Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. There's been a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about who should replace Daniel Craig now that he is
Speaker 1: retiring as James Bond, and I think I have found
Speaker 1: the perfect person. He's handsome, charming, brilliant and multilingual. His
Speaker 1: name is Nicholas Niarkos and if only he could put
Speaker 1: down his computer long enough to play the part. Nearkos
Speaker 1: is a journalist. His choice of unglamorous and at times
Speaker 1: dangerous profession is all the more surprising when you learn
Speaker 1: about his background. His grandfather, Stavros Niarkos, founded the international
Speaker 1: shipping company Nearkos Limited. I first came across Nearkos in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker magazine. His recent piece Buried Dreams covers
Speaker 1: the exploitation of workers in the cobalt mines in Central Africa.
Speaker 1: In his reporting, Narcos exposed the danger and exploitative conditions
Speaker 1: for the workers in Congolese cobalt minds, many of whom
Speaker 1: are children, as well as those that stand to profit
Speaker 1: handsomely off the minds. In addition to being a reporter
Speaker 1: at large at The New Yorker, Nearcos's work has appeared
Speaker 1: in Time, the New York Times, and the Nation.
Speaker 2: I think that all the places that I try and
Speaker 2: work for require a sort of serious journalistic engagement. And
Speaker 2: that's what I really seek for. When I look for
Speaker 2: a publication to write for The New Yorker, I find
Speaker 2: the fact checking process. I was a fact checker for
Speaker 2: many years. I think that's a very engaging thing to
Speaker 2: deal with. I like working directly with the fact checkers.
Speaker 2: I liked being a fact checker, learning you know a
Speaker 2: great deal about a subject, you know, for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks and then and then sort of moving on.
Speaker 2: And actually I found now as a reporter actually enhances
Speaker 2: my reporting. It leads me down new alleys when I'm
Speaker 2: trying to sort of verify things to the kind of
Speaker 2: one hundredth designs.
Speaker 1: When you factor you did it for how long?
Speaker 2: I did it for five years? Actually, well almost four
Speaker 2: years and eleven months.
Speaker 1: Did they confine you to fact checking in a certain
Speaker 1: realm or did you fact check a lot of different things?
Speaker 2: I fact checked a lot of different things because I
Speaker 2: speak French and Italian. Obviously, when there were stories which
Speaker 2: required those languages, I would.
Speaker 1: I would be sort of fact you were the go
Speaker 1: to fact checker sometimes, yeah, when and when you would
Speaker 1: do the fact checking or I mean, were there ones
Speaker 1: you enjoyed more, like ones that were like deep and
Speaker 1: intense and scientific or culture whatever, and did you did
Speaker 1: you didn't love, You didn't love doing the fact checking
Speaker 1: of the profile of some actress, or you enjoyed all
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed all of it, you know, Listen. I worked
Speaker 2: on a piece on TMZ by Nick Schmiddle, which was
Speaker 2: a kind of investigative piece, and that was a kind
Speaker 2: of crazy experience. It was kind of well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: sort of more you know, kind of input and sort
Speaker 2: of back and forth and lawyers and whatever than most
Speaker 2: other pieces.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it would do pieces on Iraq and Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: so on, and they would require less and less.
Speaker 1: Rod Loyal Dafi or Harvey Levin exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: But no, I loved working with I mean, the writers,
Speaker 2: they're are great, Patrick Keith, Sarah Stillman, Rachel Laviv.
Speaker 3: I mean, these this kind of Rebecca Meade.
Speaker 2: Rebecca was actually a sort of wonderful early person who
Speaker 2: I've fact checked quite quite early on in my career
Speaker 2: there and then kind of ended up sort of doing
Speaker 2: quite a lot with her, which was quite fun. And
Speaker 2: we did a piece i remember on adult and Cabano,
Speaker 2: and we just had like a lot of back and
Speaker 2: forth with Doulty Gavan as people, and it was just
Speaker 2: it was sort of hilarious because sometimes you know, those
Speaker 2: sort of fashion stories and so on. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you're talking with people in government and so on, they
Speaker 2: kind of they have this attitude that, oh, well, it's
Speaker 2: a story, it's going to go away. Whereas you know,
Speaker 2: if it's a big fashion house and you know, this
Speaker 2: is one of the few times that it appears in
Speaker 2: The New Yorker, you know, this year or in the
Speaker 2: you know, in five years or whatever, they realized that
Speaker 2: that's going to stick with.
Speaker 1: The marketing for them. Yeah, exactly. I agree. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm obviously an ever reader of The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: The thing I tend to see when I when I
Speaker 1: was thinking about your article and budgets and costs and
Speaker 1: things like that, is that, you know, the magazine has
Speaker 1: obviously a menu or different articles. There might be a profile,
Speaker 1: there might be there's obviously the shouts and murmurs and
Speaker 1: talk of the town and so but if the body
Speaker 1: of the pieces that are not criticism or art or
Speaker 1: what have you. There seems to be a limit I
Speaker 1: would imagine of the number of pieces that are this expansive,
Speaker 1: because it must be expensive. Correct.
Speaker 2: You know, I started this piece reporting it for as
Speaker 2: a book, and that first it started as a as
Speaker 2: a sort of book reporting and then and then kind
Speaker 2: of developed into New Yorker reporting.
Speaker 3: So actually I.
Speaker 2: Funded some of it for my own money, and then
Speaker 2: I used some of the New Yorker what the New
Speaker 2: Yorker paid me to sort of continue the reporting. But actually,
Speaker 2: you know, this was a sort of budgetless piece at
Speaker 2: the beginning.
Speaker 1: You first became aware of this when and how.
