Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. There's been a lot of
Speaker 1: talk about who should replace Daniel Craig now that he
Speaker 1: is retiring as James Bond, and I think I have
Speaker 1: found the perfect person. He's handsome, charming, brilliant and multi lingual.
Speaker 1: His name is Nicholas ni ArkOS, and if only he
Speaker 1: could put down his computer long enough to play the part.
Speaker 1: Ni ArkOS is a journalist. His choice of unglamorous and
Speaker 1: at times dangerous profession is all the more surprising when
Speaker 1: you learn about his background. His grandfather, Stavros Niarchos, founded
Speaker 1: the international shipping company ni ArkOS Limited. I first came
Speaker 1: across ni ArkOS in The New Yorker magazine. His recent
Speaker 1: piece Buried Dreams covers the exploitation of workers in the
Speaker 1: cobalt mines in Central Africa. In his reporting, ni ArkOS
Speaker 1: exposed the danger of us and exploitative conditions for the
Speaker 1: workers in Congolese cobalt minds, many of whom are children,
Speaker 1: as well as those that's down to profit handsomely off
Speaker 1: the minds. In addition to being a reporter at large
Speaker 1: at the New Yorker, New York coss work has appeared
Speaker 1: in Time, the New York Times, and the Nation. I
Speaker 1: think that all the places that I try and work
Speaker 1: for require a sort of serious journalistic engagement. And that's
Speaker 1: what I really seek for. When I look for a
Speaker 1: publication to write for The New Yorker, I find the
Speaker 1: fact checking process. I was a fact checker for for
Speaker 1: for many years. I think that's a very engaging thing
Speaker 1: to deal with. I like working directly with the fact checkers.
Speaker 1: I liked being a fact checker, learning a great deal
Speaker 1: about a subject, you know, for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and then and then sort of moving on. And actually
Speaker 1: I found now as a reporter actually enhances my reporting.
Speaker 1: It leads me down new alleys when I'm trying to
Speaker 1: sort of verify things, to the kind of hundreds of
Speaker 1: descience kind of thing. When you when you factor you
Speaker 1: did it for how long? I did for five years? Actually,
Speaker 1: well almost four years and eleven months. Did they confine
Speaker 1: you to fact checking in a certain realm or did
Speaker 1: you fact check a lot of different things? I fact
Speaker 1: checked a lot of different things because I speak French
Speaker 1: and Italian obviously, when there were stories which required those languages.
Speaker 1: I would I would be sort of fact you were
Speaker 1: the go to fact checker sometimes, Yeah, when you when
Speaker 1: you would do the fact checking or I mean were
Speaker 1: there once you enjoyed more like ones that were like
Speaker 1: deep and intense and scientific or culture whatever, and did
Speaker 1: you did you didn't love, You didn't love doing the
Speaker 1: fact checking of the profile of some actress, or you
Speaker 1: enjoyed all of it. I enjoyed all of it, you know. Listen.
Speaker 1: I worked on a piece on TMZ by Nick Schmiddle,
Speaker 1: which was a kind of investigative piece, and that was
Speaker 1: a kind of crazy experience that was kind of so well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sort of more you know, kind of
Speaker 1: input and sort of back and forth and lawyers and whatever.
Speaker 1: Then most other pieces, you know, sometimes it would do
Speaker 1: pieces on Iraq and Afghanistan and so on, and they
Speaker 1: were quite less less lay in a stated how Darfy
Speaker 1: or Harvey love them exactly exactly blash, But no, I
Speaker 1: loved working with I mean the writers. They're a great
Speaker 1: Patrick Keith, Sarah Stillman, Rachel I mean this this kind
Speaker 1: of made Rebecca Mede. Rebecca was actually a sort of
Speaker 1: wonderful early person I've fact checked quite quite early on
Speaker 1: in my career there and then kind of ended up
Speaker 1: sort of doing quite a lot with her, which was
Speaker 1: quite fun. And we did a piece i remember on
Speaker 1: adult and Cabano, and we just had like a lot
Speaker 1: of back and forth with Dultri caban as people, and
Speaker 1: it was just it was sort of hilarious because sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, those sort of fashion stories and so on.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're talking with people in government and
Speaker 1: so on, they kind of they have this attitude that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's a story, it's going to go away, Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: if it's a big fashion house and you know, this
Speaker 1: is one of the few times that it appears in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, you know this year or in the
Speaker 1: you know, in five years or whatever, they realized that
Speaker 1: that's going to stick with the marketing for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly a degree. Um well, I mean, I'm obviously in
Speaker 1: every reader of The New Yorker. The thing I tend
Speaker 1: to see when I when I was thinking about your
Speaker 1: article and budgets and costs and things like that, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the magazine has obviously a menu in different articles.
Speaker 1: There might be a profile, there might be you know,
Speaker 1: there's obviously the shouts and murmurs and talk of the
Speaker 1: town and so. But of the body of the pieces
Speaker 1: that are not criticism or art or what have you,
Speaker 1: there seems to be a limit, I would imagine of
Speaker 1: the number of pieces that are this expansive, because it
Speaker 1: must be expensive. Correct. You know, I started this piece
Speaker 1: reporting it for as a book, and the first it
Speaker 1: started as a as a sort of book reporting and
Speaker 1: then and then kind of developed into New Yorker reporting.
