David Weda (2:50)

So wait, are we going the right direction.

Andy Borowitz (2:52)

I just started walking.

David Weda (2:54)

Bernie, right here. Hi. Could we talk to you for a minute? Certainly.

John Cassidy (2:59)

First of all, just what's your name and where you're from?

David Weda (3:01)

David Weda.

Eric Klemm (3:02)

W E E D A I'm from Bucksport, Maine.

John Cassidy (3:06)

So, David, are you a Bernie delegate or are you a Bernie Sanders delegate.

Andy Borowitz (3:10)

From the state of Maine?

John Cassidy (3:12)

What issues are important to you, would you say?

David Weda (3:15)

Environmental issues are extremely important to me.

John Cassidy (3:17)

What about trade? I mean, some people say trade is an environmental issue too, because of it.

Eric Klemm (3:21)

Is an environmental issue. And it's also an issue that's very important to those of us who care about human rights.

David Weda (3:26)

And the TPP is not the answ. I'm opposed to the TP somewhere. There's my, one of my buttons.

Andy Borowitz (3:33)

There it is.

David Weda (3:33)

These are going to be imposed on our legislators.

Eric Klemm (3:37)

It's worse than corporate personhood.

David Weda (3:39)

They're literally overtaking our system of lawmaking.

John Cassidy (3:42)

We just got back from the Bernier bus rally outside the town hall here. Probably two or 300 people listening to speakers, all of whom were on the Bernier bus train. Actually, it was sort of ironic. We just got there and a guy was railing against the tpp.

David Remnick (3:57)

What they're attempting is a corporate takeaway.

John Cassidy (3:59)

Calling it a corporate corporate coup and citizens united on crack.

Kimberly Cooper (4:05)

I'm Kimberly Cooper and I am now from Pinellas County, Florida.

John Cassidy (4:11)

Do you see anything in your own life which makes you suspect this sort of thing?

Kimberly Cooper (4:15)

Oh, yeah. Take a look at NAFTA and cafta, what they've already done. People keep talking about how many manufacturing jobs have gone over to other countries. They've been offshored. Well, guess what? For at least four, five years now, we've had office jobs quietly being offshored and nobody knows about that. When these corporations take the good paying jobs and they send them offshore and make American citizens get lower paying jobs, these American citizens cannot afford to buy the products that these corporations are selling.

David Weda (4:50)

Okay, so Phil, can you take the bike?

Patty Marks (4:53)

Can you take the bike?

Kimberly Cooper (4:55)

Virginia Sugrin, Washington State.

David Weda (4:59)

I mean, do.

John Cassidy (5:00)

You think the world is moving in your direction on this issue? I mean, are we.

Kimberly Cooper (5:03)

I think we are catching up with the rest of the world. I see Europe, Canada, way ahead of us, way ahead.

John Cassidy (5:09)

I mean, just in terms of like say, you know, this attitude towards the tpp we just heard the man talk about there seems to be coming pop. Trump talks about it too.

Kimberly Cooper (5:18)

Yes, I know, it's scary. It's very appealing. When Trump says that he's against the tpp, he's gone left of Hillary on Several issues that are very attractive to the Bernie folks. And the jobs have just gone away. A lot of people have just left. My husband works for an Indian tribe, so that's our livelihood. When Donald Trump talks about poor negotiations, how we're just giving stuff away, I see it. I see it. And the Democrats just want to continue with that trend. So, not that I'm a Trump supporter.

John Cassidy (5:50)

But Bernie sees it too. You say?

Kimberly Cooper (5:51)

Well, Bernie sees everything. Yes, he does.

David Weda (5:55)

A lot of people are making links.

Andy Borowitz (5:56)

Between sort of the Bernie phenomenon, this.

David Weda (5:59)

Talk about trade and the Brexit vote. Do you sort of see those links or.

John Cassidy (6:05)

Yeah, no, there certainly are some links. I mean, in both cases, it's sort of nativist, nationalist reaction against globalization in some sense. In the uk, the Brexit vote, the big issue was not so much trading goods and services, which is what the PTP is about, as trading people. Labour, market migration, immigration. If you take a sort of few steps back and take a more cosmic view of it, they're both emanations of this sort of suspicion of globalization and the sort of world economy which seems to be everywhere now in the advanced world.

David Weda (6:45)

Does it surprise you now that in our two major political parties, there's sort of this overlapping Venn diagram where trade is right in the middle of it? For both of them, it is a.

John Cassidy (6:56)

Little surprising because over the last 20 or 30 years, both parties in the US have really been pro free trade, although there have been significant dissenting minority in the Democratic Party all along, left of the party, some of the unions, etc. In the Republican Party. This is a whole new ball game to have a really skeptical person on trade and appealing to the sort of working class base of the Republican Party. The entire Republican establishment believes in free trade. The party is financially dependent on large corporations who are completely bought into free trade. That's one of the reasons why Trump is so disruptive inside the party. And the fact that this issue is now cutting across party lines is, I think, something new in American politics.

David Remnick (7:40)

John Cassidy at the Democratic National Convention this week with producer Stephen Valentino. Shortly after President Obama spoke, I got in touch with Jelani Cobb, a staff writer at the New Yorker. He's the author of the Substance of Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress, which was published not long after Obama's election. Jelani also recently hosted a PBS Frontline special on race and policing, which is a terrific look at these issues. Jelani, you were at the 2008 convention for the Democrats, and now you spent the week in Philadelphia with President Obama. Doing everything he can to pass the baton to his old rival and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. And yet throughout the convention, to say nothing of the last eight years, race has been a dominant theme. And I wanted you to step back and give us an assessment about how you feel about the president's handling of race as a subject in the broadest sense, the way you were feeling about it in your book, the Substance of Hope, and the way you're feeling it now as he's facing his last months in office.