Speaker 2: I first became aware of this issue around cobalt mining
Speaker 2: because of somebody called Dan Getler. He is a mining
Speaker 2: billionaire who has sort of made his wealth in the DRC,
Speaker 2: and he actually made a lot of money. Buy he's
Speaker 2: from Israel. Originally he came to DRC. It's a crazy story.
Speaker 2: Came when he was about twenty three, and by the
Speaker 2: time he was twenty six, he was in charge of
Speaker 2: the Congo's entire diamond export. And then various sort of
Speaker 2: human rights groups were like, wait, well, what's happening here.
Speaker 2: He was very close to the ruling family and so
Speaker 2: he was kind of booted off that and Congo said, look, listen,
Speaker 2: look we've dealt with this problem. Suddenly it turned out
Speaker 2: that he had a bunch of copper and cobalt mines
Speaker 2: down in the South, which he seemed to be basically,
Speaker 2: and this is very well documented by the Carter Center
Speaker 2: and sort of Human Rights Watch and various other institutions,
Speaker 2: basically he was selling them on for the ruling family
Speaker 2: to finance their elections. So he'd basically flipped the mines.
Speaker 1: And he became aware of him.
Speaker 3: How I became aware of him.
Speaker 2: I have a very good friend of mine who works
Speaker 2: in mining, and I was sort of casting around for stories,
Speaker 2: you know, related to Africa, related to corruption and so on,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, this is I mean, looks exactly good.
Speaker 2: And also actually Patrick Keith, who's been a great sort
Speaker 2: of inspiration to me and who I worked with actually
Speaker 2: at the New Yorker, and you had Alex Gibney on
Speaker 2: the show and you know they collaborated on the opioid story.
Speaker 1: To Patrick on the street the other day, by the way,
Speaker 1: already okay, with his family down in the village and
Speaker 1: I just said to myself, my goddo of that? I
Speaker 1: thought the documentary was sensation, Yeah, sensation.
Speaker 2: So he'd done a piece on Benny Steinmetz, who was
Speaker 2: a Israeli mining billionaire. I think he's he's currently been
Speaker 2: arrested or he's on trial in Switzerland, and he had
Speaker 2: basically taken control of an iron or mine called Simon Do,
Speaker 2: which is in Guinea. And so Patrick had done that story,
Speaker 2: and that was a kind of great inspiration. And then
Speaker 2: I sort of went to Patrick, and Patrick said this,
Speaker 2: and you should also follow this story. It's a great idea.
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to do Gutler. And then I arrived
Speaker 2: in Congo and I realized that the Gutler story was
Speaker 2: very interesting, but it wasn't the whole story. And actually
Speaker 2: what became more interested interesting to me is the lives
Speaker 2: of these people, just the hellish existence of a cobalt
Speaker 2: min an artisanal cobalt minor.
Speaker 3: I have to be preciser in the southern DRC.
Speaker 1: Now I read the article and you become suspicious, or
Speaker 1: you become enlightened, if you will, to the idea that
Speaker 1: huge swaths of this continent are being exploited for these
Speaker 1: kinds of minerals. And if I may say so, I'll
Speaker 1: let you speak to this, not just the greatest hits
Speaker 1: like petroleum based things, but these cobalt for lithium for
Speaker 1: modern technology, chips, photovoltaic whatever they may be used for batteries,
Speaker 1: mostly correct the lithium batteries. So was it safe to say,
Speaker 1: you talk about Guinea, you talk about DRC. Is this
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends where Obviously some places are better regulator
Speaker 2: than others.
Speaker 1: Who's doing a good job of regulating if you can say.
Speaker 2: I think, for example, Zambia has had a better track record,
Speaker 2: although now the sort of influx of Chinese wealth into
Speaker 2: Zambia has sort of upended some.
Speaker 1: Of that, if you but seeking their copper as well.
Speaker 3: So it's actually on the border with DRC.
Speaker 2: When I was reporting some of this stuff, I actually
Speaker 2: flew to Zambia to meet a sort of renegade Congolese
Speaker 2: politician before he was traveling back into the DRC so yeah, No,
Speaker 2: it's known as the Copper Belt, and it's a sort
Speaker 2: of large part.
Speaker 1: The scene between the two countries exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: And the other big one is coltan actually, and that's
Speaker 2: sort of been the focus of a lot of human
Speaker 2: rights work because it is largely mined by sort of
Speaker 2: army types and sort of warlords in the northeast of
Speaker 2: the DRC. And coltan is used in capacitors, which are
Speaker 2: sort of key for computers and batteries. That's also been
Speaker 2: a big issue, and people confuse that with cobalt, and
Speaker 2: actually what's happening there is slightly different from cobalt, which
Speaker 2: is a kind of more of a mechanized, sort of
Speaker 2: legitimized type of trade.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing that also struck me in terms of
Speaker 1: any store like this where there's danger, describe to me
Speaker 1: what you had to do in advance security wise. You
Speaker 1: don't just land at the airport and say in an
Speaker 1: uber and say take me to you know, Cobalt town.
Speaker 1: There must have been a lot of preparatory steps you
Speaker 1: took and security steps you took, if I'm assuming, And
Speaker 1: then talk about when you first got there for the
Speaker 1: first time, what went on?