Speaker 1: So actually I funded some of it from my own money,
Speaker 1: and then I used some of the New Yorker what
Speaker 1: the New Yorker paid me to to sort of continue
Speaker 1: the reporting. But actually, you know, this was a sort
Speaker 1: of budget less piece at the beginning. You first became
Speaker 1: aware of this when and how I first became aware
Speaker 1: of this issue around cobalt mining because of somebody called
Speaker 1: Dan Gutler. He is a mining billionaire who has sort
Speaker 1: of made his wealth in the DRC, and he actually
Speaker 1: made a lot of money. Buy he's from Israel. Originally
Speaker 1: he came to DRC. It's a crazy story. Came when
Speaker 1: he was about twenty three, and by the time he
Speaker 1: was twenty six, he was in charge of the congo's
Speaker 1: entire diamond export and then various sort of human rights
Speaker 1: groups groups are like, wait, well, what's happening here. He
Speaker 1: was very close to the ruling family and so he
Speaker 1: was kind of booted off that and Congo said, look, listen,
Speaker 1: look we've dealt with this problem. And suddenly it turned
Speaker 1: out that he had a bunch of copper and cobalt
Speaker 1: mines down in the south, which he seemed to be basically,
Speaker 1: and this is very well documented by the Carter Center
Speaker 1: and sort of human rights watching various other institutions, basically
Speaker 1: he was selling them on for the ruling family to
Speaker 1: finance their elections. So he had basically flipped the minds
Speaker 1: and he became aware of him. How I became aware
Speaker 1: of him. I have a very good friend of mine
Speaker 1: who works in mining, and I was sort of casting
Speaker 1: around for stories related to Africa, related to corruption and
Speaker 1: so on, and he said, well, listen, I mean look,
Speaker 1: no Risco exactly. And also actually Patrick Keith, who has
Speaker 1: been a great sort of inspiration to me and I
Speaker 1: worked with actually at the New Yorker, and you had
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney on the show and he you know, they
Speaker 1: collaborated on the opioid story acted to Patrick on the
Speaker 1: street the other day with his family down in the village,
Speaker 1: and I just said to myself, my god, I thought
Speaker 1: they documented withal. So he'd done a piece on Bennie
Speaker 1: stein Metz, who was a Israeli mining billionaire. I think
Speaker 1: he's he's currently been arrested or he's on trial in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: and he had basically taken control of an iron are
Speaker 1: mine called Simon Do, which is in Guinea. And so
Speaker 1: Patrick had done that story, and that was a kind
Speaker 1: of great inspiration. And then I sort of went to Patrick,
Speaker 1: and Patrick said, list and you should also follow the story.
Speaker 1: It's a great idea. I've always wanted to do Gartler.
Speaker 1: And then I arrived in Congo and I realized that
Speaker 1: the Gartler story was very interesting, but it wasn't the
Speaker 1: whole story. And actually what became more interested interesting to
Speaker 1: me is the lives of these people. Just the hellish
Speaker 1: existence of a cobalt minor, an artisanal cobalt minor have
Speaker 1: to be preciser in the southern DRC. Now I read
Speaker 1: the article and you become suspicious. So you become enlightened,
Speaker 1: if you will, to the idea that huge swaths of
Speaker 1: this continent are being exploited for these kinds of minerals,
Speaker 1: and and and if I may say so, you'll let
Speaker 1: you speak to this, not just the greatest hits like
Speaker 1: petroleum based things, but these cobalts for lithium for modern technology, chips,
Speaker 1: photovoltaic whatever they may be used for batteries, mostly correct
Speaker 1: the lithium battery. It was it safe to say, you
Speaker 1: talk about Guinea, you talk about d r C. Is
Speaker 1: this happening all over Africa where these minerals exist, I mean, American, Israeli.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter pirates or when they're trying to grab
Speaker 1: as much of it as they can. Well, it depends where.
Speaker 1: Obviously some places are better regulated than others. Who's doing
Speaker 1: a good job of regulating if you can say, I think,
Speaker 1: for example, Zambia has had a better track record, although
Speaker 1: now the sort of influx of Chinese wealth into Zambia
Speaker 1: has sort of up ended some of that. And what
Speaker 1: if he was seeking their copper as well. So it's
Speaker 1: actually on the border with d r C. When I
Speaker 1: was reporting some of this stuff, I actually flew to
Speaker 1: Zambia to meet sort of renegade Congolese politician before he
Speaker 1: was traveling back into the DRC. So yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: known as the Copper Belt, and it's it's a sort
Speaker 1: of large the scene between the two countries exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And the other big one is coldtan actually, and that's
Speaker 1: sort of been the focus of a lot of human
Speaker 1: rights work because it is largely mined by sort of
Speaker 1: army types and sort of war lords in the northeast
Speaker 1: of the DRC. And coltan is used in capacitors, which
Speaker 1: are sort of key for computers and batteries. That's also
Speaker 1: been a big issue and people confuse that with cobalt,
Speaker 1: and actually what's happening there is is slightly different from cobalt,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of more of a mechanized, sort
Speaker 1: of legitimized a type of trade. Well, the thing that
Speaker 1: also struck me in terms of any story like this
Speaker 1: with there's danger described to me what you had to
Speaker 1: do in advanced security wise, you don't just land at
Speaker 1: the airport and say in an uber and say take
Speaker 1: me to you know, Cobal town. There must have been
Speaker 1: a lot of preparatory steps you took and security steps took.
Speaker 1: Give I'm assuming, and then talk about when you first
Speaker 1: got there for the first time. What went on? Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, the security steps. I mean, I've traveled to
Speaker 1: quite a lot at this point of countries which sort
Speaker 1: of have different complicated security profiles, At places like Yamen,
Speaker 1: Western Sahara, in fact, this southern part of the d
Speaker 1: r C. You know, there is the threat always of
Speaker 1: randomized violence, but I, you know, had looked into it.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to a couple of people who had been there.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to a couple of journalists, and I don't
Speaker 1: think there was a kind of threatening or kind of
Speaker 1: looming threat. I wasn't particularly afraid that. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: traveling on the road at night, you'd be stopped at
Speaker 1: roadblocks and there would be sort of policemen with guns
Speaker 1: and they'll be drunk, and you know, then you get
Speaker 1: a little bit nervous, and then we were sort of
Speaker 1: held up in broad daylight. So I traveled with the
Speaker 1: local journalist called Jeff Kazadi, who's a who's a wonderful
Speaker 1: one a guy, and he's he's he was a great resource.