Jelani Cobb (8:47)

So it's interesting, in Denver in 2008, when Obama was being nominated and I was a delegate at that point, and even among the delegates who were certain that he was about to be nominated, there was still this sense of disbelief, and of course, there was like, this bigger sense of disbelief among virtually everyone in the country that this was about to happen. And at the same time, there was this kind of question about whether or not people were going to take this as the automatic inoculation against any concerns or problems related to race in the United States. And at the end of that speech, these confetti cannons went off and everyone down the row jumped. And it wasn't because we were startled by the cannons. I think there was this real sense of concern for his safety that even as he was talking about having kind of eclipsed one barrier in American history, people were worried about, quite frankly, his safety and his life, given the history of black leaders in this country and assassination. And so I think that in some ways, we've kind of steered between those two shoals in the ensuing years. We've seen kind of point after point after point after point in which race has emerged and been a dominant part of the conversation here, maybe not in ways that we anticipated. I don't think that people expected to see the kind of explosive, highly contentious situations that have involved, for the most part, firearms that have been a dominant theme in his presidency. And so here in Philadelphia, people have tried to very delicately touch upon that. And so when you saw the mothers of the movement, for instance, the women who had lost children to gun violence in situations, for the most part, to gun violence in situations that had serious racial implications, very often with policing, they were preceded by a police officer, and they were preceded by Eric Holder. And of course, it makes sense if you're trying to, if you're a Democratic Party and you're looking to say that you're trying to peel off people from the middle and independents and people who may not quite agree with the Black Lives Matter movement, and so they've been trying to strike that balance kind of time and time again. In everything you've seen here, do you.

David Remnick (11:18)

Think there's any space between Obama and Clinton when it comes to Black Lives Matter? Both Clintons have struggled with Black Lives Matter to some degree in terms of rhetoric and approach in their meetings with them. You've seen protests and so on.

Jelani Cobb (11:34)

Well, I mean, I think there's certainly a space in terms of credibility. You know, Barack Obama comes to this as one, a black person, and then also someone who does have that activist background as a young person in the south side of Chicago. And if you recall kind of in the midpoint of the primaries when Bill Clinton had that blow up at the protesters from Black Lives Matter and, you know, he kind of went in and defended the 1994 crime bill. And then people thought this was a disaster because African American voters were supposed to be the firewall that was going to prevent the nomination from being snatched away by Bernie Sanders. And so the next day or a couple days after that, you see Bill Clinton have to kind of walk that back a little bit. And then, of course, Hillary Clinton. Clinton has been criticized by that movement as well for some of the rhetoric from the 1990s, the super predator references and so on.

David Remnick (12:32)

So you've been at these different conventions. What struck you the most? In Philadelphia, you saw a party that was not exactly unified, especially outside the arena, but sometimes in the arena as well.

Jelani Cobb (12:43)

Well, you know, what was interesting is that these two conventions are kind of almost like bookends or mirror images of each other. Because in 2008, there was this great deal of fear about the party being divided between Hillary Clinton's people and Barack Obama's people. And whether or not that lack of unity would be fatal. As a matter of fact, in talking to the Georgia delegation, former President Jimmy Carter said, well, you know, I'm an expert on what divided conventions do. And said, you know, as you saw in 1976, the Republicans were divided and I won. He said then 1980, the Democratic Party was largely divided and they won. And this was a real kind of concern that was floating around among people that turned out to be, for the most part, unfounded. And by the end of the convention, especially after Hillary Clinton gave that kind of barn burning speech that she gave, which I think has been underrated in the number of speeches that Hillary Clinton has given after she gave that speech, you saw the party really come together. In Philadelphia, it's been the opposite. The delegates seem to be much, much more skeptical here. And so after the formal nomination of Hillary Clinton. About 300 people or so bolted from the hall. And, you know, many of these were people who were chanting, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, and marched over to the media tent and, you know, had a spontaneous sit in, in the media tent protesting the way that they, in their terms, had been sitting, silenced by the Democratic Party. And last night I went to a meeting of the Green Party that the Green Party held across town from the convention. And there, there was a serious conversation, even more contentious conversation than you might imagine.

David Remnick (14:36)

How many people were there?

Jelani Cobb (14:38)

This was about maybe three or four hundred people. This building was packed. And they were debating whether or not Bernie Sanders should be considered a sellout for having given his endorsement to Hillary Clinton.

David Remnick (14:51)

And yet they're facing, in the arguments of the majority of the delegates are there and the Democratic, Democratic constituency, they are facing ultimately a binary choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the real existing world.

Jelani Cobb (15:06)

Well, I think that, you know, what's interesting is when you talk with these people, they kind of reject the binary. And so Jill Stein has this phrase that she uses that it's time to reject the lesser of two evils for.

David Remnick (15:18)

The greater good, even if that means electing Donald Trump.