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, the security steps.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've traveled to quite a lot at this
Speaker 2: point of countries which sort of have different complicated security profiles,
Speaker 2: places like Yeam in western Sahara, in fact, this southern
Speaker 2: part of the DRC. You know, there is the threat
Speaker 2: always of randomized violence, but I, you know, had looked
Speaker 2: into it. I'd spoken to a couple of people who
Speaker 2: had been there. I've spoken to a couple of journalists,
Speaker 2: and I don't think there was a kind of threatening
Speaker 2: or kind of looming threat we're afraid. I wasn't particularly
Speaker 2: afraid that. You know, sometimes traveling on the road at night,
Speaker 2: you'd be stopped at roadblocks and there would be sort
Speaker 2: of policemen with guns and they'd be drunk, and you know,
Speaker 2: then you get a little bit nervous, and then we
Speaker 2: were sort of held up in broad daylight. So I
Speaker 2: traveled with the local journalists called Jeff Kazadi, who's a
Speaker 2: wonderful one of and he was a great resource. He
Speaker 2: worked as a translator. He was incredibly sort of resourceful
Speaker 2: as well on the ground, and he sort of knew
Speaker 2: quite a few of the operators and he'd worked with
Speaker 2: I believe CNN before and some other journalists who had
Speaker 2: been down to do stories like this or to do
Speaker 2: other types of stories in southern DRC. He works for
Speaker 2: a mining trade publication, so you know, oftentimes he wanted
Speaker 2: to sort of look further into stories, but because he
Speaker 2: works for an industry publication, it wasn't the type of
Speaker 2: journalism that.
Speaker 1: They were interested in.
Speaker 2: So I contacted Jeff. I also contacted another journalist, Ben Yemba,
Speaker 2: who's based out of her and he was interested in this.
Speaker 2: So the first time I went, I went with Jeff
Speaker 2: and Ben. We kind of thought about the security risks
Speaker 2: and we discussed the different types of issues along the road.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there were bandits and so on, but usually if
Speaker 2: you're traveling in the daytime, you're fairly safe along that road.
Speaker 2: So when I first arrived in the South, i'd been
Speaker 2: in Kinshassa for a bit, and in many ways the
Speaker 2: South is much less hectic. In Conchasta and I arrived
Speaker 2: on a local flight so we didn't have to deal
Speaker 2: with customs. I stayed in a sort of very downbeat hotel,
Speaker 2: which was an interesting experience to say the least. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of women coming in at night and
Speaker 2: leaving in the morning.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 2: Afterwards everywhere, which is everywhere exactly. And then I stayed
Speaker 2: the next two or three times. I was there in
Speaker 2: more kind of like hotels that sort of mining execs
Speaker 2: had made their home. It was you know, kind of
Speaker 2: immediately there with people at the bar kind of talking
Speaker 2: about their sort of the you know, the greatest hits
Speaker 2: of you know, copper mines and cobalt.
Speaker 1: Mines, some of the work some of the useful work
Speaker 1: done there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those are sort of like off the record
Speaker 2: chats usually, but it helps you get such a good
Speaker 2: sort of context around the stuff.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: What else was very useful is that I visited a.
Speaker 2: Mining conference there as well and sort of met a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the field. It was hosted by
Speaker 2: a South African firm, but it was kind of visited
Speaker 2: by all the sort of local potents and so on.
Speaker 3: It was a sort of eye opening experience.
Speaker 2: Because people are very aware of the problem of artisanal mining,
Speaker 2: and you have to make the distinction between artisanal mining
Speaker 2: and industrial mining. So artisanal mining is something somewhere between
Speaker 2: ten and thirty percent of Congo's production every year. It
Speaker 2: really fluctuates depending on you know, supply demand, so on
Speaker 2: and the rest is industrial which has done much in
Speaker 2: the way of large mining firms anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: And do the industrials want to put the artisanals out
Speaker 1: of work?
Speaker 2: The industrials would probably prefer that the artisanals were not there,
Speaker 2: because there are serious human rights issues with some of
Speaker 2: the artisanal minds, which are with many of the artisanal minds.
Speaker 3: I would say some are led.
Speaker 2: By cooperatives, and those cooperatives are sort of better about
Speaker 2: safety than other sort of non cooperative managed artisanal minds. However,
Speaker 2: the big problem is that there's just been a huge
Speaker 2: flux of people into that region.
Speaker 1: It's a gold rush.
Speaker 2: It's a huge gold rush, and you really feel like
Speaker 2: just people are arriving every day, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: There's a train that comes down from a place called
Speaker 2: Mambuji Mai, which is in the middle of Congo, and
Speaker 2: that is a place in which there used to be
Speaker 2: a huge amount of diamond mining and that's been sort
Speaker 2: of woefully mismanaged and the industry has kind of fallen
Speaker 2: into pieces. So a lot of people who had some
Speaker 2: mining experience now sort of getting on that train which
Speaker 2: goes through the sort of jungles and wilds of Central
Speaker 2: Congo and comes to Lumumbashi and sort of people are
Speaker 2: just sort of hanging off the side of that train
Speaker 2: and it comes, you know, every two months or something
Speaker 2: like that. Nobody really the schedule basically works on you know,
Speaker 2: whenever it's completely full or whenever they can sort of
Speaker 2: get the engine running. And so with that, you know,
Speaker 2: people come and then the industrial minds have sort of
Speaker 2: run by very few people, so they don't have the
Speaker 2: capacity to observe high resolve that the labor force.
Speaker 3: Exactly, they don't they can't hire. So yeah, I think
Speaker 3: that they.
Speaker 1: Will arrived to participate in artisinal mining.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: You arrived because you think you're going to get rich
Speaker 2: and there's just like a lot of stories about it
Speaker 2: and so on, and you arrive and there's nothing to
Speaker 2: do apart from artisanal mining basically, and people really exploit
Speaker 2: that they get paid nothing. I mean, it's some people
Speaker 2: say that there have been people who made lots and
Speaker 2: lots of money, but I actually found that quite difficult
Speaker 2: to believe after spending two months there.