Speaker 1: He worked as a translator. He was incredibly sort of
Speaker 1: resourceful as well on on the ground, and he sort
Speaker 1: of knew quite a few of the operators, and he
Speaker 1: had worked with I believe CNN before and some other
Speaker 1: journalists who had been down to do stories like this
Speaker 1: or to do other types of stories in Southern DRC.
Speaker 1: He works for a mining trade publication, so you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes he wanted to sort of look further into stories,
Speaker 1: but because he works for an industry publication, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the type of journalism that they were interested in. So
Speaker 1: I contacted Jeff. I also contacted another journalist, ben Nyemba,
Speaker 1: who who's based out of there, and he was interested
Speaker 1: in this. So the first time I went, I went
Speaker 1: with Jeff and Ben. We kind of thought about the
Speaker 1: security risks and we discussed the different types of issues
Speaker 1: along the road. Sometimes there were bandits and so on,
Speaker 1: but usually if you're traveling in the daytime and you're
Speaker 1: fairly safe along that road. So when I first arrived
Speaker 1: in the South, I've been in Conshassa for a bit
Speaker 1: and in many ways the South is much less hectic
Speaker 1: lincl Chassa and I arrived on a local flight so
Speaker 1: we didn't have to deal with customs. I stayed in
Speaker 1: a sort of very downbeat hotel, which was an interesting
Speaker 1: experience to say the least, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: women coming in at night and leaving in the morning,
Speaker 1: but afterwards everywhere, which is everywhere exactly. And then I
Speaker 1: stayed the next two or three times I was there
Speaker 1: in more kind of like hotels that sort of mining
Speaker 1: execs had made their home. It was, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of immediately there with people at the bar kind of
Speaker 1: talking about their sort of the you know, the greatest
Speaker 1: hits of you know, copper mines and cobalt mines, some
Speaker 1: of the work that some of the useful work done there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those are sort of like off the record chats usually,
Speaker 1: but it helps you get get such a good sort
Speaker 1: of context around this up. You know what else was
Speaker 1: very useful useful is that I visited a mining conference
Speaker 1: there as well and sort of met a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the field. It was hosted by a South
Speaker 1: African firm, but it was kind of visited by all
Speaker 1: the sort of local potents and so on. It was
Speaker 1: a sort of eye opening experience because people are very
Speaker 1: aware of the problem of artisanal mining. And you have
Speaker 1: to make the distinction between artisanal mining and industrial mining.
Speaker 1: So artisanal mining is something somewhere between ten and thirty
Speaker 1: percent of Congo's production every year. It really fluctuates depending
Speaker 1: on you know, supply demands so on. And the rest
Speaker 1: is industrial, which has done much in the way of
Speaker 1: large mining firms anywhere else in the world. And do
Speaker 1: the industrials want to put the artisanals out of work?
Speaker 1: The industrials would probably prefer that the artisanals were not
Speaker 1: there because there are serious human rights issues with some
Speaker 1: of the artisanal minds, which with many of the artismal minds,
Speaker 1: I would say some are led by cooperatives, and those
Speaker 1: co operatives are sort of better about safety than other
Speaker 1: sort of non coatrial co operative managed artisanal minds. However,
Speaker 1: the big problem is that there's just been a huge
Speaker 1: flux of people into that region. It's a gold rush.
Speaker 1: It's a huge gold rush, and you really feel like
Speaker 1: just people are arriving every day, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: There's a train that comes down from a place called
Speaker 1: Mbuji Mai, which is in the middle of Congo, and
Speaker 1: that is a place in which there used to be
Speaker 1: a huge amount of diamond mining and that's been sort
Speaker 1: of woefully mismanaged and the industry has kind of fallen
Speaker 1: into pieces. So a lot of people who had some
Speaker 1: mining experience and now sort of getting on that train
Speaker 1: which goes through the sort of jungles and wilds of
Speaker 1: Central Congo and comes to Lumumbashi and sort of people
Speaker 1: are just sort of hanging off the side of that
Speaker 1: train and it comes, you know, every two months or
Speaker 1: something like that. Nobody really the the schedule basically works
Speaker 1: on you know, whenever it's completely full, whenever they can
Speaker 1: sort of get the engine running. And so with that,
Speaker 1: you know, people come. And then the industrial mines are
Speaker 1: sort of run by very few people, so they don't
Speaker 1: have the capacity to observe resolve that labor force exactly.