Jelani Cobb (15:22)

Well, I think there's a kind of cause and effect disjuncture here where I think a lot of people who are, you know, liberals or maybe independents would see that as being the case. But in those circles, there is not that kind of assumption that those two things are connected. Jill Stein said yesterday in this meeting, she said, we're choosing between the lesser of two evils, and it's debatable, which is the lesser. And one of the other things I think has been probably the case with Hillary is that having been in public life for decades, it's telling that the super predator line that she made was not. Was not fatal to her at the time. And the great deal of controversy that she's encountered has been 20 years later when we have a very different set of attitudes about it and not coincidentally, a much lower crime rate than we had in 1995, 1996.

David Remnick (16:11)

One of the interesting speeches came from Jesse Jackson, who didn't quite have the primetime spot that he had in previous years, but he was no less interesting. And he said that Hillary does understand that Black Lives Matter and said that she would stand up against the NRA and stand up to the Washington gun lobby and so on and so forth.

Jelani Cobb (16:29)

Yeah.

David Remnick (16:30)

And it's not quite clear how she would go about doing that. I'd love to know your take on that. Your view of what Hillary Clinton really can, in the real existing world do when it comes to guns that Barack Obama could not.

Jelani Cobb (16:45)

I'm not sure what any American politician is going to do or able to do to break, you know, the logjam that we have right now. But I do think that one of the things that, you know, that happens, it was not, I think, coincidental that Michael Bloomberg was here to speak not simply as someone who is appealing to independence and, you know, a businessman and so on, but also someone who's had this kind of very vocal presence about the issues around guns in American society. And I think guns are the way of finessing these complexities between wanting to appeal to people who think about Black Lives Matter as important and wanting to appeal to people who think that the safety and protection of police officers is paramount. And the common denominator between those two things is guns.

David Remnick (17:32)

Jelani, have a safe trip home from Philadelphia. Talk to you soon.

Jelani Cobb (17:34)

Thank you. Thank you.

David Remnick (17:35)

Jelani Cobb, staff writer at the New Yorker. As all the lunacy of the back to back convention weeks finally ratcheted down, I called up a man uniquely qualified to deal with these events. My friend, my colleague, Andy Borowitz. He writes the Borowitz Report for the New Yorker. So, Andy, kind of a transition from one week to the next. We've gone from Blade Runner convention to what?

Andy Borowitz (18:07)

Well, it's the Hillary convention. And the biggest challenge of nominating Hillary Clinton is that you have as the star of the show, Hillary Clinton. And she, to take a direct quote from her, she says, I'm not a natural politician. Which sort of makes you question her choice of career in a way because, like, I am not a natural, I don't know, harmonica player. And so I've like avoided jobs that require harmonica skills. I think the DNC and the way they've staged this, they've borrowed a strategy that was used a lot in music videos in the 80s. Like if you had the star of the show was somebody like Phil Collins or Steve Winwood who could not really move or dance, you would just surround them with lots of great dancers and bodies flying through the frame. And that's basically what they've done in this convention. You've got like Bill and Joe and Michelle and Barack and weird old Mike Bloomberg. And they really distracted attention away from the fact that the star of the show is Hillary.

David Remnick (19:08)

Mike Bloomberg was a little weird, wasn't he?

Andy Borowitz (19:11)

He is by far my favorite thing about this convention.

David Remnick (19:14)

Do tell.

Andy Borowitz (19:15)

He kind of helicoptered in from the planet Bloomberg. He got down there and basically said, donald Trump is not a real billionaire. I'm a real billionaire. He sucks. And then he got out. Like, he just flew away. And it's like, what was that?

David Remnick (19:29)

Do you think it sealed the billionaire vote?

Andy Borowitz (19:32)

Well, I think just people love to observe billionaire on billionaire violence. It's so rare to see it. And I think that people enjoyed it.

David Remnick (19:39)

They just enjoyed it. I love billionaire on billionaire violence.

Andy Borowitz (19:42)

That's right.

David Remnick (19:43)

The one thing I could not have imagined for the world of me was the fact that you'd have a James Bond Bond plot going. That there's a Russian element, a Putin Trump bromance.

Andy Borowitz (19:55)

Yeah, a little bit. Tom Clancy was good. Now, I wanted to talk to you about that because you're sort of a Russian hand. I know you've written at least one book on Russia. I have googled Russia. So we're coming at it from slightly different angles. But I wanted to get your take. Obviously, Putin is very much. His hand is very much of the levers of power here. But do you feel like he's trying to help the Republicans or help the Democrats? Do you have any hot take on that?

David Remnick (20:21)

Oh, I think Putin is much happier with the idea of a Trump presidency. First of all, he resents the United States enormously.

David Weda (20:29)

Right.

David Remnick (20:29)

Resents it fantastically. Thinks of the 90s as a great humiliation in which we were laughing at drunk Boris Yeltsin and now we're telling him not to go into Ukraine, which is in his sphere of influence. They hate Hillary Clinton. They hate the Clintons because the Clintons were in power during the 90s when everything was going south for Russia. It was chaotic and was humiliating in world affairs and at home. And now Hillary Clinton is on the edge of the White House. He doesn't want to see that. He wants to see the United States as destabilized and as distracted and crazy as possible.

Andy Borowitz (21:05)

Well, I thought you might say that because I've also googled you. But I actually think. I think it's questionable because I think everything Putin did this week really helped the Democrats.

David Remnick (21:18)

You know, last week we described the Republican convention as dystopic and bleak and fear mongering and all the rest. And I think we were joined by the entire commentariat in that. And his numbers went way up and his poll numbers in some areas have passed Hillary Clinton, and there's a kind of general freak out among the Democrats. Do you think that Hillary will regain ground in the polls because of the smoothness of the week, the relative smoothness of the week?

