Cartels

Mexico’s cartels, the people who fought them and the reporters who cover them. The Julian Dorey Podcast treats the cartel story as a long conversation rather than a headline: how Sinaloa and CJNG operate, what fentanyl and its Chinese precursors did to the trade, how trafficking works on the ground, and where the CIA and the US government fit in.

Ed Calderon, a former cartel cop who spent years in public safety on Mexico’s northern border, keeps coming back to the show, covering covert US operations, mass graves, El Mencho and the cartel occult. Kat Szulc reports on cartel activity from inside Mexico, including CJNG trafficking and the journalists killed for covering it. Mariana van Zeller brings the black-market view: arms dealers selling to both sides, a fentanyl lab and the cartels’ reach into small-town America.