Speaker 1: They don't they can't hire. So yeah, I think they
Speaker 1: arrived to participate in artisanal mining. Exactly. You arrived because
Speaker 1: you think you're going to get rich and there's just
Speaker 1: like a lot of stories about it and so on,
Speaker 1: and you arrive and there's nothing to do apart from
Speaker 1: artisanal mining basically, and people really exploit that they get
Speaker 1: paid nothing. I mean, it's it's some people say that
Speaker 1: there have been people who made lots and lots of money,
Speaker 1: but I actually found that quite difficult to believe. After
Speaker 1: spending two months there, I just so you went the
Speaker 1: one on the one trip for two months. So I
Speaker 1: went on one trip for a month, then I went
Speaker 1: on another trip for ten days, and then I was
Speaker 1: there for about almost a month the next time, so
Speaker 1: two months. So when you arrive and you are in
Speaker 1: the more decent hotel with people who seem to be
Speaker 1: related to the whole enterprise, and you can church out
Speaker 1: with him. Is the idea that when you arrive, you
Speaker 1: don't go right into the belly of the beast and
Speaker 1: go to where the artisanal mining is at full at
Speaker 1: full throttle. You kind of work your way towards that is,
Speaker 1: did you take a few days before you get into
Speaker 1: the into the pits so to speak? Depends actually on
Speaker 1: the different trips. On my second trip, I went straight
Speaker 1: to the artisman mining because I spent a lot of time,
Speaker 1: you know, talking with Seth Effricans about, you know, the
Speaker 1: benefits of copper mining for the area. So you know,
Speaker 1: I had all that material and I wanted to really
Speaker 1: focus on the the artisanal miners, who were people that
Speaker 1: sounded like they had not the right idea, but maybe
Speaker 1: the better ideas about how this should be handled, what
Speaker 1: should happen there for the greater good of everybody. So
Speaker 1: there's a Catholic charity called Good Shepherd, called Ways, and
Speaker 1: they've been incredibly sort of outspoken and sort of quite
Speaker 1: sort of research focused as well around some of these issues.
Speaker 1: They've put forward this plan which says, listen, you need
Speaker 1: to develop other types of industry because you have to
Speaker 1: understand this as like a as a cycle of which
Speaker 1: corruption is only a part. There's also just the basic
Speaker 1: fact of poverty and and need. So they have suggested
Speaker 1: that agriculture would be a way of engaging the local population.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's a very fertile region as well, and
Speaker 1: something like ninety cent of Congo's food is imported, so
Speaker 1: there's this kind of from other areas, from from Zambia,
Speaker 1: from from other areas of the region. So there's this
Speaker 1: kind and and import taxes are huge, and people are
Speaker 1: making money every step of the way, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, often not Congolese. So they say, listen,
Speaker 1: why don't the Congolese grow their own food here? Why
Speaker 1: don't people work on farms? And so I think that
Speaker 1: that's a you know, there are large businesses that obviously
Speaker 1: invested in this. I think that's actually something which would
Speaker 1: be positive for them to do. So. There are also
Speaker 1: some other groups like the Fair Cobalt Alliance, and then
Speaker 1: there's another Chinese group. The u N doesn't have a
Speaker 1: permanent presence, I don't think in con ways. Actually, a
Speaker 1: lot of what they do in Congo is to do
Speaker 1: with rebels in the north, and then they assisted with
Speaker 1: war crimes tribunals in a city which was not too
Speaker 1: far away. So they do mainly kind of like armed
Speaker 1: conflict type stuff there. I didn't see any sort of
Speaker 1: UN involvement, but I could you know, they could that
Speaker 1: they could, Yeah, they could. They could be a UN
Speaker 1: office that focuses on this, but it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be a main priority because they're focused on, you know something,
Speaker 1: what what year did you go there? I went and
Speaker 1: right before the right before? How convenient for you? Wonderful?
Speaker 1: And what is the national government? To the extent you
Speaker 1: could you could ascertain when you're there, what's their position
Speaker 1: of what's going on there? So the national government makes
Speaker 1: kind of these overtures over and over again, saying we
Speaker 1: can't have child labor whatever, and then the local government
Speaker 1: will say the same thing, and they're like, we're cleaning
Speaker 1: up the minds and then they used you know, these
Speaker 1: kind of mind clean up activities in order to basically
Speaker 1: sees more parts of the minds for themselves and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of co opt local co operatives and so on.
Speaker 1: And I document that in the piece. And at the
Speaker 1: moment there's a bit of a power struggle happening down
Speaker 1: in that region, and it's very unclear to me what's
Speaker 1: actually happening in terms of like who's getting pieces of
Speaker 1: the pie, But the fact is that it still continues. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was speaking to a friend of mine who's a photographer,
Speaker 1: Hugh can Sell a Cunningham who's done great, great work
Speaker 1: and in the DRC. He was there last weekend and
Speaker 1: he saw basically exactly the same condition. So it's not improving.
Speaker 1: But I'm assuming for people who don't understand the way
Speaker 1: these things work, it's that you have the corporate mining,
Speaker 1: you have the industrial mining, which of course the government's
Speaker 1: going to sanction that because they're gonna make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. I'm assuming, just like the drug trade and
Speaker 1: other parts of the world and South America for example,
Speaker 1: they don't want it to go away. They can't make
Speaker 1: a go away Beau. There'll be just so much illegal
Speaker 1: activity and violence and bloodshed. Do they sit there and
Speaker 1: say and they just write it off and say, well,
Speaker 1: we have to tolerate a certain amount of artisanal mining
Speaker 1: just to keep these people quiet and peaceful. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I can make it go away. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll say that, and sometimes they say, well, artismal
Speaker 1: mining can't exist. And it was funny I interviewed the
Speaker 1: governor at the time, and he basically said the same.
Speaker 1: He said both of those things in the same interview.
Speaker 1: So I don't think they really understood how to deal
Speaker 1: with this problem. And and it is, it's a very
Speaker 1: very complex issue. And I wouldn't say that I have
Speaker 1: I have the answers, but I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: being engaged with in a particularly robust manner. You also
Speaker 1: have to think about that in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: the industrial minds which were brought many of them were
Speaker 1: brought through this guy Gutler who's now in the U S. Actions.
Speaker 1: There's actually Trump d sanctioned him for a bit who
Speaker 1: knows why, and then and then he got re sanctioned.