Andy Borowitz (21:52)

It was Kind of a love in. It was sort of a love convention. And it was also a convention where when somebody did something incredibly cheesy and sentimental and you said, oh my God, they're not going to do that. That's never going to work. It somehow did work. I mean, I sort of came away believing in the audacity of cheese because I think, like, especially we have to talk about Bill Clinton. I mean, Bill Clinton, when he said, you know, 40 years ago I met a girl and he was like, oh my God, he's actually going to.

David Remnick (22:23)

Oh, no. It was worse than that. It was worse than that. He starts talking, then I tapped her on the shoulder and you're going to get his, his seduction technique. And you just thought, oh my God, I know I'm not the only one thinking this. Don't go down this route. I don't want to hear how you picked up girls.

Andy Borowitz (22:40)

No, it was like, and just was like walking in on your parents having sex. I mean, you know, they do it. You just didn't want to hear the details. And he went on and tried to make it seem like Bill and Hillary were one of the greatest love stories of all time. And I was hearing, I was saying, are people buying this? And sure enough, you know, that night on social media, I saw so many Democrats were just completely in love with it. So that did show the power of cheese. I mean, it just worked.

David Remnick (23:06)

It shows the power of what you want to hear. I mean, exactly. I have no problem with people having a complex marriage. God knows marriage is complex and theirs is just famously so. And people who are going to watch the Republican convention and want Trump to do well are going to see it far differently than the opposite. But I just thought that speech, you know, starting off, I met a girl and it was something very old fashioned and not a good way the way it started off. But then it kicked into really high gear and talked about the depth of her accomplishments and what she's cared about.

Andy Borowitz (23:40)

It was good. It was good. Although the one thing I would say about, you know, these conventions are all about the reinvention of the candidate. And basically the message of these conventions tends to be whatever you thought about the candidate going in, the exact opposite is actually true. And so like last week we heard, and we talked about it, famously misogynistic. Donald Trump is actually America's foremost feminist. We learned that from his daughter.

David Weda (24:08)

We heard that.

Andy Borowitz (24:09)

Exactly. But this week the message seemed to be from speaker after speaker. You think that Hillary Clinton has been a single minded careerist her entire life. And actually, she spends most of her time visiting people in hospitals. That's really how she spends most of her. It's like 90% hospital visits, 10% career.

David Remnick (24:32)

Andy, thank you. And will you promise to be with us on the nights of the debates, because those are not to be missed.

Andy Borowitz (24:37)

Absolutely. And I assume we're going to be doing the same thing when Jill Stein is nominated for the Green Party, because that's going to be amazing.

David Remnick (24:44)

Maybe at less length. Andy, thanks so much.

Andy Borowitz (24:48)

Thanks.

David Remnick (24:48)

Andy Borowitz writes the Borowitz Report, and you can find it@newyorker.com I'm David Remnick, and you're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

Andy Borowitz (24:57)

We didn't even talk about Joe Biden saying malarkey.

David Remnick (25:03)

Malarkey's such a good word.

Andy Borowitz (25:05)

I loved malarkey.

David Remnick (25:32)

Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, does this ring a bell at all?

David Weda (25:39)

Finally, the race is on tonight to solve a mystery dating back to World.

Eric Klemm (25:43)

War II and collect the riches that.

Andy Borowitz (25:45)

May come along with it.

David Weda (25:46)

Legend has it that a Nazi train filled with gold was lost seven decades ago.

Andy Borowitz (25:51)

But is it just that, a legend?

David Remnick (25:53)

It's a story from last fall in Poland. A couple of men announced that they knew where to find a train loaded with treasures looted by the Nazis. Gold, fine art, and rare documents stashed underground for days.

David Weda (26:06)

Fortune hunters have descended on this railroad track in Valzik, western Poland. It's said the treasure hunters were led here by a deathbed confession.

David Remnick (26:15)

It sounds like an Indiana Jones sequel or maybe a weekly world news story. But the tale of the gold train, whether it even exists or not, is more complicated than you might think. Contributor Jake Halpern went to the province of Lower Silesia to see what he could dig up.

David Weda (26:33)

Okay, so we're really close. It looks like we're like, 200 meters from his house. So here I am, I'm in a car in the foothills of Lower Silesia. I'm riding with my translator, Carol. What number 67 might be this one. We're pulling up this really steep driveway, and this big, burly guy. That's the one.

David Remnick (26:53)

Yeah, exactly.

David Weda (26:54)

His way kind of comes out, and he's yelling at us, hey, over here. And then we see what turns out to be this treasure hunter's clubhouse. It's, like, up on these pylons, and it's got, like, this Teutonic style. It looks like a tree house. So we're there to meet this guy named Andre BoJack. It's Andrew Bacon in English. And he looks like an Andrew Bacon. He's like this big, beefy guy. He's a well known treasure hunter in this region. He's not, by the way, one of the men who claimed to have found the gold train. But Andre has been looking for hidden Nazi loot of his own. So we walk in and it's clear right off the bat that he's not maintaining some sort of strict museum protocol.

Andre BoJack (27:43)

Would you like to have a beer?