Speaker 1: I just so you went the one on the one
Speaker 1: trip for two months.
Speaker 2: So I went on one trip for a month, then
Speaker 2: I went on another trip for ten days, and then
Speaker 2: I was there for about almost a month the next time,
Speaker 2: So yeah, two months.
Speaker 1: So when you arrive and you are in the more
Speaker 1: decent hotel with people who seem to be related to
Speaker 1: the whole enterprise and you can chit chat with him.
Speaker 1: Is the idea that when you arrive you don't go
Speaker 1: right into the belly of the beast and go to
Speaker 1: where the artisanal mining is at full throttle. You kind
Speaker 1: of work your way toward that. Did you take a
Speaker 1: few days before you get into the into the pits
Speaker 1: so to speak?
Speaker 2: Depends actually on the different trips. On my second trip,
Speaker 2: I went straight to the artism mining because I'd spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time, you know, talking with seth Africans about,
Speaker 2: you know, the benefits of copper mirning for the area.
Speaker 2: So you know, I had all that material and I
Speaker 2: wanted to really focus on the artisanal miners.
Speaker 1: Who were people that sounded like they had not the
Speaker 1: right idea, but maybe the better ideas about how this
Speaker 1: should be handled, what should happen there for the greater
Speaker 1: good of everybody.
Speaker 2: So there's a Catholic charity called Good Shepherd Calwazy and
Speaker 2: they've been incredibly sort of outspoken and sort of quite
Speaker 2: sort of research focused as well around some of these issues.
Speaker 2: They've put forward this plan which says, listen, you need
Speaker 2: to develop other types of industry because you have to
Speaker 2: understand this as like as a cycle of which corruption
Speaker 2: is only a part. There's also just the basic fact
Speaker 2: of poverty and need. So they have suggested that agriculture
Speaker 2: would be a way of engaging the local population. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's a very fertile region as well, and something like
Speaker 2: ninety center of Congo's food is imported, so there's this
Speaker 2: kind of from other areas the region, from Zambia, from
Speaker 2: from other areas of the region, So there's this kind
Speaker 2: and import taxes are huge, and people are making money
Speaker 2: at every step of the way and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth, often not Congolese. So they say, listen, why
Speaker 2: don't the Congolese grow their own food here? Why don't
Speaker 2: people work on farms? And so I think that that's
Speaker 2: a you know, there are large businesses that obviously invested
Speaker 2: in this. I think that's actually something which would be
Speaker 2: positive for them to do. So there are also some
Speaker 2: other groups like the Fair Cobalt Alliance and then there's
Speaker 2: another Chinese group. The UN doesn't have a permanent presence,
Speaker 2: I don't think in Colway's actually a lot of what
Speaker 2: they do in Congo is to do with rebels in
Speaker 2: the north, and then they assisted with some war crimes
Speaker 2: tribunals in a city which was not too far away.
Speaker 2: So they do mainly kind of like armed conflict type
Speaker 2: stuff there. I didn't see any sort of UN involvement,
Speaker 2: but I could you know.
Speaker 1: They could be that, they could be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there could be a.
Speaker 2: UN office that focuses on this, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be a main priority because they're focused on you know, some.
Speaker 1: What year did you go there?
Speaker 3: I went at twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: And right before the right before How convenient for you,
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, how wonderful. And what is the national
Speaker 1: government to the extent you could ascertain when you were there,
Speaker 1: what's their position on what's going on there?
Speaker 2: So the national government makes kind of these overtures over
Speaker 2: and over again saying we can't have child labor whatever,
Speaker 2: and then the local government will say the same thing,
Speaker 2: and they're like, we're cleaning up the minds and then
Speaker 2: they use you know, these kind of mind clean up
Speaker 2: activities in order to basically seize more parts of the
Speaker 2: minds for themselves and you know, kind of co opt
Speaker 2: local cooperatives and so on. And I document that in
Speaker 2: the piece, And at the moment there's a bit of
Speaker 2: a power struggle happening down in that region, and it's
Speaker 2: very unclear to me what's actually happening in terms of
Speaker 2: like who's getting pieces of the eye, But the fact
Speaker 2: is that it still continues. Actually, I was I was
Speaker 2: speaking to a friend of mine who's a photographer who
Speaker 2: can sell a Cunningham who's done great, great work in
Speaker 2: the DRC. He was there last weekend and he saw
Speaker 2: 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 going to make a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I'm assuming just like the drug trade
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, in South America, for example,
Speaker 1: they don't want it to go away. They can't make
Speaker 1: it go away because there'll be just so much illegal
Speaker 1: activity and violence and bloodshed. Do they sit there and say,
Speaker 1: and they just write it off and say, well, we
Speaker 1: have to tolerate a certain amount of artisanal mining just
Speaker 1: to keep these people quiet and peaceful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think they can make it go away. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes they'll say that, and sometimes they say, well,
Speaker 2: artisanal mining can't exist. And it was funny I interviewed
Speaker 2: the governor at the time and he basically said the same.
Speaker 2: He said both of those things in the same interview.
Speaker 2: So I don't think they really understood how to deal
Speaker 2: with this problem. And it is it's a very very
Speaker 2: complex issue, and I wouldn't say that I have I
Speaker 2: have the answers, but I just don't think it's being
Speaker 2: engaged with in a particularly robust manner. You also have
Speaker 2: to think about that in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 2: industrial minds which were brought many of them were brought
Speaker 2: through this guy Getler who's now in the US sanctions.
Speaker 2: This actually Trump de sanctioned him for a bit, who
Speaker 2: knows why, and then and then he got re sanctioned.