Speaker 1: And basically you have a system that relies on this
Speaker 1: corruption and those funds are not going back to the people,
Speaker 1: and then you have a situation in which, you know,
Speaker 1: the minds are sold to big Western companies, and big
Speaker 1: Western companies, you know, maybe don't participate directly in that,
Speaker 1: but they work with people who are certainly questionable. Actually
Speaker 1: it's not and forgive me a big Western companies has
Speaker 1: not entirely correct a lot of Chinese companies. Actually, what
Speaker 1: are the Chinese doing there? And how long have them in? Obviously, well,
Speaker 1: when I think of China, I think of a place
Speaker 1: that's obviously a vast a region of land and very
Speaker 1: geologically and topographically and media at atically. What have you here?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a China sit enormous. They don't have
Speaker 1: those resources in their own territory. So something like seventy
Speaker 1: of the world's cobalt is actually in DRC. It's like
Speaker 1: three point four million tons, which a huge, huge amount
Speaker 1: of is that, And you know there are nickel mines
Speaker 1: in Indonesia which also produced a cobalt as a byproduct.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting if you look, one of China's biggest
Speaker 1: battery manufacturers just bought one of the biggest nickel mines
Speaker 1: in Indonesia. So they're really kind of making this resource
Speaker 1: grab and they've understood how I think Ivan Glazenberg, who's
Speaker 1: the head of Glencore, one of the big was the
Speaker 1: head of Glencore, said this summer China Inc. Has realized
Speaker 1: how important cobalt is and and they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: starting to buy everything up. And where do Western manufacturers,
Speaker 1: including the U S. Where do they get their cobalt from?
Speaker 1: From the Chinese? From the Chinese, they're not buying their own, No,
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not trying to develop that resource for themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: BMW is is I think one of the few that
Speaker 1: doesn't buy from the Chinese. They buy most of their
Speaker 1: cobalt from a cobalt only mine in Morocco, but that's
Speaker 1: where too small to supply the entire world. Journalist Nicolas
Speaker 1: ni Arcos. If you like hearing about the inner workings
Speaker 1: of some of the greatest journalistic outlets of our time,
Speaker 1: check out my interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick.
Speaker 1: The magazine is not the magazine if it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a sense of humor. You're not in business to depress
Speaker 1: the hell out of the reader unremittingly. It's like a
Speaker 1: band having a set list. If you do everything, it's
Speaker 1: all sixteenth notes from mentioning. So you got a divido
Speaker 1: or will you sound like the Ramones? Although I've heard
Speaker 1: of worse things. So you want some variation in tone, invoice,
Speaker 1: and that's your responsibility, you feel, I feel all of
Speaker 1: it's my responsibility. Here more of my conversation with David
Speaker 1: Remnick in our archives that Here's the Thing dot org
Speaker 1: after the break, Nicholas ni Archos and I talked about
Speaker 1: his background and the big story he nearly broke in
Speaker 1: high school. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Nicholas ni Arcos, who could be living
Speaker 1: a life of privilege instead can be found in the
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of the Congo reporting on human rights violations.
Speaker 1: Ni Arcos grew up in London and came to the
Speaker 1: United States to attend Yale. His family helped him develop
Speaker 1: his interest in journalism. I grew up in the UK, London.
Speaker 1: I was born in hand but we're born here. Your
Speaker 1: father's Greek Greek. You're growing up in this famous family
Speaker 1: and your father is obviously the son of the guy
Speaker 1: that was the big dog there in the shipping business,
Speaker 1: Stavros Niarchos. But what was it like in your home
Speaker 1: and your family was where you ended up going into charism?
Speaker 1: That was likely where everybody very interested in politic exce
Speaker 1: and current affairs. And was your dad like rabid about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad's sort of very interesting in current affairs. And
Speaker 1: you know, my mom's family as well. My grandfather is
Speaker 1: a writer, and my great grandparents many of them were
Speaker 1: writers and travelers and many such things. And then actually
Speaker 1: in high school, I did this anti school newspaper and
Speaker 1: we actually ended up very very close to blowing the
Speaker 1: lid on this kind of strange story where Chinese officials
Speaker 1: were sort of paying this intermediary character to get their
Speaker 1: kids into the school that I went to, which is
Speaker 1: called Harrow. It's a kind of very stiff boarding school.
Speaker 1: So we ended up almost writing the story and the
Speaker 1: newspaper was shut down two years later the financial time.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the guy has revealed to be somehow connected with
Speaker 1: m I six and like one of the governors in
Speaker 1: China basically was sort of taken down by it. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of she jimping, kind of flexing his
Speaker 1: muscles for the first time we had been so close
Speaker 1: to doing that worry. You know, the only reason that
Speaker 1: we didn't didn't run it was because the school had
Speaker 1: basically said, like, you're not publishing this. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that was the first time I really like saw
Speaker 1: the power of journalism. And it was funny because they
Speaker 1: banned that it was hard copying, and people sort of
Speaker 1: hid it behind their notice boards in their dorm rooms
Speaker 1: and then kind of passed it around, and you know,
Speaker 1: by three days after publication, even though the school had
Speaker 1: destroyed most of the copies, you know, everybody had read
Speaker 1: it and it was this kind of great Athama at
Speaker 1: the bar of journal star, a noble star. And your
Speaker 1: mother is Irish English, she really I went to Dublin
Speaker 1: once with my ex wife and my daughter and we
Speaker 1: were there it was Christmas Eve and St. Stephen's Day
Speaker 1: and we were staying at the Shelburne in because it
Speaker 1: is the famous hotel. And they said to me, oh,
Speaker 1: you've made a mistake now coming this week because everything's closed.