David Weda (27:44)

He says to me, like, have a beer. And he grabs this Nazi knife, uses it to crack open the cap of the bottle and hands it to me. Yeah. So we're in this room here, and there's like these old rusted helmets and some knives and a compass and some canisters. So tell me, this is the clubhouse for the treasure hunters.

Andre BoJack (28:08)

It belongs to a friend of mine. We have the same passion, the same hobby. There are a lot of treasure hunter groups here. Our group has been here for 20 years or so. You need a place to bring all your finds. This will be our little kind of museum.

David Weda (28:23)

Andre starts taking out his loot and he shows me a whole bunch of old Nazi war helmets, an old rifle, gas mask, gas mask, canisters.

Andy Borowitz (28:33)

You know, you have such a big.

Eric Klemm (28:35)

Amount of this stuff around here.

David Weda (28:36)

There's this ornate swastika mounted on an eagle that once clearly went on the top of a flagpole. I mean, it's everywhere. There's like a box full. What's this with the swastika and the eagle here?

David Remnick (28:48)

Soto ist.

David Weda (28:49)

Look. He wasn't going on and on about how great the Nazis were. Andre is quick to tell me that his own uncle died at Auschwitz. I think Andre's position is something like this. History is ours. All of our lives were somehow wrapped up in this. But he's excited about the fact that he's uncovered all of these relics of history around him. You know, at one point, Andre even makes a joke that his group has found the gold train and that's how they got the money to build this clubhouse. But actually, Andre doesn't really believe that there is a gold train. He says, though, that there are other treasures, all sorts, big and small, that are buried all around in these hills.

Andre BoJack (29:35)

We are in the most interesting spot when it comes to hidden treasure in Europe. This area used to be owned by the Germans during World War II. There was a decree in April 1946 that every German family had to leave. They hid everything. Still today, people find stuff that was hidden back then.

David Weda (29:57)

Because you had all these Germans that were running for their lives, basically. But before they went, they buried their typewriters, their dresses, I mean, even chocolate bars because they were thinking they're going to come back to get this stuff. And then all of these new people are moved in and they take over these empty homes, which had to be kind of creepy. And every time they dig in the gardens or the fields, they unearth these small buried treasures. But Andre is clear to point out that these small treasures, that's not what he's into. That's everyday stuff for dudes with metal detectors. On Sunday in the woods, he's looking for big Holy Grail type finds deep in the ground in tunnels beneath the mountain. He reaches behind him and he pulls out this long kind of, you know, cardboard cylinder. And from it he, he unfurls this big black and white photograph, which is an aerial photograph taken sometime during the war of the Polish countryside. And he points a thumb at these like, cluster of maybe like a dozen or so small black specks. And he says, you see that? Those are barracks. Those are barracks from a forced labor camp.

Andre BoJack (31:13)

There was a camp here and it doesn't exist now. There were two, two and a half thousand workers here. It's very important to find these camps.

David Weda (31:21)

Okay, so why are they so important?

Andre BoJack (31:26)

Because so many people means the Germans were doing a lot of work there. We also know how much work could be done in eight hours. So we can calculate how long the tunnels.

David Weda (31:44)

Tunnels. That's what's really got Andre's attention, and not just his, but the gold train guys too, and all the other dedicated treasure hunters. You see, in the early 1940s, the Third Reich undertook a massive project carving miles of underground tunnels beneath the mountains. In fact, it's so big that some people call it a half completed underground city.

Joanna Lemparska (32:09)

This project is called wise, which means giant, because it is absolutely giant. These are huge, giant, underground.

David Weda (32:18)

So here I am having lunch with a woman named Joanna Lemparska. She's a local journalist and she's written books about these tunnels and the treasures that may or may not be in them.

Joanna Lemparska (32:27)

The most, the biggest one is 9,000 square meter. Thousands of people, thousands of inmates of concentration camp were to dig those underground. Nobody knows for sure why Germans tried to do it. There is no document.

David Weda (32:47)

So the thing that makes exploring these tunnels so tricky is that there are no remaining maps to the complexes. And many of the entranceways were collapsed either by the Nazis or the Soviets. So far, the treasure hunters have found miles and miles of tunnels. I mean, a huge amount of space. 656,000 square. I mean, picture a football field times 11. It begs the question, why did the Nazis need that much space underground? And there's a lot of theories about this. Some people say that it was to hide the Reich's planes. Others said it was to build an underground city, a refuge for the Nazi elite. You know, still others say it was to hide the Reichsbank gold. Every treasure hunter seems to have their own particular means of finding new tunnels that might lead to treasure. For some, it's comparing maps. Others use Georadar, even using magic. A day or two later, I'm with another treasure hunter, this guy named Kristoff. He looks like Yul Brenner a little bit. He's got a shaved bald head. He's kind of a dashing guy, super deep voice. And we are standing in front of a spot where water is basically coming out of the side of a mountain. There's a bunch of collapsed rocks there, and you can clearly see a small stream just seeping out of it. Kristoff then says, look, the next step to know how big this tunnel is and where it might go involves a very special piece of equipment. And he produces a wooden briefcase. Imagine what you would carry a clarinet in, like, 1890. And he opens it up, and inside are these beautifully long brass rods, divining rods. These are like what mystics use to find water in the desert. It's almost like a compass where you ask a question and it points the direction. Is that the. What's the idea of. So here he is, and he's dressed in these military fatigues with a patch on the shoulder that has a wolf's head, and beneath it, it says third Reich deposits. Fittingly Surreal.

Eric Klemm (35:00)

Now he asks the question if there.