Speaker 2: And basically you have a system that relies on this
Speaker 2: corruption and those funds are not going back to the people.
Speaker 2: And then you have a situation in which you know
Speaker 2: the minds are sold to big Western companies, and big
Speaker 2: Western companies, you know, maybe don't participate directly in that,
Speaker 2: but they work with people who are certainly questionable. Actually
Speaker 2: it's not and forgive me a big Western companies is
Speaker 2: not entirely correct. A lot of Chinese companies.
Speaker 1: Actually want to get to that too. What are the
Speaker 1: Chinese doing there? And how long have they been? Obviously, well,
Speaker 1: when I think of China, I think of a place
Speaker 1: of this obviously a vast a region of land and
Speaker 1: very geologically and topographically, and media realized what have you here?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's China enormous. They don't have those resources
Speaker 1: in their own territory.
Speaker 2: So something like seventy percent of the world's cobalt is
Speaker 2: actually in DRC. It's like three point four million tons,
Speaker 2: which is a huge, huge amount of cobot is there.
Speaker 2: And you know, there are nickel mines in Indonesia which
Speaker 2: also produce cobalt as a byproduct, and is interesting if
Speaker 2: you look, one of China's biggest battery manufacturers just bought
Speaker 2: one of the biggest nickel mines in Indonesia. So they're
Speaker 2: really kind of making this resource grab and they've understood
Speaker 2: how I think Ivan Glaisenberg, who's the head of Glencore,
Speaker 2: one of the big or was the head of Glencore,
Speaker 2: said this summer China Inc. Has realized how important cobolt
Speaker 2: is and they're kind of starting to buy everything up.
Speaker 1: And where do western manufacturers include in the US. Where
Speaker 1: do they get their cobolt from from the Chinese? From
Speaker 1: the Chinese, they're not out buying their own, No, they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to develop that resource for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, BMW's is I think one of the few that
Speaker 2: doesn't buy from the Chinese. They buy most of their
Speaker 2: cobalt from a cobalt only mine and Morocco, but that's
Speaker 2: where too small to supply it in Thaire.
Speaker 1: World journalist Nicholas Narkos. If you like hearing about the
Speaker 1: inner workings of some of the greatest journalistic outlets of
Speaker 1: our time, check out my interview with New Yorker editor
Speaker 1: David Remnick.
Speaker 4: The magazine is not the magazine if it doesn't have
Speaker 4: a sense of humor. You're not in business to depress
Speaker 4: the hell out of the reader unremittingly. It's like a
Speaker 4: band having a set list. If you do everything, it's
Speaker 4: all sixteenth notes ferment.
Speaker 1: So I got a DAVIDO or.
Speaker 4: Will you sound like the Ramones? Although I've heard of
Speaker 4: worse things. So you want some variation in tone, in voice,
Speaker 4: and that's your responsibility, you feel, I feel all of
Speaker 4: it's my responsibility.
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with David Remnick in our
Speaker 1: archives that Here's the Thing dot org after the break
Speaker 1: Nicholas Nearkos and I talk about his background and the
Speaker 1: big story he nearly broke in high school. I'm Malec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Nicholas Niarkos,
Speaker 1: who could be living a life of privilege instead can
Speaker 1: be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reporting
Speaker 1: on human rights violations. Nearkos grew up in London and
Speaker 1: came to the United States to attend Yale. His family
Speaker 1: helped him develop his interest in journalism.
Speaker 3: I grew up in the UK.
Speaker 1: I grew in London.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was born here, but grew up in London.
Speaker 1: You're born here, Yeah, your father's Greek, father's Greek. You're
Speaker 1: growing up in this famous family and your father is
Speaker 1: obviously the son of the guy that was the big
Speaker 1: dog there in the shipping business Stavros Niarkos. But what
Speaker 1: was it like in your home and your family was
Speaker 1: where you ended up going into Chrism? That was likely.
Speaker 1: Were everybody very interested in politics and current affairs? And
Speaker 1: was your dad like rabbit about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad's sort of very interesting in current affairs.
Speaker 2: And you know, my mum's family as well. My grandfather
Speaker 2: is a writer, and my great grandparents many of them
Speaker 2: were writers and travelers and many such things. And then
Speaker 2: actually in high school I did this anti school newspaper
Speaker 2: and we actually ended up very very close to blowing
Speaker 2: the lid on this kind of strange story where Chinese
Speaker 2: officials were sort of paying this intermediary character to get
Speaker 2: their kids into the school that I went to, which
Speaker 2: is called Harrow. It's a kind of very stiff boarding school.
Speaker 2: So we ended up almost writing the story and the
Speaker 2: newspaper was shut down. Two years later in the financial time,
Speaker 2: suddenly the guy has revealed to be somehow connected with
Speaker 2: m I six and like one of the governors in
Speaker 2: China basically was sort of taken down by it. And
Speaker 2: this was kind of she jimping, kind of flexing his
Speaker 2: muscles for the first time we had been so close
Speaker 2: to doing that store. You know, the only reason that
Speaker 2: we didn't run it was because the school had basically said, like,
Speaker 2: you're not publishing this. So yeah, I think that was
Speaker 2: the first time I really like saw the power of journalism.
Speaker 2: And it was funny because they banned that it was
Speaker 2: hard copy and then people sort of hid it behind
Speaker 2: their notice boards in their dorm rooms and then kind
Speaker 2: of passed it around, and you know, by three days
Speaker 2: after publication, even though the school had destroyed most of
Speaker 2: the copies, you know, everybody had read it. And it
Speaker 2: was this kind of great affirmation of the power.