Speaker 1: They said, this week everything's closed. Christmas Eve and Send
Speaker 1: Stephen's Day, everything's closed, even the Guinness is closed. They said.
Speaker 1: They were like, that's rare. I mean even the Guinness
Speaker 1: factories closed, and we're like, well, my ship, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do when we're here? So but you
Speaker 1: you know, obviously when I saw your byline, then I
Speaker 1: saw your name. You don't have to be my age
Speaker 1: to know, you know, there are two great shipping families,
Speaker 1: and yours just as recognizable to my generation as the
Speaker 1: other one. But you lived in London and you first
Speaker 1: came when you were born here. I grew up in London.
Speaker 1: And when did you come back here to live? How
Speaker 1: old were I came back here for college, go to school,
Speaker 1: to go to school, and you decided to say, I
Speaker 1: decided to stay. Why do you want to live here
Speaker 1: and not from London? And the opposite, I want to
Speaker 1: live in London and leave New York as soon as
Speaker 1: I love London, I love New Yordon. You do, listen,
Speaker 1: I feel like London. There's a you know, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of idealized London of my sort of teenage years,
Speaker 1: which had like a lot of kind of relaxed hangout places,
Speaker 1: which is sort of shut down and it's easier for
Speaker 1: you here. Well, no, it's just it's sort of become
Speaker 1: it's become this kind of like very I don't know,
Speaker 1: this kind of fake version of itself in a way,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it's like a yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, like heritaging and like I
Speaker 1: love these I want to live in a castle. I
Speaker 1: watched The Crown and like, oh God, that would work
Speaker 1: for me. I could live there. But when you finished
Speaker 1: school you decided to stay here. And what were the
Speaker 1: first job as you got in journalism? Um, so I
Speaker 1: worked at the Nation. Described that experience. It was a
Speaker 1: factory as an old friend of mine Katrina Katrina as well,
Speaker 1: when when you talk about budgets, so the so the
Speaker 1: Nation comes out, we were saying, that looks like a
Speaker 1: college newspaper. Yeah, and that very very less expensive paper.
Speaker 1: And so for the obviously they have their budgetary considerations,
Speaker 1: but they're irreplaceable in terms of the reporting. Did you
Speaker 1: enjoy that experience. It was a great experience. I worked
Speaker 1: directly with Katrina as her fact checker and with her
Speaker 1: late husband, Stephen Kern. And it was the time of
Speaker 1: the Syrian chemical weapons and Obama's redline and so on,
Speaker 1: and they were you know, I was called up on
Speaker 1: a Sunday evening. I think this is one of my
Speaker 1: first weeks there is caught up on a Sunday evening
Speaker 1: and they were like, okay, you've got to be in
Speaker 1: touch with the pc W, you know, four o'clock tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning kind of thing. It was a fantastic experience. And
Speaker 1: also the nation treats its interns very well, which was
Speaker 1: something I hadn't necessarily always seen in the UK. And
Speaker 1: you know, you were paid minimum wage. And there was
Speaker 1: a kind of spirit of like community and activism there
Speaker 1: which was which was really nice. And actually, by the
Speaker 1: end of my time there, I had developed this story
Speaker 1: based on a lead that I had gotten at journalism
Speaker 1: school about this lawyer who had been wiretapped called Robert
Speaker 1: Gottlieb and he was representing a guy called Addis mc
Speaker 1: dungeon in and their conversations had been wiretapped by the FBI,
Speaker 1: and that story hadn't been reported. So I sort of
Speaker 1: reported that that out a little bit and then sort
Speaker 1: of came to them and said list and I've been
Speaker 1: working on this in my spare time, and they said
Speaker 1: it sort of took a chance and published. Me. Looking
Speaker 1: back on it, I mean, that's that's quite a sort
Speaker 1: of bulls sort of risk taking. But I really appreciate
Speaker 1: that because that was my first sort of big investigative
Speaker 1: type magazine story. When you worked for the Guardian, did
Speaker 1: you go back to the UK? No, So I've written
Speaker 1: for The Guardian sort of independently as a free lancer,
Speaker 1: and then I worked at the Guardian as a researcher,
Speaker 1: Like right when I graduated college. What period of time
Speaker 1: did you work with the Huffington Post. So I started
Speaker 1: writing with the Afternoon Post in college and then I
Speaker 1: kind of wrote for them for a year two ofterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, for me finding sources, you know, sometimes I
Speaker 1: read The Times and I think, well, there's the Times again.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes they read the Times and I said,
Speaker 1: this is not the Times anymore, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: I get really really worried about their priorities, you know.
Speaker 1: But The New Yorker has been for me, you know,
Speaker 1: over the ark of many years, the most reliable in
Speaker 1: terms of its integrity and what they cover in stories
Speaker 1: they tell. And you had sent me the article from
Speaker 1: John the Anderson, which I think which when I as
Speaker 1: I was reading, I think I read this article when
Speaker 1: when it first came out. Now, that article about South
Speaker 1: America and I'd read other articles and books about the
Speaker 1: work of the Nie and the uncontacted Indians and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, I would imagine for you that that and
Speaker 1: writers like Anderson who write these broad and very complex pieces,
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of stories for you to cover. I
Speaker 1: mean you must be constantly having to make tough decisions
Speaker 1: as to which ones you because when they come to you,
Speaker 1: they don't sign, they ask you if you want to
Speaker 1: do it? Correct, No, no, no, I was as a
Speaker 1: freelance ipe pitch to place. Actually you pitched, okay, so
Speaker 1: you you pitched to Remnick and his staff that you
Speaker 1: want to do the piece based on your beginnings of
Speaker 1: your book. But I would imagine again with the corner
Speaker 1: copia of such stories that are out there, you must
Speaker 1: be constantly wondering which one you want to do. Are
Speaker 1: there are the many ideas you have for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing? Absolutely, yeah, there there there are many ideas.