Andy Borowitz (35:02)

Is something that was made by a human under the ground.

David Weda (35:05)

So Kristoff sets up a little demonstration for us. He takes us to this open area, and he says, I think there's a tunnel beneath the ground here. And the way that I find it is this. So you walk across this space with the wands, and when you are above the tunnel, when you hit the wall, the wands will cross. Okay, Carol, my translator is trying. I'm talking quietly so as not to mess up his concentration. The two rods are pointing forward. He's approaching the wall. He crossed the threshold of the wall, but they didn't cross. He's now going towards. He's in what would be the tunnel marked off on the road. He's got to the other line in the dirt. Oh. And they cross exactly when he touched it. Exactly what he touched. Christoph won't tell me exactly how many tunnels he's found this way, but he says officially he's reported finding eight sections of tunnels. And he's taken these tunnels and he's turned them into a museum of sorts.

John Cassidy (36:13)

So here we are.

David Weda (36:13)

Right.

John Cassidy (36:13)

There's a.

David Weda (36:14)

What's the name of this reset complex? So there's like, a hillside here and these two big black doors going into the mountain. It's worth pausing for a moment here. Okay, we're in. Everything I've been told about the tunnel so far is colorful and interesting, and I'm not really sure what I make wet floor. It's like a real metallic scent here. When I cross that threshold and I entered them for the first time, two things occur to me. The first is I'm really aware that people had died in large numbers to dig these tunnels. It has a crypt, like, feel from the moment you walk in. And the second thing is they're huge. It was on for quite a while. Kilometers of tunnels are there in this complex. I mean, I've been in tunnels before. I've been in the coal mining tunnels in Pennsylvania. I mean, I've been in mines. I've seen the Carrera Marba mines in Italy, but they pale by comparison.

Andy Borowitz (37:18)

Altogether, it will be 4km here.

David Weda (37:22)

First, it's kind of small, but then that tunnel gradually expands in size until it becomes larger and larger and larger. And then eventually we get to a spot where it turns into a river, and there's a boat there.

John Cassidy (37:40)

Wow.

Andy Borowitz (37:40)

The boat is quite big.

David Weda (37:42)

How deep is the water here?

Andy Borowitz (37:46)

It's up to one and a half meter.

David Weda (37:48)

We walk down and get into this boat, and we start basically making our way down this underground river deeper into this complex. So he's pulling us along. He's got these ropes that are bolted into the ceiling, and he's pulling our rowboat down like, it's almost like a trolley car down this flooded tunnel. The main tunnel that we're in is bisected by these kind of cross tunnels every, like, hundred feet or so. And then it crosses with another tunnel, and then all of a sudden, the ceiling will open up.

Patty Marks (38:23)

Oh, look up.

David Weda (38:25)

Whoa.

Patty Marks (38:25)

Whoa.

David Weda (38:26)

There's like a huge hole above us and something. What is that? You see? There's a trolley over us.

Andy Borowitz (38:35)

Yeah.

David Weda (38:36)

Let's hope it doesn't drop. So there's another tunnel directly above us.

Andy Borowitz (38:44)

Yes.

David Weda (38:45)

The scale in parts of it is enormous. I mean, big enough to fit like an Amtrak train through and for the first time, I get it. I get why it would not be a stretch of the imagination to say that someone could park a train down here. It doesn't take much to imagine how you could quickly become obsessed with this. Part of me is thinking, like, maybe I'm gonna be the dude. The gold chain's over there. I mean, it fills you with wonder. You feel like there must be something down here. Back at the clubhouse, I'm talking to Andrej. Come on. What is it that you're after? What do you think that's down there? And he kind of gives me this little knowing smile. And then he reaches into the vest pocket of his coat. Clearly, he's had this thing in there the whole time, and he's been waiting. And he pulls out this piece of paper, and he's flashing it around, and I'm trying to see what it is. And then he keeps it there for, like, just long enough for us to glimpse at. Looks like a ufo. A ufo? Tell him that looks like a flying saucer. Is that what that is? Yes. They were built first here by the Nazis underground during the war. Anti gravity flying dude. Where did you get that? And he's like, this is from a survivor. He claims it was made by one of the prisoners from one of these forced labor camps. Remember Andre took out that map and showed us the barracks from the prisoner camp. He claims it was one of those guys that made it. I'm like, can you corroborate this? Is there any firsthand accounts? And he says, as a matter of fact, there is. Dobryvecho. Panietko.

Andy Borowitz (40:37)

Panietko.

David Weda (40:38)

He takes out his cell phone. Is that. We're going to call my friend Edward, who's in his 80s, but was a boy during the war. And he saw. So Edward says, basically, oh, yeah. When I was a boy playing, we saw these. He called them flying barrels, these mysterious flying devices that were shooting around. I'm skeptical, but I'm listening. And it was difficult to hear Edward because periodically there was this kind of, like, disturbance on the line, some sort of clicking or beeping or something. When we got off the phone, Andrey's.

Andy Borowitz (41:10)

Like.

David Weda (41:13)

Did you hear that noise on the phone? We're being tapped. Tapped by who? The guards. I was like, the guards? And he proceeds to tell me this legend in Lower Silesia that there are these guards that were left in place by the Germans at the end of the war to protect the secrets that they buried in the ground there.

Andre BoJack (41:39)

The secret society was founded by former SS members who escaped Argentina and Brazil after World War II. It is financed and run by siblings of those SS members and people who share their worldview.