Speaker 1: Of good start, a noble start. And your mother is
Speaker 1: Irish English, she really I went to Dublin once with
Speaker 1: my ex wife and my daughter and we were there
Speaker 1: it was Christmas Eve and Saint Stephen's Day and we
Speaker 1: were staying at the Shelbourne in Dublin, I as it is,
Speaker 1: the famous hotel, and they said to me, oh, you've
Speaker 1: made a mistake though, come in this week because everything's closed.
Speaker 1: They said, this week everything's closed, Christmas Eve and Saint
Speaker 1: Stephen's Day, everything's close. 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 shit, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do where 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 you were born here, grew up in London. And
Speaker 1: when did you come back here to live? How old
Speaker 1: were I came back here for college, go to school,
Speaker 1: go to school, and you decided to say.
Speaker 3: I decided to stay.
Speaker 1: Now why do you want to live here or not
Speaker 1: from London? And the opposite, I want to live in
Speaker 1: London and leave New York as soon as really. Oh
Speaker 1: I love London.
Speaker 3: I love you, Yeah, you do. Listen. I feel like London.
Speaker 2: There's you know, there's this kind of idealized London of
Speaker 2: my sort of teenage years, which had like a lot
Speaker 2: of kind of relaxed hangout places, which has sort of
Speaker 2: shut down and it's easy for you here. Well, no,
Speaker 2: it's just it's sort of become it's become this kind
Speaker 2: of like very I don't know, this kind of fake
Speaker 2: version of itself in a way, and I feel like
Speaker 2: it's like a lot of these Yeah, and it's a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, like heritaging and like news.
Speaker 1: I love these. I want to live in a castle.
Speaker 1: I watched The Crown and like, oh God, that would
Speaker 1: work for me. I could live there. But when you
Speaker 1: finished school, you decided to stay here. And what were
Speaker 1: the first jobs you got in journalism?
Speaker 3: So I worked at the Nation.
Speaker 1: Describe that experience.
Speaker 2: It was a fact Katrina as an old friend of mine,
Speaker 2: Katrina Katrina's well, now when.
Speaker 1: They're paying when you talk about budgets, so the Nation
Speaker 1: comes out, we were saying, that looks like a college newspaper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on that very very less expensive paper. And so for them,
Speaker 1: obviously they have their budgetary considerations, but they're irreplaceable in
Speaker 1: terms of the reporting. Did you enjoy that experience.
Speaker 3: It was a great experience.
Speaker 2: I worked directly with Katrina as her fact checker and
Speaker 2: with her late husband, Stephen Kohen. And it was the
Speaker 2: time of the Syrian chemic chemical weapons, then Obama's Red
Speaker 2: Line and so on, and they were you know, I
Speaker 2: was called up on a Sunday evening. I think this
Speaker 2: is one of my first weeks there was called up
Speaker 2: on the Sunday evening and they were like, okay, and
Speaker 2: you've got to be on touch, in touch with the
Speaker 2: OPCW you know, four o'clock tomorrow morning, cut of thing.
Speaker 2: And it was a fantastic experience. And also the nation
Speaker 2: treats its in turns very well, which was something I
Speaker 2: hadn't necessarily always seen in the UK. And you know,
Speaker 2: you were paid minimum wage and there was a kind
Speaker 2: of spirit of like community and activism there which was
Speaker 2: which was really nice. And actually, by the end of
Speaker 2: my time there, I had developed this story based on
Speaker 2: a lead that I had gotten a journalism school about
Speaker 2: this lawyer who'd been wire tapped called Robert Gottlieb and
Speaker 2: he was representing a guy called Adis Mudungjenen and their
Speaker 2: conversations had been wire tapped by the FBI, and that
Speaker 2: story hadn't been reported, so I sort of reported that
Speaker 2: out a little bit and then sort of came to
Speaker 2: them and said, listen, I've been working on this in
Speaker 2: my spare time, and they sort of took a chance
Speaker 2: and published me. Looking back on it, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: quite a sort of both sort of risk taking. But
Speaker 2: I really appreciated that because that was my first sort
Speaker 2: of big investigative type magazine story.
Speaker 1: When you worked for the Guardian, did you go back
Speaker 1: to the UK?
Speaker 2: No, So I've written for the Guardian sort of independently
Speaker 2: as a free lancer, and then I worked at The
Speaker 2: Guardian as a researcher.
Speaker 3: Like right when I graduated college.
Speaker 1: What period of times did you work with the Huffington Post.
Speaker 2: So I started writing with the Affington Post in college
Speaker 2: and then I kind of wrote for them for a
Speaker 2: year too afterwards.
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 arc 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 le Anderson, which I think which when I as
Speaker 1: I was reading it, I think I read this article
Speaker 1: when it first came out. Now, that article about South America,
Speaker 1: and I'd read other articles and books about the work
Speaker 1: of Thunai and the uncontacted Indians and so forth. You know,
Speaker 1: I would imagine for you that that and writers like
Speaker 1: Anderson who write these broad and very complex pieces, there's
Speaker 1: no shortage of stories for you to cover. I mean
Speaker 1: you must be constantly having to make tough decisions as
Speaker 1: to which ones, because when they come to you, they
Speaker 1: don't sign, they ask you if you want to do it?
Speaker 3: Correct, No, no, no, I was as a freelance I
Speaker 3: pitched a place as actually.