Speaker 1: Part of it is also sort of editorial interest. I
Speaker 1: was reading John Didion on Al Salvador last night, and
Speaker 1: she was talking about when She Went, which I think
Speaker 1: is two, and she talked about how it was a
Speaker 1: period in which it was like phil and Hold and
Speaker 1: so you know you'd value your story and then it
Speaker 1: would be held by editors because you know, there wasn't
Speaker 1: a huge amount of interest in Al Salvador. I've actually
Speaker 1: seen that quite a lot with Yamen funny enough, which
Speaker 1: is a conflict that's been going on since you know,
Speaker 1: that's really something that's very, very difficult to get onto
Speaker 1: people's radar. So it's actually also about getting those stories
Speaker 1: onto editors radar. And there's a story that I want
Speaker 1: to do about these complicated co operations between US forces
Speaker 1: in Africa and local forces that have led to a
Speaker 1: lot of civilian casualties and don't seem to be being
Speaker 1: authorized on the highest level. But that's firstly a hard
Speaker 1: story to like get rolling and to get sourced up.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to sort of bind more sources on that.
Speaker 1: So if there any listeners, please get in touch. So
Speaker 1: everywhere you go around the world, Africa, South America, whatever,
Speaker 1: you see this exploitation for resources and from minerals, and
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if we'll ever see the day when
Speaker 1: this country decides to come out on the right side
Speaker 1: of that and try to prevent some of it. Like
Speaker 1: we know what happened in in Equator. Just it's tragic.
Speaker 1: It's tragic. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's there's
Speaker 1: so much emphasis on sort of labor rights here. And
Speaker 1: I listened to your show with Lumina Gonzalez and and
Speaker 1: she know, she was talking about how, you know, people
Speaker 1: getting the wave raging California and farms and things like that.
Speaker 1: And I think that there is a lot of good
Speaker 1: movement on that in the States. But somehow I feel
Speaker 1: like we've just sort of exported all these issues and
Speaker 1: and it's become this is a set of rules for us,
Speaker 1: or a set of rules, Yeah, exactly, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of become the sort of wages of globalization. Journalist Nicolas
Speaker 1: ni Arcos. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Nicholas ni Arcos talks about some of the more challenging
Speaker 1: aspects of his reporting in The Congo by Malic Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and this is Here's the Thing Nicolas ni Arcos New
Speaker 1: Yorker article or Buried Dreams exposed the way Cargolese cobalt
Speaker 1: miners are exploited. In his reporting for the piece, he
Speaker 1: witnessed many gut wrenching scenes. Yeah, I think the toughest
Speaker 1: things that I saw were around the kids. You know
Speaker 1: that you see a lot of kids with the former teas,
Speaker 1: firstly because of the radioactive nature of the cobalt dust
Speaker 1: heavy metals poisoning. In fact, actually this is something that
Speaker 1: one of the fact checkers on the piece, Katie nud
Speaker 1: Jim Badden, alerted me to the paternal exposure to some
Speaker 1: of these materials is actually associated very heavily with birthday effects.
Speaker 1: So that was very sad talking to parents, to wives
Speaker 1: of people who had been killed in these landslides at mines.
Speaker 1: And then obviously, you know, going to a school for
Speaker 1: sort of kids who had been not actually run by
Speaker 1: good shepherd, so kids who had been artisanal miners. And
Speaker 1: then just like chatting with this kid Zicki, who's in
Speaker 1: the piece as well. I mean he was working in
Speaker 1: mind since he was three basically, and the sort of
Speaker 1: pain and suffering, and then there was this moment where
Speaker 1: I kind of you know, showed him my phone. I said, listen,
Speaker 1: like the new iPhone is going for a thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars and everybody there knows that it's going into batteries.
Speaker 1: Something like fifty of the cobalt mine there just goes
Speaker 1: into letting my own batteries. And I said to him, listen, like,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about this? And he was just like,
Speaker 1: I feel terrible. And I think he just had this
Speaker 1: sort of moment of realization, which I really didn't want
Speaker 1: to prompt, but he sort of thought, you know, how
Speaker 1: can people sort of sanction such violence against people like me.
Speaker 1: When Remnick was on the show, he said, the New
Speaker 1: York Times is the weather. He wakes up in the
Speaker 1: morning and the first thing he does is to read
Speaker 1: the time of his whole entire media died. What's your
Speaker 1: media died? When you're up in the morning, I would
Speaker 1: say the Times as well. I like listening also to
Speaker 1: the BBC Today program. That's such a good program, and
Speaker 1: it's just very good to keep up with news from
Speaker 1: the UK as well. No TV news, No, I don't
Speaker 1: have a TV and I'm not one of those people,
Speaker 1: you know. Actually, while I was in Africa, I really
Speaker 1: you know, reporting actually in the Sahara and so on,
Speaker 1: like most of the places you get France, fanc, France
Speaker 1: twenty four, you know, everywhere, everywhere ago and I kind
Speaker 1: of when I'm in Africa, I watched a lot of
Speaker 1: France twenty four and r F which is Ra franc
Speaker 1: at n and that's great as well. I mean they're
Speaker 1: just that they're really like, I don't know, I find
Speaker 1: that sort of French quality of journalism, maybe sometimes influenced
Speaker 1: by French foreign policy, but actually they go very deep
Speaker 1: into a lot of issues that I'm interested in. The
Speaker 1: other publication that I wanted to mention is jeanne Frique,
Speaker 1: which is a sort of I think it's France based,
Speaker 1: where they cover lots of Africa, especially French speaking Africa,
Speaker 1: in depth, and again often with a kind of French
Speaker 1: twist or French foreign policy twist. What's the status of
Speaker 1: the book at the moment. I'm in the middle of
Speaker 1: writing it, reporting it, traveling. Yeah, exactly, when you come out.