David Weda (41:51)

And does he think that they're still operating here?

David Remnick (41:54)

Yes.

David Weda (41:57)

Andre has all these stories about these would be guards, suspicious locals, and these Germans that come in and do spelunking that he believes are on the lookout. In fact, he says that one time he's on one of these treasure hunting missions, and he looks over his shoulder and he just knows that these guys are following him.

Andre BoJack (42:19)

They were looking very elegant with fancy hairstyles, too fancy to be from around here. We got into a car and they started following us immediately. They turned right when we did. We turned around, and so did they. It was obvious that we were being followed.

David Weda (42:39)

So I know what you're thinking, right? We're talking about guys who are waving around magic wands and they believe in UFOs, and there's some crazy Nazi secret society that's watching them. It all sounds. I know how it sounds. Do you ever say to them, come on. Yes?

Joanna Lemparska (42:56)

Yeah, sometimes. Yes. I ask them, come on. Do you believe that there was gold in the gold train? And they say, come on, this is bull. There was machines on a gold train, not gold.

David Weda (43:11)

Joanna Lamparska, she's the journalist who's written about the history here, she says that there actually were a few Germans who stayed in the region right after the war. And a myth grew out of this that these leftover Germans, they were keeping the Soviets who took over away from these real treasures that were buried.

Joanna Lemparska (43:28)

Then they said to them, don't dig here. I know the treasure is over there. They mistaken them, you know, confusing them.

David Weda (43:36)

Almost like mythic. And people believe this. So, like, what's the deeper thing here? I mean, is this just really about people's lust for gold? I will tell you why, okay?

Joanna Lemparska (43:49)

We have to go back to 1945.

David Weda (43:52)

Russian troops, and what Lemparska says is that this fear comes from a deeply unsettled feeling that you're living in a landscape that you don't know, in homes that aren't yours, in beds that once belonged to someone else. Then on top of that, you've got this landscape with these huge, mysterious holes in the ground that thousands of people were forced to dig, and you don't know why. So what do you do? Your imagination rushes in to fill the void. Maybe Andre and Kristoff and the rest of the treasure hunters are just working hard, I mean, really, really hard, to make sense of the world around them.

David Remnick (44:53)

Jake Helper, his article Nazi Underground, about the Polish treasure hunters, appeared in the New Yorker. And you can find a link@New Yorkerradio.org Jake's also the author of Bad Paper, a terrific book about debt on Wall Street. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. In a moment, Patty Marks tries her hand at one of those sports that we only pay attention to during the Olympics. And it all comes with mixed results.

Patty Marks (45:20)

Oh, there's blood on the floor.

David Weda (45:22)

There is, yeah.

David Remnick (45:24)

Adventures in Archery. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us. Now, we've got just one more story for you this hour. Ladies and gentlemen, Patty Marks.

Patty Marks (45:59)

For my next feat, I'm going to ask my assistant, he likes to be called my producer, to help me. I'm gonna put this nectarine on top of his head, William Tell style, and shoot at. Well, the goal would be the nectarine. We'll see what happens. All right. I suppose you take an arrow here. 1.

David Remnick (46:26)

I guess you don't have to say 1, 2, 3.

Patty Marks (46:28)

Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay. All right. I get a hundred points. I'm Patty Marks, and I was in the Olympics as an archer. No, I wasn't. I went to overnight camp and I played archery, and I loved it so much. You just felt as somebody who wasn't the tallest and strongest person, you had a shot, so to speak. Archery is a sport you play against yourself, which depends. I guess that's sort of a litmus test about your personality, because you could say it's a lose lose or a win win or a win lose if you're bipolar. There are a lot of different kinds of archery. The most popular kind of archery, and I just made it up. I don't know if it's. The most popular is target archery, which you would do indoors. Then there's also field archery, which is kind of like golf. Then there is 3D archery, also outdoors. But today I'm going to invent apartment archery for the very lazy. So this is a bow that I got. Really? You got it on Amazon. I don't really know too much about it, but it's beautiful. It's made of very hard plastic, as the Olympic archers use. It's bright orange. And disappointingly, they're not arrows, they're suction cups. I could just go around the apartment and shoot at things and my boyfriend or I could just set up some targets. I do have a wooden decoy. Maybe that's a little too obvious, but I do have a trivet shaped like a man. I got It. I'm so good. I have some shrink wrapped chicken thighs which I hope are thawed. I got close. I scared the chicken thighs. Now, one more thing I'd like to kill, if you don't mind, which is let's go over to the bookcase and there are some books I want to get rid of. Finnegan Wake's too obvious. So let's get Ulysses, which is a big fat hard back. Say your goodbyes. One, two, three. I just hit a vase. Okay, I give myself some more points. Well, there goes the no shoe rule in my apartment. Now that we've ruined a lot of relics and things in my apartment, we're going to go to the trendy industrial neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to visit a company called Brooklyn Boer. We're not talking about the militaristic style of hunting bows you find online. These are the artisanal bows using different kinds of wood that you and by you I mean I have never heard of.

Eric Klemm (49:57)

I'm assuming I'm one of a handful of people in New York City who do this, but I do know there are a few others.

Patty Marks (50:05)

The owner of Brooklyn Bower is Eric Klemm.

Eric Klemm (50:08)

And this is one that I just started a couple days ago. I cut out all the pieces and right now it's in the glue up process. So it just finished curing, but it's still wrapped in cellophane.