Speaker 1: So you pitched, okay, so you pitched to Remnick and
Speaker 1: his staff that you want to do the piece based
Speaker 1: on your beginnings of your book. Yeah, but I would
Speaker 1: imagine again with the corner copia of such stories that
Speaker 1: are out there, you must be constantly wondering which one
Speaker 1: you want to do or are there many ideas you
Speaker 1: have for this kind of thing?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, there are many ideas. Part of it is
Speaker 2: also sort of editorial interest. I was reading Joan Didion
Speaker 2: on El Salvador last night, and she was talking about
Speaker 2: when she went, which I think is nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: and she talked about how it was a period in
Speaker 2: which it was like a filin hold, so you know,
Speaker 2: you'd fire your story and then it would be held
Speaker 2: by editors because you know, there wasn't a huge amount
Speaker 2: of interest in El Salvador. I've actually seen that quite
Speaker 2: a lot with Yemen, funnily enough, which is a conflict
Speaker 2: that's been going on since twenty fifteen. You know, that's
Speaker 2: really something that's very, very difficult to get onto people's radar.
Speaker 2: So it's actually also about getting those stories onto editors' radar.
Speaker 2: And there's a story that I want to do about
Speaker 2: these complicated cooperations between US forces in Africa and local
Speaker 2: forces that have led to a lot of civilian casualties
Speaker 2: and don't seem to be being authorized on the highest level.
Speaker 2: But that's firstly a hard story to get rolling and
Speaker 2: to get sourced up. So I'm trying to sort of
Speaker 2: find more sources on that. So if there are any listeners,
Speaker 2: please get in touch.
Speaker 1: So everywhere you go around the world, Africa, South America,
Speaker 1: what have you see this exploitation for resources and for minerals.
Speaker 1: And I'm just wondering if we'll ever see the day
Speaker 1: when this country decides to come out on the right
Speaker 1: side of that and try to prevent some of that,
Speaker 1: Like you know what happened in Ecuador. It's just it's tragic.
Speaker 1: It's tragical. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that there's so much emphasis on
Speaker 2: sort of labor rights here. And I listen to your
Speaker 2: show with Lamina Gonzales and know she was talking about how,
Speaker 2: you know, people getting the way maging California and farms
Speaker 2: and things like that, and I think that there is
Speaker 2: a lot of good movement on that in the States.
Speaker 2: But somehow I feel like we've just sort of exported
Speaker 2: all these issues.
Speaker 3: And it's become thistceter rules for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and that's kind of become the sort of
Speaker 2: wages of globalization.
Speaker 1: Journalist Nicholas Nearkos. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Nicholas Nearkos talks about some of the more challenging aspects
Speaker 1: of his reporting in the Congo by'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is Here's the Thing Nicholas Nearkos New Yorker article
Speaker 1: or Buried Dreams expose the way Congolese cobalt miners are exploited.
Speaker 1: In his reporting for the piece, he witnessed many gut
Speaker 1: wrenching scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the toughest things that I saw were
Speaker 2: around the kids. You know, you see a lot of
Speaker 2: kids with deformities, firstly because of the radioactive nature of
Speaker 2: the cobalt dust heavy metals poisoning. In fact, actually this
Speaker 2: is something that one of the fact checkers on the
Speaker 2: piece at Katti Nagrinbaden alerted me to that paternal exposure
Speaker 2: to some of these materials is actually associated very heavily
Speaker 2: with birth the effects. So that was very sad talking
Speaker 2: to parents, to wives of people who'd been killed in
Speaker 2: these landslides at mines. And then obviously, you know, going
Speaker 2: to a school for sort of kids who had been
Speaker 2: actually run by good shepherd, so kids who had been
Speaker 2: artismal miners. And then just like chatting with his kid, Zicki,
Speaker 2: who's in the piece as well. I mean he was
Speaker 2: working in mind since he was three basically, and just
Speaker 2: the sort of pain and suffering. And then there was
Speaker 2: this moment where I kind of you know, showed him
Speaker 2: my phone. I said, listen, like the new iPhone is
Speaker 2: going for a two hundred dollars and everybody there knows
Speaker 2: that it's going into batteries. It something like fifty percent
Speaker 2: of the cobalt mine there. It goes into lifting my
Speaker 2: own batteries. And I said to him, listen, like, how
Speaker 2: do you feel about this? And he was just like,
Speaker 2: I feel terrible. And I think he just had this
Speaker 2: sort of moment of realization which I really didn't want
Speaker 2: to prompt, but he sort of thought, you know, how
Speaker 2: 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 read The
Speaker 1: Times of his whole entire media died. What's your media died?
Speaker 1: When you're up in the morning, I.
Speaker 3: Would say the Times as well.
Speaker 2: I like listening also to the BBC Today program. It's
Speaker 2: such a good program, and it's just very good to
Speaker 2: keep up with news from.
Speaker 1: The UK as well your TV news.
Speaker 3: No, I don't have a TV. I'm not one of
Speaker 3: those people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Actually, while I was in Africa, I really you know,
Speaker 2: reporting actually in the Sahara and so on, like most
Speaker 2: of the places you get France Francaire, France twenty four,
Speaker 2: you know, everyway everywhere go, and I kind of when
Speaker 2: I'm in Africa, I watch a lot of France twenty
Speaker 2: four and a REFI, which is Radio France Ante Nacional.
Speaker 3: And that's great as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're just that they're really like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I find that sort of French quality of journalism, maybe
Speaker 2: sometimes influenced by French foreign policy, but actually they go
Speaker 2: very deep into a lot of issues that I'm interested in.
Speaker 2: The other publication that I wanted to mention is Jean Afrique,
Speaker 2: which is a sort of I think it's France based,
Speaker 2: where they cover lots of Africa, especially French speaking Africa,
Speaker 2: in depth, and again often with a kind of French
Speaker 2: twist or French foreign policy twist.
