving incarceration and rebuilding their lives.
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December 10, 2025 • 90 mins
Todd Thomas’s daughter was 12 when he discovered she was being groomed by a child predator. What he did next changed the course of his life. Mariana talks to Todd about the moment he found out, the choices he made, the failures that let this happen, and how he’s turned pain into purpose.
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