Patty Marks (50:21)

It has a lot of metal clothespins and things that look like screwdrivers piercing it.

Eric Klemm (50:30)

Here, I'll also actually you show you a finished one. This is eventually what it will look like with different coloring.

Patty Marks (50:38)

Oh, it's gorgeous. What kinds of woods are there? It's beautiful. Layers of different types of wood.

Eric Klemm (50:45)

Yeah, this is a laminate of the hickory is on the back, which keeps the bellywood, which is called Osage orange, and that keeps that from breaking when you bend it back this way. And then the riser, which is the word for the handle, is made of. I think this is boccote and more hickory and a little bit of mulberry.

Patty Marks (51:07)

And do you make arrows?

Eric Klemm (51:09)

I do, yeah. And they look something like this. And these are made of Port Orford cedar and turkey feathers.

Patty Marks (51:17)

This is sharp. This could hurt somebody.

Eric Klemm (51:19)

Yeah, that could definitely hurt somebody.

Patty Marks (51:21)

Who buys your boat?

Eric Klemm (51:23)

Random people. Also, I get commissions from friends, family, people that I've met at the archery tournaments who see the bows and, you know, it's one of those things. Archery apparently is making a comeback.

Patty Marks (51:35)

Why do you think that is?

Eric Klemm (51:37)

Well, okay, so here's the deal. I go to this archery range in Ozone Park, Queens. And it's full of old timers who have been shooting there since the 60s or 70s, I want to say. And every single one of them will tell you, they're like, oh, yeah, it's the Hunger Games. Hunger Games. The damn Hunger Games movies are making a. You know. But I think that has a lot to do with it. But I also think it's the kind of thing that ever. You know, the sort of popular culture is moving back to traditional things. And I think people see archery as sort of a hipster y kind of thing that they can take up for a hot spot.

Patty Marks (52:07)

Makes sense to me. We're here at Proline Archery in Ozone Park. I'm here with Eric, and he's going to give me a lesson. I imagine that you do best in archery when you have no thoughts in your head, which means I should do very well in archery. Is that what the goal is?

Eric Klemm (52:33)

Yes.

Patty Marks (52:35)

You have to think about that too much.

Eric Klemm (52:37)

You know what they say is you think about your shot before you start shooting. And then while you're shooting, you think about nothing.

Patty Marks (52:44)

Okay, I'll try that. You know, I hope it's not like yoga, because I can't do yoga. Oh, that was terrible.

Eric Klemm (52:51)

I don't know why that happened.

David Weda (52:53)

I don't know what happened.

Eric Klemm (52:54)

And also, with these bows, you close your non dominant eye.

Patty Marks (53:00)

That's good. If I were going for that target.

Eric Klemm (53:04)

You are an inch away from the bullseye on the target next to your target.

David Remnick (53:08)

Wow.

Patty Marks (53:09)

Okay. You're not really telling me where. How do you aim?

Eric Klemm (53:15)

That's the thing with these bows. It's more in your body. What I always tell people is stare directly at the center of what you want to shoot. And then as you keep going, your body figures out what to do as you go.

Patty Marks (53:28)

It's like steering a Segway.

Eric Klemm (53:31)

It's exactly like steering a Segway.

Patty Marks (53:34)

This is embarrassing, but the arrow went over the board with the target.

Eric Klemm (53:40)

You are consistent with your mistakes.

Patty Marks (53:43)

So if I go hunting, I need some prey that is kind of low and on the left.

Eric Klemm (53:50)

Yeah, you need, like, a deer that's had a stroke.

Patty Marks (53:52)

Okay, when we return to the apartment, there was a big surprise. Oh, there's blood on the floor.

David Weda (54:02)

There is?

David Remnick (54:03)

Yeah. Oh, my God.

David Weda (54:05)

Whoa.

Patty Marks (54:06)

Oh, my God.

David Weda (54:07)

It's all over here, too.

Patty Marks (54:08)

Who's bleeding?

David Weda (54:09)

Look, it's all over here.

Patty Marks (54:11)

So where was the blood coming from? My boyfriend Paul's toe.

David Weda (54:15)

Oh, you know what it is? It's the vase that you broke cut my foot I thought you said you cleaned up. Look, here's another piece of the glass. Oh, Jesus. That was set out for you.

Andy Borowitz (54:27)

I'm so sorry.

David Weda (54:28)

It's okay.

Patty Marks (54:28)

As long as it's not on the rug, I don't really care. It is on the rug. Should we get the Roomba to clean this? I think we should.

David Remnick (54:46)

The one, the only, Patty Marks, the author of the book let's Be Less Stupid and a contributor to the New Yorker since 1989. No boyfriends or producers were harmed in the making of our story. Not deliberately, anyway. But the blood was real. And that's it for today. Next week, we're taking a break from politics. You're welcome. And instead, Paul Simon will talk about the art of songwriting in a conversation with the great poet Paul Muldoon. Don't miss it. You can hear the New Yorker Radio Hour on our podcast, subscribe on itunes, or wherever you listen. And while you're there, if you don't mind, take a moment to give us a review. It helps other people find the show.

Kimberly Cooper (55:26)

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards. This episode was produced by Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnap, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield and Steven Valentino, with help from Owen Agnew, Alex Barron, Rob Byers, Carol Chihotsky, Becky Cooper, Matt Fidler, Eric Malinsky and Nick Palmgarten. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment.