Ioan Grillo is a contributing writer at The New York Times specializing in crime and drugs. He is the author of El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency; Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America; and Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. (This is part one of a two-part episode. Part two can be found here: https://youtu.be/ZXMtdXR_pS0) Full show notes can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/700 Subscribe to the podcast: http://jordanharbinger.com/subscribe What We Discuss with Ioan: 00:00 - Intro 00:06 - Why Ioan left the UK to report on the West 02:17 - Covering the violence of the cartels 09:27 - Ioan tells some stories about the cartels 19:01 - Finding 49 bodies 31:32 - Why the cartel hasn't gotten Ioan 36:28 - The sicario kids 43:53 - Scarily cheap hitmen 48:41 - Why you can't just eliminate kingpins 56:04 - 16x more cop fatalities in Mexico than in the US 1:01:22 - What is the solution? Mexican cartels are infamous for their ruthlessness in carving out whatever piece of the $300 billion annual illicit drug trade they can. This means waging war against one another, as well as terrorizing the populace unlucky enough to call a contested town home. The police can’t be trusted to serve and protect them because, if they’re not on the take from the cartels, they’re certainly outgunned by them. Thousands of innocent people disappear every year as pawns in whatever games the cartels decide to play — children often recruited to carry out the bloodiest, most gruesome work while their parents and relatives wind up in mass graves. For 20 years, journalist Ioan Grillo has been immersed in this world of nonstop cruelty and chaos, resulting in two books: El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency and Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America (we’ll get more into his third and most recent, Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels, in the second part of this two-part episode later this week). Here, Ioan shares the horrors he’s witnessed over the past two decades and tries to make sense of it all while retaining his own humanity. Get the BEST highlights from each episode on our clips channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-cxPJ7QxPE8M7EYe5Vv7ag Want to watch more in-depth interviews with some of the world’s most amazing and successful people? Find full episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNbAQB8BYtM&list=PLxuPu-uyanrrBgAl5-76enemxVsxFjnEQ&index=1 Welcome to The Jordan Harbinger Show, a video podcast where each week you get to join a conversation with some of the world’s highest performers and incredible personalities. I’ll ask them the tough questions to tease out their top tips so that you can reach levels of personal growth and mastery that you never imagined possible. Learn more about Jordan: http://jordanharbinger.com/about