Speaker 1: What's the status of the book at the moment.
Speaker 3: I'm in the middle of writing it, reporting it, traveling.
Speaker 1: You're still working out, yeah, exactly when are you guys
Speaker 1: got to come out?
Speaker 3: I hope to work on it all of next year
Speaker 3: and then for the next.
Speaker 2: Year basically because you're doing other things, because I'm doing
Speaker 2: other things, and I'm also.
Speaker 3: Just doing a lot of reporting on this as well.
Speaker 1: What's a story you wouldn't tell. What's a story that
Speaker 1: people suggested to you and your thought that's not for me.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been asked to do profiles of movie
Speaker 1: stars and things like that to get a paycheck and
Speaker 1: to work, and you that didn't interest you. What don't
Speaker 1: you want to do?
Speaker 2: I think sort of gossip and sort of crying into
Speaker 2: people's personal lives. I'd think probably things that you also
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't like, so you didn't know the.
Speaker 1: Half of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying this to be kind. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're this incredibly smart guy and I loved your piece.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for the book to come out. Do
Speaker 1: you have any appetite for documentary film and filmmaking.
Speaker 2: I'd love to do documentary film and filmmaking. Actually, when
Speaker 2: I graduated from Columbia, I went and made a mini
Speaker 2: doc about a Roma gypsy trumpet players in Serbia and
Speaker 2: Subbian nationalists and that was a really, really fun experience.
Speaker 2: But you know, writing has always been my first love.
Speaker 1: I feel like the work you're doing, I mean, these
Speaker 1: stories are the stories people need to hear. Where there
Speaker 1: was injustice like this and where this this exploitation we
Speaker 1: have a set of rules here in this country for
Speaker 1: our own and there's things that we would never allow.
Speaker 1: We'd be screaming from the mountaintops if we had this
Speaker 1: radioactive situation and children being content. We and we have
Speaker 1: things like that in this country now. But when it
Speaker 1: is exposed, when it is brought to light, I'll never forget,
Speaker 1: you know, being a New Yorker. One of the things
Speaker 1: I love to about being a New Yorker is the
Speaker 1: indignation and the outrage are never packed away. People carry
Speaker 1: a little bottle of it with them. And when the
Speaker 1: needles all washed up and all the medical waste washed
Speaker 1: up on the shores of New Jersey years ago, it
Speaker 1: was on the front page of the People went insane.
Speaker 1: They were like the beaches of New Jersey and all
Speaker 1: these families go there and all this contaminate. I mean,
Speaker 1: people went nuts. And of course writing books is important,
Speaker 1: but that medium of film is another layer that you
Speaker 1: should really really consider.
Speaker 2: You know, I've written about art, I've written about I
Speaker 2: was a restaurant review while I was a fact checker
Speaker 2: at the New Yorker.
Speaker 3: So you review restaurants for the NYOKA in the city,
Speaker 3: how old you do that?
Speaker 1: Two years.
Speaker 3: It was great and I did bars as well.
Speaker 2: It was fun because you know at the time, you
Speaker 2: know they would give you a couple of hundred bucks
Speaker 2: to go to restaurants.
Speaker 1: And I did Del Posto with Frank Bruney. Okay, we
Speaker 1: went to one of his sittings and Laureene doubts it,
Speaker 1: would you like to come with Frank and I and
Speaker 1: a fourth person. He's going to review Del Posto, And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, here's the rules. He orders for everybody
Speaker 1: because he has to eat everything on the menu. So
Speaker 1: the four of you have to have what he tells
Speaker 1: you to eat, and they're going to pass the plates
Speaker 1: or whatever you can all sample, but he's going to
Speaker 1: do the ordering because he must eat every item on
Speaker 1: the menu. He goes back four and five times and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and and he took me through the
Speaker 1: whole reality of Frank's life. So what was it like?
Speaker 1: Were you going four and five times to a restaurant or.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, you go two times to the restaurant.
Speaker 1: Did they eventually catch on who you were? No?
Speaker 2: Not really, But one of the best experience experiences doing that.
Speaker 2: I went to a Somali restaurant in Harlem, and then
Speaker 2: I came back after the review. I live up in Harlem,
Speaker 2: so he kind of was trying to wrap Harlem restaurants
Speaker 2: and I came back after the review and there were
Speaker 2: like lines around the block.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 2: It's really fun and it's wonderful place. I stand by
Speaker 2: my review, So that was a nice moment.
Speaker 1: Do you identify as Greek, Irish, British, American, a journalist
Speaker 1: or all of the above?
Speaker 3: Well, all of the above.
Speaker 2: But I think that my Greek roots are very very
Speaker 2: important to me, and I feel very strongly that, you know,
Speaker 2: Greece is a troubled place but also somewhere where one
Speaker 2: can do it a lot of good. I like the
Speaker 2: spirit of Greeks and Greeks abroad and this kind of
Speaker 2: journeying spirit. There's a poem by cossadinoska Vafis called Ithaca,
Speaker 2: which is probably the most famous modern Greek poem, and
Speaker 2: he talks about like hope as you set out for Ithaca,
Speaker 2: so you're sort of setting out for coming back home
Speaker 2: as Odysseus. You hope that your journey is a long one,
Speaker 2: so you hope that you have this kind of like journey,
Speaker 2: which is full of adventures and cyclops and Lystragonians and
Speaker 2: so on. So I like that sort of aspect, and
Speaker 2: I think I probably sort of see myself in that
Speaker 2: mold as well.
Speaker 1: I suppose journalist Nicholas Narkos. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue, Maureen Hoben, and Zach MacNeice. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Frank Imperial. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: is brought to you by iHeart Radio