Speaker 1: I hope to work on it all of next year
Speaker 1: and then the next year basically because you're doing other things,
Speaker 1: because I'm doing other things and I'm also just doing
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting on this as well. What's a
Speaker 1: story you wouldn't tell what's a story that that people
Speaker 1: suggested to you and your thought that's not from me?
Speaker 1: If if you have, you've been asked to do profiles
Speaker 1: of movie stars and things like that to get a
Speaker 1: paycheck into work, and you that didn't interest you. What
Speaker 1: don't you want to do? I think sort of gossip
Speaker 1: and sort of crying into people's personal lives. I think
Speaker 1: probably things that you also probably wouldn't like, so you
Speaker 1: didn't know the half of it. Yeah. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this to be kind. And when you're this incredibly
Speaker 1: smart guy and I loved your piece, I can't wait
Speaker 1: for the book to come out. Do you have any
Speaker 1: appetite for documentary film and filmmaking. I'd love to do
Speaker 1: documentary film and filmmaking. Um. Actually, when I graduated from Columbia,
Speaker 1: I went and made a mini doc about Roma gypsy
Speaker 1: trumpet players in Serbia and Serbian nationals and that was
Speaker 1: really a really, really fun experience. But you know, writing
Speaker 1: has always been my first love. I feel like the
Speaker 1: work you're doing, I mean, these stories are the stories
Speaker 1: people need to hear. Where there was injustice like this
Speaker 1: and where this there this exploitation. We have a set
Speaker 1: of rules here in this country for our own and
Speaker 1: there's things that we would never allowed. We'd be screaming
Speaker 1: from the mountaintops if we had this radioactive situation and
Speaker 1: children being contamn we and we have things like that
Speaker 1: in this country now. But but when it is exposed,
Speaker 1: when it is brought to light, I'll never forget, you know,
Speaker 1: being a New Yorker. One of the things I loved
Speaker 1: about being a New Yorker is the indignation and the
Speaker 1: outrage are never packed away. People carry a little bottle
Speaker 1: of it with them. And when the needles all washed
Speaker 1: up and all the medical waste washed up on the
Speaker 1: shores of New Jersey years ago, it was on the
Speaker 1: front page of People Went insane. They're like the beaches
Speaker 1: of New Jersey and all these families go there and
Speaker 1: all this contamnity. I mean, people went nuts. And of
Speaker 1: course writing books is is important, but that medium of
Speaker 1: film is another layer that you should really really consider.
Speaker 1: You know, I've written about aunt, I've written a boy.
Speaker 1: I was a restaurant review while I was a fat
Speaker 1: checker in the New Yorker. So I've did you review
Speaker 1: restaurants for the Yoka in the city. How old you
Speaker 1: do that two years. It was great and I did
Speaker 1: Buzz as well. It was fun because you know at
Speaker 1: the time, you know they would give you a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred bucks to get to restaurants. And I did
Speaker 1: Del Posto with Frank Bruney. Okay, we went to one
Speaker 1: of his sittings and Marine doubts that would you like
Speaker 1: to come with Frank and I and a fourth person.
Speaker 1: He's going to review Del Posto And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the rules. He orders for everybody because he has
Speaker 1: to eat everything on the menu. So the four of
Speaker 1: you have to have what he tells you to eat,
Speaker 1: and they're going to pass the plates or whatever you
Speaker 1: can all sample, but he's going to do the order
Speaker 1: because he must eat every item on the menu. He
Speaker 1: goes back four and five times and baba ba and
Speaker 1: and he he took me through the whole reality of
Speaker 1: Frank's life. So what was it like, were you going
Speaker 1: four and five times to a restaurant or no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you go two times to the restaurant. Did they eventually
Speaker 1: catch on who you were? No? Not ready, but one
Speaker 1: of the best experienced experiences doing that. I went to
Speaker 1: SMILEI Restaurant in Harlem, and then I came back after
Speaker 1: the review. I live up in Harlem, so it kind
Speaker 1: of was trying to rap Harlem restaurants. And I came
Speaker 1: back after the review and there were like lines around
Speaker 1: the block. It was great. It's really fun and it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful place. I stand by my review. So that
Speaker 1: was a nice moment. Do you identify as Greek, Irish, British, American,
Speaker 1: a journalist or all of the above? All of the above,
Speaker 1: But I I think that my Greek roots are very
Speaker 1: very important to me, and I feel very very strongly that,
Speaker 1: you know, Greece is a troubled place but also somewhere
Speaker 1: where one can do a lot of good. I like
Speaker 1: the spirit of Greeks and Greeks abroad and this kind
Speaker 1: of journeying spirit. There's a poem by corsadovaf Is called Ithaca,
Speaker 1: which is probably the most famous modern Greek poem, and
Speaker 1: he talks about like hope as you set out for Ithaca,
Speaker 1: so you're sort of setting out for coming back home
Speaker 1: as Odysseus. You hope that your journey is a long one,
Speaker 1: so you hope that you have this kind of like
Speaker 1: journey which is full of adventures and cyclops and like
Speaker 1: dragonians and so on. So I like that sort of aspect,
Speaker 1: and I think I probably sort of see myself in
Speaker 1: Mold as well. I suppose journalist Nicholas ni ArkOS. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donohue, Maureen Hoban,
Speaker 1: and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio